Silas Grangerson came to town on the Wednesday, driving in and reaching
the Charleston Hotel about five o'clock in the afternoon.
The Grangersons scarcely ever used the railway. Silas, often as he had
been in Charleston, had never put foot in a street car; even a hired
conveyance was against the prejudices of these gentlemen.
This antagonism towards public means of locomotion was not in the least
the outcome of snobbishness or pride; they had come from a race of people
accustomed to move in a small orbit in their own particular way, an
exclusive people, breeders and lovers of horses, a people to whom
locomotion had always meant pride in the means and the method; to take a
seat in a stuffy railway car at so much a mile, to grab a ticket and
squeeze into a tram car, to drive in a cab drawn by an indifferent horse
would have been hateful to these people; it was scarcely less so to their
descendants.
So Silas came to Charleston driving a pair of absolutely matched
chestnuts, a coloured manservant in the Grangerson livery in attendance.
After dinner he strolled into the bar of the hotel, met some friends, made
some bets on the forthcoming races and at eight o'clock retired upstairs
to dress.
He was one of the first of the guests to arrive.
The Rhetts' house in Legare Street was about the same size as Vernons and
equally old, but it had not the same charm, the garden was much larger
than that at Vernons, but it had not the same touch of the past. Houses,
like people, have personalities and the house of the Rhetts had a
telephone without resenting the intruder, electric everythings, even to an
elevator, modern cookers, modern stoves, everything in a modern way to
save labour and make life easy, and all so cunningly and craftily done
that the air of antiquity was supposed not to be disturbed.
Illusion! Nothing is gained without some sacrifice; you cannot hold the
past and the present in the same hand, the concealed elevator spoke in all
the rooms once its presence was betrayed, the telephone talked--everywhere
was evident the use of yesterday as a veneer of to-day.
However that may be, the old house was gay enough to-night with flowers
and lights, and Silas, looking better perhaps than he had ever looked in
his life, found himself talking to Frances Rhett with an animation that
surprised himself.
Frances had never had a chance of leading Silas behind her chariot; to
fool with her would have meant an expenditure of time and energy in
journeys to Charleston quite beyond his inclination. This aloofness
coupled with his good looks had set him apart from others.
But to-night he was quite a different being; to-night, in some mysterious
way, he managed to convey the impression, pleasing enough, that he had
come to see her and her alone.
As they stood together for a moment, he led the talk into Charleston
channels, asking about this person and that till the folk at Vernons came
on the _tapis_.
"Is it true what I hear, that Richard Pinckney has become engaged to the
girl who is staying there?" asked Silas.
Frances smiled.
"I don't think so," she replied. "Who told you?"
"Upon my word I forget," said he, "but I judged mostly by my own
eyes--they seemed like an engaged couple when I saw them last."
New guests were arriving and she had to go forward to help in receiving
them. Silas moved towards her, but in the next moment they had for a
snatch of conversation, she did not refer to the subject, nor did he.
The Vernons people were late, so late that when they arrived they were the
last of the guests; dancing was in progress and, on entering the ballroom,
Richard Pinckney was treated to the pleasing sight of his _fiancee_
whirling in the arms of Silas Grangerson.
Phyl, looking lovely in the simple, rather old-fashioned dress evolved for
her by the combined geniuses of Maria Pinckney and Madame Organdie,
produced that sensation which can only be evoked by newness, her effect
was instantaneous and profound, it touched not only every one of these
strangers but also Maria Pinckney and Richard. They had come with her, but
it was only in the ballroom that they recognised with whom they had come.
So with a book, a picture, a play, the producer and his friends only
recognise its merits fully when it is staged and condemned or praised by
the public.
A _debutante_ fails or succeeds at first glance, and the instantaneous
success of Phyl was a record in successes.
And Frances Rhett had to watch it and dance. The Inquisition had its
torments; Society has improved on them, for her victims cannot cry out and
the torments of Frances Rhett were acute. Not that she was troubling much
about Richard Pinckney and what the poisonous Silas had said; she was not
in love with Richard Pinckney, but she was passionately in love with
herself. She was the belle of Charleston; had been for the last year; and
one of her chief incentives to marriage was an intuitive knowledge that
prestige fades, that the position of principal girl in any society is like
the position of the billiard ball the juggler balances on the end of a
cue--precarious. She wanted to get married and ring down the curtain on an
unspoiled success, and now in a moment she saw herself dethroned.
In a moment. For no jeweller of Amsterdam ever had an eye for the quality
of diamonds surer than the eye of Frances Rhett for the quality of other
women's beauty. At the first glance to-night, she saw what others saw,
though more clearly than they, that it was the touch of the past that gave
Phyl her _cachet_, a something indefinable from yesterday, the lack of
which made the other girls, by contrast, seem cheap.
Never could she have imagined that the "red-headed girl at Vernons" could
gain so much from setting, a setting due to the instinct as well as the
taste of "that old Maria Pinckney."
She had always laughed at Maria, as young people sometimes will at the
old.
When Richard came up to her a little later on, he found himself coldly
received; she had no dances for him except a few at the bottom of the
programme.
"You shouldn't have been late," said she.
"Well," he said, "it was not my fault. You know what Aunt Maria is, she
kept us ten minutes after the carriage was round, and then Phyl wasn't
ready."
"She looks ready enough now," said the other, looking at Phyl and the
cluster of young men around her. "What delayed her? Was she dyeing her
head? It doesn't look quite so loud as when I saw her last."
"Her head's all right," replied Pinckney, irritated by the manner of the
other, "inside and out, and one can't say the same for every one."
Frances looked at him.
"Do you know what Silas Grangerson asked me to-night?" she said.
"No."
"He asked me were you engaged to her."
"Phyl?"
"Miss Berknowles. I don't know her well enough to call her Phyl."
"He asked you that?"
"Yes, said every one was talking of it, and the last time he saw you
together you looked like an engaged couple the way you were carrying on."
"But he has never seen us together," cried the outraged Pinckney; "that
was a pure lie."
"I expect he saw you when you didn't see him; anyhow, that's the
impression people have got, and it's not very pleasant for me."
Richard Pinckney choked back his anger. He fell to thinking where Silas
could have seen them together.
"I don't know whether he saw us or not," said he, "but I am certain of one
thing; he never saw us 'carrying on' as you call it; anyhow, I'll have a
personal explanation from Silas to-morrow."
"_Please_ don't imagine that I object to your flirting with any one you
like," said Frances with exasperating calm. "If you have a taste for that
sort of thing it is your own business."
Pinckney flushed.
"I don't know if you _want_ to quarrel with me," said he, "if you do, say
so at once."
"Not a bit," she replied, "you know I never quarrel with any one, it's bad
form for one thing and it is waste of energy for another."
A man came up to claim her for the next dance and she went off with him,
leaving Pinckney upset and astonished at her manner and conduct.
It was their first quarrel, the first result of their engagement. Frances
had seemed all laziness and honey up to this; like many another woman she
began to show her real nature now that Pinckney was secured.
But it was not an ordinary lovers' quarrel; her anger had less to do with
Richard Pinckney than with Phyl. Her hatred of Phyl, big as a baobab tree,
covered with its shadow Vernons, Miss Pinckney, and Richard.
He was part of the business of her dethronement.
Richard wandered off to where Maria Pinckney was seated watching the
dancers.
"Why aren't you dancing?" asked she.
"Oh, I don't know," he replied. "I'm not keen on it and there are loads of
men."
Miss Pinckney had watched him talking to Frances Rhett and she had drawn
her own deductions, but she said nothing. He sat down beside her. He had
been wanting to tell her of his engagement for a long time past, but had
put it off and put it off, waiting for the psychological moment. Maria
Pinckney was a very difficult person to fit into a psychological moment.
"I want to tell you something," said he. "I'm engaged to Frances Rhett."
"Engaged to be married to her?"
"Yes."
Miss Pinckney was dumb.
What she had always dreaded had come to pass, then.
"You don't congratulate me?"
"No," she replied. "I don't."
Then, all of a sudden, she turned on him.
"Congratulate you! If I saw you drowning in the harbour, would you expect
me to stand at the Battery waving my hand to you and congratulating you?
No, I don't congratulate you. You had the chance of being happy with the
most beautiful girl in the world, and the best, and you've thrown it away
to pick up with _that_ woman. Phyl would have married you, I know it, she
would have made you happy, I know it, for I know her and I know you. Now
it's all spoiled."
He rose to his feet. It was the first time in his life that he had seen
Maria Pinckney really put out.
"I'll talk to you again about it," said he. Then he moved away.
He had the pleasure of watching Frances dancing the next waltz with Silas
Grangerson, and Silas had the pleasure of watching him as he stood talking
to one of the elderly ladies and looking on.
Silas's rabbit trap was in reality a very simple affair, it was a plan to
pick a quarrel with Richard through Frances, if possible; to make the
imperturbable Pinckney angry, knowing well how easily an angry man can be
induced to make a fool of himself. To keep cool and let Richard do the
shouting.
Unfortunately for Silas, the sight of Phyl in all her beauty had raised
his temperature far above the point of coolness. There were moments when
he was dancing, when he could have flung Frances aside, torn Phyl from the
arms of her partner and made off with her through the open window.
This dance was a deadly business for him. It was the one thing needed to
cap and complete the strange fascination this girl exercised upon his
mind, his imagination, his body. It was only now that he realised that
nothing else at all mattered in the world, it was only now that he
determined to have her or die.
Silas was of the type that kills under passion, the type that, unable to
have, destroys.
Preparing a trap for another, he himself had walked into a trap
constructed by the devil, stronger than steel.
Yet he never once approached or tried to speak to Phyl. He fed on her at a
distance. Fleeting glimpses of the curves of her figure, the Titian red of
her hair, the face that to-night might have turned a saint from his vows,
were snatched by him and devoured. He would not have danced with her if he
could. To take her in his arms would have meant covering her face with
kisses. Nor did he feel the least anger against the men with whom she
danced. All that was a sham and an unreality, they were shadows. He and
Phyl were the only real persons in that room.
Later on in the evening, Richard Pinckney, tired with the lights and the
noise, took a stroll in the garden.
The garden was lit here and there with fairy lamps and there were coigns
of shadow where couples were sitting out chatting and enjoying the beauty
of the night.
The moon was nearing the full and her light cut the tree shadows
distinctly on the paths. Passing a seat occupied by one of the sitting out
couples, Pinckney noticed the woman's fan which her partner was playing
with; it was his own gift to Frances Rhett. The man was Silas Grangerson
and the woman was Frances. They were talking, but as he passed them their
voices ceased.
He felt their eyes upon him, then, when he had got twenty paces or so
away, he heard Frances laugh.
He imagined that she was laughing at him. Already angry with Silas, he
halted and half turned, intending to go back and have it out with him,
then he thought better of it and went his way. He would deal with Silas
later and in some place where he could get him alone or in the presence of
men only. Pinckney had a horror of scenes, especially in the presence of
women.
Twenty minutes later he had his opportunity. He was crossing the hall from
the supper room, when he came face to face with Silas. They were alone.
"Excuse me," said Richard Pinckney, halting in front of the other, "I want
a word with you."
"Certainly," answered Silas, guessing at once what was coming.
"You made some remarks about me to Miss Rhett this evening," went on the
other. "You coupled my name with the name of a lady in a most
unjustifiable manner and I want your explanation here and now."
"Who was the lady?" asked Silas, seemingly quite unmoved.
"Miss Berknowles."
"In what way did I couple your name with her, may I ask?"
"No, you mayn't." Richard had turned pale before the calm insolence of the
other. "You know quite well what you said and if you are a gentleman you
will apologise-- If you aren't you won't and I will deal with you in
Charleston accordingly."
Phyl was at that moment coming out of the supper room with young Reggie
Calhoun--the same who, according to Richard that morning at breakfast long
ago, was an admirer of Maria Pinckney.
She saw the two men, in profile, facing one another, and she saw Silas's
right hand, which he was holding behind his back, opening and shutting
convulsively.
She saw the blow given by Pinckney, she saw Silas step back and the knife
which he always carried, as the wasp carries its sting, suddenly in his
hand.
Then she was gripping his wrist.
Face to face with madness for a moment, holding it, fighting eye to eye.
Had she faltered, had her gaze left his for the hundredth part of a
second, he would have cast her aside and fallen upon his prey.
It was her soul that held him, her spirit--call it what you will, the
something that speaks alone through the eye.
Calhoun and Pinckney stood, during that tremendous moment, stricken,
breathless, without making the slightest movement. They saw she was
holding him by the power of her eye alone; so vividly did this fact strike
them that for a dazed moment it seemed to them that the battle was not
theirs, that the contest was beyond the earthly plane, that this was no
struggle between human beings, but a battle between sanity and madness.
Its duration might have been spanned by three ticks of the great old clock
that stood in the corner of the hall telling the time.
Then came the ring of the knife falling on the floor. It was like the
breaking of a spell. Silas, white and bewildered-looking as a man suddenly
awakened from sleep, stood looking now at his released hand as though it
did not belong to him, then at Pinckney, and then at Phyl who had turned
her back upon him and was tottering as though about to fall. Pinckney,
stepping forward, was about to speak, when at that moment the door of the
supper room opened and a band of young people came out chatting and
laughing.
Calhoun, who was a man of resource, kicked the knife which slithered away
under one of the seats. Phyl, recovering herself, walked away towards the
stairs; Silas without a word, turned and vanished from sight past the
curtain of the corridor that led to the cloakroom.
Calhoun and Pinckney were left alone.
"What are you going to do?" asked Calhoun.
"I am at his disposal," replied the other. "I struck him."
"Struck him, damnation! He drew a knife on you; he ought to be hoofed out
of the club; he'd have had you only for that girl. I never saw anything so
splendid in my life."
"Yes," said Pinckney, "she saved my life. He was clean mad, but thank God
no one knows anything about it and we avoided a scene. Say nothing to any
one unless he wants to push the matter further. I am quite at his
disposal."
PART IV
CHAPTER I
When Silas reached the cloakroom he took a glance at himself in the
mirror, then putting on his overcoat and taking his hat from the attendant
he came back into the hall. Pinckney and Calhoun had just strolled away
into the ballroom; there was no one in the hall, and without a thought of
saying good-bye to his hostess, he left the house.
He felt no anger against Pinckney, nor did he think as he walked down
Legare Street that but for the mercy of God and the intervention of Phyl
he might at that moment have been walking between two constables, a
murderer with the blood of innocence on his hands.
Not that he was insensible to reason or the fitness of things, he had
always known and acknowledged that when in a passion he was not
accountable for his acts; he admitted the fact with regret and also with a
certain pride. To-night he might have felt the regret without any pride to
leaven it but for the fact that his mind was lost to every consideration
but one--Phyl.
All through his life Silas had followed with an iron will the line that
pleased him, never for a moment had he counted the cost of his actions;
just as he had swum the harbour with his clothes on so had he plunged into
any adventure that came to hand; he knew Fear just as little as he knew
Consequence. Well, now he found himself for the first time in his life
face to face with Fate. All his adventures up to this had been little
things involving at worst loss of life by accident. This was different; it
involved his whole future and the future of the girl who had mastered his
mind.
Leaving Legare Street he reached Meeting Street and passed up it till he
reached Vernons. The moon, high in the sky now, showed the garden through
the trellis-work of the iron gate, and Silas paused for a moment and
looked in.
The garden, seen like this with the moonlight upon the roses and the
glossy leaves of the southern trees, presented a picture charming,
dream-like, almost unreal in its beauty. He tried the gate. It was locked.
On ordinary nights it would be open till the house closed, or in the event
of Pinckney being out, until he returned, but to-night, owing to the
absence of the family, it was locked.
Then, turning from the gate he crossed the road and took up his position
in a corner of shadow. Five minutes passed, then twenty, but still he kept
watch. There were few passers-by at that hour and little traffic; he had a
long view of the moonlit street and presently he saw the carriage he was
waiting for approaching.
It drew up at the front door of Vernons and he watched whilst the
occupants got out; he caught a glimpse of Phyl as she entered the house
following Miss Pinckney and followed by Richard, then the door shut and
the carriage drove away.
Silas left his concealment and crossed the road. He paced for a while up
and down outside the door of Vernons, then he came to the garden gate
again and looked in.
From here one could get a glimpse of the first and second floor piazzas
and the windows opening upon them. He could not tell which was the window
of Phyl's room, it was enough for him that the place held her.
In the way in which he had crossed the road, in his uneasy prowling up and
down before the house, and now in his attitude as he stood motionless with
head raised there was something ominous, animal-like, almost wolfish.
As he stood a call suddenly came from the garden. It was the call of an
owl, a white owl that rose on the sound and flitted softly as a moth
across the trees to the garden beyond.
Silas turned away from the gate and came back down the street towards his
hotel, arrived there he went straight to his room and to bed.
But he did not go to sleep. His head was full of plans, the craziest and
maddest plans. Pinckney he had quite dismissed from his mind, the
consciousness of having committed a vile action in drawing a knife upon an
unarmed man was with him, and the knowledge that the consequences might
include his expulsion from Charleston society, but all that instead of
sobering him made him more reckless. He would have Phyl despite the Devil
himself. He would seize her and carry her off, trap her like a bird.
He determined on the morrow to return early to Grangersons and think
things out.
CHAPTER II
Whilst he was lying in bed thinking things out, the folk at Vernons were
retiring to rest.
Maria Pinckney knew nothing of what had occurred between Silas and
Richard. Richard Pinckney, Phyl and Reggie Calhoun were the only three
persons in Charleston, leaving Silas aside, who knew of the business and
in a hurried consultation just before leaving the Rhetts they had agreed
to say nothing.
Calhoun was for publishing the affair.
"The man's dangerous," said he; "some day or another he'll do the same
thing again to some one and succeed and swing."
"I think he's had his lesson," said Pinckney; "he went clean mad for the
moment. Then there's the fact that I struck him. No, taking everything
into consideration, we'll let it be. I don't feel any animosity against
him, not half as much as if he'd stabbed me behind the back with a libel--
He did tell a lie about me to-night but it was the stupid sort of lie a
child might have told. The man has his good points as well as his bad and
I don't want to push the thing against him."
"I don't think he will do it again," said Phyl.
She, like Richard, felt no anger against Silas; it was as though they
recognised that Silas was the man really attacked that night, attacked by
the Devil.
They both recognised instinctively his good qualities. Miss Pinckney, it
will be remembered, once said that it is the man with good in him that
comes to the worst end unless the good manages to fight the bad and get it
under in time. She had a terrible instinct for the truth of things.
"Well," said Calhoun, "it's not my affair; if you choose to take pity on
him, well and good; if it were my business I'd give him a cold bath, that
might stop him from doing a thing like that again. I'll say nothing."
Though Miss Pinckney was in ignorance of the affair she was strangely
silent during the drive home and when Phyl went to her room to bid her
good night, she found her in tears, a very rare occurrence with Miss
Pinckney.
She was seated in an armchair crying and Phyl knelt down beside her and
took her hand.
Then it all came out.
"I had hoped and hoped and hoped for him, goodness knows he has been my
one thought, and now he has thrown himself away. Richard is engaged to
Frances Rhett. He told me so to-night--well, there, it's all ended,
there's no hope anywhere, she'll never let him go, and she'll have Vernons
when I'm gone. She picked him out from all the other men--why?-- Why,
because he's the best of the lot for money and position. Care about him!
She cares no more for him than I do for old Darius. I'm sure I don't know
why this trouble should have fallen on me. I suppose I have committed some
sin or another though I can't tell what. I've tried to live blameless and
there's others that haven't, yet they seem to prosper and get their
wishes--and there's no use telling me to be resigned," finished she with a
snap and as if addressing some viewless mentor. "I can't--and what's more
I won't. Never will I resign myself to wickedness, and stupidity is
wickedness, not even a decent, honest wickedness, but a crazy, sap-headed
sort of wickedness, same as influenza isn't a disease but just an ailment
that kills you all the same."
Phyl, kneeling beside Miss Pinckney, had turned deathly white. Only half
an hour ago when the little conference with Calhoun had been concluded,
Richard Pinckney had taken her hand. His words were still ringing in her
ears:
"You saved my life. I can't say what I feel, at least not now."
He had looked straight into her eyes, and now half an hour later--This.
Engaged to Frances Rhett!
She rose up and stood beside Miss Pinckney for a moment whilst that lady
finished her complaints. Then she made her escape and returned to her
room--
As she closed the door she caught a glimpse of herself in the
old-fashioned cheval glass that had been brought up by Dinah and Seth to
help her in dressing for the dance and which had not been removed. Every
picture in every mirror is the work of an artist--the man who makes a
mirror is an artist; according to the perfection of his work is the
perfection of the picture. The old cheval glass was as truthful in its way
as Gainsborough, but Gainsborough had never such a lovely subject as
Phyl.
She started at her own reflection as though it had been that of a
stranger. Then she looked mournfully at herself as a man might look at his
splendid gifts which he has thrown away. All that was no use now.
She sat down on the side of her bed with her hands clasped together just
as a child clasps its hands in grief.
Sitting like this with her eyes fixed before her she was looking directly
at Fate.
It was not only Richard Pinckney that she was about to lose but Vernons
and the Past-- Just as Juliet Mascarene had lost everything so was it to
happen to her. Or rather so had it happened, for she felt that the game
was lost--some vague, mysterious, extraordinary game played by unknown
powers had begun on that evening in Ireland when standing by the window of
the library she had heard Pinckney's voice for the first time.
The sense of Fatality came to her from the case of Juliet. Consciously and
unconsciously she had linked herself to Juliet. The extravagant idea that
she herself was Juliet returned and that Richard Pinckney was Rupert had
come to her more than once since that dream or vision in which the guns
had sounded in her ears. The idea had frightened her at first, then
pleased her vaguely. Then she had dismissed it, her _ego_ refusing any one
else a share in her love for Richard, any one--even herself masquerading
under the guise of Juliet.
The idea came back to her now leaving her utterly cold, and yet stirring
her mind anew with the sense of Fate.
* * * * *
When she fell asleep that night she passed into the dreamless condition
which is the nearest thing we know to oblivion, yet her sub-conscious mind
must have carried on its work, for when she awoke just as dawn was showing
at the window it was with the sense of having passed through a long season
of trouble, of having fought with--without conquering--all sorts of
difficulties.
She rose and dressed herself, put on her hat and came down into the
garden.
Vernons was just wakening for the day, and in the garden alive with birds,
she could hear the early morning sounds of the city, and from the
servants' quarters of the house, voices, the sound of a mat being beaten
and now and then the angry screech of a parrot. General Grant slept in the
kitchen and his cage was put out in the yard every morning at this hour.
Later it would be brought round to the piazza. He resented the kitchen
yard as beneath his dignity and he let people know it.
Phyl tried the garden gate, it was locked and Seth appearing at that
moment on the lower piazza, she called to him to fetch the key. He let her
out and she stood for a moment undecided as to whether she would walk
towards the Battery or in the opposite direction. Meeting Street never
looked more charming than now in the very early morning sunlight; under
the haze-blue sky, almost deserted, it seemed for a moment to have
recaptured its youth. A negro crab vendor was wheeling his barrow along,
crying his wares. His voice came lazily on the warm scented air.
She turned in the direction of the station. The voice of the crab seller
had completed in some uncanny way the charm of the deserted street and the
early sunlight. She was going to lose all this. Vernons and the city she
loved, Juliet, Miss Pinckney, the past and the present, she was going to
lose them all, they were all in some miraculous way part of the man she
loved, her love of them was part of her love for him. She could no longer
stay in Charleston; she must go--where? She could think of nowhere to go
but Ireland.
To stay here would be absolutely impossible.
As she walked without noticing whither she was going her mind cleared, she
began to form plans.
She would go that very day. Nothing would stop her. The thing had to be
done. Let it be done at once. She would explain everything to Miss
Pinckney. She would escape without seeing Richard again. What she was
proposing to herself was death, the ruin of everything she cared for, the
destruction of all the ties that bound her to the world, the present and
the past. It was the recognition that these ties had been broken for her
and all these things taken away by the woman who had taken away Richard.
Presently she found herself in the suburbs, in a street where coloured
children were playing in the gutter, and where the houses were
unsubstantial looking as rabbit-hutches, but there was a glimpse of
country beyond and she did not turn back. She did not want breakfast. If
she returned to Vernons by ten o'clock it would give her plenty of time to
pack her things, say good-bye to Miss Pinckney and take her departure
before Richard returned to luncheon--if he did return.
It did not take her long to pass through the negro quarter, and now, out
in the open country, out amidst those great flat lands in the broad day
and under the lonely blue sky her mood changed.
Phyl was no patient Grizel, the very last person to be trapped in the bog
of love's despondency. Abstract melancholy produced by colours, memories,
or sounds was an easy enough matter with her, but she was not the person
to mourn long over the loss of a man snatched from her by another woman.
As she walked, now, breathing the free fresh air, a feeling of anger and
resentment began to fill her mind. Anger at first against Frances Rhett
but spreading almost at once towards Richard Pinckney. Soon it included
herself, Maria Pinckney, Charleston--the whole world. It was the anger
which brings with it perfect recklessness, akin to that which had seized
her the day in Ireland when in her rage over Rafferty's dismissal she had
called Pinckney a Beast. Only this anger was less acute, more diffuse,
more lasting.
The sounds of wheels and horses' hoofs on the road behind her made her
turn her head. A carriage was approaching, an English mail phaeton drawn
by two high-stepping chestnuts and driven by a young man.
It was Silas Grangerson. Returning to Grangerson's to make plans for the
capture of Phyl, here she was on the road before him and going in the same
direction.
For a moment he could scarcely believe his eyes. Then reining in and
leaving the horses with the groom he jumped down and ran towards her.
After the affair of last night one might fancy that he would have shown
something of it in his manner.
Not a bit.
"I didn't expect to come across _you_ on the road," said he. "Won't you
speak to me--are you angry with me?"
"It's not a question of being angry," said Phyl, stiffly.
She walked on and he walked beside her, silent for a moment.
"If you mean about that affair last night," said he, "I'm sorry I lost my
temper--but he hit me--you don't understand what that means to me."
"You tried to--"
"Kill him, I did, and only for you I'd have done it. You can't understand
it all. I can scarcely understand it myself. He _hit_ me."
"I don't think you knew what you were doing," said Phyl.
"I most surely did not. I was rousted out of myself. I reckon he didn't
know what he was doing either when he struck. He ought to have known I was
not the person to hit. I'll show you, just stand before me for a moment."
Phyl faced him. He pretended to strike at her and she started back.
"There you are," said he; "you know I wasn't going to touch you but you
had to dodge. Your mind had nothing to do with it, just your instinct.
That was how I was. When he landed his blow I went for my knife by
instinct. If you tread on a snake he lets out at you just the same way. He
doesn't think. He's wound up by nature to hit back."
"But you are not a snake."
"How do you know what's in a man? I reckon we've all been animals once,
maybe I was a snake. There are worse things than snakes. Snakes are all
right, they don't meddle with you if you don't meddle with them. They've
got a bad name they don't deserve. I like them. They're a lot better
citizens, the way they look after their wives and families, than some
others and they know how to hit back prompt--say, where are you going
to?"
"I don't know," said Phyl. "I just came for a walk--I'm leaving
Charleston."
She spoke with a little catch in her voice. All Silas's misdoings were
forgotten for the moment, the fact that the man was dangerous as Death to
himself and others had been neutralised in her mind by the fact,
intuitively recognised, that there was nothing small or mean in his
character. Despite his conduct in the cemetery, despite his lunatic
outburst of the night before, in her heart of hearts she liked him;
besides that, he was part of Charleston, part of the place she loved.
Ah, how she loved it! Had you dissected her love for Richard Pinckney you
would have found a thousand living wrappings before you reached the core.
Vernons, the garden, the birds, the flowers, the blue sky, the sunlight,
Meeting Street, the story of Juliet, Miss Pinckney, even old Prue.
Memories, sounds, scents, and colours all formed part of the living thing
that Frances Rhett had killed.
"Leaving Charleston!" said Silas, speaking in a dazed sort of way.
"Yes. I cannot stay here any longer."
"Going--say--it's not because of what I did last night."
"You--oh, no. It has nothing to do with you." She spoke almost
disdainfully.
"But where are you going?"
"Back to Ireland."
"When?"
"To-day."
Then, suddenly, in some curious manner, he knew. But he was clever enough,
for once in his life, to restrain himself and say nothing.
"I will go this afternoon," said she, as though she were talking of a
journey of a few miles.
"Have you any friends to go to?"
Phyl thought of Mr. Hennessy sitting in his gloomy office in gloomy
Dublin.
"Yes, one."
"In Ireland?"
"Yes."
"Can't you think of any other friends?"
"No."
"Not even me?"
"I don't know," said poor Phyl, "I never could understand you quite, but
now that I am in trouble you seem a friend--I'm miserable--but there's no
use having friends here. It only makes it the worse having to go."
"Do you remember the day I asked you to run off to Florida with me," said
Silas, "and leave this damned place? It's no good for any one here and
you've found it out--the place is all right, it's the people that are
wrong."
Phyl made no reply.
"You're not going back," he finished.
She glanced at him.
"You're going to stay here--here with me."
"I am going back to Ireland to-day," said Phyl.
"You are not, you are going to stay here."
"No. I am going back."
She spoke as a person speaks who is half drowsy, and Silas spoke like a
person whose mind is half absent. It was the strangest conversation to
listen to, knowing their relationship and the point at issue.
"You are going to stay here," he went on. "If I lost you now I'd never
find you again. I've been wanting you ever since I saw you that day first
in the yard-- D'you remember how we sat on the log together?--you can't
tramp all the way back to Charleston-- Come with me and you'll be happy
always, all the time and all your life--"
"No," said Phyl, "I mustn't--I can't." Her mind, half dazed by all she had
gone through, by the mesmerism of his voice, by the brilliant light of the
day, was capable of no real decision on any point. The dark streets of
Dublin lay before her, a vague and nightmare vision. To return to Vernons
would be only her first step on the return to Ireland, and yet if she did
not return to Vernons, where could she go?
Silas's invitation to go with him neither raised her anger nor moved her
to consent. Phyl was an absolute Innocent in the ways of the world. No
careful mother had sullied her mind with warnings and suggestions, and her
mind was by nature unspeculative as to the material side of life.
Instinctively she knew a great deal. How much knowledge lies in the
sub-conscious mind is an open question.
They walked on for a bit without speaking and then Silas began again.
"You can't go back all that way. It's absurd. You talk of going off
to-day, why, good heavens, it takes time even to start on a journey like
that. You have to book your passage in a ship--and how are you to go
alone?"
"I don't know," said Phyl.
His voice became soft. It was the first time in his life, perhaps, that he
had spoken with tenderness, and the effect was perfectly magical.
"You are not going," he said, "you are not; indeed, I want you far too
much to let you go; there's nothing else I want at all in the world. I
don't count anything worth loving beside you."
No reply.
He turned.
The coloured groom was walking the horses, they were only a few yards
away. He went to the man and gave him some money with the order to return
to Charleston and go back to Grangersons by train, or at least to the
station that was ten miles from Grangerville.
Then as the man went off along the road he stood holding the near horse by
the bridle and talking to Phyl.
"You can't walk back all that way; put your foot on the step and get in,
leave all your trouble right here. I'll see that you never have any
trouble again. Put your foot on the step."
Phyl looked away down the road.
She hesitated just as she had hesitated that morning long ago when she had
run away from school. She had run away, not so much to get home as to get
away from homesickness.
Still she hesitated, urged by the recklessness that prompted her to break
everything at one blow, urged by the dismal and hopeless prospect towards
which the road to Charleston led her mind, held back by all sorts of hands
that seemed reaching to her from the past.
Confused, bewildered, tempted yet resisting, all might have been well had
not a vision suddenly risen before her clear, definite, and destructive to
her reason.
The vision of Frances Rhett.
Everything bad and wild in Phyl surged up before that vision. For a second
it seemed to her that she loathed the man she loved.
She put her foot on the step and got into the phaeton. Silas, without a
word, jumped up beside her, and the horses started.
CHAPTER III
She had committed the irrevocable.
When the contract is signed, when the china vase is broken, all the regret
in the world will not alter the fact.
It was not till they had gone ten miles on their way that the regret came,
sudden and painful as the stab of a dagger.
Miss Pinckney's kindly old face suddenly rose up before Phyl. She would
have been waiting breakfast for her. She saw the breakfast room, sunny and
pleasant, the tea urn on the table, the garden through the open window--
Then came the thought--what matter.
All that was lost to her anyhow. It did not matter in the least what she
did.
She was running away with Silas Grangerson.
She had a vague sort of idea that they were running away to be married,
that she would have to explain things to Colonel Grangerson when they got
to the house and that things would arrange themselves somehow.
But now, she sat voiceless beside her companion, answering only in
monosyllables when he spoke; a voice began to trouble her, a voice that
repeated the half statement, half question, over and over again.
"You are running away to be married to Silas Grangerson?"
She was running away from her troubles, from the prospect of returning to
Ireland, from the idea of banishment from Vernons. She was running away
out of anger against the woman who had taken Richard. She was running away
because of pique, anger and the reckless craving to smash everything and
dash everything to pieces--but to marry Silas Grangerson!
"Stop!" cried Phyl.
Silas glanced sideways at her.
"What's the matter now?"
"I want to go back."
"Back to Charleston!"
"Yes, stop, stop at once--I must go back, I should never have come."
Silas was on the point of flashing out but he shut his lips tight, then he
reined in.
"Wait a moment," said he with his hand on her arm, "you can't walk back,
we are nearly half way to Grangersons. I can't drive you because I don't
want to return to Charleston. If you have altered your mind you can go
back when we reach Grangersons, you can wire from there. The old man will
make it all right with Maria Pinckney."
Phyl hesitated, then she began to cry.
It was the rarest thing in the world for her to cry like this. Tears with
her meant a storm, but now she was crying quietly, hopelessly, like a lost
child.
"Don't cry," said he, "everything will be all right when we get to
Grangersons--we'll just go on."
The horses started again and Phyl dried her eyes. They covered another
five miles without speaking, and then Silas said:
"You don't mean to stick to me, then?"
"I can't," said Phyl.
"You care for some one else better?"
"Yes."
"Is it Pinckney?"
"Yes."
"God!" said he. He cut the off horse with the whip. The horses nearly
bolted, he reined them in and they settled down again to their pace.
The country was very desolate just here, cotton fields and swampy grounds
with here and there a stretch of water reflecting the blue of the sky.
After a moment's silence he began again.
There was something in Silas's mentality that seemed to have come up from
the world of automata, something tireless and persistent akin to the
energy that drives a beetle over all obstacles in its course, on or round
them.
"That's all very well," said he, "but you can't always go on caring for
Pinckney."
"Can't I?" said Phyl.
"No, you can't. He's going to get married and then where will you be?"
Phyl, staring over the horses' heads as though she were staring at some
black prospect, set her teeth. Then she spoke and her voice was like the
voice of a person who speaks under mesmerism.
"I cared for him before he was born and I'll care for him after I'm dead
and there's no use in bothering a bit about it now. _You_ couldn't
understand. No one can understand, not even he."
The road here bordered a stretch of waste land; Silas gazed over it, his
face was drawn and hard.
Then he suddenly blazed out.
Laying the whip over the horses and turning them so sharply that the
phaeton was all but upset he put them over the waste land; another touch
of the whip and they bolted.
Beyond the waste land lay a rice field and between field and waste land
stood a fence; there was doubtless a ditch on the other side of the
fence.
"You'll kill us!" cried Phyl.
"Good--so," replied Silas, "horses and all."
She had half risen from her seat, she sat down again holding tight to the
side rail and staring ahead. Death and destruction lay waiting behind that
fence, leaping every moment nearer. She did not care in the least.
She could see that Silas, despite his words, was making every effort to
rein in, the impetus to drive to hell and smash everything up had passed;
she watched his hands grow white all along the tendon ridges with the
strain. The whole thing was extraordinary and curious but unfearful, a
storm of wind seemed blowing in her face. Then like a switched out light
all things vanished.
CHAPTER IV
Twenty yards from the fence the off side wheel had gone.
The phaeton, flinging its occupants out, tilted, struck the earth at the
trace coupling just as a man might strike it with his shoulder, dragged
for five yards or so, breaking dash board and mud guard and brought the
off side horse down as though it had been poleaxed.
Silas, with the luck that always fell to him in accidents, was not even
stunned. Phyl was lying like a dead creature just where she had been flung
amongst some bent grass.
He rushed to her. She was not dead, her pulse told that, nor did she seem
injured in any way. He left her, ran to the horses, undid the traces and
got the fallen horse on its feet, then he stripped them of their harness
and turned them loose.
Having done this he returned to the girl. Phyl was just regaining
consciousness; as he reached her she half sat up leaning on her right
arm.
"Where are the horses?" said she. They were her first thought.
"I've let them loose--there they are."
She turned her head in the direction towards which he pointed. The horses,
free of their harness, had already found a grass patch and were beginning
to graze. The broken phaeton lay in the sunshine and the cushions flung to
right and left showed as blue squares amidst the green of the grass; a
light wind from the west was stirring the grass tops and a bird was
singing somewhere its thin piping note, the only sound from all that
expanse of radiant blue sky and green forsaken country.
"How do you feel now?" asked Silas.
"All right," said Phyl.
"We'd better get somewhere," he went on; "there are some cabins beyond
that rice field, I can see their tops. There's sure to be some one there
and we can send for help."
Phyl struggled to her feet, refusing assistance.
"Let us go there," said she. She turned to look at the horses.
"They'll be all right," said Silas; "there's lots of grass and there's a
pond over there--they'd live here a month without harm."
He led the way to the fence, helped her over, and then, without a word
they began to plod across the rice field.
When they reached the cabins they found them deserted, almost in ruins.
They faced a great tract of tree-grown ground. In the old plantation days
this place would have been populous, for to the right there were ruins of
other cabins stretching along and bordering an old grass road that bent
westward to lose itself amongst the trees, but now there was nothing but
desolation and the wind that stirred the mossy beards of the live oaks and
the rank green foliage of weeds and sunflowers. An old disused well faced
the cabins.
Phyl gave a little shudder as she looked around her. Her mind, still
slightly confused by the accident and beaten upon by troubles, could find
nothing with which to reply to the facts of the situation--alone here with
Silas Grangerson, lost, both of them, what explanation could she make,
even to herself, of the position?
In the nearest cabin to the right some rough dry grass had been stored as
if for the bedding of an animal. It was too coarse for fodder. Silas made
her sit down on it to rest. Then he stood before her in the doorway.
For the first time in his life he seemed disturbed in mind.
"I'll have to go and get help," said he, "and find out where we are. It's
my fault. I'm sorry, but there's no use in going over that. You aren't fit
to walk. I'll go and leave you here. You won't be afraid to stay by
yourself?"
"No," said Phyl.
"You needn't be a bit, there's no danger here."
"I am thirsty," said she.
"Wait."
He went to the well head. The windlass and chain were there rusty but
practicable and a bucket lay amongst the grass. It was in good repair and
had evidently been used recently. He lowered it and brought up some water.
The water was clear diamond bright, and cold as ice. Having satisfied
himself that it was drinkable he brought the bucket to Phyl and tilted it
slightly whilst she drank. Then he put it by the door.
"Now I'll go," said he, "and I shan't be long. Sure you won't be afraid?"
"No," she replied.
"You're not angry with me?"
"No, I'm not angry."
He bent down, took her hand and kissed it. She did not draw it away or
show any sign of resentment; it was cold like the hand of a dead person.
He glanced back as he turned to go. She saw him stand at the doorway for a
moment looking down along the grass road, his figure cut against the blaze
of light outside, then the doorway was empty.
She was never to see him again.
* * * * *
Outside in the sunlight Silas hesitated for a moment as though he was
about to turn back, then he went on, striking along the grass road and
between the trees.
Although he had never been over the ground before, he guessed it to be a
part of the old Beauregard plantation and the distance from Grangerville
to be not more than eight miles as the crow flies. By the road, reckoning
from where the accident had occurred, it would be fifteen. But the lie of
the place or the distance from Grangersons mattered little to Silas. His
mind was going through a process difficult to describe.
Silas had never cared for anything, not even for himself. Danger or safety
did not enter into his calculations. Religion was for him the name of a
thing he did not understand. He had no finer feelings except in
relationship to things strong, swift and brilliant, he had no tenderness
for the weakness of others, even the weakness of women.
He had seized on Phyl as a Burgomaster gull might seize on a puffin chick,
he had picked her up on the road to carry her off regardless of everything
but his own desire for her--a desire so strong that he would have dashed
her and himself to pieces rather than that another should possess her.
Well, as he watched her seated on the straw in that ruined cabin, subdued,
without energy, and entirely at his mercy, a will that was not his will
rose in opposition to him. Some part of himself that had remained in utter
darkness till now woke to life. It was perhaps the something that despite
all his strange qualities made him likeable, the something that instinct
guessed to be there.
It stood between him and Phyl. He was conscious of no struggle with it
because it took the form of helplessness.
Nothing but force could make her give him what he wanted. The thing was
impossible, beyond him. He felt that he could do everything, fight
everything, subdue everything--but the subdued.
There was something else. Weakness had always repelled him, whether it was
the weakness of the knees of a horse or the weakness of the will of a man.
Phyl's weakness did not repel him but it took the edge from his passion.
It was almost a form of ugliness.
He had determined on finding help to send some one back for Phyl; any of
the coloured folk hereabouts would be able to pilot her to Grangersons. He
was not troubling about the broken phaeton or the horses; the horses had
plenty of food and water; so far from suffering they would have the time
of their lives. They might be stolen--he did not care, and nothing was
more indicative of his mental upset than this indifference toward the
things he treasured most.
All to the left of the grass road, the trees were thin, showing tracts of
marsh land and pools, and the melancholy green of swamp weeds and
vegetation.
The vegetable world has its reptiles and amphibians no less than the
animal; its savages, its half civilised populations, and its civilised.
The two worlds are conterminous, and just as cultivated flowers and
civilised people are mutually in touch, here you would find poisonous
plants giving shelter to poisonous life, and the amphibious giving home to
the amphibious.
The woods on the right were healthier, more dense, more cheerful, on
higher ground; one might have likened the grass road to the life of a man
pursuing its way between his two mysteriously different characters.
Silas had determined to make straight for home after having sent
assistance for Phyl, what he was going to do after arriving home was not
evident to his mind; he had a vague idea of clearing out somewhere so that
he might forget the business. He had done with Phyl, so he told himself.
But Phyl had not done with him. He had been scarcely ten minutes on his
road when her image came into his mind. He saw her, not as he had seen her
last seated on the straw in the miserable cabin, but as he had seen her at
the ball.
The curves of her limbs, the colour of her hair, her face, all were drawn
for him by imagination, a picture more beautiful even than the reality.
Well, he had done with her, and there was no use in thinking of her--she
cared for that cursed Pinckney and she was as good as dead to him, Silas.
An ordinary man would have seen hope at the end of waiting, but Silas was
not an ordinary man, a long and dubious courtship was beyond his
imagination and his powers. Courtship, anyhow, as courtship is recognised
by the world was not for him. He wanted Phyl, he did not want to write
letters to her.
There is something to be said for this manner of love-making, it is
sincere at all events.
He tried to think of something else and he only succeeded in thinking of
Phyl in another dress. He saw her as he saw her that first day in the
stable yard at Grangersons. Then he saw her as she was dressed that day in
Charleston.
Then he remembered the scene in the churchyard. He could still feel the
smack she had given him on the face. The smack had not angered him with
her but the remembrance of it angered him now. She would not have done
that to Pinckney.
Turning a corner of the road he came upon a clear space and on the borders
of the clearing to the right some cottages. There were some half-naked
pikaninnies playing in the grass before them; and a coloured woman,
washing at a tub set on trestles, catching sight of him, stood, shading
her eyes and looking in his direction.
Silas paused for a moment as if undecided, then he came on. He asked the
woman his whereabouts and then whether she could sell him some food. She
had nothing but some corn bread and cold bacon to offer him and he bought
it, paying her a dollar and not listening to her when she told him she
could not make change.
He was like a man doing things in his sleep; his mind seemed a thousand
miles away. The woman packed the bread and bacon in a mat basket with a
plate and knife and watched him turn back in his tracks and vanish round
the bend of the road, glad to see the last of him. She reckoned him
crazy.
He was going back to Phyl.
His resolution never to see her again had vanished. She was his and he was
going to keep her, no matter what happened.
He would never part with her alive, if she killed him, if he killed her,
what matter. Nothing would stand in his path.
He reached the turning and there in the sunlight lay the half ruined
cabins and the well.
Walking softly he came to the door of the cabin where he had left Phyl.
She was there lying on the straw fast asleep. It was the sleep that comes
after exhaustion or profound excitement; she scarcely seemed to breathe.
Putting his bundle down by the door he came in softly and knelt down
beside her. His face was so close to hers that he could feel her breath
upon his mouth.
It only wanted that to complete his madness. He was about to cast himself
beside her when a pain, vicious and sharp as the stab of a red hot needle
struck him just above his right instep.
CHAPTER V
When Richard Pinckney came down to breakfast that morning, he found Miss
Pinckney seated at the table reading letters.
"Phyl went out early and has not come back yet," said she putting the
letters aside and pouring out the tea.
"Gone out," said he. "Where can she have gone to?"
Miss Pinckney did not seem to hear the question. She was not thinking of
Phyl or her whereabouts. Richard's engagement to Frances Rhett was still
dominating her mind, casting a shadow upon everything. It was like a death
in the family.
"I hope she's not bothered about what happened last night," went on
Richard. "I didn't tell you at the time, but I had--some words with Silas
Grangerson, and--Phyl was there. Silas is a fool, but it's just as well
the thing happened for it has brought matters to a head. I want to tell
you something--I'm not engaged to Frances Rhett."
"Not engaged?"
"I was, but it's broken off. I had a moment's talk with her before we left
last night. I was in a temper about a lot of things, and the business with
Silas put the cap on it. Anyhow, we had words, and the thing is broken
off."
"Oh, dear me," said Miss Pinckney. The joyful shock of the news seemed to
have reduced her mind to chaos for a moment. One could not have told from
her words or manner whether the surprise was pleasant or painful to her.
She drew her chair back from the table a little, and sought for and found
her handkerchief. She dried her eyes with it as she found her voice.
"I don't know, I don't know, I'm sure. I've prayed all night that this
might be, and now that the Lord has heard my prayer and answered it, I
feel cast right down with the wonder of it. Had I the right to interfere?
I don't know, I'm sure. It seems terrible to separate two people but I had
no thought only for you. I've spoken against the girl, and wished against
her, and felt bad in my heart against her, and now it's all over I'm just
cast down."
"She did not care for me," said Pinckney. "Why she was laughing at me last
night with him. They were sitting outside together, and when I passed them
I heard them laughing at me."
Miss Pinckney put her handkerchief away, drew in her chair, and poured
herself out some more tea energetically and with a heightened colour.
"I don't want to speak bad about any one," said she, "but there are girls
and girls. I know them, and time and again I've seen girls hanging
themselves out with labels on them. 'I'm the finest apple on the tree,'
yet no one has picked them for all their labels, because every one has
guessed that they aren't--That crab apple labelling itself a pippin and
daring to laugh at you! And that long loony Silas Grangerson, a man
without a penny to bless himself with, a creature whose character is just
kinks. Well, I'm sure--pass me the butter--laughing at you. And what were
they laughing at pray? Aren't you straight and the best looking man in
Charleston? Couldn't you buy the Rhetts twice over if you wanted to buy
such rubbish? Aren't you the top man in Charleston in name and position
and character? Why, they'll be laughing at the jokes in the N'York papers
next--They'll be appreciating their own good sense and cleverness and
personal beauty next thing--They'll be worshipping Bryan."
"Oh, I don't think they'll ever get as bad as that," said he laughing,
"but I don't think I care whether people grin at me or not; it's only just
this, she and I were never meant for each other, and I found it out, and
found it out in time. You see the engagement was never made public, so the
breaking of it won't do her any harm. She would not let me tell people
about it, she said it would be just as well to keep it secret for a while,
and then if either of us felt disposed we could break it off and no harm
done."
"Meaning that she could break it off if she wanted to but you couldn't."
"Perhaps. When I went back last night and told her I wanted to be free,
she flew out."
"Said you must stick to your word?"
"Nearly that. Then I told her she herself had said that it was open to
either of us to break the business off."
"What did she say to that?"
"Nothing. She had nothing to say. She asked why I wanted to break it
off."
"And you told her it was because of her conduct, I hope."
"No. I told her it was because I had come to care for some one else."
Miss Pinckney said nothing for a moment. Then she looked at him.
"Richard, do you care for Phyl?"
"Yes."
"Thank God," said she.
The one supreme wish of her life had been granted to her. Her gaze
wandered to the glimpse of garden visible through the open window and
rested there. She was old, she had seen friend and relative fade and
vanish, the Mascarenes, the Pinckneys, children, old people, all had
become part of that mystery, the past. Richard alone remained to her, and
Phyl. On the morning of Phyl's arrival Miss Pinckney had felt just as
though some door had opened to let this visitor in from the world of long
ago. It was not only her likeness to Juliet Mascarene, but all the
associations that likeness brought with it. Vernons became alive again, as
in the good old days. Charleston itself caught some tinge of its youth.
And there was more than that.
"Richard," said she, coming back from her fit of abstraction, "I will tell
you something I'd never have spoken of if you didn't care for her. It may
be an old woman's fancy, but Phyl is more to us, seems to me, than we
think, she's Juliet come back--Oh, it's more than the likeness. I'm sure I
can't explain what I mean, it's just she herself that's the same. There's
a lot more to a person than a face and a figure. I know it sounds absurd,
so would most things if we had never heard them before. What's more absurd
than to be born, and look at that butterfly, what's more absurd than to
tell me that yesterday it was a worm? Well, it doesn't much matter whether
she was Juliet or not, now she's going to be yours, and to save you from
that pasty--no matter she's over and done with, but I reckon she's
laughing on the wrong side of her face this morning."
Miss Pinckney rose from the table. The absence of Phyl did not disturb
her. Phyl sometimes stayed out and forgot meals, though this was the first
time she had been late for breakfast. Richard, who had business to
transact that morning in the town looked at his watch.
"I'm going to Philips', the lawyers," said he, "and then I'll look in at
the club. I'll be back to luncheon."
An hour later to Miss Pinckney engaged in dusting the drawing-room
appeared Rachel the cook.
Rachel was the most privileged of the servants, a trustworthy woman with a
character and will of her own, and absolutely devoted to the interests of
the house.
"Mistress Pinckney," said the coloured woman closing the door. "Ole
Colonel Grangerson's coachman's in de kitchen, an' he says Miss Phyl's
been an' run off with young Silas Grangerson dis very mornin'."
Miss Pinckney without dropping the duster stood silent for a moment before
Rachel. Then she broke out.
"Miss Phyl run off with young Silas Grangerson! What on earth are you
talking about, what rubbish is this, who's dared to come here talking such
nonsense? Go on--what more have you to say?"
Rachel had a lot to say.
Phyl had met Silas on the road beyond the town. They had talked together,
then Silas had sent the groom back to Charleston to return to Grangerville
by train, and had driven off with Phyl. The groom, a relation of Dinah's,
having some three hours to wait for a train, had dropped into Vernons to
pass the time and tell the good news. He was in the kitchen now.
Miss Pinckney could not but believe. She threw the duster on a chair, left
the room and went to the kitchen.
Prue was still in her corner by the fireplace, and Colonel Grangerson's
coloured man was seated at the table finishing a meal and talking to Dinah
who scuttled away as he rose up before the apparition of Miss Pinckney.
"What's all this nonsense you have been talking," said she, "coming here
saying Miss Phyl has run away with Mr. Silas? She started out this morning
to meet him and drive to Grangersons; I'm going there myself at
eleven--and you come here talking of people running away. Do you know you
could be put in prison for saying things like that? You _dare_ to say it
again to any one and I'll have you taken off before you're an hour older,
you black imp of mischief."
There was a rolling pin on the table, and half unconsciously her hand
closed on it. Colonel Grangerson's man, grey and clutching at his hat, did
not wait for the sequel, he bolted.
Then the unfortunate woman, nearly fainting, but supported by her grand
common sense and her invincible nature, left the kitchen and, followed by
Rachel, went to the library. Here she sat down for a moment to collect
herself whilst Rachel stood watching her and waiting.
"It is so and it's not so," said she at last, talking half to herself half
to the woman. "It's some trick of Silas Grangerson's. But the main thing
is no one must know. We have got to get her back. No one must
know--Rachel, go and find Seth and send him off at once to the garage
place and tell them to let me have an automobile at once, at once, mind
you. Tell them I want the quickest one they've got for a long journey."
Rachel went off and Miss Pinckney left to herself went down on her knees
by the big settee adjoining the writing table and began to wrestle with
the situation in prayer. Miss Pinckney was not overgiven to prayer. She
held that worriting the Almighty eternally about all sorts of nonsense, as
some people do who pray for "direction" and weather, etc., was bad form to
say the least of it. She even went further than that, and held that
praising him inordinately was out of place and out of taste. Saying that,
if Seth or Dinah came singing praises at her bedroom door in the morning
instead of getting on with their work, she would know exactly what it
meant--Laziness or concealed broken china, or both.
But in moments of supreme stress and difficulty, Miss Pinckney was a
believer in prayer. Her prayer now was speechless, one might compare it to
a mental wrestle with the abominable situation before God.
When she rose from her knees everything was clear to her. Two things were
evident. Phyl must be got back at any cost, and scandal must be choked,
even if it had to be choked with solid lies.
To save Phyl's reputation, Miss Pinckney would have perjured herself twice
over.
Miss Pinckney had many faults and limitations, but she had the grand
common sense of a clean heart and a clear mind. She could tell a lie with
a good conscience in a good cause, but to hide even a small fault of her
own, the threat of death on the scaffold would not have made her tell a
lie.
She went to the writing table now and taking a sheet of paper, wrote:
_Dear Richard,_
Seth Grangerson is bad again, and I am going over there now with
Phyl. We mayn't be back to-night. I am taking the automobile. We will
be back to-morrow most likely.
Your affectionate Aunt,
Maria Pinckney.
She read the note over. If all went well then everything would be well. If
the worst occurred then she could explain everything to Richard.
It was a desperate gamble; well she knew how the dice were loaded against
her, but the game had to be played out to the very last moment.
Already she had stopped the mouth of slander by her prompt action with
Colonel Grangerson's coloured man, but she well knew how coloured servants
talk; Grangerson's man was safe enough, he was frightened and he would
have to get back to Grangerville. Rachel was absolutely safe, Dinah alone
was doubtful.
She called Rachel in, gave her the note for Richard and told her to keep a
close eye on Dinah.
"Don't let her get talking to any one," said Miss Pinckney, "and when Mr.
Richard comes in give him that note yourself. If he asks about Miss Phyl,
say she came back and went with me. You understand, Rachel, Miss Phyl has
done a foolish thing, but there's no harm in it, only what fools will make
of it if they get chattering. No one must know, not even Mr. Richard."
"I'll see to that, Miss Pinckney, an' if I catch Dinah openin' her mouth
to say more'n 'potatoes' I'll dress her down so's she won't know which end
of her's which."
Miss Pinckney went upstairs, dressed hurriedly, packed a few things in a
bag and the automobile being now at the door, started.
It was after one o'clock when she reached Grangersons.
Just as on the day when she had arrived with Phyl, Colonel Grangerson,
hearing the noise of the car, came out to inspect.
He came down the steps, hat in hand, saw the occupant, started back, and
then advanced to open the door.
"Why, God bless my soul, it's you," cried the Colonel. "What has
happened?"
Miss Pinckney without a word got out and went up the steps with him.
In the hall she turned to him.
"Where is Silas?"
"Silas," replied the Colonel. "I haven't seen him since he went to
Charleston to attend some dance or another. What on earth is the matter
with you, Maria?"
"Come in here," said Miss Pinckney. She went into the drawing room and
they shut the door.
"Silas has run away with Phyl," said she, "that's what's the matter with
me. Your son has taken that girl off, Seth Grangerson, and may God have
mercy upon him."
"The red-headed girl?" said the Colonel.
"Phyl," replied she, "you know quite well whom I mean."
Colonel Grangerson made a few steps up and down the room to calm himself.
Maria Pinckney was speaking to him in a tone which, had it been used by
any one else, would have caused an explosion.
"But when did it happen," he asked, "and where have they gone? Explain
yourself, Maria. Good God! Why the fellow never spoke to her scarcely--are
you sure of what you say?"
Miss Pinckney told her tale.
"I came here to try and get her back," said she, "thinking he and she
might possibly have come here or that you might know their
whereabouts--they have not come, but there is just the chance that they
may come here yet."
"But if they have run off with each other," said the Colonel, "how are we
to stop them--they'll be married by this."
Miss Pinckney who had taken off her gloves sat down and began to fold
them, neatly rolling one inside the other.
"_Married,_" said she.
The Colonel standing by the window with his hands in his pockets turned.
"And why not?" said he. "The girl's a lady, and you told me she was not
badly off. Silas might have done worse it seems to me."
"Done worse! He couldn't have done worse. I'd sooner see her dead in her
coffin than married to Silas--There, you have it plain and straight. He'll
make her life a misery. Let me speak, Seth Grangerson, you are just going
to hear the truth for once. You have ruined that boy the way you've
brought him up, he was crazy wild to start with and you've never checked
him. Oh, I know, he has always been respectful to you and flattered your
pride and vanity, he calls you sir when he speaks to you, and you are the
only person in the world to whom he shews respect. I don't say he acts
like that from any double dealing motive, it's just the old southern
tradition he's inherited; he does respect you, and I daresay he's fond of
you, but he respects nothing else, especially women. I know him. And I
know her, and he'll make her life a misery. If he'd left her alone she'd
have been happy. Richard loves her, and would have made her a good
husband. My mind was set on it, and now it's all over."
Miss Pinckney began to weep, and the Colonel who had been swelling himself
up found his anger collapsing. She was only a woman. Women have queer
fancies--This especial woman too was part of the past and privileged.
He came to her and stood beside her and rested his hand on her shoulder.
"My dear Maria," said the Colonel, "youth is youth--There is not any use
in laying down the law for young people or making plans for their
marriages. Leave it in the hands of Providence. The most carefully
arranged marriages often turn out the worst, and a scratch match has often
as not turned out happily. Anyhow, you will stay here till news comes of
them?"
"Yes, I will stay," said Miss Pinckney.
CHAPTER VI
At eleven o'clock that night, just as Miss Pinckney was on the point of
retiring to bed the news came in the form of Phyl herself.
She arrived in a buggy driven by the farmer who owned the land through
which the grass road ran.
She gave a little glad cry when she saw Miss Pinckney and ran into her
arms.
Upstairs and alone with the lady, she told her story. Told her how she had
met Silas on the road that morning, how, tired of life and scarce knowing
what she did, she had got into the phaeton, how he had upset it and
smashed it, how she had sheltered in the cabin whilst he went in search of
help.
"Then I went to sleep," said Phyl, "and when I woke up it was afternoon.
He was not there, but he must have come back when I was asleep and left
some food for me, for there was a bundle outside the door with some bread
and bacon in it. Then I started off to walk and found a village with some
coloured people. I told them I was lost and wanted to get to Grangersons.
They were kind to me, but I had to wait a long time before they could find
that gentleman, the farmer, and he could get a cart to drive me here."
"Thank God it is all over and you are back," said Miss Pinckney. "But oh,
Phyl! what made you do it?"
"I don't know," said Phyl.
But Miss Pinckney did.
"Listen," said she. "You know what I told you about Richard and Frances
Rhett--that's all done with. He has broken off the engagement."
Phyl flushed, then she hid her burning face on Miss Pinckney's shoulder.
Miss Pinckney held her for awhile. Then she began to talk.
"We will get right back to-morrow early; no one knows anything and I'll
take care they never do. Well, it's strange--I can understand everything
but I can't understand that crazy creature. What's become of him? That's
what I want to know."
* * * * *
This is what had become of him.
Kneeling beside Phyl the sudden sharp pain just above his instep made him
turn. In turning he caught a glimpse of his assailant. It had been
creeping towards the door when he entered and had taken refuge beneath the
straw. He had almost knelt on it. Escaping, a movement of his foot had
raised its anger and it had struck, it was now whisking back into the
darkness of the cabin beyond the straw heap.
He recognised it as the deadliest snake in the South.
For a moment he recognised nothing else but the fact that he had been
bitten.
His passion and desire had vanished utterly. Phyl might have been a
thousand miles away from him for all that he thought of her.
He rose up and came out into the sunlight, went to the well head, sat down
on the frame and removed his shoe and sock. The mark of the bite was there
between the adductor tendons. A red hot iron and a bottle of whisky might
have saved him. He had not even a penknife to cut the wound out--He
thought of Phyl, she could do nothing. He thought of the bar of the
Charleston Hotel, and the verse of the song about the old hen with a
wooden leg and the statement that it was just about time for another
little drink, ran through his head.
Then suddenly the idea came to him that there might possibly be help at
the village where he had obtained the food from the coloured woman. It was
a long way off, but still it was a chance.
He put the sock in his pocket, put on the shoe and started. He ran for the
first couple of hundred yards, then he slackened his pace, then he stopped
holding one hand to his side.
The poison already had hold of him.
The game was up and he knew it. It was useless to go on, he would not live
to reach the village or reaching it would die there.
And every one would pity him with that shuddering pity people extend to
those who meet with a horrible form of death.
Death from snake bite was a low down business, it was no end for a
Grangerson; but there in the swamp to the left a man might lie forever
without being found out.
He turned from the road to the left and walked away among the trees.
The ground here sank beneath the foot, a vague haze hung above the marsh
and the ponds. Here nothing happened but the change of season, night and
day, the chorus of frogs and the crying of the white owl amidst the
trees.
CHAPTER VII
Miss Pinckney and Phyl left Grangersons next morning at seven o'clock to
return to Charleston.
During the night the Colonel had sent after the horses and they had been
captured and brought back. The broken phaeton was left for the present.
"I'll make Silas go and fetch it himself when he comes back," said the
Colonel. "I reckon the exercise will do him good."
"Do," said Miss Pinckney, "and then send him on to me. I reckon what I'll
give him will help him to forget the exercise."
On the way back she said little. She was reckoning with the fact that she
had deceived Richard. Now that everything had turned out so innocently and
so well she decided to tell him the bare facts of the matter. There was
nothing to hide except the fact of Phyl's stupidity in going with Silas.
Richard Pinckney was not in when they arrived but he returned shortly
before luncheon time and Miss Pinckney, who was waiting for him, carried
him off into the library.
She shut the door and faced him.
"Richard," said Miss Pinckney, "Seth Grangerson is as well as you are. I
didn't go to see him because he was ill, I went because of Phyl. She did a
stupid thing and I went to set matters right."
She explained the whole affair. How Phyl had met Silas, how he had
persuaded her to get into the phaeton with him, the accident and all the
rest. The story as told by Miss Pinckney was quite simple and without any
dark patches, and no man, one might fancy, could find cause for offence in
it.
Miss Pinckney, however, was quite unconscious of the fact that Silas
Grangerson had attempted to take Richard Pinckney's life on the night of
the Rhetts' dance.
To Richard the thought that Phyl should have met Silas only a few hours
after that event, talked to him, made friends with him, and got into his
carriage was a monstrous thought. He could not understand the business in
the least, he could only recognise the fact.
Had he known that it was her love for him and her despair at losing him
that led her to the act it would have been different.
He said nothing for a moment after Miss Pinckney had finished. Having
already confessed to her his love for Phyl he was too proud to show his
anger against her now.
"It was unwise of her," he said at last, turning away to the window and
looking out.
"Most," replied she, "but you cannot put old heads on young shoulders.
Well, there, it's over and done with and there's no more to be said. Well,
I must go up and change before luncheon. You are having luncheon here?"
"No," said he, "I have to meet a man at the club. I only just ran in to
see if you were back."
He went off and that day Miss Pinckney and Phyl had luncheon alone.
CHAPTER VIII
Richard Pinckney, like most people, had the defects of his qualities, but
he was different from others in this: his temper was quick and blazing
when roused, yet on rare occasions it could hold its heat and smoulder,
and keep alive indefinitely.
When in this condition he shewed nothing of his feelings except towards
the person against whom he was in wrath.
Towards them he exhibited the two main characteristics of the North
Pole--Distance and Ice.
Phyl felt the frost almost immediately. He talked to her just the same as
of old but his pleasantness and laughter were gone and he never sought her
eye. She knew at once that it was the business with Silas that had caused
this change, and she would have been entirely miserable but for the
knowledge of two great facts: she was innocent of any disloyalty to him,
he had broken off his engagement to Frances Rhett. Instinct told her that
he cared for her, Miss Pinckney had told her the same thing.
Yet day after day passed without bringing the slightest change in Richard
Pinckney.
That gentleman after many debates with himself had arrived at the
determination against will, against reason, against Love, and against
nature to have nothing more to do with Phyl.
Old Pepper Pinckney, that volcano of the past had suffered a fancied
insult from his wife; no one knew of it, no one suspected it till on his
death his will disclosed it by the fact that he had left the lady--one
dollar. The will being unwitnessed--that was the sort of man he was--did
not hold; all the same, it held an unsuspected part of his character up
for public inspection.
Richard, incapable of such an act, still had Pepper Pinckney for an
ancestor. Ancestors leave us more than their pictures.
Having come to this momentous decision, he arrived at another.
One morning at breakfast he announced his intention of going to New York
on business, he would start on the morrow and be gone a month. The
Beauregards had always been bothering him to go on a visit and he might as
well kill two birds with one stone.
Miss Pinckney made little resistance to the idea. She had noticed the
coolness between the young people; knowing how much they cared one for the
other she had little fear as to the end of the matter and she fancied a
change might do good.
But to Phyl it seemed that the end of the world had come.
All that day she scarcely spoke except to Miss Pinckney. She was like a
person stunned by some calamity.
Richard Pinckney, notwithstanding the fact that he was to leave for New
York on the morrow, did not return to dinner that night. Phyl went
upstairs early but she did not go to her room, she went to Juliet's.
Sorrow attracts sorrow. Juliet had always seemed more than a friend, more
than a sister, even.
There were times when the ungraspable idea came before her that Juliet was
herself. The vision of the Civil War sometimes came back to her and always
with the hint, like a half veiled threat, that Richard the man she loved
was Rupert the man she had loved, that following the dark law of
duplication that works alike for types and events, forms and ideas, her
history was to repeat the history of Juliet.
She had saved Richard from death at the hands of Silas Grangerson, her
love for him had met Fate face to face and won, but Fate has many reserve
weapons. She is an old warrior, and the conqueror of cities and kings does
not turn from her purpose because of a momentary defeat.
Phyl shut the door of the room, put the lamp she was carrying on a table
and opened the long windows giving upon the piazza. The night was
absolutely still, not a breath of wind stirred the foliage of the garden
and the faint sounds of the city rose through the warm night. The waning
moon would not rise yet for an hour and the stars had the sky to
themselves.
She turned from the window and going to the little bureau by the door
opened the secret drawer and took out the packet of letters. Then drawing
an armchair close to the table and the lamp she sat down, undid the ribbon
and began to read the letters.
She felt just as though Juliet were talking to her, telling her of her
troubles. She read on placing each letter on the table in turn, one upon
the other.
The chimes of St. Michael's came through the open window but they were
unheeded.
When she had read through all the letters she picked out one. The one
containing the passionate declaration of Juliet's love.
She re-read it and then placed it on the table on top of the others.
If she could speak of Richard like that!
But she could do nothing and say nothing. It is one of the curses of
womanhood that a woman may not say to a man "I love you," that the
initiative is taken out of her hands.
Phyl was a creature of impulse and it was now for the first time in her
life that she recognised this fatal barrier on the woman's side. With the
recognition came the impulse to over jump it.
He cared for her, she knew, or had cared for her. She felt that it only
required a movement on her side, a touch, a word to destroy the ice that
had formed between them. If he were to go away he might never return, nay,
he would never return, of that she felt sure.
And he would go away unless she spoke. She must speak, not to-morrow in
the cold light of day when things were impossible, but now, at once, she
would say to him simply the truth, "I love you." If he were to turn away
or repulse her it would kill her. No matter, life was absolutely nothing.
She rose from her chair and was just on the point of turning to the door
when something checked her.
It was the clock of St. Michael's striking one.
One o'clock. The whole household would be in bed. He would have retired to
his room long ago--and to-morrow it would be too late.
She could never say that to him to-morrow; even now the impulse was dying
away, the strength that would have broken convention and disregarded all
things was fading in her. She had been dreaming whilst she ought to have
been doing, and the hour had passed and would never return.
She sat down again in the chair.
The moon in the cloudless sky outside cast a patch of silver on the floor,
then it shewed a silver rim gradually increasing against the sky as it
pushed its way through the night to peep in at Phyl. Leaning back in the
chair limp and exhausted, with closed eyes, one might have fancied her
dead or in a trance and the moon as if to make sure pushed on, framing
itself now fully in the window space.
The clock of St. Michael's struck two, then it chimed the quarter after
and almost on the chime Phyl sat up. It was as though she had suddenly
come to a resolve. She clasped her hands together for a moment, then she
rose, gathered up the letters and put them away, all except one which she
held in her hand as though to give her courage for what she was about to
do. She carefully extinguished the lamp and then led by the moonlight came
out on to the piazza.
Charleston was asleep under the moon; the air was filled with the scent of
night jessamine and the faint fragrance of foliage, and scarcely a sound
came from all the sleeping city beyond the garden walls and the sea beyond
the city.
As she stood with one hand on the piazza rail, suddenly, far away but
shrill, came the crowing of a cock.
She shivered as though the sound were a menace, then rigidly gliding like
a ghost escaped from the grave and warned by the cockcrow that the hour of
return was near, she came along the piazza, mounted the stair to the next
floor and came along the upper piazza to the window of Richard Pinckney's
bedroom.
The window was open and, pushing the curtains aside, she went in.
CHAPTER IX
Richard Pinckney went to his room at eleven that night. He rarely retired
before twelve, but to-night he had packing to do as Jabez, his man, was
away and he knew better than to trust Seth.
He packed his portmanteau and left it lying open in case he had forgotten
anything that could be put in at the last moment. Then he packed a kit-bag
and, having smoked a cigarette, went to bed.
But he did not fall asleep. As a rule he slept at once on lying down, but
to-night he lay awake.
He was miserable; going away was death to him, but he was going.
First of all, because he had said that he was going. Secondly, because he
wanted to hit and hurt Phyl whom he loved, thirdly, because he wanted to
torture himself, fourthly, because he loathed and hated Silas Grangerson,
fifthly, because in his heart of hearts he knew what he was doing was
wrong.
You never know really what is in a man till he is pinched by Love. Love
may stun him with a blow or run a dagger into him without bringing his
worst qualities to light whilst a sly pinch will raise devils--all the
miserable devils that march under the leadership of Pique.
If he had not loved Phyl the fact of her going off with Silas for a drive
after what had occurred on the night before would have hurt him. Loving
her it had maddened him.
He was not angry with her now, so he told himself--just disgusted.
Meanwhile he could not sleep. The faithful St. Michael's kept him well
aware of this fact. He lit a candle and tried to read, smoked a cigarette
and then, blowing the candle out, tried to sleep. But insomnia had him
fairly in her grip; to-night there was no escape from her and he lay
whilst the moon, creeping through the sky, cast her light on the piazza
outside.
St. Michael's chimed the quarter after two and sleep, long absent, was
coming at last when, suddenly, the sound of a light footstep on the piazza
drove her leagues away.
Then outside in the full moonlight he saw a figure. It was Phyl, fully
dressed, standing with outstretched hands. Her eyes wide open, fixed, and
sightless, told their tale. She was asleep.
She moved the curtains aside and entered the room, darkening the window
space, passed across the room without the least sound, reached the bed,
and knelt down beside it. Her hand was feeling for him, it touched his
neck, he raised his head slightly from the pillow and her arm, gliding
like a snake round his neck drew his head towards her; then her lips,
blindly seeking, found his and clung to them for a moment.
Nothing could be more ghostly, more terrible, and yet more lovely than
that kiss, the kiss of a spirit, the embrace of a soul rising from the
profound abysm of sleep to find its mate.
Then her lips withdrew and he lay praying to God, as few men have ever
prayed, that she might not wake.
He felt the arm withdrawing from around his neck, she rose, wavered for a
moment, and then passed away towards the window. The lace curtains parted
as though drawn aside, closed again, and she was gone.
He left his bed and came out on the piazza. Craning over he caught a
glimpse of her returning along the lower piazza and vanishing.
Coming back to his room he saw something lying on the floor by his bed; it
was a letter; he struck a match, lit the candle and picked the letter up.
It was just a folded piece of paper, it had been sealed, but the seal was
broken, and sitting down on the side of the bed he spread it open, but his
hands were shaking so that he had to rest it on his knee.
It was not from Phyl. That letter had been written many, many years ago,
the ink was faded and the handwriting of another day.
He read it.
"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....
"Sometimes I feel as if I were deceiving him and everybody. I am, and I
don't care. Oh, 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."
It was the letter of Juliet to her lover.
He turned it over and looked at the seal with the little dove upon it. He
knew of Juliet's letters, and he knew at once that this was one of them,
and he guessed vaguely that she had been reading it when sleep overtook
her and that it had formed part of the inspiration that led her to him.
But the whole truth he would never know.
* * * * *
A blazing red Cardinal was singing in the magnolia tree by the gate,
butterflies were chasing one another above the flowers; it was seven
o'clock and the blue, lazy, lovely morning was unfolding like a flower to
the sea wind.
Richard Pinckney was standing in the piazza before his bedroom window
looking down into the garden.
To him suddenly appeared Seth.
"If you please, sah," said Seth, "Rachel tole me tell yo' de train for
N'York--"
"Damn New York," said Pinckney. "Get out."
Seth vanished, grinning, and he returned to his contemplation of the
garden.
She must never know.--In the years to come, perhaps, he might tell her--
In the years to come--
He was turning away when a step on the piazza below made him come to the
rail again and lean over. It was Phyl. She vanished and then reappeared
again, leaving the lower piazza and coming right out into the garden. He
waited till the sun had caught her in both hands, holding her against the
background of the cherokee roses, then he called to her:
"Phyl!"
She started, turned, and looked up.
THE END