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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ghost Girl, by H. De Vere Stacpoole
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Ghost Girl
+
+Author: H. De Vere Stacpoole
+
+Release Date: October 21, 2008 [EBook #26986]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GHOST GIRL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GHOST GIRL
+
+
+
+
+BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+Sea Plunder         $1.30 net
+The Gold Trail      $1.30 net
+The Pearl Fishers   $1.30 net
+The Presentation    $1.30 net
+The New Optimism    $1.00 net
+Poppyland           $2.00 net
+
+The Poems of François Villon
+Translated by
+H. DE VERE STACPOOLE
+
+Boards              $3.00 net
+Half Morocco        $7.50 net
+
+
+
+
+THE GHOST GIRL
+
+BY
+H. DE VERE STACPOOLE
+
+AUTHOR OF
+"THE MAN WHO LOST HIMSELF," "SEA PLUNDER,"
+"THE PEARL FISHERS," "THE GOLD TRAIL," ETC.
+
+NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
+LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
+TORONTO: S. B GUNDY--MCMXVIII
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1918
+By JOHN LANE COMPANY
+
+PRESS OF
+VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY
+BINGHAMTON, N. Y.
+U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+THE GHOST GIRL
+
+PART I
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+It was a warm, grey, moist evening, typical Irish weather, and Miss
+Berknowles was curled up in a window-seat of the library reading a book.
+Kilgobbin Park lay outside with the rooks cawing in the trees, miles of
+park land across which the dusk was coming, blotting out all things from
+Arranakilty to the Slieve Bloom Mountains.
+
+The turf fire burning on the great hearth threw out a rich steady glow
+that touched the black oak panelling of the room, the book backs, and the
+long-nosed face of Sir Nicholas Berknowles "attributed to Lely" and
+looking down at his last descendant from a dusty canvas on the opposite
+wall.
+
+The girl made a prettier picture. Red hair when it is of the right colour
+is lovely, and Phylice Berknowles' hair was of the right red, worn in a
+tail--she was only fifteen--so long that she could bite the end with ease
+and comfort when she was in a meditative mood, a habit of perdition that
+no schoolmistress could break her of.
+
+She was biting her tail now as she read, up to her eyes in the marvellous
+story of the Gold Bug, and now, unable to read any more by the light from
+the window, she came to the fire, curled herself on the hearthrug and
+continued the adventures of the treasure-seekers by the light of the
+burning turf.
+
+What a pretty face it was, seen by the full warm glow of the turf, and
+what a perfectly shaped head! It was not the face and head of a Berknowles
+as you could easily have perceived had you compared it with the portraits
+in the picture gallery, but of a Mascarene.
+
+Phyl's mother had been a Mascarene, a member of the old, adventurous
+family that settled in Virginia when Virginia was a wilderness and spread
+its branches through the Carolinas when the Planter was king of the South.
+Red hair had run among the Mascarenes, red hair and a wild spirit that
+brooked no contradiction and knew no fear. Phyl had inherited something of
+this restless and daring spirit. She had run away from the Rottingdean
+Academy for the Daughters of the Nobility and Gentry where she had been
+sent at the age of twelve; making her way back to Ireland like a homing
+pigeon, she had turned up one morning at breakfast time, quite unshaken by
+her experiences of travel and with the announcement that she did not like
+school.
+
+Had her mother been alive the traveller would have been promptly returned,
+but Phyl's father, good, easy man, was too much taken up with agrarian
+disputes, hunting, and the affairs of country life to bother much about
+the small affair of his daughter's future and education. He accepted her
+rejection of his plans, wrote a letter of apology to the Rottingdean
+Academy, and hired a governess for her. She wore out three in eighteen
+months, declared herself dissatisfied with governesses and competent to
+finish the process of educating and polishing herself.
+
+This she did with the aid of all the books in the library, old Dunn, the
+rat-catcher of Arranakilty, a man profoundly versed in the habits of
+rodents and birds, Larry the groom, and sundry others of low estate but
+high intelligence in matters of sport and woodcraft.
+
+Now it might be imagined from the foregoing that hardihood,
+self-assertion, and other unpleasant characteristics would be indicated in
+the manner and personality of this lover of freedom and rebel against
+restraint. Not at all. She was a most lovable and clinging person, when
+she could get hold of anything worth clinging to, with a mellifluous Irish
+voice at once soothing and distracting, a voice with pockets in it but not
+a trace of a brogue or only the very faintest suspicion. Yet when she
+spoke she had the Irish turn of words and she used the word "sure" in a
+manner strange to the English.
+
+She had reached the point in the "Gold Bug" where Jupp is threatening to
+beat Legrand, when, laying the book down beside her on the hearthrug, she
+sat with her hands clasping her knees and her eyes fixed on the fire.
+
+The tale had suddenly lost interest. She was thinking of her dead father,
+the big, hearty man who had gone to America only eight weeks ago and who
+would never return. He had gone on a visit to some of his wife's people,
+fallen ill, and died.
+
+Phyl could not understand it at all. She had cried her heart out amongst
+the ruins of her little world, but she could not understand why it had
+been ruined, or what her father had done to be killed like that, or what
+she had done to deserve such misery. The Reverend Peter Graham of
+Arranakilty could explain nothing about the matter to her understanding.
+She nearly died and then miraculously recovered. Acute grief often ends
+like that, suddenly. The mourner may be maimed for life but the sharpness
+of the pain of that dreadful, dreadful disease is gone.
+
+Phyl found herself one morning discussing rats with old Dunn, asking him
+how many he had caught in the barn and taking a vague sort of interest in
+what the old fellow was saying; books began to appeal to her again and the
+old life to run anew in a crippled sort of way. Then other things
+happened. Mr. Hennessey, the family lawyer, who had been a crony of her
+father's and who had known her from infancy, came down to Kilgobbin to
+arrange matters.
+
+It seemed that Mr. Berknowles before dying had made a will and that the
+will was being brought over from the States by Mr. Pinckney, his wife's
+cousin in whose house he had died.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know what the chap wants coming over with it for," said
+Mr. Hennessey. "He said it was by your father's request he was coming, but
+it's a long journey for a man to take at this season of the year--and I
+hope the will is all right."
+
+There was an implied distrust in his tone and an antagonism to Mr.
+Pinckney that was not without its effect on Phyl.
+
+She disliked Mr. Pinckney. She had never seen him but she disliked him all
+the same, and she feared him. She felt instinctively that this man was
+coming to make some alteration in her way of life. She did not want any
+change, she wanted to go on living just as she was with Mrs. Driscoll the
+housekeeper to look after her and all the old servants to befriend her and
+Mr. Hennessey to pay the bills.
+
+Mr. Hennessey was in the house now. He had come down that morning from
+Dublin to receive Mr. Pinckney, who was due to arrive that night.
+
+Phyl, sitting on the hearthrug, was in the act of picking up her book when
+the door opened and in came Mr. Hennessey.
+
+He had been out in the grounds overlooking things and he came to the fire
+to warm his hands, telling Phyl to sit easy and not disturb herself. Then,
+as he held a big foot to the warmth he talked down at the girl, telling
+her of what he had been about and the ruination Rafferty was letting the
+greenhouses go to.
+
+"Half-a-dozen panes of glass out--and 'I've no putty,' says he. 'Putty,'
+said I to him, 'and what's that head of yours made of?' The stoves are all
+out of order and there's a hole in one of the flues I could get my thumb
+in."
+
+"Rafferty's awfully good to the dogs," said Phyl in her mellow voice, so
+well adapted for intercession. "He may be a bit careless, but he never
+does forget to feed the animals. He's got the chickens to look after, too,
+and then there's the beagles, he knows every dog in the pack and every dog
+knows him--oh, dear, what's the good of it all!"
+
+The thought of the beagles had brought up the vision of their master who
+would never hunt with them again. Her voice became tinged with melancholy
+and Hennessey changed the subject, taking his seat in one of the armchairs
+that stood on either side of the fireplace.
+
+He was a big, loosely-made man, an easy going man with a kind heart who
+would have come to financial disaster long ago only for his partner,
+Niven.
+
+"He's almost due to be here by now," said he, taking out his watch and
+looking at it, "unless the express from Dublin is late."
+
+"What'll he be like, do you think?" said Phyl.
+
+"There's no saying," replied Mr. Hennessey. "He's an American and I've
+never had much dealings with Americans except by letter. By all accounts
+they are sharp business men, but I daresay he is all right. The thing that
+gets me is his coming over. Americans don't go thousands of miles for
+nothing, but if it's after any hanky-panky business about the property,
+maybe he'll find Jack Hennessey as sharp as any American."
+
+"He's some sort of a relation of ours," said Phyl. "Father said he was a
+sort of cousin."
+
+"On your mother's side," said Hennessey.
+
+"Yes," said Phyl. Then, after a moment's pause, "D'you know I've often
+thought of all those people over there and wondered what they were like
+and how they lived--my mother's people. Father used to talk of them
+sometimes. He said they kept slaves."
+
+"That was in the old days," said Hennessey. "The slaves are all gone long
+ago. They used to have sugar plantations and suchlike, but the war stopped
+all that."
+
+"It's funny," said Phyl, "to think that my people kept slaves--my mother's
+people--Oh, if one could only see back, see all the people that have gone
+before one so long ago-- Don't you ever feel like that?"
+
+Mr. Hennessey never had; his forebears had been liquor dealers in Athlone
+and he was content to let them lie without a too close inquisition into
+the romances of their lives.
+
+"Mr. Hennessey," said Phyl, after a moment's silence, "suppose Father has
+left Mr. Pinckney all his money--what will become of me?"
+
+"The Lord only knows," said Hennessey; "but what's been putting such
+fancies in your head?"
+
+"I don't know," replied the girl. "I was just thinking. Of course he
+wouldn't do such a thing--It's your talking of the will the last time you
+were here set me on, I suppose, but I dreamed last night Mr. Pinckney came
+and he was an American with a beard like Uncle Sam in _Punch_ last week,
+and he said Father had made a will and left him everything--he'd left him
+me as well as everything else, and the dogs and all the servants and
+Kilgobbin--then I woke up."
+
+"Well, you were dreaming nonsense," said the practical Hennessey. "A man
+can't leave his daughter away from him, though I'm half thinking there's
+many a man would be willing enough if he could."
+
+Phyl raised her head. Her quick ear had caught a sound from the avenue.
+Then the crash of wheels on gravel came from outside and her companion,
+rising hurriedly from his chair, went to the window.
+
+"That's him," said the easy-speaking Hennessey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+He left the room and Phyl, rising from the hearthrug, stood with her hand
+on the mantelpiece listening.
+
+Hennessey had left the door open and she could hear a confused noise from
+the hall, the sound of luggage being brought in, the bustle of servants
+and a murmur of voices.
+
+Then a voice that made her start.
+
+"Thanks, I can carry it myself."
+
+It was the newcomer's voice, he was being conducted to his room by
+Hennessey. It was a cheerful, youthful voice, not in the least suggestive
+of Uncle Sam with the goatee beard as depicted by the unimaginative artist
+of _Punch_. And it was a voice she had heard before, so she fancied, but
+where, she could not possibly tell--nor did she bother to think,
+dismissing the idea as a fancy.
+
+She stood listening, but heard nothing more, only the wind that had risen
+and was shaking the ivy outside the windows.
+
+Byrne, the old manservant, came in and lit the lamps and then after a few
+minutes Hennessey entered. He looked cheerful.
+
+"He seems all right and he'll be down in a minute," said the lawyer; "not
+a bit of harm in him, though I haven't had time to tackle him over money
+affairs."
+
+"How old is he?" asked the girl.
+
+"Old! Why, he's only a boy, but he's got all a man's ways with him--he's
+American, they're like that. I've heard say the American children order
+their own mothers and fathers about and drive their own motor-cars and
+gamble on the Stock Exchange." He pulled out his watch and looked at it;
+it pointed to ten minutes past seven; then he lit a cigar and sat smoking
+and smoking without a word whilst Phyl sat thinking and staring at the
+fire. They were seated like this when the door opened and Byrne shewed in
+Mr. Pinckney.
+
+Hennessey had called him a boy. He was not that. He was twenty-two years
+of age, yet he looked only twenty and you would not have been particularly
+surprised if you had been told that he was only nineteen. Good-looking,
+well-groomed and well-dressed, he made a pleasant picture, and as he came
+across the room to greet Phyl he explained without speaking what Mr.
+Hennessey meant about "all the manners of a man."
+
+Pinckney's manner was the manner of a man of the world of thirty,
+easy-going, assured, and decided.
+
+He shook hands with Phyl as Hennessey introduced them, and then stood with
+his back to the fireplace talking, as she took her seat in the armchair on
+the right, whilst the lawyer remained standing, hands in pockets and foot
+on the left corner of the fender.
+
+The newcomer did most of the talking. By a downward glance every now and
+then he included Phyl in the conversation, but he addressed most of his
+remarks to Mr. Hennessey.
+
+"And you came over by the Holyhead route?" said the lawyer.
+
+"I did," replied Pinckney.
+
+"And what did you think of Kingstown?"
+
+"Well, upon my word, I saw less of it than of a gentleman with long hair
+and a bundle of newspapers under his arm who received me like a mother
+just as I landed, hypnotised me into buying half-a-dozen newspapers and
+started me off for Dublin with his blessing."
+
+"That was Davy Stevens," said Phyl, speaking for the first time.
+
+Pinckney's entrance had produced upon her the same effect as his voice.
+
+You know the feeling that some places produce on the mind when first
+seen--
+
+                  "I have been here before
+                  But when or how I cannot tell
+                  I know the lights along the shore--"
+
+It seemed to her that she had known Pinckney and had met him in some
+place, but when or how she could not possibly remember. The feeling had
+almost worn off now. It had thrilled her, but the thrill had vanished and
+the concrete personality of the man was dominating her mind--and not very
+pleasantly.
+
+There was nothing in his manner or his words to give offence; he was quite
+pleasant and nice but--but--well, it was almost as though she had met some
+one whom she had known and liked and who had changed.
+
+The little jump of the heart that his voice caused in her had been
+followed by a chill. His manner displeased her vaguely. He seemed so
+assured, so every day, so cold.
+
+It seemed to her that not only did he hold his entertainers at a critical
+distance, but that he was somehow wanting in respectfulness to
+herself--Lunatic ideas, for the young man could not possibly have been
+more cordial towards two utter strangers and as for respectfulness, one
+does not treat a girl in a pigtail exactly as one treats a full-grown
+woman.
+
+"Oh, Davy Stevens, was it?" said Pinckney, glancing down at Phyl. "Well, I
+never knew the meaning of peaceful persuasion till he had sold out his
+stock on me. Now in the States that man would likely have been President
+by this--Things grow quicker over there."
+
+"And what did you think of Dublin?" asked Hennessey.
+
+"Well," said the young man, "the two things that struck me most about
+Dublin were the dirt and the want of taxicabs."
+
+A dead silence followed this remark.
+
+Never tell an Irishman that Dublin is dirty.
+
+Hennessey was dumb, and as for Phyl, she knew now that she hated this
+man.
+
+"Of course," went on the other, "it's a fine old city and I'm not sure
+that I would alter it or even brush it up. I should think it's pretty much
+the same to-day as when Lever wrote of it. It's a survival of the past,
+like Nuremberg. All the same, one doesn't want to live in a survival of
+the past--does one?"
+
+"I've lived there a good many years," said Hennessey; "and I've managed to
+survive it. It's not Chicago, of course; it's just Dublin, and it doesn't
+pretend to be anything else."
+
+"Just so," said Pinckney. He felt that he had put his foot in it;
+recalling his own lightly spoken words he felt shocked at his want of
+tact, and he was casting about for something to say about the sacred city
+of a friendly nature but not too fulsome, when Byrne opened the door and
+announced that dinner was served.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Phyl led the way and they crossed the hall to the dining-room, a room
+oak-panelled like the library and warm with the light of fire and
+candles.
+
+Once upon a time there had been high doings in this sombre room, hunt
+breakfasts and dinners, rousing songs, laughter, and the toasting of
+pretty women--now dust and ashes.
+
+Here highly coloured gentlemen had slept the sleep of the just, under the
+table, whilst the ladies waited in vain for them in the drawing-room, here
+Colonel Berknowles had drunk a glass of mulled wine on that black morning
+over a hundred-and-thirty years ago when he went out with Councillor
+Kinsella and shot him through the lungs by the Round House on the
+Arranakilty Road. The diminutive Tom Moore had sung his songs here "put
+standing on the table" by the other guests, and the great Dan had held
+forth and the wind had dashed the ivy against the windows just as it did
+to-night with fist-fulls of rain from the Slieve Bloom Mountains. Byrne
+had put the big silver candlesticks on the table in honour of the guest,
+and he now appeared bearing in front of him a huge dish with a cover a
+size too small for it.
+
+He placed the dish before Mr. Hennessey and removed the cover, disclosing
+a cod's "head and shoulders" whilst a female servant appeared with a dish
+of potatoes boiled in their jackets and a tureen of oyster sauce.
+
+Now a cod's head and shoulders served up like this in the good old Irish
+way is, honestly, a ghastly sight. The thing has a countenance and an
+expression most forbidding and all its own.
+
+The appearance of the old dish cover, clapped on by the cook in a hurry in
+default of the proper one, had given Phyl a turn and now she was wondering
+what Mr. Pinckney was thinking of the fish and the manner of its serving.
+
+All at once and as if stimulated into life by the presence of the new
+guest, all sorts of qualms awoke in her mind. The dining arrangements of
+the better class Irish are, and always have been, rather primitive,
+haphazard, and lacking in small refinements. Phyl was conscious of the
+fact that Byrne had placed several terrible old knives on the table,
+knives that properly belonged to the kitchen, and when the second course,
+consisting of a boiled chicken, faced by a piece of bacon reposing on a
+mat of boiled cabbage, appeared, the fact that one of the dishes was
+cracked confronted her with the equally obvious fact that the cook in her
+large-hearted way had sent up the chicken with the black legs unremoved.
+
+It seemed to Phyl's vision--now thoroughly distorted--that the eyes of the
+stranger were everywhere, cool, critical, and amused; so obsessed was her
+mind with this idea that it could take no hold upon the conversation.
+Pinckney was talking of the States; he might just as well have been
+talking about Timbuctoo for all the impression he made on her with her
+unfortunate head filled with cracked dishes, chickens' black legs, Byrne's
+awkwardness and the suddenly remembered crumb-brush.
+
+It was twenty years old and it had lost half of its bristles in the
+service of the Berknowles who had clung to it with a warm-hearted tenacity
+purely Irish.
+
+"Sure, that old brush is a disgrace to the table," was the comment Phyl's
+father had made on it once, just as though he were casually referring to
+some form of the Inevitable such as the state of the weather.
+
+The disgrace had not been removed and it was coming to the table, now, in
+the hand of Byrne. Phyl watched the crumbs being swept up, she watched the
+cloth being taken off and the wine and dessert placed in the good old
+fashion, on the polished mahogany, then leaving the gentlemen to their
+wine, she retired upstairs and to her bedroom.
+
+She felt angry with Byrne, with the cook, with Mr. Hennessey and with
+herself. Plenty of people had been to dinner at Kilgobbin, yet she had
+never felt ashamed of the _ménage_ till now. This stranger from over the
+water, notwithstanding her dislike for him, had the power to disturb her
+mind as few other people had disturbed it in the course of her short life.
+Other people had put her into worse tempers, other people had made her
+dislike them, but no one else had ever roused her into this feeling of
+unrest, this criticism of her belongings, this irritation against
+everything including herself.
+
+Her bedroom was a big room with two windows looking upon the park; it was
+almost in black darkness, but the windows shewed in dim, grey oblongs and
+she made her way to one of them, took her place in the window-seat and
+pressed her forehead against the glass. The rain had ceased and the clouds
+had risen, but the moon was not yet high enough to pierce them. Phyl could
+just make out the black masses of the distant woods and the movement of
+the near fir-trees shaking their tops like hearse plumes to the wind.
+
+The park always fascinated her when it was like that, almost blotted out
+by night. These shapes in the dark were akin to shapes in the fire in
+their power over the fancy of the gazer. Phyl as she watched them was
+thinking: not one word had this stranger said about her dead father.
+
+Mr. Berknowles had died in his house and this man had buried him in
+Charleston; he had come over here to Ireland on the business of the will
+and he had come into the dead man's house as unconcernedly as though it
+were an hotel, and he had laughed and talked about all sorts of things
+with never a word of Him.
+
+If Phyl had thought over the matter, she might have seen that, perhaps,
+this silence of Pinckney's was the silence of delicacy, not of
+indifference, but she was not in the humour to hold things up to the light
+of reason. She had decided to dislike this man and when the Mascarenes
+came to a decision of this sort they were hard to be shaken from it.
+
+She had decided to dislike him long before she saw him.
+
+What Phyl really wanted now was perhaps a commonsense female relative to
+stiffen her mind against fancies and give her a clear-sighted view of the
+world, but she had none. Philip Berknowles was the last of his race, the
+few distant connections he had in Ireland lived away in the south and were
+separated from him by the grand barrier that divides Ireland into two
+opposing camps--Religion. Berknowles was a Protestant, the others
+Papists.
+
+Phyl, as she sat watching saw, now, the line of the woods strengthen
+against the sky; the moon was breaking through the clouds and its light
+increasing minute by minute shewed the parkland clearly defined, the
+leafless oaks standing here and there, oaks that of a summer afternoon
+stood in ponds of shadow, the clumps of hazel, and away to the west the
+great dip, a little valley haunted by a fern-hidden river, a glen
+mysterious and secretive, holding in its heart the Druids' altar.
+
+The Druids' altar was the pride of Kilgobbin Park; it consisted of a vast
+slab of stone supported on four other stones, no man knew its origin, but
+popular imagination had hung it about with all sorts of gruesome fancies.
+Victims had been slaughtered there in the old days, a vein of ironstone in
+the great slab had become the bloodstain of men sacrificed by the Druids;
+the glen was avoided by day and there were very few of the country people
+round about who would have entered it by night. Phyl, who had no fear of
+anything, loved the place; she had known it from childhood and had been
+accustomed to take her worries and bothers there and bury them.
+
+It was a friend, places can become friends and, sometimes, most terrific
+enemies.
+
+The girl listening, now, heard voices below stairs. Hennessey and his
+companion were evidently leaving the dining-room and crossing the hall to
+the library. Going out on the landing she caught a glimpse of them as they
+stood for a moment looking at the trophies in the hall, then they went
+into the library, the door was closed, and Phyl came downstairs.
+
+In the hall she slipped on a pair of goloshes over her thin shoes, put on
+a cloak and hat and came out of the front door, closing it carefully
+behind her.
+
+To put it in her own words, she couldn't stand the house any longer. Not
+till this very evening did she feel the great change that her father's
+death had brought in her life, not till now did she fully know that her
+past was dead as well as her father, and not till she had left the house
+did the feeling come to her that Pinckney was to prove its undertaker.
+
+There was something alike cold and fateful in the impression that this man
+had made upon her, an extraordinary impression, for it would be impossible
+to imagine anything further removed from the ideas of Coldness and Fate
+than the idea of the cheerful and practical Pinckney. However, there it
+was, her heart was chilled with the thought of him and the instinctive
+knowledge that he was going to make a great alteration in her life.
+
+She crossed the gravelled drive to the grass sward beyond. The night had
+altered marvellously; nearly every vestige of cloud had vanished, blown
+away by the wind. The wind and the moon had the night between them and the
+air was balmy as the air of summer.
+
+Phyl turned and looked back at the house with all its windows glittering
+in the moonlight, then she struck across the grass now almost dried by the
+wind.
+
+Phyl had something of the night bird in her composition. She had often
+been out long before dawn to pick up night lines in the river and she knew
+the woods by dark as well as by day. She was out now for nothing but a
+breath of fresh air, she did not intend to stay more than ten minutes, and
+she was on the point of returning to the house when a cry from the woods
+made her pause.
+
+One might have fancied that some human being was crying out in agony, but
+Phyl knew that it was a fox, a fox caught in a trap. She was confirmed in
+her knowledge by the barking of its mates; they would be gathered round
+the trapped one lending all the help they could--with their voices.
+
+The girl did not pause to think; forgetting that she had no weapon with
+which to put the poor beast out of its misery, and no means of freeing it
+without being bitten, she started off at a run in the direction of the
+sound, entering the woods by a path that led through a grove of hazel;
+leaving this path she struck westward swift as an Indian along the road of
+the call.
+
+Her mother's people had been used to the wilds, and Phyl had more than a
+few drops of tracker blood in her veins; better than that, she had a trace
+of the wood instinct that leads a man about the forest and makes him able
+to strike a true line to the west or east or north or south without a
+compass.
+
+The trees were set rather sparsely here and the moonlight shewed vistas of
+withered fern. The wind had fallen, and in the vast silence of the night
+this place seemed unreal as a dream. The fox had evidently succeeded in
+liberating itself from the trap, for its cries had ceased, cut off all of
+a sudden as though by a closing door.
+
+Phyl paused to listen and look around her. Through all the night from
+here, from there, came thin traces of sound, threads fretting the silence.
+The trotting of a horse a mile away on the Arranakilty road, the bark of a
+dog from near the Round House, the shaky bleat of a sheep from the fold at
+Ross' farm came distinct yet diminished almost to vanishing point. It was
+like listening to the country sounds of Lilliput. With these came the
+vaguest whisper of flowing water, broken now and again by a little shudder
+of wind in the leafless branches of the trees.
+
+"He's out," said Phyl to herself. She was thinking of the fox. She knew
+that the trap must be somewhere about and she guessed who had set it.
+Rafferty, without a doubt, for only the other day he had been complaining
+of the foxes having raided the chickens, but there was no use in hunting
+for the thing by this light and without any indication of its exact
+whereabouts, so she struck on, determined to return to the house by the
+more open ground leading through the Druids' glen.
+
+She had been here before in the very early morning before sunrise on her
+way to the river, Rafferty following her with the fish creel, but she had
+never seen the place like this with the moonlight on it and she paused for
+a moment to rest and think, taking her seat on a piece of rock by the
+cromlech.
+
+Phyl, despite her American strain, was very Irish in one particular:
+though cheerful and healthy and without a trace of morbidness in her
+composition, she, still, was given to fits of melancholy--not depression,
+melancholy. It is in the air of Ireland, the moist warm air that feeds the
+shamrock and fills the glens with soft-throated echoes and it is in the
+soul of the people.
+
+Phyl, seated in this favourite spot of hers, where she had played as a
+child on many a warm summer's afternoon, gave herself over to the
+moonlight and the spirit of Recollection.
+
+She had forgotten Pinckney, and the strange disturbance that he had
+occasioned in her mind had sunk to rest; she was thinking of her father,
+of all the pleasant days that were no more--she remembered her dolls, the
+wax ones with staring eyes, dummies and effigies compared with that
+mysterious, soulful, sinful, frightful, old rag doll with the inked face,
+true friend in affliction and companion in joy, and even more, a Ju-ju to
+be propitiated. That thing had stirred in her a sort of religious
+sentiment, had caused in her a thrill of worship real, though faint, far
+more real than the worship of God that had been cultivated in her mind by
+her teachers. The old Druid stone had affected her child's mind in
+somewhat the same way, but with a difference. The Ju-ju was a familiar,
+she had even beaten and punched it when in a temper; the stone had always
+filled her with respect.
+
+There are some people the doors of whose minds are absolutely closed on
+the past; we call them material and practical people; there are others in
+which the doors of division are a wee crack open, or even ajar, so that
+their lives are more or less haunted by whisperings from that strange land
+we call yesterday.
+
+In some of the Burmese and Japanese children the doors stand wide open so
+that they can see themselves as they were before they passed through the
+change called death, but the Westerners are denied this. In Phyl's mind as
+a child one might suppose that through the doors ajar some recollections
+of forgotten gods once worshipped had stolen, and that the power of the
+Ju-ju and the Druids' stone lay in their power of focussing those vague
+and wandering threads of remembrance.
+
+To-night this power seemed regained, for she passed from the contemplation
+of concrete images into a vague and pleasant state, an absolute idleness
+of the intellect akin to that which people call daydreaming.
+
+With her cloak wrapped round her she sat, elbows on knees and her chin in
+the palms of her hands giving herself up to Nothing before starting to
+resume her way to the house.
+
+Sitting like this she suddenly started and turned. Some one had called
+her:
+
+"Phylice!"
+
+For a moment she fancied that it was a real voice, and then she knew that
+it was only a voice in her head, one of those sounds we hear when we are
+half asleep, one of those hails from dreamland that come now as the
+ringing of a bell that never has rung, or the call of a person who has
+never spoken.
+
+She rose up and resumed her way, striking along the glen to the open park,
+yet still the memory of that call pursued her.
+
+"Phylice!"
+
+It seemed Mr. Pinckney's voice, it _was_ his voice, she was sure of that
+now, and she amused herself by wondering why his voice had suddenly popped
+up in her head. She had been thinking about him more than about any one
+else that evening and that easily accounted for the matter. Fancy had
+mimicked him--yet why did Fancy use her name and clothe it in Pinckney's
+voice?--and it was distinctly a call, the call of a person who wishes to
+draw another person's attention.
+
+Pinckney had never called her by her name and she felt almost irritated at
+the impertinence of the phantom voice in doing so.
+
+This same irritation made her laugh when she realised it. Then the idea
+that Byrne might lock the hall door before she could get back drove every
+other thought away and she began to run, her shadow running before her
+over the moonlit grass.
+
+Half way across the sward, which was divided from the grass land proper by
+a Ha-ha, she heard the stable clock striking eleven.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+When Phyl withdrew from the dining-room, Hennessey filled his glass with
+port, Pinckney, who took no wine, lit a cigarette and the two men drew
+miles closer to one another in conversation.
+
+They were both relieved by the withdrawal of the girl, Hennessey because
+he wanted to talk business, Pinckney because her presence had affected him
+like a wet blanket.
+
+His first impression of Phyl had been delightful, then, little by little,
+her stiffness and seeming lifelessness had communicated themselves to him.
+It seemed to him that he had never met a duller or more awkward
+schoolgirl. His mind was of that quick order which requires to be caught
+in the uptake rapidly in order to shine. Slowness, coldness, dulness or
+hesitancy in others depressed him just as dull weather depressed him. He
+did not at all know with what a burning interest his arrival had been
+awaited, or the effect that his voice had produced and his first
+appearance. He did not know how the dull schoolgirl had weighed him in a
+mysterious balance which she herself did not quite comprehend and had
+found him slightly wanting. Neither could he tell the extent of the
+paralyses produced in that same mind of hers by the cracked china, the old
+dish cover, Byrne's awkwardness, and the deboshed crumb-brush.
+
+He should have kept to his first impression of her, for first impressions
+are nearly always right; he should have sought for the reason of so much
+charm proving charmless, so much positive attraction proving so negative
+in effect. But he did not. He just took her as he found her and was glad
+she was gone.
+
+"And I believe," said Hennessey, "the South is different now. It used to
+be all cotton before the war."
+
+"Oh, no," said Pinckney. "Before the war there was a lot of cotton grown
+but we used to grow other things as well, we used to feed ourselves, the
+plantation was economically independent. The war broke us. We had to get
+money, so we grew cotton as cotton was never grown before; the South
+became a great sheet of cotton. You see, cotton is the only crop you can
+mortgage, so we grew cotton and mortgaged it. Of course the old-time
+planter is gone, everything is done now by companies, and that's the devil
+of it--"
+
+Pinckney was silent for a moment and sat staring before him as though he
+were looking at the Past.
+
+"Companies, you see, don't grow sunflowers to look at, don't grow trees to
+shade them, don't make love in a wild and extravagant manner and shoot
+other companies for crossing them in their affections--don't play the
+guitar, in short.
+
+"Companies don't breed trotting horses and wear panama hats and put
+flowers in their buttonholes. The old Planter used to do these things and
+a lot of others. He was a bit of a patriarch in his way, too--well, he's
+gone and more's the pity. He's like an old house pulled down. No one can
+ever build it again as it was. The South's a big industrial region now.
+Not only cotton--ore and coal and machinery. We supply the North and East
+with pig-iron, machinery, God knows what. Berknowles was very keen on
+Southern industries, regularly bitten. He was talking of selling off here
+and coming to settle in Charleston when the illness took him-- and that
+reminds me."
+
+He took a document from his pocket. "This is the will. I've kept it on my
+person since I started for here. It's not the thing to trust to a handbag.
+It's in correct form, I believe. Temperley, our solicitor, made it out for
+him and it leaves everything to the girl when she's twenty--but just read
+it and see what you think."
+
+He lit another cigarette whilst Hennessey, putting on his glasses and
+pushing his dessert plate away, spread the will on the table.
+
+Pinckney watched him as he read it. Hennessey was a new order of being to
+him. This easy-going, slipshod, garrulous gentleman, fond of his glass of
+wine, contrasted strangely with the typical lawyer of the States. Flushed
+and not in his business mood, the man of law cast his eyes over the
+document before him, reading bits of it here and there and seeming not
+inclined to bother himself by a concentration of his full energies on the
+matter.
+
+Then, suddenly, his eyes became fixed on a paragraph which he re-read as
+though puzzled by the meaning of it. Then he looked up at the other over
+his glasses.
+
+"Why, what's this?" said he. "He has made _you_ Phyl's guardian. _You!_"
+
+Pinckney laughed.
+
+"Yes, that was the chief thing that brought me over. He has made me her
+guardian, till she's twenty, and he made me promise to look after her
+interests and see to all business arrangements. He said he had no near
+relations in Ireland, and he said that he'd sooner trust the devil than
+the few relatives he had, that they were Papists--that is to say Roman
+Catholics--he seemed to fear them like the deuce and their influence on
+the girl. I couldn't understand him. I've never seen any harm in Roman
+Catholics; there are loads in the States and they seem to be just as good
+citizens as the others, better, for they seem to stick tighter by their
+religion. Anyhow, there you are. Berknowles had them on the brain and
+nothing would do him but I must come over to look after the business
+myself."
+
+Hennessey, with his finger on the will, had been staring at Pinckney
+during this. He looked down now at the document and then up again.
+
+"But you--her guardian--why, it's absurd," said he. "You aren't old enough
+to be a guardian, why, Lord bless my soul, what'll people be doing next? A
+young chap like you to be the guardian of a girl like Phyl--why, it's not
+proper."
+
+"Not only am I to be her guardian," said Pinckney with a twinkle in his
+eyes, "but she's to come and live under my roof at Charleston. I promised
+Berknowles that--He was dying, you see, and one can refuse nothing to a
+dying man."
+
+Hennessey rose up in an abstracted sort of way, went to the sideboard,
+poured himself out a whisky and soda, took a sip, and sat down again.
+
+"Extraordinary, isn't it?" said Pinckney, tapping the ash off his
+cigarette. "All the same, you need not be worried at the impropriety of
+the business; there's none, nothing improper could live in the same house
+with my aunt, Maria Pinckney. Vernons belongs to her though I live
+there."
+
+"Vernons," put in the other. "What's that?"
+
+"It's the name of our house in Charleston. It's mine, really, but my
+father left it to Maria to live in; it comes to me at her death. I don't
+want that house at all. I want her to keep it forever, but it's such a
+pleasant old place, I like to live there instead of buying a house of my
+own. Vernons isn't exactly a house, it's more like a family
+tree--hollow--with all the ancestors inside instead of hanging on the
+branches."
+
+"But why on earth didn't Berknowles make your aunt guardian to the girl?"
+asked Hennessey. "There'd have been some sense in that--a middle-aged
+woman--"
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Pinckney, "my aunt is not a middle-aged woman,
+she's not fifteen."
+
+"Not what?" said Hennessey.
+
+"Not fifteen--in years of discretion, though she's over seventy as time
+goes. She has no knowledge at all of what money is or what money
+means--she flings it away, doesn't spend it--just flings it away on
+anything and everything but herself. I don't believe there's a charity in
+the States that hasn't squeezed her, or a beggar-man in the South that
+hasn't banked on her. She was sent into the world to grow flowers and look
+after stray dogs and be robbed by hoboes; she has been nearly seventy
+years at it and she doesn't know she has ever been robbed. She's not a
+fool by any manner of means, and she rules the servants at Vernons in the
+good old patriarchal way, but she's lost where money is concerned. That's
+why Berknowles wanted me to look after the girl's interests. As for
+anything else, I guess Maria Pinckney will be the real guardian."
+
+"Well, I don't know," said Hennessey. He was confused by all these new
+ideas shot into his mind suddenly like this after dinner, he could see
+that Pinckney was genuine enough, all the same it irritated him to think
+that Philip Berknowles should have chosen a youth like this to be second
+father to Phyl. What was the matter with himself, Hennessey? Hadn't he a
+fine house in Merrion Square and a wife who would have treated the girl
+like a daughter?
+
+"Well, I don't know," said he. "It's not for me to dispute the wishes of a
+client, but I've known Phyl since she was born and I've known her father
+since we were together at Trinity College and I'd have taken it more
+handsome if he'd left the looking after of her to me."
+
+"I wonder he didn't," said Pinckney. "He spoke of you a good deal to me,
+spoke of you as his best friend; all the same he seemed set on the idea of
+us taking care of the girl. He fell in love with Charleston and he
+cottoned to us; then, of course, there were the family reasons. Phyl's
+mother was a Mascarene; my mother was her mother's first cousin. Vernons
+belonged to the Mascarenes, my mother brought it to my father as part of
+her wedding portion. The Pinckneys' old house was lost to us in the smash
+up after the war. So, you see, Phyl ought to be as much at home at Vernons
+as I am. Funny, isn't it, how things get mixed up and old family houses
+change hands?"
+
+"And when do you want to take her away?" asked Hennessey.
+
+"Upon my word, I've never thought of that," replied the other. "I want to
+see things settled up here and to go over the accounts with you.
+Berknowles said the house had better be let--I should think it would be
+easy to find a good tenant--then I want to go to London on business and
+get back as quick as possible. She need not come back with me, it would
+scarcely give her time to get things ready. There's a Mrs. Van Dusen, a
+friend of ours who lives in New York, she's coming over in a month or so
+and Phyl might come with her as far as New York. It's all plain sailing
+after that."
+
+"Well," said Hennessey, folding up the will and putting it in his pocket.
+"I suppose it's all for the best, but it's hard lines for a man to lose
+his best friend and see a good old estate like Kilgobbin taken off to the
+States--Oh, you needn't tell me, if Phyl goes out there she's done for as
+far as Ireland is concerned. Sure, they never come back, the people that
+go there, and if she does come back it'll be with an American husband and
+he master of Kilgobbin. I know what America is, it never lets go of the
+man or woman it catches hold of."
+
+"You're not far wrong there," said Pinckney. "You see, life is set to a
+faster pace in America than over here and once you learn to step that pace
+you feel coming back here as if you were living in a country where people
+are hobbled. At least that's my experience. Then the air is different.
+There's somehow a feeling of morning in America that goes through the
+whole day--almost--here, afternoon begins somewhere about eleven."
+
+Hennessey yawned, and the two men, rising from the table, left the room
+and crossed the hall to the library.
+
+Here, after a while, Hennessey bade the other good night and departed for
+bed, whilst Pinckney, leaning back in his armchair, fell into a lazy and
+contemplative mood, his eyes wandering from point to point.
+
+All this business was very new to him. Pinckney had inherited his father's
+brains as well as his money. He had discovered that a large fortune
+requires just as much care and attention as a large garden and that a man
+can extract just as much interest and amusement and the physical health
+that comes from both, out of money-tending as out of flower and vegetable
+growing. Knowing all about cotton and nearly everything about wheat, he
+managed occasionally to do a bit of speculative dealing without the least
+danger of burning his fingers. Self-reliant and self-assured, knowing his
+road and all its turnings, he had moved through life up to this with the
+ease of a well-oiled and almost frictionless mechanism.
+
+But here was a new thing of which he had never dreamed. Here was another
+destiny suddenly thrust into his charge and another person's property to
+be conserved and dealt with. Never, never, did he dream when acceding to
+Berknowles' request, of the troubles, little difficulties and causes of
+indecision that were preparing to meet him.
+
+Up till now, one side of his character had been almost unknown to him. He
+had been quite unaware that he possessed a conscience most painfully
+sensitive with regard to the interests of others, a conscience that would
+prick him and poison his peace were he to leave even little things undone
+in the fulfilment of the trust he had undertaken so lightheartedly.
+
+Possessing a keen eye for men he began to recognise now why Berknowles had
+not chosen the easy-going Hennessey to look after Phyl and her affairs,
+and he guessed, just by the little bit he had seen of Kilgobbin and the
+servants, the slipshoddedness and waste going on behind the scenes in the
+absence of a master and mistress.
+
+Pinckney loathed waste as he loathed inefficiency and as he loathed dirt.
+They were all three brothers with Drink in his eyes and as he leaned back
+in the chair now, his gaze travelling about the room, he could not but
+perceive little things that would have brought exclamations from the soul
+of a careful housekeeper. The furniture had been upholstered, or rather
+re-upholstered in leather some five years ago. There is nothing that cries
+out so much against neglect as leather, and the chairs and couch in the
+library of Kilgobbin, without exactly crying out, still told their tale.
+Some of the buttons were gone, and some of them hung actually by the
+thread in the last stage of departure. There was a tiny triangular rent in
+the leather of the armchair wherein Phyl had been sitting and another
+armchair wanted a castor. The huge Persian rug that covered the centre of
+the floor shewed marks left by cigar and cigarette ash, and under a
+Jacobean book-case in the corner were stuffed all sorts of odds and ends,
+old paper-backed novels, a pair of old shoes, a tennis racquet and a
+boxing glove--besides other things.
+
+Pinckney rose up, went to the book-case and placed his fingers on top of
+it, then he looked at his fingers and the bar of dust upon them, brushed
+his hand clean and came back to his chair by the fire. He heard the stable
+clock striking eleven. The sound of the wind that had been raging outside
+all during dinner time had died away and the sounds of the house made
+themselves manifest, the hundred stealthy accountable and unaccountable
+little sounds that night evolves from an old house set in the stillness of
+the country. Just as the night jasmine gives up its perfume to the night,
+so does an old house its past in the form of murmurs and crackings and
+memories and suggestions. Notwithstanding Dunn's attentions there were
+rats alive in the cellars and under the boarding--and mice; the passages
+leading to the kitchen premises made a whispering gallery where murderers
+seemed consulting together if the scullery window were forgotten and left
+open--as it usually was, and boards in the uneven flooring that had been
+preparing for the act for weeks and months would suddenly "go off with a
+bang," a noise startling in the dead of night as the crack of a pistol,
+and produced, heaven knows how, but never by daylight.
+
+Even Pinckney, who did not believe in ghosts, became aware as he sat now
+by the fire that the old house was feeling for him to make him creep,
+feeling for him with its old disjointed fingers and all the artfulness of
+inanimate things.
+
+He was aware that Sir Nicholas Berknowles was looking down at him with the
+terrible patient gaze of a portrait, and he returned the gaze, trying to
+imagine what manner of man this might have been and how he had lived and
+what he had done in those old days that were once real sunlit days filled
+with people with real voices, hearts, and minds.
+
+A gentle creak as though a light step had pressed upon the flooring of the
+hall brought his mind back to reality and he was rising from his chair to
+retire for the night when a sound from outside the window made him sit
+down again. It was the sound of a step on the gravel path, a step stealthy
+and light, a real sound and no contraption of the imagination.
+
+The idea of burglars sprang up in his mind, but was dismissed; that was no
+burglar's footstep--and yet! He listened. The sound had ceased and now
+came a faint rubbing as of a hand feeling for the window followed by the
+sharp rapping of a knuckle on the glass.
+
+"Hullo," cried Pinckney, jumping to his feet and approaching the shuttered
+window. "Who's there?"
+
+"It's me," said a voice. "I'm locked out. Byrne's bolted the front door.
+Go to the hall door, will you, please, and let me in?"
+
+"Phyl," said Pinckney to himself. "Good heavens!" Then to the other, "I'm
+coming."
+
+Byrne had left a lamp lighted in the hall and the guest's candlestick
+waiting for him on the table. The lamp was sufficient to show him the
+executive side of the big front door that had been nearly battered in in
+the time of the Fenians and still possessed the ponderous locks and bars
+of a past day when the tenants of Kilgobbin had fought the pikemen of
+Arranakilty and Rupert Berknowles had hung seventeen rebels, no less, on
+the branches of the big oak "be the gates."
+
+Pinckney undid bolt and bar, turned the key in the great lock and flung
+the door open, disclosing Phyl standing in the moonlight. The contrast
+between the forbidding and ponderous door and the charming little figure
+against which it had stood as a barrier might have struck him had his mind
+been less astonished. As it was he could think of nothing but the
+strangeness of the business in hand.
+
+"Where on earth have you been?" said he.
+
+"Out in the woods," said Phyl, entering quite unconcerned and removing her
+cloak. "A fox got trapped in the woods and I went to let it out and
+couldn't find it, then that old fool Byrne locked the door; lucky you were
+up. I saw the light in the library shining through a crack in the shutters
+and knocked."
+
+Pinckney was putting up the bar and sliding the bolts. He said nothing.
+Had Phyl been another girl, he might have laughed and joked over the
+matter, but care of Phyl's well-being was now part of his business in life
+and that consideration just checked his speech. There was nothing at all
+wrong in the affair, and never for a moment did he dream of making the
+slightest remonstrance; still, the unwisdom of a young girl wandering
+about in the woods at night after trapped foxes was a patent fact which
+disturbed the mind of this guardian unto dumbness.
+
+Phyl, who was as sensitive to impressions as a radiometer to light, noted
+the silence of the other and resented it as she hung up her old hat and
+cloak. She knew nothing of the true facts of the case, she looked on
+Pinckney as a being almost of her own age, and that he should dare to
+express disapproval of an act of hers not concerning him, even by silence,
+was an intolerable insult. She knew that she loathed him now.--Prig!
+
+This was the first real meeting of these two and Fate, with the help of
+Irish temper and the Pinckney conscience, was making a fine fiasco of it.
+
+Phyl, having hung up the hat and coat, turned without a word, marched into
+the library and finding the book she had been reading that day, put it
+under her arm.
+
+"Good night," said she as she passed him in the hall.
+
+"Good night," he replied.
+
+He watched her disappearing up the stairs, stood for a moment irresolute,
+and then went into the library. He knew he had offended her and he knew
+exactly how he had offended her. There are silences that can be more
+hurting than speech--yet what could he have said? He rummaged in his mind
+to find something he might have said and could find nothing more
+appropriate than a remark about the weather and the fineness of the night.
+Yet a bald and decrepit remark like that would have been as bad almost as
+silence, for it would have ignored the main point at issue--the
+night-wandering of his ward.
+
+He sat down again for a moment in the armchair by the fireplace and began
+to wrestle with the position in which he found himself. This was a small
+business, but if Phyl in the future was to do things that he did not
+approve of it would be his plain duty to remonstrate with her. An odious
+position for youth to be placed in. How she would loathe and hate him!
+
+Pinckney, though a man of the world in many ways and a good business man,
+was still at heart a boy just as young as Phyl; even in years he was very
+little older than she, and the boy side of his mind was in full revolt at
+the job set before him by fate.
+
+Then he came to a resolution.
+
+"She can do jolly well what she pleases," said he to himself, "without my
+interference. Aunt Maria can attend to that. My business will be to look
+after her property and keep sharks off it. _I'm_ not going to set up in
+business to tell a girl what she ought or oughtn't to do--that's a woman's
+job."
+
+Satisfied with this seeming solution of the difficulty he went to bed.
+
+Meanwhile, Phyl, having marched off with the book under her arm found,
+when she reached her room, that she had forgotten a matchbox, and, too
+proud to return to the hall for one, went to bed in the dark.
+
+She lay awake for an hour, her mind obsessed by thoughts of this man who
+had suddenly stepped into her life, and who possessed such a strange power
+to disturb her being and fill it with feelings of unrest, irritation and,
+strangely enough, a vague attraction.
+
+The attraction one might fancy the iron to feel for the distant magnet, or
+the floating stick for the far-off whirlpool.
+
+Then she fell asleep and dreamed that they were at dinner and Mr.
+Hennessey was waiting at table. Her father was there and, before the dream
+converted itself into something equally fatuous she heard Pinckney's
+voice, also in the dream; he seemed looking for her in the hall and he was
+calling to her, "Phyl--Phyl!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Next morning came with a burst of sunshine and a windy, cloudless sky.
+Pinckney, dressing with his window open, could see the park with the rooks
+wheeling and cawing over the trees, whilst the warm wind brought into the
+room all sorts of winter scents on the very breath of summer.
+
+This rainy land where the snow rarely comes has all sorts of surprises of
+climate and character. Nothing is truly logical in Ireland, not even
+winter. That is what makes the place so delightful to some minds and so
+perplexing to others.
+
+Hennessey was staying for a day or two to go over accounts and explain the
+working of the estate to Pinckney.
+
+He was in the hall when the latter came down, and gave him good morning.
+
+"Where's your mistress?" said Hennessey to old Byrne, as they took their
+seats at the breakfast table.
+
+"Faith, she's been out since six," said Byrne. "She came down threatenin'
+to skin Rafferty alive for layin' fox thraps in the woods, then she had a
+bite of bread and butter and a cup of tea Norah made for her, and off she
+went with Rafferty to hunt out the thraps and take them up. It's little
+she cares for breakfast."
+
+"I was the same way myself when I was her age," said Hennessey to
+Pinckney. "Up at four in the morning and out fishing in Dublin Bay--it's
+well to be young."
+
+"Look here," said the young man, as Byrne left the room, "she was out till
+eleven last night in the woods; she knocked me up as I was sitting in the
+library and I let her in. _I_ don't see anything wrong in the business,
+but all the same, it's not a particularly safe proceeding and I suppose a
+mother or father would have jawed her--I couldn't. I suppose I showed by
+my manner that I didn't approve of her being out so late, for she seemed
+in a huff as she went up to bed. My position is a bit difficult, but I'm
+hanged if I'm going to do the heavy father or careful mother business. If
+she was only a boy, I could talk to her like a Dutch uncle, but I don't
+know anything about girls. I wish--"
+
+Pinckney's wish remained forever unexpressed, for at the moment the door
+opened and in came Phyl.
+
+Her face was glowing with the morning air and she seemed to have forgotten
+the business of the night before as she greeted Pinckney and the lawyer
+and took her place at the table.
+
+"Phyl," said the lawyer, half jocularly, "here's Mr. Pinckney been
+complaining that you were wandering about all night in the woods, knocking
+him up to let you in at two o'clock in the morning."
+
+Phyl, who was helping herself to bacon, looked up at Pinckney.
+
+"Oh, you cad," said her eyes. Then she spoke:
+
+"I came in at eleven. If I had known, I would have called up Byrne or one
+of the servants to let me in."
+
+Pinckney could have slain Hennessey.
+
+"Good gracious," he said. "_I_ wasn't complaining. I only just mentioned
+the fact."
+
+"The fact that I was out till two," said Phyl, with another upward glance
+of scorn.
+
+"I never said any such thing. I said eleven."
+
+"It was my loose way of speaking; but, sure, what's the good of getting
+out of temper?" put in Hennessey. "Mr. Pinckney wasn't meaning anything,
+but you see, Phyl, it's just this way, your father has made him your
+guardian."
+
+"My _what!_" cried the girl.
+
+"_Oh_, Lord!" said Pinckney, in despair at the blundering way of the
+other. Then finding himself again and the saving vein of humour, without
+which man is just a leaden figure:
+
+"Yes, that's it. I'm your guardian. You must on no account go out without
+my permission, or cough or sneeze without a written permit--Oh, Phyl,
+don't be thinking nonsense of that sort. I _am_ your guardian, it seems,
+and by your father's special request, but you are absolutely free to do as
+you like."
+
+"A nice sort of guardian," put in Hennessey with a grin.
+
+"I am only, really, guardian of your money and your interests," went on
+the other, "and your welfare. When you came in last night late, I was a
+bit taken aback and I thought--as a matter of fact, I thought it might be
+dangerous being out alone in this wild part of the country so late at
+night, but I did not want to interfere; you can understand, can't you?
+What I want you to get out of your mind is, that I am that odious thing, a
+meddling person. I'm not."
+
+Phyl was very white. She had risen from the table and was at the window.
+
+Here was her dream come true of the bearded American who had suddenly
+appeared to claim her and Kilgobbin and the servants and everything.
+
+Pinckney had not a beard, but he was an American and he had come to claim
+everything. The word guardian carried such a force and weight and was so
+filled with fantastic possibilities to the mind of Phyl, that she scarcely
+heard his soft words and excuses.
+
+Phyl had the Irish trick of running away with ideas and embroidering the
+most palpable truths with fancies. It was an inheritance from her father,
+and she stood by the window now unable to speak, with the word "Guardian"
+ringing in her ears and the idea pressing on her mind like an incubus.
+
+Hennessey had risen up. He was the first to break silence.
+
+"There's no use in meeting troubles half way," said he vaguely. "You and
+Phyl will get along all right when you know each other better. Come out,
+the two of you, and we'll go round the grounds and you will be able to see
+for yourself the state of the house and what repairs are wanting."
+
+"One moment," said Pinckney. "I want to tell Phyl something--I'm going to
+call you Phyl because I'm your guardian--d'you mind?"
+
+"No," said Phyl, "you can call me anything you like, I suppose."
+
+"I'm not going to call you anything I like--just Phyl-- Well, then, I want
+to tell you what we have to do. It's not my wishes I have to carry out but
+your father's. He wanted to let this house."
+
+"Let Kilgobbin!"
+
+"Yes, that is what he said. He wanted to let it to a good tenant who would
+look after it till you are of age. I think he was right. You see, you
+could not live here all alone, and if the place was shut up it would
+deteriorate."
+
+"It would go to wrack and ruin," said Hennessey.
+
+"And the servants?" said Phyl.
+
+"We will look after them," said Pinckney, "the new tenant might take them
+on; if not, we'll give them time to get new places."
+
+"Byrne's been here before I was born," said the girl, with dry lips, "so
+has Mrs. Driscoll. They are part of the place; it would ruin their lives
+to send them away."
+
+"Well," said Pinckney, "I don't want to be the ogre to ruin their lives;
+you can do anything you like about them. If the new tenant didn't take
+them, you might pension them. I want you to be perfectly happy in your
+mind and I want you to feel that though I am, so to speak, the guardian of
+your money, still, that money is yours."
+
+She was beginning to understand now that not only was he striving to
+soothe her feelings and propitiate her, but that he was very much in
+earnest in this business, and crowding through her mind came a great wave
+of revulsion against herself.
+
+Phyl's nature was such that whilst always ready to fly into wrath and
+easily moved to bitter resentment, one touch of kindness, one soft word,
+had the power to disarm her.
+
+One soft word from an antagonist had the power to wound her far more than
+a dozen words of bitterness.
+
+Filled now with absolutely superfluous self-reproach, she stood for a
+moment unable to speak. Then she said, raising her eyes to his:
+
+"I am sure you mean to do what is for the best.--It was stupid of me--"
+
+"Not a bit," said the other, cheerfully. "I want to do the things that
+will make you happy--that's all. I'm a business man and I know the value
+of money. Money is just worth the amount of happiness it brings."
+
+"Faith, that's true," said Hennessey, who had taken his seat again and was
+in the act of lighting a cigar.
+
+"When I was a boy," went on the other. "I was always kept hard up by my
+father. It was like pulling gum teeth to get the price of a fishing rod
+out of him. When I think of all the fun I might have bought with a few
+dollars, it makes me wild. You can't buy fun when you get old; you may buy
+an opera house or a yacht, but you can't buy the real stuff that makes
+life worth living."
+
+Phyl glanced out of the window at the park, then as though she had found
+some inspiration there, she turned to Pinckney.
+
+"If you don't mind about the money, then why don't you let me live here
+instead of letting the place? I can live here by myself and I would be
+happy here. I won't be happy if I leave it."
+
+"Well," said Pinckney, "there's your father's wish, first of all."
+
+"I'm sure if he knew how I felt, he wouldn't mind," said Phyl mournfully,
+turning her gaze again to the park.
+
+"On top of that," went on Pinckney, "there's--your age. Phyl, it wouldn't
+ever do; it's not I that am saying it, it's custom, the world, society."
+
+Phyl, like the hooked salmon that has taken the gaudy fly, felt a check
+and recognised that a Power had her in hand, recognised in the light-going
+and fair-speaking Pinckney something of adamant, a will not to be broken
+or bent.
+
+She felt for a moment a revolt against herself for having fallen to the
+lure and allowed herself to come to friendly terms with him. Then this
+feeling faded a bit. The very young are very weak in the face of
+constituted authority--besides, there was always at the back of Pinckney
+her father's wish.
+
+"And then again, on top of that," he went on, "there's the question of
+your coming to live with us; your father wished it."
+
+"In America!" cried Phyl. "Do you mean I am to live in America?"
+
+"Well, we live there; why not? It's not a bad place to live in--and what
+else are you to do?"
+
+She could not answer him. This time she saw that the bogey man had got her
+and no mistake. America to her seemed as far as the moon and far less
+familiar. If Pinckney had declared that it was necessary for her to die,
+she would have been a great deal more frightened, but the prospect would
+not have seemed much more desolate and forbidding and final.
+
+He saw at once the trouble in her mind and guessed the cause. He had a
+rare intuition for reading minds, and it seemed to him he could read
+Phyl's as easily as though the outside of her head were clear glass--he
+had cause to modify this cocksure opinion later on.
+
+"Don't worry," he said. "If you don't like America when you see it, you
+can come back to Ireland. I daresay we can arrange something; anyhow,
+don't let us meet troubles half way."
+
+"When am I to go?" said Phyl.
+
+"Sure, Phyl, you can stay as long as you like with us," said Mr.
+Hennessey. "The doors of 10, Merrion Square, are always open to you, and
+never will they be shut on you except behind your back."
+
+Pinckney laughed; and a servant coming in to clear the breakfast things,
+Hennessey led the way from the room to show Pinckney the premises.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+They crossed the hall, and passing through a green-baize covered door went
+down a passage that led to the kitchen.
+
+"This is the housekeeper's room," said Hennessey, pointing to a half open
+door, "and the servants' hall is that door beyond. This is the kitchen."
+
+They paused for a moment in the great old-fashioned kitchen, with an open
+range capable of roasting a small ox, one might have fancied. Norah, the
+cook, was busy in the scullery with her sleeves tucked up, and under the
+table was seated Susie Gallagher, a small and grubby hanger-on engaged in
+the task of washing potatoes. The potatoes were beside her on the floor
+and she was washing them in a tin basin of water with the help of an old
+nail-brush.
+
+There was a horse-shoe hung up, for luck, on the wall over the range, and
+a pile of dinner plates, from last night's dinner and still unwashed,
+stood on the dresser, where also stood a half-bottle of Guinness' stout
+and a tumbler; an old setter bitch lay before the fire and a jackdaw in a
+wicker cage set up a yell at the sight of the visitors, that brought Norah
+out of the scullery to receive them, a broad smile on her face and her
+arms tucked up in her apron.
+
+"He always yells like that at the sight of tramps or stray people about,"
+apologised the cook. "He's better than a watch-dog. Hold your tongue, you
+baste; don't you know your misthress when you see her?"
+
+"Rafferty caught him in the park," said Phyl, "and cut his tongue with a
+sixpence so as to make him able to speak."
+
+They left the kitchen and came into the yard. A big tin can of refuse was
+standing by the kitchen door, and on top of all sorts of rubbish, potato
+peelings, cabbage stalks and so forth, lay the carcass of a boiled fowl.
+It was the fowl they had dined off the night before and it lay there just
+as it had gone from the table, that is to say, minus both wings and the
+greater part of the breast, but with the legs intact.
+
+Pinckney stared at this sinful sight. Then he pointed to it.
+
+"What's that doing there?" he asked.
+
+"Waitin' to be took away be the stable boy, sor," replied the cook, who
+had followed them to the door. "All the rubbish is took away in that ould
+can every mornin'."
+
+"Good God!" said Pinckney under his breath. The expression was shaken out
+of him, so to speak, and out of a pocket of his character which had never
+been fully explored, of whose existence, indeed, he was not particularly
+aware. This Irish expedition was to show him a good many things in life
+and in himself of which up to this he had been in ignorance. He had never
+been brought face to face with waste, bald waste without a hat on or
+covering of any sort, before.
+
+"Haven't you any poor people about here?" he asked.
+
+"Hapes, sor."
+
+Pinckney was on the point of saying something more, but he checked
+himself, remembering that in the eyes of the servants he was here in the
+position of a guest.
+
+He followed Hennessey across to the stable yard, where Larry, the groom,
+was washing the carriage that had fetched him from the station the night
+before.
+
+"The servants won't eat chicken," said Phyl, in an apologetic way. She had
+noted everything and she guessed his thoughts. "They won't eat game
+either--and they throw things away if they don't like them--of course,
+it's wasteful, but they _do_ give things to the poor. Lots of poor people
+come here, every day nearly, but they don't care for scraps--you see, it
+_is_ insulting to give a poor person scraps, just as though they were
+animals. I remember the cook we had before Norah did it when she came
+first, and all the poor people stopped coming to the house. Said she ought
+to know better than to offer them the leavings."
+
+"Cheek!"
+
+"Well, I don't know," said Phyl. "We've done it for hundreds of years."
+
+She closed her mouth in a way she had when she did not wish to pursue a
+subject further. Despite the fact that she had made friends with Pinckney,
+she was galled by his attitude of criticism. Guardian or no guardian, he
+was a stranger; relation or no relation, he was a stranger, and what right
+had a stranger to dare to come and turn up his nose at the poor people or
+make remarks--he hadn't said a word--about the wastefulness of the
+servants?
+
+The redoubtable Rafferty was standing in the yard chewing a straw and
+watching Larry at work.
+
+Rafferty was a man of genius, who had started as a helper and odd job
+person, and had risen to the position of factotum. He had ousted the
+Scotch gardener and insinuated a relation of his own in his place. There
+was scarcely a servant about the estate that was not a relation of
+Rafferty's. Philip Berknowles had put up with a lot from Rafferty simply
+because Rafferty was an invaluable person in his way when not crossed.
+Everything went smoothly when the factotum was not interfered with. Cross
+him and there were immediate results ranging from ill-groomed horses to
+general unrest. He was a dark individual, half groom, half game-keeper in
+dress, a "wicked-looking divil," according to the description of his
+enemies, and an exceedingly foxy-looking individual in the eyes of
+Pinckney.
+
+"Rafferty," said Mr. Hennessey, "I want to show this gentleman round.
+Let's see the stables."
+
+Rafferty touched his cap and led the way, showing first the stalls and
+boxes where four or five horses were stabled, and then leading the way
+through the coach-house to the path from which opened the kitchen
+gardens.
+
+They were immense and walled in with red brick, capable, one might fancy,
+of supplying the wants of three or four houses the size of Kilgobbin.
+
+Pinckney noted this fact, also that the home farm to which the kitchen
+gardens led was apparently a prosperous and going little concern, with its
+fowls and chickens penned or loose, styes filled with grunting pigs, and
+turkeys gobbling and spreading their tails in the sun.
+
+"Who looks after all this?" asked Pinckney.
+
+"I do, sor," replied Rafferty.
+
+"What are the takings?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, sor?"
+
+"The profits, I mean. You sell these things, don't you?"
+
+"Kilgobbin isn't a farm, sor, it's a gintleman's estate."
+
+Pinckney, not at all set back by this snub, turned and looked the factotum
+in the face.
+
+"Just so," said he, "but I've never heard of gentlemen growing pigs to
+look at; peacocks, maybe, but not pigs. However, we'll have another look
+at the business later."
+
+He turned and they went on, Rafferty disturbed in his mind and much put
+about by the manner of the other in whom he began to divine something more
+than a casual guest, Phyl almost as much put out as Rafferty.
+
+The idea that the factotum might have been robbing her father right and
+left never occurred to her; even if it had, it would not have softened the
+fact that a strange hand was at work in her old home turning over things,
+inspecting them, holding them up for comment.
+
+She managed to drop behind as they left the farm yard for the paddocks,
+then turning down the yew lane that led back to the house, she ran as
+though hounds were after her, reached the house, locked herself in her
+bedroom, and flung herself on the bed in a tempest of weeping, dragging a
+pillow over her head as if to shield herself from the blows that the world
+was aiming at her.
+
+Phyl, without mother, brothers or sisters, had centred all her affection
+on her father and Kilgobbin; the servants, the place itself and all the
+things and people about it were part and parcel with her life, and the
+death of her father had intensified her love of the place and the people.
+
+If Pinckney had only known, he might have put the business of the
+inspection of the property and the dealing with the servants into other
+hands, but Pinckney was young and full of energy and business ability; he
+was full of conscientiousness and the determination to protect his ward's
+interests; he had scented a rogue in Rafferty, and at this very minute
+returning to the house with Hennessey, he was declaring his intention to
+make an overhaul of the working of the estate.
+
+Rafferty was to appear before him and produce his accounts and make
+explanations. Mrs. Driscoll was to be examined as to the expenditure,
+etc.
+
+He little knew the hornet's nest into which he was about to poke his
+finger.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+The grand inquisition began that evening after dinner--Phyl did not appear
+at dinner, alleging a headache--and Rafferty, summoned to the library, had
+to stand whilst Pinckney, seated at the table with a pen in his hand and a
+sheet of paper before him, went into the business of accounts.
+
+Mark how the unexpected occurs in life. Rafferty, who had been pilfering
+for years, selling garden produce and keeping the profits, robbing corn
+from the corn bin in the stable, poaching and selling birds and ground
+game to a dealer in Arranakilty, receiving illicit commissions and so
+forth, had on the death of his master shaken off all restraint and
+prepared for a campaign of open plunder. The very last thing he could have
+imagined was the sudden appearance of an American business man on the
+scene, armed with absolute power and possessing the eye of a hawk.
+
+"Your master asked me just before he died to look after this estate,"
+began Pinckney; "in fact, he has appointed me to act as guardian to Miss
+Berknowles, so I just want to see how things stand. Now, to begin with the
+horses. I want to know everything about the stables during the last--shall
+we say--six months. Who supplies the corn and the hay and the straw?"
+
+"I've been gettin' some from Faulkner of Arranakilty, sor, and some from
+Doyle of Bally-brack."
+
+"Don't you grow any horse food on the estate?"
+
+"We don't grow no corn, sor."
+
+"Well, hay and straw?"
+
+"You can't get straw, sor, widout you grow corn."
+
+"I know that--but how about hay--surely you grow lots of grass?"
+
+"We graze the grass, sor."
+
+"Do you let the grazing?"
+
+"Well, sor, it's this way; the masther was never very shtrict about the
+grazin'; we puts some of the horses out to grass, ourselves, and we lets
+poor folk have a bit of grazin' now and then for their cattle, though
+master was never after makin' money from the estate--"
+
+"Just so. Have you the receipted bills for the fodder during the last six
+months?"
+
+"Yes, sor. The master always sent me wid the money to pay the bills."
+
+"You have got the receipts?"
+
+"The which, sor?"
+
+"The bills receipted."
+
+"Bills, sure, what's the good of keepin' bills, sor, when the money's
+paid. I b'lave they're somewhere in an ould crock in the stable, at laste
+that's where I saw thim last."
+
+"Well," said Pinckney, "you can fetch them for me to-morrow morning, and
+now let's talk about the garden."
+
+Rafferty, not knowing what Pinckney might discover and so being unable to
+lie with confidence, had a very bad quarter of an hour over the garden.
+
+Pinckney was not a man to press another unduly, nor was he a man to haggle
+about halfpence or worry servants over small peccadillos. He knew quite
+well that grooms are grooms, and will be so as long as men are men. He
+would never have bothered about little details had Rafferty been an
+ordinary servant. He recognised in Rafferty, not a servant to be dismissed
+or corrected, but an antagonist to be fought. It was the case of the dog
+and badger. Rafferty was Graft and all it implies, Pinckney was Straight
+Dealing. And Straight Dealing knew quite well that the only way to get
+Graft by the throat is to ferret out details, no matter how small.
+
+So Rafferty was taken over details. He had to admit that he had "given
+away" some of the stuff from the garden and sold "a bit," sending it up to
+Dublin for that purpose; but he was not to be caught.
+
+"And the profits," said Pinckney. "I suppose you handed them over to Mr.
+Berknowles?"
+
+"No, sor; the master always tould me to keep any bit of money I might draa
+from anything I planted extra for me perkisites, that was the
+understandin' I had with him."
+
+"And over the farmyard, I suppose anything you could make by selling any
+extra animals you planted was your perquisite?"
+
+"Yes, sor."
+
+"Very well, Rafferty, that will do for to-night; get me those receipted
+bills to-morrow morning. Come here at ten o'clock and we will have another
+talk."
+
+Rafferty went off, feeling more comfortable in his mind.
+
+The word Perquisites might be made to cover a multitude of sins, but he
+would not have been so easy if he had known that Mrs. Driscoll had been
+called up immediately after his departure. Mrs. Driscoll was one of those
+terrible people who say nothing yet see everything; for the last year and
+a half she had been watching Rafferty; knowing it to be quite useless to
+report what she knew to her easy-going master, she had, none the less,
+kept on watching. As a result, she was now able to bring up a hard fact, a
+small hard fact more valuable than worlds of ductile evidence. Rafferty
+had "nicked"--it was the lady's expression--a brand-new lawn mower.
+
+"I declare to God, sir, I don't know what he _has_ took, for me eyes can't
+be everywhere, but I do know he's took the mower."
+
+"Why did you not tell Miss Phyl?"
+
+"I did, sir, and she only said, 'Oh, there must be a mistake--what would
+he be doin' with it,' says she. 'Sellin' it,' says I. 'Nonsense,' says
+she. You see, sir, Rafferty and she has always been hand in glove, what
+with the fishin' and shootin', and the horses and such like, and she won't
+hear a word against him."
+
+Mrs. Driscoll had called Rafferty a sly devil--he was.
+
+At eleven o'clock next morning, Phyl, crossing the stable yard with some
+sugar for the horses, met Rafferty. He was crying.
+
+"Why, what on earth's the matter, Rafferty?" asked the girl.
+
+"I've got the shove, miss," replied Rafferty, "after all me years of
+service, I'm put out to end me days in a ditch."
+
+"You mean you're discharged!" she cried. "Was it Mr. Pinckney?"
+
+"That's him," replied Rafferty. "Says he's the masther of us all. 'Out you
+get,' says he, 'or it's I that'll be callin' a p'leeceman to put you,'
+says he. Flung it in me face that I'd stolen a laan mower. Me that's ben
+on the estate man and boy for forty year. A laan mower! Sure, Miss Phyl,
+what would I be doin' with a laan mower?"
+
+Phyl turned from him and ran to the house. Pinckney and Hennessey were
+seated in the library when the door burst open and in came Phyl. Her eyes
+were bright and her lips were pale.
+
+"You told me you would keep all the servants," said she. "Rafferty tells
+me you have dismissed him."
+
+"I should think I had," said Pinckney lightly, and not gauging the mad
+disturbance of the other, "and it's lucky for him I haven't put him in
+prison."
+
+The word prison was all that was wanted to fire the mine. Pinckney stood
+for a moment aghast at the change in the girl.
+
+"I _hate_ you," she cried, coming a step closer to him. "I loathe
+you--master of us all, are you? Dare to touch any one here and I'll burn
+the house down with my own hands--you--you--"
+
+She paused for want of breath, her chest heaving and her hands clenched.
+
+Then Pinckney exploded.
+
+The good old fiery Pinckney blood was up. Oh, without any manner of doubt
+our ancestors are still able to speak, and it was old Roderick
+Pinckney--"Pepper Pinckney" was his nickname--that blazed out now. It was
+also the fire of youth answering the fire of youth.
+
+"Damn it!" he cried. "I've come here to do my best--I don't care--keep who
+you want--be robbed if you like it--I'm off--" He caught up all the sheets
+of paper he had been covering with figures and tore them across.
+
+"Beast!" cried Phyl.
+
+She rushed from the room and upstairs like a mad creature. The bang of her
+bedroom door closed the incident.
+
+"Now don't be taking on so," said Hennessey. "You've both of you lost your
+temper."
+
+"Lost my temper--maybe. I'm going all the same. Right back to the States.
+I'm off to Dublin by the next train and you'd better come and finish the
+business there. You'd better have her to stay with you in Dublin. I don't
+want to see her again. Anyhow, we'll settle all that later."
+
+"Maybe that's the best," said Hennessey. "My wife will look after her till
+she's ready to go to the States--if she wants to."
+
+"Please God she doesn't," replied the other.
+
+Phyl did not see Pinckney again. He went off to Dublin by the two-ten
+train with Hennessey, the latter promising to be back on the morrow to
+arrange things.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Dublin can never have been a cheerful city. Even in the days when the
+butchers joined in street fights and hung their antagonists when caught on
+steel hooks--like legs of mutton--the gaiety of Dublin one may fancy to
+have been more a matter of spirits than of spirit.
+
+Echoes from the days when the Parliament sat in Stephen's Green come down
+to us through the works of Charles Lever, but the riotous gaiety of the
+old days when Barrington was a judge of the Admiralty Court, the Hell Fire
+Club an institution, and Count Considine a figure in society, must be
+taken with a grain of salt.
+
+Mangan shows you the old Dublin as it was in those glorious times, and in
+the new Dublin of to-day the shade of Mangan seems still to walk arm in
+arm with the shade of Mathurin. Gloomy ghosts addicted to melancholy,
+noting with satisfaction that the streets are as dirty as ever, the old
+Public Houses still standing, that, despite the tramways--those
+extraordinary new modern inventions--the tide of life runs pretty much the
+same as of old. The ghosts of Mangan and Mathurin have never seen a taxi
+cab.
+
+Dublin at the present day is a splendid city for old ghosts to wander in
+without having their corns trodden on or their susceptibilities injured.
+Phyl had come to Dublin to live with the Hennesseys in Merrion Square.
+
+"Never shall my door be shut on you except behind your back," Hennessey
+had said, and he meant it.
+
+The girl was worth several thousand a year; had she been penniless it
+would have been just the same.
+
+You may meet many geniuses in your journey through life, many brilliant
+people, many beautiful people, many fascinating people, but you will not
+meet many friends. Hennessey belonged to the society of Friends, his wife
+was a member of the same community, and he would have been ruined only for
+his partner Niven, who was an ordinary lowdown human creature who believed
+in no one and kept the business together.
+
+On the day of her arrival at Merrion Square and during her first interview
+with Mrs. Hennessey in the large, cheerless drawing-room where
+decalcomanied flower pots lingered like relics of the Palæolithic age of
+Art, Phyl kept herself above tears, just as a swimmer keeps his head above
+water in a choppy sea.
+
+It was all so gloomy, yet so friendly, that the mind could not openly
+revolt at the gloom; it was all so different from the wind and trees and
+freedom of Kilgobbin, and Mrs. Hennessey, whom she had only seen once
+before, was so different, on closer acquaintance, from any of the people
+she had hitherto met in her little world.
+
+Mrs. Hennessey, with a soul above dust and housekeeping, a faded woman,
+not very tidy, with an exalted air, pouring out tea from a Britannia metal
+ware teapot and talking all the time about Willy Yeates, the Irish Players
+and Lady Gregory's last play, fascinated the girl, who did not know who
+Willy Yeates was and who had never seen the Irish Players.
+
+Nor could she learn from Mrs. Hennessey. It was impossible to get a word
+in edgeways with that lady. Sometimes, indeed, during a lull in her mind
+disturbance, she would remain quiet whilst you answered some question,
+only to find that she had totally forgotten the question and was not
+listening to your reply.
+
+Phyl got so used to Mrs. Hennessey after a few days that she did not
+listen to her questions, and so the two being matched, they got on well
+together. Young people soon accommodate themselves to their surroundings,
+and in a month the girl had grown to the colour of her new life, at least,
+on the outside of her mind. It seemed to her that she had lived years in
+Merrion Square. Kilgobbin--Hennessey had managed to let the place--seemed
+a dream of her childhood. She saw no future, and rebellion was impossible;
+there was nothing to rebel against--except the dulness and greyness of
+life. No people could have been kinder than the Hennesseys; unfortunately
+they had numerous friends, and the friends of the Hennesseys did not
+appeal to Phyl.
+
+A boy in her position would have adapted himself quickly enough, and been
+hail fellow well met with Mr. Mattram, the dentist of Westland Row, or the
+young Farrels, whose father owned one of the biggest wine merchants'
+businesses in the city; but the feminine instinct told Phyl that these
+were not the sort of people from whose class she had sprung, that their
+circle was not her circle and that she had stepped down in life in some
+mysterious way. This fact was brought sharply home to her by a young
+Farrel, a male of the Farrel brood, a hobbledehoy, good-looking enough but
+with a Dublin accent and a cheeky manner.
+
+This immature wine merchant at a party given by Mrs. Hennessey had made
+love to Phyl and had tried to kiss her behind the dining-room door.
+
+The recollection of the smack in the face she had given him soothed her
+that night as she lay tossing in her bed, and it was on this night and for
+the first time since she left Kilgobbin that the recollection of Pinckney
+came before her otherwise than as a shadow. He stood with the Hennessey
+circle as his background, a bright, good-looking figure and a gentleman to
+his finger-tips.
+
+Why had she cast aside her own people--even though they were distant
+relations? What stupidity had caused her to insult Pinckney by telling him
+she hated him? She found herself asking that question without being able
+to answer it.
+
+After all that fuss at Kilgobbin and Pinckney's departure, Mr. Hennessey
+had proved to her that Rafferty was a rogue who deserved no quarter; the
+man had been dismissed, the whole business was done with and over, and
+now, looking back in cool blood, she was utterly unable to reconstruct and
+put together the reasons for the outburst of anger that had severed her
+from the one kinsman who had put out his hand to help her.
+
+She could no longer conjure up the feeling that Pinckney was an interloper
+come to break up Kilgobbin and spoil the home she had known from
+childhood.
+
+Fate had done that. Kilgobbin was gone--let to strangers; Hennessey had
+taken over her guardianship _pro tem_, and it was entirely owing to
+herself that she was in her present position. She had no right to
+criticise the friends of the Hennesseys; she had deliberately walked into
+that circle from which she felt she never could escape now.
+
+Just as Pinckney had discovered that guardianship was showing him traits
+in his character hitherto unknown to him, Phyl was discovering her woman's
+instinct as regards social matters.
+
+She recognised that once having taken her place amongst the Hennessey set,
+her position for life was fixed, as far as Ireland was concerned. She was
+branded.
+
+The Berknowles were an old family, but she was the last of them. The
+relatives living in the south could be no help to her; they were poor,
+rabid Catholics and had fallen to little account, owing to unwise
+marriages and that irresponsible fatuous apathy in affairs which is the
+dry rot of Ireland and the Irish people. They were proud as Lucifer, but
+no one was proud of them.
+
+If only Philip Berknowles had been a man to make fast friends amongst his
+own class, some of those friends might have come to his daughter's rescue
+now. But Berknowles had lived his own life since the death of his wife, an
+easy-going country gentleman in a county mostly inhabited by squireens and
+cottage folk, caring little for the _convenances_ and with no taste for
+women's society.
+
+Thoughts born of all these facts, some of which were only half understood,
+filled the mind of the girl as she lay awake with the noise of that
+raucous party ringing in her ears; and when she fell asleep, it was only
+to awake with a sense of despondency weighing upon her and the odious
+Farrel incident waiting to follow her through the day.
+
+About a week later, coming down to breakfast one morning, she found a
+letter on her plate. A letter with American stamps on it and the address,
+Miss Phylice Berknowles, Merrion Square, Dublin, Ireland, written in a
+firm, bold hand.
+
+Mrs. Hennessey was not down and Mr. Hennessey had departed for the office,
+so Phyl had the breakfast table to herself--and the letter.
+
+She knew at once whom it was from, even before she read the postmark,
+"Charleston."
+
+Pinckney, the man who had been in her thoughts during the past six or
+seven days, the man who had left Ireland righteously disgusted with her,
+the man to whom she had said, "I hate you!"
+
+The scene flashed before her as she tore the envelope open, his sudden
+blaze of anger, the way he had torn the papers up, his departure. What was
+he going to say to her now? She flushed at the thought that this thing in
+her hand might prove to be his opinion of her in cold blood, a reproof, a
+remonstrance--she opened the folded sheet--ah!
+
+  "Dear Phyl,
+
+  "Aunt Maria was greatly disappointed when I returned here without
+  you, she had quite made up her mind that you were coming back with
+  me. We both lost our temper that day, but I was the worse, for I said
+  a word I shouldn't have said, and for which I apologise. Aunt Maria
+  says it was the Pinckney temper. However that may be, we shall be
+  delighted to see you. Mrs. Van Dusen leaves on the 6th of next month.
+  I am sending all particulars to Mr. Hennessey. You could meet Mrs.
+  Van Dusen at Liverpool and go with her as far as New York. Let me
+  have a cable to know if you are coming. Pinckney, Vernons,
+  Charleston, U. S. A., is the cable address.
+
+                        "Your affectionate guardian--also cousin--
+                                                      "R. Pinckney."
+
+Then underneath, in an angular, old-fashioned hand, one of those
+handwritings we associate with crossed letters, rosewood desks, valentines
+and wafers:
+
+  "Be sure to come. I am very anxious to see you, and I only hope you
+  will like me as much as I am sure to like you.
+
+                                                   "Maria Pinckney."
+
+Phyl caught her breath back when she read this and her eyes filled with
+tears. It was the woman's voice that touched her, coming after Pinckney's
+business-like and jerky sentences.
+
+Then she sat with the letter before her, looking at the new prospect it
+had opened for her.
+
+Was Pinckney still angry, despite his talk about the Pinckney temper; had
+he written not of his own free will but at the desire of Maria Pinckney?
+She read the thing over again without finding any solution to this
+question.
+
+But one fact was clear. Maria Pinckney was genuine in her invitation.
+
+"I'll go," said Phyl.
+
+She rose up from the table as though determined then and there to start
+off for America, left the room, went upstairs and knocked at Mrs.
+Hennessey's door.
+
+That lady was sitting up in bed with a stocking tied round her throat--she
+was suffering from a slight attack of tonsilitis--and the Irish _Times_
+spread on her knees.
+
+"Mrs. Hennessey," said Phyl, "I have just had a letter from my cousins in
+America, and they want me to go out to them."
+
+"Want you to go to America!" said Mrs. Hennessey. "On a visit, I
+suppose?"
+
+"No, to stay there."
+
+"To stay in America; but what on earth do they want you to do that for?
+Who on earth would dream of leaving Dublin to live in America! It's
+extraordinary the ideas some people get hold of. Then, of course, they
+don't know, that's all that's to be said for them. It's like hearing
+people talking and talking of all the fine views abroad, and you'd think
+they'd never seen the Dargle or the Glen of the Downs; they don't know the
+beauty of their own country or haven't eyes to see it, and they must go
+raving of the Bay of Naples with Kiliney Bay a stone's throw away from
+them, and talking of Paris with Dublin outside their doors, and praising
+up foreign actors with never a word of the Irish Players. Dublin giving
+her best to them, and they with deaf ears to her music and blind eyes to
+her sons."
+
+"But, you see, Mrs. Hennessey, the Pinckneys are my relations."
+
+"Irish?" cried the good woman, absolutely unconscious of everything but
+the vision before her. "Those that can't see their own land aren't Irish.
+Mongrels is the name for them, without pride of heart or light of
+understanding."
+
+She was off.
+
+With a far, fixed gaze and her mind in a state of internal combustion, she
+seemed a thousand miles away from Phyl and her affairs, fighting the
+battles of Ireland.
+
+Phyl gathered the impression that, if she went to America Mrs. Hennessey
+would grieve less over the fact that she (Phyl) was leaving Merrion
+Square, than over the fact that she was leaving Dublin. She escaped,
+carrying this impression with her, went upstairs, dressed, and then
+started off for Mr. Hennessey's office.
+
+It was a cold, bright day and Dublin looked almost cheerful in the
+sunlight.
+
+The lawyer looked surprised when she was shown into his private room;
+then, when she had told him her business, he fumbled amongst the papers on
+his desk and produced a letter.
+
+"This is from Pinckney," said he. "It came by the same post as yours, only
+it was directed to the office. It's the same story, too. He wants you to
+go over."
+
+"I've been thinking over the whole business," said Phyl, "and I feel I
+ought to go."
+
+"Aren't you happy in Dublin?" asked he.
+
+"M'yes," answered the other. "But, you see--at least, I'm as happy as I
+suppose I'll be anywhere, only they are my people and I feel I ought to go
+to them. It's very lonely to have no people of one's own. You and Mrs.
+Hennessey have been very kind to me, and I shall always be grateful,
+but--"
+
+"But we aren't your own flesh and blood. You're right. Well, there it is.
+We'll be sorry to lose you, but, maybe, though you haven't much experience
+of the world, you've hit the nail on the head. We aren't your flesh and
+blood, and though the Pinckneys aren't much more to you, still, one drop
+of blood makes all the difference in the world. Then again, you're a cut
+above us; we're quite simple people, but the Berknowles were always in the
+Castle set and a long chalk above the Hennesseys. I was saying that to
+Norah only last night when I was reading the account of the big party at
+the Viceregal Lodge and the names of all the people that were there, and I
+said to her, 'Phyl ought to be going to parties like that by and by when
+she grows older, and we can't do much for her in that way,' and off she
+goes in a temper. 'Who's the Aberdeens?' says she. 'A lot of English
+without an Irish feather in their tails, and he opening the doors to
+visitors in his dressing gown--Castle,' she says, 'it's little Castle
+there'll be when we have a Parliament sitting in Dublin.'"
+
+"I don't want to go to parties at the Viceregal Lodge," said Phyl,
+flushing to think of what a snob she had been when only a few days back
+she had criticised the Hennesseys and their set in her own mind. These
+honest, straightforward good people were not snobs, whatever else they
+might be, and if her desire for America had been prompted solely by the
+desire to escape from the social conditions that environed her friends,
+she would now have smothered it and stamped on it. But the call from
+Charleston that had come across the water to her was an influence far more
+potent than that. That call from the country where her mother had been
+born and where her mother's people had always lived had more in it than
+the voices that carried the message.
+
+"Well," said Hennessey, "you mayn't want to go to parties now, but you
+will when you are a bit older. However, you can please yourself--Do you
+want to go to America?"
+
+"I do," said Phyl. "It's not that I want to leave you, but there is
+something that tells me I have got to go. When I read the letter first
+this morning, I was delighted to think that Mr. Pinckney was not still
+angry with me, and I liked the idea of the change, for Dublin is a bit
+dreary after Kilgobbin and--and well, I _will_ say it--I don't care for
+some of the people I have met in Dublin. But since then a new feeling has
+come over me. I think it came as I was walking down here to the office.
+It's a feeling as if something were pulling me ever so slightly, yet still
+pulling me from over there. My father said that there was more of mother
+in me than him. I remember he said that once--well, perhaps it's that. She
+came from over there."
+
+"Maybe it is," said Hennessey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+The thing was settled definitely that night, Mrs. Hennessey resisting the
+idea at first, more, one might have fancied from her talk, because the
+idea was anti-national than from love of Phyl, though, as a matter of
+fact, she was fond enough of the girl.
+
+"It's what's left Ireland what it is," went on the good lady. "Cripples
+and lunatics, that's all that's left of us with your emigration; all the
+good blood of Ireland flowing away from her and not a drop, scarcely,
+coming back."
+
+"I'll come back," said Phyl, "you need not fear about that--some day."
+
+"Ay, some day," said Mrs. Hennessey, and stared into the fire. Then the
+spirit moving her, she began to discant on things past and people
+vanished.
+
+Synge, and Oscar Wilde and Willie Wilde, who was the real genius of the
+family, only his genius "stuck in him somehow and wouldn't come out." She
+passed from people who had vanished to places that had changed, and only
+stopped when the servant came in with the announcement that supper was
+ready.
+
+Then at supper, lo and behold! she discussed the going away of Phyl, as
+though it were a matter arranged and done with and carrying her full
+consent and approval.
+
+During the weeks following, Phyl's impending journey kept Mrs. Hennessey
+busy in a spasmodic way. One might have fancied from the preparations and
+lists of things necessary that the girl was off to the wilds of New Guinea
+or some region equally destitute of shops.
+
+Hennessey remonstrated, and then let her have her way--it kept her quiet,
+and Phyl, nothing loath, spent most of her time now in shops, Tod and
+Burns, and Cannock and White's, examining patterns and being fitted,
+varying these amusements by farewell visits. She was invited out by all
+the Hennesseys' friends, the Farrels and the Rourkes, and the Longs and
+the Newlands, and the Pryces and the Oldhams, all prepared tea-parties in
+her honour, made her welcome, and made much of her, just as we make much
+of people who have not long to live.
+
+She was the girl that was going to America. She did not appreciate the
+real kindness underlying this terrible round of festivities till she was
+standing on the deck of the _Hybernia_ at Kingstown saying good-bye to
+Hennessey.
+
+Then, as the boat drew away from the Carlisle pier, as it passed the
+guardship anchorage and the batteries at the ends of the east and west
+piers, all those people from whom she had longed to escape seemed to her
+the most desirable people on earth.
+
+Bound for a world unknown, peopled with utter strangers, Ireland, beloved
+Ireland, called after her as a mother calls to her child.
+
+Oh, the loneliness! the desolation!
+
+As she stood watching the Wicklow mountains fading in the grey distance,
+she knew for the first time the meaning of those words, "Gone West"; and
+she knew what the thousands suffered who, driven from their cabins on the
+hillside or the moor, went West in the old days when the emigrant ship
+showed her tall masts in Queenstown Harbour and her bellying canvas to the
+sunset of the Atlantic.
+
+At Liverpool, she found Mrs. Van Dusen, a tall, rather good-looking,
+rather hard-looking but exceedingly fashionable individual, at the hotel
+where it was arranged they should meet.
+
+Phyl, looking like a lost dog, confused by travel and dumb from dejection,
+had little in common with this lady, nor did a rough passage across the
+Atlantic extend their knowledge of one another, for Mrs. Van Dusen
+scarcely appeared from her state-room till the evening when, the great
+ship coming to her moorings, New York sketched itself and its blazing
+skyscrapers against the gloom before the astonished eyes of Phyl.
+
+PART II
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Holyhead, Liverpool, New York, each of these stopping places had impressed
+upon Phyl the distance she was putting between herself and her home,
+making her feel that if this business was not death it was, at least, a
+very good imitation of dying.
+
+But the south-bound express from New York was to show her just what people
+may be expected to feel _after_ they are dead.
+
+America had been for Phyl little more than a geographical expression.
+"Uncle Tom's Cabin," "The Last of the Mohicans," "The Settlers in Canada"
+and "Round the World in Eighty Days," had given her pictures, and from
+these she had built up a vague land of snow and forests, log huts, plains,
+Red Indians, runaway negroes and men with bowie knives.
+
+New York had given this fantastic idea a rough joggle, the south-bound
+express tumbled it all to pieces.
+
+Forests and mountains and plains would have been familiar to her
+imagination, but the south-bound express was producing for her inspection
+quite different things from these.
+
+New Jersey with its populous towns, for instance, towns she never could
+have imagined or dreamed of, filled with people whose existence she could
+not picture.
+
+What gave her a cold grue was the suddenly grasped fact that all this
+great mechanism of life, cities, towns, roaring railways, agricultural
+lands, manufacturing districts filled with English speaking people--that
+all this was alien, knew nothing of Ireland or England, except as it might
+know of Japan or a dream of the past.
+
+The people in the train were talking English--were English to all intents
+and purposes, and yet, as far as England and Ireland were concerned, she
+knew them to be dead.
+
+It had been freezing in New York, a great rainstorm was blowing across the
+world as they crossed the Delaware; it passed, sweeping away east under
+the arch of a vast rainbow, even the rainbow seemed alien and different to
+Irish rainbows--it was too big.
+
+Then came Philadelphia, where some of the dead folk left the train and
+others got in. One had an Irish voice and accent. He was a big man with a
+hard, pushful face and a great under jaw. Phyl knew him at once for what
+he was, and that he had died to Ireland long years ago.
+
+Then came Wilmington and Baltimore, and then, long after sunset in the
+dark, a warmer air that entered the train like a viewless passenger, nerve
+soothing and mind lulling--the first breath of the South.
+
+Next morning, looking from the windows of the car, she saw the South. Vast
+spaces of low-lying land broken by river and bayou, flooded by the light
+of the new risen sun and touched by a vague mist from the sea, soft as a
+haze of summer, warm with light and everywhere hinting at the blue deep
+sky beyond.
+
+Youth, morning, and the spirit of the sea all lay in that luminous haze,
+that warm light filled with the laziness of June; and, for one delightful
+moment, it seemed to Phyl that summer days long forgotten, rapturous
+mornings half remembered were here again.
+
+The rumble of trestle and boom of bridge filled the train, and now the
+masts of ships showed thready against the hazy blue of the sky; frame
+houses sprang up by the track and fences with black children roosting on
+them; then the mean streets of the coloured quarter and now, as the cars
+slackened speed, came the bustle that marks the end of a journey. People
+were getting their light luggage together, and as Phyl was strapping the
+bundle that held her travelling rug and books, a waft of tepid,
+salt-scented air came through the compartment and on it the voice of the
+negro attendant rousing some drowsy passenger.
+
+"Charleston, sah."
+
+She got out, dazed and numbed by the journey, and stood with the rug
+bundle in her hand looking about her, half undecided what to do, half
+absorbed by the bustle and movement of the platform.
+
+Then, pushing towards her through the crowd, she saw Pinckney.
+
+He had come to meet her, and as they shook hands, Phyl laughed.
+
+He seemed so bright and cheerful, and the relief at finding a friend after
+that long, friendless journey was so great that she laughed right out with
+pleasure, like a little child--laughed right into his eyes.
+
+It seemed to Pinckney that he had never seen the real Phyl before.
+
+He took the bundle from her and gave it to a negro servant, and then,
+giving the luggage checks to the servant and leaving him to bring on the
+luggage, he led the girl through the crowd.
+
+"We'll walk to the house," said he, "if you are not too tired; it's only a
+few steps away--well--how do you like America?"
+
+"America?" she replied. "I don't know--it's different from what I thought
+it would be, ever so much different--and this place--why, it is like
+summer here."
+
+"It's the South," said Pinckney. "Look, this is Meeting Street."
+
+They had turned from the street leading from the station into a broad,
+beautiful highway, placid, sun flooded, and leading away to the Battery,
+that chief pride and glory of Charleston.
+
+On either side of the street, half hidden by their garden walls, large
+stately houses of the Georgian era showed themselves. Mansions that had
+slumbered in the sun for a hundred years, great, solid houses whose
+yellow-wash seemed the incrustation left by golden and peaceful
+afternoons, houses of old English solidity yet with the Southern touch of
+deep verandas and the hint of palm trees in their jealously walled
+gardens.
+
+"Oh, how beautiful!" said Phyl. She stopped, looked about her, and then
+gazed away down the street. It was as though the old stately street--and
+surely the Street of Other Days might be its name--had been waiting for
+her all her life, waiting for her to turn that corner leading from the
+commonplace station, waiting to greet her like the ghost of some friend of
+childhood. Surely she knew it! Like the recollection of a dream once
+dreamed, it lay before her with its walled gardens, its vaguely familiar
+houses, its sunlight and placidity.
+
+Pinckney, proud of his native town and pleased at this appreciation of it,
+stood by without speaking, watching the girl who seemed to have forgotten
+his existence for a moment. Her head was raised as if she were inhaling
+the sea wind lazily blowing from the Battery, and bearing with it stray
+scents from the gardens by the way.
+
+Then she came back to herself, and they walked on.
+
+"It's just as if I knew the place," said she, "and yet I never remember
+seeing anything like it before."
+
+"I've felt that way sometimes about places," said Pinckney. "It seemed to
+me that I knew Paris quite well when I went there, though I'd never been
+there before. Charleston is pretty English, anyway, and maybe it's that
+that makes it seem familiar. But I'm glad you like it. You like it, don't
+you?"
+
+"Like it!" said she. "I should think I did--It's more than liking--I love
+it."
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Better than Dublin?"
+
+It was her turn to laugh.
+
+"I never loved Dublin." She turned her head to glance at a peep of garden
+showing through a wrought iron gate. "Oh, Dublin!--don't talk to me about
+it here. I want to keep on feeling I'm here really and that there's
+nowhere else."
+
+"There isn't," said he, disclosing for the first time in his life, and
+quite unconsciously, his passion for the place where he had been born.
+"There's nowhere else but Charleston worth anything--I don't know what it
+is about, but it's so."
+
+They were passing a wall across whose top peeped an elbow of ivy geranium.
+It was as though the unseen garden beyond, tired of constraint and
+drowsily stretching, had disclosed this hint of a geranium coloured arm.
+
+Pinckney paused at a wrought iron gate and opened it.
+
+"This is Vernons," said he.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+A grosbeak was singing in the magnolia tree by the gate and the warmth of
+the morning sun was filling the garden with a heart-snatching perfume of
+jessamine.
+
+Jessamine and the faint bitterness of sun warmed foliage.
+
+It was a garden sure to be haunted by birds; not large and, though well
+kept, not trim, and sing the birds as loud as they might, they never could
+break the charm of silence cast by Time on this magic spot.
+
+In the centre of the lawn stood a dial, inscribed with the old dial
+motto:
+
+                      The Hours Pass and are Numbered.
+
+Phyl paused for a moment just as she had paused in the street, and
+Pinckney looking at her noticed again that uptilt of the head, and that
+far away look as of a person who is trying to remember or straining to
+hear.
+
+Then a voice from the house came across the broad veranda leading from the
+garden to the lower rooms.
+
+A female voice that seemed laughing and scolding at the same time.
+
+"Dinah! Dinah! bless the girl, will she never learn sense-- Dinah! Ah,
+there you are. How often have I told you to put General Grant in the sun
+first thing in the morning?-- You've been dusting! I'll dust you. Here,
+get away."
+
+Out on the veranda, parrot cage in hand, came a most surprising lady.
+Antique yet youthful, dressed as ladies were wont to dress of a morning in
+long forgotten years, bright eyed, and wrathfully agitated.
+
+"Aunt," cried Pinckney. "Here we are."
+
+The sun was in Miss Pinckney's eyes; she put the cage down, shaded her
+eyes and stared full at Phyl.
+
+"God bless me!" said Miss Pinckney.
+
+"This is Phyl," said he, as they came up to the verandah steps.
+
+Miss Pinckney, seeming not to hear him in the least, took the girl by both
+hands, and holding her so as if for inspection stared at her.
+
+Then she turned on Pinckney with a snap.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me--she's--why, she's a Mascarene. Well, of all the
+astonishing things in the world-- Child--child, where did you get that
+face?"
+
+Before Phyl could answer this recondite question, she found herself
+enveloped in frills and a vague perfume of stephanotis. Maria Pinckney had
+taken her literally to her heart, and was kissing her as people kiss small
+children, kissing her and half crying at the same time, whilst Pinckney
+stood by wondering.
+
+He thought that he knew everything about Maria Pinckney, just as he had
+fancied he knew himself till Phyl had shewn him, over there in Ireland,
+that there were a lot of things in his mind and character still to be
+known by himself. This, as regards him, seemed the special mission of Phyl
+in the world.
+
+"It's the likeness," said Miss Pinckney. "I thought it was Juliet
+Mascarene there before me in the sun, Juliet dead those years and years."
+Then commanding herself, and with one of those reverses, sudden changes of
+manner and subject peculiar to herself:
+
+"Where's your luggage?"
+
+"Abraham is bringing it along."
+
+"Abraham! Do you mean you didn't drive, _walked_ here from the station?"
+
+"Yes," said Pinckney shamefacedly, almost, and wondering what sin against
+the _covenances_ he had committed now.
+
+"And she after that journey from N'York. Richard Pinckney, you are
+a--man--I was going to have called you a fool--but it's the same thing.
+Here, come on both of you--the child must be starving. This is the
+breakfast room, Phyl--Phyl! I will never get used to that name; no matter,
+I'm getting an old woman, and mustn't grumble--mustn't grumble--umph!"
+
+She took Pinckney's walking-stick from him and, with the end of it, picked
+up a duster that the mysterious Dinah, evidently, had left lying on the
+floor.
+
+She put the duster out on the veranda, rang a bell and ordered the
+coloured boy who answered it to send in breakfast.
+
+Phyl, commanded by Miss Pinckney, sat down to table just as she was
+without removing her hat.
+
+The old lady had come to the conclusion that the newcomer must be faint
+with hunger after her journey, and when Miss Pinckney came to one of her
+conclusions, there was nothing more to be said on the matter.
+
+It was a pleasant room, chintzy and sunny; they sat down to a gate-legged
+table that would just manage to seat four comfortably whilst the urn was
+brought in, a copper urn in which the water was kept at boiling point by a
+red hot iron contained in a cylinder.
+
+Phyl knew that urn. They had one like it at Kilgobbin and she said so, but
+Miss Pinckney did not seem to hear her. There were times when this lady
+was almost rude--or seemed so owing to inattention, her bustling mind
+often outrunning the conversation or harking back to the past when it
+ought to have been in the present.
+
+Tea making, and the making of tea was a solemn rite at Vernons, absorbed
+her whole attention, but Pinckney noticed this morning that the hand, that
+old, perfect, delicately shaped hand, trembled ever so slightly as it
+measured the tea from the tortoise-shell covered tea caddy, and that the
+thin lips, lips whose thinness seemed only the result of the kisses of
+Time, were moving as though debating some question unheard.
+
+He recognised that the coming of Phyl had produced a great effect on Maria
+Pinckney. No one knew her better than he, for no one loved her so well.
+
+It was she who ordered him about, still, just as though he were a small
+boy, and sometimes as he sat watching her, so fragile, so indomitable,
+like the breath of winter would come the thought that a day would come--a
+day might come soon when he would be no longer ordered about, told to put
+his hat in the hall--which is the proper place for hats--told not to dare
+to bring cigars into the drawing-room.
+
+To Phyl, Maria Pinckney formed part of the spell that was surrounding her;
+Meeting Street had begun the weaving of this spell, Vernons was completing
+it with the aid of Maria Pinckney.
+
+The song of the Cardinal Grosbeak in the garden, the stirring of the
+window curtains in the warm morning air, the feel of morning and sunlight,
+the scent of the tea that was filling the room, the room itself
+old-fashioned yet cheerful, chintzy and sunny, all the things had the
+faint familiarity of the street. It was as though the blood of her
+mother's people coursing in her veins had retained and brought to her some
+thrill and warmth from all these things; these things they knew and loved
+so well.
+
+"There's the carriage," said Miss Pinckney, whose ears had picked out the
+sound of it drawing up at the front door. "They know where to take the
+luggage. Richard, go and see that they don't knock the bannisters about.
+Abraham is all thumbs and has no more sense in moving things than Dinah
+has'n dusting them. Only last week when Mrs. Beamis was going away, he let
+that trunk of hers slip and I declare to goodness I thought it was a
+church falling down the stairs and tearing the place to pieces."
+
+There was little of the stately languor of the South in Miss Pinckney's
+speech. She was Northern on the mother's side. But in her prejudices she
+was purely Southern, or, at least, Charlestonian.
+
+Pinckney laughed.
+
+"I don't think Phyl's luggage will hurt much even if it falls," said he.
+"English luggage is generally soft."
+
+"It's only a trunk and a portmanteau," said Phyl, as he left the room, but
+Miss Pinckney did not seem to hear; pouring herself out another cup of tea
+(she was the best and the worst hostess in the whole world) and seeming
+not to notice that Phyl's cup was empty, she was off on one of her mind
+wandering expeditions, a state of soul that sometimes carried her into the
+past, sometimes into the future, that led her anywhere and to the wrapt,
+inward contemplation of all sorts of things and subjects from the doings
+of the Heavenly Host to the misdoings of Dinah.
+
+She talked on these expeditions.
+
+"Well, I'm sure and I'm sure I don't know what folk want with the luggage
+they carry about with them nowadays-- The old folk didn't. Not Saratoga
+trunks, anyhow. I remember 'swell as if it was yesterday way back in 1880,
+when Richard's father and mother were married, old Simon Mascarene--he
+belonged to your mother's lot, the Mascarenes of Virginia-- He came to the
+wedding, and all he brought was a carpet-bag. I can see the roses on it
+still. He wore a beaver hat. They'd been out of fashion for years and
+years. So was he. Twenty dollars apiece they cost him, and his clothes
+were the same. Looked like a picture out of Dickens. Your grandmother was
+there, too, came from Richmond for the wedding, drove here in her own
+carriage. She and Simon were the last of the Virginia Mascarenes and they
+looked it. Seems to me some people never can be new nor get away from
+their ancestors. If you'd dressed Simon in kilts it wouldn't have made any
+difference, much, he'd still have been Simon Mascarene of Virginia, just
+as stiff and fine and proud and old-fashioned."
+
+"It seems funny that my people should have been the Virginia Mascarenes,"
+said Phyl, "because--because--well, I feel as if my people had always
+lived here--this feels like home--I don't know what it is, but just as I
+came into the street outside there I seemed to know it, and this house--"
+
+"Why, God bless my soul," said Miss Pinckney, whose eyes had just fallen
+on the girl's empty cup, "here have I been talking and talking, and you
+waiting for some more tea. Why didn't you ask, child?--What were you
+saying? The Virginia Mascarenes-- Oh, they often came here, and your
+mother knew this house as well as Planters. That was the name of their
+house in Richmond. But what I can't get over is your likeness to Juliet.
+She might have been your sister to look at you both--and she dead all
+these years."
+
+"Who was Juliet?"
+
+"She was the girl who died," said Miss Pinckney. "You know, although
+Richard calls me Aunt, I am not really his aunt; it's just an easy name
+for an old woman who is an interloper, a Pinckney adrift. It was this way
+I came in. Long before the Civil War, the Pinckneys lived at a house
+called Bures in Legare Street. A fine old house it was, and is still.
+Well, I was a cousin with a little money of my own, and I was left lonely
+and they took me in. James Pinckney was head of the family then, and he
+had two sons, Rupert and Charles. I might have been their sister the way
+we all lived together and loved each other--and quarrelled. Dear me, dear
+me, what is Time at all that it leaves everything the same? The same sun,
+and flowers and houses, and all the people gone or changed-- Well, I am
+trying to tell you-- Rupert fell in love with Juliet Mascarene, who lived
+here. He was killed suddenly in '61-- I don't want to talk of it--and she
+died of grief the year after. She died of grief--simply died of grief.
+Charles lived and married in 1880 when he was forty years old. He married
+Juliet's brother's daughter and Vernons came to him on the marriage. He
+hadn't a son till ten years later. That son was Richard. Charles left
+Richard all his property and Vernons on the condition that I always lived
+here--till I died, and that's how it is. I'm not Richard's aunt, it's only
+a name he gives me--I'm only just an old piece of furniture left with the
+house to him. I'm so fond of the place, it would kill me to leave it;
+places grow like that round one, though I'm sure I don't know why."
+
+"I don't wonder at you loving Vernons," said Phyl. "I was just the same
+about our place in Ireland, Kilgobbin--I thought it would kill me to leave
+it."
+
+"Tell me about it," said Miss Pinckney. Phyl told, or tried to tell.
+
+Looking back, she found between herself and Ireland the sunlight of
+Charleston, the garden with the magnolia trees where the red bird was
+singing and the jessamine casting its perfume. Ireland looked very far
+away and gloomy, desolate as Kilgobbin without its master and with the
+mist of winter among the trees.
+
+All that was part of the Past gone forever, and so great was the magic of
+this new place that she found herself recognising with a little chill that
+this Past had separated itself from her, that her feeling towards it was
+faintly tinged by something not unlike indifference.
+
+"Well," said Miss Pinckney, when she had finished, "it must be a beautiful
+old place, though I can't seem to see it-- You see, I've never been in
+Ireland and I can't picture it any more than the new Jerusalem. Now Dinah
+knows all about the new Jerusalem, from the golden slippers right up she
+sees it--I can't. Haven't got the gift of seeing things, and it seems
+strange that the A'mighty should shower it on a coloured girl and leave a
+white woman wanting; but it appears to be the A'mighty knows his own
+business, so I don't grumble. Now I'm going to show you the house and your
+room. I've given you a room looking right on the garden, this side. You've
+noticed how all our houses here are built with their sides facing the
+street and their fronts facing the garden, or maybe you haven't noticed it
+yet, but you will. 'Pears to me our ancestors had some sense in their
+heads, even though they didn't invent telegraphs to send bad news in a
+hurry and railway cars to smash people to bits, and telephones to let
+strangers talk right into one's house just by ringing a bell. Not that I'd
+let one into Vernons. You may hunt high or low, garret or basement, you
+won't find one of those boxes of impudence in Vernons--not while I have
+servants to go my messages."
+
+Miss Pinckney was right. For years she had fought the telephone and kept
+it out, making Richard Pinckney's life a tissue of small inconveniences,
+and suffering this epitaph on her sanity to be written by all sorts of
+inferior people, "Plumb crazy."
+
+She led the way from the breakfast-room and passed into the hall.
+
+The spirit of Vernons inhabited the hall. One might have fancied it as a
+stout and prosperous gentleman attired in a blue coat with brass buttons,
+shorts, and wearing a bunch of seals at his fob. Oak, brought from
+England, formed the panelling, and a great old grandfather's clock, with
+the maker's name and address, "Whewel. Coggershall," blazoned on its brass
+face, told the time, just as it had told the time when the Regent was
+ruling at St. James's in those days which seem so spacious, yet so trivial
+in their pomp and vanity.
+
+Sitting alone here of an afternoon with the sun pointing fingers through
+the high leaded windows, Whewel of Coggershall took you under his spell,
+the spell of old ghosts of long forgotten afternoons, spacious afternoons
+filled with the cawing of rooks and the drone of bees. English afternoons
+of the good old time when the dust of the post chaise was the only mark of
+hurry across miles of meadow land and cowslip weather. And then as you sat
+held by the sound of the slow-slipping seconds, maybe, from some door
+leading to the servants' quarters suddenly left open a voice would come,
+the voice of some darky singing whilst at work.
+
+A snatch of the South mixing with your dream of England and the past, and
+making of the whole a charm beyond words.
+
+That is Charleston.
+
+Set against the panelling and almost covering it in parts were prints,
+wood-cuts, engravings, portraits in black and white.
+
+Here was a silhouette of Colonel Vernon, the founder of the house, and
+another of his wife. Here was an early portrait of Jeff Davis,
+hollow-cheeked and goatee-bearded, and here was Mayflower, the property of
+Colonel Seth Mascarene, the fastest trotting horse in Virginia, worshipped
+by her owner whose portrait hung alongside.
+
+Phyl glanced at these pictures as she followed Miss Pinckney, who opened
+doors shewing the dining-room, a room rather heavily furnished, hung with
+portraits of long-faced gentlemen and ladies of old time, and then the
+drawing-room. A real drawing-room of the Sixties, a thing preserved in its
+entirety, in all its original stiffness, interesting as a valentine,
+perfumed like an old rosewood cabinet.
+
+Keepsakes and Books of Beauty lay on the centre table, a gilt clock
+beneath a glass shade marked the moment when it had ceased to keep time
+over twenty-five years ago, the antimacassars on the armchairs were not a
+line out of position; not a speck of dust lay anywhere, and the Dresden
+shepherds and shepherdesses simpered and made love in the same old
+fashion, preserving unaltered the sentiment of spring, the suggestion of
+Love, lambs, and the song of birds.
+
+"It's just as it used to be," said Miss Pinckney. "Nothing at all has been
+changed, and I dust it myself. I would just as soon let a servant loose
+here with a duster as I'd let one of the buzzards from the market-place
+loose in the larder. Those water-colours were done by Mary Mascarene,
+Juliet's sister, who died when she was fifteen; they mayn't be
+masterpieces but they're Mary's, and worth more'n if they were covered
+with gold. Mrs. Beamis sniffed when she came in here--she's the woman
+whose trunk got loose on the stairs I told you about--sniffed as if the
+place smelt musty. She's got a husband who's made a million dollars out of
+dry goods in Chicago, and she thought the room wanted re-furnishing.
+Didn't say it, but I knew. A player-piano is what she wanted. Didn't say
+it, but _I_ knew. Umph!"
+
+Miss Pinckney, having shown Phyl out, looked round the room as if to make
+sure that all the familiar ghosts were in their places, then she shut the
+door with a snap, and turning, led the way upstairs murmuring to herself,
+and with the exalted and far away look which she wore when put out.
+
+Phyl's room lay on the first landing, a bright and cheerful room papered
+with a rather cheap flower and sprig patterned paper, spring-like for all
+its cheapness, and just the background for children's heads when they wake
+up on a bright morning.
+
+A bowl of flowers stood on the dressing-table, and the open window shewed
+across the verandah a bit of the garden, where the cherokee roses were
+blooming.
+
+"This is your room," said Miss Pinckney. "It's one of the brightest in the
+house, and I hope you'll like it-- Listen!"
+
+Through the open window came the chime of church-bells.
+
+"It's the chimes of St. Michael's. You'll never want a clock here, the
+bells ring every quarter, just as they've rung for the last hundred years;
+they're the first thing I remember, and maybe they'll be the last. Well,
+come on and I'll show you some more of the house, if you're not tired and
+don't want to rest."
+
+She led the way from the room and along the corridor, opening doors and
+shewing rooms, and then up a back stairs to the top floor beneath the
+attics.
+
+The house seemed to grow in age as they ascended. Not a door in Vernons
+was exactly true in line; the old house settling itself down quietly
+through the years and assisted perhaps by the great earthquake, though
+that had left it practically unharmed, shewed that deviation from the
+right line in cornice and wainscoting and door space, which is the hall
+mark left on architecture by genius or age. The builders of the Parthenon
+knew this, the builders of Vernons did not-- Age supplied their defects.
+
+Up here the flooring of the passages and rooms frankly sagged in places,
+and the beams bellied downwards ever so little and the ceilings bowed.
+
+"I've seen all these bed-rooms filled in the old days," said Miss
+Pinckney. "We had wounded soldiers here in the war. What Vernons hasn't
+seen of American history isn't worth telling--much. Here's the nursery."
+
+She opened a door with bottle-glass panels, real old bottle-glass worth
+its weight in minted silver, and shewed Phyl into a room.
+
+"This is the nursery," said she.
+
+It was a large room with two windows, and the windows were barred to keep
+small people from tumbling into the garden. The place had the air of
+silence and secrecy that haunts rooms long closed and deserted. An
+old-fashioned paper shewing birds of Paradise covered the walls. A paper
+so old that Miss Pinckney remembered it when, as a child, she had come
+here to tea with the Mascarene children, so good that the dye of the
+gorgeous Paradise birds had scarcely faded.
+
+A beam of morning sun struck across the room, a great solid, golden bar of
+light. Phyl, as she stood for a moment on the threshold, saw motes dancing
+in the bar of light; the air was close and almost stuffy owing to the
+windows being shut. A rocking-horse, much, much the worse for wear stood
+in one corner, he was piebald and the beam of light just failed to touch
+his brush-like tail. A Noah's Ark of the good old pattern stood on the lid
+of a great chest under one of the windows, and in the centre of the room a
+heavy table of plain oak nicked by knives and stained with ink told its
+tale.
+
+There were books in a little hanging book-case, books of the 'forties' and
+'fifties': "Peter Parley," "The Child's Pilgrim's Progress," "The
+Dairy-Maid's Daughter," an odd volume of _Harper's_ _Magazine_ containing
+an instalment of "Little Dorrit," Caroline Chesebro's "Children of Light,"
+and Samuel Irenæus Prime's "Elizabeth Thornton or the Flower and Fruit of
+Female Piety, and other Sketches." Miss Pinckney opened one of the windows
+to let in air; Phyl, who had said nothing, stood looking about her at the
+forsaken toys, the chairs, and the little three-legged stool most
+evidently once the property of some child.
+
+All nurseries have a generic likeness. It seemed to her that she knew this
+room, from the beam of light with the motes dancing in it to the
+bird-patterned paper. Kilgobbin nursery was papered with a paper giving an
+endless repetition of one subject--a man driving a pig to market--with
+that exception, the two rooms were not unlike. Yet those birds were the
+haunting charm of this place, the things that most appealed to her, things
+that seemed the ghosts of old friends.
+
+She came to the window and looked out through the bars. Across the garden
+of Vernons one caught a glimpse of other gardens, palmetto-tree tops, and
+away, beyond the battery, a hint of the blue harbour. Just the picture to
+fill an imaginative child's mind with all sorts of pleasant fancies about
+the world, and Phyl, forgetting for a moment Miss Pinckney, herself, and
+the room in which she was, stood looking out, caught in a momentary day
+dream, just like a child in one of those reveries that are part of the
+fairy tale of childhood.
+
+That touch of blue sea beyond the red roofs and green palmetto fronds gave
+her mind wings for a moment and a world to fly through. Not the world we
+live in, but the world worth living in. Old sailor-stories, old scraps of
+thought and dreams from nowhere pursued her, haunted her during that
+delightful and tantalising moment, and then she was herself again and Miss
+Pinckney was saying:
+
+"It's a pretty view and hasn't changed since I was a child. Now, in N'York
+they'd have put up skyscrapers; Lord bless you, they'd have put them up at
+a _loss_ so's to seem energetic and spoil the view. That's a N'Yorker in
+two words, happy so long as he's energetic and spoiling views--" Then
+gazing dreamily towards the touch of blue sea. "Well, I guess the Lord
+made N'Yorkers same as he made you and me. His ways are _in_scrutable and
+past finding out; so'r the ways of some of his creatures."
+
+She turned from the window, and her eye fell on the great chest by the
+other window.
+
+Going to it, she opened the lid.
+
+It was full of old toys, mostly broken. She seemed to have forgotten the
+presence of Phyl. Holding the chest's lid open, she gazed at the coloured
+and futile contents.
+
+Then she closed the lid of the chest with a sigh.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The South dines at four o'clock--at least Charleston does.
+
+It was the old English custom and the old Irish custom, too.
+
+In the reign of William the Conqueror people dined at eleven A.M. or was
+it ten? Then, as civilisation advanced, the dinner hour stole forward. In
+the time of the Georges it reached four o'clock. In Ireland, the most
+conservative country on earth, some people even still sit down to table at
+four--in Charleston every one does.
+
+One would not change the custom for worlds, just as one would not change
+the old box pews of St. Michael's or replace the cannon on the Battery
+with modern ordinance.
+
+Richard Pinckney did not dine at home that day. He was dining with the
+Rhetts in Calhoun Street, so Miss Pinckney said as they sat down to table.
+She sniffed as she said it, for the Rhetts, though one of the best
+families in the town, were people not of her way of thinking. The two
+Rhett girls had each a motor-car of her own and drove it--abomination!
+
+The automobile ranked in her mind with the telephone as an invention of
+the devil.
+
+Phyl had not seen Richard Pinckney since the morning and now he was dining
+out. Her heart had warmed to him at the station on the way to Vernons, and
+at breakfast he had appeared to her as a quite different person to the
+Richard Pinckney who had come to Kilgobbin, more boyish and frank, less of
+a man of the world. She had not seen him since he left the room at
+breakfast-time to look after her luggage. Miss Pinckney said he had gone
+off "somewhere or another" and grumbled at him for going off leaving his
+breakfast not quite finished, she said that he was always "scatter
+braining about" either at the yacht club or somewhere else.
+
+Phyl, as she sat now at the dining-table with the dead and gone Mascarene
+men and women looking at her from the canvases on the wall, felt ever so
+slightly hurt.
+
+Youth calls to youth irrespective of sex. She felt as a young person feels
+when another young person shows indifference. Then came the thought: was
+he avoiding her? Was he angry still about the affair at Kilgobbin, or was
+it just that he did not want to be bothered talking to her, looked on her
+as a nuisance in the house, a guest of no interest to him and yet to whom
+he had to be polite?
+
+She could not tell. Neither could she tell why the problem exercised her
+mind in the way it did. Even at Kilgobbin, despite the fact of her
+antagonism towards him, Pinckney had possessed the power of disturbing her
+mind and making her think about him in a way that no one else had ever
+succeeded in doing. No one else had made her feel the short-comings in the
+household _ménage_ at Kilgobbin, no one else had made her so fiercely
+critical of herself and her belongings.
+
+She did not recognise the fact, but the fact was there, that it was a
+necessity of her being to stand well in this man's eyes.
+
+When a woman falls in love with a man or a man with a woman, the first
+necessity of his or her being is to stand well in the eyes of the loved
+one, anything that may bring ridicule or adverse criticism or disdain is
+death.
+
+Phyl was not in love with Richard Pinckney, nor had she been in love with
+him at Kilgobbin, all the same the sensitiveness to appearances felt by a
+lover was there. Her anger that night when he had let her in at eleven
+o'clock was due, perhaps, less to his implied reproof then the fact that
+she had felt cheap in his eyes, and now, sitting at dinner with Miss
+Pinckney the idea that he was still angry with her was obscured by the far
+more distasteful idea that she was of absolutely no account in his eyes, a
+creature to whom he had to be civil, an interloper.
+
+Her cheeks flushed and her eyes brightened at the thought, but Miss
+Pinckney did not notice it. She had turned from the subject of the Rhetts
+and their automobiles to Charleston society in general.
+
+"Now that you've come," said she, "you will find there's not a moment you
+won't enjoy yourself if you're fond of gadding about. All the society here
+is in the hands of young people, balls and parties! The St. Cecilias give
+three balls a year. I go always, not to dance but to look on. Richard is a
+St. Cecilia--St. Cecilias? Why, it's just a club a hundred-and-forty years
+old. There are two hundred of them, all men, and they know how to
+entertain. I have been at every ball for the last half century. Not one
+have I missed. Then there's the yacht club and picnics to Summerville and
+the Isle of Palms, and bathing parties and boating by moonlight. If you
+are a gad-about you will enjoy all that."
+
+"But I'm not," said Phyl. "I've never been used to society, much. I like
+books better than people, unless they're--"
+
+"Unless they're what?"
+
+"Well--people I really like."
+
+"Well," said Miss Pinckney, "one wouldn't expect you to like people you
+_didn't_ like--there's no 'really' in liking, it's one thing or the
+other--you don't care for girls, maybe?"
+
+"I haven't seen much of them," replied Phyl, "except at school, and that
+was only for a short time. I--I ran away."
+
+"Ran away! And why did you run away?"
+
+"I was miserable; they were kind enough to me, but I wanted to get
+home--Father was alive then--I felt I had to get home or die--I can't
+explain it--It felt like a sort of madness. I had to get back home."
+
+Miss Pinckney was watching the girl, she scarcely seemed listening to
+her--Then she spoke:
+
+"Impulsive. If I wasn't sitting here in broad daylight, I'd fancy it was
+Juliet Mascarene. What makes you so like her? It's not the face so much,
+though the family likeness runs strong, still, the face is different,
+though like--It's just you yourself--well, I'm sure I don't know, seems to
+me there's a lot of things hid from us. Look at the Pringles, Anthony's
+family, the ones that live in Tradd Street. If you put their noses
+together, they'd reach to Legare Street. It runs in the family. Julian
+Pringle, he died in '70, he was just the same. Now why should a long nose
+run through a family like that, or a bad temper, or the colour of hair? I
+don't know. The world's a puzzle and the older one grows, the more it
+puzzles one."
+
+After dinner, Miss Pinckney ordered Phyl to put on her hat and they
+started out for a drive.
+
+Every day at five o'clock, weather permitting, Miss Pinckney took an
+airing. She was one of the sights of Charleston, she, and the dark
+chestnut horses driven by Abraham the coloured coachman, and the barouche
+in which she drove; a carriage of other times, one of those deathless
+conveyances turned out in Long Acre in the days when varnish was varnish
+and hand labour had not been ousted by machinery. It was painted in a
+basket-work pattern, the pattern peculiar to the English Royal carriages,
+and the whole turn-out had an excellence and a style of its own--a thing
+unpurchasable as yesterday.
+
+They drove in the direction of the Battery and here they drew up to look
+at the view. On one side of them stood the great curving row of mansions
+facing the sea, old Georgian houses and houses more modern, yet without
+offence, set in gardens where the palmetto leaves shivered in the sea wind
+and the pink mimosa mixed its perfume with the salt-scented air. On the
+other side lay the sea. Afternoon, late afternoon, is the time of all
+times to visit this spacious and sunlit place. It is then that the old
+ghosts return, if ever they return, to discuss the news brought by the
+last packet from England, the doings of Mr. Pitt, the Paris fashions.
+
+Looking seaward they would see no change in the changeless sea and little
+change in the city if they turned their eyes that way.
+
+Miss Pinckney got out and they walked a bit, inspecting the guns, each
+with its brass plate and its story.
+
+Far away in the haze stood Fort Sumter,--a fragment of history, a sea
+warrior of the past, voiceless and guarding forever the viewless. It may
+have been some recollection of the Brighton front and of the great harbour
+of Kingstown with the sun upon it, and all this seemed vaguely familiar to
+Phyl, pleasantly familiar and homely. She breathed the sea air deeply and
+then, as she turned, glancing towards the land, a recollection came to her
+of the story she had been reading that evening in the library at
+Kilgobbin--"The Gold Bug." It was near here that Legrand had found the
+treasure. He had come to Charleston to buy the mattocks and picks--no, it
+was Jupp the negro who had come to buy them.
+
+She turned to Miss Pinckney.
+
+"Did you ever read a story called 'The Gold Bug' by Edgar Allan Poe?" she
+asked. "It is about a place near here--Sullivan's Island--that's it--I
+remember now."
+
+"Why, I knew him," said Miss Pinckney.
+
+"Knew Edgar Allan Poe!" said Phyl.
+
+"I knew him when I was a child and I have sat on his knee and I can see
+his face--what a face it was! and the coat he wore--it had a velvet
+collar--his teeth were beautiful, and his hair--beautiful glossy hair it
+was, but he was not handsome as people use that expression, he was
+extraordinary, such eyes--and the most wonderful voice in the world. I'm
+seventy-five years of age and he died in October '49, and I met him three
+years before he died, so you see I was a pretty small child. It was at
+Fordham. He'd just taken a cottage there for his wife, who was ailing with
+consumption, and my aunt, Mary Pinckney, who was a friend of the Osgoods,
+took me there. It must have been summer for I remember a bird hanging in a
+cage in the sunshine, a bob-o'-link it was, he had caught it in the
+woods.
+
+"Dear Lord! I wonder where that summer day's gone to, and the
+bob-o'-link--'pears to me we aren't even memories, for memories live and
+we don't."
+
+They were walking along, Abraham slowly following with the carriage, and
+Miss Pinckney was walking in an exultant manner as though she saw nothing
+about her, as though she were treading air. Phyl had unconsciously set
+free a train of thought in the mind of Miss Pinckney, a train that always
+led to an explosion, and this is exactly how it happened and what she
+said.
+
+"But his memory will live. Look right round you, do you see his statue?"
+
+"No," said Phyl, sweeping the view. "Where is it?"
+
+"Just so, where is it? It's not here, it's not in N'York, it's not in
+Baltimore, it's not in Philadelphia, it's not in Boston. The one real
+splendid writing man that America has produced she's ashamed to put up a
+statue to. Why? Because he drank! Why, God bless my soul, Grant drank. No,
+it wasn't drink, it was Griswold. The man who hated him, the man who
+crucified his reputation and sold the remains for thirty pieces of silver
+to a publisher, Griswold, Rufus Griswold--Judas Griswold that was his real
+name, and he hid it--"
+
+Miss Pinckney had lowered her parasol in her anger, she shut it with a
+snap and then shot it up again; as she did so an automobile driven by a
+girl and which was approaching them, passed, and a young man seated by the
+girl raised his hat.
+
+It was Richard Pinckney.
+
+The girl was a very pretty brunette. This thing was too much for Miss
+Pinckney in her present temper; all her anger against Griswold seemed
+suddenly diverted to the automobile. She snorted.
+
+"There goes Richard with Venetia Frances Rhett," said she. "Ought to be
+ashamed of herself driving along the Battery in that outrageous thing;
+goodness knows, they're bad enough driven by men, scaring people to death
+and killing dogs and chickens, without girls taking to them--"
+
+She stared after the car, then signalling to Abraham, she got into the
+barouche, Phyl followed her and they continued their drive.
+
+That evening after supper Miss Pinckney's mind warmed to thoughts of the
+good old days when motor-cars were undreamed of, and stirred up by the
+recollection of Edgar Allan Poe, discharged itself of reminiscences worth
+much gold could they have been taken down by a stenographer.
+
+She was sitting with Phyl in the piazza, for the night was warm, and
+whilst a big southern moon lit the garden, she let her mind stray over the
+men and women who had made American literature in the '50's and '60's,
+many of whom she had known when young.
+
+Estelle Anna Lewis of Baltimore, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Cullen
+Bryant, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Cornelius Mathews, Frances Sargent Osgood,
+N. P. Willis, Laughton Osborn. She had known Lowell and Longfellow, yet
+her mind seemed to cling mostly to the lesser people, writers in the
+_Southern Literary Messenger_, the _Home Journal_, the _Mirror_ and the
+_Broadway Journal_.
+
+People well-known in their day and now scarcely remembered, yet whose very
+names are capable of evoking the colour and romance of that fascinating
+epoch beyond and around the Civil War.
+
+"They're all dead and gone," said she, "and folk nowadays don't seem to
+trouble about the best of them, or remember their lines, yet there's
+nothing they write now that's as good--I remember poor Thomas Ward.
+'Flaccus' was the name he wrote under, a thin skeleton of a man always
+with his head in the air and his mind somewhere else, used to write in the
+_Knickerbocker Journal_; I heard him recite one of his things.
+
+          "'And, straining, fastened on her lips a kiss,
+          That seemed to suck the life blood from her heart.'
+
+"That stuck in my head, mostly, I expect, because Thomas Ward didn't look
+as if he'd ever kissed a girl, but they are good lines and a lot better
+than they write nowadays."
+
+The wind had risen a bit and was stirring in the leaves of the magnolias,
+white carnations growing near the sun dial shook their ruffles in the
+moonlight, and from near and far away came the sounds of Charleston,
+voices, the sound of traffic and then, a thread of tune tying moonbeams,
+magnolias, carnations and cherokee roses in a great southern bunch, came
+the notes of a banjo, plunk, plunk, and a voice from somewhere away in the
+back premises, the voice of a negro singing one of the old Plantation
+songs.
+
+Just a snatch before some closing door cut the singer off, but enough to
+make Phyl raise her head and listen, listen as though a whole world
+vaguely guessed, a world forgotten yet still warm and loving, youthful and
+sunlit, were striving to reach her and speak to her--As though Charleston
+the mysterious city that had greeted her first in Meeting Street were
+trying to tell her of things delightful, once loved, once known and
+forever vanished.
+
+As she lay awake that night with the moonlight showing through the blinds,
+the whole of that strange day came before her in pictures: the face of
+Frances Rhett troubled her, yet she did not know in the least why; it
+seemed part of the horribleness of automobiles and the anger of Miss
+Pinckney and the tribulations of Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+Then the fantastic band of forgotten _literati_ trooped before her, led by
+"Flaccus," the man who didn't look as if he had ever kissed a girl, yet
+who wrote:
+
+           "And, straining, fastened on her lips a kiss,
+           That seemed to suck the life blood from her heart."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Phyl awoke to the early morning sunlight and the sounds of Charleston.
+
+The chimes of St. Michael's were striking six and through the summery
+sunlit air carried by the sea wind stirring the curtains came the cries of
+the streets and the rumbling of early morning carts.
+
+Oh, those negro cries! the cry of the crab-seller, the orange vendor, the
+man who sells "monkey meat" dolorous, long drawn out, lazy, you do not
+know the South till you have heard them.
+
+The sound of a mat being shaken and beaten on the piazza, adjoining that
+on which her window opened came now, and two voices in dispute.
+
+"Mistress Pinckney she told me to tell you--she mos' sholey did."
+
+"Go wash yo' face, yo' coloured trash, cummin' here wid yo' orders--skip
+out o' my piazza--'clar' to goodness I dunno what's cummin' to niggers
+dese days."
+
+Then Miss Pinckney's voice as from an upper window:
+
+"Dinah! Seth! what's that I hear? Get on with your work the pair of you
+and stop your chattering. You hear me?"
+
+When Phyl came down Richard Pinckney was in the garden smoking a cigarette
+and gathering some carnations.
+
+"They're for aunt," said he, "to propitiate her for my being late last
+night. I wasn't in till one. I'm worse even than you, you see, and the
+next time you are out till eleven and I let you in and grumble at you, you
+can hit back. Have a flower."
+
+He gave her the finest in his bunch and Phyl put it in her belt. If she
+had any doubt as to the sincerity of his welcome his manner this morning
+ought to have set her mind at rest.
+
+She stood looking at him as he tied the stalks of the flowers together and
+he was worth looking at, a fresh, bright figure, the very incarnation of
+youth and health and one might almost say innocence. Clear eyed,
+well-groomed, good to look upon.
+
+"I generally pick a flower and put it on her plate," said he, "but this
+morning she shall have a whole bunch--hope you slept all right?"
+
+"Rather," said Phyl, "I never sleep much the first night in a new
+place--but somehow--oh, I don't know how to express it--but nothing here
+seems new."
+
+"Nothing is," said he laughing, "it's all as old as the hills--you like
+it, don't you?"
+
+"It's not a question of liking--of course I like it, who could help liking
+it--it's more than that. It's a feeling I have that I will either love it
+or hate it, and I don't know which yet, all sorts of things come back to
+me here, you see, my mother knew the place--do people remember what their
+mothers and fathers knew, I wonder? But, if you understood me, it's not so
+much remembering as feeling. All yesterday it seemed to me that I had only
+to turn some corner and come upon something waiting for me, something I
+knew quite well, and the smells and sounds and things are always reminding
+me of something--you know how it is when you have forgotten a name and
+when it's lying just at the back of your mind--that's how I feel here,
+about nearly everything--strange, isn't it?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said the practical Pinckney. "This place is awfully
+English for one thing, sure to remind you of a lot of things in Ireland
+and England, and then there's of course the fact that you are partly
+American, but I don't see why you should ever hate it."
+
+"_Indeed_, I didn't mean that," said she flushing up at the thought that
+in trying to express herself she had made such a blunder. "I meant--I
+meant, that this something about the place that is always reminding me of
+itself might make me hate _it_."
+
+"Or love it?"
+
+"Yes, but I can't explain--the place itself no one could hate, you must
+have thought me rude."
+
+"Not a bit--not the least little bit in the world. Well, I believe you'll
+come to love it, not hate it."
+
+"It," said Phyl. "I don't know that, because I don't know what it is--this
+something that is always peeping round corners at me yet hiding itself."
+
+"_Richard_!" came Miss Pinckney's voice from the piazza where she had just
+appeared, "smoking cigarettes before breakfast, how often have I told you
+I won't have you smoking before breakfast--why, God bless my soul, what
+are you doing with all those carnations?"
+
+He flung the cigarette-end away, but she refused to kiss him on account of
+the tobacco fumes, though she took the flowers.
+
+Cigarettes, like telephones, automobiles, and the memory of Edgar Allan
+Poe, formed a subject upon which once started Miss Pinckney was hard to
+check, and whilst she poured out the tea, she pursued it.
+
+"Dr. Cotton it was who told me, the one who used to live in Tradd Street,
+he was a relative of Dr. Garden the man that gave his name to that flower
+they call the gardenia--had it sent him from somewhere in the South, but
+I'm sure I don't know where--New Orleans, I think, but it doesn't matter.
+I was saying about Dr. Cotton, _old_ Dr. Cotton of Tradd Street, he told
+me that the truth about young William Pringle's death was that he was
+black when he died, from cigarette smoking, black as a crow. Used to smoke
+before breakfast, used to smoke all day, used to smoke in his sleep, I
+b'lieve. Couldn't get rid of the pesky habit and died clinging to it,
+black as a crow. I can't abide the things. Your father used to smoke Bull
+Durham in a corn cob, or a cigar, he'd a' soon have smoked one of those
+cigarettes of yours as soon as he'd have been caught doing tatting. Don't
+tell me, there's no manhood in them, it's just vice in thimble-fulls. I'd
+much sooner see a man lying healthily under the table once in a way than
+always half fuddled, and I'd sooner be poisoned out by a green cigar now
+and then, than always having that nasty sickly cigarette smell round the
+place."
+
+"But good gracious, Aunt, I'm not a cigarette smoker, only once and away
+and at odd times."
+
+"I wasn't talking about you so much as the young men of to-day, and the
+young women, they're the worst, for they encourage the others to make
+fools of themselves, and if they're not smoking themselves they're sucking
+candy. Candy sucking and cigarette smoking is the ruin of the States.
+Those Rhett girls _live_ on candy, and they look it--pasty faces."
+
+"Why!" said he, "what grudge have you got against the Rhetts now,
+Aunt--it's as bad to take a girl's complexion away as a man's
+character--what have the Rhetts been doing to you?"
+
+Miss Pinckney did not seem to hear the question for a moment, then she
+said, speaking as if to some invisible person:
+
+"That Frances Rhett may be reckoned the belle of Charleston, that's what I
+heard old Mr. Outhwaite call her, but she's a belle I wouldn't care to
+have tied round my neck. Belle! She's no more a belle than I am, there are
+hundreds of prettier girls between here and the Battery, but she's one of
+those sort that have the knack of setting young men against each other and
+making them fight for her; she's labelled herself as a prize, which she
+isn't. I declare to goodness the world frightens me at times, the way I
+see fools going about labelled as clever men, and women your grandfathers
+wouldn't have cast an eye at going about labelled as beauties. I do
+believe if I was to give myself out as a beauty to-morrow I'd have half
+the young idiots in Charleston after me, believing me."
+
+"They're after you already," said Pinckney, "only yesterday I heard young
+Reggy Calhoun saying--"
+
+"I know," said Miss Pinckney, "and I want no more of your impudence. Now
+take yourself off if you've finished your breakfast, for Phyl and I have
+work to do."
+
+He got up and went off laughing by way of the piazza and they could hear
+his cheery voice in the garden talking to the old negro gardener.
+
+Miss Pinckney's eyes softened. She was fiddling with a spoon and when she
+spoke she seemed speaking to it, turning it about as if to examine its
+pattern all the time.
+
+"I don't know what mothers with boys feel like, but I do want to see that
+boy safe and married before I go. He's just the sort to be landed in
+unhappiness; he is, most surely; well, I don't know, there's no use in
+warning young folk, you may spank 'em for stealing the jam but you can't
+spank 'em from fooling with the wrong sort of girl."
+
+Miss Pinckney had talked the night before of Phyl's father and had
+proposed taking her this morning to the Magnolia cemetery to see the
+grave. She broke off the conversation suddenly as this fact strayed into
+her mind, and, rising up, invited Phyl to follow her to the kitchen
+premises where she had orders to give before starting.
+
+"I always look after my own house," said she, "and always will. Fine
+ladies nowadays sit in their drawing-rooms and ring their bells for the
+servants to rob them and they aren't any more respected. That's what makes
+the Charleston negro the impudentest lump of blackness under the sun, that
+and knowing they're emancipated. They've got to look on themselves as part
+of the Heavenly Host. Well, I'll have no emancipated rubbish in my house,
+and the consequence is I never lose a servant and I never get impudence.
+They'll all get a pension when they're too old to work, and good food and
+good pay whilst they're working, and I've said to them 'you're no more
+emancipated than I am, we're all slaves to our duty and the only
+difference between now and the old days is I can't sell you--and if you
+were idle enough to make me want to sell you there's no one would buy such
+rubbish nowadays.' Half the trouble is that people these times don't know
+how to talk to coloured folk, and the other half is that they don't want
+to talk to them."
+
+She led the way down passages to the great kitchen, stonebuilt, clean and
+full of sunlight. The door was open on to the yard and through an open
+side door one could get a glimpse of the scullery, the great washing up
+sink, generations old, and worn with use, and above it the drying
+dresser.
+
+There were no new-fangled cooking inventions at Vernons, everything was
+done at an open range of the good old fashion still to be found in many an
+English country house.
+
+Miss Pinckney objected to "baked meat" and the joints at Vernons were
+roast, swinging from a clockwork Jack and basted all the time with a long
+metal ladle.
+
+By the range this morning was seated an old coloured woman engaged in
+cutting up onions. This was Prue the oldest living thing in Vernons and
+perhaps in Charleston; she had been kitchen maid before Miss Pinckney was
+born, then cook, and now, long past work, she was just kept on.
+Twenty-five years ago she had been offered a pension and a cottage for
+herself but she refused both. She wanted to die where she was, so she
+said. So they let her stay, doing odd jobs and bossing the others just as
+though she were still mistress of the kitchen--as in fact she was. She had
+become a legend and no one knew her exact age, she was creepin' close to a
+hundred, and her memory which carried her back to the slave days was
+marvellous in its retentiveness.
+
+She had cooked a dinner for Jeff Davis when he was a guest at Vernons, she
+could still hear the guns of the Civil War, so she said, and the Mascarene
+family history was her Bible.
+
+She looked down on the Pinckneys as trash beside the Mascarenes, and
+interlopers, and this attitude and point of view though well known to Miss
+Pinckney was not in the least resented by her.
+
+But during the last few years this old lady's intellect had been steadily
+coming under eclipse; still insisting on doing little jobs in a futile
+sort of way, silence had been creeping upon her so that she rarely spoke
+now, and when she did, by chance, her words revealed the fact that her
+mind was dwelling in the past.
+
+Rachel, the cook, a sturdy coloured woman with her head bound up in an
+isabelle-coloured handkerchief was standing by the kitchen table on which
+she was resting the fore-finger of her left hand, whilst with the right
+she was turning over some fish that had just been sent in from the
+fishmonger's. She seemed in a critical mood, but what she said to Miss
+Pinckney was lost to Phyl whose attention was attracted by a chuckling
+sound from near the range.
+
+It was Prue.
+
+The old woman at sight of Phyl had dropped the knife and the onion on
+which she had been engaged. She was now seated, hands on knees, chuckling
+and nodding to the girl, then, scarcely raising her right hand from her
+knee, she made a twiddling movement with the fore-finger as if to say,
+"come here--come here--I have something to tell you."
+
+Phyl glanced at Miss Pinckney who was so taken up with what Rachel was
+saying about the fish that she noticed nothing. Then she looked again at
+Prue and, unable to resist the invitation, came towards her. The old woman
+caught her by the arm so that she had to bend her head.
+
+"Miss Julie," whispered Prue, "Massa Pinckney told me tell yo' he be at de
+gate t'night same time 'slas' night. Done you let on 's I told yo'," she
+gave the arm a pinch and relapsed into herself chuckling whilst Phyl stood
+with a little shiver, half of relief at her escape from that bony clutch,
+half of dread--a vague dread as though she had come in contact with
+something uncanny.
+
+She came to the table again and stood without looking at Prue, whilst Miss
+Pinckney completed her orders, then, that lady, having finished her
+business and casting an eye about the place on the chance of finding any
+dirt or litter, saw Prue and asked how she was doing.
+
+"Well, miss, she's doin' fa'r," replied Rachel, "but I'm t'inking she's
+not long fore de new Jerusalem. Sits didderin' dere 'n' smokin' her pipe,
+'n' lays about her wid her stick times, fancyin' there'er dogs comin' into
+de kitchen."
+
+"A dog bit her once way back in the '60's," said Miss Pinckney; "they used
+to keep dogs here then. She don't want for anything?"
+
+"Law no, miss, _she_ done want for nothin'; look at her now laffin' to
+herself. Haven't seen her do that way dis long time. Hi, Prue, what yo'
+laffin' at?"
+
+Prue, instead of answering leant further forward hiding her face without
+checking her merriment.
+
+"Crazy," said Miss Pinckney, "but it's better to be laughing crazy than
+crying crazy like some folk--here's a quarter and get her some candy."
+
+She put the coin on the table and marched off followed by Phyl.
+
+"She wanted to tell me something," said Phyl as they were driving to the
+cemetery; "she beckoned me to her and took hold of my arm and whispered
+something."
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+Phyl, somehow, could not bring herself to betray that crazy confidence.
+
+"I don't know, exactly, but she called me Miss Julie."
+
+"Oh--she called you Miss Julie," said the other. Then she relapsed into
+thought and nothing more was said till they reached their destination.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Charleston's Magnolia Cemetery like everything else about Charleston shows
+the touch of the War. Here the soldiers lie who fought so bravely under
+Wade Hampton and here lies the general himself.
+
+Go south, go north, and you will not find a place touched by the War where
+you will not find noble memories, echoes of heroic deeds, legends of brave
+men.
+
+Miss Pinckney was by no means a peace party and this thought was doubtless
+in her head as she stood surveying the confederate graves. There were
+relations here and men whom she had known as a child.
+
+"That's the War," said she, "and people abuse war as if it was the worst
+thing in the world, insulting the dead. 'Clare to goodness it makes me
+savage to hear the pasty-faces talking of war and making plans to abolish
+it. It's like hearing a lot of children making plans to abolish thunder
+storms. Where would America be now without the War, and where'd her
+history be? You tell me that. It'd just be the history of a big canning
+factory. These men aren't dead, they're still alive and fighting--fighting
+Chicago; fighting pork, and wheat, and cotton and railway-stock and
+everything else that's abolishing the soul of the nation.
+
+"There's Matt Carey's grave. He had everything he wanted, and he wasn't
+young. Now-a-days he'd have been driving in his automobile killing old
+women and chickens, or tarpoon fishing down 'n Florida letting the world
+go rip, or full of neur--what do they call it--that thing that gets on
+their nerves and makes crazy old men of them at forty--I've forgotten.
+_He_ didn't. He took up a gun and died like a lion, and he was a
+middle-aged business man. No one remembers him, I do believe, except,
+maybe me, clean forgotten--and yet he helped to put a brick into the only
+monument worth ten cents that America has got--The War.
+
+"And some northern people would say 'nice sort of brick, seeing he was
+fighting on the wrong side.' Wrong side or right side he was fighting for
+something else than his own hand. _That's_ the point."
+
+She closed up her lips and they went on. Phyl found her father's grave in
+a quiet spot where the live-oaks stood, the long grey moss hanging from
+their branches.
+
+Miss Pinckney, having pointed out the grave, strayed off, leaving the girl
+to herself.
+
+The gloomy, strange-looking trees daunted Phyl, and the grave, too young
+yet to have a headstone, drew her towards it, yet repelled her.
+
+It was like meeting in a dream some one she had loved and who had turned
+into a stranger in a strange place.
+
+Just as Charleston had dimmed Ireland in her mind as a bright light dims a
+lesser light, so had some influence come between her and the memory of her
+father. That memory was just as distinct as ever, but grief had died from
+it, as though Time had been at work on it for years and years.
+
+The Phyl who had stepped out of the south-bound express and the girl of
+this morning were the same in mind and body, but in soul and outlook they
+had changed and were changing as though the air of the south had some
+magic in it, some food that had always been denied her and which was
+necessary for her full being.
+
+Miss Pinckney returned from her wanderings amongst the graves and they
+turned to the gate.
+
+"It used to seem strange to me coming here when I was a girl," said she.
+"It always seemed as if I was come to visit people who could never come to
+see me. I used to pity them, but one gets older and one gets wiser, and I
+fancy it's they that pity us, if they can see us at all, which isn't often
+likely."
+
+"D'you think they come back?" said Phyl.
+
+"My dear child, if I told you what I thought, you'd say I was plum crazy.
+But I'll say this. What do you think the Almighty made folk for? to live a
+few years and then lie in a grave with folk heaping flowers on them?
+There's no such laziness in nature. I don't say there aren't folk who live
+their lives like as if they were dead, covered with flowers and never
+moving a hand to help themselves like some of those N'York women--but they
+don't count. They're against nature and I guess when they die they die,
+for they haven't ever lived." Then, vehemently: "Of course, they come
+back, not as ghosts peekin' about and making nuisances of themselves, but
+they come back as people--which is the sensible way and there's nothing
+unsensible in nature. Mind you, I don't say there aren't ghosts, there
+are, for I've seen 'em; I saw Simon Pinckney, the one that died of drink,
+as plain as my hand same day he died, but he was a no account. He hadn't
+the making of a man, so he couldn't come back as a man, and he wasn't a
+woman, so he couldn't come back as a woman; so he came back as a ghost. He
+was always an uneasy creature, else I don't suppose he'd have come back as
+anything. When a man wears out a suit of clothes he doesn't die, he gets a
+new one, and when he wears out a body--which isn't a bit more than a suit
+of clothes--he gets a new one. If he hasn't piled up grit enough in life
+to pay for a new body, he goes about without one and he's a ghost. That's
+my way of thinking and I know--I know--n'matter."
+
+She put up her sunshade and they returned, driving through the warm spring
+weather. Phyl was silent, the day had taken possession of her. The scent
+of pink mimosa filled the air, the blue sky shewed here and there a few
+feather traces of white cloud and the wind from the sea seemed the very
+breath of the southern spring.
+
+It seemed to Phyl as they drove that never before had she met or felt the
+loveliness of life, never till this moment when turning a corner the song
+of a bird from a garden met them with the perfume of jessamine.
+
+Charleston is full of surprises like that, things that snatch you away
+from the present or catch you for a moment into the embrace of some old
+garden lurking behind a wrought iron gate, or tell you a love story no
+matter how much you don't want to hear it--or tease you, if you are a
+practical business man, with some other futility which has nothing at all
+to do with "real" life.
+
+It seemed to Phyl as though, somehow, the whole of the morning had been
+working up to that moment, as though the perfume of the jessamine and the
+song of the birds were the culmination of the meaning of all sorts of
+things seen and unseen, heard and unheard.
+
+The message of the crazy old negress came back to her. Who was Miss Julie?
+and who was the Mr. Pinckney that was to meet her, and where was the gate
+at which they were to meet in such a secretive manner? Was it just
+craziness, or was it possible that this was some real message delivered
+years and years ago. A real lover's message which the old woman had once
+been charged to deliver and which she had repeated automatically and like
+a parrot.
+
+Miss Julie--could it be possible that she meant Miss Juliet--The Juliet
+Mascarene to whom she, Phyl, bore such a strong family likeness, could it
+be possible that the likeness had started the old woman's mind working and
+had recalled the message of a half-a-century ago to her lips.
+
+It was a fascinating thought. Juliet had been in love with one of the
+Pinckneys and this message was from a Pinckney and one day, perhaps, most
+likely a fine spring day like to-day, Pinckney had given the negro girl a
+message to give to Juliet, and the lovers and the message and the bright
+spring day had vanished utterly and forever leaving only Prue.
+
+The gate would no doubt be the garden gate. Phyl in all her life had never
+given a thought to Love, she had known nothing of sentiment, that much
+abused thing which is yet the salt of life, and Romance for her had meant
+Adventure; all the same she was now weaving all sorts of threads into
+dreams and fancies. What appealed to her most was her own likeness to
+Juliet, the girl who had died so many, many years ago. A likeness
+incomplete enough, according to Miss Pinckney, yet strong enough to awaken
+memories in the mind of Prue.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+"Miss Pinckney," said Phyl, as they sat at luncheon that day, "you
+remember you said yesterday that I was like Juliet Mascarene?"
+
+"So you are," replied the other, "though the likeness is more noticeable
+at first sight as far as the face goes--I've got a picture of her I will
+show you, it's upstairs in her room, the one next yours on the same
+piazza--why do you ask me?"
+
+"I was thinking," replied Phyl, "that the old woman in the
+kitchen--Prue--may have meant Juliet when she called me Julie, and that it
+was the likeness that set her mind going."
+
+"It's not impossible. Prue's like that crazy old clock Selina Pinckney
+left me in her will. It'd tell you the day and the hour _and_ the minute
+and the year and the month and the weather. A little man came out if it
+was going to rain and a little woman if it was going to shine. But if you
+wanted to know the time, it couldn't tell you nearer than the hour before
+last of the day before yesterday, and if you sneezed near it, it'd up and
+strike a hundred and twenty. I gave it to Rachel. She said it was 'some'
+clock, said it was a dandy for striking and the time didn't matter as the
+old kitchen clock saw to that. It's the same with Prue, the time doesn't
+matter, and they look up to her in the kitchen mostly, I expect, because
+she's an oddity, same as Selina Pinckney's clock. Seems to me anything
+crazy and useless is reckoned valuable these days, and not only among
+coloured folk but whites--Dinah, hasn't Mr. Richard come in yet?"
+
+"No, Mistress Pinckney," replied the coloured girl, who had just entered
+the room, "I haven't seen no sign of him."
+
+"Running about without his luncheon," grumbled the lady, "said he had a
+deal in cotton on. I might have guessed it." Then when Dinah had left the
+room and talking half to herself, "There's nothing Richard seems to think
+of but business or pleasure. I'm not saying anything against the boy, he's
+as good and better than any of the rest, but like the rest of them his
+character wants forming round something real. It wasn't so in the old
+days, they were bad enough then and drank a lot more, but they had in them
+something that made for something better than business or pleasure. Matt
+Curry didn't go out and get killed for business or pleasure, and all the
+old Pinckneys didn't fight in the war or fight with one another for
+business or pleasure. There's more in life than fooling with girls or
+buying cotton or sailing yacht races, but Richard doesn't seem to see it.
+I did think that having a ward to look after would have sobered him a bit
+and helped to form his character--well, maybe it will yet."
+
+"I don't want to be looked after," said Phyl flushing up, "and if Mr.
+Pinckney--" she stopped. What she was going to say about Pinckney was not
+clear in her mind, clouded as it was with anger--anger at the thought that
+she was an object to be looked after by her "guardian," anger at the
+implication that he was not bothering to look after her, being too much
+engaged in the business of fooling with girls and buying cotton, and a
+reasonable anger springing from and embracing the whole world that held
+his beyond Vernons.
+
+"Yes?" said Miss Pinckney.
+
+"Oh, nothing," replied the other, trying to laugh and making a failure of
+the business. "I was only going to say that Mr. Pinckney must have lots to
+do instead of wasting his time looking after strangers, and if he hadn't I
+don't want to be looked after. I don't want him to bother about
+me--I--I--" It did not want much more to start her off in a wild fit of
+weeping about nothing, her mind for some reason or other unknown even to
+herself was worked up and seething just as on that day at Kilgobbin when
+the woes of Rafferty had caused her to make such an exhibition of herself
+in the library. Anything was possible with Phyl when under the influence
+of unreasoning emotion like this, anything from flinging a knife at a
+person to breaking into tears.
+
+Miss Pinckney knew it. Without understanding in the least the
+psychological mechanism of Phyl, she knew as a woman and by some
+electrical influence the state of her mind.
+
+She rose from the table.
+
+"Stranger," said she, taking the other by the arm, "you call yourself a
+stranger. Come along upstairs with me. I want to show you something."
+
+Still holding her by the arm, caressingly, she led her off across the hall
+and up the stairs; on the first floor landing she opened a door; it was
+the door of the bedroom next to Phyl's, a room of the same shape and size
+and with the same view over the garden.
+
+Just as the drawing-room had been kept in its entirety without alteration
+or touch save the touch of a duster, so had this room, the bedroom of a
+girl of long ago, a girl who would now have been a woman old and
+decrepit--had she lived.
+
+"Here's the picture you wanted to see," said Miss Pinckney leading Phyl up
+to a miniature hanging on the wall near the bed. "That's Juliet, and if
+you don't see the family likeness, well, then, you must be blind.--And you
+calling yourself a stranger!"
+
+Phyl looked. It was rather a stiff and finicking little portrait; she
+fancied it was like herself but was not sure, the colour of the hair was
+almost the same but the way it was dressed made a lot of difference, and
+she said so.
+
+"Well, they did their hair different then," replied Miss Pinckney, "and
+that reminds me, it's near time you put that tail up." She sat down in a
+rocker by the window and with her hands on her knees contemplated Phyl.
+"I'm your only female relative, and Lord knows I'm far enough off, anyhow
+I'm something with a skirt on it, and brains in its head, and that's what
+a girl most wants when she comes to your age. You'll be asked to parties
+and things here and you'll find that tail in the way; it's good enough for
+a schoolgirl, but you aren't that any longer. I'll get Dinah to do your
+hair, something simple and not too grown-up--you don't mind an old woman
+telling you this--do you?"
+
+"Indeed I don't," said Phyl. "I don't care how my hair is done, you can
+cut it off if you like, but I don't want to go to parties."
+
+"Well, maybe you don't," said Miss Pinckney, "but, all the same, we'll get
+Dinah to look to your hair. Dinah can do most anything in that way; she'd
+get twice the wages as a lady's maid elsewhere and she knows it, but she
+won't go. I've told her over and again to be off and better herself, but
+she won't go, sticks to me like a mosquito. Well, this was Juliet's room
+just as that's her picture; she died in that bed and everything is just
+exactly as she left it. It was kept so after her death. You see, it wasn't
+like an ordinary person dying, it was the tragedy of the whole thing that
+stirred folk so, dying of a broken heart for the man she was in love with.
+It set all the crazy poets off like that clock of Selina Pinckney's I was
+telling you of. The _News and Courier_ had yards of obituary notice and
+verses. It made people forget the war for a couple of days. There's all
+her books on that shelf and the diary the poor thing used to keep. Open
+one of the drawers in that chest."
+
+Phyl did so. The drawer was packed with clothes neatly folded. The air
+became filled with the scent of lavender.
+
+"There are her things, everything she ever had when she died. It may seem
+foolish to keep everything like that, foolish and sentimental, and if
+she'd died of measles or fallen down the stairs and killed herself maybe
+her old things would have been given away, but dying as she did--well,
+somehow, it didn't seem right for coloured girls to be parading about in
+her things. Mrs. Beamis sniffed here just as she sniffed in the
+drawing-room, and she said, one night, something about sentiment, as if
+she was referring to chicken cholera. I knew what she meant. She meant we
+were a pack of fools. Well, she ought to know. I reckon she ought to be a
+judge of folly--the life she leads in Chicago. Umph!--Now I'm going to lie
+down for an hour, and if you take my advice you'll do the same. The middle
+of the day was meant to rest in. You can get to your room by the window."
+
+She kissed Phyl and went off.
+
+Phyl, instead of going to her room, took her seat in the rocker and looked
+around her. The place held her, something returned to it that had been
+driven away perhaps by Miss Pinckney's cheerful and practical presence,
+the faint odour of lavender still clung to the air, and the silence was
+unbroken except for a faint stirring of the window curtains now and then
+to the breeze from outside. Everything was, indeed, just as it had been
+left, the toilet tidies and all the quaint contraptions of the '50's and
+'60's in their places. On the wall opposite the bed hung several water
+colours evidently the work of that immature artist Mary Mascarene, a watch
+pocket hung above the bed, a thing embroidered with blue roses, enough to
+disturb the sleep of any æsthete, yet beautiful enough in those old days.
+There was only one stain mark in the scrupulous cleanliness and neatness
+of the place--a panel by the window, once white painted but now dingy-grey
+and scored with lines. Phyl got up and inspected it more closely.
+Children's heights had evidently been measured here. There was a scale of
+feet marked in pencil, initials, and dates. Here was "M. M.," probably
+Mary Mascarene, "2 ft. 6 inches. Nineteen months," and the date "April,
+1845," and again a year later, "M. M. 2 ft. 9-1/2 inches, May, 1846." So
+she had grown three and a half inches in a year. "J. M."--Juliet without
+doubt--"3 feet, 3 years old, 1845." Juliet was evidently the elder--so it
+went on right into the early '60's, mixed here and there with other
+initials, amongst which Phyl made out "J. J." and "R. P.," children maybe
+staying at the house and measured against the Mascarene children--children
+now old men and women, possibly not even that. It was in the kindly spirit
+of Vernons not to pass a painter's brush over these scratchings, records
+of the height of a child that lingered only in the memory of the old
+house.
+
+Phyl turned from them to the bookshelf and the books it contained. "Noble
+Deeds of American Women," "Precept on Precept," "The Dairyman's Daughter,"
+and the "New England Primer"--with a mark against the verses left "by John
+Rogers to his wife and nine small children, and one at the breast, when he
+was burned at the stake at Smithfield in 1555." There were also books of
+poetry, Bryant, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "Powhatan, a metrical romance
+in seven cantos by Seba Smith," and several others.
+
+Phyl did something characteristic. She gathered every single book into a
+pile in her arms and sat down on the floor with them to have a feast. This
+devourer of books was omnivorous in her tastes, especially if it were a
+question of sampling, and she had enough critical faculty to enable her to
+enjoy rubbish. She lingered over Powhatan and its dedication to the "Young
+People of the United States" and then passed on to the others till she
+came to a little black book. It was Juliet Mascarene's diary and
+proclaimed the fact openly on the first page with the statements: "I am
+twelve years old to-day and Aunt Susan has given me this book to keep as
+my diary and not to forget to write each day my evil deeds as well as my
+good, which I will if I remember them. She didn't give me anything else. I
+had to-day a Paris doll from Cousin Jane Pinckney who has winking eyes
+which shut when you lay her on her back and pantalettes with scallops
+which take off and on and a trunk of clothes with a little key to it.
+Father gave me a Bible and I have had other things too numerous for
+mension.
+
+                                              "Signed Juliet Mascarene."
+
+with never a date.
+
+Then:
+
+"I haven't done any evil deeds, or good ones that I can remember, so I
+haven't written in this book for maybe a week. Mary and I, we went to a
+party at the Pinckneys to-day at Bures, the Calhoun children and the
+Rutledges were there and we had Lady Baltimore cake and a good time. Mary
+wore her blue organdie and looked very nice and Rupert Pinckney was there,
+he's fourteen and wouldn't talk to the children because they were too
+small for him, I expect. He told me he was going to have a pony same as
+Silas Rhett that threw him in the market place Wednesday last and galloped
+all the way to Battery before he was stopped, only his was to be a better
+one with more shy in it, said Silas Rhett ought to be tied on next time.
+Then old Mr. Pinckney came in and shewed us a musical snuff-box and we
+went home, and driving back Mary kicked me on the shin by axident and I
+pinched her and she didn't cry till we'd got home, then she began to roar
+and mother said it was my ungovernable temper, and I said I wished I was
+dead.
+
+"I shan't go to any more parties because it's always like that after them.
+Father told me I was to pray for a new heart and not to have any supper
+but Prue has brought me up a cake of her own making. So that's one evil
+deed to put down--It's just like Mary, any one else would have cried right
+out in the carriage and not bottled it up and kept it up till she got
+home.
+
+"This is a Friday and Prue says Friday parties are always sure to end in
+trouble for the devil puts powder in the cakes and the only way to stop
+him is to turn them three times round when they're baking and touch them
+each time with a forked hazel twig."
+
+Phyl read this passage over twice. The mention of Prue interested her
+vastly. Prue even then had evidently been a favourite of Juliet's.
+
+She read on hoping to find the name of the coloured woman again, but it
+did not occur.
+
+The diary, indeed, did not run over more than a year and a half, but
+scrappy as it was and short in point of time, the character of Juliet
+shone forth from it, uneasy, impetuous, tormenting and loving.
+
+Many books could not have depicted the people round Vernons so well as
+this scribbling of a child. Mary Mascarene, quiet, rather a spoil-sport
+and something of a tale-teller, dead and gone Pinckneys and Rhetts. Aunt
+Susan, Cousin Jane Pinckney, Uncle George who beat his coloured man,
+Darius, because the said Darius had let him go out with one brass button
+missing from his blue coat. Simon Pinckney--the one whose ghost
+walked--and who "fell down in the garden because he had the hiccups,"
+these and others of their time lived in the little black book given by the
+miserly Aunt Susan "to keep as my diary and not to forget to write each
+day my evil deeds as well as my good."
+
+Towards the end there was another reference to Rupert Pinckney, the tragic
+lover of the future:
+
+"Rupert Pinckney was here to-day with his mother to luncheon and we had a
+palmetto salad and mother said when he was gone he was the most frivulus
+boy in Charleston, whatever that was, and too much of a dandy, but father
+said he had stuff in him and Aunt Susan, who was here too, said 'Yes,
+stuff and nonsense,' and I said he could ride his pony without tumbling
+off like Silas Rhett, anyhow.
+
+"Then they went on talking about his people and how they hadn't as much
+money as they used to have, and Aunt Susan said that was so, and the worst
+of it is they're spending more money than they used to spend, and father
+said, well, anyhow, that wasn't a very common complaint with _some_ people
+and he left the room. He never stays long in the room with Aunt S.
+
+"I think the Pinckneys are real nice."
+
+"Mr. Simon Mascarene from Richmond and his wife came to see us to-day and
+stay for a week. They drove here in their own carriage with four brown
+horses and you could not tell which horse was which, they are so alike,
+they are very fine people and Mr. M. has a red face--not the same red as
+Mr. Simon Pinckney's, but different somehow--more like an apple, and a
+high nose which makes him look very grand and fine." The same Simon
+Mascarene, no doubt, that came to the wedding of Charles Pinckney in 1880
+as old Simon Mascarene, the one whose flowered carpet bag still lingered
+in the memory of Miss Pinckney.
+
+"Mrs. M. is very fine too and beautifully dressed and mother gave her a
+great bouquet of geraniums and garden flowers with a live green
+caterpillar looping about in the green stuff which nobody saw but me, till
+it fell on Mrs. M.'s knee and she screamed. There is to be a big party
+to-morrow and the Pinckneys are coming and Rupert."
+
+There the diary ended.
+
+Phyl put it back on the shelf with the books.
+
+She had not the knowledge necessary to visualise the people referred to,
+those people of another day when Planters kept open house, when slaves
+were slaves and Bures the home of the old gentleman with the musical
+snuff-box, but she could visualise Juliet as a child. The writing in the
+little book had brought the vision up warm from the past and it seemed
+almost as though she might suddenly run in from the sunlit piazza that lay
+beyond the waving window curtains.
+
+There was a bureau in one corner, or rather one of those structures that
+went by the name of Davenports in the days of our fathers. Phyl went to it
+and raised the lid. She did so without a second thought or any feeling
+that it was wrong to poke about in a place like this and pry into secrets.
+Juliet seemed to belong to her as though she had been a sister, her own
+likeness to the dead girl was a bond of attraction stronger than a family
+tie, and Juliet's mournful love story completed the charm.
+
+The desk contained very little, a seal with a dove on it, some sticks of
+spangled sealing-wax, a paper knife of coloured wood with a picture of
+Benjamin Franklin on the handle and some sheets of note-paper with gilt
+edges.
+
+Phyl noticed that the gilt was still bright.
+
+She took out the paper knife and looked at it, and then held the blade to
+her lips to feel the smoothness of it, drawing it along so that her lips
+touched every part of the blade.
+
+Then she put it back, and as she did so a little panel at the back of the
+desk fell forward disclosing a cache containing a bundle of letters tied
+round with ribbon.
+
+Phyl started as though a hand had been laid on her arm. The point of the
+paper knife must have touched the spring of the panel, but it seemed as
+though the desk had suddenly opened its hand, closed and clasping those
+letters for so many years. For a moment she hesitated to touch them. Then
+she thought of all the time they had lain there and a feeling that Juliet
+wouldn't mind and that the old bureau had told its secret without being
+asked, overcame her scruples. She took the letters and sitting down again
+on the floor, untied the ribbon.
+
+There were no envelopes. Each sheet of paper had been carefully folded and
+sealed with green wax, with the seal leaving the impression of the dove.
+There was no address, and they had evidently been tied together in
+chronological order. But the handwriting was the handwriting of Juliet
+Mascarene fully formed now.
+
+The first of these things ran:
+
+"It wasn't my fault. I didn't create old Mr. Gadney and send him to church
+to keep us talking in the street like that. I did _not_ see you. You
+couldn't have passed, and if you did you must have been invisible. I feel
+dreadfully wicked writing to you. Do you know this is a clandestine
+correspondence and must stop at once? You mustn't _ever_ write to me
+again, nor I mustn't see you. Of course I can't help seeing you in church
+and on the street--and I can't help thinking about you. They'll be making
+me try and stop breathing next. I don't care a button for the whole lot of
+them. It was all Aunt Susan's doing, only for her my people would never
+have quarrelled with yours and I wouldn't have been so miserable. I feel
+sometimes as if I could just take a boat and sail off to somewhere where I
+would never see any people again.
+
+"It was clever of you to send your letter by P. This goes to you by the
+same hand."
+
+There was no signature and no date.
+
+Phyl turned the sheet of paper over to make sure again that there was no
+address. As she did so a faint, quaint perfume came to her as though the
+old-fashioned soul of the letter were released for a moment. It was
+vervain, the perfume of long ago, beloved of the Duchesse de Chartres and
+the ladies of the forties.
+
+She laid the letter down and took up the next.
+
+"It is _wicked_ of you. My people never would be so mean as to quarrel
+with your people or look down on them because they have lost money. Why
+did you say that--and you know I said in my last letter that I could not
+write to you again. I was shocked when P. pinched my arm as I was passing
+her on the stairs and handed me your note--Don't you--don't you--how shall
+I say it? Don't you think you and I could meet and speak to one another
+somewhere instead of always writing like this? Somewhere where no one
+could see us. Do you know--do you know--do you, ahem! O dear me--know that
+just inside our gate there's a little arbour. The tiniest place. When I
+was a child I used to play there with Mary at keeping house, there's a
+seat just big enough for two and we used to sit there with our dolls. No
+one can see the gate from the lower piazza, and the gate doesn't make any
+noise opening, for father had it oiled--it used to squeak a bit from rust,
+but it doesn't now and I'll be there to-morrow night at nine--in the
+arbour--at least I _may_ be there. I just want to tell you in a way I
+can't in a letter that my people aren't the sort of folk to sneer at any
+one because they have lost money.
+
+"I am sending this by P.
+
+"The arbour is just back of the big magnolia as you come in, on the
+left."
+
+Phyl gave a little laugh. Then with half-closed eyes she kissed the
+letter, laid it softly on the floor beside the first and went on to the
+next.
+
+"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. No one sees us
+meet. No one knows, and yet I fear them finding out just by instinct.
+Father said to me the other day, 'What makes you seem so happy these
+times?' If Mary had been alive she would have found out long ago, for I
+never could keep anything hid from her. I was nearly saying to him, 'If
+you want to know why I am so happy go and ask the magnolia tree by the
+gate.'
+
+"Sometimes I feel as if I were deceiving him and everybody. I am, and I
+don't care--I don't care if they knew. O 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."
+
+Phyl's eyes grew half blind with tears.
+
+This cry from the Past went to her heart like a knife. The wind,
+strengthening for a moment, moved the window curtains, bringing with it
+the drowsy afternoon sounds of Charleston, sounds that seemed to mock at
+this voice declaring the deathlessness of its love. It was impossible to
+go on reading. Impossible to expose any more this heart that had ceased to
+beat.
+
+The meetings in the arbour behind the magnolia tree, the kisses, the words
+that the leaves and birds alone could hear--they had all ended in death.
+
+It did not matter now if the garden gate creaked on its hinges, or if
+watching eyes from the piazza saw the glossy leaves stirring when no wind
+could shake them--nothing mattered at all to these people now.
+
+She put all the letters back in the bureau, carefully closing them in the
+secret drawer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+"Miss Pinckney," said Phyl that night as they sat at supper, "when you
+left me this afternoon in Juliet's room I stopped to look at the books and
+things and when I opened the bureau I touched a spring by accident and a
+little panel fell out and I found a lot of old letters behind it. It was
+wrong of me to go meddling about and I thought I ought to tell you."
+
+"Old letters," said Miss Pinckney, "you don't say--what were they about?"
+
+"I read one or two," said the girl. "I'd never, never have dreamed of
+touching them only--only they were hers--they were to him."
+
+"Rupert?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Love letters?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Miss Pinckney sighed.
+
+"He kept all her letters," said she, "and they came back to her after he
+was killed. He was killed here in Charleston, at Fort Sumter, in the war;
+they brought him across here and carried him on a stretcher and she--well,
+well, it's all done with and let it rest, but it is strange that those
+letters should have fallen into your hands."
+
+"Why, strange?"
+
+"Why?" burst out Miss Pinckney. "Why I have dusted that old bureau inside
+and out a hundred times, and pulled out the drawers and pushed them in and
+it never shewed sign of having anything in it but emptiness, and you don't
+do more'n look at it and you find those letters. It's just as if the thing
+had deceived me. I don't mind, and I don't want to see them, they weren't
+intended for other eyes than his and hers--and maybe yours since they were
+shewn you like that."
+
+"Was it wrong of me to look at them?" asked Phyl. "I never would have done
+it only--only--Oh, I don't know, I somehow felt she wouldn't mind. She
+seemed like a sister--I would never dream of looking at another person's
+letters but she did not seem like another person. I can't explain. It was
+just as though the letters were my own--just exactly as though they were
+my own when I found them in my hands."
+
+Phyl was talking with her eyes fixed before her as though she were looking
+across some great distance.
+
+Miss Pinckney gave a little shiver, then supper being over she rose from
+the table and led the way from the room.
+
+Richard Pinckney had dined with them but he was out for supper somewhere
+or another. They went to the drawing-room and had not been there for more
+than a few minutes when Frances Rhett was announced.
+
+The Rhetts were on intimate enough terms with the Pinckneys to call in
+like this without ceremony; Frances had called to speak to Miss Pinckney
+about some charity affair she was getting up in a hurry, but she had not
+been five minutes in the room before Phyl knew that she had called to look
+at her. To look at the girl who had come to live with the Pinckneys, the
+red headed girl. Phyl did not know that girls of Frances' type dread red
+haired girls, if they are pretty, as rabbits dread stoats, but she did
+know in some uncanny way that Frances Rhett considered Richard Pinckney as
+her own property to be protected against all comers.
+
+All at once and new born, the woman awoke in her instinctive, mistrustful
+and armed.
+
+Frances Rhett, despite Miss Pinckney's dispraise of her, was a most
+formidable person as far as the opposite sex was concerned. One of the
+women of whom other women say, "Well, I don't know what he sees in her,
+I'm sure."
+
+A brunette of eighteen who looked twenty, full-blooded, full lipped, full
+curved, sleepy-eyed, she seemed dressed by nature for the part of the
+world and the flesh--with a hint of the devil in those deep, dark, pansy
+blue eyes that seemed now by artificial light almost black.
+
+"Well, I'll subscribe ten dollars," said Miss Pinckney; "I reckon the
+darkie babies won't be any the worse for a _crêche_ and maybe not very
+much better for it. If you could get up an institution to distil good
+manners and respect for their betters into their heads I'd give you forty.
+I'm sure I don't know what the coloured folk of Charleston are coming to,
+one of them nearly pushed me off the sidewalk the other day, bag of
+impudence! and the way they look at one in the street with that sleery
+leery what-d'-you-call-yourself-you-white-trash grin on their faces
+s'nough to raise Cain in any one's heart."
+
+"I know," replied the dark girl, "and they are getting worse; the whip is
+the only thing that as far as I can see ever made them possible, and what
+we have now is the result of your beautiful Abolitionists."
+
+"Don't call them my beautiful Abolitionists," replied the other. "I didn't
+make 'em. All the same I don't believe in whipping and never did. It's the
+whip that whipped us in the war. If white folk had treated black folk like
+Christians slavery would have been the greatest god-send to blacks. It was
+what stays are to women. But they didn't. The low down white made slavery
+impossible with his whipping and oppression and _we_ had to suffer. Well,
+we haven't ended our sufferings and if these folk go on multiplying like
+rabbits there's no knowing what we've got to suffer yet."
+
+Miss Rhett concurred and took her departure. "Now, that girl," said the
+elder lady when Frances Rhett was gone, "is just the type of the people I
+was telling her about. No idea but whipping. _She_ wouldn't have much
+mercy on a human creature black or tan _or_ white. Thick skinned. She
+didn't even see that I was telling her so to her face. Wonder what brought
+her here this hour with her _crêche_. It's just a fad. If they got up a
+charity to make alligator bait of the black babies so's to sell the
+alligator skins to buy pants with texts on them for the Hottentots it'd be
+all the same to her. Something to gad about with. I wish I'd kept that ten
+dollars in my pocket."
+
+Miss Pinckney went to bed early that night--before ten--and Phyl, who was
+free to do as she chose, sat for a while in the lower piazza watching the
+moon rising above the trees. She had a little plan in her mind, a plan
+that had only occurred to her just before the departure of Miss Pinckney
+for bed.
+
+She sat now watching the garden growing ghostly bright, the sun dial
+becoming a moon dial, the carnations touched by that stillness and mystery
+which is held only in the light of the moon and the light of the dawn.
+
+Phyl found herself sitting between two worlds. In the light of the
+northern moon in summer there is a vague rose tinge to be caught at times
+and in places when it falls full on house wall or the road on which one is
+walking. The piazza to-night had this living and warm touch. It seemed lit
+by a glorified ethereal day. A day that had never grown up and would never
+lose the charm of dawn.
+
+Yet the garden to which she would now turn her eyes shewed nothing of
+this. Night reigned there from the cherokee roses moving in the wind to
+the carnations motionless, moon stricken, deathly white.
+
+Sure that Miss Pinckney would not come down again, Phyl rose and crossed
+the garden towards the gate.
+
+She wanted to see if the trysting place behind the magnolia and the bushes
+that grew about it were still there.
+
+At the gate she paused for a moment, glancing back at the house as Juliet
+Mascarene might have done on those evenings when she had an appointment
+with her lover. Then, pushing through the bushes and past the magnolia
+trees she found herself in a little half moonlit space, a natural arbour
+through whose roof of leaves the moonlight came in quavering shafts. She
+stood for a moment absolutely still whilst her eyes accustomed themselves
+to the light. Then she began to search for the seat she guessed to be
+there, and found it. It was between an oak bole and the wall of the
+garden, and the bushes behind had grown so that their branches half
+covered it. Neglected, forsaken, unknown, perhaps, to the people now
+living in Vernons it had lingered with the fidelity of inanimate things,
+protected by the foliage of the southern garden from prying eyes.
+
+She pushed back the leaves and branches and bent them out of the way, then
+she took her seat, and as she did so several of the bent branches released
+themselves and closed half round her in a delightful embrace.
+
+From here she could see brokenly the garden and the walk leading from the
+gate, with the light of the moon now strong upon the walk. The night
+sounds of the street just beyond the wall came mixed with the stir of
+foliage as the wind from the sea pressed over the trees like the hand of a
+mesmerist inducing sleep.
+
+So it was here that Juliet Mascarene had sat with Rupert Pinckney on those
+summer nights when the world was younger, before the war. The war that had
+changed everything whilst leaving the roses untouched and the moonlight
+the same on the bird-haunted garden of Vernons.
+
+Everything was the same here in this little space of flowers and trees.
+But the lovers had vanished.
+
+"For man walketh in a vain shadow and disquieteth himself in vain." The
+words strayed across Phyl's mind brought up by recollection. "He cometh up
+and is cut down like a flower, he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never
+continueth in one stay."
+
+The trees seemed whispering it, the eternal statement that leaves the
+eternal question unanswered.
+
+The garden was talking to her, the night, the very bushes that clasped her
+in a half embrace; perfumes, moonlight, the voice of the wind, all were
+part of the spell that bound her, held her, whispered to her. It was as
+though the love letter of Juliet had led her here to show her as in a
+glass darkly the vainness of love in the vainness of life.
+
+Vainly, for as she sat watching in imagination the forms of the lost
+lovers parting there at the gate, suddenly there came upon her a stirring
+of the soul, a joyous uplifting as though wings had been given to her mind
+for one wild second raising it to the heights beyond earthly knowledge.
+
+"Love can never die."
+
+It was as though some ghostly voice had whispered this fact in her ear.
+
+Juliet was not dead nor the man she loved, changed maybe but not dead. In
+some extraordinary way she knew it as surely as though she herself had
+once been Juliet.
+
+Religion to Phyl had meant little, the Bible a book of fair promises and
+appalling threats, vague promises but quite definite threats. As a quite
+small child she had gathered the impression that she was sure to be damned
+unless she managed to convert herself into a quite different being from
+the person she knew herself to be. Death was the supreme bogey, the future
+life a thing not to be thought of if one wanted to be happy.
+
+Yet now, just as if she had been through it all, the truth came flooding
+on her like a golden sea, the truth that life never loses touch with life,
+that the body is only a momentary manifestation of the ever living
+spirit.
+
+Meeting Street, the old house so full of memories, Juliet's letters, the
+garden, they had all been stretching out arms to her, trying to tell her
+something, whispering, suggesting, and now all these vague voices had
+become clear, as though strengthened by the moonlight and the mystery of
+night.
+
+Clear as lip-spoken words came the message:
+
+"You have lived before and we say this to you, we, the things that knew
+you and loved you in a past life."
+
+A step that halted outside close to the garden gate broke the spell, the
+gate turned on its hinges shewing through its trellis work the form of a
+man. It was Pinckney just returned from some supper-party or club.
+
+Phyl caught her breath back. Suddenly, and at the sight of Pinckney,
+Prue's words of that morning entered her mind.
+
+"Miss Julie, Massa Pinckney told me tell yo' he be at de gate t'night
+same's las' night. Done you let on as I told you."
+
+And here he was, the man who had been occupying her thoughts and who was
+beginning to occupy her dreams, and here she was as though waiting for him
+by appointment.
+
+But there was much more than that. Worlds and worlds more than that, a
+whole universe of happiness undreamed of.
+
+She rose from the seat and the parted bushes rustled faintly as they
+closed behind her.
+
+Pinckney, who had just shut the gate, heard the whisper of the leaves, he
+turned and saw a figure standing half in shadow and half in moonlight. For
+a moment he was startled, fancying it a stranger, then he saw that it was
+Phyl.
+
+"Hullo," said he. "Why, Phyl, what are you doing here?"
+
+The commonplace question shattered everything like a false note in music.
+
+"Nothing," she answered. Then without a word more she ran past him and
+vanished into the house.
+
+Pinckney cast the stump of his cigar away.
+
+"What on earth is the matter with her now?" said he to himself. "What on
+earth have I done?"
+
+The word she had uttered carried half a sob with it, it might have been
+the last word of a quarrel.
+
+He stood for a moment glancing around. The wild idea had entered his mind
+that she had been there to meet some one and that his intrusion had put
+her out.
+
+But there was no one in the garden; nothing but the trees and the flowers,
+wind shaken and lit by the moon, the same placid moon that had lit the
+garden of Vernons for the lovers of whom he knew nothing except by
+hearsay, and for whom he cared nothing at all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+When Phyl awoke from sleep next morning, the brightness of the South had
+lost some of its charm.
+
+Something magical that had been forming in her mind and taking its life
+from Vernons had been shattered last night by Pinckney's commonplace
+question.
+
+This morning, looking back on yesterday, she could remember details but
+she could not recapture the essence. The exaltation that had raised her
+above and beyond herself. It was like the remembrance of a rose contrasted
+with the reality.
+
+The whole day had been working up to that moment in the little arbour,
+when her mind, tricked or led, had risen to heights beyond thought, to
+happiness beyond experience, only to be cast down from those heights by
+the voice of reality.
+
+The thing was plain enough to common sense; she had let herself be
+over-ruled by Imagination, working upon splendid material. Prue's message,
+her own likeness to Juliet, Juliet's letters, the little arbour, those and
+the magic of Vernons had worked upon her mind singly and together,
+exalting her into a soul-state utterly beyond all previous experience.
+
+It was as though she had played the part of Juliet for a day, suffered
+vaguely and enjoyed in imagination what Juliet had suffered and enjoyed in
+life, known Love as Juliet had known it--for a moment.
+
+The brutal touch of the Real coming at the supreme moment to shatter and
+shrivel everything.
+
+And the strange thing was that she had no regrets.
+
+Looking back on yesterday, the things that had happened seemed of little
+interest. Sleep seemed to have put an Atlantic ocean between her and
+them.
+
+Coming down to breakfast she found Pinckney just coming in from the
+garden; he said nothing about the incident of the night before, nor did
+she, there were other things to talk about. Seth, one of the darkies, had
+been 'kicking up shines,' he had given impudence to Miss Pinckney that
+morning. Impudence to Miss Pinckney! You can scarcely conceive the meaning
+of that statement without a personal knowledge of Miss Pinckney, and a
+full understanding of the magic of her rule.
+
+Seth was, even now, packing up the quaint contraptions he called his
+luggage, and old Darius, the coloured odd job man, was getting a barrow
+out of the tool-house to wheel the said luggage to Seth's grandmother's
+house, somewhere in the negro quarters of the town. The whole affair of
+the impudence and dismissal had not taken two minutes, but the effects
+were widespread and lasting. Dinah was weeping, the kitchen in confusion;
+one might have thought a death had occurred in the house, and Miss
+Pinckney presiding at the breakfast table was voluble and silent by
+turns.
+
+"Never mind," said Pinckney with all the light-heartedness of a man
+towards domestic affairs. "Seth's not the only nigger in Charleston."
+
+"I'm not bothering about his going," replied Miss Pinckney. "He was all
+thumbs and of no manner of use but to make work; what upsets me is the way
+he hid his nature. Time and again I've been good to that boy. He looked
+all black grin and frizzled head, nothing bad in him you'd say--and then!
+It's like opening a cupboard and finding a toad, and there's Dinah going
+on like a fool; she's crying because he's going, not because he gave me
+impudence. Rachel's the same, and I'm just going now to the kitchen to
+give them a talking to all round."
+
+Off she went.
+
+"I know what that means," said Pinckney. "It's only once in a couple of
+years that there's any trouble with servants and then--oh, my! You see
+Aunt Maria is not the same as other people because she loves every one
+dearly, and looks on the servants as part of the family. I expect she
+loves that black imp Seth, for all his faults, and that's what makes her
+so upset."
+
+"Same as I was about Rafferty," said Phyl with a little laugh.
+
+Pinckney laughed also and their eyes met. Just like a veil swept aside,
+something indefinable that had lain between them, some awkwardness
+arising, maybe, from the Rafferty incident, vanished in that moment.
+
+Phyl had been drawing steadily towards him lately, till, unknown to her,
+he had entered into the little romance of Juliet, so much so that if last
+night, at that magical moment when he met her on entering the gate--if at
+that moment he had taken her in his arms and kissed her, Love might have
+been born instantly from his embrace.
+
+But the psychological moment had passed, a crisis unknown to him and
+almost unknown to her.
+
+And now, as if to seal the triumph of the commonplace, suddenly, the vague
+reservation that had lain between them, disappeared.
+
+"Do you know," said he, "you taught me a lesson that day, a lesson every
+man ought to be taught before he leaves college."
+
+"What was that?" asked Phyl.
+
+"Never to interfere in household affairs. Of course Rafferty wasn't
+exactly a household affair because he belonged mostly to the stable, still
+he was your affair more than mine. Household affairs belong to women, and
+men ought to leave them alone."
+
+"Maybe you're right," said Phyl, "but all the same I was wrong. Do you
+know I've never apologised for what I said."
+
+"What did you say?" asked he with an artless air of having forgotten.
+
+"Oh, I said--things, and--I apologise."
+
+"And I said--things, and I apologise--come on, let's go out. I have no
+business this morning and I'd like to show you the town--if you'd care to
+come."
+
+"What about Miss Pinckney?" asked Phyl.
+
+"Oh, she's all right," he replied. "The Seth trouble will keep her busy
+till lunch time and I'll leave word we've gone out for a walk."
+
+Phyl ran upstairs and put on her hat. As they were passing through the
+garden the thought came to her just for a moment to show him the little
+arbour; then something stopped her, a feeling that this humble little
+secret was not hers to give away, and a feeling that Pinckney wouldn't
+care. Dead lovers vanished so long and their affairs would have little
+interest for his practical mind.
+
+The morning was warmer even than yesterday. The joyous, elusive,
+intoxicating spirit of the Southern spring was everywhere, the air seemed
+filled with the dust of sunbeams, filled with fragrance and lazy sounds.
+The very business of the street seemed part of a great universal gaiety
+over which the sky heat hazy beyond the Battery rose in a dome of deep,
+sublime tranquil blue.
+
+They stopped to inspect the old slave market.
+
+Then the remains of the building that had once been the old Planters Hotel
+held Phyl like a wizard whilst Pinckney explained its history. Here in the
+old days the travelling carriages had drawn up, piled with the luggage of
+fine folk on a visit to Charleston on business or pleasure. The Planters
+was known all through the Georgias and Virginia, all through the States in
+the days when General Washington and John C. Calhoun were living figures.
+
+The ghost of the place held Phyl's imagination. Just as Meeting Street
+seemed filled with friendly old memories on her first entering it, so did
+the air around the ruins of the "Planters."
+
+Then having paused to admire the gouty pillars of St. Michael's they went
+into the church.
+
+The silence of an empty church is a thing apart from all other silences in
+the world. Deeper, more complete, more filled with voices.
+
+As they were entering a negro caretaker engaged in dusting and tidying let
+something fall, and as the silence closed in on the faint echo that
+followed the sound they stopped, just by the font to look around them.
+Here the spirit of spring was not. The shafts of sunlight through the
+windows lit the old fashioned box pews, the double decked pulpit, and the
+font crowned with the dove with the light of long ago. Sunday mornings of
+the old time assuredly had found sanctuary here and the old congregations
+had not yet quite departed.
+
+The occasional noise of the caretaker as he moved from pew to pew scarcely
+disturbed the tranquillity, the scene was set beyond the reach of the
+sounds and daily affairs of this world, and the actors held in a medium
+unshakable as that which holds the ghostly life of bees in amber and birds
+in marqueterie.
+
+"That was George Washington's pew," whispered Pinckney, "at least the one
+he sat in once. That's the old Pinckney pew, belonged to Bures--other
+people sit there now. This is our pew--Vernons. The Mascarenes had it in
+the old days, of course."
+
+Phyl looked at the pew where Juliet Mascarene had sat often enough, no
+doubt, whilst the preacher had preached on the vanity of life, on the
+delusions of the world and the shortness of Time.
+
+Many an eloquent divine had stood in the pulpit of St. Michael's, but none
+have ever preached a sermon so poignant, so real, so searching as that
+which the old church preaches to those who care to hear.
+
+They turned to go.
+
+Outside Phyl was silent and Pinckney seemed occupied by thoughts of his
+own. They had got to that pleasant stage of intimacy where conversation
+can be dropped without awkwardness and picked up again haphazard, but you
+cannot be silent long in the streets of Charleston on a spring day. They
+visited the market-place and inspected the buzzards and then, somehow,
+without knowing it, they drifted on to the water side. Here where the
+docks lie deserted and the green water washes the weed grown and rotting
+timbers of wharves they took their seats on a baulk of timber to rest and
+contemplate things.
+
+"There used to be ships here once," said he. "Lots of ships--but that was
+before the war."
+
+He was silent and Phyl glanced sideways at him, wondering what was in his
+mind. She soon found out. A struggle was going on between his two selves,
+his business self that demanded up-to-dateness, bustle, and the energetic
+conduct of affairs, and his other self that was content to let things lie,
+to see Charleston just as she was, unspoiled by the thing we call Business
+Prosperity. It was a battle between the South and the North in him.
+
+He talked it out to her. Went into details, pointed to Galveston and New
+Orleans, those greedy sea mouths that swallow the goods of the world and
+give out cotton, whilst Charleston lay idle, her wharves almost deserted,
+her storehouses empty.
+
+He spoke almost vehemently, spoke as a business man speaks of wasted
+chances and things neglected. Then, when he had finished, the girl put in
+her word.
+
+"Well," said she, "it may be so but I don't want it any different from
+what it is."
+
+Pinckney laughed, the laugh of a man who is confessing a weakness.
+
+"I don't know that I do either," said he.
+
+It was rank blasphemy against Business. At the club you would often find
+him bemoaning the business decay of the city he loved, but here, sitting
+by the girl on the forsaken wharf, in the sunshine, the feeling suddenly
+came to him that there was something here that business would drive away.
+Something better than Prosperity.
+
+It was as though he were looking at things for a moment through her eyes.
+
+They came back through the sunlit streets to find Miss Pinckney recovered
+from the Seth business, and after luncheon that day, assisted by Dinah and
+the directions of Miss Pinckney, Phyl's hair "went up."
+
+"It's beautiful," said the old lady, as she contemplated the result, "and
+more like Juliet than ever. Take the glass and look at yourself."
+
+Phyl did.
+
+She did not see the beauty but she saw the change. Her childhood had
+vanished as though some breath had blown it away in the magic mirror.
+
+PART III
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+In a fortnight Phyl had adjusted herself to her new environment so
+completely that to use Pinckney's expression, she might have been bred and
+born in Charleston.
+
+Custom and acquaintanceship had begun to dull without destroying the charm
+of the place and the ghostly something, the something that during the
+first two days had seemed to haunt Vernons, the something indefinable she
+had called "It" had withdrawn.
+
+The spell, whatever it was, had been broken that night in the garden, when
+Pinckney's commonplace remark had shattered the dream-state into which she
+had worked herself with the assistance of Prue, Juliet's letters, the
+little secret arbour and the moonlight of the South.
+
+One morning, coming down to breakfast, she found Miss Pinckney in
+agitation, an open telegram in one hand and a feather duster in the
+other.
+
+It was one of the early morning habits of Miss Pinckney to range the house
+superintending things with a feather duster in hand, not so much for use
+as for the purpose of encouraging others. She was in the breakfast room
+now dusting spasmodically things that did not require dusting and talking
+all the time, pausing every now and then to have another glance at the
+telegram whilst Richard Pinckney, unable to get a word in, sat on a chair,
+and Jim, the little coloured page, who had brought in the urn, stood by
+listening and admiring.
+
+"Forty miles from here and ten from a railway station," said Miss
+Pinckney, "and how am I to get there?"
+
+"Automobile," said Pinckney.
+
+It was evidently not his first suggestion as to this means of locomotion,
+for the suggestion was received without an outburst, neither resented nor
+assented to in fact. They took their seats at table and then it all came
+out.
+
+Colonel Seth Grangerson of Grangerson House, Grangerville, S. Carolina,
+was ill. Miss Pinckney was his nearest relative, the nearest at least with
+whom he was not fighting, and he had wired to her, or rather his son had
+wired to her, to come at once.
+
+"As if I were a bird," said the old lady. Grangerville was a backwater
+place, badly served by the railway, and it would take the best part of a
+day to get there by ordinary means.
+
+"A car will get you there inside a couple of hours," said Pinckney.
+
+"As if he couldn't have sent for Susan Revenall," went on she as though
+oblivious to the suggestion, "but I suppose he's fought with them again. I
+patched up a peace between them last midsummer, but I suppose the patches
+didn't stick; he's fought with the Revenalls, he's fought with the
+Calhouns, he's fought with the Beauregards, he's fought with the
+Tredegars--that man would fight with his own front teeth if he couldn't
+get anything better to fight with, and now he's dying I expect he reckons
+to have a fight with me, just to finish off with. He killed his poor wife,
+and Dick Grangerson would never have gone off and got drowned only for
+him--Oh, he's not so bad," turning to Phyl, "he's good enough only for
+that--will fight."
+
+"Too much pep," said Pinckney.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know what it is. They're the queerest lot the Almighty
+ever put feet on, and I don't mind saying it, even though they are
+relatives." Turning to Phyl. "I suppose you know, least I suppose you
+think, that the Civil War was fought for the emancipation of the darkies
+and that they _were_ emancipated."
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Well, they weren't--at least not at Grangersons. While the Colonel's
+father was fighting in the Civil War, his first wife, she was a Dawson,
+kept things going at home, and after the war was over and he was back he
+took up the rule again. Emancipation--no one would have dared to say the
+word to him, he'd have killed you with a look. The North never beat
+Grangerson, it beat Davis and one man and another but it never beat
+Grangerson, he carried on after the war just as he carried on before, told
+the darkies that emancipation was nigger talk and they believed him.
+People came round telling them they were free, and all they got was broken
+heads. They were a very tetchy lot, those niggers, are still what are left
+of them. You see, they've always been proud of being Grangerson's niggers,
+that's the sort of man he is, able to make them feel like that."
+
+"Silas helps to carry on the place, doesn't he?" asked Pinckney.
+
+"Yes, and just in the same tradition, only he's finding it doesn't work, I
+suspect. You see, the old darkies are all right, but when he's forced to
+get new labour he has to get the new darkies and they're all wrong, and he
+thrashes them and they run away. They never take the law of him either. I
+reckon when they get clear of Silas they don't stop running till they get
+to Galveston."
+
+They talked of other things and then, breakfast over, Miss Pinckney turned
+to Richard.
+
+"Well, what about that automobile?"
+
+"I'll have one at the door for you at ten," said he.
+
+She turned to Phyl.
+
+"You'd better go with me--if you'd like to; you'd be lonely here all by
+yourself, and you may as well see Grangersons whilst the old man's there,
+though maybe he'll be gone before we arrive. We may be there for a couple
+of days, so you'd better take enough things."
+
+Then she went off to dress herself for the journey, and an hour later she
+appeared veiled and apparelled, Dick following her with the luggage, a
+bandbox and a bag of other days.
+
+She got into the big touring car without a word. Phyl followed her and
+Pinckney tucked the rug round their knees.
+
+"You've got the most careful driver in Charleston," said he, "and he knows
+the road."
+
+Miss Pinckney nodded.
+
+She was flying straight in the face of her pet prejudice. She was not in
+the least afraid of a break down or an overset. An accident that did not
+rob her of life or limb would indeed have been an opportunity for saying
+"I told you so." She was chiefly afraid of running over things.
+
+As Pinckney was closing the door on them who should appear but Seth--Seth
+in a striped sleeved jacket, all grin and frizzled head and bearing a
+bunch of flowers in his hand. He had not been dismissed after all. When
+Miss Pinckney had gone into the kitchen to pay him his wages he had
+carried on so that she forgave him. The flowers--her own flowers just
+picked from the garden--were an offering, not to propitiate but to
+please.
+
+Pinckney laughed, but Miss Pinckney as she took the bouquet scarcely
+noticed either him or Seth, her mind was busy with something else.
+
+She leaned over towards the chauffeur.
+
+"Mind you don't run over any chickens," said she.
+
+It was a gorgeous morning, with the sea mists blowing away on the sea
+wind, swamp-land and river and bayou showing streets and ponds of sapphire
+through the vanishing haze.
+
+Phyl was in high spirits; the tune of Camptown Races, which a street boy
+had been whistling as they started, pursued her. Miss Pinckney, dumb
+through the danger zone where chickens and dogs and nigger children might
+be run over, found her voice in the open country.
+
+The bunch of flowers presented to her by Seth and which she was holding on
+her lap started her off.
+
+"I hope it is not a warning," said she; "wouldn't be a bit surprised to
+find Seth Grangerson in his coffin waiting for the flowers to be put on
+him; what put it in to the darkey's head to give me them! I don't know,
+I'm sure, same thing I suppose that put it into his head to give me
+impudence."
+
+"You've taken him back," said Phyl.
+
+"Well, I suppose I have," said the other in a resigned voice, "and likely
+to pay for my foolishness."
+
+Pinckney had said that it was only a two hours' run from Charleston to
+Grangerville, but he had reckoned without taking into consideration the
+badness of some of the roads, and the intricacies of the way, for it was
+after one o'clock when they reached the little town beyond which, a mile
+to the West, lay the Colonel's house.
+
+Grangerville lies on the border of Clarendon county, a tiny place that yet
+supports a newspaper of its own, the _Grangerville Courier_. The _Courier_
+office, the barber's shop and the hotel are the chief places in
+Grangerville, and yellow dogs and black children seem the bulk of the
+population, at least of a warm afternoon, when drowsiness holds the place
+in her keeping, and the light lies broad and steadfast and golden upon the
+cotton fields, and the fields of Indian corn, and the foliage of the woods
+that spread to southward, enchanted woods, fading away into an enchanted
+world of haze and sun and silence.
+
+When the great Southern moon rises above the cotton fields, Romance
+touches even Grangerville itself, the baying of the yellow dog, darkey
+voices, the distant plunking of a banjo, the owl in the trees--all are the
+same as of old--and the houses are the same, nearly, and the people, and
+it is hard to believe that over there to the North the locomotives of the
+Atlantic Coast railway are whistling down the night, that men are able to
+talk to one another at a distance of a thousand miles, fly like birds,
+live like fish, and perpetuate their shadows in the "movies."
+
+Grangersons lay a mile beyond the little town, a solidly built mansion set
+far back from the road, and approached by an avenue of cypress. As they
+drew up before the pillared piazza, upon which the front door opened, from
+the doorway, wide open this warm day, appeared an old gentleman.
+
+A very fine looking old man he was. His face, with its predominant nose,
+long white moustache and firm cleft chin, was of that resolute and
+obstinate type which seems a legacy of the Roman Empire, whose legionaries
+left much more behind them in Gaul and Britain than Trajan arches and
+Roman roads. He was dressed in light grey tweeds, his linen was
+immaculate--youthful and still a beau in point of dress, and bearing
+himself erect with the aid of a walking stick, a crutch handled stick of
+clouded malacca, Colonel Seth Grangerson, for he it was, had come to his
+front door, drawn by the sound of the one thing he detested more than
+anything in life, a motor car.
+
+"Why, Lord! He's not even in bed," cried the outraged Miss Pinckney, who
+recognised him at once. "All this journey and he up and about--it beats
+Seth and his impudence!"
+
+The Colonel, whose age dimmed eyes saw nothing but the automobile, came
+down the steps, panama hat in hand, courtly, freezing, yet ready to
+explode on the least provocation. Within touch of the car he recognised
+the chief occupant.
+
+"Why, God bless my soul," cried he, "it's Maria Pinckney."
+
+"Yes, it's me," said the lady, "and I expected to find you in bed or
+worse, and here you are up. Silas sent me a telegram."
+
+"He's a fool," cut in the old gentleman. "I had one of my old attacks last
+night, and I told him I'd be up and about in the morning--and I am. Good
+Gad! Maria, you're the last person in the world I'd ever have expected to
+see in one of these outrageous things." He had opened the door of the car
+and was presenting his arm to the lady.
+
+"You can shut the door," said Miss Pinckney. "I'm not getting out. The
+thing's not more outrageous than your getting up like that right after an
+attack and dragging me a hundred miles from Charleston over hill and
+dale--I'm not getting out, I'm going right back--right back to
+Charleston."
+
+The Colonel turned his head and called to a darkey that had appeared at
+the front door.
+
+"Take the luggage in," said he. Miss Pinckney got out of the car despite
+herself, half laughing, half angry, and taking the gallantly proffered arm
+found herself being led up the steps of Grangersons, pausing half way up
+to introduce Phyl, whom she had completely forgotten till now.
+
+The Colonel, like his son Silas, as will presently be seen, had a direct
+way with women; the Grangersons had pretty nearly always fallen in love at
+sight and run away with their wives. Colonel Seth's father had done this,
+meeting, marrying and fascinating the beautiful Maria Tredegar, and
+carrying her off under his arm like a hypnotised fowl, and from under the
+noses of half a dozen more eligible suitors, just as now, the Colonel was
+carrying Maria Pinckney off into his house half against her will. Phyl
+following them, gazed round at the fine old oak panelled hall, from which
+they were led into the drawing room, a room not unlike the drawing room at
+Vernons, but larger and giving a view of the garden where the oleanders
+and cherokee money and the crescent leaves of the blue gum trees were
+moving in the wind. Colonel Seth, despite the war, had plenty of roses and
+Grangersons was kept up in the old style. Just as in Nuremberg and
+Vittoria we see mediæval cities preserved, so to speak, under glass, so at
+Grangersons one found the old Plantation, house and all, miraculously
+intact, living, almost, one might say, breathing.
+
+The price of cotton did not matter much to the Colonel, nor the price of
+haulage. This son of the Southerner who had refused to be beaten by the
+North in the war, cared for nothing much beyond the ring of sky that made
+his horizon. Twice a year he made a visit to Charleston, driving in his
+own carriage, occasionally he visited Richmond or Durham, where he had an
+interest in tobacco; New York he had never seen. He loathed railways and
+automobiles, mainly, perhaps, because they were inventions of the North,
+that is to say the devil. He had a devilish hatred of the North. Not of
+Northerners, but just of the North.
+
+The word North set his teeth on edge. It did not matter to him that
+Charleston was picking up some prosperity in the way of phosphates, or
+that Chattanooga was smelting ore into money, or that industrial
+prosperity was abroad in the land; he was old enough to have a
+recollection of old days, and from the North had come the chilly blast
+that had blown away that age.
+
+A servant brought in cake and wine to stay the travellers till dinner
+time, refreshment that Miss Pinckney positively refused at first.
+
+"You will stay the night," said the Colonel, as he helped her, "and Sarah
+will show you to your rooms when we have had a word together."
+
+Miss Pinckney, sipping her wine, made no reply, then placing the scarcely
+touched glass on the table and with her bonnet strings thrown back, she
+turned to the Colonel.
+
+"Do you see the likeness?" said she.
+
+"What likeness?" asked the old gentleman.
+
+"Why, God bless my soul, the likeness to Juliet Mascarene. Phyl, turn your
+face to the light."
+
+The Colonel, searching in his waistcoat pocket, found a pair of folding
+glasses and put them on.
+
+"She gets it from her mother's side," said Miss Pinckney, "the Lord knows
+how it is these things happen, but it's Juliet, isn't it?"
+
+The Colonel removed his glasses, wiped them with his handkerchief, and
+returned them to his pocket.
+
+"It is," said he. Then in the fine old fashion he turned to the girl,
+raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.
+
+"Phyl," said Miss Pinckney, "would not you like to have a look at the
+garden whilst we have a chat? Old people's talk isn't of much interest to
+young people."
+
+"Old people," cried the warrior. "There are no old people in this room."
+He made for the door and opened it for Phyl, then he accompanied her into
+the hall, where at the still open door he pointed the way to the garden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Outside Phyl stood for a moment to breathe the warm scented air and look
+around her.
+
+To be treated like a child by any other person than Maria Pinckney would
+have incensed her, all the same to be told to do a thing because it was
+good for her, or because it was a pleasant thing to do, in the teller's
+opinion, was an almost certain way of making her do the exact opposite.
+
+The garden did not attract her, the place did.
+
+That cypress avenue with the sun upon it, that broad sweep of drive in
+front of the house, the distant peeps of country between trees and the
+languorous lazy atmosphere of the perfect day fascinated her mind. She
+came along the house front to the right, and found herself at the gate of
+the stable yard.
+
+The stable yard of Grangersons was an immense flagged quadrangle bounded
+on the right, counting from the point of entrance, by the kitchen
+premises.
+
+There was stable room for forty horses, coach-house accommodation for a
+dozen or more carriages.
+
+The car had been run into one of the coach-houses and the yard stood
+empty, sunlit, silent, save for the voices of the pigeons wheeling in the
+air, or strutting on the roof of the great barn adjoining the stables.
+
+One of the stable doors was open and as Phyl crossed the yard a young man
+appeared at the open door, shaded his eyes and looked at her. Then he came
+forward. It was Silas Grangerson, and Phyl thought he was the handsomest
+and most graceful person she had ever seen in her life.
+
+Silas was a shade over six feet in height, dark, straight, slim yet
+perfectly proportioned; his face was extraordinary, the most vivid thing
+one would meet in a year's journey, and with a daring, and at times,
+almost a mad look unforgettable when once glimpsed. Like the Colonel and
+like his ancestors Silas had a direct way with women.
+
+"Hallo," said he, with the sunny smile of old acquaintanceship, "where
+have _you_ sprung from?"
+
+Phyl was startled for a moment, then almost instantly she came in touch
+with the vein and mood and mind of the other and laughed.
+
+"I came with Miss Pinckney," said she.
+
+"You're not from Charleston?"
+
+"Yes, indeed I am."
+
+"But where do you live in Charleston? I've never seen you and I know
+every--besides you don't look as if you belonged to Charleston--I don't
+believe you've come from there."
+
+"Then where do you think I've come from?"
+
+"I don't know," said Silas laughing, "but it doesn't matter as long as
+you're here, does it? 'Scuse my fooling, won't you--I wouldn't with a
+stranger, but you don't seem a stranger somehow--though I don't know your
+name."
+
+"Phylice Berknowles," said Phyl, glancing up at him and half wondering how
+it was that, despite his good looks, his manhood, and their total
+unacquaintanceship, she felt as little constrained in his presence as
+though he were a boy.
+
+"And my name is Silas Grangerson. Say, is Maria Pinckney in the house with
+father?"
+
+"She is."
+
+"Talking over old times, I s'pose?" said Silas.
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"I can hear them. It's always the same when they get together--and I
+suppose you got sick of it and came out?"
+
+"No, they put me out--asked me wouldn't I like to look at the garden."
+
+Already she had banded herself with him in mild opposition to the elders.
+
+"Great--Jerusalem. They're just like a pair of old horses wanting to be
+left quiet and rub their nose-bags together. Look at the garden! I can
+hear them--come on and look at the horses."
+
+He led the way to a loose box and opened the upper door.
+
+"That's Flying Fox, she's mine, the fastest trotter in the Carolinas--you
+know anything about horses?"
+
+"Rather!"
+
+"I thought you did, somehow. Mind! she doesn't take to strangers. Mind!
+she bites like an alligator."
+
+"Not me," said Phyl, fondling the lovely but fleering-eyed head protruding
+above the lower door.
+
+"So she doesn't," said Silas admiringly, "she's taken to you--well, I
+don't blame her. Here's John Barleycorn," opening another door, "own
+brother to the Fox, he's Pap's; he's a bolter, and kicks like a duck gun.
+She's got all her vice at one end of her and he at the other, match pair."
+He whistled between his teeth as he put up the bars, then he shewed other
+horses, Phyl watching his every movement, and wondering what it was that
+gave pleasure to her in watching. Silas moved, or seemed to move,
+absolutely without effort, and his slim brown hands touched everything
+delicately, as though they were touching fragile porcelain, yet those same
+hands could bend an iron bar, or rein in John Barleycorn even when the bit
+was between the said J. B.'s teeth.
+
+"That's the horses," said he, flinging open a coach-house door, "and
+that's the shandrydan the governor still drives in when he goes to
+Charleston. Look at it. It was made in the forties, and you should see it
+with a darkey on the box and Pap inside, and all his luggage behind, and
+he going off to Charleston, and the nigger children running after it."
+
+Phyl inspected the mustard-yellow vehicle. Then he closed the door on it,
+put up the bar, and, the business of showing things over, did a little
+double shuffle as though Phyl were not present, or as though she were a
+boy friend and not a strange young woman.
+
+"Say, do you like poetry?" said he, breaking off and seeming suddenly to
+remember her presence.
+
+"No," said Phyl. "At least--"
+
+"Well, here's some.
+
+  "'There was an old hen and she had a wooden leg, She went to the barn
+  and she laid a wooden egg, She laid it right down by the barn--don't
+  you think.'"
+
+"Well?" said she, laughing.
+
+"'It's just about time for another little drink--' some sense in poetry
+like that, isn't there? But all the drinks are in the house and I don't
+want to go in. I'm hiding from Pap. Last night when he was ratty with
+rheumatism, he let out at me, saying the young people weren't any good,
+saying Maria Pinckney was the only person he knew with sense in her head,
+called me a name because I poured him out a dose of liniment instead of
+medicine, by mistake--though he didn't swallow it--and wished Maria was
+here. So I just sent Jake, the page boy, off with a wire to her; didn't
+tell any one, just sent it. Come on and look at the garden--you've got to
+look at the garden, you know."
+
+He led the way past the barn to a farmyard, where hens were clucking and
+scratching and scraping in the sunshine; the deep double bass grunting of
+pigs came from the sties, by the low wall across which one could see the
+country stretching far away, the cotton fields, the woods, all hazed by
+the warmth of the afternoon.
+
+"Let's sit down and look at the garden," said he, pointing to a huge log
+by the near wall--"and aren't the convolvuluses beautiful?"
+
+"Beautiful," said Phyl, falling into the vein of the other. "And listen to
+the roses."
+
+"They grunt like that because it's near dinner time--they're pretty much
+like humans." He took a cigarette case from his pocket and a cigarette
+from the case.
+
+"You don't mind smoking, do you?"
+
+"Not a bit."
+
+"Have one?"
+
+"I daren't."
+
+"Maria Pinckney won't know."
+
+"It's not her--I smoked one once and it made me sick."
+
+"Well, try another--I won't look if you are."
+
+"They'll--she'll smell it."
+
+"Not she, you can eat some parsley, that takes the smell away."
+
+"Oh, I don't mind telling her--it's only--well, there."
+
+She took a cigarette and he lit it for her.
+
+"Blow it through your nose," he commanded, "that's the way. Now let's
+pretend we're two old darkies sitting on a log, you push against me and
+I'll push against you, you're Jim and I'm Uncle Joseph. 'What yo' crowding
+me for, Jim,'" he squeezed up gently against her, and Phyl jumped to her
+feet.
+
+He glanced up at her, sideways, laughing, and for the life of her she
+could not be angry.
+
+"Don't you think we'd better go and look at the garden?" said she.
+
+"In a minute, sit down again. I won't knock against you. It was only my
+fun. We'll pretend I'm Pap, and you're Maria Pinckney, if you like. You've
+let your cigarette go out."
+
+"So I have."
+
+"You can light it from mine."
+
+Phyl hesitated and was lost.
+
+It was the nearest thing to a kiss, and as she drew back with the lighted
+cigarette between her lips, she felt a not unpleasant sense of wickedness,
+such as the virtuous boy feels when led to adventure by the bad boy.
+Sitting on a log, smoking cigarettes, talking familiarly with a stranger,
+taking a light from him in such a fashion with her face so close to his
+that his eyes-- They smoked in silence for a moment.
+
+Then Silas spoke:
+
+"Do you ever feel lonesome?" said he.
+
+"Awfully--sometimes."
+
+"So do I."
+
+Silence for a moment. Then:
+
+"I go off to Charleston when I feel like that--once in a fortnight or
+so--Where do you live in Charleston?"
+
+"I live with Miss Pinckney--I thought you knew."
+
+"You didn't say that. You only said you came with her."
+
+"Well, I live with her at Vernons. I'm Irish, y' know. My--my father died
+in Charleston, and I came from Ireland to live with Miss Pinckney. Mr.
+Richard Pinckney is my guardian."
+
+"Your which? Dick Pinckney your guardian! Why, he's not older than I
+am--that fellow your guardian--why, he wears a flannel petticoat."
+
+"He doesn't," cried Phyl, flinging away the cigarette, which had become
+noxious, and roused to sudden anger by the slighting tone of the other.
+"What do you mean by saying such a thing?"
+
+"Oh, I only meant that he's too awfully proper for this life. He goes to
+Charleston races, but never backs a horse, scarcely, and one Mint Julep
+would make him see two crows. He's a sort of distant relation of ours."
+
+Phyl was silent. She resented his criticism of her friend, and just in
+this moment the something mad and harum scarum in the character of Silas
+seemed shown up to her with electrical effect. Criticism is a most
+dangerous thing to indulge in, unless anonymously in the pages of a
+journal, for the right to criticise has to be made good in the mind of the
+audience, unless the audience is hostile to the criticised.
+
+Then she said: "I don't know anything about Mint Juleps or race courses,
+but I do know that Mr. Pinckney has been--is--is my friend, and I'd rather
+not talk about him, if you please."
+
+"Now, you're huffed," cried Silas exultingly, as though he had scored a
+point at some game.
+
+"I'm not."
+
+"You are--you've flushed."
+
+Phyl turned pale, a deadly sign.
+
+"I'd never dream of getting out of temper with _you_," said she.
+
+It was his turn to flush. You might have struck Silas Grangerson without
+upsetting his balance, but the slightest suspicion of a sneer raised all
+the devil in him. Had Phyl been a man he would have knocked him off the
+log. He cast the stump of his cigarette on the ground and pounded it with
+his heel. Had there been anything breakable within reach he would have
+broken it. Her anger with him vanished and she laughed.
+
+"You've flushed now," said she.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+When they came round to the front of the house they found Colonel
+Grangerson and Miss Pinckney coming down the steps.
+
+They were going to the garden in search of Phyl.
+
+"We've been looking at the horses," said Silas, after he had greeted Miss
+Pinckney. "No, sir, I did not leave any of the doors open, but I've been
+looking for Sam with a blacksnake whip to liven him up. He left the grey
+without grooming after she was brought in this morning, and I was rubbing
+her down myself when this lady came into the yard."
+
+"I'll skin that nigger," cried the Colonel.
+
+"I reckon I'll save you that trouble, sir," replied the son, as they
+turned garden-wards.
+
+Silas had little use for "r's" and said "suh" for "sir" and "wah" for
+"war." He was also quite a different person in the presence of his father
+from what he was when alone or in the presence of strangers.
+
+In the presence of his father, past generations spoke in his every word
+and action, he became sedate, deferential, leisurely. It was not fear of
+the elder man that caused this change, it was reflection from him.
+
+The shadows were long in the garden, and away across the pastures,
+glimpsed beyond the cypress hedge and bordering the cotton fields, the
+pond-shadows cast by the live oaks at noon had become river shadows,
+flowing eastward; the murmur of bees filled the air like a haze of sound,
+and here and there as they passed a bush coloured flowers detached
+themselves and became butterflies.
+
+They sat down on a great old stone bench lichened and sun warmed to enjoy
+the view, and the Colonel talked of tobacco and politics and cotton,
+including them all in his conversation in the grand patriarchal manner.
+
+Phyl understanding little, and half drowsed by the warmth and the buzzing
+of the bees and the voice of the speaker, had given herself up to that
+lazy condition of mind which is the next best thing to sleep, when she was
+suddenly aroused. She was seated between Miss Pinckney and Silas. Silas
+had pinched her little finger.
+
+She snatched her hand away, and turned towards him. He was looking away
+over the pastures; his profile showed nothing but its absolute
+correctness. Miss Pinckney had noticed nothing, and the Colonel, who had
+finished with cotton, looking at his watch, declared that it was close on
+dinner time.
+
+After supper that night, Phyl found herself in the garden. Silas had not
+appeared at supper; the Colonel had brought down a book of old
+photographs, photographs of people and places dead or changed, and he and
+Miss Pinckney became so absorbed in them that they had little thought for
+the girl.
+
+She went out to look at the moon, and it was worth looking at, rising like
+a honey coloured shield above the belt of the eastern woods.
+
+The whole world was filled with the moonlight, warm tinted, and ghostly as
+the light of vanished days, white moths were flitting above the bushes,
+and on the almost windless air the voice of an owl came across the cotton
+fields.
+
+Phyl reached the seat where they had all sat that afternoon. It was still
+warm from the all-day sunshine, and she sat down to rest and listen.
+
+The owl had ceased crying, and through the league wide silence faint
+sounds far and near told of the life moving and thrilling beneath the
+night; the boom of a beetle, voices from the distant road, and now and
+then a whisper of wind rising and dying out across the garden and the
+trees.
+
+A faint sound came from behind the seat, and before Phyl could turn two
+warm hands covered her eyes.
+
+She plucked them away and stood up.
+
+"I _wish_ you wouldn't do things like that," she cried. "How _dare_ you?"
+
+"I couldn't help it," replied the other, "you looked so comfortable. I
+didn't mean to startle you. I thought you must have heard me coming across
+the grass."
+
+"I didn't--and you shouldn't have done it."
+
+"Well, I'm sorry. There, I've apologised, make friends."
+
+"There is nothing to make friends about," she replied stiffly. "No, I
+don't want to shake hands--I'm not angry, let us go into the house."
+
+"Don't," said Silas imploringly. "He and she are sitting over that old
+album, comparing notes. I saw them through the window, that's why I came
+to look for you in the garden. Do you know, I believe the Governor was
+gone once on Maria, years ago, but they never got married. He married my
+mother instead."
+
+Phyl forgot her resentment.
+
+The faint idea that Colonel Grangerson and Maria Pinckney had perhaps been
+more than friends in long gone days, had strayed across her mind, to be
+dismissed as a fancy. It interested her to find Silas confirming it.
+
+"Of course, I can't say for certain," he went on, lighting a cigarette. "I
+only judge by the way they go on when they're together, and the way he
+talks of her. Say, do you ever want to grow old?"
+
+"No, I don't--ever."
+
+"Neither do I. I hope I'll be kicked to death by a horse, or drowned or
+shot before I'm forty. I don't want to die in any beds with doctors round
+me. I reckon if I'm ever like that I'll drink the liniment instead of the
+medicine--same as I nearly drenched Pap--and go to heaven with a red label
+for my ticket. Sit down for a while and let's talk."
+
+"No, I don't care to sit down."
+
+"I won't touch you. I promise."
+
+Phyl hesitated a moment and then sat down. She was not afraid of Silas in
+the least, but his tricks of an overgrown boy did not please her; it
+seemed to her sometimes as though his irresponsibility was less an
+inheritance from youth, than from some ancestor ill-balanced to the point
+of craziness. If any other man of his age had acted and spoken to her as
+he had done she would have smacked his face, but Silas was Silas, and his
+good looks and seeming innocence, and something really charming that lay
+away at the back of his character and gave colour to this personality,
+managed, somehow, to condone his queerness of conduct.
+
+All the same she sat a foot away from him on the seat, and kept her hands
+folded on her lap.
+
+Silas sat for a while smoking in silence, then he spoke.
+
+"Where's this you said you came from?"
+
+"Ireland."
+
+"You don't talk like a Paddy a bit."
+
+"Don't I?"
+
+"Not a bit, nor look like one."
+
+"Have you seen many Irish people?"
+
+"No, mostly in pictures--comic papers, you know, like _Puck_."
+
+"I think it's a shame," broke out Phyl. "People are always making fun of
+the Irish, drawing them like monkeys with great upper lips--but it's only
+ignorant people who never travel who think of them like that."
+
+"That's so, I expect," replied Silas, either unconscious of the dig at
+himself or undesirous of a quarrel, "and the next few dollars I have to
+spare I'll go to Ireland. I'm crazy now to see it."
+
+"What's made you crazy to see it?"
+
+"Because it's the place you come from."
+
+Phyl sniffed.
+
+"I hate compliments."
+
+"I wasn't complimenting you, I was complimenting Ireland," said Silas
+sweetly. She was silent, a white moth passing close to her held her gaze
+for a moment, then it flitted away across the bushes.
+
+"Let's forget Ireland for a moment," said she, "and talk of Charleston. Do
+you know many people there?"
+
+"I know most every one. The Pinckneys and Calhouns and Tredegars and
+Revenalls and--"
+
+"Rhetts."
+
+"Yes--but there are a dozen Rhetts; same as there's half a hundred
+Pinckneys and Calhouns, families, I mean. What's his name--Richard
+Pinckney, your guardian, is engaged to a Rhett."
+
+"He is not."
+
+"He is--Venetia Frances, the one that lives in Legare Street. Why, I've
+seen them canoodling often, and every one says they are engaged."
+
+"Well, he's not, or Miss Pinckney would have told me."
+
+"Oh, she's blind. I tell you he is, and she'll be your guardian when he's
+married her."
+
+"That she won't," said Phyl.
+
+"How'll you help it? A man and wife are one."
+
+"He's only guardian of my property."
+
+"Well, Heaven help your property when she gets a finger in the pie; she'll
+spend it on hats--sure."
+
+This outrageous statement, uttered with a laugh, left Phyl cold. The
+statement about Frances Rhett had disturbed her, she could not tell
+exactly why, for it was none of her business whom Pinckney might choose to
+marry--still--Frances Rhett! It was almost as though an antagonism had
+existed between them since that afternoon when she had seen Frances first,
+driving in the car with Richard Pinckney.
+
+She rose to her feet and Silas rose also, throwing away the end of his
+cigarette.
+
+"Going into the house?" said he.
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Well, you'll be off to-morrow morning, and I won't see you, for I have to
+be out early, but I'll see you in Charleston, though not at Vernons maybe,
+for I'm not in love with Richard Pinckney, and I don't care much for
+visiting his house. But I'll see you somewhere, sure."
+
+"Good-bye," said she holding out her hand. He took it, held it, and then,
+all of a sudden, she found herself in his arms.
+
+Helpless as a child, in his arms and smothered with kisses. He kissed her
+on the mouth, on the forehead, on the chin, and with a last kiss on the
+mouth that made her feel as though her life were going from her, he
+vanished. Vanished amidst the bushes whilst she stood, tottering, dazed,
+breathless, outraged, yet--in some extraordinary way not angry. Pulled
+between tears and laughter, resentment, and a strange new feeling suddenly
+born in her from his burning lips, and the strength that had held her for
+a moment to itself.
+
+In one moment, and as though with the stroke of a sword, Silas had cut
+down the barrier that had divided her from the reality of things. He had
+kissed away her childhood.
+
+Then throwing out her hands as though pushing away some presence that was
+surrounding her, she ran to the house. In the hall she sat down for a
+moment to recover herself before going into the drawing room, where Miss
+Pinckney and the Colonel were closing the book which held for them the
+people and the places they had known in youth, and between its leaves who
+knows what old remembrances, like the withered flower that has once formed
+part of a summer's day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+They started at ten o'clock next morning for Charleston, the Colonel
+standing on the house steps and waving his hand to them as they drove off.
+Silas was nowhere to be seen, he had gone out before breakfast, so the
+butler said, and had not returned. Miss Pinckney resented this casual
+treatment.
+
+"He ought to have been here to bid us good-bye," said she, as they cleared
+the avenue. "He's got the name for being a mad creature, but even mad
+creatures may show common courtesy. I'm sure I don't know where he gets
+his manners from unless it's his mother's lot, same place as he got his
+good looks."
+
+"Why do you say he's mad?" asked Phyl.
+
+"Because he is. Not exactly mad, maybe, but eccentric, he swum Charleston
+harbour with his clothes on because some one dared him, and was nearly
+drowned with the tide coming in or going out, I forget which; and another
+day he got on the engine at Charleston station and started the train,
+drove it too, till they managed to climb over the top of the carriages or
+something and stop him--at least that's the story. He'll come to a bad
+end, that boy, unless he mends his ways. Lots of people say he's got good
+in him. So he has, perhaps, but it's just that sort that come to the worst
+end, unless the good manages to fight the bad and get it under in time."
+
+Phyl said nothing. Her mind was disturbed. She had slept scarcely at all
+during the night, and her feelings towards Silas Grangerson, now that she
+was beyond his reach, were alternating in the strangest way between
+attraction and repulsion.
+
+They would have repelled the thought of him entirely but for the
+instinctive recognition of the fact that his conduct had been the result
+of impulse, the impulse of a child, ill governed, and accustomed to seize
+what it wanted. Added to that was the fact of his entire naturalness. From
+the moment of their first meeting he had talked to her as though they were
+old acquaintances. Unless when talking to his father, everything in his
+manner, tone, conversation was free, unfettered by convention, fresh, if
+at times startling. This was his great charm, and at the same time his
+great defect, for it revealed his want of qualities no less than his
+qualities.
+
+Do what she could she was unable to escape from the incident of last
+night, it was as though those strong arms had not quite released their
+hold upon her, as though Pan had broken from the bushes, shown her by his
+magic things she had never dreamed of, and vanished.
+
+It was nearly two o'clock when they reached Vernons. Richard Pinckney was
+at home, and at the sight of him Phyl's heart went out towards him. Clean,
+well groomed, honest, kindly, he was like a breath of fresh sea air after
+breathing tropical swamp atmosphere.
+
+Strange to say Miss Pinckney seemed to feel somewhat the same.
+
+"Yes, we're back," said she, as they passed into the dining-room where
+some refreshments were awaiting them, "and glad I am to be back. Vernons
+smells good after Grangersons. Oh, dear me, what is it that clings to that
+place? It's like opening an old trunk that's been shut for years. I told
+Seth Grangerson, right out flat, he ought to get away from there into the
+world somewhere, but there he sits clinging to his rheumatism and the
+past. I declare I nearly cried last night as he was showing me all those
+old pictures."
+
+"He's not very ill then," said Richard.
+
+"Ill! Not he. It was that fool Silas sent the telegram. Just an attack of
+rheumatism."
+
+She went upstairs to change and the two young people went into the garden,
+where Richard Pinckney was having some alterations done.
+
+On the day Phyl's hair went up it seemed to Richard that a new person had
+come to live with them. Phyl had suddenly turned into a young woman--and
+such a young woman! He had never considered her looks before, to young men
+of his age and temperament girls in pigtails are, as far as the manhood in
+them is concerned, little more and sometimes less than things. But Phyl
+with her hair up was not to be denied, and had he not been philandering
+after Frances Rhett, and had Phyl been a total stranger suddenly seen, it
+is quite possible that a far warmer feeling than admiration might have
+been the result. As it was she formed a new interest in life.
+
+He showed her the alterations he was making, slight enough and causing
+little change in the general plan of the garden.
+
+"I scarcely like doing anything," said he, "but that new walk will be no
+end of an improvement, and it will save that bit of grass which is being
+trodden to death by people crossing it, then there's all those bushes by
+the gate, they're going, those behind the tree,--a little space there will
+make all the difference in the world."
+
+"Behind the magnolia?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't," said Phyl.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because they have been there always and--well, look!"
+
+She led the way behind the tree, pushed the bushes aside and disclosed the
+seat.
+
+She no longer felt that she was betraying a secret. Her experience at
+Grangersons had in some way made Vernons seem to her now really her home,
+and Richard Pinckney closer to her in relationship.
+
+"Why, how did you know that was there?" said Richard. "I've never seen
+it."
+
+"Juliet Mascarene used to sit there with--with some one she was in love
+with. I found some of her old letters and they told about it--see, it's a
+little arbour, used to be, though it's all so overgrown now."
+
+"Juliet," said he. "That was the girl who died. I have heard Aunt Maria
+talk about her and she keeps her room just as it used to be. Who was the
+somebody?"
+
+"It was a Mr. Rupert Pinckney."
+
+"I knew there was a love story of some sort connected with her, but I
+never worried about the details. So they used to come and sit here."
+
+"Yes, he'd come to the gate at night and she'd meet him. Her people did
+not want her to marry him and so they had to meet in secret."
+
+"That was a long time ago."
+
+"Before you were born," said Phyl.
+
+He looked at her.
+
+"Aunt is always saying how like you are to her," said he, "but she's mad
+on family likenesses, and I never thought of it. It may be a want in me
+but I've never taken much interest in dead relatives; but somehow, finding
+this little place tucked away here gives one a jog. It's like finding a
+nest in a tree. How long have you known of it?"
+
+"Oh, some time. I found a bundle of her old letters--" she paused. Richard
+Pinckney had taken his place on the little seat, just as one sits down in
+an armchair to see if it is comfortable, and was leaning back amidst the
+bush branches.
+
+"This is all right," said he, "sit down, there's lots of room--you found
+her letter, tell us all about it."
+
+Phyl sat down and told the little story. It seemed to interest him.
+
+"The Pinckneys lost money," said he, "and that's why the old Mascarene
+birds were set against her marrying him, I suppose. Makes one wild that
+sort of thing. What right have people to interfere?"
+
+"Money seems everything in this world," said Phyl.
+
+"It's not--it seems to be, but it's not. Money can't buy happiness after
+one is grown up. You remember I told you that over in Ireland; when candy
+and fishing rods mean happiness money is all right--after that money is
+useful enough, but it's the making of it and not the spending it that
+counts,--that and a lot of things that have nothing to do with money. If
+the Mascarenes hadn't been fools they'd have seen that a poor man with
+kick in him--and the Pinckneys always had that--was as good as a rich man,
+and those two might have got married."
+
+"No," said Phyl, "they never could have got married, he had to die. He was
+killed, you know, at the beginning of the war."
+
+"You're a fatalist."
+
+"Well, things happen."
+
+"Yes, but you can stop them happening very often."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Just by willing it."
+
+"Yes," said Phyl meditatively, "but how are you to use your will against
+what comes unexpectedly. Now that telegram yesterday morning took me to
+Grangersons with Miss Pinckney. Suppose--suppose I had broken my leg or,
+say, fallen into a well there and got drowned--that would have been
+Fate."
+
+"No," said Pinckney, "carelessness, the telegram would not have drowned
+you, but your carelessness in going too close to the well."
+
+"Suppose," said Phyl, "instead of that, Mr. Silas Grangerson had shot me
+by accident with a gun--the telegram would have brought me to that without
+any carelessness of mine."
+
+"No, it couldn't," said Pinckney lightly, "it would still have been your
+own fault for going near such a hare-brained scamp. Oh, I'm only joking,
+what I really mean is that nine times out of ten the thing people call
+Fate is nothing more than want of foresight."
+
+"And the tenth time it is Fate," said Phyl rising.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Next morning brought Phyl a letter. It came by the early post, so that she
+got it in her bedroom before coming down.
+
+Phyl had few correspondents and she looked at the envelope curiously
+before opening it.
+
+                        "Miss Berknowles,
+                        at Vernons. Charleston."
+
+ran the address written in a large, boyish, yet individual hand. She knew
+at once and by instinct whom it was from.
+
+"I'm coming to Charleston in a day or two, and I want to see you," ran the
+letter which had neither address nor date, "but I'm not coming to
+Pinckneys. I'll be about town and sure to find you somewhere. I can't get
+you out of my mind since last night. Tried to, but can't."
+
+That was all. Phyl put the letter back in its envelope. She was not angry,
+she was disturbed. There was an assurance about Silas Grangerson daunting
+in its simplicity and directness. Something that raised opposition to him
+in her heart, yet paralysed it. Instinct told her to avoid him, to drive
+him from her mind, ay and something more than instinct. The spirit of
+Vernons, the calm sweet soul of the place, that seemed to hold the past
+and the present, Juliet and herself, peace and happiness with the promise
+of all good things in the future, this spirit rose up against Silas
+Grangerson as though he were the antagonist to happiness and peace, Juliet
+and herself, the present and the past.
+
+Rose up, without prevailing entirely.
+
+Silas had impressed himself upon her mind in such a manner that she could
+not free herself from the impression. Young as she was, with the terribly
+clear perception of the male character which all women possess in
+different degrees, she recognised that Silas was dangerous to that logical
+and equitable state of existence we call happiness, not on account of his
+wildness or his eccentricities, but because of some want inherent in his
+nature, something that spoke vaguely in his words and his actions, in his
+handsome face and in his careless and graceful manner.
+
+All the same she could not free herself from the impression he had made
+upon her, she could not drive him from her mind, he had in some way
+paralysed her volition, called forces to his aid from some unknown part of
+her nature, perhaps with those kisses which she still felt upon the very
+face of her soul.
+
+She came down to breakfast, and afterwards finding herself alone with Miss
+Pinckney, she took Silas's letter from her pocket and handed it to her.
+She had been debating in her own mind all breakfast time as to whether she
+ought to show the letter; the struggle had been between her instinct to do
+the right thing, and a powerful antagonism to this instinct which was a
+new thing in her.
+
+The latter won.
+
+And then, lo and behold, when she found herself alone with Miss Pinckney
+in the sunlit breakfast room, almost against her will and just as though
+her hand had moved of its own volition, she put it in her pocket and
+produced the letter.
+
+Miss Pinckney read it.
+
+"Well, of all the crazy creatures!" said she. "Why, he has only met you
+once. He's mad! No, he isn't--he's a Grangerson. I know them."
+
+She stopped short and re-read the letter, turned it about and then laid it
+down.
+
+"Just as if he'd known you for years. And you scarcely spoke to him. Did
+he _say_ anything to you as if he cared for you?"
+
+"No, he didn't," said Phyl quite truthfully.
+
+"Did he look at you as if he cared for you?"
+
+"No," replied the other, dreading another question. But Miss Pinckney did
+not put it. She could not conceive a man kissing a girl who had never
+betrayed his feelings for her by word or glance.
+
+"Well, it gets me. It does indeed; acting like a dumb creature and then
+writing this-- Do you care for _him_?"
+
+"I--I--no--you see, I don't know him--much."
+
+"Well, he seems to know you pretty well, there's no doubt about one thing,
+Silas Grangerson can make up his mind pretty quick. He won't come to
+Vernons, won't he? Well, maybe it's better for him not, for I've no
+patience with oddities. That's what's wrong with him, he's an oddity, and
+it's those sort of people make the trouble in life--they're worse than
+whisky and cards for bringing unhappiness. Years and years and years
+ago--I'm telling you this though I've never told it to any one else--Seth
+Grangerson, Silas's father, seemed to care for me, not much, still he
+seemed to care. Then one day all at once he came into the room where I
+was, through the window, and told me to come off and get married to him,
+wanted me to go away right off. I was a fool in those days, but not all a
+fool, and when he tried to put his arm round my waist, my hand went up and
+smacked his face.
+
+"We are good enough friends now, but I've often thought of what I escaped
+by not marrying him. You saw him and the life he's leading at that out of
+the way place, but you didn't see his obstinacy and his queerness, and
+Silas is ten times worse, more crazy--well, there, you're warned--but mind
+you I don't want to be meddling. I've seen so many carefully prepared
+marriages turn out pure miseries, and so many crazy matches turn out
+happily, that I'm more than cautious in giving advice. Seems to me that
+people before they are married are quite different creatures to what they
+turn out after they are married."
+
+"But I don't want to get married," said Phyl.
+
+"No, but, seems to me, Silas does," replied the other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+One bright morning three days later, as Phyl was crossing Meeting Street
+near the Charleston Hotel, whom should she meet but Silas.
+
+Silas in town get up, quite a different looking individual from the Silas
+of Grangersons, dressed in perfectly fitting light grey tweed, a figure
+almost condoning one for the use of that old-time, half-discredited word
+"Elegant."
+
+"There you are," said Silas, his face lighting up. "I thought it wouldn't
+be long before I met you. Meeting Street is like a rabbit run, and I
+reckon the whole of Charleston passes through it twice a day."
+
+His manner was genuinely frank and open, and he seemed to have completely
+forgotten the incident of the kissing. Phyl said nothing for a moment; she
+felt put out, angry at having been caught like a rabbit, and not over
+pleased at being compared to one.
+
+Then she spoke freezingly enough:
+
+"I don't know much about the habits of Charleston; you will not find _me_
+here every day. I have only been out twice here alone and--I'm in a
+hurry."
+
+"Why, what's the matter with you?" cried Silas in a voice of
+astonishment.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"But there is, you're not angry with me, are you?"
+
+"Not in the least," replied the other, quite determined to avoid being
+drawn into explanations.
+
+"Well, that's all right. You don't mind my walking with you a bit?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"I only came here last night, and I'm putting up at the Charleston," said
+Silas. "Of course there are a lot of friends I could stay with but I
+always prefer being free; one is never quite free in another person's
+house; for one thing you can't order the servants about, though, upon my
+word, now-a-days one can't do that, much, anywhere."
+
+"I suppose not," said Phyl.
+
+The fact was being borne in upon her that Silas in town was a different
+person from Silas in the country, or seemed so; more sedate and more
+conventional. She also noticed as they walked along that he was saluted by
+a great many people, and also, before she had done with him that morning,
+she noticed that the leery, impudent looking, coloured folk seemed to come
+under a blight as they passed him, giving him the wall and yards to spare.
+It was as though the impersonification of the blacksnake whip were walking
+with her as well as a most notoriously dangerous man, a man who would
+strike another down, white or coloured, for a glance, not to say a word.
+
+She had come out on business, commissioned by Miss Pinckney to purchase a
+ball of magenta Berlin wool. Miss Pinckney still knitted antimacassars,
+and the construction of antimacassars is impossible without Berlin
+wool--that obsolete form of German Frightfulness.
+
+She bestowed the things on poor folk to brighten their homes.
+
+When Phyl went into the store to buy the wool Silas waited outside, and
+when she came out they walked down the street together.
+
+She had intended returning straight home after making her purchase but
+they were walking now not towards Vernons but towards the Battery.
+
+"What do you do with yourself all day?" asked Silas, suddenly breaking
+silence.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," she replied, "nothing much--we go out for drives."
+
+"In that old basket carriage thing?"
+
+"With Miss Pinckney."
+
+"I know, I've seen her often--what else do you do?"
+
+"Oh, I read."
+
+"What do you read?"
+
+"Books."
+
+"Doesn't Pinckney ever take you out?"
+
+"No, I don't go out much with Mr. Pinckney; you see, he's generally so
+busy."
+
+Silas sniffed. They had reached the Battery and were standing looking over
+the blue water of the harbour. The day was perfect, dreamy, heavenly, warm
+and filled with sea scents and harbour sounds; scarcely a breath of wind
+stirred across the water where a three-master was being towed to her
+moorings by a tug.
+
+"She's coming up to the wharves," said Silas. "They steer by the spire of
+St. Philips, the line between there and Fort Sumpter is all deep water.
+How'd you like to be a sailor?"
+
+"Wouldn't mind," said Phyl.
+
+"How'd you like to take a boat--I mean a decent sized fishing yawl and go
+off round the world, or even down Florida way? Florida's fine, you don't
+know Florida, it's got two coasts and it's hard to tell which is the best.
+From Indian River right round and up to Cedar Keys there's all sorts of
+fishing, and you can camp out on the reefs; one cooks one's own food and
+you can swim all day. There's tarpon and barracuda and sword fish, and
+nights when there's a moon you could see to read a book."
+
+"How jolly!"
+
+"Let's go there?"
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"Oh, just you and I. I'm fed up with everything. We could have a boatman
+to help sail and steer."
+
+He spoke lightly and laughingly, and without much enthusiasm and as though
+he were talking to some one of his own sex, and Phyl, not knowing how to
+take him, said nothing.
+
+He went on, his tone growing warmer.
+
+"I'm not joking, I'm dead sick of Grangersons and Charleston, and I reckon
+you are too--aren't you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You may think so, but you are, all the same, without knowing it."
+
+"I think you are talking nonsense," said Phyl hurriedly, fighting against
+a deadly sort of paralysis of mind such as one may suppose comes upon the
+mind of a bird under the spell of a serpent.
+
+"No one could be kinder than Miss Pinckney, and so no one could be happier
+than I am. I love Vernons."
+
+"All the same," said Silas, "you are not really alive there. It's the life
+of a cabbage, must be, there's only you and Maria and--Pinckney. Maria is
+a decent old sort but she's only a woman, and as for Pinckney--he doesn't
+care for you."
+
+This statement suddenly brought Phyl to herself. It went through her like
+a knife. She had ceased to think of Richard Pinckney in any way but as a
+friend. At one time, during the first couple of days at Vernons, her heart
+had moved mysteriously towards him; the way he had connected himself
+through Prue's message with the love story of Juliet had drawn her towards
+him, but that spell had snapped; she was conscious only of friendliness
+towards Richard Pinckney. Why, then, this sudden pain caused by Silas's
+words?
+
+"How do you know?" she flashed out. "What right have you to dare--" She
+stopped.
+
+The blaze of her anger seemed to Silas evidence that she cared for
+Pinckney.
+
+"You're in love with him," said he, flying out. The bald and brutal
+statement took Phyl's breath from her. She turned on him, saw the anger in
+his face, and then--turned away.
+
+His state of mind condoned his words. To a woman a blow received from the
+passion she has roused is a rude sort of compliment, unlike other
+compliments it is absolutely honest.
+
+"I am in love with no one," said she; "you have no right to say such
+things--no right at all--they are insulting."
+
+A gull, white as snow, came flitting by and wheeled out away over the
+harbour; as her eyes followed it he stood looking at her, his anger gone,
+but his mind only half convinced by her feeble words.
+
+"I didn't mean to insult you," he said; "don't let us quarrel. When I'm in
+a temper I don't know what I say or do--that's the truth. I want to have
+you all for myself, have ever since the first moment I saw you over there
+at Grangersons."
+
+"Don't," said Phyl. "I can't listen to you if you talk like that--Please
+don't."
+
+"Very well," said Silas.
+
+The quick change that was one of his characteristics showed itself in his
+altered voice. His was a mind that seemed always in ambush, darting out on
+predatory expeditions and then vanishing back into obscurity.
+
+They turned away from the sea front and began to retrace their steps,
+silently at first, and then little by little falling into ordinary
+conversation again as though nothing had happened.
+
+Silas knew every corner of Charleston, and the history of every corner,
+and when he chose he could make his knowledge interesting. In this mood he
+was a pleasant companion, and Phyl, her recent experience almost
+forgotten, let herself be led and instructed, not knowing that this
+armistice was the equivalent of a defeat.
+
+She had already drawn much closer to him in mind, this companionship and
+quiet conversation was a more sure and deadly thing than any kisses or
+wild words. It would linger in her mind warm and quietly. Put in a woman's
+mind a pleasant recollection of yourself and you have established a force
+whose activity may seem small, but is in reality great, because of its
+permanency.
+
+They did not take a direct line in the direction of Vernons, and so
+presently found themselves in front of St. Michael's. The gate of the
+cemetery was open and they wandered in.
+
+The place was deserted, save by the birds, and the air perfumed by all
+manner of Southern growing things. Sun, shadow, silence, and that strange
+peace which hangs over the homes of the dead, all were here, ringed in by
+the old walls and the faint murmur of the living city beyond.
+
+They walked along the paths, looking at the tombstones, and pausing to
+read the inscriptions, Phyl gradually entering into that state of mind
+wherein reality and material things fall out of perspective. The fragrant
+elusive poetry of death, which can speak in the songs of birds and the
+scent of flowers in the sunshine and the shade of trees more clearly than
+in the voice of man, was speaking to her now.
+
+All these people here lying, all these names here inscribed, all these
+were the representatives of days once bright and now forgotten, love once
+sweet and now unknown.
+
+Then, as though something had led or betrayed her to the place, she paused
+where the graves lay half shadowed by a magnolia, she read the nearest
+inscription with a little catch of her breath. Then the further one. They
+were the graves of Juliet Mascarene and Rupert Pinckney, the dead lovers
+who had passed from the world almost together, whose bodies lay side by
+side in the cold bed of earth.
+
+In a moment the spell of the little arbour was around her again, in a
+moment the pregnant first impression of Vernons had re-seized her, fresh
+as though the commonplace touch of everyday life had never spoiled it.
+
+It was as though the spirit of Juliet and the spirit of the old house were
+saying to her "Have you forgotten us?"
+
+Tears welled to her eyes. Silas standing beside her was saying something,
+she did not know what. She scarcely heard him.
+
+Misinterpreting her silence, unconscious as an animal of her state of mind
+and the direction of her thoughts, the man at her side moved towards her
+slightly, seemed to hesitate, and then, suddenly clasping her by the waist
+kissed her upon the side of the neck.
+
+Phyl straightened like a bow when the string is released. Then she struck
+him, struck him open handed in the face, so that the sound of the blow
+might have been heard beyond the wall.
+
+His face blanched so that the mark on it showed up, he took a step back.
+For a moment Phyl thought he was going to spring upon her. Then he
+mastered himself, but if murder ever showed itself upon the countenance of
+man it showed itself in that half second on the countenance of Silas
+Grangerson.
+
+"You'll be sorry for that," said he.
+
+"Don't speak to me," said Phyl. "You are horrible--bad--wicked--I will
+tell Richard Pinckney."
+
+"Do," said Silas. "Tell him also I'll be even with him yet. You're in love
+with him, that's what's the matter with you--well, wait."
+
+He turned on his heel and walked off. He did not look back once. As he
+vanished from sight Phyl clasped her hands together.
+
+It was as though she had suddenly been shown the real Silas--or rather the
+something light and evil and dangerous, the something inscrutable and
+allied to insanity that inhabited his mind.
+
+She was not thinking of herself, she was thinking of Richard Pinckney. She
+felt that she had been the unconscious means of releasing against him an
+evil force. A force that might injure or destroy him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+She came out of the cemetery. There was no sign of Silas in the street nor
+on the front of the church.
+
+Phyl had a full measure of the Celtic power to meet trouble halfway, to
+imagine disaster. As she hurried home she saw all manner of trouble,
+things happening to Richard Pinckney, and all brought about through
+herself. Amidst all these fancies she saw one fact: He must be warned.
+
+She found Miss Pinckney in the linen room. The linen room at Vernons was a
+treasure house beyond a man's description, perhaps even beyond his true
+appreciation. There in the cupboards with their thin old fashioned ring
+handles and on the shelves of red cedar reposed damask and double damask
+of the time when men paid for their purchases in guineas, miraculous
+preservations. Just as the life of a china vase is a perpetual escape from
+the stupidity of servant maids and the heaviness of clumsy fingers, so the
+life of these cream white oblongs, in which certain lights brought forth
+miraculous representations of flowers, festoons and birds, was a perpetual
+preservation from the moth, from damp, from dryness, from the dust that
+corrupts.
+
+A house like Vernons exists not by virtue of its brick and mortar; to keep
+it really alive it must be preserved in all its parts, not only from damp
+and decay, but from innovation; one can fancy a gas cooker sending a
+perpetual shudder through it, a telephone destroying who knows what
+fragrant old influences; the store cupboards and still room are part of
+its bowels, its napery, bed sheets, and hangings part of its dress. The
+man knew what he was doing who left Miss Pinckney a life interest in
+Vernons, it was that interest that kept Vernons alive.
+
+She was exercising it on the critical examination of some sheets when Phyl
+came into the room, now, with the wool she had purchased and the tale she
+had to tell.
+
+Miss Pinckney carefully put the sheet she was examining on one side,
+opened the parcel and looked at the wool.
+
+"I met Silas Grangerson," said Phyl as the other was examining the
+purchase with head turned on one side, holding it now in this light, now
+in that.
+
+"Silas Grangerson! Why, where on earth has he sprung from?" asked Miss
+Pinckney in a voice of surprise.
+
+"I don't know, but I met him in the street and we walked as far as the
+Battery and--and--"
+
+She hesitated for a moment, then it all came out. To no one but Maria
+Pinckney could she have told that story.
+
+"Well, of all the astounding creatures," said Miss Pinckney at last. "Did
+he ask you to marry him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Just to run away with him--kissed you."
+
+"He kissed me at Grangersons."
+
+"At Grangersons. When?"
+
+"That night. I went into the garden and he came out from amongst some
+bushes."
+
+"Umph-- It's the family disease-- Well, if I get my fingers in his hair I
+promise to cure him. He wants curing. He'll just apologise, and that
+before he's an hour older. Where's he staying?"
+
+"No, no," said Phyl, "you mustn't ever say I told you. I don't mind. I
+would have said nothing only for Mr. Pinckney."
+
+"You mean Richard?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What has he to do with it?"
+
+Phyl did not hesitate nor turn her head away, though her cheeks were
+burning.
+
+"Silas Grangerson thinks I care for Mr. Pinckney, he said he would be even
+with him. I know he intends doing him some injury. I feel it--and I want
+you to warn him to be careful--without telling him, of course, what I have
+said."
+
+Miss Pinckney was silent for a moment. She had already matched Phyl and
+Richard in her mind. She had come to a very full understanding of her
+character, and she would have given all the linen at Vernons for the
+certainty that those two cared for one another.
+
+Frances Rhett rode her like an obsession. Life and nature had given Maria
+Pinckney an acquired and instinctive knowledge of character, and in the
+union of Richard and Frances Rhett she divined unhappiness, just as a
+clever seaman divines the unseen ice-berg in the ship's track. She smelt
+it.
+
+"Phyl," said she, "do you care for Richard?"
+
+The question quickly put and by those lips caused no confusion in the
+girl's mind.
+
+"No," said she. "At least-- Oh, I don't know how to explain it--I care for
+everything here, for Vernons and everything in it, it is all like a story
+that I love--Juliet and Vernons and the past and the present. He's part of
+it too. I want to have it always just as it is. I didn't tell you, but
+when that happened in the cemetery, I was looking at her grave; you never
+told me it was there with his. I came on it by accident and she was
+seeming to speak to me out of it. I was thinking of her and him,
+when--that happened. It was just as though some one had struck _her_ and
+him. I can't explain exactly."
+
+"Strange," said Miss Pinckney.
+
+She turned and began to put away with a thoughtful air the linen she had
+been examining. Then she said:
+
+"I'll tell Richard and warn him to keep away from that fool, not that
+there is any danger--but it is just as well to warn him."
+
+Phyl helped to put away the linen and then she went upstairs to her room.
+She felt easier in her mind and taking her seat on a cane couch by the
+window she fell into a book. The History of the Civil War. This bookworm
+had always one sure refuge in trouble--books.
+
+Books! Have we ever properly recognised the mystery and magic that lies in
+that word, the magic that allows a man to lead ever so many other lives
+than his own, to be other people, to travel where he has never been, to
+laugh with folk he has never seen, to know their sorrows as he can never
+know the sorrows of "real people"--and their joys.
+
+Phyl had been Robinson Crusoe and Jane Eyre, Monte Cristo and Jo.
+
+History which is so horribly unreal because it deals with real people had
+never appealed to her, but the history of the Civil War was different from
+others.
+
+It had to do with Vernons.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+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 attaché, 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+When Silas Grangerson left the cemetery of St. Michael's he walked for
+half a mile without knowing or caring in what direction he was going.
+
+Phyl had done more than slap his face. She had slapped his pride, his
+assurance of himself, and his desire for her all at the same time.
+
+Silas rarely bothered about girls, yet he knew that he had the power to
+fascinate any woman once he put his mind to the work. He had not tried his
+powers of fascination on Phyl. It was the other way about. Phyl absolutely
+unconsciously had used her fascination upon him.
+
+Something in her, recognised by him on their first meeting in the stable
+yard, had put away the barrier of sex. He had talked to her as if she had
+been a boy. Sitting on the seat beside her whilst the Colonel had been
+prosing over politics and tobacco, the prompting came to Silas to pinch
+her finger just for fun; when he had put his hands over her eyes that
+night it was in obedience to the same prompting, but at the moment of
+parting from her, a desire quite new had overmastered him.
+
+He had kissed a good many girls, but never in his life had he kissed a
+girl as he kissed Phyl.
+
+Something cynical in his feelings for the other sex had always left him
+somewhat cold, but Phyl was different from the others, she had in some way
+struck straight at his real being.
+
+When he left her that night at Grangersons he was almost as disturbed as
+she.
+
+He scarcely slept. He was out at dawn and on his return after she had left
+he sat down and wrote the letter which Phyl received next morning.
+
+Silas was in love for the first time in his life, but love with Silas was
+a thing apart from the love of ordinary men.
+
+There was no worship of the object; the something that crystallises out in
+the form of love-letters, verses, bouquets, and candy was not there. He
+wanted Phyl.
+
+He had no more idea of marriage than the great god Pan. If she had
+consented he would have taken her off on that yawl of his imagination
+round the world or down to Florida, without thought of the morrow or the
+_convenances_, or Society; but please do not imagine this rather primitive
+gentleman a chartered libertine. He would have married her as soon as not,
+but he had neither the genius nor the inclination for the courtship that
+leads by slow degrees up to the question, "Will you marry me?"
+
+He wanted her at once.
+
+As he walked along now with the devil awake in his heart, he felt no anger
+towards Phyl; all his rage was against Pinckney; he had never liked
+Pinckney, he more than suspected that Phyl cared for him and he wanted
+some one to hate badly.
+
+He had walked himself into a reasonable state of mind when he found
+himself outside the Queen City Club. He went in and one of the first men
+he met was Pinckney.
+
+So well did he hold himself in hand that Pinckney suspected nothing of his
+feelings. Silas was far too good a sportsman to shout at the edge of the
+wood, too much of a gentleman to desire a brawl in public. He was going to
+knife Pinckney, he was also going to capture Phyl, but the knifing of
+Pinckney was the main objective and that required time and thought. He did
+not desire the blood of the gentleman; he wanted his pride and _amour
+propre_. He wanted to hit him on the raw, but he did not know yet where,
+exactly, the raw was nor how to hit it. Time would tell him.
+
+He was specially civil to his intended victim, and he went off home that
+evening plotting all the way, but arriving at nothing. He was trying to
+make bricks without straw. Pinckney did not drink, nor did he gamble, and
+he was far too good a business man to be had in that way. However, all
+things come to him who waits, and next morning's post brought him a ray of
+light in the midst of his darkness.
+
+It brought him an invitation to the Rhetts' dance on the following
+Wednesday; nearly a week to wait, but, still, something to wait for.
+
+"What are you thinking about, Silas?" asked old Seth Grangerson as they
+sat at breakfast.
+
+"I'm thinking of a new rabbit trap, suh," responded the son.
+
+The rabbit trap seemed to give him a good deal of food for thought during
+the week that followed; food that made him hilarious and gloomy by turns,
+restless also.
+
+Had he known it, Phyl away at Charleston, was equally restless. She no
+longer thought of Silas. She had dismissed him from her mind, she no
+longer feared him as a possible source of danger to the man she loved.
+Love had her entirely in his possession to torture as he pleased. She knew
+only one danger, the danger that Richard Pinckney did not care in the
+least for her, and as day followed day that danger grew more defined and
+concrete. Richard had taken to avoiding her, she became aware of that.
+
+She fancied that she displeased him.
+
+If she had only known!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+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 _fiancée_
+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 _débutante_ 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 phaëton 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 phaëton. 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
+phaëton 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 phaëton, 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 phaëton 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 phaëton 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 phaëton, 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 phaëton 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 phaëton 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
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ghost Girl, by H. De Vere Stacpoole
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+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+<title>
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Ghost Girl, by H. De Vere Stacpoole.
+</title>
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+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ghost Girl, by H. De Vere Stacpoole
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Ghost Girl
+
+Author: H. De Vere Stacpoole
+
+Release Date: October 21, 2008 [EBook #26986]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GHOST GIRL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<hr class='silver' />
+
+<div class='ce'>
+<p style=' font-size:1.4em;'>THE GHOST GIRL</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='silver' />
+
+<table summary="" style="font-size: smaller; border: 1px solid black; margin:auto; padding:1em;">
+<tr><td colspan='2' align='center'>BY THE SAME AUTHOR</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan='2' align='center'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Sea Plunder</td><td>$1.30 net</td></tr>
+<tr><td>The Gold Trail</td><td>$1.30 net</td></tr>
+<tr><td>The Pearl Fishers</td><td>$1.30 net</td></tr>
+<tr><td>The Presentation</td><td>$1.30 net</td></tr>
+<tr><td>The New Optimism</td><td>$1.00 net</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Poppyland</td><td>$2.00 net</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan='2' align='center'><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>The Poems of François Villon</span><br />
+Translated by<br />
+<span style='font-size:smaller;'>H. DE VERE STACPOOLE</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;Boards</td><td>$3.00 net</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;Half Morocco</td><td>$7.50 net</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class='silver' />
+
+<div class='ce'>
+<p style=' font-size:2.2em; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:2em;'>THE GHOST GIRL</p>
+<p>BY</p>
+<p style=' font-size:1,2em;'>H. DE VERE STACPOOLE</p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.8em;'>AUTHOR OF</p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.8em;'>&#8220;THE MAN WHO LOST HIMSELF,&#8221; &#8220;SEA</p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.8em;'>PLUNDER,&#8221; &#8220;THE PEARL FISHERS,&#8221;</p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.8em; margin-bottom:8em;'>&#8220;THE GOLD TRAIL,&#8221; ETC.</p>
+<p>NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY</p>
+<p>LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD</p>
+<p style=' margin-bottom:2.2em;'>TORONTO: S. B GUNDY&nbsp;&#8258;&nbsp;&#8258;&nbsp;&#8258;&nbsp;MCMXVIII</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='silver' />
+
+<div class='ce'>
+<p>Copyright, 1918</p>
+<p style=' margin-bottom:3em;'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>By JOHN LANE COMPANY</span></p>
+<div style='margin-top:1em'></div>
+<p style=' font-size:0.8em;'>PRESS OF</p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.8em;'>VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY</p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.8em;'>BINGHAMTON, N. Y.</p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.8em;'>U. S. A.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='silver' />
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_7' name='page_7'></a>7</span></div>
+<div class='ce'>
+<p style=' font-size:1.4em; margin-bottom:1em;'>THE GHOST GIRL</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='ce'>
+<p style=' font-size:1.4em;'>PART I</p>
+</div>
+
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was a warm, grey, moist evening, typical Irish
+weather, and Miss Berknowles was curled up in
+a window-seat of the library reading a book. Kilgobbin
+Park lay outside with the rooks cawing in the
+trees, miles of park land across which the dusk was
+coming, blotting out all things from Arranakilty to
+the Slieve Bloom Mountains.</p>
+<p>The turf fire burning on the great hearth threw
+out a rich steady glow that touched the black oak
+panelling of the room, the book backs, and the long-nosed
+face of Sir Nicholas Berknowles &#8220;attributed
+to Lely&#8221; and looking down at his last descendant
+from a dusty canvas on the opposite wall.</p>
+<p>The girl made a prettier picture. Red hair when
+it is of the right colour is lovely, and Phylice Berknowles&#8217;
+hair was of the right red, worn in a tail&mdash;she
+was only fifteen&mdash;so long that she could bite the
+end with ease and comfort when she was in a meditative
+mood, a habit of perdition that no schoolmistress
+could break her of.</p>
+<p>She was biting her tail now as she read, up to her
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_8' name='page_8'></a>8</span>
+eyes in the marvellous story of the Gold Bug, and
+now, unable to read any more by the light from the
+window, she came to the fire, curled herself on the
+hearthrug and continued the adventures of the treasure-seekers
+by the light of the burning turf.</p>
+<p>What a pretty face it was, seen by the full warm
+glow of the turf, and what a perfectly shaped head!
+It was not the face and head of a Berknowles as
+you could easily have perceived had you compared
+it with the portraits in the picture gallery, but of a
+Mascarene.</p>
+<p>Phyl&#8217;s mother had been a Mascarene, a member of
+the old, adventurous family that settled in Virginia
+when Virginia was a wilderness and spread its
+branches through the Carolinas when the Planter
+was king of the South. Red hair had run among
+the Mascarenes, red hair and a wild spirit that
+brooked no contradiction and knew no fear. Phyl
+had inherited something of this restless and daring
+spirit. She had run away from the Rottingdean
+Academy for the Daughters of the Nobility and
+Gentry where she had been sent at the age of twelve;
+making her way back to Ireland like a homing pigeon,
+she had turned up one morning at breakfast time,
+quite unshaken by her experiences of travel and with
+the announcement that she did not like school.</p>
+<p>Had her mother been alive the traveller would
+have been promptly returned, but Phyl&#8217;s father,
+good, easy man, was too much taken up with agrarian
+disputes, hunting, and the affairs of country
+life to bother much about the small affair of his
+daughter&#8217;s future and education. He accepted her
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_9' name='page_9'></a>9</span>
+rejection of his plans, wrote a letter of apology to
+the Rottingdean Academy, and hired a governess
+for her. She wore out three in eighteen months, declared
+herself dissatisfied with governesses and competent
+to finish the process of educating and polishing
+herself.</p>
+<p>This she did with the aid of all the books in the
+library, old Dunn, the rat-catcher of Arranakilty, a
+man profoundly versed in the habits of rodents and
+birds, Larry the groom, and sundry others of low
+estate but high intelligence in matters of sport and
+woodcraft.</p>
+<p>Now it might be imagined from the foregoing
+that hardihood, self-assertion, and other unpleasant
+characteristics would be indicated in the manner and
+personality of this lover of freedom and rebel
+against restraint. Not at all. She was a most
+lovable and clinging person, when she could get hold
+of anything worth clinging to, with a mellifluous
+Irish voice at once soothing and distracting, a voice
+with pockets in it but not a trace of a brogue or
+only the very faintest suspicion. Yet when she
+spoke she had the Irish turn of words and she used
+the word &#8220;sure&#8221; in a manner strange to the English.</p>
+<p>She had reached the point in the &#8220;Gold Bug&#8221;
+where Jupp is threatening to beat Legrand, when,
+laying the book down beside her on the hearthrug,
+she sat with her hands clasping her knees and her
+eyes fixed on the fire.</p>
+<p>The tale had suddenly lost interest. She was
+thinking of her dead father, the big, hearty man
+who had gone to America only eight weeks ago and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_10' name='page_10'></a>10</span>
+who would never return. He had gone on a visit
+to some of his wife&#8217;s people, fallen ill, and died.</p>
+<p>Phyl could not understand it at all. She had
+cried her heart out amongst the ruins of her little
+world, but she could not understand why it had been
+ruined, or what her father had done to be killed like
+that, or what she had done to deserve such misery.
+The Reverend Peter Graham of Arranakilty could
+explain nothing about the matter to her understanding.
+She nearly died and then miraculously recovered.
+Acute grief often ends like that, suddenly.
+The mourner may be maimed for life but the sharpness
+of the pain of that dreadful, dreadful disease is
+gone.</p>
+<p>Phyl found herself one morning discussing rats
+with old Dunn, asking him how many he had caught
+in the barn and taking a vague sort of interest in
+what the old fellow was saying; books began to appeal
+to her again and the old life to run anew in a
+crippled sort of way. Then other things happened.
+Mr. Hennessey, the family lawyer, who had been a
+crony of her father&#8217;s and who had known her from
+infancy, came down to Kilgobbin to arrange matters.</p>
+<p>It seemed that Mr. Berknowles before dying had
+made a will and that the will was being brought over
+from the States by Mr. Pinckney, his wife&#8217;s cousin
+in whose house he had died.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m sure I don&#8217;t know what the chap wants coming
+over with it for,&#8221; said Mr. Hennessey. &#8220;He
+said it was by your father&#8217;s request he was coming,
+but it&#8217;s a long journey for a man to take at this
+season of the year&mdash;and I hope the will is all right.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_11' name='page_11'></a>11</span></p>
+<p>There was an implied distrust in his tone and an
+antagonism to Mr. Pinckney that was not without
+its effect on Phyl.</p>
+<p>She disliked Mr. Pinckney. She had never seen
+him but she disliked him all the same, and she feared
+him. She felt instinctively that this man was coming
+to make some alteration in her way of life. She
+did not want any change, she wanted to go on living
+just as she was with Mrs. Driscoll the housekeeper
+to look after her and all the old servants to befriend
+her and Mr. Hennessey to pay the bills.</p>
+<p>Mr. Hennessey was in the house now. He had
+come down that morning from Dublin to receive Mr.
+Pinckney, who was due to arrive that night.</p>
+<p>Phyl, sitting on the hearthrug, was in the act of
+picking up her book when the door opened and in
+came Mr. Hennessey.</p>
+<p>He had been out in the grounds overlooking
+things and he came to the fire to warm his hands,
+telling Phyl to sit easy and not disturb herself.
+Then, as he held a big foot to the warmth he talked
+down at the girl, telling her of what he had been
+about and the ruination Rafferty was letting the
+greenhouses go to.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Half-a-dozen panes of glass out&mdash;and &#8216;I&#8217;ve no
+putty,&#8217; says he. &#8216;Putty,&#8217; said I to him, &#8216;and what&#8217;s
+that head of yours made of?&#8217; The stoves are all
+out of order and there&#8217;s a hole in one of the flues
+I could get my thumb in.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Rafferty&#8217;s awfully good to the dogs,&#8221; said Phyl
+in her mellow voice, so well adapted for intercession.
+&#8220;He may be a bit careless, but he never does forget
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_12' name='page_12'></a>12</span>
+to feed the animals. He&#8217;s got the chickens to look
+after, too, and then there&#8217;s the beagles, he knows
+every dog in the pack and every dog knows him&mdash;oh,
+dear, what&#8217;s the good of it all!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The thought of the beagles had brought up the
+vision of their master who would never hunt with
+them again. Her voice became tinged with melancholy
+and Hennessey changed the subject, taking his
+seat in one of the armchairs that stood on either
+side of the fireplace.</p>
+<p>He was a big, loosely-made man, an easy going
+man with a kind heart who would have come to financial
+disaster long ago only for his partner, Niven.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s almost due to be here by now,&#8221; said he,
+taking out his watch and looking at it, &#8220;unless the
+express from Dublin is late.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;ll he be like, do you think?&#8221; said Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s no saying,&#8221; replied Mr. Hennessey.
+&#8220;He&#8217;s an American and I&#8217;ve never had much dealings
+with Americans except by letter. By all accounts
+they are sharp business men, but I daresay
+he is all right. The thing that gets me is his coming
+over. Americans don&#8217;t go thousands of miles for
+nothing, but if it&#8217;s after any hanky-panky business
+about the property, maybe he&#8217;ll find Jack Hennessey
+as sharp as any American.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s some sort of a relation of ours,&#8221; said Phyl.
+&#8220;Father said he was a sort of cousin.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;On your mother&#8217;s side,&#8221; said Hennessey.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Phyl. Then, after a moment&#8217;s pause,
+&#8220;D&#8217;you know I&#8217;ve often thought of all those people
+over there and wondered what they were like and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_13' name='page_13'></a>13</span>
+how they lived&mdash;my mother&#8217;s people. Father used
+to talk of them sometimes. He said they kept
+slaves.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That was in the old days,&#8221; said Hennessey.
+&#8220;The slaves are all gone long ago. They used to
+have sugar plantations and suchlike, but the war
+stopped all that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s funny,&#8221; said Phyl, &#8220;to think that my people
+kept slaves&mdash;my mother&#8217;s people&mdash;Oh, if one could
+only see back, see all the people that have gone before
+one so long ago&mdash; Don&#8217;t you ever feel like
+that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Mr. Hennessey never had; his forebears had been
+liquor dealers in Athlone and he was content to let
+them lie without a too close inquisition into the romances
+of their lives.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Hennessey,&#8221; said Phyl, after a moment&#8217;s
+silence, &#8220;suppose Father has left Mr. Pinckney all
+his money&mdash;what will become of me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The Lord only knows,&#8221; said Hennessey; &#8220;but
+what&#8217;s been putting such fancies in your head?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; replied the girl. &#8220;I was just
+thinking. Of course he wouldn&#8217;t do such a thing&mdash;It&#8217;s
+your talking of the will the last time you were
+here set me on, I suppose, but I dreamed last night
+Mr. Pinckney came and he was an American with
+a beard like Uncle Sam in <i>Punch</i> last week, and he
+said Father had made a will and left him everything&mdash;he&#8217;d
+left him me as well as everything else, and the
+dogs and all the servants and Kilgobbin&mdash;then I
+woke up.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, you were dreaming nonsense,&#8221; said the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_14' name='page_14'></a>14</span>
+practical Hennessey. &#8220;A man can&#8217;t leave his daughter
+away from him, though I&#8217;m half thinking there&#8217;s
+many a man would be willing enough if he could.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl raised her head. Her quick ear had caught
+a sound from the avenue. Then the crash of wheels
+on gravel came from outside and her companion,
+rising hurriedly from his chair, went to the window.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s him,&#8221; said the easy-speaking Hennessey.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_15' name='page_15'></a>15</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>He left the room and Phyl, rising from the
+hearthrug, stood with her hand on the mantelpiece
+listening.</p>
+<p>Hennessey had left the door open and she could
+hear a confused noise from the hall, the sound of
+luggage being brought in, the bustle of servants and
+a murmur of voices.</p>
+<p>Then a voice that made her start.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Thanks, I can carry it myself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was the newcomer&#8217;s voice, he was being conducted
+to his room by Hennessey. It was a cheerful,
+youthful voice, not in the least suggestive of Uncle
+Sam with the goatee beard as depicted by the unimaginative
+artist of <i>Punch</i>. And it was a voice she
+had heard before, so she fancied, but where, she
+could not possibly tell&mdash;nor did she bother to think,
+dismissing the idea as a fancy.</p>
+<p>She stood listening, but heard nothing more, only
+the wind that had risen and was shaking the ivy
+outside the windows.</p>
+<p>Byrne, the old manservant, came in and lit the
+lamps and then after a few minutes Hennessey entered.
+He looked cheerful.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He seems all right and he&#8217;ll be down in a minute,&#8221;
+said the lawyer; &#8220;not a bit of harm in him,
+though I haven&#8217;t had time to tackle him over money
+affairs.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_16' name='page_16'></a>16</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;How old is he?&#8221; asked the girl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Old! Why, he&#8217;s only a boy, but he&#8217;s got all a
+man&#8217;s ways with him&mdash;he&#8217;s American, they&#8217;re like
+that. I&#8217;ve heard say the American children order
+their own mothers and fathers about and drive their
+own motor-cars and gamble on the Stock Exchange.&#8221;
+He pulled out his watch and looked at it; it pointed
+to ten minutes past seven; then he lit a cigar and sat
+smoking and smoking without a word whilst Phyl
+sat thinking and staring at the fire. They were
+seated like this when the door opened and Byrne
+shewed in Mr. Pinckney.</p>
+<p>Hennessey had called him a boy. He was not
+that. He was twenty-two years of age, yet he looked
+only twenty and you would not have been particularly
+surprised if you had been told that he was only
+nineteen. Good-looking, well-groomed and well-dressed,
+he made a pleasant picture, and as he came
+across the room to greet Phyl he explained without
+speaking what Mr. Hennessey meant about &#8220;all the
+manners of a man.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Pinckney&#8217;s manner was the manner of a man of
+the world of thirty, easy-going, assured, and decided.</p>
+<p>He shook hands with Phyl as Hennessey introduced
+them, and then stood with his back to the
+fireplace talking, as she took her seat in the armchair
+on the right, whilst the lawyer remained standing,
+hands in pockets and foot on the left corner of the
+fender.</p>
+<p>The newcomer did most of the talking. By a
+downward glance every now and then he included
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_17' name='page_17'></a>17</span>
+Phyl in the conversation, but he addressed most of
+his remarks to Mr. Hennessey.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And you came over by the Holyhead route?&#8221;
+said the lawyer.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I did,&#8221; replied Pinckney.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And what did you think of Kingstown?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, upon my word, I saw less of it than of a
+gentleman with long hair and a bundle of newspapers
+under his arm who received me like a mother just as
+I landed, hypnotised me into buying half-a-dozen
+newspapers and started me off for Dublin with his
+blessing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That was Davy Stevens,&#8221; said Phyl, speaking
+for the first time.</p>
+<p>Pinckney&#8217;s entrance had produced upon her the
+same effect as his voice.</p>
+<p>You know the feeling that some places produce on
+the mind when first seen&mdash;</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;I have been here before</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>But when or how I cannot tell</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>I know the lights along the shore&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>It seemed to her that she had known Pinckney
+and had met him in some place, but when or how
+she could not possibly remember. The feeling had
+almost worn off now. It had thrilled her, but the
+thrill had vanished and the concrete personality of
+the man was dominating her mind&mdash;and not very
+pleasantly.</p>
+<p>There was nothing in his manner or his words to
+give offence; he was quite pleasant and nice but&mdash;but&mdash;well,
+it was almost as though she had met some
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_18' name='page_18'></a>18</span>
+one whom she had known and liked and who had
+changed.</p>
+<p>The little jump of the heart that his voice caused
+in her had been followed by a chill. His manner
+displeased her vaguely. He seemed so assured, so
+every day, so cold.</p>
+<p>It seemed to her that not only did he hold his
+entertainers at a critical distance, but that he was
+somehow wanting in respectfulness to herself&mdash;Lunatic
+ideas, for the young man could not possibly
+have been more cordial towards two utter strangers
+and as for respectfulness, one does not treat a girl
+in a pigtail exactly as one treats a full-grown woman.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Davy Stevens, was it?&#8221; said Pinckney, glancing
+down at Phyl. &#8220;Well, I never knew the meaning
+of peaceful persuasion till he had sold out his
+stock on me. Now in the States that man would
+likely have been President by this&mdash;Things grow
+quicker over there.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And what did you think of Dublin?&#8221; asked Hennessey.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said the young man, &#8220;the two things that
+struck me most about Dublin were the dirt and the
+want of taxicabs.&#8221;</p>
+<p>A dead silence followed this remark.</p>
+<p>Never tell an Irishman that Dublin is dirty.</p>
+<p>Hennessey was dumb, and as for Phyl, she knew
+now that she hated this man.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Of course,&#8221; went on the other, &#8220;it&#8217;s a fine old
+city and I&#8217;m not sure that I would alter it or even
+brush it up. I should think it&#8217;s pretty much the
+same to-day as when Lever wrote of it. It&#8217;s a survival
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_19' name='page_19'></a>19</span>
+of the past, like Nuremberg. All the same,
+one doesn&#8217;t want to live in a survival of the past&mdash;does
+one?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve lived there a good many years,&#8221; said Hennessey;
+&#8220;and I&#8217;ve managed to survive it. It&#8217;s not
+Chicago, of course; it&#8217;s just Dublin, and it doesn&#8217;t
+pretend to be anything else.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Just so,&#8221; said Pinckney. He felt that he had
+put his foot in it; recalling his own lightly spoken
+words he felt shocked at his want of tact, and he
+was casting about for something to say about the
+sacred city of a friendly nature but not too fulsome,
+when Byrne opened the door and announced that
+dinner was served.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_20' name='page_20'></a>20</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>Phyl led the way and they crossed the hall to
+the dining-room, a room oak-panelled like the
+library and warm with the light of fire and candles.</p>
+<p>Once upon a time there had been high doings in
+this sombre room, hunt breakfasts and dinners, rousing
+songs, laughter, and the toasting of pretty women&mdash;now
+dust and ashes.</p>
+<p>Here highly coloured gentlemen had slept the
+sleep of the just, under the table, whilst the ladies
+waited in vain for them in the drawing-room, here
+Colonel Berknowles had drunk a glass of mulled
+wine on that black morning over a hundred-and-thirty
+years ago when he went out with Councillor
+Kinsella and shot him through the lungs by the
+Round House on the Arranakilty Road. The diminutive
+Tom Moore had sung his songs here &#8220;put
+standing on the table&#8221; by the other guests, and the
+great Dan had held forth and the wind had dashed
+the ivy against the windows just as it did to-night
+with fist-fulls of rain from the Slieve Bloom Mountains.
+Byrne had put the big silver candlesticks on
+the table in honour of the guest, and he now appeared
+bearing in front of him a huge dish with a cover a
+size too small for it.</p>
+<p>He placed the dish before Mr. Hennessey and removed
+the cover, disclosing a cod&#8217;s &#8220;head and shoulders&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_21' name='page_21'></a>21</span>
+whilst a female servant appeared with a dish
+of potatoes boiled in their jackets and a tureen of
+oyster sauce.</p>
+<p>Now a cod&#8217;s head and shoulders served up like
+this in the good old Irish way is, honestly, a ghastly
+sight. The thing has a countenance and an expression
+most forbidding and all its own.</p>
+<p>The appearance of the old dish cover, clapped on
+by the cook in a hurry in default of the proper one,
+had given Phyl a turn and now she was wondering
+what Mr. Pinckney was thinking of the fish and the
+manner of its serving.</p>
+<p>All at once and as if stimulated into life by the
+presence of the new guest, all sorts of qualms awoke
+in her mind. The dining arrangements of the better
+class Irish are, and always have been, rather primitive,
+haphazard, and lacking in small refinements.
+Phyl was conscious of the fact that Byrne had placed
+several terrible old knives on the table, knives that
+properly belonged to the kitchen, and when the second
+course, consisting of a boiled chicken, faced by
+a piece of bacon reposing on a mat of boiled cabbage,
+appeared, the fact that one of the dishes was
+cracked confronted her with the equally obvious fact
+that the cook in her large-hearted way had sent up
+the chicken with the black legs unremoved.</p>
+<p>It seemed to Phyl&#8217;s vision&mdash;now thoroughly distorted&mdash;that
+the eyes of the stranger were everywhere,
+cool, critical, and amused; so obsessed was
+her mind with this idea that it could take no hold
+upon the conversation. Pinckney was talking of the
+States; he might just as well have been talking about
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_22' name='page_22'></a>22</span>
+Timbuctoo for all the impression he made on her
+with her unfortunate head filled with cracked dishes,
+chickens&#8217; black legs, Byrne&#8217;s awkwardness and the
+suddenly remembered crumb-brush.</p>
+<p>It was twenty years old and it had lost half of its
+bristles in the service of the Berknowles who had
+clung to it with a warm-hearted tenacity purely Irish.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sure, that old brush is a disgrace to the table,&#8221;
+was the comment Phyl&#8217;s father had made on it once,
+just as though he were casually referring to some
+form of the Inevitable such as the state of the
+weather.</p>
+<p>The disgrace had not been removed and it was
+coming to the table, now, in the hand of Byrne.
+Phyl watched the crumbs being swept up, she watched
+the cloth being taken off and the wine and dessert
+placed in the good old fashion, on the polished mahogany,
+then leaving the gentlemen to their wine, she
+retired upstairs and to her bedroom.</p>
+<p>She felt angry with Byrne, with the cook, with
+Mr. Hennessey and with herself. Plenty of people
+had been to dinner at Kilgobbin, yet she had never
+felt ashamed of the <i>ménage</i> till now. This stranger
+from over the water, notwithstanding her dislike for
+him, had the power to disturb her mind as few other
+people had disturbed it in the course of her short life.
+Other people had put her into worse tempers, other
+people had made her dislike them, but no one else
+had ever roused her into this feeling of unrest, this
+criticism of her belongings, this irritation against
+everything including herself.</p>
+<p>Her bedroom was a big room with two windows
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_23' name='page_23'></a>23</span>
+looking upon the park; it was almost in black darkness,
+but the windows shewed in dim, grey oblongs
+and she made her way to one of them, took her place
+in the window-seat and pressed her forehead against
+the glass. The rain had ceased and the clouds had
+risen, but the moon was not yet high enough to
+pierce them. Phyl could just make out the black
+masses of the distant woods and the movement of
+the near fir-trees shaking their tops like hearse
+plumes to the wind.</p>
+<p>The park always fascinated her when it was like
+that, almost blotted out by night. These shapes in
+the dark were akin to shapes in the fire in their power
+over the fancy of the gazer. Phyl as she watched
+them was thinking: not one word had this stranger
+said about her dead father.</p>
+<p>Mr. Berknowles had died in his house and this
+man had buried him in Charleston; he had come over
+here to Ireland on the business of the will and he
+had come into the dead man&#8217;s house as unconcernedly
+as though it were an hotel, and he had laughed and
+talked about all sorts of things with never a word of
+Him.</p>
+<p>If Phyl had thought over the matter, she might
+have seen that, perhaps, this silence of Pinckney&#8217;s
+was the silence of delicacy, not of indifference, but
+she was not in the humour to hold things up to the
+light of reason. She had decided to dislike this man
+and when the Mascarenes came to a decision of this
+sort they were hard to be shaken from it.</p>
+<p>She had decided to dislike him long before she
+saw him.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_24' name='page_24'></a>24</span></p>
+<p>What Phyl really wanted now was perhaps a commonsense
+female relative to stiffen her mind against
+fancies and give her a clear-sighted view of the
+world, but she had none. Philip Berknowles was
+the last of his race, the few distant connections he
+had in Ireland lived away in the south and were separated
+from him by the grand barrier that divides
+Ireland into two opposing camps&mdash;Religion. Berknowles
+was a Protestant, the others Papists.</p>
+<p>Phyl, as she sat watching saw, now, the line of
+the woods strengthen against the sky; the moon
+was breaking through the clouds and its light increasing
+minute by minute shewed the parkland
+clearly defined, the leafless oaks standing here and
+there, oaks that of a summer afternoon stood in
+ponds of shadow, the clumps of hazel, and away to
+the west the great dip, a little valley haunted by a
+fern-hidden river, a glen mysterious and secretive,
+holding in its heart the Druids&#8217; altar.</p>
+<p>The Druids&#8217; altar was the pride of Kilgobbin
+Park; it consisted of a vast slab of stone supported
+on four other stones, no man knew its origin, but
+popular imagination had hung it about with all sorts
+of gruesome fancies. Victims had been slaughtered
+there in the old days, a vein of ironstone in the great
+slab had become the bloodstain of men sacrificed by
+the Druids; the glen was avoided by day and there
+were very few of the country people round about who
+would have entered it by night. Phyl, who had no
+fear of anything, loved the place; she had known it
+from childhood and had been accustomed to take her
+worries and bothers there and bury them.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_25' name='page_25'></a>25</span></p>
+<p>It was a friend, places can become friends and,
+sometimes, most terrific enemies.</p>
+<p>The girl listening, now, heard voices below stairs.
+Hennessey and his companion were evidently leaving
+the dining-room and crossing the hall to the
+library. Going out on the landing she caught a
+glimpse of them as they stood for a moment looking
+at the trophies in the hall, then they went into the
+library, the door was closed, and Phyl came downstairs.</p>
+<p>In the hall she slipped on a pair of goloshes over
+her thin shoes, put on a cloak and hat and came
+out of the front door, closing it carefully behind her.</p>
+<p>To put it in her own words, she couldn&#8217;t stand the
+house any longer. Not till this very evening did she
+feel the great change that her father&#8217;s death had
+brought in her life, not till now did she fully know
+that her past was dead as well as her father, and not
+till she had left the house did the feeling come to her
+that Pinckney was to prove its undertaker.</p>
+<p>There was something alike cold and fateful in the
+impression that this man had made upon her, an
+extraordinary impression, for it would be impossible
+to imagine anything further removed from the
+ideas of Coldness and Fate than the idea of the
+cheerful and practical Pinckney. However, there it
+was, her heart was chilled with the thought of him
+and the instinctive knowledge that he was going to
+make a great alteration in her life.</p>
+<p>She crossed the gravelled drive to the grass sward
+beyond. The night had altered marvellously; nearly
+every vestige of cloud had vanished, blown away by
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_26' name='page_26'></a>26</span>
+the wind. The wind and the moon had the night
+between them and the air was balmy as the air of
+summer.</p>
+<p>Phyl turned and looked back at the house with all
+its windows glittering in the moonlight, then she
+struck across the grass now almost dried by the wind.</p>
+<p>Phyl had something of the night bird in her composition.
+She had often been out long before dawn
+to pick up night lines in the river and she knew the
+woods by dark as well as by day. She was out now
+for nothing but a breath of fresh air, she did not
+intend to stay more than ten minutes, and she was
+on the point of returning to the house when a cry
+from the woods made her pause.</p>
+<p>One might have fancied that some human being
+was crying out in agony, but Phyl knew that it was
+a fox, a fox caught in a trap. She was confirmed
+in her knowledge by the barking of its mates; they
+would be gathered round the trapped one lending all
+the help they could&mdash;with their voices.</p>
+<p>The girl did not pause to think; forgetting that
+she had no weapon with which to put the poor beast
+out of its misery, and no means of freeing it without
+being bitten, she started off at a run in the direction
+of the sound, entering the woods by a path that led
+through a grove of hazel; leaving this path she struck
+westward swift as an Indian along the road of the
+call.</p>
+<p>Her mother&#8217;s people had been used to the wilds,
+and Phyl had more than a few drops of tracker blood
+in her veins; better than that, she had a trace of the
+wood instinct that leads a man about the forest and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_27' name='page_27'></a>27</span>
+makes him able to strike a true line to the west or
+east or north or south without a compass.</p>
+<p>The trees were set rather sparsely here and the
+moonlight shewed vistas of withered fern. The
+wind had fallen, and in the vast silence of the night
+this place seemed unreal as a dream. The fox had
+evidently succeeded in liberating itself from the trap,
+for its cries had ceased, cut off all of a sudden as
+though by a closing door.</p>
+<p>Phyl paused to listen and look around her.
+Through all the night from here, from there, came
+thin traces of sound, threads fretting the silence.
+The trotting of a horse a mile away on the Arranakilty
+road, the bark of a dog from near the Round
+House, the shaky bleat of a sheep from the fold at
+Ross&#8217; farm came distinct yet diminished almost to
+vanishing point. It was like listening to the country
+sounds of Lilliput. With these came the vaguest
+whisper of flowing water, broken now and again by
+a little shudder of wind in the leafless branches of
+the trees.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s out,&#8221; said Phyl to herself. She was thinking
+of the fox. She knew that the trap must be
+somewhere about and she guessed who had set it.
+Rafferty, without a doubt, for only the other day he
+had been complaining of the foxes having raided the
+chickens, but there was no use in hunting for the
+thing by this light and without any indication of its
+exact whereabouts, so she struck on, determined to
+return to the house by the more open ground leading
+through the Druids&#8217; glen.</p>
+<p>She had been here before in the very early morning
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_28' name='page_28'></a>28</span>
+before sunrise on her way to the river, Rafferty following
+her with the fish creel, but she had never seen
+the place like this with the moonlight on it and she
+paused for a moment to rest and think, taking her
+seat on a piece of rock by the cromlech.</p>
+<p>Phyl, despite her American strain, was very Irish
+in one particular: though cheerful and healthy and
+without a trace of morbidness in her composition,
+she, still, was given to fits of melancholy&mdash;not depression,
+melancholy. It is in the air of Ireland,
+the moist warm air that feeds the shamrock and fills
+the glens with soft-throated echoes and it is in the
+soul of the people.</p>
+<p>Phyl, seated in this favourite spot of hers, where
+she had played as a child on many a warm summer&#8217;s
+afternoon, gave herself over to the moonlight and
+the spirit of Recollection.</p>
+<p>She had forgotten Pinckney, and the strange disturbance
+that he had occasioned in her mind had
+sunk to rest; she was thinking of her father, of all
+the pleasant days that were no more&mdash;she remembered
+her dolls, the wax ones with staring eyes,
+dummies and effigies compared with that mysterious,
+soulful, sinful, frightful, old rag doll with the inked
+face, true friend in affliction and companion in joy,
+and even more, a Ju-ju to be propitiated. That
+thing had stirred in her a sort of religious sentiment,
+had caused in her a thrill of worship real, though
+faint, far more real than the worship of God that
+had been cultivated in her mind by her teachers.
+The old Druid stone had affected her child&#8217;s mind in
+somewhat the same way, but with a difference. The
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_29' name='page_29'></a>29</span>
+Ju-ju was a familiar, she had even beaten and
+punched it when in a temper; the stone had always
+filled her with respect.</p>
+<p>There are some people the doors of whose minds
+are absolutely closed on the past; we call them material
+and practical people; there are others in which
+the doors of division are a wee crack open, or even
+ajar, so that their lives are more or less haunted
+by whisperings from that strange land we call yesterday.</p>
+<p>In some of the Burmese and Japanese children
+the doors stand wide open so that they can see themselves
+as they were before they passed through the
+change called death, but the Westerners are denied
+this. In Phyl&#8217;s mind as a child one might suppose
+that through the doors ajar some recollections of
+forgotten gods once worshipped had stolen, and
+that the power of the Ju-ju and the Druids&#8217; stone
+lay in their power of focussing those vague and wandering
+threads of remembrance.</p>
+<p>To-night this power seemed regained, for she
+passed from the contemplation of concrete images
+into a vague and pleasant state, an absolute idleness
+of the intellect akin to that which people call daydreaming.</p>
+<p>With her cloak wrapped round her she sat, elbows
+on knees and her chin in the palms of her hands
+giving herself up to Nothing before starting to resume
+her way to the house.</p>
+<p>Sitting like this she suddenly started and turned.
+Some one had called her:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Phylice!&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_30' name='page_30'></a>30</span></p>
+<p>For a moment she fancied that it was a real voice,
+and then she knew that it was only a voice in her
+head, one of those sounds we hear when we are half
+asleep, one of those hails from dreamland that come
+now as the ringing of a bell that never has rung, or
+the call of a person who has never spoken.</p>
+<p>She rose up and resumed her way, striking along
+the glen to the open park, yet still the memory of
+that call pursued her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Phylice!&#8221;</p>
+<p>It seemed Mr. Pinckney&#8217;s voice, it <i>was</i> his voice,
+she was sure of that now, and she amused herself
+by wondering why his voice had suddenly popped up
+in her head. She had been thinking about him more
+than about any one else that evening and that easily
+accounted for the matter. Fancy had mimicked him&mdash;yet
+why did Fancy use her name and clothe it in
+Pinckney&#8217;s voice?&mdash;and it was distinctly a call, the
+call of a person who wishes to draw another person&#8217;s
+attention.</p>
+<p>Pinckney had never called her by her name and
+she felt almost irritated at the impertinence of the
+phantom voice in doing so.</p>
+<p>This same irritation made her laugh when she
+realised it. Then the idea that Byrne might lock
+the hall door before she could get back drove every
+other thought away and she began to run, her
+shadow running before her over the moonlit grass.</p>
+<p>Half way across the sward, which was divided
+from the grass land proper by a Ha-ha, she heard
+the stable clock striking eleven.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_31' name='page_31'></a>31</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>When Phyl withdrew from the dining-room,
+Hennessey filled his glass with port, Pinckney,
+who took no wine, lit a cigarette and the two
+men drew miles closer to one another in conversation.</p>
+<p>They were both relieved by the withdrawal of
+the girl, Hennessey because he wanted to talk business,
+Pinckney because her presence had affected
+him like a wet blanket.</p>
+<p>His first impression of Phyl had been delightful,
+then, little by little, her stiffness and seeming lifelessness
+had communicated themselves to him. It
+seemed to him that he had never met a duller or
+more awkward schoolgirl. His mind was of that
+quick order which requires to be caught in the uptake
+rapidly in order to shine. Slowness, coldness,
+dulness or hesitancy in others depressed him just as
+dull weather depressed him. He did not at all know
+with what a burning interest his arrival had been
+awaited, or the effect that his voice had produced
+and his first appearance. He did not know how the
+dull schoolgirl had weighed him in a mysterious balance
+which she herself did not quite comprehend and
+had found him slightly wanting. Neither could he
+tell the extent of the paralyses produced in that same
+mind of hers by the cracked china, the old dish cover,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_32' name='page_32'></a>32</span>
+Byrne&#8217;s awkwardness, and the deboshed crumb-brush.</p>
+<p>He should have kept to his first impression of her,
+for first impressions are nearly always right; he
+should have sought for the reason of so much charm
+proving charmless, so much positive attraction proving
+so negative in effect. But he did not. He just
+took her as he found her and was glad she was gone.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And I believe,&#8221; said Hennessey, &#8220;the South is
+different now. It used to be all cotton before the
+war.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, no,&#8221; said Pinckney. &#8220;Before the war there
+was a lot of cotton grown but we used to grow other
+things as well, we used to feed ourselves, the plantation
+was economically independent. The war
+broke us. We had to get money, so we grew cotton
+as cotton was never grown before; the South became
+a great sheet of cotton. You see, cotton is the only
+crop you can mortgage, so we grew cotton and mortgaged
+it. Of course the old-time planter is gone,
+everything is done now by companies, and that&#8217;s the
+devil of it&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Pinckney was silent for a moment and sat staring
+before him as though he were looking at the Past.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Companies, you see, don&#8217;t grow sunflowers to
+look at, don&#8217;t grow trees to shade them, don&#8217;t make
+love in a wild and extravagant manner and shoot
+other companies for crossing them in their affections&mdash;don&#8217;t
+play the guitar, in short.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Companies don&#8217;t breed trotting horses and wear
+panama hats and put flowers in their buttonholes.
+The old Planter used to do these things and a lot
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_33' name='page_33'></a>33</span>
+of others. He was a bit of a patriarch in his way,
+too&mdash;well, he&#8217;s gone and more&#8217;s the pity. He&#8217;s like
+an old house pulled down. No one can ever build
+it again as it was. The South&#8217;s a big industrial
+region now. Not only cotton&mdash;ore and coal and
+machinery. We supply the North and East with
+pig-iron, machinery, God knows what. Berknowles
+was very keen on Southern industries, regularly bitten.
+He was talking of selling off here and coming
+to settle in Charleston when the illness took him&mdash;
+and that reminds me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He took a document from his pocket. &#8220;This is
+the will. I&#8217;ve kept it on my person since I started
+for here. It&#8217;s not the thing to trust to a handbag.
+It&#8217;s in correct form, I believe. Temperley, our solicitor,
+made it out for him and it leaves everything
+to the girl when she&#8217;s twenty&mdash;but just read it and
+see what you think.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He lit another cigarette whilst Hennessey, putting
+on his glasses and pushing his dessert plate away,
+spread the will on the table.</p>
+<p>Pinckney watched him as he read it. Hennessey
+was a new order of being to him. This easy-going,
+slipshod, garrulous gentleman, fond of his glass of
+wine, contrasted strangely with the typical lawyer
+of the States. Flushed and not in his business mood,
+the man of law cast his eyes over the document before
+him, reading bits of it here and there and seeming
+not inclined to bother himself by a concentration
+of his full energies on the matter.</p>
+<p>Then, suddenly, his eyes became fixed on a paragraph
+which he re-read as though puzzled by the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_34' name='page_34'></a>34</span>
+meaning of it. Then he looked up at the other over
+his glasses.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, what&#8217;s this?&#8221; said he. &#8220;He has made
+<i>you</i> Phyl&#8217;s guardian. <i>You!</i>&#8221;</p>
+<p>Pinckney laughed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, that was the chief thing that brought me
+over. He has made me her guardian, till she&#8217;s
+twenty, and he made me promise to look after her
+interests and see to all business arrangements. He
+said he had no near relations in Ireland, and he said
+that he&#8217;d sooner trust the devil than the few relatives
+he had, that they were Papists&mdash;that is to say
+Roman Catholics&mdash;he seemed to fear them like the
+deuce and their influence on the girl. I couldn&#8217;t understand
+him. I&#8217;ve never seen any harm in Roman
+Catholics; there are loads in the States and they
+seem to be just as good citizens as the others, better,
+for they seem to stick tighter by their religion. Anyhow,
+there you are. Berknowles had them on the
+brain and nothing would do him but I must come
+over to look after the business myself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Hennessey, with his finger on the will, had been
+staring at Pinckney during this. He looked down
+now at the document and then up again.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But you&mdash;her guardian&mdash;why, it&#8217;s absurd,&#8221; said
+he. &#8220;You aren&#8217;t old enough to be a guardian, why,
+Lord bless my soul, what&#8217;ll people be doing next?
+A young chap like you to be the guardian of a girl
+like Phyl&mdash;why, it&#8217;s not proper.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not only am I to be her guardian,&#8221; said Pinckney
+with a twinkle in his eyes, &#8220;but she&#8217;s to come and
+live under my roof at Charleston. I promised Berknowles
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_35' name='page_35'></a>35</span>
+that&mdash;He was dying, you see, and one
+can refuse nothing to a dying man.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Hennessey rose up in an abstracted sort of way,
+went to the sideboard, poured himself out a whisky
+and soda, took a sip, and sat down again.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Extraordinary, isn&#8217;t it?&#8221; said Pinckney, tapping
+the ash off his cigarette. &#8220;All the same, you need
+not be worried at the impropriety of the business;
+there&#8217;s none, nothing improper could live in the same
+house with my aunt, Maria Pinckney. Vernons belongs
+to her though I live there.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Vernons,&#8221; put in the other. &#8220;What&#8217;s that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s the name of our house in Charleston. It&#8217;s
+mine, really, but my father left it to Maria to live
+in; it comes to me at her death. I don&#8217;t want that
+house at all. I want her to keep it forever, but
+it&#8217;s such a pleasant old place, I like to live there instead
+of buying a house of my own. Vernons isn&#8217;t
+exactly a house, it&#8217;s more like a family tree&mdash;hollow&mdash;with
+all the ancestors inside instead of hanging
+on the branches.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But why on earth didn&#8217;t Berknowles make your
+aunt guardian to the girl?&#8221; asked Hennessey.
+&#8220;There&#8217;d have been some sense in that&mdash;a middle-aged
+woman&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I beg your pardon,&#8221; said Pinckney, &#8220;my aunt is
+not a middle-aged woman, she&#8217;s not fifteen.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not what?&#8221; said Hennessey.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not fifteen&mdash;in years of discretion, though she&#8217;s
+over seventy as time goes. She has no knowledge
+at all of what money is or what money means&mdash;she
+flings it away, doesn&#8217;t spend it&mdash;just flings it away
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_36' name='page_36'></a>36</span>
+on anything and everything but herself. I don&#8217;t believe
+there&#8217;s a charity in the States that hasn&#8217;t
+squeezed her, or a beggar-man in the South that
+hasn&#8217;t banked on her. She was sent into the world
+to grow flowers and look after stray dogs and be
+robbed by hoboes; she has been nearly seventy years
+at it and she doesn&#8217;t know she has ever been robbed.
+She&#8217;s not a fool by any manner of means, and she
+rules the servants at Vernons in the good old patriarchal
+way, but she&#8217;s lost where money is concerned.
+That&#8217;s why Berknowles wanted me to look after the
+girl&#8217;s interests. As for anything else, I guess Maria
+Pinckney will be the real guardian.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; said Hennessey. He was
+confused by all these new ideas shot into his mind
+suddenly like this after dinner, he could see that
+Pinckney was genuine enough, all the same it irritated
+him to think that Philip Berknowles should
+have chosen a youth like this to be second father to
+Phyl. What was the matter with himself, Hennessey?
+Hadn&#8217;t he a fine house in Merrion Square
+and a wife who would have treated the girl like a
+daughter?</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; said he. &#8220;It&#8217;s not for me
+to dispute the wishes of a client, but I&#8217;ve known
+Phyl since she was born and I&#8217;ve known her father
+since we were together at Trinity College and I&#8217;d
+have taken it more handsome if he&#8217;d left the looking
+after of her to me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wonder he didn&#8217;t,&#8221; said Pinckney. &#8220;He spoke
+of you a good deal to me, spoke of you as his best
+friend; all the same he seemed set on the idea of us
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_37' name='page_37'></a>37</span>
+taking care of the girl. He fell in love with Charleston
+and he cottoned to us; then, of course, there were
+the family reasons. Phyl&#8217;s mother was a Mascarene;
+my mother was her mother&#8217;s first cousin. Vernons
+belonged to the Mascarenes, my mother brought
+it to my father as part of her wedding portion. The
+Pinckneys&#8217; old house was lost to us in the smash up
+after the war. So, you see, Phyl ought to be as
+much at home at Vernons as I am. Funny, isn&#8217;t it,
+how things get mixed up and old family houses
+change hands?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And when do you want to take her away?&#8221; asked
+Hennessey.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Upon my word, I&#8217;ve never thought of that,&#8221; replied
+the other. &#8220;I want to see things settled up
+here and to go over the accounts with you. Berknowles
+said the house had better be let&mdash;I should
+think it would be easy to find a good tenant&mdash;then I
+want to go to London on business and get back as
+quick as possible. She need not come back with me,
+it would scarcely give her time to get things ready.
+There&#8217;s a Mrs. Van Dusen, a friend of ours who
+lives in New York, she&#8217;s coming over in a month or
+so and Phyl might come with her as far as New
+York. It&#8217;s all plain sailing after that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Hennessey, folding up the will and
+putting it in his pocket. &#8220;I suppose it&#8217;s all for the
+best, but it&#8217;s hard lines for a man to lose his best
+friend and see a good old estate like Kilgobbin taken
+off to the States&mdash;Oh, you needn&#8217;t tell me, if Phyl
+goes out there she&#8217;s done for as far as Ireland is
+concerned. Sure, they never come back, the people
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_38' name='page_38'></a>38</span>
+that go there, and if she does come back it&#8217;ll be with
+an American husband and he master of Kilgobbin.
+I know what America is, it never lets go of the man
+or woman it catches hold of.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re not far wrong there,&#8221; said Pinckney.
+&#8220;You see, life is set to a faster pace in America than
+over here and once you learn to step that pace you
+feel coming back here as if you were living in a
+country where people are hobbled. At least that&#8217;s
+my experience. Then the air is different. There&#8217;s
+somehow a feeling of morning in America that goes
+through the whole day&mdash;almost&mdash;here, afternoon
+begins somewhere about eleven.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Hennessey yawned, and the two men, rising from
+the table, left the room and crossed the hall to the
+library.</p>
+<p>Here, after a while, Hennessey bade the other
+good night and departed for bed, whilst Pinckney,
+leaning back in his armchair, fell into a lazy and
+contemplative mood, his eyes wandering from point
+to point.</p>
+<p>All this business was very new to him. Pinckney
+had inherited his father&#8217;s brains as well as his money.
+He had discovered that a large fortune requires just
+as much care and attention as a large garden and that
+a man can extract just as much interest and amusement
+and the physical health that comes from both,
+out of money-tending as out of flower and vegetable
+growing. Knowing all about cotton and nearly
+everything about wheat, he managed occasionally to
+do a bit of speculative dealing without the least danger
+of burning his fingers. Self-reliant and self-assured,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_39' name='page_39'></a>39</span>
+knowing his road and all its turnings, he
+had moved through life up to this with the ease of
+a well-oiled and almost frictionless mechanism.</p>
+<p>But here was a new thing of which he had never
+dreamed. Here was another destiny suddenly
+thrust into his charge and another person&#8217;s property
+to be conserved and dealt with. Never, never, did
+he dream when acceding to Berknowles&#8217; request, of
+the troubles, little difficulties and causes of indecision
+that were preparing to meet him.</p>
+<p>Up till now, one side of his character had been
+almost unknown to him. He had been quite unaware
+that he possessed a conscience most painfully
+sensitive with regard to the interests of others, a
+conscience that would prick him and poison his peace
+were he to leave even little things undone in the fulfilment
+of the trust he had undertaken so lightheartedly.</p>
+<p>Possessing a keen eye for men he began to recognise
+now why Berknowles had not chosen the easy-going
+Hennessey to look after Phyl and her affairs,
+and he guessed, just by the little bit he had seen of
+Kilgobbin and the servants, the slipshoddedness and
+waste going on behind the scenes in the absence of
+a master and mistress.</p>
+<p>Pinckney loathed waste as he loathed inefficiency
+and as he loathed dirt. They were all three brothers
+with Drink in his eyes and as he leaned back in
+the chair now, his gaze travelling about the room, he
+could not but perceive little things that would have
+brought exclamations from the soul of a careful
+housekeeper. The furniture had been upholstered,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_40' name='page_40'></a>40</span>
+or rather re-upholstered in leather some five years
+ago. There is nothing that cries out so much against
+neglect as leather, and the chairs and couch in the
+library of Kilgobbin, without exactly crying out, still
+told their tale. Some of the buttons were gone, and
+some of them hung actually by the thread in the last
+stage of departure. There was a tiny triangular
+rent in the leather of the armchair wherein Phyl had
+been sitting and another armchair wanted a castor.
+The huge Persian rug that covered the centre of the
+floor shewed marks left by cigar and cigarette ash,
+and under a Jacobean book-case in the corner were
+stuffed all sorts of odds and ends, old paper-backed
+novels, a pair of old shoes, a tennis racquet and a
+boxing glove&mdash;besides other things.</p>
+<p>Pinckney rose up, went to the book-case and placed
+his fingers on top of it, then he looked at his fingers
+and the bar of dust upon them, brushed his hand
+clean and came back to his chair by the fire. He
+heard the stable clock striking eleven. The sound
+of the wind that had been raging outside all during
+dinner time had died away and the sounds of the
+house made themselves manifest, the hundred
+stealthy accountable and unaccountable little sounds
+that night evolves from an old house set in the stillness
+of the country. Just as the night jasmine gives
+up its perfume to the night, so does an old house its
+past in the form of murmurs and crackings and memories
+and suggestions. Notwithstanding Dunn&#8217;s attentions
+there were rats alive in the cellars and under
+the boarding&mdash;and mice; the passages leading to the
+kitchen premises made a whispering gallery where
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_41' name='page_41'></a>41</span>
+murderers seemed consulting together if the scullery
+window were forgotten and left open&mdash;as it usually
+was, and boards in the uneven flooring that had been
+preparing for the act for weeks and months would
+suddenly &#8220;go off with a bang,&#8221; a noise startling in
+the dead of night as the crack of a pistol, and produced,
+heaven knows how, but never by daylight.</p>
+<p>Even Pinckney, who did not believe in ghosts, became
+aware as he sat now by the fire that the old
+house was feeling for him to make him creep, feeling
+for him with its old disjointed fingers and all the artfulness
+of inanimate things.</p>
+<p>He was aware that Sir Nicholas Berknowles was
+looking down at him with the terrible patient gaze
+of a portrait, and he returned the gaze, trying to
+imagine what manner of man this might have been
+and how he had lived and what he had done in those
+old days that were once real sunlit days filled with
+people with real voices, hearts, and minds.</p>
+<p>A gentle creak as though a light step had pressed
+upon the flooring of the hall brought his mind back
+to reality and he was rising from his chair to retire
+for the night when a sound from outside the window
+made him sit down again. It was the sound of a
+step on the gravel path, a step stealthy and light, a
+real sound and no contraption of the imagination.</p>
+<p>The idea of burglars sprang up in his mind, but
+was dismissed; that was no burglar&#8217;s footstep&mdash;and
+yet! He listened. The sound had ceased and now
+came a faint rubbing as of a hand feeling for the
+window followed by the sharp rapping of a knuckle
+on the glass.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_42' name='page_42'></a>42</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Hullo,&#8221; cried Pinckney, jumping to his feet
+and approaching the shuttered window. &#8220;Who&#8217;s
+there?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s me,&#8221; said a voice. &#8220;I&#8217;m locked out.
+Byrne&#8217;s bolted the front door. Go to the hall door,
+will you, please, and let me in?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Phyl,&#8221; said Pinckney to himself. &#8220;Good
+heavens!&#8221; Then to the other, &#8220;I&#8217;m coming.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Byrne had left a lamp lighted in the hall and the
+guest&#8217;s candlestick waiting for him on the table.
+The lamp was sufficient to show him the executive
+side of the big front door that had been nearly battered
+in in the time of the Fenians and still possessed
+the ponderous locks and bars of a past day when
+the tenants of Kilgobbin had fought the pikemen of
+Arranakilty and Rupert Berknowles had hung seventeen
+rebels, no less, on the branches of the big oak
+&#8220;be the gates.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Pinckney undid bolt and bar, turned the key in the
+great lock and flung the door open, disclosing Phyl
+standing in the moonlight. The contrast between
+the forbidding and ponderous door and the charming
+little figure against which it had stood as a barrier
+might have struck him had his mind been less
+astonished. As it was he could think of nothing but
+the strangeness of the business in hand.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where on earth have you been?&#8221; said he.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Out in the woods,&#8221; said Phyl, entering quite
+unconcerned and removing her cloak. &#8220;A fox got
+trapped in the woods and I went to let it out and
+couldn&#8217;t find it, then that old fool Byrne locked the
+door; lucky you were up. I saw the light in the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_43' name='page_43'></a>43</span>
+library shining through a crack in the shutters and
+knocked.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Pinckney was putting up the bar and sliding the
+bolts. He said nothing. Had Phyl been another
+girl, he might have laughed and joked over the
+matter, but care of Phyl&#8217;s well-being was now part
+of his business in life and that consideration just
+checked his speech. There was nothing at all wrong
+in the affair, and never for a moment did he dream
+of making the slightest remonstrance; still, the unwisdom
+of a young girl wandering about in the woods
+at night after trapped foxes was a patent fact which
+disturbed the mind of this guardian unto dumbness.</p>
+<p>Phyl, who was as sensitive to impressions as a
+radiometer to light, noted the silence of the other
+and resented it as she hung up her old hat and cloak.
+She knew nothing of the true facts of the case, she
+looked on Pinckney as a being almost of her own
+age, and that he should dare to express disapproval
+of an act of hers not concerning him, even by silence,
+was an intolerable insult. She knew that she loathed
+him now.&mdash;Prig!</p>
+<p>This was the first real meeting of these two and
+Fate, with the help of Irish temper and the Pinckney
+conscience, was making a fine fiasco of it.</p>
+<p>Phyl, having hung up the hat and coat, turned without
+a word, marched into the library and finding the
+book she had been reading that day, put it under her
+arm.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Good night,&#8221; said she as she passed him in the
+hall.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Good night,&#8221; he replied.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_44' name='page_44'></a>44</span></p>
+<p>He watched her disappearing up the stairs, stood
+for a moment irresolute, and then went into the
+library. He knew he had offended her and he knew
+exactly how he had offended her. There are silences
+that can be more hurting than speech&mdash;yet what
+could he have said? He rummaged in his mind to
+find something he might have said and could find
+nothing more appropriate than a remark about
+the weather and the fineness of the night. Yet a
+bald and decrepit remark like that would have been
+as bad almost as silence, for it would have ignored
+the main point at issue&mdash;the night-wandering of his
+ward.</p>
+<p>He sat down again for a moment in the armchair
+by the fireplace and began to wrestle with the position
+in which he found himself. This was a small
+business, but if Phyl in the future was to do things
+that he did not approve of it would be his plain duty
+to remonstrate with her. An odious position for
+youth to be placed in. How she would loathe and
+hate him!</p>
+<p>Pinckney, though a man of the world in many
+ways and a good business man, was still at heart a
+boy just as young as Phyl; even in years he was very
+little older than she, and the boy side of his mind
+was in full revolt at the job set before him by fate.</p>
+<p>Then he came to a resolution.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She can do jolly well what she pleases,&#8221; said he
+to himself, &#8220;without my interference. Aunt Maria
+can attend to that. My business will be to look after
+her property and keep sharks off it. <i>I&#8217;m</i> not going
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_45' name='page_45'></a>45</span>
+to set up in business to tell a girl what she ought or
+oughtn&#8217;t to do&mdash;that&#8217;s a woman&#8217;s job.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Satisfied with this seeming solution of the difficulty
+he went to bed.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile, Phyl, having marched off with the
+book under her arm found, when she reached her
+room, that she had forgotten a matchbox, and, too
+proud to return to the hall for one, went to bed in
+the dark.</p>
+<p>She lay awake for an hour, her mind obsessed by
+thoughts of this man who had suddenly stepped into
+her life, and who possessed such a strange power to
+disturb her being and fill it with feelings of unrest,
+irritation and, strangely enough, a vague attraction.</p>
+<p>The attraction one might fancy the iron to feel
+for the distant magnet, or the floating stick for the
+far-off whirlpool.</p>
+<p>Then she fell asleep and dreamed that they were
+at dinner and Mr. Hennessey was waiting at table.
+Her father was there and, before the dream converted
+itself into something equally fatuous she heard
+Pinckney&#8217;s voice, also in the dream; he seemed looking
+for her in the hall and he was calling to her,
+&#8220;Phyl&mdash;Phyl!&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_46' name='page_46'></a>46</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>Next morning came with a burst of sunshine
+and a windy, cloudless sky. Pinckney, dressing
+with his window open, could see the park
+with the rooks wheeling and cawing over the trees,
+whilst the warm wind brought into the room all sorts
+of winter scents on the very breath of summer.</p>
+<p>This rainy land where the snow rarely comes has
+all sorts of surprises of climate and character.
+Nothing is truly logical in Ireland, not even winter.
+That is what makes the place so delightful to some
+minds and so perplexing to others.</p>
+<p>Hennessey was staying for a day or two to go over
+accounts and explain the working of the estate to
+Pinckney.</p>
+<p>He was in the hall when the latter came down, and
+gave him good morning.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where&#8217;s your mistress?&#8221; said Hennessey to old
+Byrne, as they took their seats at the breakfast
+table.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Faith, she&#8217;s been out since six,&#8221; said Byrne.
+&#8220;She came down threatenin&#8217; to skin Rafferty alive
+for layin&#8217; fox thraps in the woods, then she had a bite
+of bread and butter and a cup of tea Norah made
+for her, and off she went with Rafferty to hunt out
+the thraps and take them up. It&#8217;s little she cares
+for breakfast.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_47' name='page_47'></a>47</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;I was the same way myself when I was her age,&#8221;
+said Hennessey to Pinckney. &#8220;Up at four in the
+morning and out fishing in Dublin Bay&mdash;it&#8217;s well to
+be young.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Look here,&#8221; said the young man, as Byrne left
+the room, &#8220;she was out till eleven last night in the
+woods; she knocked me up as I was sitting in the
+library and I let her in. <i>I</i> don&#8217;t see anything
+wrong in the business, but all the same, it&#8217;s
+not a particularly safe proceeding and I suppose a
+mother or father would have jawed her&mdash;I couldn&#8217;t.
+I suppose I showed by my manner that I didn&#8217;t approve
+of her being out so late, for she seemed in a
+huff as she went up to bed. My position is a bit
+difficult, but I&#8217;m hanged if I&#8217;m going to do the heavy
+father or careful mother business. If she was only
+a boy, I could talk to her like a Dutch uncle, but I
+don&#8217;t know anything about girls. I wish&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Pinckney&#8217;s wish remained forever unexpressed,
+for at the moment the door opened and in came
+Phyl.</p>
+<p>Her face was glowing with the morning air and
+she seemed to have forgotten the business of the
+night before as she greeted Pinckney and the lawyer
+and took her place at the table.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Phyl,&#8221; said the lawyer, half jocularly, &#8220;here&#8217;s
+Mr. Pinckney been complaining that you were wandering
+about all night in the woods, knocking him
+up to let you in at two o&#8217;clock in the morning.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl, who was helping herself to bacon, looked
+up at Pinckney.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, you cad,&#8221; said her eyes. Then she spoke:
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_48' name='page_48'></a>48</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;I came in at eleven. If I had known, I would
+have called up Byrne or one of the servants to let
+me in.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Pinckney could have slain Hennessey.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Good gracious,&#8221; he said. &#8220;<i>I</i> wasn&#8217;t complaining.
+I only just mentioned the fact.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The fact that I was out till two,&#8221; said Phyl, with
+another upward glance of scorn.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I never said any such thing. I said eleven.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was my loose way of speaking; but, sure,
+what&#8217;s the good of getting out of temper?&#8221; put in
+Hennessey. &#8220;Mr. Pinckney wasn&#8217;t meaning anything,
+but you see, Phyl, it&#8217;s just this way, your father
+has made him your guardian.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;My <i>what!</i>&#8221; cried the girl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>Oh</i>, Lord!&#8221; said Pinckney, in despair at the
+blundering way of the other. Then finding himself
+again and the saving vein of humour, without which
+man is just a leaden figure:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, that&#8217;s it. I&#8217;m your guardian. You must
+on no account go out without my permission, or
+cough or sneeze without a written permit&mdash;Oh, Phyl,
+don&#8217;t be thinking nonsense of that sort. I <i>am</i> your
+guardian, it seems, and by your father&#8217;s special request,
+but you are absolutely free to do as you like.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A nice sort of guardian,&#8221; put in Hennessey with
+a grin.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am only, really, guardian of your money and
+your interests,&#8221; went on the other, &#8220;and your welfare.
+When you came in last night late, I was a bit
+taken aback and I thought&mdash;as a matter of fact, I
+thought it might be dangerous being out alone in this
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_49' name='page_49'></a>49</span>
+wild part of the country so late at night, but I did
+not want to interfere; you can understand, can&#8217;t you?
+What I want you to get out of your mind is, that I
+am that odious thing, a meddling person. I&#8217;m not.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl was very white. She had risen from the
+table and was at the window.</p>
+<p>Here was her dream come true of the bearded
+American who had suddenly appeared to claim her
+and Kilgobbin and the servants and everything.</p>
+<p>Pinckney had not a beard, but he was an American
+and he had come to claim everything. The word
+guardian carried such a force and weight and was
+so filled with fantastic possibilities to the mind of
+Phyl, that she scarcely heard his soft words and
+excuses.</p>
+<p>Phyl had the Irish trick of running away with
+ideas and embroidering the most palpable truths
+with fancies. It was an inheritance from her father,
+and she stood by the window now unable to speak,
+with the word &#8220;Guardian&#8221; ringing in her ears and
+the idea pressing on her mind like an incubus.</p>
+<p>Hennessey had risen up. He was the first to
+break silence.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s no use in meeting troubles half way,&#8221;
+said he vaguely. &#8220;You and Phyl will get along all
+right when you know each other better. Come out,
+the two of you, and we&#8217;ll go round the grounds and
+you will be able to see for yourself the state of the
+house and what repairs are wanting.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;One moment,&#8221; said Pinckney. &#8220;I want to tell
+Phyl something&mdash;I&#8217;m going to call you Phyl because
+I&#8217;m your guardian&mdash;d&#8217;you mind?&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_50' name='page_50'></a>50</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said Phyl, &#8220;you can call me anything you
+like, I suppose.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not going to call you anything I like&mdash;just
+Phyl&mdash; Well, then, I want to tell you what we
+have to do. It&#8217;s not my wishes I have to carry out
+but your father&#8217;s. He wanted to let this house.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Let Kilgobbin!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, that is what he said. He wanted to let it
+to a good tenant who would look after it till you are
+of age. I think he was right. You see, you could
+not live here all alone, and if the place was shut up
+it would deteriorate.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It would go to wrack and ruin,&#8221; said Hennessey.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And the servants?&#8221; said Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We will look after them,&#8221; said Pinckney, &#8220;the
+new tenant might take them on; if not, we&#8217;ll give
+them time to get new places.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Byrne&#8217;s been here before I was born,&#8221; said the
+girl, with dry lips, &#8220;so has Mrs. Driscoll. They
+are part of the place; it would ruin their lives to
+send them away.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Pinckney, &#8220;I don&#8217;t want to be the
+ogre to ruin their lives; you can do anything you
+like about them. If the new tenant didn&#8217;t take
+them, you might pension them. I want you to be
+perfectly happy in your mind and I want you to feel
+that though I am, so to speak, the guardian of your
+money, still, that money is yours.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She was beginning to understand now that not only
+was he striving to soothe her feelings and propitiate
+her, but that he was very much in earnest in this
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_51' name='page_51'></a>51</span>
+business, and crowding through her mind came a
+great wave of revulsion against herself.</p>
+<p>Phyl&#8217;s nature was such that whilst always ready
+to fly into wrath and easily moved to bitter resentment,
+one touch of kindness, one soft word, had the
+power to disarm her.</p>
+<p>One soft word from an antagonist had the power
+to wound her far more than a dozen words of bitterness.</p>
+<p>Filled now with absolutely superfluous self-reproach,
+she stood for a moment unable to speak.
+Then she said, raising her eyes to his:</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am sure you mean to do what is for the best.&mdash;It
+was stupid of me&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not a bit,&#8221; said the other, cheerfully. &#8220;I want
+to do the things that will make you happy&mdash;that&#8217;s
+all. I&#8217;m a business man and I know the value of
+money. Money is just worth the amount of happiness
+it brings.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Faith, that&#8217;s true,&#8221; said Hennessey, who had
+taken his seat again and was in the act of lighting a
+cigar.</p>
+<p>&#8220;When I was a boy,&#8221; went on the other. &#8220;I was
+always kept hard up by my father. It was like
+pulling gum teeth to get the price of a fishing rod out
+of him. When I think of all the fun I might have
+bought with a few dollars, it makes me wild. You
+can&#8217;t buy fun when you get old; you may buy an
+opera house or a yacht, but you can&#8217;t buy the real
+stuff that makes life worth living.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl glanced out of the window at the park, then
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_52' name='page_52'></a>52</span>
+as though she had found some inspiration there, she
+turned to Pinckney.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you don&#8217;t mind about the money, then why
+don&#8217;t you let me live here instead of letting the place?
+I can live here by myself and I would be happy here.
+I won&#8217;t be happy if I leave it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Pinckney, &#8220;there&#8217;s your father&#8217;s
+wish, first of all.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m sure if he knew how I felt, he wouldn&#8217;t
+mind,&#8221; said Phyl mournfully, turning her gaze again
+to the park.</p>
+<p>&#8220;On top of that,&#8221; went on Pinckney, &#8220;there&#8217;s&mdash;your
+age. Phyl, it wouldn&#8217;t ever do; it&#8217;s not I that
+am saying it, it&#8217;s custom, the world, society.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl, like the hooked salmon that has taken the
+gaudy fly, felt a check and recognised that a Power
+had her in hand, recognised in the light-going and
+fair-speaking Pinckney something of adamant, a will
+not to be broken or bent.</p>
+<p>She felt for a moment a revolt against herself for
+having fallen to the lure and allowed herself to come
+to friendly terms with him. Then this feeling faded
+a bit. The very young are very weak in the face
+of constituted authority&mdash;besides, there was always
+at the back of Pinckney her father&#8217;s wish.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And then again, on top of that,&#8221; he went on,
+&#8220;there&#8217;s the question of your coming to live with us;
+your father wished it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;In America!&#8221; cried Phyl. &#8220;Do you mean I am
+to live in America?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, we live there; why not? It&#8217;s not a bad
+place to live in&mdash;and what else are you to do?&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_53' name='page_53'></a>53</span></p>
+<p>She could not answer him. This time she saw
+that the bogey man had got her and no mistake.
+America to her seemed as far as the moon and far
+less familiar. If Pinckney had declared that it was
+necessary for her to die, she would have been a great
+deal more frightened, but the prospect would not
+have seemed much more desolate and forbidding and
+final.</p>
+<p>He saw at once the trouble in her mind and
+guessed the cause. He had a rare intuition for reading
+minds, and it seemed to him he could read Phyl&#8217;s
+as easily as though the outside of her head were clear
+glass&mdash;he had cause to modify this cocksure opinion
+later on.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t worry,&#8221; he said. &#8220;If you don&#8217;t like
+America when you see it, you can come back to Ireland.
+I daresay we can arrange something; anyhow,
+don&#8217;t let us meet troubles half way.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;When am I to go?&#8221; said Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sure, Phyl, you can stay as long as you like with
+us,&#8221; said Mr. Hennessey. &#8220;The doors of 10, Merrion
+Square, are always open to you, and never will
+they be shut on you except behind your back.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Pinckney laughed; and a servant coming in to
+clear the breakfast things, Hennessey led the way
+from the room to show Pinckney the premises.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_54' name='page_54'></a>54</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>They crossed the hall, and passing through a
+green-baize covered door went down a passage
+that led to the kitchen.</p>
+<p>&#8220;This is the housekeeper&#8217;s room,&#8221; said Hennessey,
+pointing to a half open door, &#8220;and the servants&#8217;
+hall is that door beyond. This is the kitchen.&#8221;</p>
+<p>They paused for a moment in the great old-fashioned
+kitchen, with an open range capable of roasting
+a small ox, one might have fancied. Norah, the
+cook, was busy in the scullery with her sleeves tucked
+up, and under the table was seated Susie Gallagher,
+a small and grubby hanger-on engaged in the task of
+washing potatoes. The potatoes were beside her
+on the floor and she was washing them in a tin basin
+of water with the help of an old nail-brush.</p>
+<p>There was a horse-shoe hung up, for luck, on the
+wall over the range, and a pile of dinner plates, from
+last night&#8217;s dinner and still unwashed, stood on the
+dresser, where also stood a half-bottle of Guinness&#8217;
+stout and a tumbler; an old setter bitch lay before
+the fire and a jackdaw in a wicker cage set up a yell
+at the sight of the visitors, that brought Norah out
+of the scullery to receive them, a broad smile on her
+face and her arms tucked up in her apron.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He always yells like that at the sight of tramps
+or stray people about,&#8221; apologised the cook. &#8220;He&#8217;s
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_55' name='page_55'></a>55</span>
+better than a watch-dog. Hold your tongue, you
+baste; don&#8217;t you know your misthress when you see
+her?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Rafferty caught him in the park,&#8221; said Phyl, &#8220;and
+cut his tongue with a sixpence so as to make him
+able to speak.&#8221;</p>
+<p>They left the kitchen and came into the yard. A
+big tin can of refuse was standing by the kitchen
+door, and on top of all sorts of rubbish, potato peelings,
+cabbage stalks and so forth, lay the carcass of
+a boiled fowl. It was the fowl they had dined off
+the night before and it lay there just as it had gone
+from the table, that is to say, minus both wings and
+the greater part of the breast, but with the legs
+intact.</p>
+<p>Pinckney stared at this sinful sight. Then he
+pointed to it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s that doing there?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Waitin&#8217; to be took away be the stable boy, sor,&#8221;
+replied the cook, who had followed them to the door.
+&#8220;All the rubbish is took away in that ould can every
+mornin&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Good God!&#8221; said Pinckney under his breath.
+The expression was shaken out of him, so to speak,
+and out of a pocket of his character which had never
+been fully explored, of whose existence, indeed, he
+was not particularly aware. This Irish expedition
+was to show him a good many things in life and in
+himself of which up to this he had been in ignorance.
+He had never been brought face to face with waste,
+bald waste without a hat on or covering of any sort,
+before.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_56' name='page_56'></a>56</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Haven&#8217;t you any poor people about here?&#8221; he
+asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hapes, sor.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Pinckney was on the point of saying something
+more, but he checked himself, remembering that in
+the eyes of the servants he was here in the position
+of a guest.</p>
+<p>He followed Hennessey across to the stable yard,
+where Larry, the groom, was washing the carriage
+that had fetched him from the station the night
+before.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The servants won&#8217;t eat chicken,&#8221; said Phyl, in an
+apologetic way. She had noted everything and she
+guessed his thoughts. &#8220;They won&#8217;t eat game either&mdash;and
+they throw things away if they don&#8217;t like them&mdash;of
+course, it&#8217;s wasteful, but they <i>do</i> give things to
+the poor. Lots of poor people come here, every
+day nearly, but they don&#8217;t care for scraps&mdash;you see,
+it <i>is</i> insulting to give a poor person scraps, just as
+though they were animals. I remember the cook we
+had before Norah did it when she came first, and all
+the poor people stopped coming to the house. Said
+she ought to know better than to offer them the
+leavings.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Cheek!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; said Phyl. &#8220;We&#8217;ve done it
+for hundreds of years.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She closed her mouth in a way she had when she
+did not wish to pursue a subject further. Despite
+the fact that she had made friends with Pinckney,
+she was galled by his attitude of criticism. Guardian
+or no guardian, he was a stranger; relation or
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_57' name='page_57'></a>57</span>
+no relation, he was a stranger, and what right had a
+stranger to dare to come and turn up his nose at the
+poor people or make remarks&mdash;he hadn&#8217;t said a
+word&mdash;about the wastefulness of the servants?</p>
+<p>The redoubtable Rafferty was standing in the yard
+chewing a straw and watching Larry at work.</p>
+<p>Rafferty was a man of genius, who had started as
+a helper and odd job person, and had risen to the
+position of factotum. He had ousted the Scotch
+gardener and insinuated a relation of his own in his
+place. There was scarcely a servant about the estate
+that was not a relation of Rafferty&#8217;s. Philip
+Berknowles had put up with a lot from Rafferty
+simply because Rafferty was an invaluable person in
+his way when not crossed. Everything went
+smoothly when the factotum was not interfered with.
+Cross him and there were immediate results ranging
+from ill-groomed horses to general unrest. He was
+a dark individual, half groom, half game-keeper in
+dress, a &#8220;wicked-looking divil,&#8221; according to the
+description of his enemies, and an exceedingly foxy-looking
+individual in the eyes of Pinckney.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Rafferty,&#8221; said Mr. Hennessey, &#8220;I want to show
+this gentleman round. Let&#8217;s see the stables.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Rafferty touched his cap and led the way, showing
+first the stalls and boxes where four or five horses
+were stabled, and then leading the way through the
+coach-house to the path from which opened the
+kitchen gardens.</p>
+<p>They were immense and walled in with red brick,
+capable, one might fancy, of supplying the wants of
+three or four houses the size of Kilgobbin.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_58' name='page_58'></a>58</span></p>
+<p>Pinckney noted this fact, also that the home farm
+to which the kitchen gardens led was apparently a
+prosperous and going little concern, with its fowls
+and chickens penned or loose, styes filled with grunting
+pigs, and turkeys gobbling and spreading their
+tails in the sun.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who looks after all this?&#8221; asked Pinckney.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I do, sor,&#8221; replied Rafferty.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What are the takings?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I beg your pardon, sor?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The profits, I mean. You sell these things, don&#8217;t
+you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Kilgobbin isn&#8217;t a farm, sor, it&#8217;s a gintleman&#8217;s
+estate.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Pinckney, not at all set back by this snub, turned
+and looked the factotum in the face.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Just so,&#8221; said he, &#8220;but I&#8217;ve never heard of gentlemen
+growing pigs to look at; peacocks, maybe, but
+not pigs. However, we&#8217;ll have another look at the
+business later.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He turned and they went on, Rafferty disturbed
+in his mind and much put about by the manner of the
+other in whom he began to divine something more
+than a casual guest, Phyl almost as much put out as
+Rafferty.</p>
+<p>The idea that the factotum might have been robbing
+her father right and left never occurred to her;
+even if it had, it would not have softened the fact
+that a strange hand was at work in her old home
+turning over things, inspecting them, holding them
+up for comment.</p>
+<p>She managed to drop behind as they left the farm
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_59' name='page_59'></a>59</span>
+yard for the paddocks, then turning down the yew
+lane that led back to the house, she ran as though
+hounds were after her, reached the house, locked
+herself in her bedroom, and flung herself on the bed
+in a tempest of weeping, dragging a pillow over her
+head as if to shield herself from the blows that the
+world was aiming at her.</p>
+<p>Phyl, without mother, brothers or sisters, had
+centred all her affection on her father and Kilgobbin;
+the servants, the place itself and all the things
+and people about it were part and parcel with her
+life, and the death of her father had intensified her
+love of the place and the people.</p>
+<p>If Pinckney had only known, he might have put
+the business of the inspection of the property and
+the dealing with the servants into other hands, but
+Pinckney was young and full of energy and business
+ability; he was full of conscientiousness and the determination
+to protect his ward&#8217;s interests; he had
+scented a rogue in Rafferty, and at this very minute
+returning to the house with Hennessey, he was declaring
+his intention to make an overhaul of the
+working of the estate.</p>
+<p>Rafferty was to appear before him and produce
+his accounts and make explanations. Mrs. Driscoll
+was to be examined as to the expenditure, etc.</p>
+<p>He little knew the hornet&#8217;s nest into which he was
+about to poke his finger.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_60' name='page_60'></a>60</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>The grand inquisition began that evening after
+dinner&mdash;Phyl did not appear at dinner, alleging
+a headache&mdash;and Rafferty, summoned to the
+library, had to stand whilst Pinckney, seated at the
+table with a pen in his hand and a sheet of paper
+before him, went into the business of accounts.</p>
+<p>Mark how the unexpected occurs in life. Rafferty,
+who had been pilfering for years, selling garden
+produce and keeping the profits, robbing corn
+from the corn bin in the stable, poaching and selling
+birds and ground game to a dealer in Arranakilty,
+receiving illicit commissions and so forth, had on the
+death of his master shaken off all restraint and
+prepared for a campaign of open plunder. The
+very last thing he could have imagined was the sudden
+appearance of an American business man on the
+scene, armed with absolute power and possessing the
+eye of a hawk.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Your master asked me just before he died to look
+after this estate,&#8221; began Pinckney; &#8220;in fact, he has
+appointed me to act as guardian to Miss Berknowles,
+so I just want to see how things stand. Now, to
+begin with the horses. I want to know everything
+about the stables during the last&mdash;shall we say&mdash;six
+months. Who supplies the corn and the hay and
+the straw?&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_61' name='page_61'></a>61</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve been gettin&#8217; some from Faulkner of Arranakilty,
+sor, and some from Doyle of Bally-brack.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t you grow any horse food on the estate?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t grow no corn, sor.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, hay and straw?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can&#8217;t get straw, sor, widout you grow
+corn.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know that&mdash;but how about hay&mdash;surely you
+grow lots of grass?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We graze the grass, sor.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you let the grazing?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, sor, it&#8217;s this way; the masther was never
+very shtrict about the grazin&#8217;; we puts some of the
+horses out to grass, ourselves, and we lets poor folk
+have a bit of grazin&#8217; now and then for their cattle,
+though master was never after makin&#8217; money from
+the estate&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Just so. Have you the receipted bills for the
+fodder during the last six months?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, sor. The master always sent me wid the
+money to pay the bills.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You have got the receipts?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The which, sor?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The bills receipted.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Bills, sure, what&#8217;s the good of keepin&#8217; bills, sor,
+when the money&#8217;s paid. I b&#8217;lave they&#8217;re somewhere
+in an ould crock in the stable, at laste that&#8217;s where
+I saw thim last.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Pinckney, &#8220;you can fetch them for
+me to-morrow morning, and now let&#8217;s talk about the
+garden.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Rafferty, not knowing what Pinckney might discover
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_62' name='page_62'></a>62</span>
+and so being unable to lie with confidence, had
+a very bad quarter of an hour over the garden.</p>
+<p>Pinckney was not a man to press another unduly,
+nor was he a man to haggle about halfpence or worry
+servants over small peccadillos. He knew quite
+well that grooms are grooms, and will be so as long as
+men are men. He would never have bothered about
+little details had Rafferty been an ordinary servant.
+He recognised in Rafferty, not a servant to be dismissed
+or corrected, but an antagonist to be fought.
+It was the case of the dog and badger. Rafferty was
+Graft and all it implies, Pinckney was Straight Dealing.
+And Straight Dealing knew quite well that the
+only way to get Graft by the throat is to ferret out
+details, no matter how small.</p>
+<p>So Rafferty was taken over details. He had to
+admit that he had &#8220;given away&#8221; some of the stuff
+from the garden and sold &#8220;a bit,&#8221; sending it up to
+Dublin for that purpose; but he was not to be caught.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And the profits,&#8221; said Pinckney. &#8220;I suppose you
+handed them over to Mr. Berknowles?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, sor; the master always tould me to keep any
+bit of money I might draa from anything I planted
+extra for me perkisites, that was the understandin&#8217; I
+had with him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And over the farmyard, I suppose anything you
+could make by selling any extra animals you planted
+was your perquisite?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, sor.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Very well, Rafferty, that will do for to-night;
+get me those receipted bills to-morrow morning.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_63' name='page_63'></a>63</span>
+Come here at ten o&#8217;clock and we will have another
+talk.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Rafferty went off, feeling more comfortable in his
+mind.</p>
+<p>The word Perquisites might be made to cover a
+multitude of sins, but he would not have been so
+easy if he had known that Mrs. Driscoll had been
+called up immediately after his departure. Mrs.
+Driscoll was one of those terrible people who say
+nothing yet see everything; for the last year and a
+half she had been watching Rafferty; knowing it to
+be quite useless to report what she knew to her easy-going
+master, she had, none the less, kept on watching.
+As a result, she was now able to bring up a
+hard fact, a small hard fact more valuable than
+worlds of ductile evidence. Rafferty had &#8220;nicked&#8221;&mdash;it
+was the lady&#8217;s expression&mdash;a brand-new lawn
+mower.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I declare to God, sir, I don&#8217;t know what he <i>has</i>
+took, for me eyes can&#8217;t be everywhere, but I do know
+he&#8217;s took the mower.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why did you not tell Miss Phyl?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I did, sir, and she only said, &#8216;Oh, there must be a
+mistake&mdash;what would he be doin&#8217; with it,&#8217; says she.
+&#8216;Sellin&#8217; it,&#8217; says I. &#8216;Nonsense,&#8217; says she. You see,
+sir, Rafferty and she has always been hand in glove,
+what with the fishin&#8217; and shootin&#8217;, and the horses and
+such like, and she won&#8217;t hear a word against him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Mrs. Driscoll had called Rafferty a sly devil&mdash;he
+was.</p>
+<p>At eleven o&#8217;clock next morning, Phyl, crossing the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_64' name='page_64'></a>64</span>
+stable yard with some sugar for the horses, met Rafferty.
+He was crying.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, what on earth&#8217;s the matter, Rafferty?&#8221;
+asked the girl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve got the shove, miss,&#8221; replied Rafferty, &#8220;after
+all me years of service, I&#8217;m put out to end me days
+in a ditch.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You mean you&#8217;re discharged!&#8221; she cried. &#8220;Was
+it Mr. Pinckney?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s him,&#8221; replied Rafferty. &#8220;Says he&#8217;s the
+masther of us all. &#8216;Out you get,&#8217; says he, &#8216;or it&#8217;s I
+that&#8217;ll be callin&#8217; a p&#8217;leeceman to put you,&#8217; says he.
+Flung it in me face that I&#8217;d stolen a laan mower.
+Me that&#8217;s ben on the estate man and boy for forty
+year. A laan mower! Sure, Miss Phyl, what
+would I be doin&#8217; with a laan mower?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl turned from him and ran to the house.
+Pinckney and Hennessey were seated in the library
+when the door burst open and in came Phyl. Her
+eyes were bright and her lips were pale.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You told me you would keep all the servants,&#8221;
+said she. &#8220;Rafferty tells me you have dismissed
+him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I should think I had,&#8221; said Pinckney lightly, and
+not gauging the mad disturbance of the other, &#8220;and
+it&#8217;s lucky for him I haven&#8217;t put him in prison.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The word prison was all that was wanted to fire
+the mine. Pinckney stood for a moment aghast at
+the change in the girl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I <i>hate</i> you,&#8221; she cried, coming a step closer to
+him. &#8220;I loathe you&mdash;master of us all, are you?
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_65' name='page_65'></a>65</span>
+Dare to touch any one here and I&#8217;ll burn the house
+down with my own hands&mdash;you&mdash;you&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>She paused for want of breath, her chest heaving
+and her hands clenched.</p>
+<p>Then Pinckney exploded.</p>
+<p>The good old fiery Pinckney blood was up. Oh,
+without any manner of doubt our ancestors are still
+able to speak, and it was old Roderick Pinckney&mdash;&#8220;Pepper
+Pinckney&#8221; was his nickname&mdash;that blazed
+out now. It was also the fire of youth answering the
+fire of youth.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Damn it!&#8221; he cried. &#8220;I&#8217;ve come here to do my
+best&mdash;I don&#8217;t care&mdash;keep who you want&mdash;be robbed
+if you like it&mdash;I&#8217;m off&mdash;&#8221; He caught up all the
+sheets of paper he had been covering with figures
+and tore them across.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Beast!&#8221; cried Phyl.</p>
+<p>She rushed from the room and upstairs like a mad
+creature. The bang of her bedroom door closed
+the incident.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now don&#8217;t be taking on so,&#8221; said Hennessey.
+&#8220;You&#8217;ve both of you lost your temper.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Lost my temper&mdash;maybe. I&#8217;m going all the
+same. Right back to the States. I&#8217;m off to Dublin
+by the next train and you&#8217;d better come and finish
+the business there. You&#8217;d better have her to stay
+with you in Dublin. I don&#8217;t want to see her again.
+Anyhow, we&#8217;ll settle all that later.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Maybe that&#8217;s the best,&#8221; said Hennessey. &#8220;My
+wife will look after her till she&#8217;s ready to go to the
+States&mdash;if she wants to.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_66' name='page_66'></a>66</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Please God she doesn&#8217;t,&#8221; replied the other.</p>
+<p>Phyl did not see Pinckney again. He went off to
+Dublin by the two-ten train with Hennessey, the latter
+promising to be back on the morrow to arrange
+things.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_67' name='page_67'></a>67</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>Dublin can never have been a cheerful city.
+Even in the days when the butchers joined in
+street fights and hung their antagonists when caught
+on steel hooks&mdash;like legs of mutton&mdash;the gaiety of
+Dublin one may fancy to have been more a matter
+of spirits than of spirit.</p>
+<p>Echoes from the days when the Parliament sat in
+Stephen&#8217;s Green come down to us through the works
+of Charles Lever, but the riotous gaiety of the old
+days when Barrington was a judge of the Admiralty
+Court, the Hell Fire Club an institution, and Count
+Considine a figure in society, must be taken with a
+grain of salt.</p>
+<p>Mangan shows you the old Dublin as it was in
+those glorious times, and in the new Dublin of to-day
+the shade of Mangan seems still to walk arm in arm
+with the shade of Mathurin. Gloomy ghosts addicted
+to melancholy, noting with satisfaction that
+the streets are as dirty as ever, the old Public Houses
+still standing, that, despite the tramways&mdash;those
+extraordinary new modern inventions&mdash;the tide of
+life runs pretty much the same as of old. The ghosts
+of Mangan and Mathurin have never seen a taxi cab.</p>
+<p>Dublin at the present day is a splendid city for old
+ghosts to wander in without having their corns
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_68' name='page_68'></a>68</span>
+trodden on or their susceptibilities injured. Phyl
+had come to Dublin to live with the Hennesseys in
+Merrion Square.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Never shall my door be shut on you except behind
+your back,&#8221; Hennessey had said, and he meant it.</p>
+<p>The girl was worth several thousand a year; had
+she been penniless it would have been just the same.</p>
+<p>You may meet many geniuses in your journey
+through life, many brilliant people, many beautiful
+people, many fascinating people, but you will not
+meet many friends. Hennessey belonged to the
+society of Friends, his wife was a member of the
+same community, and he would have been ruined
+only for his partner Niven, who was an ordinary lowdown
+human creature who believed in no one and
+kept the business together.</p>
+<p>On the day of her arrival at Merrion Square and
+during her first interview with Mrs. Hennessey in
+the large, cheerless drawing-room where decalcomanied
+flower pots lingered like relics of the Palæolithic
+age of Art, Phyl kept herself above tears, just
+as a swimmer keeps his head above water in a
+choppy sea.</p>
+<p>It was all so gloomy, yet so friendly, that the mind
+could not openly revolt at the gloom; it was all so
+different from the wind and trees and freedom of
+Kilgobbin, and Mrs. Hennessey, whom she had only
+seen once before, was so different, on closer acquaintance,
+from any of the people she had hitherto met in
+her little world.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Hennessey, with a soul above dust and
+housekeeping, a faded woman, not very tidy, with
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_69' name='page_69'></a>69</span>
+an exalted air, pouring out tea from a Britannia metal ware teapot
+and talking all the time about
+Willy Yeates, the Irish Players and Lady Gregory&#8217;s
+last play, fascinated the girl, who did not know
+who Willy Yeates was and who had never seen the
+Irish Players.</p>
+<p>Nor could she learn from Mrs. Hennessey. It
+was impossible to get a word in edgeways with that
+lady. Sometimes, indeed, during a lull in her mind
+disturbance, she would remain quiet whilst you
+answered some question, only to find that she had
+totally forgotten the question and was not listening
+to your reply.</p>
+<p>Phyl got so used to Mrs. Hennessey after a few
+days that she did not listen to her questions, and so
+the two being matched, they got on well together.
+Young people soon accommodate themselves to their
+surroundings, and in a month the girl had grown
+to the colour of her new life, at least, on the outside
+of her mind. It seemed to her that she had lived
+years in Merrion Square. Kilgobbin&mdash;Hennessey
+had managed to let the place&mdash;seemed a dream of
+her childhood. She saw no future, and rebellion
+was impossible; there was nothing to rebel against&mdash;except
+the dulness and greyness of life. No people
+could have been kinder than the Hennesseys; unfortunately
+they had numerous friends, and the friends
+of the Hennesseys did not appeal to Phyl.</p>
+<p>A boy in her position would have adapted himself
+quickly enough, and been hail fellow well met with
+Mr. Mattram, the dentist of Westland Row, or the
+young Farrels, whose father owned one of the biggest
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_70' name='page_70'></a>70</span>
+wine merchants&#8217; businesses in the city; but the
+feminine instinct told Phyl that these were not the
+sort of people from whose class she had sprung, that
+their circle was not her circle and that she had
+stepped down in life in some mysterious way. This
+fact was brought sharply home to her by a young
+Farrel, a male of the Farrel brood, a hobbledehoy,
+good-looking enough but with a Dublin accent and a
+cheeky manner.</p>
+<p>This immature wine merchant at a party given by
+Mrs. Hennessey had made love to Phyl and had tried
+to kiss her behind the dining-room door.</p>
+<p>The recollection of the smack in the face she had
+given him soothed her that night as she lay tossing
+in her bed, and it was on this night and for the first
+time since she left Kilgobbin that the recollection of
+Pinckney came before her otherwise than as a
+shadow. He stood with the Hennessey circle as his
+background, a bright, good-looking figure and a gentleman
+to his finger-tips.</p>
+<p>Why had she cast aside her own people&mdash;even
+though they were distant relations? What stupidity
+had caused her to insult Pinckney by telling him she
+hated him? She found herself asking that question
+without being able to answer it.</p>
+<p>After all that fuss at Kilgobbin and Pinckney&#8217;s
+departure, Mr. Hennessey had proved to her that
+Rafferty was a rogue who deserved no quarter; the
+man had been dismissed, the whole business was done
+with and over, and now, looking back in cool blood,
+she was utterly unable to reconstruct and put together
+the reasons for the outburst of anger that had
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_71' name='page_71'></a>71</span>
+severed her from the one kinsman who had put out
+his hand to help her.</p>
+<p>She could no longer conjure up the feeling that
+Pinckney was an interloper come to break up Kilgobbin
+and spoil the home she had known from
+childhood.</p>
+<p>Fate had done that. Kilgobbin was gone&mdash;let to
+strangers; Hennessey had taken over her guardianship
+<i>pro tem</i>, and it was entirely owing to herself
+that she was in her present position. She had no
+right to criticise the friends of the Hennesseys; she
+had deliberately walked into that circle from which
+she felt she never could escape now.</p>
+<p>Just as Pinckney had discovered that guardianship
+was showing him traits in his character hitherto unknown
+to him, Phyl was discovering her woman&#8217;s
+instinct as regards social matters.</p>
+<p>She recognised that once having taken her place
+amongst the Hennessey set, her position for life was
+fixed, as far as Ireland was concerned. She was
+branded.</p>
+<p>The Berknowles were an old family, but she was
+the last of them. The relatives living in the south
+could be no help to her; they were poor, rabid Catholics
+and had fallen to little account, owing to unwise
+marriages and that irresponsible fatuous apathy in
+affairs which is the dry rot of Ireland and the Irish
+people. They were proud as Lucifer, but no one
+was proud of them.</p>
+<p>If only Philip Berknowles had been a man to make
+fast friends amongst his own class, some of those
+friends might have come to his daughter&#8217;s rescue
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_72' name='page_72'></a>72</span>
+now. But Berknowles had lived his own life since
+the death of his wife, an easy-going country gentleman
+in a county mostly inhabited by squireens and
+cottage folk, caring little for the <i>convenances</i> and
+with no taste for women&#8217;s society.</p>
+<p>Thoughts born of all these facts, some of which
+were only half understood, filled the mind of the girl
+as she lay awake with the noise of that raucous
+party ringing in her ears; and when she fell asleep, it
+was only to awake with a sense of despondency
+weighing upon her and the odious Farrel incident
+waiting to follow her through the day.</p>
+<p>About a week later, coming down to breakfast one
+morning, she found a letter on her plate. A letter
+with American stamps on it and the address, Miss
+Phylice Berknowles, Merrion Square, Dublin, Ireland,
+written in a firm, bold hand.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Hennessey was not down and Mr. Hennessey
+had departed for the office, so Phyl had the
+breakfast table to herself&mdash;and the letter.</p>
+<p>She knew at once whom it was from, even before
+she read the postmark, &#8220;Charleston.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Pinckney, the man who had been in her thoughts
+during the past six or seven days, the man who had
+left Ireland righteously disgusted with her, the man
+to whom she had said, &#8220;I hate you!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The scene flashed before her as she tore the envelope
+open, his sudden blaze of anger, the way he
+had torn the papers up, his departure. What was
+he going to say to her now? She flushed at the
+thought that this thing in her hand might prove
+to be his opinion of her in cold blood, a reproof,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_73' name='page_73'></a>73</span>
+a remonstrance&mdash;she opened the folded sheet&mdash;ah!</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>
+<p>&#8220;Dear Phyl,</p>
+<p>&#8220;Aunt Maria was greatly disappointed when I
+returned here without you, she had quite made up
+her mind that you were coming back with me. We
+both lost our temper that day, but I was the worse,
+for I said a word I shouldn&#8217;t have said, and for
+which I apologise. Aunt Maria says it was the
+Pinckney temper. However that may be, we shall
+be delighted to see you. Mrs. Van Dusen leaves
+on the 6th of next month. I am sending all particulars
+to Mr. Hennessey. You could meet Mrs.
+Van Dusen at Liverpool and go with her as far as
+New York. Let me have a cable to know if you are
+coming. Pinckney, Vernons, Charleston, U. S. A.,
+is the cable address.</p>
+<div class='ra'>
+<p style=' margin-right:2em;'>&#8220;Your affectionate guardian&mdash;also cousin&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;<span style='font-variant: small-caps'>R. Pinckney.</span>&#8221;</p>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+<p>Then underneath, in an angular, old-fashioned
+hand, one of those handwritings we associate with
+crossed letters, rosewood desks, valentines and
+wafers:</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>
+<p>&#8220;Be sure to come. I am very anxious to see you,
+and I only hope you will like me as much as I am
+sure to like you.</p>
+<div class='ra'>
+<p>&#8220;<span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Maria Pinckney.</span>&#8221;</p>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+<p>Phyl caught her breath back when she read this
+and her eyes filled with tears. It was the woman&#8217;s
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_74' name='page_74'></a>74</span>
+voice that touched her, coming after Pinckney&#8217;s business-like
+and jerky sentences.</p>
+<p>Then she sat with the letter before her, looking
+at the new prospect it had opened for her.</p>
+<p>Was Pinckney still angry, despite his talk about
+the Pinckney temper; had he written not of his own
+free will but at the desire of Maria Pinckney? She
+read the thing over again without finding any solution
+to this question.</p>
+<p>But one fact was clear. Maria Pinckney was
+genuine in her invitation.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll go,&#8221; said Phyl.</p>
+<p>She rose up from the table as though determined
+then and there to start off for America, left the room,
+went upstairs and knocked at Mrs. Hennessey&#8217;s door.</p>
+<p>That lady was sitting up in bed with a stocking tied
+round her throat&mdash;she was suffering from a slight
+attack of tonsilitis&mdash;and the Irish <i>Times</i> spread on
+her knees.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mrs. Hennessey,&#8221; said Phyl, &#8220;I have just had a
+letter from my cousins in America, and they want me
+to go out to them.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Want you to go to America!&#8221; said Mrs. Hennessey.
+&#8220;On a visit, I suppose?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, to stay there.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;To stay in America; but what on earth do they
+want you to do that for? Who on earth would
+dream of leaving Dublin to live in America! It&#8217;s
+extraordinary the ideas some people get hold of.
+Then, of course, they don&#8217;t know, that&#8217;s all that&#8217;s to
+be said for them. It&#8217;s like hearing people talking
+and talking of all the fine views abroad, and you&#8217;d
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_75' name='page_75'></a>75</span>
+think they&#8217;d never seen the Dargle or the Glen of the
+Downs; they don&#8217;t know the beauty of their own
+country or haven&#8217;t eyes to see it, and they must go
+raving of the Bay of Naples with Kiliney Bay a
+stone&#8217;s throw away from them, and talking of Paris
+with Dublin outside their doors, and praising up
+foreign actors with never a word of the Irish Players.
+Dublin giving her best to them, and they with deaf
+ears to her music and blind eyes to her sons.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But, you see, Mrs. Hennessey, the Pinckneys are
+my relations.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Irish?&#8221; cried the good woman, absolutely unconscious
+of everything but the vision before her.
+&#8220;Those that can&#8217;t see their own land aren&#8217;t Irish.
+Mongrels is the name for them, without pride of
+heart or light of understanding.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She was off.</p>
+<p>With a far, fixed gaze and her mind in a state of
+internal combustion, she seemed a thousand miles
+away from Phyl and her affairs, fighting the battles
+of Ireland.</p>
+<p>Phyl gathered the impression that, if she went to
+America Mrs. Hennessey would grieve less over the
+fact that she (Phyl) was leaving Merrion Square,
+than over the fact that she was leaving Dublin. She
+escaped, carrying this impression with her, went upstairs,
+dressed, and then started off for Mr. Hennessey&#8217;s
+office.</p>
+<p>It was a cold, bright day and Dublin looked almost
+cheerful in the sunlight.</p>
+<p>The lawyer looked surprised when she was shown
+into his private room; then, when she had told him
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_76' name='page_76'></a>76</span>
+her business, he fumbled amongst the papers on his
+desk and produced a letter.</p>
+<p>&#8220;This is from Pinckney,&#8221; said he. &#8220;It came by
+the same post as yours, only it was directed to the
+office. It&#8217;s the same story, too. He wants you to
+go over.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve been thinking over the whole business,&#8221; said
+Phyl, &#8220;and I feel I ought to go.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Aren&#8217;t you happy in Dublin?&#8221; asked he.</p>
+<p>&#8220;M&#8217;yes,&#8221; answered the other. &#8220;But, you see&mdash;at
+least, I&#8217;m as happy as I suppose I&#8217;ll be anywhere,
+only they are my people and I feel I ought to go to
+them. It&#8217;s very lonely to have no people of one&#8217;s
+own. You and Mrs. Hennessey have been very kind
+to me, and I shall always be grateful, but&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But we aren&#8217;t your own flesh and blood. You&#8217;re
+right. Well, there it is. We&#8217;ll be sorry to lose you,
+but, maybe, though you haven&#8217;t much experience of
+the world, you&#8217;ve hit the nail on the head. We
+aren&#8217;t your flesh and blood, and though the Pinckneys
+aren&#8217;t much more to you, still, one drop of
+blood makes all the difference in the world. Then
+again, you&#8217;re a cut above us; we&#8217;re quite simple
+people, but the Berknowles were always in the Castle
+set and a long chalk above the Hennesseys. I was
+saying that to Norah only last night when I was reading
+the account of the big party at the Viceregal
+Lodge and the names of all the people that were
+there, and I said to her, &#8216;Phyl ought to be going to
+parties like that by and by when she grows older,
+and we can&#8217;t do much for her in that way,&#8217; and off
+she goes in a temper. &#8216;Who&#8217;s the Aberdeens?&#8217; says
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_77' name='page_77'></a>77</span>
+she. &#8216;A lot of English without an Irish feather in
+their tails, and he opening the doors to visitors in his
+dressing gown&mdash;Castle,&#8217; she says, &#8216;it&#8217;s little Castle
+there&#8217;ll be when we have a Parliament sitting in
+Dublin.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to go to parties at the Viceregal
+Lodge,&#8221; said Phyl, flushing to think of what a snob
+she had been when only a few days back she had
+criticised the Hennesseys and their set in her own
+mind. These honest, straightforward good people
+were not snobs, whatever else they might be, and if
+her desire for America had been prompted solely by
+the desire to escape from the social conditions that
+environed her friends, she would now have smothered
+it and stamped on it. But the call from
+Charleston that had come across the water to her was
+an influence far more potent than that. That call
+from the country where her mother had been born
+and where her mother&#8217;s people had always lived had
+more in it than the voices that carried the message.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Hennessey, &#8220;you mayn&#8217;t want to go
+to parties now, but you will when you are a bit older.
+However, you can please yourself&mdash;Do you want to
+go to America?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I do,&#8221; said Phyl. &#8220;It&#8217;s not that I want to leave
+you, but there is something that tells me I have got
+to go. When I read the letter first this morning, I
+was delighted to think that Mr. Pinckney was not
+still angry with me, and I liked the idea of the
+change, for Dublin is a bit dreary after Kilgobbin
+and&mdash;and well, I <i>will</i> say it&mdash;I don&#8217;t care for some
+of the people I have met in Dublin. But since then
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_78' name='page_78'></a>78</span>
+a new feeling has come over me. I think it came as
+I was walking down here to the office. It&#8217;s a feeling
+as if something were pulling me ever so slightly, yet
+still pulling me from over there. My father said
+that there was more of mother in me than him. I
+remember he said that once&mdash;well, perhaps it&#8217;s that.
+She came from over there.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Maybe it is,&#8221; said Hennessey.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_79' name='page_79'></a>79</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>The thing was settled definitely that night,
+Mrs. Hennessey resisting the idea at first,
+more, one might have fancied from her talk, because
+the idea was anti-national than from love of Phyl,
+though, as a matter of fact, she was fond enough of
+the girl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s what&#8217;s left Ireland what it is,&#8221; went on the
+good lady. &#8220;Cripples and lunatics, that&#8217;s all that&#8217;s
+left of us with your emigration; all the good blood
+of Ireland flowing away from her and not a drop,
+scarcely, coming back.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll come back,&#8221; said Phyl, &#8220;you need not fear
+about that&mdash;some day.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, some day,&#8221; said Mrs. Hennessey, and stared
+into the fire. Then the spirit moving her, she began
+to discant on things past and people vanished.</p>
+<p>Synge, and Oscar Wilde and Willie Wilde, who
+was the real genius of the family, only his genius
+&#8220;stuck in him somehow and wouldn&#8217;t come out.&#8221;
+She passed from people who had vanished to places
+that had changed, and only stopped when the servant
+came in with the announcement that supper was
+ready.</p>
+<p>Then at supper, lo and behold! she discussed the
+going away of Phyl, as though it were a matter
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_80' name='page_80'></a>80</span>
+arranged and done with and carrying her full consent
+and approval.</p>
+<p>During the weeks following, Phyl&#8217;s impending
+journey kept Mrs. Hennessey busy in a spasmodic
+way. One might have fancied from the preparations
+and lists of things necessary that the girl was
+off to the wilds of New Guinea or some region
+equally destitute of shops.</p>
+<p>Hennessey remonstrated, and then let her have
+her way&mdash;it kept her quiet, and Phyl, nothing loath,
+spent most of her time now in shops, Tod and Burns,
+and Cannock and White&#8217;s, examining patterns and
+being fitted, varying these amusements by farewell
+visits. She was invited out by all the Hennesseys&#8217;
+friends, the Farrels and the Rourkes, and the Longs
+and the Newlands, and the Pryces and the Oldhams,
+all prepared tea-parties in her honour, made her welcome,
+and made much of her, just as we make much
+of people who have not long to live.</p>
+<p>She was the girl that was going to America. She
+did not appreciate the real kindness underlying this
+terrible round of festivities till she was standing on
+the deck of the <i>Hybernia</i> at Kingstown saying good-bye
+to Hennessey.</p>
+<p>Then, as the boat drew away from the Carlisle
+pier, as it passed the guardship anchorage and the
+batteries at the ends of the east and west piers, all
+those people from whom she had longed to escape
+seemed to her the most desirable people on earth.</p>
+<p>Bound for a world unknown, peopled with utter
+strangers, Ireland, beloved Ireland, called after her
+as a mother calls to her child.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_81' name='page_81'></a>81</span></p>
+<p>Oh, the loneliness! the desolation!</p>
+<p>As she stood watching the Wicklow mountains
+fading in the grey distance, she knew for the first
+time the meaning of those words, &#8220;Gone West&#8221;; and
+she knew what the thousands suffered who, driven
+from their cabins on the hillside or the moor, went
+West in the old days when the emigrant ship showed
+her tall masts in Queenstown Harbour and her bellying
+canvas to the sunset of the Atlantic.</p>
+<p>At Liverpool, she found Mrs. Van Dusen, a tall,
+rather good-looking, rather hard-looking but exceedingly
+fashionable individual, at the hotel where it
+was arranged they should meet.</p>
+<p>Phyl, looking like a lost dog, confused by travel
+and dumb from dejection, had little in common with
+this lady, nor did a rough passage across the Atlantic
+extend their knowledge of one another, for Mrs. Van
+Dusen scarcely appeared from her state-room till the
+evening when, the great ship coming to her moorings,
+New York sketched itself and its blazing skyscrapers
+against the gloom before the astonished
+eyes of Phyl.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_82' name='page_82'></a>82</span></p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_83' name='page_83'></a>83</span></div>
+<div class='ce'>
+<p style=' font-size:1.4em; margin-top:2em;'>PART II</p>
+</div>
+
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>Holyhead, Liverpool, New York, each of
+these stopping places had impressed upon
+Phyl the distance she was putting between herself and
+her home, making her feel that if this business was
+not death it was, at least, a very good imitation of
+dying.</p>
+<p>But the south-bound express from New York was
+to show her just what people may be expected to feel
+<i>after</i> they are dead.</p>
+<p>America had been for Phyl little more than a
+geographical expression. &#8220;Uncle Tom&#8217;s Cabin,&#8221;
+&#8220;The Last of the Mohicans,&#8221; &#8220;The Settlers in
+Canada&#8221; and &#8220;Round the World in Eighty Days,&#8221;
+had given her pictures, and from these she had built
+up a vague land of snow and forests, log huts, plains,
+Red Indians, runaway negroes and men with bowie
+knives.</p>
+<p>New York had given this fantastic idea a rough
+joggle, the south-bound express tumbled it all to
+pieces.</p>
+<p>Forests and mountains and plains would have been
+familiar to her imagination, but the south-bound express
+was producing for her inspection quite different
+things from these.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_84' name='page_84'></a>84</span></p>
+<p>New Jersey with its populous towns, for instance,
+towns she never could have imagined or dreamed of,
+filled with people whose existence she could not
+picture.</p>
+<p>What gave her a cold grue was the suddenly
+grasped fact that all this great mechanism of life,
+cities, towns, roaring railways, agricultural lands,
+manufacturing districts filled with English speaking
+people&mdash;that all this was alien, knew nothing of Ireland
+or England, except as it might know of Japan or
+a dream of the past.</p>
+<p>The people in the train were talking English&mdash;were
+English to all intents and purposes, and yet, as
+far as England and Ireland were concerned, she
+knew them to be dead.</p>
+<p>It had been freezing in New York, a great rainstorm
+was blowing across the world as they crossed
+the Delaware; it passed, sweeping away east under
+the arch of a vast rainbow, even the rainbow seemed
+alien and different to Irish rainbows&mdash;it was too big.</p>
+<p>Then came Philadelphia, where some of the dead
+folk left the train and others got in. One had an
+Irish voice and accent. He was a big man with a
+hard, pushful face and a great under jaw. Phyl
+knew him at once for what he was, and that he had
+died to Ireland long years ago.</p>
+<p>Then came Wilmington and Baltimore, and then,
+long after sunset in the dark, a warmer air that
+entered the train like a viewless passenger, nerve
+soothing and mind lulling&mdash;the first breath of the
+South.</p>
+<p>Next morning, looking from the windows of the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_85' name='page_85'></a>85</span>
+car, she saw the South. Vast spaces of low-lying
+land broken by river and bayou, flooded by the light
+of the new risen sun and touched by a vague mist
+from the sea, soft as a haze of summer, warm with
+light and everywhere hinting at the blue deep sky
+beyond.</p>
+<p>Youth, morning, and the spirit of the sea all lay
+in that luminous haze, that warm light filled with the
+laziness of June; and, for one delightful moment, it
+seemed to Phyl that summer days long forgotten,
+rapturous mornings half remembered were here
+again.</p>
+<p>The rumble of trestle and boom of bridge filled
+the train, and now the masts of ships showed thready
+against the hazy blue of the sky; frame houses
+sprang up by the track and fences with black children
+roosting on them; then the mean streets of the
+coloured quarter and now, as the cars slackened
+speed, came the bustle that marks the end of a journey.
+People were getting their light luggage
+together, and as Phyl was strapping the bundle that
+held her travelling rug and books, a waft of tepid,
+salt-scented air came through the compartment and
+on it the voice of the negro attendant rousing some
+drowsy passenger.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Charleston, sah.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She got out, dazed and numbed by the journey,
+and stood with the rug bundle in her hand looking
+about her, half undecided what to do, half absorbed
+by the bustle and movement of the platform.</p>
+<p>Then, pushing towards her through the crowd,
+she saw Pinckney.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_86' name='page_86'></a>86</span></p>
+<p>He had come to meet her, and as they shook
+hands, Phyl laughed.</p>
+<p>He seemed so bright and cheerful, and the relief
+at finding a friend after that long, friendless journey
+was so great that she laughed right out with pleasure,
+like a little child&mdash;laughed right into his eyes.</p>
+<p>It seemed to Pinckney that he had never seen the
+real Phyl before.</p>
+<p>He took the bundle from her and gave it to a
+negro servant, and then, giving the luggage checks
+to the servant and leaving him to bring on the luggage,
+he led the girl through the crowd.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll walk to the house,&#8221; said he, &#8220;if you are
+not too tired; it&#8217;s only a few steps away&mdash;well&mdash;how
+do you like America?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;America?&#8221; she replied. &#8220;I don&#8217;t know&mdash;it&#8217;s different
+from what I thought it would be, ever so much
+different&mdash;and this place&mdash;why, it is like summer
+here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s the South,&#8221; said Pinckney. &#8220;Look, this is
+Meeting Street.&#8221;</p>
+<p>They had turned from the street leading from the
+station into a broad, beautiful highway, placid, sun
+flooded, and leading away to the Battery, that chief
+pride and glory of Charleston.</p>
+<p>On either side of the street, half hidden by their
+garden walls, large stately houses of the Georgian
+era showed themselves. Mansions that had slumbered
+in the sun for a hundred years, great, solid
+houses whose yellow-wash seemed the incrustation
+left by golden and peaceful afternoons, houses of old
+English solidity yet with the Southern touch of deep
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_87' name='page_87'></a>87</span>
+verandas and the hint of palm trees in their jealously
+walled gardens.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, how beautiful!&#8221; said Phyl. She stopped,
+looked about her, and then gazed away down the
+street. It was as though the old stately street&mdash;and
+surely the Street of Other Days might be its name&mdash;had
+been waiting for her all her life, waiting for her
+to turn that corner leading from the commonplace
+station, waiting to greet her like the ghost of some
+friend of childhood. Surely she knew it! Like
+the recollection of a dream once dreamed, it lay before
+her with its walled gardens, its vaguely familiar
+houses, its sunlight and placidity.</p>
+<p>Pinckney, proud of his native town and pleased
+at this appreciation of it, stood by without speaking,
+watching the girl who seemed to have forgotten his
+existence for a moment. Her head was raised as if
+she were inhaling the sea wind lazily blowing from
+the Battery, and bearing with it stray scents from
+the gardens by the way.</p>
+<p>Then she came back to herself, and they walked
+on.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s just as if I knew the place,&#8221; said she, &#8220;and
+yet I never remember seeing anything like it before.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve felt that way sometimes about places,&#8221; said
+Pinckney. &#8220;It seemed to me that I knew Paris
+quite well when I went there, though I&#8217;d never been
+there before. Charleston is pretty English, anyway,
+and maybe it&#8217;s that that makes it seem familiar.
+But I&#8217;m glad you like it. You like it, don&#8217;t
+you?&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_88' name='page_88'></a>88</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Like it!&#8221; said she. &#8220;I should think I did&mdash;It&#8217;s
+more than liking&mdash;I love it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He laughed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Better than Dublin?&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was her turn to laugh.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I never loved Dublin.&#8221; She turned her head to
+glance at a peep of garden showing through a
+wrought iron gate. &#8220;Oh, Dublin!&mdash;don&#8217;t talk to
+me about it here. I want to keep on feeling I&#8217;m
+here really and that there&#8217;s nowhere else.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There isn&#8217;t,&#8221; said he, disclosing for the first time
+in his life, and quite unconsciously, his passion for
+the place where he had been born. &#8220;There&#8217;s nowhere
+else but Charleston worth anything&mdash;I don&#8217;t
+know what it is about, but it&#8217;s so.&#8221;</p>
+<p>They were passing a wall across whose top peeped
+an elbow of ivy geranium. It was as though the
+unseen garden beyond, tired of constraint and
+drowsily stretching, had disclosed this hint of a
+geranium coloured arm.</p>
+<p>Pinckney paused at a wrought iron gate and
+opened it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;This is Vernons,&#8221; said he.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_89' name='page_89'></a>89</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>A grosbeak was singing in the magnolia tree
+by the gate and the warmth of the morning
+sun was filling the garden with a heart-snatching
+perfume of jessamine.</p>
+<p>Jessamine and the faint bitterness of sun warmed
+foliage.</p>
+<p>It was a garden sure to be haunted by birds; not
+large and, though well kept, not trim, and sing the
+birds as loud as they might, they never could break
+the charm of silence cast by Time on this magic spot.</p>
+<p>In the centre of the lawn stood a dial, inscribed
+with the old dial motto:</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 1.47167034584253em;'>The Hours Pass and are Numbered.</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>Phyl paused for a moment just as she had paused
+in the street, and Pinckney looking at her noticed
+again that uptilt of the head, and that far away look
+as of a person who is trying to remember or straining
+to hear.</p>
+<p>Then a voice from the house came across the
+broad veranda leading from the garden to the
+lower rooms.</p>
+<p>A female voice that seemed laughing and scolding
+at the same time.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dinah! Dinah! bless the girl, will she never
+learn sense&mdash; Dinah! Ah, there you are. How
+often have I told you to put General Grant in the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_90' name='page_90'></a>90</span>
+sun first thing in the morning?&mdash; You&#8217;ve been
+dusting! I&#8217;ll dust you. Here, get away.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Out on the veranda, parrot cage in hand, came
+a most surprising lady. Antique yet youthful,
+dressed as ladies were wont to dress of a morning in
+long forgotten years, bright eyed, and wrathfully
+agitated.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Aunt,&#8221; cried Pinckney. &#8220;Here we are.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The sun was in Miss Pinckney&#8217;s eyes; she put the
+cage down, shaded her eyes and stared full at Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;God bless me!&#8221; said Miss Pinckney.</p>
+<p>&#8220;This is Phyl,&#8221; said he, as they came up to the
+verandah steps.</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney, seeming not to hear him in the
+least, took the girl by both hands, and holding her
+so as if for inspection stared at her.</p>
+<p>Then she turned on Pinckney with a snap.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why didn&#8217;t you tell me&mdash;she&#8217;s&mdash;why, she&#8217;s a
+Mascarene. Well, of all the astonishing things in
+the world&mdash; Child&mdash;child, where did you get that
+face?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Before Phyl could answer this recondite question,
+she found herself enveloped in frills and a vague
+perfume of stephanotis. Maria Pinckney had taken
+her literally to her heart, and was kissing her as
+people kiss small children, kissing her and half crying
+at the same time, whilst Pinckney stood by wondering.</p>
+<p>He thought that he knew everything about Maria
+Pinckney, just as he had fancied he knew himself
+till Phyl had shewn him, over there in Ireland, that
+there were a lot of things in his mind and character
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_91' name='page_91'></a>91</span>
+still to be known by himself. This, as regards him,
+seemed the special mission of Phyl in the world.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s the likeness,&#8221; said Miss Pinckney. &#8220;I
+thought it was Juliet Mascarene there before me in
+the sun, Juliet dead those years and years.&#8221; Then
+commanding herself, and with one of those reverses,
+sudden changes of manner and subject peculiar to
+herself:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where&#8217;s your luggage?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Abraham is bringing it along.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Abraham! Do you mean you didn&#8217;t drive,
+<i>walked</i> here from the station?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Pinckney shamefacedly, almost, and
+wondering what sin against the <i>covenances</i> he had
+committed now.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And she after that journey from N&#8217;York. Richard
+Pinckney, you are a&mdash;man&mdash;I was going to have
+called you a fool&mdash;but it&#8217;s the same thing. Here,
+come on both of you&mdash;the child must be starving.
+This is the breakfast room, Phyl&mdash;Phyl! I will
+never get used to that name; no matter, I&#8217;m getting
+an old woman, and mustn&#8217;t grumble&mdash;mustn&#8217;t grumble&mdash;umph!&#8221;</p>
+<p>She took Pinckney&#8217;s walking-stick from him and,
+with the end of it, picked up a duster that the mysterious
+Dinah, evidently, had left lying on the floor.</p>
+<p>She put the duster out on the veranda, rang a
+bell and ordered the coloured boy who answered it
+to send in breakfast.</p>
+<p>Phyl, commanded by Miss Pinckney, sat down to
+table just as she was without removing her hat.</p>
+<p>The old lady had come to the conclusion that the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_92' name='page_92'></a>92</span>
+newcomer must be faint with hunger after her journey,
+and when Miss Pinckney came to one of her conclusions,
+there was nothing more to be said on the
+matter.</p>
+<p>It was a pleasant room, chintzy and sunny; they
+sat down to a gate-legged table that would just manage
+to seat four comfortably whilst the urn was
+brought in, a copper urn in which the water was
+kept at boiling point by a red hot iron contained in
+a cylinder.</p>
+<p>Phyl knew that urn. They had one like it at Kilgobbin
+and she said so, but Miss Pinckney did not
+seem to hear her. There were times when this lady
+was almost rude&mdash;or seemed so owing to inattention,
+her bustling mind often outrunning the conversation
+or harking back to the past when it ought to have
+been in the present.</p>
+<p>Tea making, and the making of tea was a solemn
+rite at Vernons, absorbed her whole attention, but
+Pinckney noticed this morning that the hand, that
+old, perfect, delicately shaped hand, trembled ever
+so slightly as it measured the tea from the tortoise-shell
+covered tea caddy, and that the thin lips, lips
+whose thinness seemed only the result of the kisses
+of Time, were moving as though debating some
+question unheard.</p>
+<p>He recognised that the coming of Phyl had produced
+a great effect on Maria Pinckney. No one
+knew her better than he, for no one loved her so
+well.</p>
+<p>It was she who ordered him about, still, just as
+though he were a small boy, and sometimes as he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_93' name='page_93'></a>93</span>
+sat watching her, so fragile, so indomitable, like
+the breath of winter would come the thought that a
+day would come&mdash;a day might come soon when he
+would be no longer ordered about, told to put his
+hat in the hall&mdash;which is the proper place for hats&mdash;told
+not to dare to bring cigars into the drawing-room.</p>
+<p>To Phyl, Maria Pinckney formed part of the spell
+that was surrounding her; Meeting Street had begun
+the weaving of this spell, Vernons was completing it
+with the aid of Maria Pinckney.</p>
+<p>The song of the Cardinal Grosbeak in the garden,
+the stirring of the window curtains in the warm
+morning air, the feel of morning and sunlight, the
+scent of the tea that was filling the room, the room
+itself old-fashioned yet cheerful, chintzy and sunny,
+all the things had the faint familiarity of the street.
+It was as though the blood of her mother&#8217;s people
+coursing in her veins had retained and brought to her
+some thrill and warmth from all these things; these
+things they knew and loved so well.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s the carriage,&#8221; said Miss Pinckney,
+whose ears had picked out the sound of it drawing
+up at the front door. &#8220;They know where to take
+the luggage. Richard, go and see that they don&#8217;t
+knock the bannisters about. Abraham is all thumbs
+and has no more sense in moving things than Dinah
+has&#8217;n dusting them. Only last week when Mrs.
+Beamis was going away, he let that trunk of hers
+slip and I declare to goodness I thought it was a
+church falling down the stairs and tearing the place
+to pieces.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_94' name='page_94'></a>94</span></p>
+<p>There was little of the stately languor of the
+South in Miss Pinckney&#8217;s speech. She was Northern
+on the mother&#8217;s side. But in her prejudices she
+was purely Southern, or, at least, Charlestonian.</p>
+<p>Pinckney laughed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think Phyl&#8217;s luggage will hurt much even
+if it falls,&#8221; said he. &#8220;English luggage is generally
+soft.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s only a trunk and a portmanteau,&#8221; said Phyl,
+as he left the room, but Miss Pinckney did not seem
+to hear; pouring herself out another cup of tea (she
+was the best and the worst hostess in the whole
+world) and seeming not to notice that Phyl&#8217;s cup
+was empty, she was off on one of her mind wandering
+expeditions, a state of soul that sometimes carried
+her into the past, sometimes into the future,
+that led her anywhere and to the wrapt, inward contemplation
+of all sorts of things and subjects from
+the doings of the Heavenly Host to the misdoings
+of Dinah.</p>
+<p>She talked on these expeditions.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I&#8217;m sure and I&#8217;m sure I don&#8217;t know what
+folk want with the luggage they carry about with
+them nowadays&mdash; The old folk didn&#8217;t. Not Saratoga
+trunks, anyhow. I remember &#8217;swell as if it
+was yesterday way back in 1880, when Richard&#8217;s
+father and mother were married, old Simon Mascarene&mdash;he
+belonged to your mother&#8217;s lot, the Mascarenes
+of Virginia&mdash; He came to the wedding, and
+all he brought was a carpet-bag. I can see the roses
+on it still. He wore a beaver hat. They&#8217;d been
+out of fashion for years and years. So was he.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_95' name='page_95'></a>95</span>
+Twenty dollars apiece they cost him, and his clothes
+were the same. Looked like a picture out of Dickens.
+Your grandmother was there, too, came from
+Richmond for the wedding, drove here in her own
+carriage. She and Simon were the last of the Virginia
+Mascarenes and they looked it. Seems to me
+some people never can be new nor get away from
+their ancestors. If you&#8217;d dressed Simon in kilts it
+wouldn&#8217;t have made any difference, much, he&#8217;d still
+have been Simon Mascarene of Virginia, just as stiff
+and fine and proud and old-fashioned.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It seems funny that my people should have been
+the Virginia Mascarenes,&#8221; said Phyl, &#8220;because&mdash;because&mdash;well,
+I feel as if my people had always lived
+here&mdash;this feels like home&mdash;I don&#8217;t know what it is,
+but just as I came into the street outside there I
+seemed to know it, and this house&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, God bless my soul,&#8221; said Miss Pinckney,
+whose eyes had just fallen on the girl&#8217;s empty cup,
+&#8220;here have I been talking and talking, and you waiting
+for some more tea. Why didn&#8217;t you ask, child?&mdash;What
+were you saying? The Virginia Mascarenes&mdash; Oh,
+they often came here, and your mother
+knew this house as well as Planters. That was the
+name of their house in Richmond. But what I can&#8217;t
+get over is your likeness to Juliet. She might have
+been your sister to look at you both&mdash;and she dead
+all these years.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who was Juliet?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She was the girl who died,&#8221; said Miss Pinckney.
+&#8220;You know, although Richard calls me Aunt, I am
+not really his aunt; it&#8217;s just an easy name for an old
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_96' name='page_96'></a>96</span>
+woman who is an interloper, a Pinckney adrift. It
+was this way I came in. Long before the Civil
+War, the Pinckneys lived at a house called Bures in
+Legare Street. A fine old house it was, and is still.
+Well, I was a cousin with a little money of my own,
+and I was left lonely and they took me in. James
+Pinckney was head of the family then, and he had
+two sons, Rupert and Charles. I might have been
+their sister the way we all lived together and loved
+each other&mdash;and quarrelled. Dear me, dear me,
+what is Time at all that it leaves everything the
+same? The same sun, and flowers and houses, and
+all the people gone or changed&mdash; Well, I am trying
+to tell you&mdash; Rupert fell in love with Juliet
+Mascarene, who lived here. He was killed suddenly
+in &#8217;61&mdash; I don&#8217;t want to talk of it&mdash;and she
+died of grief the year after. She died of grief&mdash;simply
+died of grief. Charles lived and married in
+1880 when he was forty years old. He married
+Juliet&#8217;s brother&#8217;s daughter and Vernons came to him
+on the marriage. He hadn&#8217;t a son till ten years
+later. That son was Richard. Charles left Richard
+all his property and Vernons on the condition
+that I always lived here&mdash;till I died, and that&#8217;s how
+it is. I&#8217;m not Richard&#8217;s aunt, it&#8217;s only a name
+he gives me&mdash;I&#8217;m only just an old piece of furniture
+left with the house to him. I&#8217;m so fond of
+the place, it would kill me to leave it; places grow
+like that round one, though I&#8217;m sure I don&#8217;t know
+why.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t wonder at you loving Vernons,&#8221; said
+Phyl. &#8220;I was just the same about our place in Ireland,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_97' name='page_97'></a>97</span>
+Kilgobbin&mdash;I thought it would kill me to leave
+it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tell me about it,&#8221; said Miss Pinckney. Phyl
+told, or tried to tell.</p>
+<p>Looking back, she found between herself and Ireland
+the sunlight of Charleston, the garden with the
+magnolia trees where the red bird was singing and
+the jessamine casting its perfume. Ireland looked
+very far away and gloomy, desolate as Kilgobbin
+without its master and with the mist of winter among
+the trees.</p>
+<p>All that was part of the Past gone forever, and
+so great was the magic of this new place that she
+found herself recognising with a little chill that this
+Past had separated itself from her, that her feeling
+towards it was faintly tinged by something not unlike
+indifference.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Miss Pinckney, when she had finished,
+&#8220;it must be a beautiful old place, though I can&#8217;t
+seem to see it&mdash; You see, I&#8217;ve never been in Ireland
+and I can&#8217;t picture it any more than the new
+Jerusalem. Now Dinah knows all about the new
+Jerusalem, from the golden slippers right up she sees
+it&mdash;I can&#8217;t. Haven&#8217;t got the gift of seeing things,
+and it seems strange that the A&#8217;mighty should
+shower it on a coloured girl and leave a white woman
+wanting; but it appears to be the A&#8217;mighty knows
+his own business, so I don&#8217;t grumble. Now I&#8217;m
+going to show you the house and your room. I&#8217;ve
+given you a room looking right on the garden, this
+side. You&#8217;ve noticed how all our houses here are
+built with their sides facing the street and their fronts
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_98' name='page_98'></a>98</span>
+facing the garden, or maybe you haven&#8217;t noticed it
+yet, but you will. &#8217;Pears to me our ancestors had
+some sense in their heads, even though they didn&#8217;t
+invent telegraphs to send bad news in a hurry and
+railway cars to smash people to bits, and telephones
+to let strangers talk right into one&#8217;s house just by
+ringing a bell. Not that I&#8217;d let one into Vernons.
+You may hunt high or low, garret or basement, you
+won&#8217;t find one of those boxes of impudence in Vernons&mdash;not
+while I have servants to go my messages.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney was right. For years she had
+fought the telephone and kept it out, making Richard
+Pinckney&#8217;s life a tissue of small inconveniences,
+and suffering this epitaph on her sanity to be written
+by all sorts of inferior people, &#8220;Plumb crazy.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She led the way from the breakfast-room and
+passed into the hall.</p>
+<p>The spirit of Vernons inhabited the hall. One
+might have fancied it as a stout and prosperous
+gentleman attired in a blue coat with brass buttons,
+shorts, and wearing a bunch of seals at his fob.
+Oak, brought from England, formed the panelling,
+and a great old grandfather&#8217;s clock, with the maker&#8217;s
+name and address, &#8220;Whewel. Coggershall,&#8221; blazoned
+on its brass face, told the time, just as it had told the
+time when the Regent was ruling at St. James&#8217;s in
+those days which seem so spacious, yet so trivial in
+their pomp and vanity.</p>
+<p>Sitting alone here of an afternoon with the sun
+pointing fingers through the high leaded windows,
+Whewel of Coggershall took you under his spell,
+the spell of old ghosts of long forgotten afternoons,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_99' name='page_99'></a>99</span>
+spacious afternoons filled with the cawing of rooks
+and the drone of bees. English afternoons of the
+good old time when the dust of the post chaise was
+the only mark of hurry across miles of meadow land
+and cowslip weather. And then as you sat held
+by the sound of the slow-slipping seconds, maybe,
+from some door leading to the servants&#8217; quarters
+suddenly left open a voice would come, the voice of
+some darky singing whilst at work.</p>
+<p>A snatch of the South mixing with your dream of
+England and the past, and making of the whole a
+charm beyond words.</p>
+<p>That is Charleston.</p>
+<p>Set against the panelling and almost covering it
+in parts were prints, wood-cuts, engravings, portraits
+in black and white.</p>
+<p>Here was a silhouette of Colonel Vernon, the
+founder of the house, and another of his wife.
+Here was an early portrait of Jeff Davis, hollow-cheeked
+and goatee-bearded, and here was Mayflower,
+the property of Colonel Seth Mascarene, the
+fastest trotting horse in Virginia, worshipped by her
+owner whose portrait hung alongside.</p>
+<p>Phyl glanced at these pictures as she followed
+Miss Pinckney, who opened doors shewing the dining-room,
+a room rather heavily furnished, hung
+with portraits of long-faced gentlemen and ladies of
+old time, and then the drawing-room. A real drawing-room
+of the Sixties, a thing preserved in its entirety,
+in all its original stiffness, interesting as a
+valentine, perfumed like an old rosewood cabinet.</p>
+<p>Keepsakes and Books of Beauty lay on the centre
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_100' name='page_100'></a>100</span>
+table, a gilt clock beneath a glass shade marked
+the moment when it had ceased to keep time over
+twenty-five years ago, the antimacassars on the armchairs
+were not a line out of position; not a speck
+of dust lay anywhere, and the Dresden shepherds
+and shepherdesses simpered and made love in the
+same old fashion, preserving unaltered the sentiment
+of spring, the suggestion of Love, lambs, and
+the song of birds.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s just as it used to be,&#8221; said Miss Pinckney.
+&#8220;Nothing at all has been changed, and I dust it myself.
+I would just as soon let a servant loose here
+with a duster as I&#8217;d let one of the buzzards from
+the market-place loose in the larder. Those water-colours
+were done by Mary Mascarene, Juliet&#8217;s sister,
+who died when she was fifteen; they mayn&#8217;t be
+masterpieces but they&#8217;re Mary&#8217;s, and worth more&#8217;n
+if they were covered with gold. Mrs. Beamis
+sniffed when she came in here&mdash;she&#8217;s the woman
+whose trunk got loose on the stairs I told you about&mdash;sniffed
+as if the place smelt musty. She&#8217;s got a
+husband who&#8217;s made a million dollars out of dry
+goods in Chicago, and she thought the room wanted
+re-furnishing. Didn&#8217;t say it, but I knew. A player-piano
+is what she wanted. Didn&#8217;t say it, but <i>I</i> knew.
+Umph!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney, having shown Phyl out, looked
+round the room as if to make sure that all the familiar
+ghosts were in their places, then she shut the
+door with a snap, and turning, led the way upstairs
+murmuring to herself, and with the exalted and far
+away look which she wore when put out.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_101' name='page_101'></a>101</span></p>
+<p>Phyl&#8217;s room lay on the first landing, a bright and
+cheerful room papered with a rather cheap flower
+and sprig patterned paper, spring-like for all its
+cheapness, and just the background for children&#8217;s
+heads when they wake up on a bright morning.</p>
+<p>A bowl of flowers stood on the dressing-table,
+and the open window shewed across the verandah a
+bit of the garden, where the cherokee roses were
+blooming.</p>
+<p>&#8220;This is your room,&#8221; said Miss Pinckney. &#8220;It&#8217;s
+one of the brightest in the house, and I hope you&#8217;ll
+like it&mdash; Listen!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Through the open window came the chime of
+church-bells.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s the chimes of St. Michael&#8217;s. You&#8217;ll never
+want a clock here, the bells ring every quarter, just
+as they&#8217;ve rung for the last hundred years; they&#8217;re
+the first thing I remember, and maybe they&#8217;ll be the
+last. Well, come on and I&#8217;ll show you some more
+of the house, if you&#8217;re not tired and don&#8217;t want to
+rest.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She led the way from the room and along the corridor,
+opening doors and shewing rooms, and then
+up a back stairs to the top floor beneath the attics.</p>
+<p>The house seemed to grow in age as they ascended.
+Not a door in Vernons was exactly true in line; the
+old house settling itself down quietly through the
+years and assisted perhaps by the great earthquake,
+though that had left it practically unharmed, shewed
+that deviation from the right line in cornice and
+wainscoting and door space, which is the hall mark
+left on architecture by genius or age. The builders
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_102' name='page_102'></a>102</span>
+of the Parthenon knew this, the builders of Vernons
+did not&mdash; Age supplied their defects.</p>
+<p>Up here the flooring of the passages and rooms
+frankly sagged in places, and the beams bellied downwards
+ever so little and the ceilings bowed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve seen all these bed-rooms filled in the old
+days,&#8221; said Miss Pinckney. &#8220;We had wounded soldiers
+here in the war. What Vernons hasn&#8217;t seen of
+American history isn&#8217;t worth telling&mdash;much. Here&#8217;s
+the nursery.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She opened a door with bottle-glass panels, real
+old bottle-glass worth its weight in minted silver,
+and shewed Phyl into a room.</p>
+<p>&#8220;This is the nursery,&#8221; said she.</p>
+<p>It was a large room with two windows, and the
+windows were barred to keep small people from tumbling
+into the garden. The place had the air of
+silence and secrecy that haunts rooms long closed and
+deserted. An old-fashioned paper shewing birds of
+Paradise covered the walls. A paper so old that
+Miss Pinckney remembered it when, as a child, she
+had come here to tea with the Mascarene children,
+so good that the dye of the gorgeous Paradise birds
+had scarcely faded.</p>
+<p>A beam of morning sun struck across the room, a
+great solid, golden bar of light. Phyl, as she stood
+for a moment on the threshold, saw motes dancing
+in the bar of light; the air was close and almost
+stuffy owing to the windows being shut. A rocking-horse,
+much, much the worse for wear stood in one
+corner, he was piebald and the beam of light just
+failed to touch his brush-like tail. A Noah&#8217;s Ark
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_103' name='page_103'></a>103</span>
+of the good old pattern stood on the lid of a great
+chest under one of the windows, and in the centre
+of the room a heavy table of plain oak nicked by
+knives and stained with ink told its tale.</p>
+<p>There were books in a little hanging book-case,
+books of the &#8216;forties&#8217; and &#8216;fifties&#8217;: &#8220;Peter Parley,&#8221;
+&#8220;The Child&#8217;s Pilgrim&#8217;s Progress,&#8221; &#8220;The Dairy-Maid&#8217;s
+Daughter,&#8221; an odd volume of <i>Harper&#8217;s</i>
+<i>Magazine</i> containing an instalment of &#8220;Little Dorrit,&#8221;
+Caroline Chesebro&#8217;s &#8220;Children of Light,&#8221; and
+Samuel Irenæus Prime&#8217;s &#8220;Elizabeth Thornton or
+the Flower and Fruit of Female Piety, and other
+Sketches.&#8221; Miss Pinckney opened one of the windows
+to let in air; Phyl, who had said nothing, stood
+looking about her at the forsaken toys, the chairs,
+and the little three-legged stool most evidently once
+the property of some child.</p>
+<p>All nurseries have a generic likeness. It seemed
+to her that she knew this room, from the beam of
+light with the motes dancing in it to the bird-patterned
+paper. Kilgobbin nursery was papered with
+a paper giving an endless repetition of one subject&mdash;a
+man driving a pig to market&mdash;with that exception,
+the two rooms were not unlike. Yet those birds
+were the haunting charm of this place, the things that
+most appealed to her, things that seemed the ghosts
+of old friends.</p>
+<p>She came to the window and looked out through
+the bars. Across the garden of Vernons one caught
+a glimpse of other gardens, palmetto-tree tops, and
+away, beyond the battery, a hint of the blue harbour.
+Just the picture to fill an imaginative child&#8217;s
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_104' name='page_104'></a>104</span>
+mind with all sorts of pleasant fancies about the
+world, and Phyl, forgetting for a moment Miss
+Pinckney, herself, and the room in which she was,
+stood looking out, caught in a momentary day dream,
+just like a child in one of those reveries that are part
+of the fairy tale of childhood.</p>
+<p>That touch of blue sea beyond the red roofs and
+green palmetto fronds gave her mind wings for a
+moment and a world to fly through. Not the world
+we live in, but the world worth living in. Old sailor-stories,
+old scraps of thought and dreams from nowhere
+pursued her, haunted her during that delightful
+and tantalising moment, and then she was herself
+again and Miss Pinckney was saying:</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a pretty view and hasn&#8217;t changed since I was
+a child. Now, in N&#8217;York they&#8217;d have put up skyscrapers;
+Lord bless you, they&#8217;d have put them up
+at a <i>loss</i> so&#8217;s to seem energetic and spoil the view.
+That&#8217;s a N&#8217;Yorker in two words, happy so long as
+he&#8217;s energetic and spoiling views&mdash;&#8221; Then gazing
+dreamily towards the touch of blue sea. &#8220;Well, I
+guess the Lord made N&#8217;Yorkers same as he made
+you and me. His ways are <i>in</i>scrutable and past finding
+out; so&#8217;r the ways of some of his creatures.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She turned from the window, and her eye fell on
+the great chest by the other window.</p>
+<p>Going to it, she opened the lid.</p>
+<p>It was full of old toys, mostly broken. She
+seemed to have forgotten the presence of Phyl.
+Holding the chest&#8217;s lid open, she gazed at the coloured
+and futile contents.</p>
+<p>Then she closed the lid of the chest with a sigh.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_105' name='page_105'></a>105</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>The South dines at four o&#8217;clock&mdash;at least
+Charleston does.</p>
+<p>It was the old English custom and the old Irish
+custom, too.</p>
+<p>In the reign of William the Conqueror people
+dined at eleven <span style='font-variant: small-caps'>a.m.</span> or was it ten? Then, as
+civilisation advanced, the dinner hour stole forward.
+In the time of the Georges it reached four
+o&#8217;clock. In Ireland, the most conservative country
+on earth, some people even still sit down to table at
+four&mdash;in Charleston every one does.</p>
+<p>One would not change the custom for worlds,
+just as one would not change the old box pews of
+St. Michael&#8217;s or replace the cannon on the Battery
+with modern ordinance.</p>
+<p>Richard Pinckney did not dine at home that day.
+He was dining with the Rhetts in Calhoun Street,
+so Miss Pinckney said as they sat down to table.
+She sniffed as she said it, for the Rhetts, though
+one of the best families in the town, were people
+not of her way of thinking. The two Rhett girls
+had each a motor-car of her own and drove it&mdash;abomination!</p>
+<p>The automobile ranked in her mind with the telephone
+as an invention of the devil.</p>
+<p>Phyl had not seen Richard Pinckney since the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_106' name='page_106'></a>106</span>
+morning and now he was dining out. Her heart
+had warmed to him at the station on the way to
+Vernons, and at breakfast he had appeared to her
+as a quite different person to the Richard Pinckney
+who had come to Kilgobbin, more boyish and frank,
+less of a man of the world. She had not seen him
+since he left the room at breakfast-time to look after
+her luggage. Miss Pinckney said he had gone off
+&#8220;somewhere or another&#8221; and grumbled at him for
+going off leaving his breakfast not quite finished,
+she said that he was always &#8220;scatter braining about&#8221;
+either at the yacht club or somewhere else.</p>
+<p>Phyl, as she sat now at the dining-table with the
+dead and gone Mascarene men and women looking
+at her from the canvases on the wall, felt ever so
+slightly hurt.</p>
+<p>Youth calls to youth irrespective of sex. She
+felt as a young person feels when another young
+person shows indifference. Then came the thought:
+was he avoiding her? Was he angry still about
+the affair at Kilgobbin, or was it just that he did not
+want to be bothered talking to her, looked on her
+as a nuisance in the house, a guest of no interest to
+him and yet to whom he had to be polite?</p>
+<p>She could not tell. Neither could she tell why
+the problem exercised her mind in the way it did.
+Even at Kilgobbin, despite the fact of her antagonism
+towards him, Pinckney had possessed the
+power of disturbing her mind and making her think
+about him in a way that no one else had ever succeeded
+in doing. No one else had made her feel
+the short-comings in the household <i>ménage</i> at Kilgobbin,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_107' name='page_107'></a>107</span>
+no one else had made her so fiercely critical
+of herself and her belongings.</p>
+<p>She did not recognise the fact, but the fact was
+there, that it was a necessity of her being to stand
+well in this man&#8217;s eyes.</p>
+<p>When a woman falls in love with a man or a man
+with a woman, the first necessity of his or her being
+is to stand well in the eyes of the loved one, anything
+that may bring ridicule or adverse criticism or
+disdain is death.</p>
+<p>Phyl was not in love with Richard Pinckney, nor
+had she been in love with him at Kilgobbin, all the
+same the sensitiveness to appearances felt by a lover
+was there. Her anger that night when he had let
+her in at eleven o&#8217;clock was due, perhaps, less to his
+implied reproof then the fact that she had felt
+cheap in his eyes, and now, sitting at dinner with
+Miss Pinckney the idea that he was still angry with
+her was obscured by the far more distasteful idea
+that she was of absolutely no account in his eyes,
+a creature to whom he had to be civil, an interloper.</p>
+<p>Her cheeks flushed and her eyes brightened at
+the thought, but Miss Pinckney did not notice it.
+She had turned from the subject of the Rhetts
+and their automobiles to Charleston society in general.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now that you&#8217;ve come,&#8221; said she, &#8220;you will find
+there&#8217;s not a moment you won&#8217;t enjoy yourself if
+you&#8217;re fond of gadding about. All the society here
+is in the hands of young people, balls and parties!
+The St. Cecilias give three balls a year. I go always,
+not to dance but to look on. Richard is a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_108' name='page_108'></a>108</span>
+St. Cecilia&mdash;St. Cecilias? Why, it&#8217;s just a club a
+hundred-and-forty years old. There are two hundred
+of them, all men, and they know how to entertain.
+I have been at every ball for the last half
+century. Not one have I missed. Then there&#8217;s the
+yacht club and picnics to Summerville and the Isle
+of Palms, and bathing parties and boating by moonlight.
+If you are a gad-about you will enjoy all
+that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But I&#8217;m not,&#8221; said Phyl. &#8220;I&#8217;ve never been used
+to society, much. I like books better than people,
+unless they&#8217;re&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Unless they&#8217;re what?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well&mdash;people I really like.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Miss Pinckney, &#8220;one wouldn&#8217;t expect
+you to like people you <i>didn&#8217;t</i> like&mdash;there&#8217;s no
+&#8216;really&#8217; in liking, it&#8217;s one thing or the other&mdash;you
+don&#8217;t care for girls, maybe?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I haven&#8217;t seen much of them,&#8221; replied Phyl,
+&#8220;except at school, and that was only for a short
+time. I&mdash;I ran away.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ran away! And why did you run away?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I was miserable; they were kind enough to me,
+but I wanted to get home&mdash;Father was alive then&mdash;I
+felt I had to get home or die&mdash;I can&#8217;t explain it&mdash;It
+felt like a sort of madness. I had to get back
+home.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney was watching the girl, she scarcely
+seemed listening to her&mdash;Then she spoke:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Impulsive. If I wasn&#8217;t sitting here in broad
+daylight, I&#8217;d fancy it was Juliet Mascarene. What
+makes you so like her? It&#8217;s not the face so much,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_109' name='page_109'></a>109</span>
+though the family likeness runs strong, still, the
+face is different, though like&mdash;It&#8217;s just you yourself&mdash;well,
+I&#8217;m sure I don&#8217;t know, seems to me there&#8217;s
+a lot of things hid from us. Look at the Pringles,
+Anthony&#8217;s family, the ones that live in Tradd
+Street. If you put their noses together, they&#8217;d
+reach to Legare Street. It runs in the family.
+Julian Pringle, he died in &#8217;70, he was just the same.
+Now why should a long nose run through a family
+like that, or a bad temper, or the colour of hair?
+I don&#8217;t know. The world&#8217;s a puzzle and the older
+one grows, the more it puzzles one.&#8221;</p>
+<p>After dinner, Miss Pinckney ordered Phyl to put
+on her hat and they started out for a drive.</p>
+<p>Every day at five o&#8217;clock, weather permitting,
+Miss Pinckney took an airing. She was one of the
+sights of Charleston, she, and the dark chestnut
+horses driven by Abraham the coloured coachman,
+and the barouche in which she drove; a carriage of
+other times, one of those deathless conveyances
+turned out in Long Acre in the days when varnish
+was varnish and hand labour had not been ousted
+by machinery. It was painted in a basket-work pattern,
+the pattern peculiar to the English Royal carriages,
+and the whole turn-out had an excellence and
+a style of its own&mdash;a thing unpurchasable as yesterday.</p>
+<p>They drove in the direction of the Battery and
+here they drew up to look at the view. On one side
+of them stood the great curving row of mansions
+facing the sea, old Georgian houses and houses
+more modern, yet without offence, set in gardens
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_110' name='page_110'></a>110</span>
+where the palmetto leaves shivered in the sea wind
+and the pink mimosa mixed its perfume with the
+salt-scented air. On the other side lay the sea.
+Afternoon, late afternoon, is the time of all times
+to visit this spacious and sunlit place. It is then
+that the old ghosts return, if ever they return, to
+discuss the news brought by the last packet from
+England, the doings of Mr. Pitt, the Paris fashions.</p>
+<p>Looking seaward they would see no change in
+the changeless sea and little change in the city if
+they turned their eyes that way.</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney got out and they walked a bit, inspecting
+the guns, each with its brass plate and its
+story.</p>
+<p>Far away in the haze stood Fort Sumter,&mdash;a
+fragment of history, a sea warrior of the past,
+voiceless and guarding forever the viewless. It
+may have been some recollection of the Brighton
+front and of the great harbour of Kingstown with
+the sun upon it, and all this seemed vaguely familiar
+to Phyl, pleasantly familiar and homely.
+She breathed the sea air deeply and then, as she
+turned, glancing towards the land, a recollection
+came to her of the story she had been reading that
+evening in the library at Kilgobbin&mdash;&#8220;The Gold
+Bug.&#8221; It was near here that Legrand had found
+the treasure. He had come to Charleston to buy
+the mattocks and picks&mdash;no, it was Jupp the negro
+who had come to buy them.</p>
+<p>She turned to Miss Pinckney.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did you ever read a story called &#8216;The Gold
+Bug&#8217; by Edgar Allan Poe?&#8221; she asked. &#8220;It is
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_111' name='page_111'></a>111</span>
+about a place near here&mdash;Sullivan&#8217;s Island&mdash;that&#8217;s
+it&mdash;I remember now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, I knew him,&#8221; said Miss Pinckney.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Knew Edgar Allan Poe!&#8221; said Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I knew him when I was a child and I have sat
+on his knee and I can see his face&mdash;what a face it
+was! and the coat he wore&mdash;it had a velvet collar&mdash;his
+teeth were beautiful, and his hair&mdash;beautiful
+glossy hair it was, but he was not handsome as people
+use that expression, he was extraordinary, such
+eyes&mdash;and the most wonderful voice in the world.
+I&#8217;m seventy-five years of age and he died in October
+&#8217;49, and I met him three years before he died, so
+you see I was a pretty small child. It was at Fordham.
+He&#8217;d just taken a cottage there for his wife,
+who was ailing with consumption, and my aunt,
+Mary Pinckney, who was a friend of the Osgoods,
+took me there. It must have been summer for I
+remember a bird hanging in a cage in the sunshine,
+a bob-o&#8217;-link it was, he had caught it in the woods.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dear Lord! I wonder where that summer
+day&#8217;s gone to, and the bob-o&#8217;-link&mdash;&#8217;pears to me we
+aren&#8217;t even memories, for memories live and we
+don&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+<p>They were walking along, Abraham slowly following
+with the carriage, and Miss Pinckney was
+walking in an exultant manner as though she saw
+nothing about her, as though she were treading air.
+Phyl had unconsciously set free a train of thought
+in the mind of Miss Pinckney, a train that always
+led to an explosion, and this is exactly how it happened
+and what she said.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_112' name='page_112'></a>112</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;But his memory will live. Look right round
+you, do you see his statue?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said Phyl, sweeping the view. &#8220;Where is
+it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Just so, where is it? It&#8217;s not here, it&#8217;s not in
+N&#8217;York, it&#8217;s not in Baltimore, it&#8217;s not in Philadelphia,
+it&#8217;s not in Boston. The one real splendid
+writing man that America has produced she&#8217;s
+ashamed to put up a statue to. Why? Because
+he drank! Why, God bless my soul, Grant drank.
+No, it wasn&#8217;t drink, it was Griswold. The man
+who hated him, the man who crucified his reputation
+and sold the remains for thirty pieces of silver to a
+publisher, Griswold, Rufus Griswold&mdash;Judas Griswold
+that was his real name, and he hid it&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney had lowered her parasol in her
+anger, she shut it with a snap and then shot it up
+again; as she did so an automobile driven by a girl
+and which was approaching them, passed, and a
+young man seated by the girl raised his hat.</p>
+<p>It was Richard Pinckney.</p>
+<p>The girl was a very pretty brunette. This thing
+was too much for Miss Pinckney in her present
+temper; all her anger against Griswold seemed suddenly
+diverted to the automobile. She snorted.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There goes Richard with Venetia Frances
+Rhett,&#8221; said she. &#8220;Ought to be ashamed of herself
+driving along the Battery in that outrageous
+thing; goodness knows, they&#8217;re bad enough driven
+by men, scaring people to death and killing dogs and
+chickens, without girls taking to them&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>She stared after the car, then signalling to Abraham,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_113' name='page_113'></a>113</span>
+she got into the barouche, Phyl followed her
+and they continued their drive.</p>
+<p>That evening after supper Miss Pinckney&#8217;s mind
+warmed to thoughts of the good old days when
+motor-cars were undreamed of, and stirred up by the
+recollection of Edgar Allan Poe, discharged itself
+of reminiscences worth much gold could they have
+been taken down by a stenographer.</p>
+<p>She was sitting with Phyl in the piazza, for the
+night was warm, and whilst a big southern moon lit
+the garden, she let her mind stray over the men
+and women who had made American literature in
+the &#8217;50&#8217;s and &#8217;60&#8217;s, many of whom she had known
+when young.</p>
+<p>Estelle Anna Lewis of Baltimore, Nathaniel
+Hawthorne, William Cullen Bryant, Elizabeth
+Oakes Smith, Cornelius Mathews, Frances Sargent
+Osgood, N. P. Willis, Laughton Osborn. She had
+known Lowell and Longfellow, yet her mind
+seemed to cling mostly to the lesser people, writers
+in the <i>Southern Literary Messenger</i>, the <i>Home Journal</i>, the <i>Mirror</i> and the <i>Broadway Journal</i>.</p>
+<p>People well-known in their day and now scarcely
+remembered, yet whose very names are capable of
+evoking the colour and romance of that fascinating
+epoch beyond and around the Civil War.</p>
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re all dead and gone,&#8221; said she, &#8220;and folk
+nowadays don&#8217;t seem to trouble about the best of
+them, or remember their lines, yet there&#8217;s nothing
+they write now that&#8217;s as good&mdash;I remember poor
+Thomas Ward. &#8216;Flaccus&#8217; was the name he wrote
+under, a thin skeleton of a man always with his head
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_114' name='page_114'></a>114</span>
+in the air and his mind somewhere else, used to
+write in the <i>Knickerbocker Journal</i>; I heard him
+recite one of his things.</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;&#8216;And, straining, fastened on her lips a kiss,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>That seemed to suck the life blood from her heart.&#8217;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>&#8220;That stuck in my head, mostly, I expect, because
+Thomas Ward didn&#8217;t look as if he&#8217;d ever kissed a
+girl, but they are good lines and a lot better than
+they write nowadays.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The wind had risen a bit and was stirring in the
+leaves of the magnolias, white carnations growing
+near the sun dial shook their ruffles in the moonlight,
+and from near and far away came the sounds
+of Charleston, voices, the sound of traffic and then,
+a thread of tune tying moonbeams, magnolias, carnations
+and cherokee roses in a great southern
+bunch, came the notes of a banjo, plunk, plunk, and
+a voice from somewhere away in the back premises,
+the voice of a negro singing one of the old Plantation
+songs.</p>
+<p>Just a snatch before some closing door cut the
+singer off, but enough to make Phyl raise her head
+and listen, listen as though a whole world vaguely
+guessed, a world forgotten yet still warm and loving,
+youthful and sunlit, were striving to reach her and
+speak to her&mdash;As though Charleston the mysterious
+city that had greeted her first in Meeting Street
+were trying to tell her of things delightful, once
+loved, once known and forever vanished.</p>
+<p>As she lay awake that night with the moonlight
+showing through the blinds, the whole of that
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_115' name='page_115'></a>115</span>
+strange day came before her in pictures: the face of
+Frances Rhett troubled her, yet she did not know in
+the least why; it seemed part of the horribleness of
+automobiles and the anger of Miss Pinckney and
+the tribulations of Edgar Allan Poe.</p>
+<p>Then the fantastic band of forgotten <i>literati</i>
+trooped before her, led by &#8220;Flaccus,&#8221; the man who
+didn&#8217;t look as if he had ever kissed a girl, yet who
+wrote:</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>&#8220;And, straining, fastened on her lips a kiss,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>That seemed to suck the life blood from her heart.&#8221;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_116' name='page_116'></a>116</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>Phyl awoke to the early morning sunlight and
+the sounds of Charleston.</p>
+<p>The chimes of St. Michael&#8217;s were striking six and
+through the summery sunlit air carried by the sea
+wind stirring the curtains came the cries of the
+streets and the rumbling of early morning carts.</p>
+<p>Oh, those negro cries! the cry of the crab-seller,
+the orange vendor, the man who sells &#8220;monkey
+meat&#8221; dolorous, long drawn out, lazy, you do not
+know the South till you have heard them.</p>
+<p>The sound of a mat being shaken and beaten on
+the piazza, adjoining that on which her window
+opened came now, and two voices in dispute.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mistress Pinckney she told me to tell you&mdash;she
+mos&#8217; sholey did.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Go wash yo&#8217; face, yo&#8217; coloured trash, cummin&#8217;
+here wid yo&#8217; orders&mdash;skip out o&#8217; my piazza&mdash;&#8217;clar&#8217;
+to goodness I dunno what&#8217;s cummin&#8217; to niggers dese
+days.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then Miss Pinckney&#8217;s voice as from an upper
+window:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dinah! Seth! what&#8217;s that I hear? Get on
+with your work the pair of you and stop your chattering.
+You hear me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>When Phyl came down Richard Pinckney was in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_117' name='page_117'></a>117</span>
+the garden smoking a cigarette and gathering some
+carnations.</p>
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re for aunt,&#8221; said he, &#8220;to propitiate her
+for my being late last night. I wasn&#8217;t in till one.
+I&#8217;m worse even than you, you see, and the next time
+you are out till eleven and I let you in and grumble
+at you, you can hit back. Have a flower.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He gave her the finest in his bunch and Phyl put
+it in her belt. If she had any doubt as to the sincerity
+of his welcome his manner this morning ought
+to have set her mind at rest.</p>
+<p>She stood looking at him as he tied the stalks of
+the flowers together and he was worth looking at,
+a fresh, bright figure, the very incarnation of youth
+and health and one might almost say innocence.
+Clear eyed, well-groomed, good to look upon.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I generally pick a flower and put it on her
+plate,&#8221; said he, &#8220;but this morning she shall have a
+whole bunch&mdash;hope you slept all right?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Rather,&#8221; said Phyl, &#8220;I never sleep much the first
+night in a new place&mdash;but somehow&mdash;oh, I don&#8217;t
+know how to express it&mdash;but nothing here seems
+new.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nothing is,&#8221; said he laughing, &#8220;it&#8217;s all as old as
+the hills&mdash;you like it, don&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not a question of liking&mdash;of course I like it,
+who could help liking it&mdash;it&#8217;s more than that. It&#8217;s
+a feeling I have that I will either love it or hate it,
+and I don&#8217;t know which yet, all sorts of things come
+back to me here, you see, my mother knew the place&mdash;do
+people remember what their mothers and
+fathers knew, I wonder? But, if you understood
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_118' name='page_118'></a>118</span>
+me, it&#8217;s not so much remembering as feeling. All
+yesterday it seemed to me that I had only to turn
+some corner and come upon something waiting for
+me, something I knew quite well, and the smells and
+sounds and things are always reminding me of
+something&mdash;you know how it is when you have forgotten
+a name and when it&#8217;s lying just at the back of
+your mind&mdash;that&#8217;s how I feel here, about nearly
+everything&mdash;strange, isn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; said the practical Pinckney.
+&#8220;This place is awfully English for one thing, sure
+to remind you of a lot of things in Ireland and England,
+and then there&#8217;s of course the fact that you
+are partly American, but I don&#8217;t see why you should
+ever hate it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>Indeed</i>, I didn&#8217;t mean that,&#8221; said she flushing
+up at the thought that in trying to express herself
+she had made such a blunder. &#8220;I meant&mdash;I meant,
+that this something about the place that is always
+reminding me of itself might make me hate <i>it</i>.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Or love it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, but I can&#8217;t explain&mdash;the place itself no one
+could hate, you must have thought me rude.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not a bit&mdash;not the least little bit in the world.
+Well, I believe you&#8217;ll come to love it, not hate it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It,&#8221; said Phyl. &#8220;I don&#8217;t know that, because I
+don&#8217;t know what it is&mdash;this something that is always
+peeping round corners at me yet hiding itself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>Richard</i>!&#8221; came Miss Pinckney&#8217;s voice from the
+piazza where she had just appeared, &#8220;smoking
+cigarettes before breakfast, how often have I told
+you I won&#8217;t have you smoking before
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_119' name='page_119'></a>119</span>
+breakfast&mdash;why, God bless my soul, what are you doing with
+all those carnations?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He flung the cigarette-end away, but she refused
+to kiss him on account of the tobacco fumes, though
+she took the flowers.</p>
+<p>Cigarettes, like telephones, automobiles, and the
+memory of Edgar Allan Poe, formed a subject upon
+which once started Miss Pinckney was hard to
+check, and whilst she poured out the tea, she pursued
+it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dr. Cotton it was who told me, the one who
+used to live in Tradd Street, he was a relative of
+Dr. Garden the man that gave his name to that
+flower they call the gardenia&mdash;had it sent him from
+somewhere in the South, but I&#8217;m sure I don&#8217;t know
+where&mdash;New Orleans, I think, but it doesn&#8217;t matter.
+I was saying about Dr. Cotton, <i>old</i> Dr. Cotton of
+Tradd Street, he told me that the truth about young
+William Pringle&#8217;s death was that he was black when
+he died, from cigarette smoking, black as a crow.
+Used to smoke before breakfast, used to smoke all
+day, used to smoke in his sleep, I b&#8217;lieve. Couldn&#8217;t
+get rid of the pesky habit and died clinging to it,
+black as a crow. I can&#8217;t abide the things. Your
+father used to smoke Bull Durham in a corn cob,
+or a cigar, he&#8217;d a&#8217; soon have smoked one of those
+cigarettes of yours as soon as he&#8217;d have been caught
+doing tatting. Don&#8217;t tell me, there&#8217;s no manhood
+in them, it&#8217;s just vice in thimble-fulls. I&#8217;d much
+sooner see a man lying healthily under the table
+once in a way than always half fuddled, and I&#8217;d
+sooner be poisoned out by a green cigar now and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_120' name='page_120'></a>120</span>
+then, than always having that nasty sickly cigarette
+smell round the place.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But good gracious, Aunt, I&#8217;m not a cigarette
+smoker, only once and away and at odd times.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wasn&#8217;t talking about you so much as the young
+men of to-day, and the young women, they&#8217;re the
+worst, for they encourage the others to make fools
+of themselves, and if they&#8217;re not smoking themselves
+they&#8217;re sucking candy. Candy sucking and
+cigarette smoking is the ruin of the States. Those
+Rhett girls <i>live</i> on candy, and they look it&mdash;pasty
+faces.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why!&#8221; said he, &#8220;what grudge have you got
+against the Rhetts now, Aunt&mdash;it&#8217;s as bad to take a
+girl&#8217;s complexion away as a man&#8217;s character&mdash;what
+have the Rhetts been doing to you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney did not seem to hear the question
+for a moment, then she said, speaking as if to some
+invisible person:</p>
+<p>&#8220;That Frances Rhett may be reckoned the belle
+of Charleston, that&#8217;s what I heard old Mr. Outhwaite
+call her, but she&#8217;s a belle I wouldn&#8217;t care to
+have tied round my neck. Belle! She&#8217;s no more a
+belle than I am, there are hundreds of prettier girls
+between here and the Battery, but she&#8217;s one of those
+sort that have the knack of setting young men
+against each other and making them fight for her;
+she&#8217;s labelled herself as a prize, which she isn&#8217;t. I
+declare to goodness the world frightens me at times,
+the way I see fools going about labelled as clever
+men, and women your grandfathers wouldn&#8217;t have
+cast an eye at going about labelled as beauties. I
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_121' name='page_121'></a>121</span>
+do believe if I was to give myself out as a beauty
+to-morrow I&#8217;d have half the young idiots in Charleston
+after me, believing me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re after you already,&#8221; said Pinckney,
+&#8220;only yesterday I heard young Reggy Calhoun saying&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know,&#8221; said Miss Pinckney, &#8220;and I want no
+more of your impudence. Now take yourself off if
+you&#8217;ve finished your breakfast, for Phyl and I have
+work to do.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He got up and went off laughing by way of the
+piazza and they could hear his cheery voice in the
+garden talking to the old negro gardener.</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney&#8217;s eyes softened. She was fiddling
+with a spoon and when she spoke she seemed speaking
+to it, turning it about as if to examine its pattern
+all the time.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know what mothers with boys feel like,
+but I do want to see that boy safe and married before
+I go. He&#8217;s just the sort to be landed in unhappiness;
+he is, most surely; well, I don&#8217;t know,
+there&#8217;s no use in warning young folk, you may spank
+&#8217;em for stealing the jam but you can&#8217;t spank &#8217;em
+from fooling with the wrong sort of girl.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney had talked the night before of
+Phyl&#8217;s father and had proposed taking her this
+morning to the Magnolia cemetery to see the grave.
+She broke off the conversation suddenly as this fact
+strayed into her mind, and, rising up, invited Phyl
+to follow her to the kitchen premises where she had
+orders to give before starting.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I always look after my own house,&#8221; said she,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_122' name='page_122'></a>122</span>
+&#8220;and always will. Fine ladies nowadays sit in their
+drawing-rooms and ring their bells for the servants
+to rob them and they aren&#8217;t any more respected.
+That&#8217;s what makes the Charleston negro the impudentest
+lump of blackness under the sun, that and
+knowing they&#8217;re emancipated. They&#8217;ve got to look
+on themselves as part of the Heavenly Host. Well,
+I&#8217;ll have no emancipated rubbish in my house, and
+the consequence is I never lose a servant and I never
+get impudence. They&#8217;ll all get a pension when
+they&#8217;re too old to work, and good food and good
+pay whilst they&#8217;re working, and I&#8217;ve said to them
+&#8216;you&#8217;re no more emancipated than I am, we&#8217;re all
+slaves to our duty and the only difference between
+now and the old days is I can&#8217;t sell you&mdash;and if you
+were idle enough to make me want to sell you
+there&#8217;s no one would buy such rubbish nowadays.&#8217;
+Half the trouble is that people these times don&#8217;t
+know how to talk to coloured folk, and the other
+half is that they don&#8217;t want to talk to them.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She led the way down passages to the great
+kitchen, stonebuilt, clean and full of sunlight. The
+door was open on to the yard and through an open
+side door one could get a glimpse of the scullery,
+the great washing up sink, generations old, and
+worn with use, and above it the drying dresser.</p>
+<p>There were no new-fangled cooking inventions
+at Vernons, everything was done at an open range
+of the good old fashion still to be found in many an
+English country house.</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney objected to &#8220;baked meat&#8221; and the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_123' name='page_123'></a>123</span>
+joints at Vernons were roast, swinging from a clockwork
+Jack and basted all the time with a long metal
+ladle.</p>
+<p>By the range this morning was seated an old
+coloured woman engaged in cutting up onions.
+This was Prue the oldest living thing in Vernons
+and perhaps in Charleston; she had been kitchen
+maid before Miss Pinckney was born, then cook,
+and now, long past work, she was just kept on.
+Twenty-five years ago she had been offered a pension
+and a cottage for herself but she refused both.
+She wanted to die where she was, so she said. So
+they let her stay, doing odd jobs and bossing the
+others just as though she were still mistress of the
+kitchen&mdash;as in fact she was. She had become a
+legend and no one knew her exact age, she was
+creepin&#8217; close to a hundred, and her memory which
+carried her back to the slave days was marvellous
+in its retentiveness.</p>
+<p>She had cooked a dinner for Jeff Davis when he
+was a guest at Vernons, she could still hear the guns
+of the Civil War, so she said, and the Mascarene
+family history was her Bible.</p>
+<p>She looked down on the Pinckneys as trash beside
+the Mascarenes, and interlopers, and this attitude
+and point of view though well known to Miss Pinckney
+was not in the least resented by her.</p>
+<p>But during the last few years this old lady&#8217;s intellect
+had been steadily coming under eclipse; still
+insisting on doing little jobs in a futile sort of way,
+silence had been creeping upon her so that she
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_124' name='page_124'></a>124</span>
+rarely spoke now, and when she did, by chance, her
+words revealed the fact that her mind was dwelling
+in the past.</p>
+<p>Rachel, the cook, a sturdy coloured woman with
+her head bound up in an isabelle-coloured handkerchief
+was standing by the kitchen table on which she
+was resting the fore-finger of her left hand, whilst
+with the right she was turning over some fish that
+had just been sent in from the fishmonger&#8217;s. She
+seemed in a critical mood, but what she said to Miss
+Pinckney was lost to Phyl whose attention was attracted
+by a chuckling sound from near the range.</p>
+<p>It was Prue.</p>
+<p>The old woman at sight of Phyl had dropped the
+knife and the onion on which she had been engaged.
+She was now seated, hands on knees, chuckling and
+nodding to the girl, then, scarcely raising her right
+hand from her knee, she made a twiddling movement
+with the fore-finger as if to say, &#8220;come here&mdash;come
+here&mdash;I have something to tell you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl glanced at Miss Pinckney who was so taken
+up with what Rachel was saying about the fish that
+she noticed nothing. Then she looked again at
+Prue and, unable to resist the invitation, came towards
+her. The old woman caught her by the arm
+so that she had to bend her head.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Miss Julie,&#8221; whispered Prue, &#8220;Massa Pinckney
+told me tell yo&#8217; he be at de gate t&#8217;night same time
+&#8217;slas&#8217; night. Done you let on &#8217;s I told yo&#8217;,&#8221; she gave
+the arm a pinch and relapsed into herself chuckling
+whilst Phyl stood with a little shiver, half of relief
+at her escape from that bony clutch, half of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_125' name='page_125'></a>125</span>
+dread&mdash;a vague dread as though she had come in contact
+with something uncanny.</p>
+<p>She came to the table again and stood without
+looking at Prue, whilst Miss Pinckney completed
+her orders, then, that lady, having finished her business
+and casting an eye about the place on the
+chance of finding any dirt or litter, saw Prue and
+asked how she was doing.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, miss, she&#8217;s doin&#8217; fa&#8217;r,&#8221; replied Rachel,
+&#8220;but I&#8217;m t&#8217;inking she&#8217;s not long fore de new Jerusalem.
+Sits didderin&#8217; dere &#8217;n&#8217; smokin&#8217; her pipe, &#8217;n&#8217;
+lays about her wid her stick times, fancyin&#8217; there&#8217;er
+dogs comin&#8217; into de kitchen.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A dog bit her once way back in the &#8217;60&#8217;s,&#8221; said
+Miss Pinckney; &#8220;they used to keep dogs here then.
+She don&#8217;t want for anything?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Law no, miss, <i>she</i> done want for nothin&#8217;; look
+at her now laffin&#8217; to herself. Haven&#8217;t seen her do
+that way dis long time. Hi, Prue, what yo&#8217; laffin&#8217;
+at?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Prue, instead of answering leant further forward
+hiding her face without checking her merriment.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Crazy,&#8221; said Miss Pinckney, &#8220;but it&#8217;s better to
+be laughing crazy than crying crazy like some folk&mdash;here&#8217;s
+a quarter and get her some candy.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She put the coin on the table and marched off
+followed by Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She wanted to tell me something,&#8221; said Phyl as
+they were driving to the cemetery; &#8220;she beckoned
+me to her and took hold of my arm and whispered
+something.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What did she say?&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_126' name='page_126'></a>126</span></p>
+<p>Phyl, somehow, could not bring herself to betray
+that crazy confidence.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know, exactly, but she called me Miss
+Julie.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh&mdash;she called you Miss Julie,&#8221; said the other.
+Then she relapsed into thought and nothing more
+was said till they reached their destination.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_127' name='page_127'></a>127</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>Charleston&#8217;s Magnolia Cemetery like
+everything else about Charleston shows the
+touch of the War. Here the soldiers lie who
+fought so bravely under Wade Hampton and here
+lies the general himself.</p>
+<p>Go south, go north, and you will not find a place
+touched by the War where you will not find noble
+memories, echoes of heroic deeds, legends of brave
+men.</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney was by no means a peace party
+and this thought was doubtless in her head as she
+stood surveying the confederate graves. There
+were relations here and men whom she had known
+as a child.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s the War,&#8221; said she, &#8220;and people abuse
+war as if it was the worst thing in the world, insulting
+the dead. &#8217;Clare to goodness it makes me
+savage to hear the pasty-faces talking of war and
+making plans to abolish it. It&#8217;s like hearing a lot
+of children making plans to abolish thunder storms.
+Where would America be now without the War,
+and where&#8217;d her history be? You tell me that.
+It&#8217;d just be the history of a big canning factory.
+These men aren&#8217;t dead, they&#8217;re still alive and fighting&mdash;fighting
+Chicago; fighting pork, and wheat,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_128' name='page_128'></a>128</span>
+and cotton and railway-stock and everything else
+that&#8217;s abolishing the soul of the nation.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s Matt Carey&#8217;s grave. He had everything
+he wanted, and he wasn&#8217;t young. Now-a-days
+he&#8217;d have been driving in his automobile killing
+old women and chickens, or tarpoon fishing
+down &#8217;n Florida letting the world go rip, or full of
+neur&mdash;what do they call it&mdash;that thing that gets on
+their nerves and makes crazy old men of them at
+forty&mdash;I&#8217;ve forgotten. <i>He</i> didn&#8217;t. He took up a
+gun and died like a lion, and he was a middle-aged
+business man. No one remembers him, I do believe,
+except, maybe me, clean forgotten&mdash;and yet
+he helped to put a brick into the only monument
+worth ten cents that America has got&mdash;The War.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And some northern people would say &#8216;nice sort
+of brick, seeing he was fighting on the wrong side.&#8217;
+Wrong side or right side he was fighting for something
+else than his own hand. <i>That&#8217;s</i> the point.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She closed up her lips and they went on. Phyl
+found her father&#8217;s grave in a quiet spot where the
+live-oaks stood, the long grey moss hanging from
+their branches.</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney, having pointed out the grave,
+strayed off, leaving the girl to herself.</p>
+<p>The gloomy, strange-looking trees daunted Phyl,
+and the grave, too young yet to have a headstone,
+drew her towards it, yet repelled her.</p>
+<p>It was like meeting in a dream some one she
+had loved and who had turned into a stranger in a
+strange place.</p>
+<p>Just as Charleston had dimmed Ireland in her
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_129' name='page_129'></a>129</span>
+mind as a bright light dims a lesser light, so had
+some influence come between her and the memory
+of her father. That memory was just as distinct
+as ever, but grief had died from it, as though Time
+had been at work on it for years and years.</p>
+<p>The Phyl who had stepped out of the south-bound
+express and the girl of this morning were the
+same in mind and body, but in soul and outlook they
+had changed and were changing as though the air
+of the south had some magic in it, some food that
+had always been denied her and which was necessary
+for her full being.</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney returned from her wanderings
+amongst the graves and they turned to the gate.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It used to seem strange to me coming here when
+I was a girl,&#8221; said she. &#8220;It always seemed as if I
+was come to visit people who could never come to
+see me. I used to pity them, but one gets older and
+one gets wiser, and I fancy it&#8217;s they that pity us, if
+they can see us at all, which isn&#8217;t often likely.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;D&#8217;you think they come back?&#8221; said Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;My dear child, if I told you what I thought,
+you&#8217;d say I was plum crazy. But I&#8217;ll say this.
+What do you think the Almighty made folk for? to
+live a few years and then lie in a grave with folk
+heaping flowers on them? There&#8217;s no such laziness
+in nature. I don&#8217;t say there aren&#8217;t folk who
+live their lives like as if they were dead, covered
+with flowers and never moving a hand to help themselves
+like some of those N&#8217;York women&mdash;but they
+don&#8217;t count. They&#8217;re against nature and I guess
+when they die they die, for they haven&#8217;t ever lived.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_130' name='page_130'></a>130</span>
+Then, vehemently: &#8220;Of course, they come back,
+not as ghosts peekin&#8217; about and making nuisances
+of themselves, but they come back as people&mdash;which
+is the sensible way and there&#8217;s nothing unsensible in
+nature. Mind you, I don&#8217;t say there aren&#8217;t ghosts,
+there are, for I&#8217;ve seen &#8217;em; I saw Simon Pinckney,
+the one that died of drink, as plain as my hand same
+day he died, but he was a no account. He hadn&#8217;t
+the making of a man, so he couldn&#8217;t come back as a
+man, and he wasn&#8217;t a woman, so he couldn&#8217;t come
+back as a woman; so he came back as a ghost. He
+was always an uneasy creature, else I don&#8217;t suppose
+he&#8217;d have come back as anything. When a man
+wears out a suit of clothes he doesn&#8217;t die, he gets a
+new one, and when he wears out a body&mdash;which
+isn&#8217;t a bit more than a suit of clothes&mdash;he gets a new
+one. If he hasn&#8217;t piled up grit enough in life to
+pay for a new body, he goes about without one and
+he&#8217;s a ghost. That&#8217;s my way of thinking and I
+know&mdash;I know&mdash;n&#8217;matter.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She put up her sunshade and they returned, driving
+through the warm spring weather. Phyl was
+silent, the day had taken possession of her. The
+scent of pink mimosa filled the air, the blue sky
+shewed here and there a few feather traces of white
+cloud and the wind from the sea seemed the very
+breath of the southern spring.</p>
+<p>It seemed to Phyl as they drove that never before
+had she met or felt the loveliness of life, never till
+this moment when turning a corner the song of a
+bird from a garden met them with the perfume of
+jessamine.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_131' name='page_131'></a>131</span></p>
+<p>Charleston is full of surprises like that, things
+that snatch you away from the present or catch you
+for a moment into the embrace of some old garden
+lurking behind a wrought iron gate, or tell you a
+love story no matter how much you don&#8217;t want to
+hear it&mdash;or tease you, if you are a practical business
+man, with some other futility which has nothing at
+all to do with &#8220;real&#8221; life.</p>
+<p>It seemed to Phyl as though, somehow, the whole
+of the morning had been working up to that moment,
+as though the perfume of the jessamine and
+the song of the birds were the culmination of the
+meaning of all sorts of things seen and unseen,
+heard and unheard.</p>
+<p>The message of the crazy old negress came back
+to her. Who was Miss Julie? and who was the Mr.
+Pinckney that was to meet her, and where was the
+gate at which they were to meet in such a secretive
+manner? Was it just craziness, or was it possible
+that this was some real message delivered years and
+years ago. A real lover&#8217;s message which the old
+woman had once been charged to deliver and which
+she had repeated automatically and like a parrot.</p>
+<p>Miss Julie&mdash;could it be possible that she meant
+Miss Juliet&mdash;The Juliet Mascarene to whom she,
+Phyl, bore such a strong family likeness, could it be
+possible that the likeness had started the old
+woman&#8217;s mind working and had recalled the message
+of a half-a-century ago to her lips.</p>
+<p>It was a fascinating thought. Juliet had been in
+love with one of the Pinckneys and this message was
+from a Pinckney and one day, perhaps, most likely
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_132' name='page_132'></a>132</span>
+a fine spring day like to-day, Pinckney had given the
+negro girl a message to give to Juliet, and the lovers
+and the message and the bright spring day had
+vanished utterly and forever leaving only Prue.</p>
+<p>The gate would no doubt be the garden gate.
+Phyl in all her life had never given a thought to
+Love, she had known nothing of sentiment, that
+much abused thing which is yet the salt of life, and
+Romance for her had meant Adventure; all the
+same she was now weaving all sorts of threads into
+dreams and fancies. What appealed to her most
+was her own likeness to Juliet, the girl who had
+died so many, many years ago. A likeness incomplete
+enough, according to Miss Pinckney, yet
+strong enough to awaken memories in the mind of
+Prue.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_133' name='page_133'></a>133</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>&#8220;Miss Pinckney,&#8221; said Phyl, as they sat
+at luncheon that day, &#8220;you remember you
+said yesterday that I was like Juliet Mascarene?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;So you are,&#8221; replied the other, &#8220;though the likeness
+is more noticeable at first sight as far as the
+face goes&mdash;I&#8217;ve got a picture of her I will show
+you, it&#8217;s upstairs in her room, the one next yours
+on the same piazza&mdash;why do you ask me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I was thinking,&#8221; replied Phyl, &#8220;that the old
+woman in the kitchen&mdash;Prue&mdash;may have meant
+Juliet when she called me Julie, and that it was the
+likeness that set her mind going.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not impossible. Prue&#8217;s like that crazy old
+clock Selina Pinckney left me in her will. It&#8217;d tell
+you the day and the hour <i>and</i> the minute and the
+year and the month and the weather. A little man
+came out if it was going to rain and a little woman
+if it was going to shine. But if you wanted to know
+the time, it couldn&#8217;t tell you nearer than the hour
+before last of the day before yesterday, and if you
+sneezed near it, it&#8217;d up and strike a hundred and
+twenty. I gave it to Rachel. She said it was
+&#8216;some&#8217; clock, said it was a dandy for striking and
+the time didn&#8217;t matter as the old kitchen clock saw
+to that. It&#8217;s the same with Prue, the time doesn&#8217;t
+matter, and they look up to her in the kitchen
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_134' name='page_134'></a>134</span>
+mostly, I expect, because she&#8217;s an oddity, same as
+Selina Pinckney&#8217;s clock. Seems to me anything
+crazy and useless is reckoned valuable these days,
+and not only among coloured folk but whites&mdash;Dinah,
+hasn&#8217;t Mr. Richard come in yet?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, Mistress Pinckney,&#8221; replied the coloured
+girl, who had just entered the room, &#8220;I haven&#8217;t seen
+no sign of him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Running about without his luncheon,&#8221; grumbled
+the lady, &#8220;said he had a deal in cotton on. I might
+have guessed it.&#8221; Then when Dinah had left the
+room and talking half to herself, &#8220;There&#8217;s nothing
+Richard seems to think of but business or pleasure.
+I&#8217;m not saying anything against the boy, he&#8217;s
+as good and better than any of the rest, but like the
+rest of them his character wants forming round
+something real. It wasn&#8217;t so in the old days, they
+were bad enough then and drank a lot more, but
+they had in them something that made for something
+better than business or pleasure. Matt Curry
+didn&#8217;t go out and get killed for business or pleasure,
+and all the old Pinckneys didn&#8217;t fight in the war or
+fight with one another for business or pleasure.
+There&#8217;s more in life than fooling with girls or buying
+cotton or sailing yacht races, but Richard doesn&#8217;t
+seem to see it. I did think that having a ward to
+look after would have sobered him a bit and helped
+to form his character&mdash;well, maybe it will yet.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to be looked after,&#8221; said Phyl
+flushing up, &#8220;and if Mr. Pinckney&mdash;&#8221; she stopped.
+What she was going to say about Pinckney was not
+clear in her mind, clouded as it was with anger&mdash;anger
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_135' name='page_135'></a>135</span>
+at the thought that she was an object to be
+looked after by her &#8220;guardian,&#8221; anger at the implication
+that he was not bothering to look after her,
+being too much engaged in the business of fooling
+with girls and buying cotton, and a reasonable anger
+springing from and embracing the whole world that
+held his beyond Vernons.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes?&#8221; said Miss Pinckney.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, nothing,&#8221; replied the other, trying to laugh
+and making a failure of the business. &#8220;I was only
+going to say that Mr. Pinckney must have lots to do
+instead of wasting his time looking after strangers,
+and if he hadn&#8217;t I don&#8217;t want to be looked after. I
+don&#8217;t want him to bother about me&mdash;I&mdash;I&mdash;&#8221; It
+did not want much more to start her off in a wild
+fit of weeping about nothing, her mind for some
+reason or other unknown even to herself was
+worked up and seething just as on that day at Kilgobbin
+when the woes of Rafferty had caused her
+to make such an exhibition of herself in the library.
+Anything was possible with Phyl when under the
+influence of unreasoning emotion like this, anything
+from flinging a knife at a person to breaking into
+tears.</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney knew it. Without understanding
+in the least the psychological mechanism of Phyl, she
+knew as a woman and by some electrical influence
+the state of her mind.</p>
+<p>She rose from the table.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Stranger,&#8221; said she, taking the other by the arm,
+&#8220;you call yourself a stranger. Come along upstairs
+with me. I want to show you something.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_136' name='page_136'></a>136</span></p>
+<p>Still holding her by the arm, caressingly, she led
+her off across the hall and up the stairs; on the first
+floor landing she opened a door; it was the door of
+the bedroom next to Phyl&#8217;s, a room of the same
+shape and size and with the same view over the garden.</p>
+<p>Just as the drawing-room had been kept in its
+entirety without alteration or touch save the touch
+of a duster, so had this room, the bedroom of a
+girl of long ago, a girl who would now have been a
+woman old and decrepit&mdash;had she lived.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Here&#8217;s the picture you wanted to see,&#8221; said Miss
+Pinckney leading Phyl up to a miniature hanging on
+the wall near the bed. &#8220;That&#8217;s Juliet, and if you
+don&#8217;t see the family likeness, well, then, you must be
+blind.&mdash;And you calling yourself a stranger!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl looked. It was rather a stiff and finicking
+little portrait; she fancied it was like herself but
+was not sure, the colour of the hair was almost the
+same but the way it was dressed made a lot of
+difference, and she said so.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, they did their hair different then,&#8221; replied
+Miss Pinckney, &#8220;and that reminds me, it&#8217;s
+near time you put that tail up.&#8221; She sat down in
+a rocker by the window and with her hands on her
+knees contemplated Phyl. &#8220;I&#8217;m your only female
+relative, and Lord knows I&#8217;m far enough off, anyhow
+I&#8217;m something with a skirt on it, and brains
+in its head, and that&#8217;s what a girl most wants when
+she comes to your age. You&#8217;ll be asked to parties
+and things here and you&#8217;ll find that tail in the way;
+it&#8217;s good enough for a schoolgirl, but you aren&#8217;t
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_137' name='page_137'></a>137</span>
+that any longer. I&#8217;ll get Dinah to do your hair,
+something simple and not too grown-up&mdash;you don&#8217;t
+mind an old woman telling you this&mdash;do you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Indeed I don&#8217;t,&#8221; said Phyl. &#8220;I don&#8217;t care how
+my hair is done, you can cut it off if you like, but I
+don&#8217;t want to go to parties.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, maybe you don&#8217;t,&#8221; said Miss Pinckney,
+&#8220;but, all the same, we&#8217;ll get Dinah to look to your
+hair. Dinah can do most anything in that way;
+she&#8217;d get twice the wages as a lady&#8217;s maid elsewhere
+and she knows it, but she won&#8217;t go. I&#8217;ve
+told her over and again to be off and better herself,
+but she won&#8217;t go, sticks to me like a mosquito.
+Well, this was Juliet&#8217;s room just as that&#8217;s her picture;
+she died in that bed and everything is just
+exactly as she left it. It was kept so after her
+death. You see, it wasn&#8217;t like an ordinary person
+dying, it was the tragedy of the whole thing that
+stirred folk so, dying of a broken heart for the man
+she was in love with. It set all the crazy poets off
+like that clock of Selina Pinckney&#8217;s I was telling you
+of. The <i>News and Courier</i> had yards of obituary
+notice and verses. It made people forget the war
+for a couple of days. There&#8217;s all her books on that
+shelf and the diary the poor thing used to keep.
+Open one of the drawers in that chest.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl did so. The drawer was packed with
+clothes neatly folded. The air became filled with
+the scent of lavender.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There are her things, everything she ever had
+when she died. It may seem foolish to keep everything
+like that, foolish and sentimental, and if she&#8217;d
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_138' name='page_138'></a>138</span>
+died of measles or fallen down the stairs and killed
+herself maybe her old things would have been given
+away, but dying as she did&mdash;well, somehow, it didn&#8217;t
+seem right for coloured girls to be parading about
+in her things. Mrs. Beamis sniffed here just as she
+sniffed in the drawing-room, and she said, one night,
+something about sentiment, as if she was referring
+to chicken cholera. I knew what she meant. She
+meant we were a pack of fools. Well, she ought to
+know. I reckon she ought to be a judge of folly&mdash;the
+life she leads in Chicago. Umph!&mdash;Now I&#8217;m
+going to lie down for an hour, and if you take my
+advice you&#8217;ll do the same. The middle of the day
+was meant to rest in. You can get to your room by
+the window.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She kissed Phyl and went off.</p>
+<p>Phyl, instead of going to her room, took her seat
+in the rocker and looked around her. The place
+held her, something returned to it that had been
+driven away perhaps by Miss Pinckney&#8217;s cheerful
+and practical presence, the faint odour of lavender
+still clung to the air, and the silence was unbroken
+except for a faint stirring of the window curtains
+now and then to the breeze from outside. Everything
+was, indeed, just as it had been left, the toilet
+tidies and all the quaint contraptions of the &#8217;50&#8217;s
+and &#8217;60&#8217;s in their places. On the wall opposite the
+bed hung several water colours evidently the work
+of that immature artist Mary Mascarene, a watch
+pocket hung above the bed, a thing embroidered with
+blue roses, enough to disturb the sleep of any æsthete,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_139' name='page_139'></a>139</span>
+yet beautiful enough in those old days. There was
+only one stain mark in the scrupulous cleanliness and
+neatness of the place&mdash;a panel by the window, once
+white painted but now dingy-grey and scored with
+lines. Phyl got up and inspected it more closely.
+Children&#8217;s heights had evidently been measured here.
+There was a scale of feet marked in pencil, initials,
+and dates. Here was &#8220;M. M.,&#8221; probably Mary
+Mascarene, &#8220;2 ft. 6 inches. Nineteen months,&#8221; and
+the date &#8220;April, 1845,&#8221; and again a year later, &#8220;M. M.
+2 ft. 9-1/2 inches, May, 1846.&#8221; So she had
+grown three and a half inches in a year. &#8220;J. M.&#8221;&mdash;Juliet
+without doubt&mdash;&#8220;3 feet, 3 years old, 1845.&#8221;
+Juliet was evidently the elder&mdash;so it went on right
+into the early &#8217;60&#8217;s, mixed here and there with other
+initials, amongst which Phyl made out &#8220;J. J.&#8221; and
+&#8220;R. P.,&#8221; children maybe staying at the house and
+measured against the Mascarene children&mdash;children
+now old men and women, possibly not even that. It
+was in the kindly spirit of Vernons not to pass a
+painter&#8217;s brush over these scratchings, records of the
+height of a child that lingered only in the memory
+of the old house.</p>
+<p>Phyl turned from them to the bookshelf and the
+books it contained. &#8220;Noble Deeds of American
+Women,&#8221; &#8220;Precept on Precept,&#8221; &#8220;The Dairyman&#8217;s
+Daughter,&#8221; and the &#8220;New England Primer&#8221;&mdash;with
+a mark against the verses left &#8220;by John Rogers to
+his wife and nine small children, and one at the
+breast, when he was burned at the stake at Smithfield
+in 1555.&#8221; There were also books of poetry,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_140' name='page_140'></a>140</span>
+Bryant, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, &#8220;Powhatan, a
+metrical romance in seven cantos by Seba Smith,&#8221;
+and several others.</p>
+<p>Phyl did something characteristic. She gathered
+every single book into a pile in her arms and sat
+down on the floor with them to have a feast. This
+devourer of books was omnivorous in her tastes,
+especially if it were a question of sampling, and she
+had enough critical faculty to enable her to enjoy
+rubbish. She lingered over Powhatan and its dedication
+to the &#8220;Young People of the United States&#8221;
+and then passed on to the others till she came to a
+little black book. It was Juliet Mascarene&#8217;s diary
+and proclaimed the fact openly on the first page with
+the statements: &#8220;I am twelve years old to-day and
+Aunt Susan has given me this book to keep as my
+diary and not to forget to write each day my evil
+deeds as well as my good, which I will if I remember
+them. She didn&#8217;t give me anything else. I had to-day
+a Paris doll from Cousin Jane Pinckney who
+has winking eyes which shut when you lay her on
+her back and pantalettes with scallops which take
+off and on and a trunk of clothes with a little key
+to it. Father gave me a Bible and I have had other
+things too numerous for mension.</p>
+<div class='ra'>
+<p>&#8220;Signed Juliet Mascarene.&#8221;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>with never a date.</p>
+<p>Then:</p>
+<p>&#8220;I haven&#8217;t done any evil deeds, or good ones that
+I can remember, so I haven&#8217;t written in this book
+for maybe a week. Mary and I, we went to a party
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_141' name='page_141'></a>141</span>
+at the Pinckneys to-day at Bures, the Calhoun children
+and the Rutledges were there and we had Lady
+Baltimore cake and a good time. Mary wore her
+blue organdie and looked very nice and Rupert
+Pinckney was there, he&#8217;s fourteen and wouldn&#8217;t talk
+to the children because they were too small for him,
+I expect. He told me he was going to have a pony
+same as Silas Rhett that threw him in the market
+place Wednesday last and galloped all the way to
+Battery before he was stopped, only his was to be a
+better one with more shy in it, said Silas Rhett ought
+to be tied on next time. Then old Mr. Pinckney
+came in and shewed us a musical snuff-box and we
+went home, and driving back Mary kicked me on the
+shin by axident and I pinched her and she didn&#8217;t cry
+till we&#8217;d got home, then she began to roar and
+mother said it was my ungovernable temper, and I
+said I wished I was dead.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I shan&#8217;t go to any more parties because it&#8217;s always
+like that after them. Father told me I was
+to pray for a new heart and not to have any supper
+but Prue has brought me up a cake of her own making.
+So that&#8217;s one evil deed to put down&mdash;It&#8217;s
+just like Mary, any one else would have cried right
+out in the carriage and not bottled it up and kept it
+up till she got home.</p>
+<p>&#8220;This is a Friday and Prue says Friday parties
+are always sure to end in trouble for the devil puts
+powder in the cakes and the only way to stop him is
+to turn them three times round when they&#8217;re baking
+and touch them each time with a forked hazel twig.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl read this passage over twice. The mention
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_142' name='page_142'></a>142</span>
+of Prue interested her vastly. Prue even then had
+evidently been a favourite of Juliet&#8217;s.</p>
+<p>She read on hoping to find the name of the coloured
+woman again, but it did not occur.</p>
+<p>The diary, indeed, did not run over more than a
+year and a half, but scrappy as it was and short in
+point of time, the character of Juliet shone forth
+from it, uneasy, impetuous, tormenting and loving.</p>
+<p>Many books could not have depicted the people
+round Vernons so well as this scribbling of a child.
+Mary Mascarene, quiet, rather a spoil-sport and
+something of a tale-teller, dead and gone Pinckneys
+and Rhetts. Aunt Susan, Cousin Jane Pinckney,
+Uncle George who beat his coloured man, Darius,
+because the said Darius had let him go out with one
+brass button missing from his blue coat. Simon
+Pinckney&mdash;the one whose ghost walked&mdash;and who
+&#8220;fell down in the garden because he had the hiccups,&#8221;
+these and others of their time lived in the little black
+book given by the miserly Aunt Susan &#8220;to keep as
+my diary and not to forget to write each day my evil
+deeds as well as my good.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Towards the end there was another reference to
+Rupert Pinckney, the tragic lover of the future:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Rupert Pinckney was here to-day with his mother
+to luncheon and we had a palmetto salad and mother
+said when he was gone he was the most frivulus boy
+in Charleston, whatever that was, and too much of
+a dandy, but father said he had stuff in him and
+Aunt Susan, who was here too, said &#8216;Yes, stuff and
+nonsense,&#8217; and I said he could ride his pony without
+tumbling off like Silas Rhett, anyhow.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_143' name='page_143'></a>143</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Then they went on talking about his people and
+how they hadn&#8217;t as much money as they used to have,
+and Aunt Susan said that was so, and the worst of
+it is they&#8217;re spending more money than they used to
+spend, and father said, well, anyhow, that wasn&#8217;t a
+very common complaint with <i>some</i> people and he
+left the room. He never stays long in the room
+with Aunt S.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think the Pinckneys are real nice.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Simon Mascarene from Richmond and his
+wife came to see us to-day and stay for a week.
+They drove here in their own carriage with four
+brown horses and you could not tell which horse was
+which, they are so alike, they are very fine people
+and Mr. M. has a red face&mdash;not the same red as
+Mr. Simon Pinckney&#8217;s, but different somehow&mdash;more
+like an apple, and a high nose which makes him look
+very grand and fine.&#8221; The same Simon Mascarene,
+no doubt, that came to the wedding of Charles Pinckney
+in 1880 as old Simon Mascarene, the one whose
+flowered carpet bag still lingered in the memory of
+Miss Pinckney.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mrs. M. is very fine too and beautifully dressed
+and mother gave her a great bouquet of geraniums
+and garden flowers with a live green caterpillar looping
+about in the green stuff which nobody saw but
+me, till it fell on Mrs. M.&#8217;s knee and she screamed.
+There is to be a big party to-morrow and the Pinckneys
+are coming and Rupert.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There the diary ended.</p>
+<p>Phyl put it back on the shelf with the books.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_144' name='page_144'></a>144</span></p>
+<p>She had not the knowledge necessary to visualise
+the people referred to, those people of another day
+when Planters kept open house, when slaves were
+slaves and Bures the home of the old gentleman with
+the musical snuff-box, but she could visualise Juliet
+as a child. The writing in the little book had
+brought the vision up warm from the past and it
+seemed almost as though she might suddenly run in
+from the sunlit piazza that lay beyond the waving
+window curtains.</p>
+<p>There was a bureau in one corner, or rather one
+of those structures that went by the name of Davenports
+in the days of our fathers. Phyl went to it
+and raised the lid. She did so without a second
+thought or any feeling that it was wrong to poke
+about in a place like this and pry into secrets. Juliet
+seemed to belong to her as though she had been a
+sister, her own likeness to the dead girl was a bond
+of attraction stronger than a family tie, and Juliet&#8217;s
+mournful love story completed the charm.</p>
+<p>The desk contained very little, a seal with a dove
+on it, some sticks of spangled sealing-wax, a paper
+knife of coloured wood with a picture of Benjamin
+Franklin on the handle and some sheets of note-paper
+with gilt edges.</p>
+<p>Phyl noticed that the gilt was still bright.</p>
+<p>She took out the paper knife and looked at it, and
+then held the blade to her lips to feel the smoothness
+of it, drawing it along so that her lips touched every
+part of the blade.</p>
+<p>Then she put it back, and as she did so a little
+panel at the back of the desk fell forward disclosing
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_145' name='page_145'></a>145</span>
+a cache containing a bundle of letters tied round with
+ribbon.</p>
+<p>Phyl started as though a hand had been laid on
+her arm. The point of the paper knife must have
+touched the spring of the panel, but it seemed as
+though the desk had suddenly opened its hand, closed
+and clasping those letters for so many years. For
+a moment she hesitated to touch them. Then she
+thought of all the time they had lain there and a
+feeling that Juliet wouldn&#8217;t mind and that the old
+bureau had told its secret without being asked, overcame
+her scruples. She took the letters and sitting
+down again on the floor, untied the ribbon.</p>
+<p>There were no envelopes. Each sheet of paper
+had been carefully folded and sealed with green wax,
+with the seal leaving the impression of the dove.
+There was no address, and they had evidently been
+tied together in chronological order. But the handwriting
+was the handwriting of Juliet Mascarene
+fully formed now.</p>
+<p>The first of these things ran:</p>
+<p>&#8220;It wasn&#8217;t my fault. I didn&#8217;t create old Mr. Gadney
+and send him to church to keep us talking in the
+street like that. I did <i>not</i> see you. You couldn&#8217;t
+have passed, and if you did you must have been invisible.
+I feel dreadfully wicked writing to you.
+Do you know this is a clandestine correspondence
+and must stop at once? You mustn&#8217;t <i>ever</i> write to
+me again, nor I mustn&#8217;t see you. Of course I can&#8217;t
+help seeing you in church and on the street&mdash;and I
+can&#8217;t help thinking about you. They&#8217;ll be making
+me try and stop breathing next. I don&#8217;t care a button
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_146' name='page_146'></a>146</span>
+for the whole lot of them. It was all Aunt
+Susan&#8217;s doing, only for her my people would never
+have quarrelled with yours and I wouldn&#8217;t have been
+so miserable. I feel sometimes as if I could just
+take a boat and sail off to somewhere where I would
+never see any people again.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was clever of you to send your letter by P.
+This goes to you by the same hand.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was no signature and no date.</p>
+<p>Phyl turned the sheet of paper over to make sure
+again that there was no address. As she did so a
+faint, quaint perfume came to her as though the old-fashioned
+soul of the letter were released for a moment.
+It was vervain, the perfume of long ago, beloved
+of the Duchesse de Chartres and the ladies
+of the forties.</p>
+<p>She laid the letter down and took up the next.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is <i>wicked</i> of you. My people never would be
+so mean as to quarrel with your people or look down
+on them because they have lost money. Why did
+you say that&mdash;and you know I said in my last letter
+that I could not write to you again. I was shocked
+when P. pinched my arm as I was passing her on
+the stairs and handed me your note&mdash;Don&#8217;t you&mdash;don&#8217;t
+you&mdash;how shall I say it? Don&#8217;t you think
+you and I could meet and speak to one another somewhere
+instead of always writing like this? Somewhere
+where no one could see us. Do you know&mdash;do
+you know&mdash;do you, ahem! O dear me&mdash;know
+that just inside our gate there&#8217;s a little arbour. The
+tiniest place. When I was a child I used to play
+there with Mary at keeping house, there&#8217;s a seat just
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_147' name='page_147'></a>147</span>
+big enough for two and we used to sit there with our
+dolls. No one can see the gate from the lower
+piazza, and the gate doesn&#8217;t make any noise opening,
+for father had it oiled&mdash;it used to squeak a bit from
+rust, but it doesn&#8217;t now and I&#8217;ll be there to-morrow
+night at nine&mdash;in the arbour&mdash;at least I <i>may</i> be there.
+I just want to tell you in a way I can&#8217;t in a letter
+that my people aren&#8217;t the sort of folk to sneer at
+any one because they have lost money.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am sending this by P.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The arbour is just back of the big magnolia as
+you come in, on the left.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl gave a little laugh. Then with half-closed
+eyes she kissed the letter, laid it softly on the floor
+beside the first and went on to the next.</p>
+<p>&#8220;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. No one sees us meet.
+No one knows, and yet I fear them finding out just
+by instinct. Father said to me the other day, &#8216;What
+makes you seem so happy these times?&#8217; If Mary
+had been alive she would have found out long ago,
+for I never could keep anything hid from her. I was
+nearly saying to him, &#8216;If you want to know why I
+am so happy go and ask the magnolia tree by the
+gate.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sometimes I feel as if I were deceiving him and
+everybody. I am, and I don&#8217;t care&mdash;I don&#8217;t care if
+they knew. O 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.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_148' name='page_148'></a>148</span></p>
+<p>Phyl&#8217;s eyes grew half blind with tears.</p>
+<p>This cry from the Past went to her heart like a
+knife. The wind, strengthening for a moment,
+moved the window curtains, bringing with it the
+drowsy afternoon sounds of Charleston, sounds that
+seemed to mock at this voice declaring the deathlessness
+of its love. It was impossible to go on reading.
+Impossible to expose any more this heart that had
+ceased to beat.</p>
+<p>The meetings in the arbour behind the magnolia
+tree, the kisses, the words that the leaves and birds
+alone could hear&mdash;they had all ended in death.</p>
+<p>It did not matter now if the garden gate creaked
+on its hinges, or if watching eyes from the piazza
+saw the glossy leaves stirring when no wind could
+shake them&mdash;nothing mattered at all to these people
+now.</p>
+<p>She put all the letters back in the bureau, carefully
+closing them in the secret drawer.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_149' name='page_149'></a>149</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>&#8220;Miss Pinckney,&#8221; said Phyl that night as
+they sat at supper, &#8220;when you left me this
+afternoon in Juliet&#8217;s room I stopped to look at the
+books and things and when I opened the bureau I
+touched a spring by accident and a little panel fell
+out and I found a lot of old letters behind it. It
+was wrong of me to go meddling about and I thought
+I ought to tell you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Old letters,&#8221; said Miss Pinckney, &#8220;you don&#8217;t
+say&mdash;what were they about?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I read one or two,&#8221; said the girl. &#8220;I&#8217;d never,
+never have dreamed of touching them only&mdash;only
+they were hers&mdash;they were to him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Rupert?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Love letters?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney sighed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He kept all her letters,&#8221; said she, &#8220;and they came
+back to her after he was killed. He was killed here
+in Charleston, at Fort Sumter, in the war; they
+brought him across here and carried him on a
+stretcher and she&mdash;well, well, it&#8217;s all done with and
+let it rest, but it is strange that those letters should
+have fallen into your hands.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, strange?&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_150' name='page_150'></a>150</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Why?&#8221; burst out Miss Pinckney. &#8220;Why I have
+dusted that old bureau inside and out a hundred
+times, and pulled out the drawers and pushed them
+in and it never shewed sign of having anything in it
+but emptiness, and you don&#8217;t do more&#8217;n look at it
+and you find those letters. It&#8217;s just as if the thing
+had deceived me. I don&#8217;t mind, and I don&#8217;t want
+to see them, they weren&#8217;t intended for other eyes
+than his and hers&mdash;and maybe yours since they were
+shewn you like that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Was it wrong of me to look at them?&#8221; asked
+Phyl. &#8220;I never would have done it only&mdash;only&mdash;Oh,
+I don&#8217;t know, I somehow felt she wouldn&#8217;t mind.
+She seemed like a sister&mdash;I would never dream of
+looking at another person&#8217;s letters but she did not
+seem like another person. I can&#8217;t explain. It was
+just as though the letters were my own&mdash;just exactly
+as though they were my own when I found them in
+my hands.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl was talking with her eyes fixed before her
+as though she were looking across some great distance.</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney gave a little shiver, then supper
+being over she rose from the table and led the way
+from the room.</p>
+<p>Richard Pinckney had dined with them but he
+was out for supper somewhere or another. They
+went to the drawing-room and had not been there
+for more than a few minutes when Frances Rhett
+was announced.</p>
+<p>The Rhetts were on intimate enough terms with
+the Pinckneys to call in like this without ceremony;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_151' name='page_151'></a>151</span>
+Frances had called to speak to Miss Pinckney about
+some charity affair she was getting up in a hurry,
+but she had not been five minutes in the room before
+Phyl knew that she had called to look at her. To
+look at the girl who had come to live with the Pinckneys,
+the red headed girl. Phyl did not know that
+girls of Frances&#8217; type dread red haired girls, if they
+are pretty, as rabbits dread stoats, but she did know
+in some uncanny way that Frances Rhett considered
+Richard Pinckney as her own property to be protected
+against all comers.</p>
+<p>All at once and new born, the woman awoke in
+her instinctive, mistrustful and armed.</p>
+<p>Frances Rhett, despite Miss Pinckney&#8217;s dispraise
+of her, was a most formidable person as far as the
+opposite sex was concerned. One of the women of
+whom other women say, &#8220;Well, I don&#8217;t know what
+he sees in her, I&#8217;m sure.&#8221;</p>
+<p>A brunette of eighteen who looked twenty, full-blooded,
+full lipped, full curved, sleepy-eyed, she
+seemed dressed by nature for the part of the world
+and the flesh&mdash;with a hint of the devil in those deep,
+dark, pansy blue eyes that seemed now by artificial
+light almost black.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I&#8217;ll subscribe ten dollars,&#8221; said Miss Pinckney;
+&#8220;I reckon the darkie babies won&#8217;t be any the
+worse for a <i>crêche</i> and maybe not very much better
+for it. If you could get up an institution to distil
+good manners and respect for their betters into their
+heads I&#8217;d give you forty. I&#8217;m sure I don&#8217;t know
+what the coloured folk of Charleston are coming
+to, one of them nearly pushed me off the sidewalk
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_152' name='page_152'></a>152</span>
+the other day, bag of impudence! and the way they
+look at one in the street with that sleery leery what-d&#8217;-you-call-yourself-you-white-trash
+grin on their
+faces s&#8217;nough to raise Cain in any one&#8217;s heart.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know,&#8221; replied the dark girl, &#8220;and they are getting
+worse; the whip is the only thing that as far as
+I can see ever made them possible, and what we have
+now is the result of your beautiful Abolitionists.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t call them my beautiful Abolitionists,&#8221; replied
+the other. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t make &#8217;em. All the same
+I don&#8217;t believe in whipping and never did. It&#8217;s the
+whip that whipped us in the war. If white folk had
+treated black folk like Christians slavery would have
+been the greatest god-send to blacks. It was what
+stays are to women. But they didn&#8217;t. The low
+down white made slavery impossible with his whipping
+and oppression and <i>we</i> had to suffer. Well, we
+haven&#8217;t ended our sufferings and if these folk go on
+multiplying like rabbits there&#8217;s no knowing what
+we&#8217;ve got to suffer yet.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Rhett concurred and took her departure.
+&#8220;Now, that girl,&#8221; said the elder lady when Frances
+Rhett was gone, &#8220;is just the type of the people I was
+telling her about. No idea but whipping. <i>She</i>
+wouldn&#8217;t have much mercy on a human creature black
+or tan <i>or</i> white. Thick skinned. She didn&#8217;t even
+see that I was telling her so to her face. Wonder
+what brought her here this hour with her <i>crêche</i>.
+It&#8217;s just a fad. If they got up a charity to make alligator
+bait of the black babies so&#8217;s to sell the alligator
+skins to buy pants with texts on them for the
+Hottentots it&#8217;d be all the same to her. Something
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_153' name='page_153'></a>153</span>
+to gad about with. I wish I&#8217;d kept that ten dollars
+in my pocket.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney went to bed early that night&mdash;before
+ten&mdash;and Phyl, who was free to do as she chose,
+sat for a while in the lower piazza watching the moon
+rising above the trees. She had a little plan in her
+mind, a plan that had only occurred to her just before
+the departure of Miss Pinckney for bed.</p>
+<p>She sat now watching the garden growing ghostly
+bright, the sun dial becoming a moon dial, the carnations
+touched by that stillness and mystery which
+is held only in the light of the moon and the light of
+the dawn.</p>
+<p>Phyl found herself sitting between two worlds.
+In the light of the northern moon in summer there
+is a vague rose tinge to be caught at times and in
+places when it falls full on house wall or the road on
+which one is walking. The piazza to-night had this
+living and warm touch. It seemed lit by a glorified
+ethereal day. A day that had never grown up and
+would never lose the charm of dawn.</p>
+<p>Yet the garden to which she would now turn her
+eyes shewed nothing of this. Night reigned there
+from the cherokee roses moving in the wind to the
+carnations motionless, moon stricken, deathly white.</p>
+<p>Sure that Miss Pinckney would not come down
+again, Phyl rose and crossed the garden towards the
+gate.</p>
+<p>She wanted to see if the trysting place behind the
+magnolia and the bushes that grew about it were
+still there.</p>
+<p>At the gate she paused for a moment, glancing
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_154' name='page_154'></a>154</span>
+back at the house as Juliet Mascarene might have
+done on those evenings when she had an appointment
+with her lover. Then, pushing through the
+bushes and past the magnolia trees she found herself
+in a little half moonlit space, a natural arbour
+through whose roof of leaves the moonlight came in
+quavering shafts. She stood for a moment absolutely
+still whilst her eyes accustomed themselves to
+the light. Then she began to search for the seat she
+guessed to be there, and found it. It was between
+an oak bole and the wall of the garden, and the
+bushes behind had grown so that their branches half
+covered it. Neglected, forsaken, unknown, perhaps,
+to the people now living in Vernons it had lingered
+with the fidelity of inanimate things, protected by the
+foliage of the southern garden from prying eyes.</p>
+<p>She pushed back the leaves and branches and bent
+them out of the way, then she took her seat, and as
+she did so several of the bent branches released themselves
+and closed half round her in a delightful embrace.</p>
+<p>From here she could see brokenly the garden and
+the walk leading from the gate, with the light of the
+moon now strong upon the walk. The night sounds
+of the street just beyond the wall came mixed with
+the stir of foliage as the wind from the sea pressed
+over the trees like the hand of a mesmerist inducing
+sleep.</p>
+<p>So it was here that Juliet Mascarene had sat with
+Rupert Pinckney on those summer nights when the
+world was younger, before the war. The war that
+had changed everything whilst leaving the roses untouched
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_155' name='page_155'></a>155</span>
+and the moonlight the same on the bird-haunted
+garden of Vernons.</p>
+<p>Everything was the same here in this little space
+of flowers and trees. But the lovers had vanished.</p>
+<p>&#8220;For man walketh in a vain shadow and disquieteth
+himself in vain.&#8221; The words strayed
+across Phyl&#8217;s mind brought up by recollection. &#8220;He
+cometh up and is cut down like a flower, he fleeth as
+it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The trees seemed whispering it, the eternal statement
+that leaves the eternal question unanswered.</p>
+<p>The garden was talking to her, the night, the very
+bushes that clasped her in a half embrace; perfumes,
+moonlight, the voice of the wind, all were part of the
+spell that bound her, held her, whispered to her. It
+was as though the love letter of Juliet had led her
+here to show her as in a glass darkly the vainness of
+love in the vainness of life.</p>
+<p>Vainly, for as she sat watching in imagination
+the forms of the lost lovers parting there at the gate,
+suddenly there came upon her a stirring of the soul,
+a joyous uplifting as though wings had been given to
+her mind for one wild second raising it to the heights
+beyond earthly knowledge.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Love can never die.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was as though some ghostly voice had whispered
+this fact in her ear.</p>
+<p>Juliet was not dead nor the man she loved, changed
+maybe but not dead. In some extraordinary way she
+knew it as surely as though she herself had once been
+Juliet.</p>
+<p>Religion to Phyl had meant little, the Bible a book
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_156' name='page_156'></a>156</span>
+of fair promises and appalling threats, vague promises
+but quite definite threats. As a quite small child
+she had gathered the impression that she was sure
+to be damned unless she managed to convert herself
+into a quite different being from the person she knew
+herself to be. Death was the supreme bogey, the
+future life a thing not to be thought of if one wanted
+to be happy.</p>
+<p>Yet now, just as if she had been through it all, the
+truth came flooding on her like a golden sea, the
+truth that life never loses touch with life, that the
+body is only a momentary manifestation of the ever
+living spirit.</p>
+<p>Meeting Street, the old house so full of memories,
+Juliet&#8217;s letters, the garden, they had all been stretching
+out arms to her, trying to tell her something,
+whispering, suggesting, and now all these vague
+voices had become clear, as though strengthened by
+the moonlight and the mystery of night.</p>
+<p>Clear as lip-spoken words came the message:</p>
+<p>&#8220;You have lived before and we say this to you, we,
+the things that knew you and loved you in a past
+life.&#8221;</p>
+<p>A step that halted outside close to the garden gate
+broke the spell, the gate turned on its hinges shewing
+through its trellis work the form of a man. It
+was Pinckney just returned from some supper-party
+or club.</p>
+<p>Phyl caught her breath back. Suddenly, and at
+the sight of Pinckney, Prue&#8217;s words of that morning
+entered her mind.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Miss Julie, Massa Pinckney told me tell yo&#8217; he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_157' name='page_157'></a>157</span>
+be at de gate t&#8217;night same&#8217;s las&#8217; night. Done you let
+on as I told you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>And here he was, the man who had been occupying
+her thoughts and who was beginning to occupy
+her dreams, and here she was as though waiting for
+him by appointment.</p>
+<p>But there was much more than that. Worlds and
+worlds more than that, a whole universe of happiness
+undreamed of.</p>
+<p>She rose from the seat and the parted bushes rustled
+faintly as they closed behind her.</p>
+<p>Pinckney, who had just shut the gate, heard the
+whisper of the leaves, he turned and saw a figure
+standing half in shadow and half in moonlight. For
+a moment he was startled, fancying it a stranger,
+then he saw that it was Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hullo,&#8221; said he. &#8220;Why, Phyl, what are you
+doing here?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The commonplace question shattered everything
+like a false note in music.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nothing,&#8221; she answered. Then without a word
+more she ran past him and vanished into the house.</p>
+<p>Pinckney cast the stump of his cigar away.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What on earth is the matter with her now?&#8221; said
+he to himself. &#8220;What on earth have I done?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The word she had uttered carried half a sob with
+it, it might have been the last word of a quarrel.</p>
+<p>He stood for a moment glancing around. The
+wild idea had entered his mind that she had been
+there to meet some one and that his intrusion had
+put her out.</p>
+<p>But there was no one in the garden; nothing but
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_158' name='page_158'></a>158</span>
+the trees and the flowers, wind shaken and lit by the
+moon, the same placid moon that had lit the garden
+of Vernons for the lovers of whom he knew nothing
+except by hearsay, and for whom he cared nothing
+at all.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_159' name='page_159'></a>159</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>When Phyl awoke from sleep next morning,
+the brightness of the South had lost some of
+its charm.</p>
+<p>Something magical that had been forming in her
+mind and taking its life from Vernons had been shattered
+last night by Pinckney&#8217;s commonplace question.</p>
+<p>This morning, looking back on yesterday, she
+could remember details but she could not recapture
+the essence. The exaltation that had raised her
+above and beyond herself. It was like the remembrance
+of a rose contrasted with the reality.</p>
+<p>The whole day had been working up to that
+moment in the little arbour, when her mind, tricked
+or led, had risen to heights beyond thought, to happiness
+beyond experience, only to be cast down from
+those heights by the voice of reality.</p>
+<p>The thing was plain enough to common sense; she
+had let herself be over-ruled by Imagination, working
+upon splendid material. Prue&#8217;s message, her
+own likeness to Juliet, Juliet&#8217;s letters, the little
+arbour, those and the magic of Vernons had worked
+upon her mind singly and together, exalting her into
+a soul-state utterly beyond all previous experience.</p>
+<p>It was as though she had played the part of Juliet
+for a day, suffered vaguely and enjoyed in imagination
+what Juliet had suffered and enjoyed in life,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_160' name='page_160'></a>160</span>
+known Love as Juliet had known it&mdash;for a moment.</p>
+<p>The brutal touch of the Real coming at the supreme
+moment to shatter and shrivel everything.</p>
+<p>And the strange thing was that she had no regrets.</p>
+<p>Looking back on yesterday, the things that had
+happened seemed of little interest. Sleep seemed
+to have put an Atlantic ocean between her and them.</p>
+<p>Coming down to breakfast she found Pinckney
+just coming in from the garden; he said nothing about
+the incident of the night before, nor did she, there
+were other things to talk about. Seth, one of the
+darkies, had been &#8216;kicking up shines,&#8217; he had given
+impudence to Miss Pinckney that morning. Impudence
+to Miss Pinckney! You can scarcely conceive
+the meaning of that statement without a personal
+knowledge of Miss Pinckney, and a full understanding
+of the magic of her rule.</p>
+<p>Seth was, even now, packing up the quaint contraptions
+he called his luggage, and old Darius, the
+coloured odd job man, was getting a barrow out of
+the tool-house to wheel the said luggage to Seth&#8217;s
+grandmother&#8217;s house, somewhere in the negro quarters
+of the town. The whole affair of the impudence
+and dismissal had not taken two minutes, but the
+effects were widespread and lasting. Dinah was
+weeping, the kitchen in confusion; one might have
+thought a death had occurred in the house, and Miss
+Pinckney presiding at the breakfast table was voluble
+and silent by turns.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Never mind,&#8221; said Pinckney with all the light-heartedness
+of a man towards domestic affairs.
+&#8220;Seth&#8217;s not the only nigger in Charleston.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_161' name='page_161'></a>161</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not bothering about his going,&#8221; replied Miss
+Pinckney. &#8220;He was all thumbs and of no manner
+of use but to make work; what upsets me is the way
+he hid his nature. Time and again I&#8217;ve been good
+to that boy. He looked all black grin and frizzled
+head, nothing bad in him you&#8217;d say&mdash;and then! It&#8217;s
+like opening a cupboard and finding a toad, and
+there&#8217;s Dinah going on like a fool; she&#8217;s crying because
+he&#8217;s going, not because he gave me impudence.
+Rachel&#8217;s the same, and I&#8217;m just going now to the
+kitchen to give them a talking to all round.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Off she went.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know what that means,&#8221; said Pinckney. &#8220;It&#8217;s
+only once in a couple of years that there&#8217;s any trouble
+with servants and then&mdash;oh, my! You see Aunt
+Maria is not the same as other people because she
+loves every one dearly, and looks on the servants as
+part of the family. I expect she loves that black
+imp Seth, for all his faults, and that&#8217;s what makes
+her so upset.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Same as I was about Rafferty,&#8221; said Phyl with a
+little laugh.</p>
+<p>Pinckney laughed also and their eyes met. Just
+like a veil swept aside, something indefinable that
+had lain between them, some awkwardness arising,
+maybe, from the Rafferty incident, vanished in that
+moment.</p>
+<p>Phyl had been drawing steadily towards him
+lately, till, unknown to her, he had entered into the
+little romance of Juliet, so much so that if last night,
+at that magical moment when he met her on entering
+the gate&mdash;if at that moment he had taken her in his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_162' name='page_162'></a>162</span>
+arms and kissed her, Love might have been born
+instantly from his embrace.</p>
+<p>But the psychological moment had passed, a crisis
+unknown to him and almost unknown to her.</p>
+<p>And now, as if to seal the triumph of the commonplace,
+suddenly, the vague reservation that had lain
+between them, disappeared.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you know,&#8221; said he, &#8220;you taught me a lesson
+that day, a lesson every man ought to be taught
+before he leaves college.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What was that?&#8221; asked Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Never to interfere in household affairs. Of
+course Rafferty wasn&#8217;t exactly a household affair
+because he belonged mostly to the stable, still he was
+your affair more than mine. Household affairs
+belong to women, and men ought to leave them
+alone.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Maybe you&#8217;re right,&#8221; said Phyl, &#8220;but all the same
+I was wrong. Do you know I&#8217;ve never apologised
+for what I said.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What did you say?&#8221; asked he with an artless air
+of having forgotten.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I said&mdash;things, and&mdash;I apologise.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And I said&mdash;things, and I apologise&mdash;come on,
+let&#8217;s go out. I have no business this morning and
+I&#8217;d like to show you the town&mdash;if you&#8217;d care to
+come.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What about Miss Pinckney?&#8221; asked Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, she&#8217;s all right,&#8221; he replied. &#8220;The Seth
+trouble will keep her busy till lunch time and I&#8217;ll leave
+word we&#8217;ve gone out for a walk.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl ran upstairs and put on her hat. As they
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_163' name='page_163'></a>163</span>
+were passing through the garden the thought came to
+her just for a moment to show him the little arbour;
+then something stopped her, a feeling that this
+humble little secret was not hers to give away, and a
+feeling that Pinckney wouldn&#8217;t care. Dead lovers
+vanished so long and their affairs would have little
+interest for his practical mind.</p>
+<p>The morning was warmer even than yesterday.
+The joyous, elusive, intoxicating spirit of the Southern
+spring was everywhere, the air seemed filled with
+the dust of sunbeams, filled with fragrance and lazy
+sounds. The very business of the street seemed
+part of a great universal gaiety over which the sky
+heat hazy beyond the Battery rose in a dome of deep,
+sublime tranquil blue.</p>
+<p>They stopped to inspect the old slave market.</p>
+<p>Then the remains of the building that had once
+been the old Planters Hotel held Phyl like a wizard
+whilst Pinckney explained its history. Here in the
+old days the travelling carriages had drawn up, piled
+with the luggage of fine folk on a visit to Charleston
+on business or pleasure. The Planters was known
+all through the Georgias and Virginia, all through
+the States in the days when General Washington and
+John C. Calhoun were living figures.</p>
+<p>The ghost of the place held Phyl&#8217;s imagination.
+Just as Meeting Street seemed filled with friendly old
+memories on her first entering it, so did the air
+around the ruins of the &#8220;Planters.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then having paused to admire the gouty pillars of
+St. Michael&#8217;s they went into the church.</p>
+<p>The silence of an empty church is a thing apart
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_164' name='page_164'></a>164</span>
+from all other silences in the world. Deeper, more
+complete, more filled with voices.</p>
+<p>As they were entering a negro caretaker engaged
+in dusting and tidying let something fall, and as the
+silence closed in on the faint echo that followed the
+sound they stopped, just by the font to look around
+them. Here the spirit of spring was not. The
+shafts of sunlight through the windows lit the old
+fashioned box pews, the double decked pulpit, and
+the font crowned with the dove with the light of long
+ago. Sunday mornings of the old time assuredly
+had found sanctuary here and the old congregations
+had not yet quite departed.</p>
+<p>The occasional noise of the caretaker as he moved
+from pew to pew scarcely disturbed the tranquillity,
+the scene was set beyond the reach of the sounds and
+daily affairs of this world, and the actors held in a
+medium unshakable as that which holds the ghostly
+life of bees in amber and birds in marqueterie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That was George Washington&#8217;s pew,&#8221; whispered
+Pinckney, &#8220;at least the one he sat in once. That&#8217;s
+the old Pinckney pew, belonged to Bures&mdash;other
+people sit there now. This is our pew&mdash;Vernons.
+The Mascarenes had it in the old days, of course.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl looked at the pew where Juliet Mascarene
+had sat often enough, no doubt, whilst the preacher
+had preached on the vanity of life, on the delusions
+of the world and the shortness of Time.</p>
+<p>Many an eloquent divine had stood in the pulpit
+of St. Michael&#8217;s, but none have ever preached a sermon
+so poignant, so real, so searching as that which
+the old church preaches to those who care to hear.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_165' name='page_165'></a>165</span></p>
+<p>They turned to go.</p>
+<p>Outside Phyl was silent and Pinckney seemed occupied
+by thoughts of his own. They had got to
+that pleasant stage of intimacy where conversation
+can be dropped without awkwardness and picked up
+again haphazard, but you cannot be silent long in
+the streets of Charleston on a spring day. They
+visited the market-place and inspected the buzzards
+and then, somehow, without knowing it, they drifted
+on to the water side. Here where the docks lie
+deserted and the green water washes the weed grown
+and rotting timbers of wharves they took their seats
+on a baulk of timber to rest and contemplate things.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There used to be ships here once,&#8221; said he.
+&#8220;Lots of ships&mdash;but that was before the war.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He was silent and Phyl glanced sideways at him,
+wondering what was in his mind. She soon found
+out. A struggle was going on between his two
+selves, his business self that demanded up-to-dateness,
+bustle, and the energetic conduct of affairs, and
+his other self that was content to let things lie, to see
+Charleston just as she was, unspoiled by the thing we
+call Business Prosperity. It was a battle between
+the South and the North in him.</p>
+<p>He talked it out to her. Went into details,
+pointed to Galveston and New Orleans, those greedy
+sea mouths that swallow the goods of the world
+and give out cotton, whilst Charleston lay idle, her
+wharves almost deserted, her storehouses empty.</p>
+<p>He spoke almost vehemently, spoke as a business
+man speaks of wasted chances and things neglected.
+Then, when he had finished, the girl put in her word.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_166' name='page_166'></a>166</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said she, &#8220;it may be so but I don&#8217;t want it
+any different from what it is.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Pinckney laughed, the laugh of a man who is confessing
+a weakness.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know that I do either,&#8221; said he.</p>
+<p>It was rank blasphemy against Business. At the
+club you would often find him bemoaning the business
+decay of the city he loved, but here, sitting by
+the girl on the forsaken wharf, in the sunshine, the
+feeling suddenly came to him that there was something
+here that business would drive away. Something
+better than Prosperity.</p>
+<p>It was as though he were looking at things for a
+moment through her eyes.</p>
+<p>They came back through the sunlit streets to find
+Miss Pinckney recovered from the Seth business, and
+after luncheon that day, assisted by Dinah and the
+directions of Miss Pinckney, Phyl&#8217;s hair &#8220;went up.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s beautiful,&#8221; said the old lady, as she contemplated
+the result, &#8220;and more like Juliet than ever.
+Take the glass and look at yourself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl did.</p>
+<p>She did not see the beauty but she saw the change.
+Her childhood had vanished as though some breath
+had blown it away in the magic mirror.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_167' name='page_167'></a>167</span></p>
+<div class='ce'>
+<p style=' font-size:1.4em; margin-top:2em;'>PART III</p>
+</div>
+
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>In a fortnight Phyl had adjusted herself to her
+new environment so completely that to use Pinckney&#8217;s
+expression, she might have been bred and born
+in Charleston.</p>
+<p>Custom and acquaintanceship had begun to dull
+without destroying the charm of the place and the
+ghostly something, the something that during the
+first two days had seemed to haunt Vernons, the
+something indefinable she had called &#8220;It&#8221; had withdrawn.</p>
+<p>The spell, whatever it was, had been broken that
+night in the garden, when Pinckney&#8217;s commonplace
+remark had shattered the dream-state into which she
+had worked herself with the assistance of Prue,
+Juliet&#8217;s letters, the little secret arbour and the moonlight
+of the South.</p>
+<p>One morning, coming down to breakfast, she
+found Miss Pinckney in agitation, an open telegram
+in one hand and a feather duster in the other.</p>
+<p>It was one of the early morning habits of Miss
+Pinckney to range the house superintending things
+with a feather duster in hand, not so much for use as
+for the purpose of encouraging others. She was in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_168' name='page_168'></a>168</span>
+the breakfast room now dusting spasmodically
+things that did not require dusting and talking all
+the time, pausing every now and then to have another
+glance at the telegram whilst Richard Pinckney, unable
+to get a word in, sat on a chair, and Jim, the
+little coloured page, who had brought in the urn,
+stood by listening and admiring.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Forty miles from here and ten from a railway
+station,&#8221; said Miss Pinckney, &#8220;and how am I to get
+there?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Automobile,&#8221; said Pinckney.</p>
+<p>It was evidently not his first suggestion as to this
+means of locomotion, for the suggestion was received
+without an outburst, neither resented nor assented to
+in fact. They took their seats at table and then it all
+came out.</p>
+<p>Colonel Seth Grangerson of Grangerson House,
+Grangerville, S. Carolina, was ill. Miss Pinckney
+was his nearest relative, the nearest at least with
+whom he was not fighting, and he had wired to her,
+or rather his son had wired to her, to come at once.</p>
+<p>&#8220;As if I were a bird,&#8221; said the old lady. Grangerville
+was a backwater place, badly served by the
+railway, and it would take the best part of a day to
+get there by ordinary means.</p>
+<p>&#8220;A car will get you there inside a couple of hours,&#8221;
+said Pinckney.</p>
+<p>&#8220;As if he couldn&#8217;t have sent for Susan Revenall,&#8221;
+went on she as though oblivious to the suggestion,
+&#8220;but I suppose he&#8217;s fought with them again. I
+patched up a peace between them last midsummer,
+but I suppose the patches didn&#8217;t stick; he&#8217;s fought
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_169' name='page_169'></a>169</span>
+with the Revenalls, he&#8217;s fought with the Calhouns,
+he&#8217;s fought with the Beauregards, he&#8217;s fought with
+the Tredegars&mdash;that man would fight with his own
+front teeth if he couldn&#8217;t get anything better to fight
+with, and now he&#8217;s dying I expect he reckons to have
+a fight with me, just to finish off with. He killed his
+poor wife, and Dick Grangerson would never have
+gone off and got drowned only for him&mdash;Oh, he&#8217;s not
+so bad,&#8221; turning to Phyl, &#8220;he&#8217;s good enough only for
+that&mdash;will fight.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Too much pep,&#8221; said Pinckney.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m sure I don&#8217;t know what it is. They&#8217;re the
+queerest lot the Almighty ever put feet on, and I
+don&#8217;t mind saying it, even though they are relatives.&#8221;
+Turning to Phyl. &#8220;I suppose you know, least I suppose
+you think, that the Civil War was fought for
+the emancipation of the darkies and that they <i>were</i>
+emancipated.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, they weren&#8217;t&mdash;at least not at Grangersons.
+While the Colonel&#8217;s father was fighting in the Civil
+War, his first wife, she was a Dawson, kept things
+going at home, and after the war was over and he
+was back he took up the rule again. Emancipation&mdash;no
+one would have dared to say the word to him,
+he&#8217;d have killed you with a look. The North never
+beat Grangerson, it beat Davis and one man and
+another but it never beat Grangerson, he carried on
+after the war just as he carried on before, told the
+darkies that emancipation was nigger talk and they
+believed him. People came round telling them they
+were free, and all they got was broken heads. They
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_170' name='page_170'></a>170</span>
+were a very tetchy lot, those niggers, are still what
+are left of them. You see, they&#8217;ve always been
+proud of being Grangerson&#8217;s niggers, that&#8217;s the sort
+of man he is, able to make them feel like that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Silas helps to carry on the place, doesn&#8217;t he?&#8221;
+asked Pinckney.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, and just in the same tradition, only he&#8217;s
+finding it doesn&#8217;t work, I suspect. You see, the old
+darkies are all right, but when he&#8217;s forced to get new
+labour he has to get the new darkies and they&#8217;re all
+wrong, and he thrashes them and they run away.
+They never take the law of him either. I reckon
+when they get clear of Silas they don&#8217;t stop running
+till they get to Galveston.&#8221;</p>
+<p>They talked of other things and then, breakfast
+over, Miss Pinckney turned to Richard.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, what about that automobile?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll have one at the door for you at ten,&#8221; said he.</p>
+<p>She turned to Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;d better go with me&mdash;if you&#8217;d like to; you&#8217;d
+be lonely here all by yourself, and you may as well
+see Grangersons whilst the old man&#8217;s there, though
+maybe he&#8217;ll be gone before we arrive. We may be
+there for a couple of days, so you&#8217;d better take
+enough things.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then she went off to dress herself for the journey,
+and an hour later she appeared veiled and apparelled,
+Dick following her with the luggage, a bandbox and a
+bag of other days.</p>
+<p>She got into the big touring car without a word.
+Phyl followed her and Pinckney tucked the rug
+round their knees.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_171' name='page_171'></a>171</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve got the most careful driver in Charleston,&#8221;
+said he, &#8220;and he knows the road.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney nodded.</p>
+<p>She was flying straight in the face of her pet
+prejudice. She was not in the least afraid of a
+break down or an overset. An accident that did not
+rob her of life or limb would indeed have been an
+opportunity for saying &#8220;I told you so.&#8221; She was
+chiefly afraid of running over things.</p>
+<p>As Pinckney was closing the door on them who
+should appear but Seth&mdash;Seth in a striped sleeved
+jacket, all grin and frizzled head and bearing a bunch
+of flowers in his hand. He had not been dismissed
+after all. When Miss Pinckney had gone into the
+kitchen to pay him his wages he had carried on so
+that she forgave him. The flowers&mdash;her own
+flowers just picked from the garden&mdash;were an offering,
+not to propitiate but to please.</p>
+<p>Pinckney laughed, but Miss Pinckney as she took
+the bouquet scarcely noticed either him or Seth, her
+mind was busy with something else.</p>
+<p>She leaned over towards the chauffeur.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mind you don&#8217;t run over any chickens,&#8221; said
+she.</p>
+<p>It was a gorgeous morning, with the sea mists
+blowing away on the sea wind, swamp-land and river
+and bayou showing streets and ponds of sapphire
+through the vanishing haze.</p>
+<p>Phyl was in high spirits; the tune of Camptown
+Races, which a street boy had been whistling as they
+started, pursued her. Miss Pinckney, dumb through
+the danger zone where chickens and dogs and nigger
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_172' name='page_172'></a>172</span>
+children might be run over, found her voice in the
+open country.</p>
+<p>The bunch of flowers presented to her by Seth and
+which she was holding on her lap started her off.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I hope it is not a warning,&#8221; said she; &#8220;wouldn&#8217;t
+be a bit surprised to find Seth Grangerson in his coffin
+waiting for the flowers to be put on him; what put
+it in to the darkey&#8217;s head to give me them! I don&#8217;t
+know, I&#8217;m sure, same thing I suppose that put it into
+his head to give me impudence.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve taken him back,&#8221; said Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I suppose I have,&#8221; said the other in a resigned
+voice, &#8220;and likely to pay for my foolishness.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Pinckney had said that it was only a two hours&#8217;
+run from Charleston to Grangerville, but he had
+reckoned without taking into consideration the badness
+of some of the roads, and the intricacies of the
+way, for it was after one o&#8217;clock when they reached
+the little town beyond which, a mile to the West, lay
+the Colonel&#8217;s house.</p>
+<p>Grangerville lies on the border of Clarendon
+county, a tiny place that yet supports a newspaper of
+its own, the <i>Grangerville Courier</i>. The <i>Courier</i>
+office, the barber&#8217;s shop and the hotel are the chief
+places in Grangerville, and yellow dogs and black
+children seem the bulk of the population, at least of
+a warm afternoon, when drowsiness holds the place
+in her keeping, and the light lies broad and steadfast
+and golden upon the cotton fields, and the fields of
+Indian corn, and the foliage of the woods that spread
+to southward, enchanted woods, fading away into an
+enchanted world of haze and sun and silence.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_173' name='page_173'></a>173</span></p>
+<p>When the great Southern moon rises above the
+cotton fields, Romance touches even Grangerville itself,
+the baying of the yellow dog, darkey voices, the
+distant plunking of a banjo, the owl in the trees&mdash;all
+are the same as of old&mdash;and the houses are the
+same, nearly, and the people, and it is hard to believe
+that over there to the North the locomotives of the
+Atlantic Coast railway are whistling down the night,
+that men are able to talk to one another at a distance
+of a thousand miles, fly like birds, live like fish, and
+perpetuate their shadows in the &#8220;movies.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Grangersons lay a mile beyond the little town, a
+solidly built mansion set far back from the road, and
+approached by an avenue of cypress. As they drew
+up before the pillared piazza, upon which the front
+door opened, from the doorway, wide open this warm
+day, appeared an old gentleman.</p>
+<p>A very fine looking old man he was. His face,
+with its predominant nose, long white moustache and
+firm cleft chin, was of that resolute and obstinate
+type which seems a legacy of the Roman Empire,
+whose legionaries left much more behind them in
+Gaul and Britain than Trajan arches and Roman
+roads. He was dressed in light grey tweeds, his
+linen was immaculate&mdash;youthful and still a beau in
+point of dress, and bearing himself erect with the aid
+of a walking stick, a crutch handled stick of clouded
+malacca, Colonel Seth Grangerson, for he it was, had
+come to his front door, drawn by the sound of the one
+thing he detested more than anything in life, a motor
+car.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, Lord! He&#8217;s not even in bed,&#8221; cried the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_174' name='page_174'></a>174</span>
+outraged Miss Pinckney, who recognised him at once.
+&#8220;All this journey and he up and about&mdash;it beats Seth
+and his impudence!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Colonel, whose age dimmed eyes saw nothing
+but the automobile, came down the steps, panama hat
+in hand, courtly, freezing, yet ready to explode on
+the least provocation. Within touch of the car he
+recognised the chief occupant.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, God bless my soul,&#8221; cried he, &#8220;it&#8217;s Maria
+Pinckney.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, it&#8217;s me,&#8221; said the lady, &#8220;and I expected to
+find you in bed or worse, and here you are up. Silas
+sent me a telegram.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s a fool,&#8221; cut in the old gentleman. &#8220;I had
+one of my old attacks last night, and I told him I&#8217;d be
+up and about in the morning&mdash;and I am. Good
+Gad! Maria, you&#8217;re the last person in the world I&#8217;d
+ever have expected to see in one of these outrageous
+things.&#8221; He had opened the door of the car and
+was presenting his arm to the lady.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can shut the door,&#8221; said Miss Pinckney.
+&#8220;I&#8217;m not getting out. The thing&#8217;s not more outrageous
+than your getting up like that right after an
+attack and dragging me a hundred miles from
+Charleston over hill and dale&mdash;I&#8217;m not getting out,
+I&#8217;m going right back&mdash;right back to Charleston.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Colonel turned his head and called to a
+darkey that had appeared at the front door.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Take the luggage in,&#8221; said he. Miss Pinckney
+got out of the car despite herself, half laughing, half
+angry, and taking the gallantly proffered arm found
+herself being led up the steps of Grangersons, pausing
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_175' name='page_175'></a>175</span>
+half way up to introduce Phyl, whom she had
+completely forgotten till now.</p>
+<p>The Colonel, like his son Silas, as will presently
+be seen, had a direct way with women; the Grangersons
+had pretty nearly always fallen in love at sight
+and run away with their wives. Colonel Seth&#8217;s
+father had done this, meeting, marrying and fascinating
+the beautiful Maria Tredegar, and carrying her
+off under his arm like a hypnotised fowl, and from
+under the noses of half a dozen more eligible suitors,
+just as now, the Colonel was carrying Maria Pinckney
+off into his house half against her will. Phyl following
+them, gazed round at the fine old oak panelled
+hall, from which they were led into the drawing
+room, a room not unlike the drawing room at Vernons,
+but larger and giving a view of the garden
+where the oleanders and cherokee money and the
+crescent leaves of the blue gum trees were moving in
+the wind. Colonel Seth, despite the war, had plenty
+of roses and Grangersons was kept up in the old
+style. Just as in Nuremberg and Vittoria we see
+mediæval cities preserved, so to speak, under glass, so
+at Grangersons one found the old Plantation, house
+and all, miraculously intact, living, almost, one might
+say, breathing.</p>
+<p>The price of cotton did not matter much to the
+Colonel, nor the price of haulage. This son of the
+Southerner who had refused to be beaten by the
+North in the war, cared for nothing much beyond the
+ring of sky that made his horizon. Twice a year he
+made a visit to Charleston, driving in his own carriage,
+occasionally he visited Richmond or Durham,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_176' name='page_176'></a>176</span>
+where he had an interest in tobacco; New York he
+had never seen. He loathed railways and automobiles,
+mainly, perhaps, because they were inventions
+of the North, that is to say the devil. He had
+a devilish hatred of the North. Not of Northerners,
+but just of the North.</p>
+<p>The word North set his teeth on edge. It did not
+matter to him that Charleston was picking up some
+prosperity in the way of phosphates, or that Chattanooga
+was smelting ore into money, or that industrial
+prosperity was abroad in the land; he was old
+enough to have a recollection of old days, and from
+the North had come the chilly blast that had blown
+away that age.</p>
+<p>A servant brought in cake and wine to stay the
+travellers till dinner time, refreshment that Miss
+Pinckney positively refused at first.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You will stay the night,&#8221; said the Colonel, as he
+helped her, &#8220;and Sarah will show you to your rooms
+when we have had a word together.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney, sipping her wine, made no reply,
+then placing the scarcely touched glass on the table
+and with her bonnet strings thrown back, she turned
+to the Colonel.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you see the likeness?&#8221; said she.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What likeness?&#8221; asked the old gentleman.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, God bless my soul, the likeness to Juliet
+Mascarene. Phyl, turn your face to the light.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Colonel, searching in his waistcoat pocket,
+found a pair of folding glasses and put them on.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She gets it from her mother&#8217;s side,&#8221; said Miss
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_177' name='page_177'></a>177</span>
+Pinckney, &#8220;the Lord knows how it is these things
+happen, but it&#8217;s Juliet, isn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Colonel removed his glasses, wiped them with
+his handkerchief, and returned them to his pocket.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is,&#8221; said he. Then in the fine old fashion he
+turned to the girl, raised her hand to his lips and
+kissed it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Phyl,&#8221; said Miss Pinckney, &#8220;would not you like
+to have a look at the garden whilst we have a chat?
+Old people&#8217;s talk isn&#8217;t of much interest to young people.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Old people,&#8221; cried the warrior. &#8220;There are no
+old people in this room.&#8221; He made for the door
+and opened it for Phyl, then he accompanied her
+into the hall, where at the still open door he pointed
+the way to the garden.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_178' name='page_178'></a>178</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>Outside Phyl stood for a moment to breathe
+the warm scented air and look around her.</p>
+<p>To be treated like a child by any other person than
+Maria Pinckney would have incensed her, all the
+same to be told to do a thing because it was good for
+her, or because it was a pleasant thing to do, in the
+teller&#8217;s opinion, was an almost certain way of making
+her do the exact opposite.</p>
+<p>The garden did not attract her, the place did.</p>
+<p>That cypress avenue with the sun upon it, that
+broad sweep of drive in front of the house, the distant
+peeps of country between trees and the languorous
+lazy atmosphere of the perfect day fascinated
+her mind. She came along the house front to
+the right, and found herself at the gate of the stable
+yard.</p>
+<p>The stable yard of Grangersons was an immense
+flagged quadrangle bounded on the right, counting
+from the point of entrance, by the kitchen premises.</p>
+<p>There was stable room for forty horses, coach-house
+accommodation for a dozen or more carriages.</p>
+<p>The car had been run into one of the coach-houses
+and the yard stood empty, sunlit, silent, save for the
+voices of the pigeons wheeling in the air, or strutting
+on the roof of the great barn adjoining the stables.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_179' name='page_179'></a>179</span></p>
+<p>One of the stable doors was open and as Phyl
+crossed the yard a young man appeared at the open
+door, shaded his eyes and looked at her. Then he
+came forward. It was Silas Grangerson, and Phyl
+thought he was the handsomest and most graceful
+person she had ever seen in her life.</p>
+<p>Silas was a shade over six feet in height, dark,
+straight, slim yet perfectly proportioned; his face was
+extraordinary, the most vivid thing one would meet
+in a year&#8217;s journey, and with a daring, and at times,
+almost a mad look unforgettable when once glimpsed.
+Like the Colonel and like his ancestors Silas had a
+direct way with women.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hallo,&#8221; said he, with the sunny smile of old
+acquaintanceship, &#8220;where have <i>you</i> sprung from?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl was startled for a moment, then almost
+instantly she came in touch with the vein and mood
+and mind of the other and laughed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I came with Miss Pinckney,&#8221; said she.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re not from Charleston?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, indeed I am.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But where do you live in Charleston? I&#8217;ve
+never seen you and I know every&mdash;besides you don&#8217;t
+look as if you belonged to Charleston&mdash;I don&#8217;t
+believe you&#8217;ve come from there.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then where do you think I&#8217;ve come from?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; said Silas laughing, &#8220;but it
+doesn&#8217;t matter as long as you&#8217;re here, does it?
+&#8217;Scuse my fooling, won&#8217;t you&mdash;I wouldn&#8217;t with a
+stranger, but you don&#8217;t seem a stranger somehow&mdash;though
+I don&#8217;t know your name.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Phylice Berknowles,&#8221; said Phyl, glancing up at
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_180' name='page_180'></a>180</span>
+him and half wondering how it was that, despite his
+good looks, his manhood, and their total unacquaintanceship,
+she felt as little constrained in his
+presence as though he were a boy.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And my name is Silas Grangerson. Say, is
+Maria Pinckney in the house with father?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She is.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Talking over old times, I s&#8217;pose?&#8221; said Silas.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I can hear them. It&#8217;s always the same when
+they get together&mdash;and I suppose you got sick of it
+and came out?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, they put me out&mdash;asked me wouldn&#8217;t I like
+to look at the garden.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Already she had banded herself with him in mild
+opposition to the elders.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Great&mdash;Jerusalem. They&#8217;re just like a pair of
+old horses wanting to be left quiet and rub their nose-bags
+together. Look at the garden! I can hear
+them&mdash;come on and look at the horses.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He led the way to a loose box and opened the
+upper door.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s Flying Fox, she&#8217;s mine, the fastest trotter
+in the Carolinas&mdash;you know anything about
+horses?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Rather!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I thought you did, somehow. Mind! she doesn&#8217;t
+take to strangers. Mind! she bites like an alligator.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not me,&#8221; said Phyl, fondling the lovely but
+fleering-eyed head protruding above the lower door.</p>
+<p>&#8220;So she doesn&#8217;t,&#8221; said Silas admiringly, &#8220;she&#8217;s
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_181' name='page_181'></a>181</span>
+taken to you&mdash;well, I don&#8217;t blame her. Here&#8217;s John
+Barleycorn,&#8221; opening another door, &#8220;own brother to
+the Fox, he&#8217;s Pap&#8217;s; he&#8217;s a bolter, and kicks like a
+duck gun. She&#8217;s got all her vice at one end of her
+and he at the other, match pair.&#8221; He whistled
+between his teeth as he put up the bars, then he
+shewed other horses, Phyl watching his every movement,
+and wondering what it was that gave pleasure
+to her in watching. Silas moved, or seemed to
+move, absolutely without effort, and his slim brown
+hands touched everything delicately, as though they
+were touching fragile porcelain, yet those same
+hands could bend an iron bar, or rein in John Barleycorn
+even when the bit was between the said J.
+B.&#8217;s teeth.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s the horses,&#8221; said he, flinging open a coach-house
+door, &#8220;and that&#8217;s the shandrydan the governor
+still drives in when he goes to Charleston. Look at
+it. It was made in the forties, and you should see
+it with a darkey on the box and Pap inside, and all
+his luggage behind, and he going off to Charleston,
+and the nigger children running after it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl inspected the mustard-yellow vehicle. Then
+he closed the door on it, put up the bar, and, the
+business of showing things over, did a little double
+shuffle as though Phyl were not present, or as though
+she were a boy friend and not a strange young
+woman.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Say, do you like poetry?&#8221; said he, breaking off
+and seeming suddenly to remember her presence.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said Phyl. &#8220;At least&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, here&#8217;s some.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_182' name='page_182'></a>182</span></p>
+<div class='blockquot'>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;There was an old hen and she had a wooden leg,
+She went to the barn and she laid a wooden egg,
+She laid it right down by the barn&mdash;don&#8217;t you think.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;Well?&#8221; said she, laughing.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;It&#8217;s just about time for another little drink&mdash;&#8217;
+some sense in poetry like that, isn&#8217;t there? But all
+the drinks are in the house and I don&#8217;t want to go in.
+I&#8217;m hiding from Pap. Last night when he was ratty
+with rheumatism, he let out at me, saying the young
+people weren&#8217;t any good, saying Maria Pinckney
+was the only person he knew with sense in her head,
+called me a name because I poured him out a dose
+of liniment instead of medicine, by mistake&mdash;though
+he didn&#8217;t swallow it&mdash;and wished Maria was here.
+So I just sent Jake, the page boy, off with a wire to
+her; didn&#8217;t tell any one, just sent it. Come on and
+look at the garden&mdash;you&#8217;ve got to look at the garden,
+you know.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He led the way past the barn to a farmyard,
+where hens were clucking and scratching and scraping
+in the sunshine; the deep double bass grunting of
+pigs came from the sties, by the low wall across
+which one could see the country stretching far away,
+the cotton fields, the woods, all hazed by the warmth
+of the afternoon.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s sit down and look at the garden,&#8221; said he,
+pointing to a huge log by the near wall&mdash;&#8220;and aren&#8217;t
+the convolvuluses beautiful?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Beautiful,&#8221; said Phyl, falling into the vein of
+the other. &#8220;And listen to the roses.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They grunt like that because it&#8217;s near dinner
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_183' name='page_183'></a>183</span>
+time&mdash;they&#8217;re pretty much like humans.&#8221; He took
+a cigarette case from his pocket and a cigarette from
+the case.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t mind smoking, do you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not a bit.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Have one?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I daren&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Maria Pinckney won&#8217;t know.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not her&mdash;I smoked one once and it made me
+sick.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, try another&mdash;I won&#8217;t look if you are.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;ll&mdash;she&#8217;ll smell it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not she, you can eat some parsley, that takes the
+smell away.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I don&#8217;t mind telling her&mdash;it&#8217;s only&mdash;well,
+there.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She took a cigarette and he lit it for her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Blow it through your nose,&#8221; he commanded,
+&#8220;that&#8217;s the way. Now let&#8217;s pretend we&#8217;re two old
+darkies sitting on a log, you push against me and I&#8217;ll
+push against you, you&#8217;re Jim and I&#8217;m Uncle Joseph.
+&#8216;What yo&#8217; crowding me for, Jim,&#8217;&#8221; he squeezed
+up gently against her, and Phyl jumped to her
+feet.</p>
+<p>He glanced up at her, sideways, laughing, and for
+the life of her she could not be angry.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t you think we&#8217;d better go and look at the
+garden?&#8221; said she.</p>
+<p>&#8220;In a minute, sit down again. I won&#8217;t knock
+against you. It was only my fun. We&#8217;ll pretend
+I&#8217;m Pap, and you&#8217;re Maria Pinckney, if you like.
+You&#8217;ve let your cigarette go out.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_184' name='page_184'></a>184</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;So I have.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can light it from mine.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl hesitated and was lost.</p>
+<p>It was the nearest thing to a kiss, and as she drew
+back with the lighted cigarette between her lips, she
+felt a not unpleasant sense of wickedness, such as the
+virtuous boy feels when led to adventure by the bad
+boy. Sitting on a log, smoking cigarettes, talking
+familiarly with a stranger, taking a light from him
+in such a fashion with her face so close to his that his
+eyes&mdash; They smoked in silence for a moment.</p>
+<p>Then Silas spoke:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you ever feel lonesome?&#8221; said he.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Awfully&mdash;sometimes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;So do I.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Silence for a moment. Then:</p>
+<p>&#8220;I go off to Charleston when I feel like that&mdash;once
+in a fortnight or so&mdash;Where do you live in
+Charleston?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I live with Miss Pinckney&mdash;I thought you knew.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You didn&#8217;t say that. You only said you came
+with her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I live with her at Vernons. I&#8217;m Irish, y&#8217;
+know. My&mdash;my father died in Charleston, and I
+came from Ireland to live with Miss Pinckney. Mr.
+Richard Pinckney is my guardian.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Your which? Dick Pinckney your guardian!
+Why, he&#8217;s not older than I am&mdash;that fellow your
+guardian&mdash;why, he wears a flannel petticoat.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He doesn&#8217;t,&#8221; cried Phyl, flinging away the
+cigarette, which had become noxious, and roused to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_185' name='page_185'></a>185</span>
+sudden anger by the slighting tone of the other.
+&#8220;What do you mean by saying such a thing?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I only meant that he&#8217;s too awfully proper
+for this life. He goes to Charleston races, but
+never backs a horse, scarcely, and one Mint Julep
+would make him see two crows. He&#8217;s a sort of distant
+relation of ours.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl was silent. She resented his criticism of her
+friend, and just in this moment the something mad
+and harum scarum in the character of Silas seemed
+shown up to her with electrical effect. Criticism is
+a most dangerous thing to indulge in, unless anonymously
+in the pages of a journal, for the right to
+criticise has to be made good in the mind of the
+audience, unless the audience is hostile to the criticised.</p>
+<p>Then she said: &#8220;I don&#8217;t know anything about
+Mint Juleps or race courses, but I do know that Mr.
+Pinckney has been&mdash;is&mdash;is my friend, and I&#8217;d rather
+not talk about him, if you please.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now, you&#8217;re huffed,&#8221; cried Silas exultingly, as
+though he had scored a point at some game.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are&mdash;you&#8217;ve flushed.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl turned pale, a deadly sign.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d never dream of getting out of temper with
+<i>you</i>,&#8221; said she.</p>
+<p>It was his turn to flush. You might have struck
+Silas Grangerson without upsetting his balance, but
+the slightest suspicion of a sneer raised all the devil
+in him. Had Phyl been a man he would have
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_186' name='page_186'></a>186</span>
+knocked him off the log. He cast the stump of his
+cigarette on the ground and pounded it with his heel.
+Had there been anything breakable within reach
+he would have broken it. Her anger with him vanished
+and she laughed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve flushed now,&#8221; said she.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_187' name='page_187'></a>187</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>When they came round to the front of the
+house they found Colonel Grangerson and
+Miss Pinckney coming down the steps.</p>
+<p>They were going to the garden in search of Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve been looking at the horses,&#8221; said Silas,
+after he had greeted Miss Pinckney. &#8220;No, sir, I did
+not leave any of the doors open, but I&#8217;ve been looking
+for Sam with a blacksnake whip to liven him up.
+He left the grey without grooming after she was
+brought in this morning, and I was rubbing her down
+myself when this lady came into the yard.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll skin that nigger,&#8221; cried the Colonel.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I reckon I&#8217;ll save you that trouble, sir,&#8221; replied
+the son, as they turned garden-wards.</p>
+<p>Silas had little use for &#8220;r&#8217;s&#8221; and said &#8220;suh&#8221; for
+&#8220;sir&#8221; and &#8220;wah&#8221; for &#8220;war.&#8221; He was also quite a
+different person in the presence of his father from
+what he was when alone or in the presence of
+strangers.</p>
+<p>In the presence of his father, past generations
+spoke in his every word and action, he became sedate,
+deferential, leisurely. It was not fear of the elder
+man that caused this change, it was reflection from
+him.</p>
+<p>The shadows were long in the garden, and away
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_188' name='page_188'></a>188</span>
+across the pastures, glimpsed beyond the cypress
+hedge and bordering the cotton fields, the pond-shadows
+cast by the live oaks at noon had become
+river shadows, flowing eastward; the murmur of
+bees filled the air like a haze of sound, and here and
+there as they passed a bush coloured flowers detached
+themselves and became butterflies.</p>
+<p>They sat down on a great old stone bench lichened
+and sun warmed to enjoy the view, and the Colonel
+talked of tobacco and politics and cotton, including
+them all in his conversation in the grand patriarchal
+manner.</p>
+<p>Phyl understanding little, and half drowsed by the
+warmth and the buzzing of the bees and the voice of
+the speaker, had given herself up to that lazy condition
+of mind which is the next best thing to sleep,
+when she was suddenly aroused. She was seated
+between Miss Pinckney and Silas. Silas had pinched
+her little finger.</p>
+<p>She snatched her hand away, and turned towards
+him. He was looking away over the pastures; his
+profile showed nothing but its absolute correctness.
+Miss Pinckney had noticed nothing, and the Colonel,
+who had finished with cotton, looking at his watch,
+declared that it was close on dinner time.</p>
+<p>After supper that night, Phyl found herself in the
+garden. Silas had not appeared at supper; the Colonel
+had brought down a book of old photographs,
+photographs of people and places dead or changed,
+and he and Miss Pinckney became so absorbed in
+them that they had little thought for the girl.</p>
+<p>She went out to look at the moon, and it was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_189' name='page_189'></a>189</span>
+worth looking at, rising like a honey coloured shield
+above the belt of the eastern woods.</p>
+<p>The whole world was filled with the moonlight,
+warm tinted, and ghostly as the light of vanished
+days, white moths were flitting above the bushes,
+and on the almost windless air the voice of an owl
+came across the cotton fields.</p>
+<p>Phyl reached the seat where they had all sat that
+afternoon. It was still warm from the all-day sunshine,
+and she sat down to rest and listen.</p>
+<p>The owl had ceased crying, and through the
+league wide silence faint sounds far and near told of
+the life moving and thrilling beneath the night; the
+boom of a beetle, voices from the distant road, and
+now and then a whisper of wind rising and dying
+out across the garden and the trees.</p>
+<p>A faint sound came from behind the seat, and
+before Phyl could turn two warm hands covered
+her eyes.</p>
+<p>She plucked them away and stood up.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I <i>wish</i> you wouldn&#8217;t do things like that,&#8221; she
+cried. &#8220;How <i>dare</i> you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I couldn&#8217;t help it,&#8221; replied the other, &#8220;you looked
+so comfortable. I didn&#8217;t mean to startle you. I
+thought you must have heard me coming across the
+grass.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t&mdash;and you shouldn&#8217;t have done it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I&#8217;m sorry. There, I&#8217;ve apologised, make
+friends.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There is nothing to make friends about,&#8221; she
+replied stiffly. &#8220;No, I don&#8217;t want to shake hands&mdash;I&#8217;m
+not angry, let us go into the house.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_190' name='page_190'></a>190</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t,&#8221; said Silas imploringly. &#8220;He and she are
+sitting over that old album, comparing notes. I saw
+them through the window, that&#8217;s why I came to look
+for you in the garden. Do you know, I believe the
+Governor was gone once on Maria, years ago, but
+they never got married. He married my mother
+instead.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl forgot her resentment.</p>
+<p>The faint idea that Colonel Grangerson and
+Maria Pinckney had perhaps been more than friends
+in long gone days, had strayed across her mind, to be
+dismissed as a fancy. It interested her to find Silas
+confirming it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Of course, I can&#8217;t say for certain,&#8221; he went on,
+lighting a cigarette. &#8220;I only judge by the way they
+go on when they&#8217;re together, and the way he talks of
+her. Say, do you ever want to grow old?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, I don&#8217;t&mdash;ever.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Neither do I. I hope I&#8217;ll be kicked to death by
+a horse, or drowned or shot before I&#8217;m forty. I
+don&#8217;t want to die in any beds with doctors round me.
+I reckon if I&#8217;m ever like that I&#8217;ll drink the liniment
+instead of the medicine&mdash;same as I nearly drenched
+Pap&mdash;and go to heaven with a red label for my
+ticket. Sit down for a while and let&#8217;s talk.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, I don&#8217;t care to sit down.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I won&#8217;t touch you. I promise.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl hesitated a moment and then sat down. She
+was not afraid of Silas in the least, but his tricks of
+an overgrown boy did not please her; it seemed to
+her sometimes as though his irresponsibility was less
+an inheritance from youth, than from some ancestor
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_191' name='page_191'></a>191</span>
+ill-balanced to the point of craziness. If any other
+man of his age had acted and spoken to her as he had
+done she would have smacked his face, but Silas was
+Silas, and his good looks and seeming innocence, and
+something really charming that lay away at the back
+of his character and gave colour to this personality,
+managed, somehow, to condone his queerness of conduct.</p>
+<p>All the same she sat a foot away from him on the
+seat, and kept her hands folded on her lap.</p>
+<p>Silas sat for a while smoking in silence, then he
+spoke.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where&#8217;s this you said you came from?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ireland.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t talk like a Paddy a bit.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t I?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not a bit, nor look like one.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Have you seen many Irish people?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, mostly in pictures&mdash;comic papers, you know,
+like <i>Puck</i>.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think it&#8217;s a shame,&#8221; broke out Phyl. &#8220;People
+are always making fun of the Irish, drawing them
+like monkeys with great upper lips&mdash;but it&#8217;s only
+ignorant people who never travel who think of them
+like that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s so, I expect,&#8221; replied Silas, either unconscious
+of the dig at himself or undesirous of a quarrel,
+&#8220;and the next few dollars I have to spare I&#8217;ll go
+to Ireland. I&#8217;m crazy now to see it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s made you crazy to see it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Because it&#8217;s the place you come from.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl sniffed.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_192' name='page_192'></a>192</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;I hate compliments.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wasn&#8217;t complimenting you, I was complimenting
+Ireland,&#8221; said Silas sweetly. She was silent, a white
+moth passing close to her held her gaze for a
+moment, then it flitted away across the bushes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s forget Ireland for a moment,&#8221; said she,
+&#8220;and talk of Charleston. Do you know many people
+there?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know most every one. The Pinckneys and
+Calhouns and Tredegars and Revenalls and&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Rhetts.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes&mdash;but there are a dozen Rhetts; same as
+there&#8217;s half a hundred Pinckneys and Calhouns,
+families, I mean. What&#8217;s his name&mdash;Richard
+Pinckney, your guardian, is engaged to a Rhett.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He is not.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He is&mdash;Venetia Frances, the one that lives in
+Legare Street. Why, I&#8217;ve seen them canoodling
+often, and every one says they are engaged.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, he&#8217;s not, or Miss Pinckney would have told
+me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, she&#8217;s blind. I tell you he is, and she&#8217;ll be
+your guardian when he&#8217;s married her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That she won&#8217;t,&#8221; said Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How&#8217;ll you help it? A man and wife are one.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s only guardian of my property.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, Heaven help your property when she gets
+a finger in the pie; she&#8217;ll spend it on hats&mdash;sure.&#8221;</p>
+<p>This outrageous statement, uttered with a laugh,
+left Phyl cold. The statement about Frances Rhett
+had disturbed her, she could not tell exactly why, for
+it was none of her business whom Pinckney might
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_193' name='page_193'></a>193</span>
+choose to marry&mdash;still&mdash;Frances Rhett! It was
+almost as though an antagonism had existed between
+them since that afternoon when she had seen Frances
+first, driving in the car with Richard Pinckney.</p>
+<p>She rose to her feet and Silas rose also, throwing
+away the end of his cigarette.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Going into the house?&#8221; said he.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, you&#8217;ll be off to-morrow morning, and I
+won&#8217;t see you, for I have to be out early, but I&#8217;ll see
+you in Charleston, though not at Vernons maybe, for
+I&#8217;m not in love with Richard Pinckney, and I don&#8217;t
+care much for visiting his house. But I&#8217;ll see you
+somewhere, sure.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Good-bye,&#8221; said she holding out her hand. He
+took it, held it, and then, all of a sudden, she found
+herself in his arms.</p>
+<p>Helpless as a child, in his arms and smothered
+with kisses. He kissed her on the mouth, on the
+forehead, on the chin, and with a last kiss on the
+mouth that made her feel as though her life were
+going from her, he vanished. Vanished amidst the
+bushes whilst she stood, tottering, dazed, breathless,
+outraged, yet&mdash;in some extraordinary way not angry.
+Pulled between tears and laughter, resentment, and
+a strange new feeling suddenly born in her from his
+burning lips, and the strength that had held her for a
+moment to itself.</p>
+<p>In one moment, and as though with the stroke of
+a sword, Silas had cut down the barrier that had
+divided her from the reality of things. He had
+kissed away her childhood.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_194' name='page_194'></a>194</span></p>
+<p>Then throwing out her hands as though pushing
+away some presence that was surrounding her, she
+ran to the house. In the hall she sat down for a
+moment to recover herself before going into the
+drawing room, where Miss Pinckney and the Colonel
+were closing the book which held for them the people
+and the places they had known in youth, and between
+its leaves who knows what old remembrances, like
+the withered flower that has once formed part of a
+summer&#8217;s day.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_195' name='page_195'></a>195</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>They started at ten o&#8217;clock next morning for
+Charleston, the Colonel standing on the house
+steps and waving his hand to them as they drove off.
+Silas was nowhere to be seen, he had gone out before
+breakfast, so the butler said, and had not returned.
+Miss Pinckney resented this casual treatment.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He ought to have been here to bid us good-bye,&#8221;
+said she, as they cleared the avenue. &#8220;He&#8217;s got the
+name for being a mad creature, but even mad creatures
+may show common courtesy. I&#8217;m sure I don&#8217;t
+know where he gets his manners from unless it&#8217;s
+his mother&#8217;s lot, same place as he got his good
+looks.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why do you say he&#8217;s mad?&#8221; asked Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Because he is. Not exactly mad, maybe, but
+eccentric, he swum Charleston harbour with his
+clothes on because some one dared him, and was
+nearly drowned with the tide coming in or going out,
+I forget which; and another day he got on the engine
+at Charleston station and started the train,
+drove it too, till they managed to climb over the top
+of the carriages or something and stop him&mdash;at least
+that&#8217;s the story. He&#8217;ll come to a bad end, that boy,
+unless he mends his ways. Lots of people say he&#8217;s
+got good in him. So he has, perhaps, but it&#8217;s just
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_196' name='page_196'></a>196</span>
+that sort that come to the worst end, unless the good
+manages to fight the bad and get it under in time.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl said nothing. Her mind was disturbed.
+She had slept scarcely at all during the night, and
+her feelings towards Silas Grangerson, now that she
+was beyond his reach, were alternating in the
+strangest way between attraction and repulsion.</p>
+<p>They would have repelled the thought of him
+entirely but for the instinctive recognition of the
+fact that his conduct had been the result of impulse,
+the impulse of a child, ill governed, and accustomed
+to seize what it wanted. Added to that was the fact
+of his entire naturalness. From the moment of
+their first meeting he had talked to her as though
+they were old acquaintances. Unless when talking
+to his father, everything in his manner, tone, conversation
+was free, unfettered by convention, fresh,
+if at times startling. This was his great charm,
+and at the same time his great defect, for it revealed
+his want of qualities no less than his qualities.</p>
+<p>Do what she could she was unable to escape from
+the incident of last night, it was as though those
+strong arms had not quite released their hold upon
+her, as though Pan had broken from the bushes,
+shown her by his magic things she had never
+dreamed of, and vanished.</p>
+<p>It was nearly two o&#8217;clock when they reached Vernons.
+Richard Pinckney was at home, and at the
+sight of him Phyl&#8217;s heart went out towards him.
+Clean, well groomed, honest, kindly, he was like a
+breath of fresh sea air after breathing tropical
+swamp atmosphere.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_197' name='page_197'></a>197</span></p>
+<p>Strange to say Miss Pinckney seemed to feel
+somewhat the same.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, we&#8217;re back,&#8221; said she, as they passed into
+the dining-room where some refreshments were
+awaiting them, &#8220;and glad I am to be back. Vernons
+smells good after Grangersons. Oh, dear me, what
+is it that clings to that place? It&#8217;s like opening an
+old trunk that&#8217;s been shut for years. I told Seth
+Grangerson, right out flat, he ought to get away
+from there into the world somewhere, but there he
+sits clinging to his rheumatism and the past. I declare
+I nearly cried last night as he was showing me
+all those old pictures.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s not very ill then,&#8221; said Richard.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ill! Not he. It was that fool Silas sent the
+telegram. Just an attack of rheumatism.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She went upstairs to change and the two young
+people went into the garden, where Richard Pinckney
+was having some alterations done.</p>
+<p>On the day Phyl&#8217;s hair went up it seemed to Richard
+that a new person had come to live with them.
+Phyl had suddenly turned into a young woman&mdash;and
+such a young woman! He had never considered
+her looks before, to young men of his age and
+temperament girls in pigtails are, as far as the manhood
+in them is concerned, little more and sometimes
+less than things. But Phyl with her hair up was
+not to be denied, and had he not been philandering
+after Frances Rhett, and had Phyl been a total
+stranger suddenly seen, it is quite possible that a far
+warmer feeling than admiration might have been the
+result. As it was she formed a new interest in life.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_198' name='page_198'></a>198</span></p>
+<p>He showed her the alterations he was making,
+slight enough and causing little change in the general
+plan of the garden.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I scarcely like doing anything,&#8221; said he, &#8220;but that
+new walk will be no end of an improvement, and it
+will save that bit of grass which is being trodden to
+death by people crossing it, then there&#8217;s all those
+bushes by the gate, they&#8217;re going, those behind the
+tree,&mdash;a little space there will make all the difference
+in the world.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Behind the magnolia?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wish you wouldn&#8217;t,&#8221; said Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Because they have been there always and&mdash;well,
+look!&#8221;</p>
+<p>She led the way behind the tree, pushed the
+bushes aside and disclosed the seat.</p>
+<p>She no longer felt that she was betraying a secret.
+Her experience at Grangersons had in some way
+made Vernons seem to her now really her home,
+and Richard Pinckney closer to her in relationship.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, how did you know that was there?&#8221; said
+Richard. &#8220;I&#8217;ve never seen it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Juliet Mascarene used to sit there with&mdash;with
+some one she was in love with. I found some of
+her old letters and they told about it&mdash;see, it&#8217;s a
+little arbour, used to be, though it&#8217;s all so overgrown
+now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Juliet,&#8221; said he. &#8220;That was the girl who died.
+I have heard Aunt Maria talk about her and she
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_199' name='page_199'></a>199</span>
+keeps her room just as it used to be. Who was the
+somebody?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was a Mr. Rupert Pinckney.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I knew there was a love story of some sort connected
+with her, but I never worried about the details.
+So they used to come and sit here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, he&#8217;d come to the gate at night and she&#8217;d
+meet him. Her people did not want her to marry
+him and so they had to meet in secret.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That was a long time ago.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Before you were born,&#8221; said Phyl.</p>
+<p>He looked at her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Aunt is always saying how like you are to her,&#8221;
+said he, &#8220;but she&#8217;s mad on family likenesses, and I
+never thought of it. It may be a want in me but I&#8217;ve
+never taken much interest in dead relatives; but
+somehow, finding this little place tucked away here
+gives one a jog. It&#8217;s like finding a nest in a tree.
+How long have you known of it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, some time. I found a bundle of her old
+letters&mdash;&#8221; she paused. Richard Pinckney had taken
+his place on the little seat, just as one sits down in
+an armchair to see if it is comfortable, and was
+leaning back amidst the bush branches.</p>
+<p>&#8220;This is all right,&#8221; said he, &#8220;sit down, there&#8217;s lots
+of room&mdash;you found her letter, tell us all about it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl sat down and told the little story. It
+seemed to interest him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The Pinckneys lost money,&#8221; said he, &#8220;and that&#8217;s
+why the old Mascarene birds were set against her
+marrying him, I suppose. Makes one wild that sort
+of thing. What right have people to interfere?&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_200' name='page_200'></a>200</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Money seems everything in this world,&#8221; said
+Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not&mdash;it seems to be, but it&#8217;s not. Money
+can&#8217;t buy happiness after one is grown up. You
+remember I told you that over in Ireland; when
+candy and fishing rods mean happiness money is all
+right&mdash;after that money is useful enough, but it&#8217;s the
+making of it and not the spending it that counts,&mdash;that
+and a lot of things that have nothing to do with
+money. If the Mascarenes hadn&#8217;t been fools they&#8217;d
+have seen that a poor man with kick in him&mdash;and the
+Pinckneys always had that&mdash;was as good as a rich
+man, and those two might have got married.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said Phyl, &#8220;they never could have got
+married, he had to die. He was killed, you know,
+at the beginning of the war.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re a fatalist.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, things happen.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, but you can stop them happening very
+often.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Just by willing it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Phyl meditatively, &#8220;but how are you
+to use your will against what comes unexpectedly.
+Now that telegram yesterday morning took me to
+Grangersons with Miss Pinckney. Suppose&mdash;suppose
+I had broken my leg or, say, fallen into a well
+there and got drowned&mdash;that would have been
+Fate.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said Pinckney, &#8220;carelessness, the telegram
+would not have drowned you, but your carelessness
+in going too close to the well.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_201' name='page_201'></a>201</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Suppose,&#8221; said Phyl, &#8220;instead of that, Mr. Silas
+Grangerson had shot me by accident with a gun&mdash;the
+telegram would have brought me to that without
+any carelessness of mine.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, it couldn&#8217;t,&#8221; said Pinckney lightly, &#8220;it would
+still have been your own fault for going near such
+a hare-brained scamp. Oh, I&#8217;m only joking, what
+I really mean is that nine times out of ten the thing
+people call Fate is nothing more than want of foresight.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And the tenth time it is Fate,&#8221; said Phyl rising.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_202' name='page_202'></a>202</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>Next morning brought Phyl a letter. It came
+by the early post, so that she got it in her
+bedroom before coming down.</p>
+<p>Phyl had few correspondents and she looked at
+the envelope curiously before opening it.</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;Miss Berknowles,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>at Vernons. Charleston.&#8221;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>ran the address written in a large, boyish, yet individual
+hand. She knew at once and by instinct
+whom it was from.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m coming to Charleston in a day or two, and
+I want to see you,&#8221; ran the letter which had neither
+address nor date, &#8220;but I&#8217;m not coming to Pinckneys.
+I&#8217;ll be about town and sure to find you somewhere.
+I can&#8217;t get you out of my mind since last night.
+Tried to, but can&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+<p>That was all. Phyl put the letter back in its
+envelope. She was not angry, she was disturbed.
+There was an assurance about Silas Grangerson
+daunting in its simplicity and directness. Something
+that raised opposition to him in her heart, yet
+paralysed it. Instinct told her to avoid him, to
+drive him from her mind, ay and something more
+than instinct. The spirit of Vernons, the calm sweet
+soul of the place, that seemed to hold the past and
+the present, Juliet and herself, peace and happiness
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_203' name='page_203'></a>203</span>
+with the promise of all good things in the future,
+this spirit rose up against Silas Grangerson as
+though he were the antagonist to happiness and
+peace, Juliet and herself, the present and the past.</p>
+<p>Rose up, without prevailing entirely.</p>
+<p>Silas had impressed himself upon her mind in
+such a manner that she could not free herself from
+the impression. Young as she was, with the terribly
+clear perception of the male character which
+all women possess in different degrees, she recognised
+that Silas was dangerous to that logical and
+equitable state of existence we call happiness, not on
+account of his wildness or his eccentricities, but because
+of some want inherent in his nature, something
+that spoke vaguely in his words and his actions, in
+his handsome face and in his careless and graceful
+manner.</p>
+<p>All the same she could not free herself from the
+impression he had made upon her, she could not
+drive him from her mind, he had in some way
+paralysed her volition, called forces to his aid from
+some unknown part of her nature, perhaps with
+those kisses which she still felt upon the very face
+of her soul.</p>
+<p>She came down to breakfast, and afterwards
+finding herself alone with Miss Pinckney, she took
+Silas&#8217;s letter from her pocket and handed it to her.
+She had been debating in her own mind all breakfast
+time as to whether she ought to show the letter;
+the struggle had been between her instinct to do the
+right thing, and a powerful antagonism to this instinct
+which was a new thing in her.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_204' name='page_204'></a>204</span></p>
+<p>The latter won.</p>
+<p>And then, lo and behold, when she found herself
+alone with Miss Pinckney in the sunlit breakfast
+room, almost against her will and just as though
+her hand had moved of its own volition, she put it
+in her pocket and produced the letter.</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney read it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, of all the crazy creatures!&#8221; said she.
+&#8220;Why, he has only met you once. He&#8217;s mad! No,
+he isn&#8217;t&mdash;he&#8217;s a Grangerson. I know them.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She stopped short and re-read the letter, turned it
+about and then laid it down.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Just as if he&#8217;d known you for years. And you
+scarcely spoke to him. Did he <i>say</i> anything to you
+as if he cared for you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, he didn&#8217;t,&#8221; said Phyl quite truthfully.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did he look at you as if he cared for you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; replied the other, dreading another question.
+But Miss Pinckney did not put it. She could
+not conceive a man kissing a girl who had never
+betrayed his feelings for her by word or glance.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, it gets me. It does indeed; acting like a
+dumb creature and then writing this&mdash; Do you care
+for <i>him</i>?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;I&mdash;no&mdash;you see, I don&#8217;t know him&mdash;much.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, he seems to know you pretty well, there&#8217;s
+no doubt about one thing, Silas Grangerson can
+make up his mind pretty quick. He won&#8217;t come to
+Vernons, won&#8217;t he? Well, maybe it&#8217;s better for him
+not, for I&#8217;ve no patience with oddities. That&#8217;s
+what&#8217;s wrong with him, he&#8217;s an oddity, and it&#8217;s those
+sort of people make the trouble in life&mdash;they&#8217;re
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_205' name='page_205'></a>205</span>
+worse than whisky and cards for bringing unhappiness.
+Years and years and years ago&mdash;I&#8217;m telling
+you this though I&#8217;ve never told it to any one else&mdash;Seth
+Grangerson, Silas&#8217;s father, seemed to care for
+me, not much, still he seemed to care. Then one
+day all at once he came into the room where I was,
+through the window, and told me to come off and
+get married to him, wanted me to go away right off.
+I was a fool in those days, but not all a fool, and
+when he tried to put his arm round my waist, my
+hand went up and smacked his face.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We are good enough friends now, but I&#8217;ve often
+thought of what I escaped by not marrying him.
+You saw him and the life he&#8217;s leading at that out
+of the way place, but you didn&#8217;t see his obstinacy
+and his queerness, and Silas is ten times worse, more
+crazy&mdash;well, there, you&#8217;re warned&mdash;but mind you I
+don&#8217;t want to be meddling. I&#8217;ve seen so many carefully
+prepared marriages turn out pure miseries, and
+so many crazy matches turn out happily, that I&#8217;m
+more than cautious in giving advice. Seems to me
+that people before they are married are quite different
+creatures to what they turn out after they are
+married.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But I don&#8217;t want to get married,&#8221; said Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, but, seems to me, Silas does,&#8221; replied the
+other.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_206' name='page_206'></a>206</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>One bright morning three days later, as Phyl
+was crossing Meeting Street near the Charleston
+Hotel, whom should she meet but Silas.</p>
+<p>Silas in town get up, quite a different looking individual
+from the Silas of Grangersons, dressed in
+perfectly fitting light grey tweed, a figure almost
+condoning one for the use of that old-time, half-discredited
+word &#8220;Elegant.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There you are,&#8221; said Silas, his face lighting
+up. &#8220;I thought it wouldn&#8217;t be long before I met
+you. Meeting Street is like a rabbit run, and I
+reckon the whole of Charleston passes through it
+twice a day.&#8221;</p>
+<p>His manner was genuinely frank and open, and
+he seemed to have completely forgotten the incident
+of the kissing. Phyl said nothing for a moment;
+she felt put out, angry at having been caught
+like a rabbit, and not over pleased at being compared
+to one.</p>
+<p>Then she spoke freezingly enough:</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know much about the habits of Charleston;
+you will not find <i>me</i> here every day. I have
+only been out twice here alone and&mdash;I&#8217;m in a hurry.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, what&#8217;s the matter with you?&#8221; cried Silas
+in a voice of astonishment.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nothing.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_207' name='page_207'></a>207</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;But there is, you&#8217;re not angry with me, are you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not in the least,&#8221; replied the other, quite determined
+to avoid being drawn into explanations.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, that&#8217;s all right. You don&#8217;t mind my walking
+with you a bit?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I only came here last night, and I&#8217;m putting up
+at the Charleston,&#8221; said Silas. &#8220;Of course there
+are a lot of friends I could stay with but I always
+prefer being free; one is never quite free in another
+person&#8217;s house; for one thing you can&#8217;t order the
+servants about, though, upon my word, now-a-days
+one can&#8217;t do that, much, anywhere.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I suppose not,&#8221; said Phyl.</p>
+<p>The fact was being borne in upon her that Silas
+in town was a different person from Silas in the
+country, or seemed so; more sedate and more conventional.
+She also noticed as they walked along
+that he was saluted by a great many people, and also,
+before she had done with him that morning, she
+noticed that the leery, impudent looking, coloured
+folk seemed to come under a blight as they passed
+him, giving him the wall and yards to spare. It
+was as though the impersonification of the blacksnake
+whip were walking with her as well as a most
+notoriously dangerous man, a man who would strike
+another down, white or coloured, for a glance, not
+to say a word.</p>
+<p>She had come out on business, commissioned by
+Miss Pinckney to purchase a ball of magenta Berlin
+wool. Miss Pinckney still knitted antimacassars,
+and the construction of antimacassars is impossible
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_208' name='page_208'></a>208</span>
+without Berlin wool&mdash;that obsolete form of German
+Frightfulness.</p>
+<p>She bestowed the things on poor folk to brighten
+their homes.</p>
+<p>When Phyl went into the store to buy the wool
+Silas waited outside, and when she came out they
+walked down the street together.</p>
+<p>She had intended returning straight home after
+making her purchase but they were walking now
+not towards Vernons but towards the Battery.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do you do with yourself all day?&#8221; asked
+Silas, suddenly breaking silence.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; she replied, &#8220;nothing much&mdash;we
+go out for drives.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;In that old basket carriage thing?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;With Miss Pinckney.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know, I&#8217;ve seen her often&mdash;what else do you
+do?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I read.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do you read?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Books.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Doesn&#8217;t Pinckney ever take you out?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, I don&#8217;t go out much with Mr. Pinckney;
+you see, he&#8217;s generally so busy.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Silas sniffed. They had reached the Battery and
+were standing looking over the blue water of the
+harbour. The day was perfect, dreamy, heavenly,
+warm and filled with sea scents and harbour sounds;
+scarcely a breath of wind stirred across the water
+where a three-master was being towed to her moorings
+by a tug.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s coming up to the wharves,&#8221; said Silas.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_209' name='page_209'></a>209</span>
+&#8220;They steer by the spire of St. Philips, the line between
+there and Fort Sumpter is all deep water.
+How&#8217;d you like to be a sailor?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wouldn&#8217;t mind,&#8221; said Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How&#8217;d you like to take a boat&mdash;I mean a decent
+sized fishing yawl and go off round the world,
+or even down Florida way? Florida&#8217;s fine, you
+don&#8217;t know Florida, it&#8217;s got two coasts and it&#8217;s hard
+to tell which is the best. From Indian River right
+round and up to Cedar Keys there&#8217;s all sorts of fishing,
+and you can camp out on the reefs; one cooks
+one&#8217;s own food and you can swim all day. There&#8217;s
+tarpon and barracuda and sword fish, and nights
+when there&#8217;s a moon you could see to read a book.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How jolly!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s go there?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How do you mean?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, just you and I. I&#8217;m fed up with everything.
+We could have a boatman to help sail and
+steer.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He spoke lightly and laughingly, and without
+much enthusiasm and as though he were talking to
+some one of his own sex, and Phyl, not knowing how
+to take him, said nothing.</p>
+<p>He went on, his tone growing warmer.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not joking, I&#8217;m dead sick of Grangersons
+and Charleston, and I reckon you are too&mdash;aren&#8217;t
+you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You may think so, but you are, all the same,
+without knowing it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think you are talking nonsense,&#8221; said Phyl hurriedly,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_210' name='page_210'></a>210</span>
+fighting against a deadly sort of paralysis
+of mind such as one may suppose comes upon the
+mind of a bird under the spell of a serpent.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No one could be kinder than Miss Pinckney, and
+so no one could be happier than I am. I love
+Vernons.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;All the same,&#8221; said Silas, &#8220;you are not really
+alive there. It&#8217;s the life of a cabbage, must be,
+there&#8217;s only you and Maria and&mdash;Pinckney. Maria
+is a decent old sort but she&#8217;s only a woman, and
+as for Pinckney&mdash;he doesn&#8217;t care for you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>This statement suddenly brought Phyl to herself.
+It went through her like a knife. She had ceased
+to think of Richard Pinckney in any way but as a
+friend. At one time, during the first couple of days
+at Vernons, her heart had moved mysteriously towards
+him; the way he had connected himself
+through Prue&#8217;s message with the love story of
+Juliet had drawn her towards him, but that spell
+had snapped; she was conscious only of friendliness
+towards Richard Pinckney. Why, then, this sudden
+pain caused by Silas&#8217;s words?</p>
+<p>&#8220;How do you know?&#8221; she flashed out. &#8220;What
+right have you to dare&mdash;&#8221; She stopped.</p>
+<p>The blaze of her anger seemed to Silas evidence
+that she cared for Pinckney.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re in love with him,&#8221; said he, flying out.
+The bald and brutal statement took Phyl&#8217;s breath
+from her. She turned on him, saw the anger in his
+face, and then&mdash;turned away.</p>
+<p>His state of mind condoned his words. To a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_211' name='page_211'></a>211</span>
+woman a blow received from the passion she has
+roused is a rude sort of compliment, unlike other
+compliments it is absolutely honest.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am in love with no one,&#8221; said she; &#8220;you have
+no right to say such things&mdash;no right at all&mdash;they
+are insulting.&#8221;</p>
+<p>A gull, white as snow, came flitting by and wheeled
+out away over the harbour; as her eyes followed it
+he stood looking at her, his anger gone, but his mind
+only half convinced by her feeble words.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t mean to insult you,&#8221; he said; &#8220;don&#8217;t let
+us quarrel. When I&#8217;m in a temper I don&#8217;t know
+what I say or do&mdash;that&#8217;s the truth. I want to have
+you all for myself, have ever since the first moment
+I saw you over there at Grangersons.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t,&#8221; said Phyl. &#8220;I can&#8217;t listen to you if you
+talk like that&mdash;Please don&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Very well,&#8221; said Silas.</p>
+<p>The quick change that was one of his characteristics
+showed itself in his altered voice. His was a
+mind that seemed always in ambush, darting out on
+predatory expeditions and then vanishing back into
+obscurity.</p>
+<p>They turned away from the sea front and began
+to retrace their steps, silently at first, and then little
+by little falling into ordinary conversation again as
+though nothing had happened.</p>
+<p>Silas knew every corner of Charleston, and the
+history of every corner, and when he chose he could
+make his knowledge interesting. In this mood he
+was a pleasant companion, and Phyl, her recent experience
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_212' name='page_212'></a>212</span>
+almost forgotten, let herself be led and instructed,
+not knowing that this armistice was the
+equivalent of a defeat.</p>
+<p>She had already drawn much closer to him in
+mind, this companionship and quiet conversation
+was a more sure and deadly thing than any kisses
+or wild words. It would linger in her mind warm
+and quietly. Put in a woman&#8217;s mind a pleasant
+recollection of yourself and you have established a
+force whose activity may seem small, but is in reality
+great, because of its permanency.</p>
+<p>They did not take a direct line in the direction of
+Vernons, and so presently found themselves in front
+of St. Michael&#8217;s. The gate of the cemetery was
+open and they wandered in.</p>
+<p>The place was deserted, save by the birds, and
+the air perfumed by all manner of Southern growing
+things. Sun, shadow, silence, and that strange
+peace which hangs over the homes of the dead, all
+were here, ringed in by the old walls and the faint
+murmur of the living city beyond.</p>
+<p>They walked along the paths, looking at the
+tombstones, and pausing to read the inscriptions,
+Phyl gradually entering into that state of mind
+wherein reality and material things fall out of perspective.
+The fragrant elusive poetry of death,
+which can speak in the songs of birds and the scent
+of flowers in the sunshine and the shade of trees
+more clearly than in the voice of man, was speaking
+to her now.</p>
+<p>All these people here lying, all these names here
+inscribed, all these were the representatives of days
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_213' name='page_213'></a>213</span>
+once bright and now forgotten, love once sweet and
+now unknown.</p>
+<p>Then, as though something had led or betrayed
+her to the place, she paused where the graves lay
+half shadowed by a magnolia, she read the nearest
+inscription with a little catch of her breath. Then
+the further one. They were the graves of Juliet
+Mascarene and Rupert Pinckney, the dead lovers
+who had passed from the world almost together,
+whose bodies lay side by side in the cold bed of
+earth.</p>
+<p>In a moment the spell of the little arbour was
+around her again, in a moment the pregnant first
+impression of Vernons had re-seized her, fresh as
+though the commonplace touch of everyday life had
+never spoiled it.</p>
+<p>It was as though the spirit of Juliet and the spirit
+of the old house were saying to her &#8220;Have you forgotten
+us?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Tears welled to her eyes. Silas standing beside
+her was saying something, she did not know what.
+She scarcely heard him.</p>
+<p>Misinterpreting her silence, unconscious as an
+animal of her state of mind and the direction of her
+thoughts, the man at her side moved towards her
+slightly, seemed to hesitate, and then, suddenly
+clasping her by the waist kissed her upon the side of
+the neck.</p>
+<p>Phyl straightened like a bow when the string is
+released. Then she struck him, struck him open
+handed in the face, so that the sound of the blow
+might have been heard beyond the wall.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_214' name='page_214'></a>214</span></p>
+<p>His face blanched so that the mark on it showed
+up, he took a step back. For a moment Phyl
+thought he was going to spring upon her. Then he
+mastered himself, but if murder ever showed itself
+upon the countenance of man it showed itself in
+that half second on the countenance of Silas Grangerson.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ll be sorry for that,&#8221; said he.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t speak to me,&#8221; said Phyl. &#8220;You are horrible&mdash;bad&mdash;wicked&mdash;I
+will tell Richard Pinckney.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do,&#8221; said Silas. &#8220;Tell him also I&#8217;ll be even
+with him yet. You&#8217;re in love with him, that&#8217;s what&#8217;s
+the matter with you&mdash;well, wait.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He turned on his heel and walked off. He did
+not look back once. As he vanished from sight
+Phyl clasped her hands together.</p>
+<p>It was as though she had suddenly been shown
+the real Silas&mdash;or rather the something light and
+evil and dangerous, the something inscrutable and
+allied to insanity that inhabited his mind.</p>
+<p>She was not thinking of herself, she was thinking
+of Richard Pinckney. She felt that she had been
+the unconscious means of releasing against him an
+evil force. A force that might injure or destroy
+him.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_215' name='page_215'></a>215</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>She came out of the cemetery. There was no
+sign of Silas in the street nor on the front of the
+church.</p>
+<p>Phyl had a full measure of the Celtic power to
+meet trouble halfway, to imagine disaster. As she
+hurried home she saw all manner of trouble, things
+happening to Richard Pinckney, and all brought
+about through herself. Amidst all these fancies she
+saw one fact: He must be warned.</p>
+<p>She found Miss Pinckney in the linen room. The
+linen room at Vernons was a treasure house beyond
+a man&#8217;s description, perhaps even beyond his true appreciation.
+There in the cupboards with their thin
+old fashioned ring handles and on the shelves of red
+cedar reposed damask and double damask of the
+time when men paid for their purchases in guineas,
+miraculous preservations. Just as the life of a
+china vase is a perpetual escape from the stupidity
+of servant maids and the heaviness of clumsy fingers,
+so the life of these cream white oblongs, in which
+certain lights brought forth miraculous representations
+of flowers, festoons and birds, was a perpetual
+preservation from the moth, from damp, from dryness,
+from the dust that corrupts.</p>
+<p>A house like Vernons exists not by virtue of its
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_216' name='page_216'></a>216</span>
+brick and mortar; to keep it really alive it must be
+preserved in all its parts, not only from damp and
+decay, but from innovation; one can fancy a gas
+cooker sending a perpetual shudder through it, a
+telephone destroying who knows what fragrant old
+influences; the store cupboards and still room are
+part of its bowels, its napery, bed sheets, and hangings
+part of its dress. The man knew what he was
+doing who left Miss Pinckney a life interest in
+Vernons, it was that interest that kept Vernons
+alive.</p>
+<p>She was exercising it on the critical examination
+of some sheets when Phyl came into the room, now,
+with the wool she had purchased and the tale she
+had to tell.</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney carefully put the sheet she was
+examining on one side, opened the parcel and looked
+at the wool.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I met Silas Grangerson,&#8221; said Phyl as the other
+was examining the purchase with head turned on
+one side, holding it now in this light, now in that.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Silas Grangerson! Why, where on earth has he
+sprung from?&#8221; asked Miss Pinckney in a voice of
+surprise.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know, but I met him in the street and we
+walked as far as the Battery and&mdash;and&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>She hesitated for a moment, then it all came out.
+To no one but Maria Pinckney could she have told
+that story.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, of all the astounding creatures,&#8221; said Miss
+Pinckney at last. &#8220;Did he ask you to marry him?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_217' name='page_217'></a>217</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Just to run away with him&mdash;kissed you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He kissed me at Grangersons.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;At Grangersons. When?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That night. I went into the garden and he
+came out from amongst some bushes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Umph&mdash; It&#8217;s the family disease&mdash; Well, if I
+get my fingers in his hair I promise to cure him.
+He wants curing. He&#8217;ll just apologise, and that
+before he&#8217;s an hour older. Where&#8217;s he staying?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, no,&#8221; said Phyl, &#8220;you mustn&#8217;t ever say I told
+you. I don&#8217;t mind. I would have said nothing
+only for Mr. Pinckney.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You mean Richard?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What has he to do with it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl did not hesitate nor turn her head away,
+though her cheeks were burning.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Silas Grangerson thinks I care for Mr. Pinckney,
+he said he would be even with him. I know
+he intends doing him some injury. I feel it&mdash;and I
+want you to warn him to be careful&mdash;without telling
+him, of course, what I have said.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney was silent for a moment. She had
+already matched Phyl and Richard in her mind.
+She had come to a very full understanding of her
+character, and she would have given all the linen
+at Vernons for the certainty that those two cared
+for one another.</p>
+<p>Frances Rhett rode her like an obsession. Life
+and nature had given Maria Pinckney an acquired
+and instinctive knowledge of character, and in the
+union of Richard and Frances Rhett she divined
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_218' name='page_218'></a>218</span>
+unhappiness, just as a clever seaman divines the unseen
+ice-berg in the ship&#8217;s track. She smelt it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Phyl,&#8221; said she, &#8220;do you care for Richard?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The question quickly put and by those lips caused
+no confusion in the girl&#8217;s mind.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said she. &#8220;At least&mdash; Oh, I don&#8217;t know
+how to explain it&mdash;I care for everything here, for
+Vernons and everything in it, it is all like a story
+that I love&mdash;Juliet and Vernons and the past and
+the present. He&#8217;s part of it too. I want to have
+it always just as it is. I didn&#8217;t tell you, but when
+that happened in the cemetery, I was looking at her
+grave; you never told me it was there with his. I
+came on it by accident and she was seeming to speak
+to me out of it. I was thinking of her and him,
+when&mdash;that happened. It was just as though some
+one had struck <i>her</i> and him. I can&#8217;t explain exactly.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Strange,&#8221; said Miss Pinckney.</p>
+<p>She turned and began to put away with a thoughtful
+air the linen she had been examining. Then she
+said:</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll tell Richard and warn him to keep away
+from that fool, not that there is any danger&mdash;but it
+is just as well to warn him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl helped to put away the linen and then she
+went upstairs to her room. She felt easier in her
+mind and taking her seat on a cane couch by the
+window she fell into a book. The History of the
+Civil War. This bookworm had always one sure
+refuge in trouble&mdash;books.</p>
+<p>Books! Have we ever properly recognised the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_219' name='page_219'></a>219</span>
+mystery and magic that lies in that word, the magic
+that allows a man to lead ever so many other lives
+than his own, to be other people, to travel where
+he has never been, to laugh with folk he has never
+seen, to know their sorrows as he can never know
+the sorrows of &#8220;real people&#8221;&mdash;and their joys.</p>
+<p>Phyl had been Robinson Crusoe and Jane Eyre,
+Monte Cristo and Jo.</p>
+<p>History which is so horribly unreal because it
+deals with real people had never appealed to her,
+but the history of the Civil War was different from
+others.</p>
+<p>It had to do with Vernons.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_220' name='page_220'></a>220</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>After luncheon that day Phyl, having nothing
+better to do, went up to her room and resumed
+her book.</p>
+<p>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&mdash;suppose they had fought?
+She called to recollection Silas&#8217;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&#8217;s voice&mdash;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.</p>
+<p>Beyond the curtains lay the golden afternoon.
+Sometimes a bird shadow, the loveliest thing in
+shadow-land, would cross the curtains, sometimes a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_221' name='page_221'></a>221</span>
+note of song or the sound of a bird&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>Then she half woke, falling asleep again to be
+awakened fully by a sound.</p>
+<p>A sound, deep, sonorous, now rhythmical, now
+confused. It was the sound of guns.</p>
+<p>She had heard it once long ago on the Brighton
+coast, and now as she sat up every nerve and muscle
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_222' name='page_222'></a>222</span>
+tense, and her mind filled with a vague dread, it
+came so heavily that the walls of Vernons shook.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;s life, insistent,
+rhythmical, a pall of sound now billowing, now
+sinking, as though blown under by a wind.</p>
+<p>She sought the piazza stairs and next moment
+was in the garden, then she found herself in the
+street.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>She ran, and as she drew close to the striving
+mass of people she saw men bearing stretchers.</p>
+<p>They were pushing their way through the crowd,
+making to enter a house on the right.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_223' name='page_223'></a>223</span></p>
+<p>Then came a voice. The voice of one man shouting
+to another.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Young Pinckney&#8217;s killed.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>She sat up.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Glancing back into the room she saw the book
+lying on the floor, the sight of it was like a crystallising
+thread for thought.</p>
+<p>She had seen the past, she had heard the guns of
+the war.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_224' name='page_224'></a>224</span></p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Had she then experienced what Juliet once experienced,
+seen what she saw, suffered what she suffered?</p>
+<p>Was she Juliet?</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217; 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&#8217;s
+surprise at her likeness to Juliet. Prue&#8217;s recognition
+of her, the finding of those letters, the finding
+of the little arbour&mdash;any one of these things meant
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_225' name='page_225'></a>225</span>
+little in itself, taken all together they meant a great
+deal&mdash;and then this last experience.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Then as she sat fighting against the unnatural,
+her imaginative and superstitious mind trembling at
+that which seemed beyond imagination, a miracle
+happened.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Perfect love casteth out fear, even fear of the
+supernatural, even fear of Fate.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>&#8220;Richard,&#8221; said Miss Pinckney that night, finding
+herself alone with him, &#8220;that Silas Grangerson is in
+town and I want you to beware of him.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_226' name='page_226'></a>226</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Silas,&#8221; said he, &#8220;why I saw him at the club, he&#8217;s
+gone back home by this, I expect, at least he said he
+was going back to-night. Why should I beware of
+him?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s such an irresponsible creature,&#8221; she replied.
+&#8220;I&#8217;m going to tell you something, and mind,
+what I&#8217;m going to tell you is a secret you mustn&#8217;t
+breathe to any one: he&#8217;s in love with Phyl.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Silas?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes. I knew it wouldn&#8217;t be long before some
+one was after her. She&#8217;s the prettiest girl in
+Charleston, and she&#8217;s different from the others
+somehow.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The cunning of the woman held her from praise
+of Phyl&#8217;s goodness and mental qualities, or any over
+praise of the goods she was bringing to his attention.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Has he spoken to her about it?&#8221; asked he.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m sure to goodness I don&#8217;t know what I&#8217;m
+about telling you a thing that was told to me in confidence,&#8221;
+said the other. &#8220;Well, you promise never
+to say a word to Phyl or to any one else if I tell you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I promise.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, he&#8217;s&mdash;he&#8217;s kissed her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Richard Pinckney leaned forward in his chair.
+He seemed very much disturbed in his mind.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Does she care for him?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t believe she does&mdash;yet. They always begin
+like that; girls don&#8217;t know their minds till all of
+a sudden they find some man who does.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, let&#8217;s hope she never cares for Silas Grangerson,&#8221;
+said he rising from his chair. &#8220;You know
+what he is.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_227' name='page_227'></a>227</span></p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Richard Pinckney&#8217;s mind was disturbed.</p>
+<p>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 attaché, 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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&mdash;and
+he had been looking at her for a year without
+the picture stirring any wild enthusiasm in his mind.</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney&#8217;s revelation as to Silas had come
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_228' name='page_228'></a>228</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Behind the thought was the feeling of the boy
+who sees the other boy going off with the ripest and
+rosiest apple.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>This was a woman, distinct from the girl of yesterday,
+as the full blown from the half blown flower.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It will be here by the morning post, I expect,&#8221;
+said he. &#8220;You&#8217;d like to go, wouldn&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl hesitated for a moment. &#8220;Is that&mdash;I mean
+is that young lady Miss Frances Rhett&mdash;the one
+who called here?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; cut in Pinckney, &#8220;those are the people.
+You&#8217;ll come, won&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is Miss Pinckney going?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She&mdash;of course she&#8217;s going, she goes to everything,
+and old Mrs. Rhett is anxious to meet you.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_229' name='page_229'></a>229</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;It is very kind of them,&#8221; said Phyl. &#8220;Yes, I&#8217;ll
+come.&#8221; But she spoke without enthusiasm, and it
+seemed to him that a chill had come over her.</p>
+<p>Did she know of his entanglement with Frances
+Rhett? And could it be&mdash;</p>
+<p>He put the question aside. He had no right to
+indulge in any fancies at all about Phyl as regarded
+himself.</p>
+<p>Then Miss Pinckney came out on the piazza and
+Phyl rose to go into the house.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_230' name='page_230'></a>230</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>When Silas Grangerson left the cemetery of
+St. Michael&#8217;s he walked for half a mile without
+knowing or caring in what direction he was going.</p>
+<p>Phyl had done more than slap his face. She
+had slapped his pride, his assurance of himself, and
+his desire for her all at the same time.</p>
+<p>Silas rarely bothered about girls, yet he knew
+that he had the power to fascinate any woman once
+he put his mind to the work. He had not tried his
+powers of fascination on Phyl. It was the other
+way about. Phyl absolutely unconsciously had used
+her fascination upon him.</p>
+<p>Something in her, recognised by him on their first
+meeting in the stable yard, had put away the barrier
+of sex. He had talked to her as if she had been a
+boy. Sitting on the seat beside her whilst the
+Colonel had been prosing over politics and tobacco,
+the prompting came to Silas to pinch her finger just
+for fun; when he had put his hands over her eyes
+that night it was in obedience to the same prompting,
+but at the moment of parting from her, a desire
+quite new had overmastered him.</p>
+<p>He had kissed a good many girls, but never in his
+life had he kissed a girl as he kissed Phyl.</p>
+<p>Something cynical in his feelings for the other
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_231' name='page_231'></a>231</span>
+sex had always left him somewhat cold, but Phyl
+was different from the others, she had in some way
+struck straight at his real being.</p>
+<p>When he left her that night at Grangersons he
+was almost as disturbed as she.</p>
+<p>He scarcely slept. He was out at dawn and on
+his return after she had left he sat down and wrote
+the letter which Phyl received next morning.</p>
+<p>Silas was in love for the first time in his life, but
+love with Silas was a thing apart from the love of
+ordinary men.</p>
+<p>There was no worship of the object; the something
+that crystallises out in the form of love-letters,
+verses, bouquets, and candy was not there. He
+wanted Phyl.</p>
+<p>He had no more idea of marriage than the great
+god Pan. If she had consented he would have
+taken her off on that yawl of his imagination round
+the world or down to Florida, without thought of
+the morrow or the <i>convenances</i>, or Society; but
+please do not imagine this rather primitive gentleman
+a chartered libertine. He would have married
+her as soon as not, but he had neither the genius
+nor the inclination for the courtship that leads by
+slow degrees up to the question, &#8220;Will you marry
+me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He wanted her at once.</p>
+<p>As he walked along now with the devil awake
+in his heart, he felt no anger towards Phyl; all his
+rage was against Pinckney; he had never liked Pinckney,
+he more than suspected that Phyl cared for him
+and he wanted some one to hate badly.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_232' name='page_232'></a>232</span></p>
+<p>He had walked himself into a reasonable state of
+mind when he found himself outside the Queen City
+Club. He went in and one of the first men he met
+was Pinckney.</p>
+<p>So well did he hold himself in hand that Pinckney
+suspected nothing of his feelings. Silas was far too
+good a sportsman to shout at the edge of the wood,
+too much of a gentleman to desire a brawl in public.
+He was going to knife Pinckney, he was also going
+to capture Phyl, but the knifing of Pinckney was the
+main objective and that required time and thought.
+He did not desire the blood of the gentleman; he
+wanted his pride and <i>amour propre</i>. He wanted
+to hit him on the raw, but he did not know yet
+where, exactly, the raw was nor how to hit it. Time
+would tell him.</p>
+<p>He was specially civil to his intended victim, and
+he went off home that evening plotting all the way,
+but arriving at nothing. He was trying to make
+bricks without straw. Pinckney did not drink, nor
+did he gamble, and he was far too good a business
+man to be had in that way. However, all things
+come to him who waits, and next morning&#8217;s post
+brought him a ray of light in the midst of his darkness.</p>
+<p>It brought him an invitation to the Rhetts&#8217; dance
+on the following Wednesday; nearly a week to wait,
+but, still, something to wait for.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What are you thinking about, Silas?&#8221; asked old
+Seth Grangerson as they sat at breakfast.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m thinking of a new rabbit trap, suh,&#8221; responded
+the son.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_233' name='page_233'></a>233</span></p>
+<p>The rabbit trap seemed to give him a good deal
+of food for thought during the week that followed;
+food that made him hilarious and gloomy by turns,
+restless also.</p>
+<p>Had he known it, Phyl away at Charleston, was
+equally restless. She no longer thought of Silas.
+She had dismissed him from her mind, she no longer
+feared him as a possible source of danger to the man
+she loved. Love had her entirely in his possession
+to torture as he pleased. She knew only one danger,
+the danger that Richard Pinckney did not care
+in the least for her, and as day followed day that
+danger grew more defined and concrete. Richard
+had taken to avoiding her, she became aware of
+that.</p>
+<p>She fancied that she displeased him.</p>
+<p>If she had only known!</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_234' name='page_234'></a>234</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER X</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>Silas Grangerson came to town on the
+Wednesday, driving in and reaching the
+Charleston Hotel about five o&#8217;clock in the afternoon.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>So Silas came to Charleston driving a pair of
+absolutely matched chestnuts, a coloured manservant
+in the Grangerson livery in attendance.</p>
+<p>After dinner he strolled into the bar of the hotel,
+met some friends, made some bets on the forthcoming
+races and at eight o&#8217;clock retired upstairs to
+dress.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_235' name='page_235'></a>235</span></p>
+<p>He was one of the first of the guests to arrive.</p>
+<p>The Rhetts&#8217; 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.</p>
+<p>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&mdash;everywhere was evident the use of
+yesterday as a veneer of to-day.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>But to-night he was quite a different being; to-night,
+in some mysterious way, he managed to convey
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_236' name='page_236'></a>236</span>
+the impression, pleasing enough, that he had
+come to see her and her alone.</p>
+<p>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
+<i>tapis</i>.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is it true what I hear, that Richard Pinckney
+has become engaged to the girl who is staying
+there?&#8221; asked Silas.</p>
+<p>Frances smiled.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think so,&#8221; she replied. &#8220;Who told you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Upon my word I forget,&#8221; said he, &#8220;but I judged
+mostly by my own eyes&mdash;they seemed like an engaged
+couple when I saw them last.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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 <i>fiancée</i> whirling in the arms of Silas
+Grangerson.</p>
+<p>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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_237' name='page_237'></a>237</span>
+They had come with her, but it was only in the ballroom
+that they recognised with whom they had
+come.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>A <i>débutante</i> fails or succeeds at first glance, and
+the instantaneous success of Phyl was a record in
+successes.</p>
+<p>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&mdash;precarious.
+She wanted to get married and ring
+down the curtain on an unspoiled success, and now
+in a moment she saw herself dethroned.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;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 <i>cachet</i>, a something indefinable from yesterday,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_238' name='page_238'></a>238</span>
+the lack of which made the other girls, by contrast,
+seem cheap.</p>
+<p>Never could she have imagined that the &#8220;red-headed
+girl at Vernons&#8221; could gain so much from
+setting, a setting due to the instinct as well as the
+taste of &#8220;that old Maria Pinckney.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She had always laughed at Maria, as young people
+sometimes will at the old.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You shouldn&#8217;t have been late,&#8221; said she.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; he said, &#8220;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&#8217;t
+ready.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She looks ready enough now,&#8221; said the other,
+looking at Phyl and the cluster of young men around
+her. &#8220;What delayed her? Was she dyeing her
+head? It doesn&#8217;t look quite so loud as when I saw
+her last.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Her head&#8217;s all right,&#8221; replied Pinckney, irritated
+by the manner of the other, &#8220;inside and out,
+and one can&#8217;t say the same for every one.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Frances looked at him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you know what Silas Grangerson asked me
+to-night?&#8221; she said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He asked me were you engaged to her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Phyl?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Miss Berknowles. I don&#8217;t know her well
+enough to call her Phyl.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_239' name='page_239'></a>239</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;He asked you that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But he has never seen us together,&#8221; cried the
+outraged Pinckney; &#8220;that was a pure lie.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I expect he saw you when you didn&#8217;t see him;
+anyhow, that&#8217;s the impression people have got, and
+it&#8217;s not very pleasant for me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Richard Pinckney choked back his anger. He
+fell to thinking where Silas could have seen them
+together.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know whether he saw us or not,&#8221; said
+he, &#8220;but I am certain of one thing; he never saw us
+&#8216;carrying on&#8217; as you call it; anyhow, I&#8217;ll have a personal
+explanation from Silas to-morrow.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>Please</i> don&#8217;t imagine that I object to your flirting
+with any one you like,&#8221; said Frances with exasperating
+calm. &#8220;If you have a taste for that sort
+of thing it is your own business.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Pinckney flushed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know if you <i>want</i> to quarrel with me,&#8221;
+said he, &#8220;if you do, say so at once.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not a bit,&#8221; she replied, &#8220;you know I never
+quarrel with any one, it&#8217;s bad form for one thing
+and it is waste of energy for another.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_240' name='page_240'></a>240</span>
+to show her real nature now that Pinckney was
+secured.</p>
+<p>But it was not an ordinary lovers&#8217; 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.</p>
+<p>He was part of the business of her dethronement.</p>
+<p>Richard wandered off to where Maria Pinckney
+was seated watching the dancers.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why aren&#8217;t you dancing?&#8221; asked she.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; he replied. &#8220;I&#8217;m not keen
+on it and there are loads of men.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I want to tell you something,&#8221; said he. &#8220;I&#8217;m
+engaged to Frances Rhett.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Engaged to be married to her?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney was dumb.</p>
+<p>What she had always dreaded had come to pass,
+then.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t congratulate me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; she replied. &#8220;I don&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then, all of a sudden, she turned on him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Congratulate you! If I saw you drowning in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_241' name='page_241'></a>241</span>
+the harbour, would you expect me to stand at the
+Battery waving my hand to you and congratulating
+you? No, I don&#8217;t congratulate you. You had the
+chance of being happy with the most beautiful girl
+in the world, and the best, and you&#8217;ve thrown it
+away to pick up with <i>that</i> 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&#8217;s all spoiled.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He rose to his feet. It was the first time in his
+life that he had seen Maria Pinckney really put out.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll talk to you again about it,&#8221; said he. Then
+he moved away.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Silas&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_242' name='page_242'></a>242</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>Silas was of the type that kills under passion, the
+type that, unable to have, destroys.</p>
+<p>Preparing a trap for another, he himself had
+walked into a trap constructed by the devil, stronger
+than steel.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Later on in the evening, Richard Pinckney, tired
+with the lights and the noise, took a stroll in the
+garden.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;s fan which her partner
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_243' name='page_243'></a>243</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>He felt their eyes upon him, then, when he had
+got twenty paces or so away, he heard Frances
+laugh.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Excuse me,&#8221; said Richard Pinckney, halting in
+front of the other, &#8220;I want a word with you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Certainly,&#8221; answered Silas, guessing at once what
+was coming.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You made some remarks about me to Miss Rhett
+this evening,&#8221; went on the other. &#8220;You coupled
+my name with the name of a lady in a most unjustifiable
+manner and I want your explanation here
+and now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who was the lady?&#8221; asked Silas, seemingly quite
+unmoved.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Miss Berknowles.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;In what way did I couple your name with her,
+may I ask?&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_244' name='page_244'></a>244</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;No, you mayn&#8217;t.&#8221; Richard had turned pale before
+the calm insolence of the other. &#8220;You know
+quite well what you said and if you are a gentleman
+you will apologise&mdash; If you aren&#8217;t you won&#8217;t and
+I will deal with you in Charleston accordingly.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl was at that moment coming out of the supper
+room with young Reggie Calhoun&mdash;the same
+who, according to Richard that morning at breakfast
+long ago, was an admirer of Maria Pinckney.</p>
+<p>She saw the two men, in profile, facing one another,
+and she saw Silas&#8217;s right hand, which he was
+holding behind his back, opening and shutting convulsively.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Then she was gripping his wrist.</p>
+<p>Face to face with madness for a moment, holding
+it, fighting eye to eye.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>It was her soul that held him, her spirit&mdash;call it
+what you will, the something that speaks alone
+through the eye.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_245' name='page_245'></a>245</span>
+the contest was beyond the earthly plane, that this
+was no struggle between human beings, but a battle
+between sanity and madness.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Calhoun and Pinckney were left alone.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What are you going to do?&#8221; asked Calhoun.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am at his disposal,&#8221; replied the other. &#8220;I
+struck him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Struck him, damnation! He drew a knife on
+you; he ought to be hoofed out of the club; he&#8217;d have
+had you only for that girl. I never saw anything so
+splendid in my life.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_246' name='page_246'></a>246</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Pinckney, &#8220;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.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_247' name='page_247'></a>247</span></p>
+<div class='ce'>
+<p style=' font-size:1.4em; margin-top:2em;'>PART IV</p>
+</div>
+
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&mdash;Phyl.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_248' name='page_248'></a>248</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_249' name='page_249'></a>249</span>
+Miss Pinckney and followed by Richard, then the
+door shut and the carriage drove away.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;s room, it was enough for him that the place
+held her.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_250' name='page_250'></a>250</span>
+would seize her and carry her off, trap her like a
+bird.</p>
+<p>He determined on the morrow to return early to
+Grangersons and think things out.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_251' name='page_251'></a>251</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>Whilst he was lying in bed thinking things
+out, the folk at Vernons were retiring to rest.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Calhoun was for publishing the affair.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The man&#8217;s dangerous,&#8221; said he; &#8220;some day or
+another he&#8217;ll do the same thing again to some one
+and succeed and swing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think he&#8217;s had his lesson,&#8221; said Pinckney; &#8220;he
+went clean mad for the moment. Then there&#8217;s the
+fact that I struck him. No, taking everything into
+consideration, we&#8217;ll let it be. I don&#8217;t feel any animosity
+against him, not half as much as if he&#8217;d
+stabbed me behind the back with a libel&mdash; 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&#8217;t want to
+push the thing against him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think he will do it again,&#8221; said Phyl.</p>
+<p>She, like Richard, felt no anger against Silas; it
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_252' name='page_252'></a>252</span>
+was as though they recognised that Silas was the
+man really attacked that night, attacked by the Devil.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Calhoun, &#8220;it&#8217;s not my affair; if you
+choose to take pity on him, well and good; if it were
+my business I&#8217;d give him a cold bath, that might stop
+him from doing a thing like that again. I&#8217;ll say
+nothing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>She was seated in an armchair crying and Phyl
+knelt down beside her and took her hand.</p>
+<p>Then it all came out.</p>
+<p>&#8220;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&mdash;well,
+there, it&#8217;s all ended, there&#8217;s no hope anywhere, she&#8217;ll
+never let him go, and she&#8217;ll have Vernons when I&#8217;m
+gone. She picked him out from all the other men&mdash;why?&mdash; Why,
+because he&#8217;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&#8217;m sure
+I don&#8217;t know why this trouble should have fallen on
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_253' name='page_253'></a>253</span>
+me. I suppose I have committed some sin or another
+though I can&#8217;t tell what. I&#8217;ve tried to live
+blameless and there&#8217;s others that haven&#8217;t, yet they
+seem to prosper and get their wishes&mdash;and there&#8217;s
+no use telling me to be resigned,&#8221; finished she with a
+snap and as if addressing some viewless mentor. &#8220;I
+can&#8217;t&mdash;and what&#8217;s more I won&#8217;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&#8217;t a disease but just an ailment that kills you
+all the same.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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:</p>
+<p>&#8220;You saved my life. I can&#8217;t say what I feel, at
+least not now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He had looked straight into her eyes, and now
+half an hour later&mdash;This.</p>
+<p>Engaged to Frances Rhett!</p>
+<p>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&mdash;</p>
+<p>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&mdash;the man who makes a mirror is an
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_254' name='page_254'></a>254</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>She sat down on the side of her bed with her hands
+clasped together just as a child clasps its hands in
+grief.</p>
+<p>Sitting like this with her eyes fixed before her she
+was looking directly at Fate.</p>
+<p>It was not only Richard Pinckney that she was
+about to lose but Vernons and the Past&mdash; 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&mdash;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&#8217;s
+voice for the first time.</p>
+<p>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 <i>ego</i> refusing any one else a share in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_255' name='page_255'></a>255</span>
+her love for Richard, any one&mdash;even herself masquerading
+under the guise of Juliet.</p>
+<p>The idea came back to her now leaving her utterly
+cold, and yet stirring her mind anew with the
+sense of Fate.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>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&mdash;without conquering&mdash;all
+sorts of difficulties.</p>
+<p>She rose and dressed herself, put on her hat and
+came down into the garden.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;
+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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_256' name='page_256'></a>256</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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&mdash;where? She could think of nowhere
+to go but Ireland.</p>
+<p>To stay here would be absolutely impossible.</p>
+<p>As she walked without noticing whither she was
+going her mind cleared, she began to form plans.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Presently she found herself in the suburbs, in a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_257' name='page_257'></a>257</span>
+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&#8217;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&mdash;if he did return.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Phyl was no patient Grizel, the very last person
+to be trapped in the bog of love&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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&mdash;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&#8217;s dismissal she had called
+Pinckney a Beast. Only this anger was less acute,
+more diffuse, more lasting.</p>
+<p>The sounds of wheels and horses&#8217; hoofs on the
+road behind her made her turn her head. A carriage
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_258' name='page_258'></a>258</span>
+was approaching, an English mail phaëton
+drawn by two high-stepping chestnuts and driven
+by a young man.</p>
+<p>It was Silas Grangerson. Returning to Grangerson&#8217;s
+to make plans for the capture of Phyl, here she
+was on the road before him and going in the same
+direction.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>After the affair of last night one might fancy that
+he would have shown something of it in his manner.</p>
+<p>Not a bit.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t expect to come across <i>you</i> on the road,&#8221;
+said he. &#8220;Won&#8217;t you speak to me&mdash;are you angry
+with me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not a question of being angry,&#8221; said Phyl,
+stiffly.</p>
+<p>She walked on and he walked beside her, silent
+for a moment.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you mean about that affair last night,&#8221; said
+he, &#8220;I&#8217;m sorry I lost my temper&mdash;but he hit me&mdash;you
+don&#8217;t understand what that means to me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You tried to&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Kill him, I did, and only for you I&#8217;d have done
+it. You can&#8217;t understand it all. I can scarcely understand
+it myself. He <i>hit</i> me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think you knew what you were doing,&#8221;
+said Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I most surely did not. I was rousted out of
+myself. I reckon he didn&#8217;t know what he was doing
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_259' name='page_259'></a>259</span>
+either when he struck. He ought to have known I
+was not the person to hit. I&#8217;ll show you, just stand
+before me for a moment.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl faced him. He pretended to strike at her
+and she started back.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There you are,&#8221; said he; &#8220;you know I wasn&#8217;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&#8217;t think. He&#8217;s wound up by nature to hit
+back.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But you are not a snake.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How do you know what&#8217;s in a man? I reckon
+we&#8217;ve all been animals once, maybe I was a snake.
+There are worse things than snakes. Snakes are all
+right, they don&#8217;t meddle with you if you don&#8217;t meddle
+with them. They&#8217;ve got a bad name they don&#8217;t
+deserve. I like them. They&#8217;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&mdash;say, where are you going to?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; said Phyl. &#8220;I just came for a
+walk&mdash;I&#8217;m leaving Charleston.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She spoke with a little catch in her voice. All
+Silas&#8217;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_260' name='page_260'></a>260</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Leaving Charleston!&#8221; said Silas, speaking in a
+dazed sort of way.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes. I cannot stay here any longer.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Going&mdash;say&mdash;it&#8217;s not because of what I did last
+night.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&mdash;oh, no. It has nothing to do with you.&#8221;
+She spoke almost disdainfully.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But where are you going?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Back to Ireland.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;When?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;To-day.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then, suddenly, in some curious manner, he knew.
+But he was clever enough, for once in his life, to
+restrain himself and say nothing.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I will go this afternoon,&#8221; said she, as though
+she were talking of a journey of a few miles.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Have you any friends to go to?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl thought of Mr. Hennessy sitting in his
+gloomy office in gloomy Dublin.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, one.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;In Ireland?&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_261' name='page_261'></a>261</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Can&#8217;t you think of any other friends?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not even me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; said poor Phyl, &#8220;I never could
+understand you quite, but now that I am in trouble
+you seem a friend&mdash;I&#8217;m miserable&mdash;but there&#8217;s no
+use having friends here. It only makes it the worse
+having to go.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you remember the day I asked you to run
+off to Florida with me,&#8221; said Silas, &#8220;and leave this
+damned place? It&#8217;s no good for any one here and
+you&#8217;ve found it out&mdash;the place is all right, it&#8217;s the
+people that are wrong.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl made no reply.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re not going back,&#8221; he finished.</p>
+<p>She glanced at him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re going to stay here&mdash;here with me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am going back to Ireland to-day,&#8221; said Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are not, you are going to stay here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No. I am going back.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are going to stay here,&#8221; he went on. &#8220;If
+I lost you now I&#8217;d never find you again. I&#8217;ve been
+wanting you ever since I saw you that day first in
+the yard&mdash; D&#8217;you remember how we sat on the
+log together?&mdash;you can&#8217;t tramp all the way back to
+Charleston&mdash; Come with me and you&#8217;ll be happy
+always, all the time and all your life&mdash;&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_262' name='page_262'></a>262</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said Phyl, &#8220;I mustn&#8217;t&mdash;I can&#8217;t.&#8221; 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?</p>
+<p>Silas&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>Instinctively she knew a great deal. How much
+knowledge lies in the sub-conscious mind is an open
+question.</p>
+<p>They walked on for a bit without speaking and
+then Silas began again.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can&#8217;t go back all that way. It&#8217;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&mdash;and how are
+you to go alone?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; said Phyl.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are not going,&#8221; he said, &#8220;you are not; indeed,
+I want you far too much to let you go; there&#8217;s
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_263' name='page_263'></a>263</span>
+nothing else I want at all in the world. I don&#8217;t
+count anything worth loving beside you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>No reply.</p>
+<p>He turned.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Then as the man went off along the road he stood
+holding the near horse by the bridle and talking
+to Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can&#8217;t walk back all that way; put your foot
+on the step and get in, leave all your trouble right
+here. I&#8217;ll see that you never have any trouble again.
+Put your foot on the step.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl looked away down the road.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_264' name='page_264'></a>264</span></p>
+<p>The vision of Frances Rhett.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>She put her foot on the step and got into the
+phaëton. Silas, without a word, jumped up beside
+her, and the horses started.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_265' name='page_265'></a>265</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>She had committed the irrevocable.</p>
+<p>When the contract is signed, when the china
+vase is broken, all the regret in the world will not
+alter the fact.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney&#8217;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&mdash;</p>
+<p>Then came the thought&mdash;what matter.</p>
+<p>All that was lost to her anyhow. It did not matter
+in the least what she did.</p>
+<p>She was running away with Silas Grangerson.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_266' name='page_266'></a>266</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;You are running away to be married to Silas
+Grangerson?&#8221;</p>
+<p>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&mdash;but to marry Silas
+Grangerson!</p>
+<p>&#8220;Stop!&#8221; cried Phyl.</p>
+<p>Silas glanced sideways at her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s the matter now?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I want to go back.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Back to Charleston!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, stop, stop at once&mdash;I must go back, I should
+never have come.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Silas was on the point of flashing out but he shut
+his lips tight, then he reined in.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wait a moment,&#8221; said he with his hand on her
+arm, &#8220;you can&#8217;t walk back, we are nearly half way
+to Grangersons. I can&#8217;t drive you because I don&#8217;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.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl hesitated, then she began to cry.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t cry,&#8221; said he, &#8220;everything will be all right
+when we get to Grangersons&mdash;we&#8217;ll just go on.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_267' name='page_267'></a>267</span></p>
+<p>The horses started again and Phyl dried her eyes.
+They covered another five miles without speaking,
+and then Silas said:</p>
+<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t mean to stick to me, then?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t,&#8221; said Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You care for some one else better?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is it Pinckney?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;God!&#8221; 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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>After a moment&#8217;s silence he began again.</p>
+<p>There was something in Silas&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s all very well,&#8221; said he, &#8220;but you can&#8217;t
+always go on caring for Pinckney.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Can&#8217;t I?&#8221; said Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, you can&#8217;t. He&#8217;s going to get married and
+then where will you be?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl, staring over the horses&#8217; 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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I cared for him before he was born and I&#8217;ll
+care for him after I&#8217;m dead and there&#8217;s no use in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_268' name='page_268'></a>268</span>
+bothering a bit about it now. <i>You</i> couldn&#8217;t understand.
+No one can understand, not even he.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The road here bordered a stretch of waste land;
+Silas gazed over it, his face was drawn and hard.</p>
+<p>Then he suddenly blazed out.</p>
+<p>Laying the whip over the horses and turning them
+so sharply that the phaëton was all but upset he put
+them over the waste land; another touch of the whip
+and they bolted.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ll kill us!&#8221; cried Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Good&mdash;so,&#8221; replied Silas, &#8220;horses and all.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_269' name='page_269'></a>269</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>Twenty yards from the fence the off side
+wheel had gone.</p>
+<p>The phaëton, 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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where are the horses?&#8221; said she. They were
+her first thought.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve let them loose&mdash;there they are.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_270' name='page_270'></a>270</span>
+to graze. The broken phaëton 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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How do you feel now?&#8221; asked Silas.</p>
+<p>&#8220;All right,&#8221; said Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;d better get somewhere,&#8221; he went on; &#8220;there
+are some cabins beyond that rice field, I can see
+their tops. There&#8217;s sure to be some one there and
+we can send for help.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl struggled to her feet, refusing assistance.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Let us go there,&#8221; said she. She turned to look
+at the horses.</p>
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;ll be all right,&#8221; said Silas; &#8220;there&#8217;s lots of
+grass and there&#8217;s a pond over there&mdash;they&#8217;d live
+here a month without harm.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He led the way to the fence, helped her over, and
+then, without a word they began to plod across the
+rice field.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_271' name='page_271'></a>271</span>
+rank green foliage of weeds and sunflowers. An
+old disused well faced the cabins.</p>
+<p>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&mdash;alone
+here with Silas Grangerson, lost, both of them,
+what explanation could she make, even to herself, of
+the position?</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>For the first time in his life he seemed disturbed
+in mind.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll have to go and get help,&#8221; said he, &#8220;and find
+out where we are. It&#8217;s my fault. I&#8217;m sorry, but
+there&#8217;s no use in going over that. You aren&#8217;t fit to
+walk. I&#8217;ll go and leave you here. You won&#8217;t be
+afraid to stay by yourself?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said Phyl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You needn&#8217;t be a bit, there&#8217;s no danger here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am thirsty,&#8221; said she.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wait.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_272' name='page_272'></a>272</span>
+to Phyl and tilted it slightly whilst she drank. Then
+he put it by the door.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now I&#8217;ll go,&#8221; said he, &#8220;and I shan&#8217;t be long.
+Sure you won&#8217;t be afraid?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; she replied.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re not angry with me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, I&#8217;m not angry.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>She was never to see him again.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_273' name='page_273'></a>273</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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&mdash;a desire so strong that
+he would have dashed her and himself to pieces
+rather than that another should possess her.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>It stood between him and Phyl. He was conscious
+of no struggle with it because it took the form
+of helplessness.</p>
+<p>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&mdash;but the subdued.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;s weakness did not repel him but it
+took the edge from his passion. It was almost a
+form of ugliness.</p>
+<p>He had determined on finding help to send some
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_274' name='page_274'></a>274</span>
+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 phaëton 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&mdash;he did not care,
+and nothing was more indicative of his mental upset
+than this indifference toward the things he treasured
+most.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_275' name='page_275'></a>275</span></p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Well, he had done with her, and there was no
+use in thinking of her&mdash;she cared for that cursed
+Pinckney and she was as good as dead to him, Silas.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>There is something to be said for this manner
+of love-making, it is sincere at all events.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Turning a corner of the road he came upon a
+clear space and on the borders of the clearing to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_276' name='page_276'></a>276</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>He was going back to Phyl.</p>
+<p>His resolution never to see her again had vanished.
+She was his and he was going to keep her,
+no matter what happened.</p>
+<p>He would never part with her alive, if she killed
+him, if he killed her, what matter. Nothing would
+stand in his path.</p>
+<p>He reached the turning and there in the sunlight
+lay the half ruined cabins and the well.</p>
+<p>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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_277' name='page_277'></a>277</span></p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_278' name='page_278'></a>278</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>When Richard Pinckney came down to breakfast
+that morning, he found Miss Pinckney
+seated at the table reading letters.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Phyl went out early and has not come back yet,&#8221;
+said she putting the letters aside and pouring out
+the tea.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Gone out,&#8221; said he. &#8220;Where can she have gone
+to?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney did not seem to hear the question.
+She was not thinking of Phyl or her whereabouts.
+Richard&#8217;s engagement to Frances Rhett was still
+dominating her mind, casting a shadow upon everything.
+It was like a death in the family.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I hope she&#8217;s not bothered about what happened
+last night,&#8221; went on Richard. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t tell you at
+the time, but I had&mdash;some words with Silas Grangerson,
+and&mdash;Phyl was there. Silas is a fool, but
+it&#8217;s just as well the thing happened for it has brought
+matters to a head. I want to tell you something&mdash;I&#8217;m
+not engaged to Frances Rhett.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not engaged?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I was, but it&#8217;s broken off. I had a moment&#8217;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.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_279' name='page_279'></a>279</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, dear me,&#8221; 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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know, I don&#8217;t know, I&#8217;m sure. I&#8217;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&#8217;t know, I&#8217;m sure.
+It seems terrible to separate two people but I had
+no thought only for you. I&#8217;ve spoken against the
+girl, and wished against her, and felt bad in my
+heart against her, and now it&#8217;s all over I&#8217;m just cast
+down.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She did not care for me,&#8221; said Pinckney.
+&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney put her handkerchief away, drew
+in her chair, and poured herself out some more tea
+energetically and with a heightened colour.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to speak bad about any one,&#8221; said
+she, &#8220;but there are girls and girls. I know them,
+and time and again I&#8217;ve seen girls hanging themselves
+out with labels on them. &#8216;I&#8217;m the finest
+apple on the tree,&#8217; yet no one has picked them for
+all their labels, because every one has guessed that
+they aren&#8217;t&mdash;That crab apple labelling itself a pippin
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_280' name='page_280'></a>280</span>
+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&#8217;m sure&mdash;pass me the butter&mdash;laughing
+at you. And what were they laughing at
+pray? Aren&#8217;t you straight and the best looking
+man in Charleston? Couldn&#8217;t you buy the Rhetts
+twice over if you wanted to buy such rubbish?
+Aren&#8217;t you the top man in Charleston in name and
+position and character? Why, they&#8217;ll be laughing
+at the jokes in the N&#8217;York papers next&mdash;They&#8217;ll
+be appreciating their own good sense and cleverness
+and personal beauty next thing&mdash;They&#8217;ll be worshipping
+Bryan.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I don&#8217;t think they&#8217;ll ever get as bad as that,&#8221;
+said he laughing, &#8220;but I don&#8217;t think I care whether
+people grin at me or not; it&#8217;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&#8217;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.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Meaning that she could break it off if she
+wanted to but you couldn&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps. When I went back last night and
+told her I wanted to be free, she flew out.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Said you must stick to your word?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nearly that. Then I told her she herself had
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_281' name='page_281'></a>281</span>
+said that it was open to either of us to break the
+business off.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What did she say to that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nothing. She had nothing to say. She asked
+why I wanted to break it off.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And you told her it was because of her conduct,
+I hope.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No. I told her it was because I had come to
+care for some one else.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney said nothing for a moment.
+Then she looked at him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Richard, do you care for Phyl?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Thank God,&#8221; said she.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Richard,&#8221; said she, coming back from her fit of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_282' name='page_282'></a>282</span>
+abstraction, &#8220;I will tell you something I&#8217;d never
+have spoken of if you didn&#8217;t care for her. It may
+be an old woman&#8217;s fancy, but Phyl is more to us,
+seems to me, than we think, she&#8217;s Juliet come back&mdash;Oh,
+it&#8217;s more than the likeness. I&#8217;m sure I can&#8217;t
+explain what I mean, it&#8217;s just she herself that&#8217;s the
+same. There&#8217;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&#8217;s more absurd than to be born, and look at that
+butterfly, what&#8217;s more absurd than to tell me that
+yesterday it was a worm? Well, it doesn&#8217;t much
+matter whether she was Juliet or not, now she&#8217;s
+going to be yours, and to save you from that pasty&mdash;no
+matter she&#8217;s over and done with, but I reckon
+she&#8217;s laughing on the wrong side of her face this
+morning.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m going to Philips&#8217;, the lawyers,&#8221; said he,
+&#8220;and then I&#8217;ll look in at the club. I&#8217;ll be back to
+luncheon.&#8221;</p>
+<p>An hour later to Miss Pinckney engaged in dusting
+the drawing-room appeared Rachel the cook.</p>
+<p>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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_283' name='page_283'></a>283</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Mistress Pinckney,&#8221; said the coloured woman
+closing the door. &#8220;Ole Colonel Grangerson&#8217;s
+coachman&#8217;s in de kitchen, an&#8217; he says Miss Phyl&#8217;s
+been an&#8217; run off with young Silas Grangerson dis
+very mornin&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney without dropping the duster stood
+silent for a moment before Rachel. Then she
+broke out.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Miss Phyl run off with young Silas Grangerson!
+What on earth are you talking about, what rubbish
+is this, who&#8217;s dared to come here talking such nonsense?
+Go on&mdash;what more have you to say?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Rachel had a lot to say.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney could not but believe. She threw
+the duster on a chair, left the room and went to
+the kitchen.</p>
+<p>Prue was still in her corner by the fireplace, and
+Colonel Grangerson&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s all this nonsense you have been talking,&#8221;
+said she, &#8220;coming here saying Miss Phyl has
+run away with Mr. Silas? She started out this
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_284' name='page_284'></a>284</span>
+morning to meet him and drive to Grangersons; I&#8217;m
+going there myself at eleven&mdash;and you come here
+talking of people running away. Do you know you
+could be put in prison for saying things like that?
+You <i>dare</i> to say it again to any one and I&#8217;ll have
+you taken off before you&#8217;re an hour older, you black
+imp of mischief.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was a rolling pin on the table, and half
+unconsciously her hand closed on it. Colonel
+Grangerson&#8217;s man, grey and clutching at his hat, did
+not wait for the sequel, he bolted.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is so and it&#8217;s not so,&#8221; said she at last, talking
+half to herself half to the woman. &#8220;It&#8217;s some trick
+of Silas Grangerson&#8217;s. But the main thing is no
+one must know. We have got to get her back. No
+one must know&mdash;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&#8217;ve got
+for a long journey.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_285' name='page_285'></a>285</span>
+do who pray for &#8220;direction&#8221; 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&mdash;Laziness or concealed broken china, or
+both.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>To save Phyl&#8217;s reputation, Miss Pinckney would
+have perjured herself twice over.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>She went to the writing table now and taking a
+sheet of paper, wrote:</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>
+<p><i>Dear Richard,</i></p>
+<p>Seth Grangerson is bad again, and I am going
+over there now with Phyl. We mayn&#8217;t be back
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_286' name='page_286'></a>286</span>
+to-night. I am taking the automobile. We will be
+back to-morrow most likely.</p>
+<div class='ra'>
+<p style=' margin-right:2em;'>Your affectionate Aunt,</p>
+<p><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Maria Pinckney.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Already she had stopped the mouth of slander by
+her prompt action with Colonel Grangerson&#8217;s
+coloured man, but she well knew how coloured servants
+talk; Grangerson&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>She called Rachel in, gave her the note for Richard
+and told her to keep a close eye on Dinah.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t let her get talking to any one,&#8221; said Miss
+Pinckney, &#8220;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&#8217;s no harm in it, only what fools will make of
+it if they get chattering. No one must know, not
+even Mr. Richard.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll see to that, Miss Pinckney, an&#8217; if I catch
+Dinah openin&#8217; her mouth to say more&#8217;n &#8216;potatoes&#8217;
+I&#8217;ll dress her down so&#8217;s she won&#8217;t know which end
+of her&#8217;s which.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_287' name='page_287'></a>287</span></p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney went upstairs, dressed hurriedly,
+packed a few things in a bag and the automobile being
+now at the door, started.</p>
+<p>It was after one o&#8217;clock when she reached Grangersons.</p>
+<p>Just as on the day when she had arrived with
+Phyl, Colonel Grangerson, hearing the noise of the
+car, came out to inspect.</p>
+<p>He came down the steps, hat in hand, saw the
+occupant, started back, and then advanced to open
+the door.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, God bless my soul, it&#8217;s you,&#8221; cried the
+Colonel. &#8220;What has happened?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney without a word got out and went
+up the steps with him.</p>
+<p>In the hall she turned to him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where is Silas?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Silas,&#8221; replied the Colonel. &#8220;I haven&#8217;t seen
+him since he went to Charleston to attend some
+dance or another. What on earth is the matter
+with you, Maria?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Come in here,&#8221; said Miss Pinckney. She went
+into the drawing room and they shut the door.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Silas has run away with Phyl,&#8221; said she, &#8220;that&#8217;s
+what&#8217;s the matter with me. Your son has taken
+that girl off, Seth Grangerson, and may God have
+mercy upon him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The red-headed girl?&#8221; said the Colonel.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Phyl,&#8221; replied she, &#8220;you know quite well whom
+I mean.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Colonel Grangerson made a few steps up and
+down the room to calm himself. Maria Pinckney
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_288' name='page_288'></a>288</span>
+was speaking to him in a tone which, had it been
+used by any one else, would have caused an explosion.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But when did it happen,&#8221; he asked, &#8220;and where
+have they gone? Explain yourself, Maria. Good
+God! Why the fellow never spoke to her scarcely&mdash;are
+you sure of what you say?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney told her tale.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I came here to try and get her back,&#8221; said she,
+&#8220;thinking he and she might possibly have come here
+or that you might know their whereabouts&mdash;they
+have not come, but there is just the chance that they
+may come here yet.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But if they have run off with each other,&#8221; said
+the Colonel, &#8220;how are we to stop them&mdash;they&#8217;ll be
+married by this.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney who had taken off her gloves sat
+down and began to fold them, neatly rolling one inside
+the other.</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>Married,</i>&#8221; said she.</p>
+<p>The Colonel standing by the window with his
+hands in his pockets turned.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And why not?&#8221; said he. &#8220;The girl&#8217;s a lady, and
+you told me she was not badly off. Silas might have
+done worse it seems to me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Done worse! He couldn&#8217;t have done worse.
+I&#8217;d sooner see her dead in her coffin than married to
+Silas&mdash;There, you have it plain and straight. He&#8217;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&#8217;ve brought
+him up, he was crazy wild to start with and you&#8217;ve
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_289' name='page_289'></a>289</span>
+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&#8217;t say he acts like that from
+any double dealing motive, it&#8217;s just the old southern
+tradition he&#8217;s inherited; he does respect you, and I
+daresay he&#8217;s fond of you, but he respects nothing
+else, especially women. I know him. And I know
+her, and he&#8217;ll make her life a misery. If he&#8217;d left
+her alone she&#8217;d have been happy. Richard loves
+her, and would have made her a good husband.
+My mind was set on it, and now it&#8217;s all over.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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&mdash;This especial woman too was
+part of the past and privileged.</p>
+<p>He came to her and stood beside her and rested
+his hand on her shoulder.</p>
+<p>&#8220;My dear Maria,&#8221; said the Colonel, &#8220;youth is
+youth&mdash;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?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I will stay,&#8221; said Miss Pinckney.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_290' name='page_290'></a>290</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>At eleven o&#8217;clock that night, just as Miss
+Pinckney was on the point of retiring to bed
+the news came in the form of Phyl herself.</p>
+<p>She arrived in a buggy driven by the farmer who
+owned the land through which the grass road ran.</p>
+<p>She gave a little glad cry when she saw Miss
+Pinckney and ran into her arms.</p>
+<p>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 phaëton, how he
+had upset it and smashed it, how she had sheltered
+in the cabin whilst he went in search of help.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then I went to sleep,&#8221; said Phyl, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Thank God it is all over and you are back,&#8221; said
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_291' name='page_291'></a>291</span>
+Miss Pinckney. &#8220;But oh, Phyl! what made you do
+it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; said Phyl.</p>
+<p>But Miss Pinckney did.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Listen,&#8221; said she. &#8220;You know what I told you
+about Richard and Frances Rhett&mdash;that&#8217;s all done
+with. He has broken off the engagement.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Phyl flushed, then she hid her burning face on
+Miss Pinckney&#8217;s shoulder.</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney held her for awhile. Then she
+began to talk.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We will get right back to-morrow early; no one
+knows anything and I&#8217;ll take care they never do.
+Well, it&#8217;s strange&mdash;I can understand everything but
+I can&#8217;t understand that crazy creature. What&#8217;s become
+of him? That&#8217;s what I want to know.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>This is what had become of him.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>He recognised it as the deadliest snake in the
+South.</p>
+<p>For a moment he recognised nothing else but the
+fact that he had been bitten.</p>
+<p>His passion and desire had vanished utterly.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_292' name='page_292'></a>292</span>
+Phyl might have been a thousand miles away from
+him for all that he thought of her.</p>
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>The poison already had hold of him.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>And every one would pity him with that shuddering
+pity people extend to those who meet with a
+horrible form of death.</p>
+<p>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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_293' name='page_293'></a>293</span></p>
+<p>He turned from the road to the left and walked
+away among the trees.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_294' name='page_294'></a>294</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>Miss Pinckney and Phyl left Grangersons
+next morning at seven o&#8217;clock to return to
+Charleston.</p>
+<p>During the night the Colonel had sent after the
+horses and they had been captured and brought
+back. The broken phaëton was left for the present.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll make Silas go and fetch it himself when he
+comes back,&#8221; said the Colonel. &#8220;I reckon the exercise
+will do him good.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do,&#8221; said Miss Pinckney, &#8220;and then send him
+on to me. I reckon what I&#8217;ll give him will help him
+to forget the exercise.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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&#8217;s stupidity in going with Silas.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>She shut the door and faced him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Richard,&#8221; said Miss Pinckney, &#8220;Seth Grangerson
+is as well as you are. I didn&#8217;t go to see him
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_295' name='page_295'></a>295</span>
+because he was ill, I went because of Phyl. She did
+a stupid thing and I went to set matters right.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She explained the whole affair. How Phyl had
+met Silas, how he had persuaded her to get into the
+phaëton 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.</p>
+<p>Miss Pinckney, however, was quite unconscious
+of the fact that Silas Grangerson had attempted to
+take Richard Pinckney&#8217;s life on the night of the
+Rhetts&#8217; dance.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was unwise of her,&#8221; he said at last, turning
+away to the window and looking out.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Most,&#8221; replied she, &#8220;but you cannot put old
+heads on young shoulders. Well, there, it&#8217;s over
+and done with and there&#8217;s no more to be said.
+Well, I must go up and change before luncheon.
+You are having luncheon here?&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_296' name='page_296'></a>296</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said he, &#8220;I have to meet a man at the club.
+I only just ran in to see if you were back.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He went off and that day Miss Pinckney and Phyl
+had luncheon alone.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_297' name='page_297'></a>297</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>When in this condition he shewed nothing of his
+feelings except towards the person against whom he
+was in wrath.</p>
+<p>Towards them he exhibited the two main characteristics
+of the North Pole&mdash;Distance and Ice.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Yet day after day passed without bringing the
+slightest change in Richard Pinckney.</p>
+<p>That gentleman after many debates with himself
+had arrived at the determination against will,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_298' name='page_298'></a>298</span>
+against reason, against Love, and against nature to
+have nothing more to do with Phyl.</p>
+<p>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&mdash;one dollar. The will being unwitnessed&mdash;that
+was the sort of man he was&mdash;did not hold; all
+the same, it held an unsuspected part of his character
+up for public inspection.</p>
+<p>Richard, incapable of such an act, still had Pepper
+Pinckney for an ancestor. Ancestors leave us
+more than their pictures.</p>
+<p>Having come to this momentous decision, he arrived
+at another.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>But to Phyl it seemed that the end of the world
+had come.</p>
+<p>All that day she scarcely spoke except to Miss
+Pinckney. She was like a person stunned by some
+calamity.</p>
+<p>Richard Pinckney, notwithstanding the fact that
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_299' name='page_299'></a>299</span>
+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&#8217;s. Sorrow attracts sorrow. Juliet had always
+seemed more than a friend, more than a sister,
+even.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_300' name='page_300'></a>300</span>
+an armchair close to the table and the lamp she
+sat down, undid the ribbon and began to read the
+letters.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>The chimes of St. Michael&#8217;s came through the
+open window but they were unheeded.</p>
+<p>When she had read through all the letters she
+picked out one. The one containing the passionate
+declaration of Juliet&#8217;s love.</p>
+<p>She re-read it and then placed it on the table on
+top of the others.</p>
+<p>If she could speak of Richard like that!</p>
+<p>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 &#8220;I love you,&#8221; that the initiative is
+taken out of her hands.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;s side. With the recognition
+came the impulse to over jump it.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_301' name='page_301'></a>301</span>
+would say to him simply the truth, &#8220;I love you.&#8221;
+If he were to turn away or repulse her it would kill
+her. No matter, life was absolutely nothing.</p>
+<p>She rose from her chair and was just on the point
+of turning to the door when something checked her.</p>
+<p>It was the clock of St. Michael&#8217;s striking one.</p>
+<p>One o&#8217;clock. The whole household would be in
+bed. He would have retired to his room long ago&mdash;and
+to-morrow it would be too late.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>She sat down again in the chair.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>The clock of St. Michael&#8217;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_302' name='page_302'></a>302</span>
+what she was about to do. She carefully extinguished
+the lamp and then led by the moonlight came
+out on to the piazza.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>As she stood with one hand on the piazza rail,
+suddenly, far away but shrill, came the crowing of
+a cock.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;s bedroom.</p>
+<p>The window was open and, pushing the curtains
+aside, she went in.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_303' name='page_303'></a>303</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>But he did not fall asleep. As a rule he slept at
+once on lying down, but to-night he lay awake.</p>
+<p>He was miserable; going away was death to him,
+but he was going.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&mdash;all the miserable devils that march under
+the leadership of Pique.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_304' name='page_304'></a>304</span></p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>He was not angry with her now, so he told himself&mdash;just
+disgusted.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile he could not sleep. The faithful St.
+Michael&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>St. Michael&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Nothing could be more ghostly, more terrible, and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_305' name='page_305'></a>305</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>Then her lips withdrew and he lay praying to
+God, as few men have ever prayed, that she might
+not wake.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>It was not from Phyl. That letter had been written
+many, many years ago, the ink was faded and
+the handwriting of another day.</p>
+<p>He read it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;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....</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sometimes I feel as if I were deceiving him and
+everybody. I am, and I don&#8217;t care. Oh, my darling!
+my darling! my darling! If the whole world
+were against you I would love you all the more. I
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_306' name='page_306'></a>306</span>
+will love you all my life, and I will love you when
+I am dead.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was the letter of Juliet to her lover.</p>
+<p>He turned it over and looked at the seal with the
+little dove upon it. He knew of Juliet&#8217;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.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>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&#8217;clock and
+the blue, lazy, lovely morning was unfolding like a
+flower to the sea wind.</p>
+<p>Richard Pinckney was standing in the piazza before
+his bedroom window looking down into the
+garden.</p>
+<p>To him suddenly appeared Seth.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you please, sah,&#8221; said Seth, &#8220;Rachel tole me
+tell yo&#8217; de train for N&#8217;York&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Damn New York,&#8221; said Pinckney. &#8220;Get out.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Seth vanished, grinning, and he returned to his
+contemplation of the garden.</p>
+<p>She must never know.&mdash;In the years to come,
+perhaps, he might tell her&mdash; In the years to
+come&mdash;</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_307' name='page_307'></a>307</span>
+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:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Phyl!&#8221;</p>
+<p>She started, turned, and looked up.</p>
+<div class='ce'>
+<p>THE END</p>
+</div>
+
+<!-- generated by ppgen.rb version: 2.31 -->
+<!-- timestamp: Tue Oct 21 10:01:19 -0400 2008 -->
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
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+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ghost Girl, by H. De Vere Stacpoole
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+</body>
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@@ -0,0 +1,8937 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ghost Girl, by H. De Vere Stacpoole
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Ghost Girl
+
+Author: H. De Vere Stacpoole
+
+Release Date: October 21, 2008 [EBook #26986]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GHOST GIRL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GHOST GIRL
+
+
+
+
+BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+Sea Plunder         $1.30 net
+The Gold Trail      $1.30 net
+The Pearl Fishers   $1.30 net
+The Presentation    $1.30 net
+The New Optimism    $1.00 net
+Poppyland           $2.00 net
+
+The Poems of Francois Villon
+Translated by
+H. DE VERE STACPOOLE
+
+Boards              $3.00 net
+Half Morocco        $7.50 net
+
+
+
+
+THE GHOST GIRL
+
+BY
+H. DE VERE STACPOOLE
+
+AUTHOR OF
+"THE MAN WHO LOST HIMSELF," "SEA PLUNDER,"
+"THE PEARL FISHERS," "THE GOLD TRAIL," ETC.
+
+NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
+LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
+TORONTO: S. B GUNDY--MCMXVIII
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1918
+By JOHN LANE COMPANY
+
+PRESS OF
+VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY
+BINGHAMTON, N. Y.
+U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+THE GHOST GIRL
+
+PART I
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+It was a warm, grey, moist evening, typical Irish weather, and Miss
+Berknowles was curled up in a window-seat of the library reading a book.
+Kilgobbin Park lay outside with the rooks cawing in the trees, miles of
+park land across which the dusk was coming, blotting out all things from
+Arranakilty to the Slieve Bloom Mountains.
+
+The turf fire burning on the great hearth threw out a rich steady glow
+that touched the black oak panelling of the room, the book backs, and the
+long-nosed face of Sir Nicholas Berknowles "attributed to Lely" and
+looking down at his last descendant from a dusty canvas on the opposite
+wall.
+
+The girl made a prettier picture. Red hair when it is of the right colour
+is lovely, and Phylice Berknowles' hair was of the right red, worn in a
+tail--she was only fifteen--so long that she could bite the end with ease
+and comfort when she was in a meditative mood, a habit of perdition that
+no schoolmistress could break her of.
+
+She was biting her tail now as she read, up to her eyes in the marvellous
+story of the Gold Bug, and now, unable to read any more by the light from
+the window, she came to the fire, curled herself on the hearthrug and
+continued the adventures of the treasure-seekers by the light of the
+burning turf.
+
+What a pretty face it was, seen by the full warm glow of the turf, and
+what a perfectly shaped head! It was not the face and head of a Berknowles
+as you could easily have perceived had you compared it with the portraits
+in the picture gallery, but of a Mascarene.
+
+Phyl's mother had been a Mascarene, a member of the old, adventurous
+family that settled in Virginia when Virginia was a wilderness and spread
+its branches through the Carolinas when the Planter was king of the South.
+Red hair had run among the Mascarenes, red hair and a wild spirit that
+brooked no contradiction and knew no fear. Phyl had inherited something of
+this restless and daring spirit. She had run away from the Rottingdean
+Academy for the Daughters of the Nobility and Gentry where she had been
+sent at the age of twelve; making her way back to Ireland like a homing
+pigeon, she had turned up one morning at breakfast time, quite unshaken by
+her experiences of travel and with the announcement that she did not like
+school.
+
+Had her mother been alive the traveller would have been promptly returned,
+but Phyl's father, good, easy man, was too much taken up with agrarian
+disputes, hunting, and the affairs of country life to bother much about
+the small affair of his daughter's future and education. He accepted her
+rejection of his plans, wrote a letter of apology to the Rottingdean
+Academy, and hired a governess for her. She wore out three in eighteen
+months, declared herself dissatisfied with governesses and competent to
+finish the process of educating and polishing herself.
+
+This she did with the aid of all the books in the library, old Dunn, the
+rat-catcher of Arranakilty, a man profoundly versed in the habits of
+rodents and birds, Larry the groom, and sundry others of low estate but
+high intelligence in matters of sport and woodcraft.
+
+Now it might be imagined from the foregoing that hardihood,
+self-assertion, and other unpleasant characteristics would be indicated in
+the manner and personality of this lover of freedom and rebel against
+restraint. Not at all. She was a most lovable and clinging person, when
+she could get hold of anything worth clinging to, with a mellifluous Irish
+voice at once soothing and distracting, a voice with pockets in it but not
+a trace of a brogue or only the very faintest suspicion. Yet when she
+spoke she had the Irish turn of words and she used the word "sure" in a
+manner strange to the English.
+
+She had reached the point in the "Gold Bug" where Jupp is threatening to
+beat Legrand, when, laying the book down beside her on the hearthrug, she
+sat with her hands clasping her knees and her eyes fixed on the fire.
+
+The tale had suddenly lost interest. She was thinking of her dead father,
+the big, hearty man who had gone to America only eight weeks ago and who
+would never return. He had gone on a visit to some of his wife's people,
+fallen ill, and died.
+
+Phyl could not understand it at all. She had cried her heart out amongst
+the ruins of her little world, but she could not understand why it had
+been ruined, or what her father had done to be killed like that, or what
+she had done to deserve such misery. The Reverend Peter Graham of
+Arranakilty could explain nothing about the matter to her understanding.
+She nearly died and then miraculously recovered. Acute grief often ends
+like that, suddenly. The mourner may be maimed for life but the sharpness
+of the pain of that dreadful, dreadful disease is gone.
+
+Phyl found herself one morning discussing rats with old Dunn, asking him
+how many he had caught in the barn and taking a vague sort of interest in
+what the old fellow was saying; books began to appeal to her again and the
+old life to run anew in a crippled sort of way. Then other things
+happened. Mr. Hennessey, the family lawyer, who had been a crony of her
+father's and who had known her from infancy, came down to Kilgobbin to
+arrange matters.
+
+It seemed that Mr. Berknowles before dying had made a will and that the
+will was being brought over from the States by Mr. Pinckney, his wife's
+cousin in whose house he had died.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know what the chap wants coming over with it for," said
+Mr. Hennessey. "He said it was by your father's request he was coming, but
+it's a long journey for a man to take at this season of the year--and I
+hope the will is all right."
+
+There was an implied distrust in his tone and an antagonism to Mr.
+Pinckney that was not without its effect on Phyl.
+
+She disliked Mr. Pinckney. She had never seen him but she disliked him all
+the same, and she feared him. She felt instinctively that this man was
+coming to make some alteration in her way of life. She did not want any
+change, she wanted to go on living just as she was with Mrs. Driscoll the
+housekeeper to look after her and all the old servants to befriend her and
+Mr. Hennessey to pay the bills.
+
+Mr. Hennessey was in the house now. He had come down that morning from
+Dublin to receive Mr. Pinckney, who was due to arrive that night.
+
+Phyl, sitting on the hearthrug, was in the act of picking up her book when
+the door opened and in came Mr. Hennessey.
+
+He had been out in the grounds overlooking things and he came to the fire
+to warm his hands, telling Phyl to sit easy and not disturb herself. Then,
+as he held a big foot to the warmth he talked down at the girl, telling
+her of what he had been about and the ruination Rafferty was letting the
+greenhouses go to.
+
+"Half-a-dozen panes of glass out--and 'I've no putty,' says he. 'Putty,'
+said I to him, 'and what's that head of yours made of?' The stoves are all
+out of order and there's a hole in one of the flues I could get my thumb
+in."
+
+"Rafferty's awfully good to the dogs," said Phyl in her mellow voice, so
+well adapted for intercession. "He may be a bit careless, but he never
+does forget to feed the animals. He's got the chickens to look after, too,
+and then there's the beagles, he knows every dog in the pack and every dog
+knows him--oh, dear, what's the good of it all!"
+
+The thought of the beagles had brought up the vision of their master who
+would never hunt with them again. Her voice became tinged with melancholy
+and Hennessey changed the subject, taking his seat in one of the armchairs
+that stood on either side of the fireplace.
+
+He was a big, loosely-made man, an easy going man with a kind heart who
+would have come to financial disaster long ago only for his partner,
+Niven.
+
+"He's almost due to be here by now," said he, taking out his watch and
+looking at it, "unless the express from Dublin is late."
+
+"What'll he be like, do you think?" said Phyl.
+
+"There's no saying," replied Mr. Hennessey. "He's an American and I've
+never had much dealings with Americans except by letter. By all accounts
+they are sharp business men, but I daresay he is all right. The thing that
+gets me is his coming over. Americans don't go thousands of miles for
+nothing, but if it's after any hanky-panky business about the property,
+maybe he'll find Jack Hennessey as sharp as any American."
+
+"He's some sort of a relation of ours," said Phyl. "Father said he was a
+sort of cousin."
+
+"On your mother's side," said Hennessey.
+
+"Yes," said Phyl. Then, after a moment's pause, "D'you know I've often
+thought of all those people over there and wondered what they were like
+and how they lived--my mother's people. Father used to talk of them
+sometimes. He said they kept slaves."
+
+"That was in the old days," said Hennessey. "The slaves are all gone long
+ago. They used to have sugar plantations and suchlike, but the war stopped
+all that."
+
+"It's funny," said Phyl, "to think that my people kept slaves--my mother's
+people--Oh, if one could only see back, see all the people that have gone
+before one so long ago-- Don't you ever feel like that?"
+
+Mr. Hennessey never had; his forebears had been liquor dealers in Athlone
+and he was content to let them lie without a too close inquisition into
+the romances of their lives.
+
+"Mr. Hennessey," said Phyl, after a moment's silence, "suppose Father has
+left Mr. Pinckney all his money--what will become of me?"
+
+"The Lord only knows," said Hennessey; "but what's been putting such
+fancies in your head?"
+
+"I don't know," replied the girl. "I was just thinking. Of course he
+wouldn't do such a thing--It's your talking of the will the last time you
+were here set me on, I suppose, but I dreamed last night Mr. Pinckney came
+and he was an American with a beard like Uncle Sam in _Punch_ last week,
+and he said Father had made a will and left him everything--he'd left him
+me as well as everything else, and the dogs and all the servants and
+Kilgobbin--then I woke up."
+
+"Well, you were dreaming nonsense," said the practical Hennessey. "A man
+can't leave his daughter away from him, though I'm half thinking there's
+many a man would be willing enough if he could."
+
+Phyl raised her head. Her quick ear had caught a sound from the avenue.
+Then the crash of wheels on gravel came from outside and her companion,
+rising hurriedly from his chair, went to the window.
+
+"That's him," said the easy-speaking Hennessey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+He left the room and Phyl, rising from the hearthrug, stood with her hand
+on the mantelpiece listening.
+
+Hennessey had left the door open and she could hear a confused noise from
+the hall, the sound of luggage being brought in, the bustle of servants
+and a murmur of voices.
+
+Then a voice that made her start.
+
+"Thanks, I can carry it myself."
+
+It was the newcomer's voice, he was being conducted to his room by
+Hennessey. It was a cheerful, youthful voice, not in the least suggestive
+of Uncle Sam with the goatee beard as depicted by the unimaginative artist
+of _Punch_. And it was a voice she had heard before, so she fancied, but
+where, she could not possibly tell--nor did she bother to think,
+dismissing the idea as a fancy.
+
+She stood listening, but heard nothing more, only the wind that had risen
+and was shaking the ivy outside the windows.
+
+Byrne, the old manservant, came in and lit the lamps and then after a few
+minutes Hennessey entered. He looked cheerful.
+
+"He seems all right and he'll be down in a minute," said the lawyer; "not
+a bit of harm in him, though I haven't had time to tackle him over money
+affairs."
+
+"How old is he?" asked the girl.
+
+"Old! Why, he's only a boy, but he's got all a man's ways with him--he's
+American, they're like that. I've heard say the American children order
+their own mothers and fathers about and drive their own motor-cars and
+gamble on the Stock Exchange." He pulled out his watch and looked at it;
+it pointed to ten minutes past seven; then he lit a cigar and sat smoking
+and smoking without a word whilst Phyl sat thinking and staring at the
+fire. They were seated like this when the door opened and Byrne shewed in
+Mr. Pinckney.
+
+Hennessey had called him a boy. He was not that. He was twenty-two years
+of age, yet he looked only twenty and you would not have been particularly
+surprised if you had been told that he was only nineteen. Good-looking,
+well-groomed and well-dressed, he made a pleasant picture, and as he came
+across the room to greet Phyl he explained without speaking what Mr.
+Hennessey meant about "all the manners of a man."
+
+Pinckney's manner was the manner of a man of the world of thirty,
+easy-going, assured, and decided.
+
+He shook hands with Phyl as Hennessey introduced them, and then stood with
+his back to the fireplace talking, as she took her seat in the armchair on
+the right, whilst the lawyer remained standing, hands in pockets and foot
+on the left corner of the fender.
+
+The newcomer did most of the talking. By a downward glance every now and
+then he included Phyl in the conversation, but he addressed most of his
+remarks to Mr. Hennessey.
+
+"And you came over by the Holyhead route?" said the lawyer.
+
+"I did," replied Pinckney.
+
+"And what did you think of Kingstown?"
+
+"Well, upon my word, I saw less of it than of a gentleman with long hair
+and a bundle of newspapers under his arm who received me like a mother
+just as I landed, hypnotised me into buying half-a-dozen newspapers and
+started me off for Dublin with his blessing."
+
+"That was Davy Stevens," said Phyl, speaking for the first time.
+
+Pinckney's entrance had produced upon her the same effect as his voice.
+
+You know the feeling that some places produce on the mind when first
+seen--
+
+                  "I have been here before
+                  But when or how I cannot tell
+                  I know the lights along the shore--"
+
+It seemed to her that she had known Pinckney and had met him in some
+place, but when or how she could not possibly remember. The feeling had
+almost worn off now. It had thrilled her, but the thrill had vanished and
+the concrete personality of the man was dominating her mind--and not very
+pleasantly.
+
+There was nothing in his manner or his words to give offence; he was quite
+pleasant and nice but--but--well, it was almost as though she had met some
+one whom she had known and liked and who had changed.
+
+The little jump of the heart that his voice caused in her had been
+followed by a chill. His manner displeased her vaguely. He seemed so
+assured, so every day, so cold.
+
+It seemed to her that not only did he hold his entertainers at a critical
+distance, but that he was somehow wanting in respectfulness to
+herself--Lunatic ideas, for the young man could not possibly have been
+more cordial towards two utter strangers and as for respectfulness, one
+does not treat a girl in a pigtail exactly as one treats a full-grown
+woman.
+
+"Oh, Davy Stevens, was it?" said Pinckney, glancing down at Phyl. "Well, I
+never knew the meaning of peaceful persuasion till he had sold out his
+stock on me. Now in the States that man would likely have been President
+by this--Things grow quicker over there."
+
+"And what did you think of Dublin?" asked Hennessey.
+
+"Well," said the young man, "the two things that struck me most about
+Dublin were the dirt and the want of taxicabs."
+
+A dead silence followed this remark.
+
+Never tell an Irishman that Dublin is dirty.
+
+Hennessey was dumb, and as for Phyl, she knew now that she hated this
+man.
+
+"Of course," went on the other, "it's a fine old city and I'm not sure
+that I would alter it or even brush it up. I should think it's pretty much
+the same to-day as when Lever wrote of it. It's a survival of the past,
+like Nuremberg. All the same, one doesn't want to live in a survival of
+the past--does one?"
+
+"I've lived there a good many years," said Hennessey; "and I've managed to
+survive it. It's not Chicago, of course; it's just Dublin, and it doesn't
+pretend to be anything else."
+
+"Just so," said Pinckney. He felt that he had put his foot in it;
+recalling his own lightly spoken words he felt shocked at his want of
+tact, and he was casting about for something to say about the sacred city
+of a friendly nature but not too fulsome, when Byrne opened the door and
+announced that dinner was served.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Phyl led the way and they crossed the hall to the dining-room, a room
+oak-panelled like the library and warm with the light of fire and
+candles.
+
+Once upon a time there had been high doings in this sombre room, hunt
+breakfasts and dinners, rousing songs, laughter, and the toasting of
+pretty women--now dust and ashes.
+
+Here highly coloured gentlemen had slept the sleep of the just, under the
+table, whilst the ladies waited in vain for them in the drawing-room, here
+Colonel Berknowles had drunk a glass of mulled wine on that black morning
+over a hundred-and-thirty years ago when he went out with Councillor
+Kinsella and shot him through the lungs by the Round House on the
+Arranakilty Road. The diminutive Tom Moore had sung his songs here "put
+standing on the table" by the other guests, and the great Dan had held
+forth and the wind had dashed the ivy against the windows just as it did
+to-night with fist-fulls of rain from the Slieve Bloom Mountains. Byrne
+had put the big silver candlesticks on the table in honour of the guest,
+and he now appeared bearing in front of him a huge dish with a cover a
+size too small for it.
+
+He placed the dish before Mr. Hennessey and removed the cover, disclosing
+a cod's "head and shoulders" whilst a female servant appeared with a dish
+of potatoes boiled in their jackets and a tureen of oyster sauce.
+
+Now a cod's head and shoulders served up like this in the good old Irish
+way is, honestly, a ghastly sight. The thing has a countenance and an
+expression most forbidding and all its own.
+
+The appearance of the old dish cover, clapped on by the cook in a hurry in
+default of the proper one, had given Phyl a turn and now she was wondering
+what Mr. Pinckney was thinking of the fish and the manner of its serving.
+
+All at once and as if stimulated into life by the presence of the new
+guest, all sorts of qualms awoke in her mind. The dining arrangements of
+the better class Irish are, and always have been, rather primitive,
+haphazard, and lacking in small refinements. Phyl was conscious of the
+fact that Byrne had placed several terrible old knives on the table,
+knives that properly belonged to the kitchen, and when the second course,
+consisting of a boiled chicken, faced by a piece of bacon reposing on a
+mat of boiled cabbage, appeared, the fact that one of the dishes was
+cracked confronted her with the equally obvious fact that the cook in her
+large-hearted way had sent up the chicken with the black legs unremoved.
+
+It seemed to Phyl's vision--now thoroughly distorted--that the eyes of the
+stranger were everywhere, cool, critical, and amused; so obsessed was her
+mind with this idea that it could take no hold upon the conversation.
+Pinckney was talking of the States; he might just as well have been
+talking about Timbuctoo for all the impression he made on her with her
+unfortunate head filled with cracked dishes, chickens' black legs, Byrne's
+awkwardness and the suddenly remembered crumb-brush.
+
+It was twenty years old and it had lost half of its bristles in the
+service of the Berknowles who had clung to it with a warm-hearted tenacity
+purely Irish.
+
+"Sure, that old brush is a disgrace to the table," was the comment Phyl's
+father had made on it once, just as though he were casually referring to
+some form of the Inevitable such as the state of the weather.
+
+The disgrace had not been removed and it was coming to the table, now, in
+the hand of Byrne. Phyl watched the crumbs being swept up, she watched the
+cloth being taken off and the wine and dessert placed in the good old
+fashion, on the polished mahogany, then leaving the gentlemen to their
+wine, she retired upstairs and to her bedroom.
+
+She felt angry with Byrne, with the cook, with Mr. Hennessey and with
+herself. Plenty of people had been to dinner at Kilgobbin, yet she had
+never felt ashamed of the _menage_ till now. This stranger from over the
+water, notwithstanding her dislike for him, had the power to disturb her
+mind as few other people had disturbed it in the course of her short life.
+Other people had put her into worse tempers, other people had made her
+dislike them, but no one else had ever roused her into this feeling of
+unrest, this criticism of her belongings, this irritation against
+everything including herself.
+
+Her bedroom was a big room with two windows looking upon the park; it was
+almost in black darkness, but the windows shewed in dim, grey oblongs and
+she made her way to one of them, took her place in the window-seat and
+pressed her forehead against the glass. The rain had ceased and the clouds
+had risen, but the moon was not yet high enough to pierce them. Phyl could
+just make out the black masses of the distant woods and the movement of
+the near fir-trees shaking their tops like hearse plumes to the wind.
+
+The park always fascinated her when it was like that, almost blotted out
+by night. These shapes in the dark were akin to shapes in the fire in
+their power over the fancy of the gazer. Phyl as she watched them was
+thinking: not one word had this stranger said about her dead father.
+
+Mr. Berknowles had died in his house and this man had buried him in
+Charleston; he had come over here to Ireland on the business of the will
+and he had come into the dead man's house as unconcernedly as though it
+were an hotel, and he had laughed and talked about all sorts of things
+with never a word of Him.
+
+If Phyl had thought over the matter, she might have seen that, perhaps,
+this silence of Pinckney's was the silence of delicacy, not of
+indifference, but she was not in the humour to hold things up to the light
+of reason. She had decided to dislike this man and when the Mascarenes
+came to a decision of this sort they were hard to be shaken from it.
+
+She had decided to dislike him long before she saw him.
+
+What Phyl really wanted now was perhaps a commonsense female relative to
+stiffen her mind against fancies and give her a clear-sighted view of the
+world, but she had none. Philip Berknowles was the last of his race, the
+few distant connections he had in Ireland lived away in the south and were
+separated from him by the grand barrier that divides Ireland into two
+opposing camps--Religion. Berknowles was a Protestant, the others
+Papists.
+
+Phyl, as she sat watching saw, now, the line of the woods strengthen
+against the sky; the moon was breaking through the clouds and its light
+increasing minute by minute shewed the parkland clearly defined, the
+leafless oaks standing here and there, oaks that of a summer afternoon
+stood in ponds of shadow, the clumps of hazel, and away to the west the
+great dip, a little valley haunted by a fern-hidden river, a glen
+mysterious and secretive, holding in its heart the Druids' altar.
+
+The Druids' altar was the pride of Kilgobbin Park; it consisted of a vast
+slab of stone supported on four other stones, no man knew its origin, but
+popular imagination had hung it about with all sorts of gruesome fancies.
+Victims had been slaughtered there in the old days, a vein of ironstone in
+the great slab had become the bloodstain of men sacrificed by the Druids;
+the glen was avoided by day and there were very few of the country people
+round about who would have entered it by night. Phyl, who had no fear of
+anything, loved the place; she had known it from childhood and had been
+accustomed to take her worries and bothers there and bury them.
+
+It was a friend, places can become friends and, sometimes, most terrific
+enemies.
+
+The girl listening, now, heard voices below stairs. Hennessey and his
+companion were evidently leaving the dining-room and crossing the hall to
+the library. Going out on the landing she caught a glimpse of them as they
+stood for a moment looking at the trophies in the hall, then they went
+into the library, the door was closed, and Phyl came downstairs.
+
+In the hall she slipped on a pair of goloshes over her thin shoes, put on
+a cloak and hat and came out of the front door, closing it carefully
+behind her.
+
+To put it in her own words, she couldn't stand the house any longer. Not
+till this very evening did she feel the great change that her father's
+death had brought in her life, not till now did she fully know that her
+past was dead as well as her father, and not till she had left the house
+did the feeling come to her that Pinckney was to prove its undertaker.
+
+There was something alike cold and fateful in the impression that this man
+had made upon her, an extraordinary impression, for it would be impossible
+to imagine anything further removed from the ideas of Coldness and Fate
+than the idea of the cheerful and practical Pinckney. However, there it
+was, her heart was chilled with the thought of him and the instinctive
+knowledge that he was going to make a great alteration in her life.
+
+She crossed the gravelled drive to the grass sward beyond. The night had
+altered marvellously; nearly every vestige of cloud had vanished, blown
+away by the wind. The wind and the moon had the night between them and the
+air was balmy as the air of summer.
+
+Phyl turned and looked back at the house with all its windows glittering
+in the moonlight, then she struck across the grass now almost dried by the
+wind.
+
+Phyl had something of the night bird in her composition. She had often
+been out long before dawn to pick up night lines in the river and she knew
+the woods by dark as well as by day. She was out now for nothing but a
+breath of fresh air, she did not intend to stay more than ten minutes, and
+she was on the point of returning to the house when a cry from the woods
+made her pause.
+
+One might have fancied that some human being was crying out in agony, but
+Phyl knew that it was a fox, a fox caught in a trap. She was confirmed in
+her knowledge by the barking of its mates; they would be gathered round
+the trapped one lending all the help they could--with their voices.
+
+The girl did not pause to think; forgetting that she had no weapon with
+which to put the poor beast out of its misery, and no means of freeing it
+without being bitten, she started off at a run in the direction of the
+sound, entering the woods by a path that led through a grove of hazel;
+leaving this path she struck westward swift as an Indian along the road of
+the call.
+
+Her mother's people had been used to the wilds, and Phyl had more than a
+few drops of tracker blood in her veins; better than that, she had a trace
+of the wood instinct that leads a man about the forest and makes him able
+to strike a true line to the west or east or north or south without a
+compass.
+
+The trees were set rather sparsely here and the moonlight shewed vistas of
+withered fern. The wind had fallen, and in the vast silence of the night
+this place seemed unreal as a dream. The fox had evidently succeeded in
+liberating itself from the trap, for its cries had ceased, cut off all of
+a sudden as though by a closing door.
+
+Phyl paused to listen and look around her. Through all the night from
+here, from there, came thin traces of sound, threads fretting the silence.
+The trotting of a horse a mile away on the Arranakilty road, the bark of a
+dog from near the Round House, the shaky bleat of a sheep from the fold at
+Ross' farm came distinct yet diminished almost to vanishing point. It was
+like listening to the country sounds of Lilliput. With these came the
+vaguest whisper of flowing water, broken now and again by a little shudder
+of wind in the leafless branches of the trees.
+
+"He's out," said Phyl to herself. She was thinking of the fox. She knew
+that the trap must be somewhere about and she guessed who had set it.
+Rafferty, without a doubt, for only the other day he had been complaining
+of the foxes having raided the chickens, but there was no use in hunting
+for the thing by this light and without any indication of its exact
+whereabouts, so she struck on, determined to return to the house by the
+more open ground leading through the Druids' glen.
+
+She had been here before in the very early morning before sunrise on her
+way to the river, Rafferty following her with the fish creel, but she had
+never seen the place like this with the moonlight on it and she paused for
+a moment to rest and think, taking her seat on a piece of rock by the
+cromlech.
+
+Phyl, despite her American strain, was very Irish in one particular:
+though cheerful and healthy and without a trace of morbidness in her
+composition, she, still, was given to fits of melancholy--not depression,
+melancholy. It is in the air of Ireland, the moist warm air that feeds the
+shamrock and fills the glens with soft-throated echoes and it is in the
+soul of the people.
+
+Phyl, seated in this favourite spot of hers, where she had played as a
+child on many a warm summer's afternoon, gave herself over to the
+moonlight and the spirit of Recollection.
+
+She had forgotten Pinckney, and the strange disturbance that he had
+occasioned in her mind had sunk to rest; she was thinking of her father,
+of all the pleasant days that were no more--she remembered her dolls, the
+wax ones with staring eyes, dummies and effigies compared with that
+mysterious, soulful, sinful, frightful, old rag doll with the inked face,
+true friend in affliction and companion in joy, and even more, a Ju-ju to
+be propitiated. That thing had stirred in her a sort of religious
+sentiment, had caused in her a thrill of worship real, though faint, far
+more real than the worship of God that had been cultivated in her mind by
+her teachers. The old Druid stone had affected her child's mind in
+somewhat the same way, but with a difference. The Ju-ju was a familiar,
+she had even beaten and punched it when in a temper; the stone had always
+filled her with respect.
+
+There are some people the doors of whose minds are absolutely closed on
+the past; we call them material and practical people; there are others in
+which the doors of division are a wee crack open, or even ajar, so that
+their lives are more or less haunted by whisperings from that strange land
+we call yesterday.
+
+In some of the Burmese and Japanese children the doors stand wide open so
+that they can see themselves as they were before they passed through the
+change called death, but the Westerners are denied this. In Phyl's mind as
+a child one might suppose that through the doors ajar some recollections
+of forgotten gods once worshipped had stolen, and that the power of the
+Ju-ju and the Druids' stone lay in their power of focussing those vague
+and wandering threads of remembrance.
+
+To-night this power seemed regained, for she passed from the contemplation
+of concrete images into a vague and pleasant state, an absolute idleness
+of the intellect akin to that which people call daydreaming.
+
+With her cloak wrapped round her she sat, elbows on knees and her chin in
+the palms of her hands giving herself up to Nothing before starting to
+resume her way to the house.
+
+Sitting like this she suddenly started and turned. Some one had called
+her:
+
+"Phylice!"
+
+For a moment she fancied that it was a real voice, and then she knew that
+it was only a voice in her head, one of those sounds we hear when we are
+half asleep, one of those hails from dreamland that come now as the
+ringing of a bell that never has rung, or the call of a person who has
+never spoken.
+
+She rose up and resumed her way, striking along the glen to the open park,
+yet still the memory of that call pursued her.
+
+"Phylice!"
+
+It seemed Mr. Pinckney's voice, it _was_ his voice, she was sure of that
+now, and she amused herself by wondering why his voice had suddenly popped
+up in her head. She had been thinking about him more than about any one
+else that evening and that easily accounted for the matter. Fancy had
+mimicked him--yet why did Fancy use her name and clothe it in Pinckney's
+voice?--and it was distinctly a call, the call of a person who wishes to
+draw another person's attention.
+
+Pinckney had never called her by her name and she felt almost irritated at
+the impertinence of the phantom voice in doing so.
+
+This same irritation made her laugh when she realised it. Then the idea
+that Byrne might lock the hall door before she could get back drove every
+other thought away and she began to run, her shadow running before her
+over the moonlit grass.
+
+Half way across the sward, which was divided from the grass land proper by
+a Ha-ha, she heard the stable clock striking eleven.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+When Phyl withdrew from the dining-room, Hennessey filled his glass with
+port, Pinckney, who took no wine, lit a cigarette and the two men drew
+miles closer to one another in conversation.
+
+They were both relieved by the withdrawal of the girl, Hennessey because
+he wanted to talk business, Pinckney because her presence had affected him
+like a wet blanket.
+
+His first impression of Phyl had been delightful, then, little by little,
+her stiffness and seeming lifelessness had communicated themselves to him.
+It seemed to him that he had never met a duller or more awkward
+schoolgirl. His mind was of that quick order which requires to be caught
+in the uptake rapidly in order to shine. Slowness, coldness, dulness or
+hesitancy in others depressed him just as dull weather depressed him. He
+did not at all know with what a burning interest his arrival had been
+awaited, or the effect that his voice had produced and his first
+appearance. He did not know how the dull schoolgirl had weighed him in a
+mysterious balance which she herself did not quite comprehend and had
+found him slightly wanting. Neither could he tell the extent of the
+paralyses produced in that same mind of hers by the cracked china, the old
+dish cover, Byrne's awkwardness, and the deboshed crumb-brush.
+
+He should have kept to his first impression of her, for first impressions
+are nearly always right; he should have sought for the reason of so much
+charm proving charmless, so much positive attraction proving so negative
+in effect. But he did not. He just took her as he found her and was glad
+she was gone.
+
+"And I believe," said Hennessey, "the South is different now. It used to
+be all cotton before the war."
+
+"Oh, no," said Pinckney. "Before the war there was a lot of cotton grown
+but we used to grow other things as well, we used to feed ourselves, the
+plantation was economically independent. The war broke us. We had to get
+money, so we grew cotton as cotton was never grown before; the South
+became a great sheet of cotton. You see, cotton is the only crop you can
+mortgage, so we grew cotton and mortgaged it. Of course the old-time
+planter is gone, everything is done now by companies, and that's the devil
+of it--"
+
+Pinckney was silent for a moment and sat staring before him as though he
+were looking at the Past.
+
+"Companies, you see, don't grow sunflowers to look at, don't grow trees to
+shade them, don't make love in a wild and extravagant manner and shoot
+other companies for crossing them in their affections--don't play the
+guitar, in short.
+
+"Companies don't breed trotting horses and wear panama hats and put
+flowers in their buttonholes. The old Planter used to do these things and
+a lot of others. He was a bit of a patriarch in his way, too--well, he's
+gone and more's the pity. He's like an old house pulled down. No one can
+ever build it again as it was. The South's a big industrial region now.
+Not only cotton--ore and coal and machinery. We supply the North and East
+with pig-iron, machinery, God knows what. Berknowles was very keen on
+Southern industries, regularly bitten. He was talking of selling off here
+and coming to settle in Charleston when the illness took him-- and that
+reminds me."
+
+He took a document from his pocket. "This is the will. I've kept it on my
+person since I started for here. It's not the thing to trust to a handbag.
+It's in correct form, I believe. Temperley, our solicitor, made it out for
+him and it leaves everything to the girl when she's twenty--but just read
+it and see what you think."
+
+He lit another cigarette whilst Hennessey, putting on his glasses and
+pushing his dessert plate away, spread the will on the table.
+
+Pinckney watched him as he read it. Hennessey was a new order of being to
+him. This easy-going, slipshod, garrulous gentleman, fond of his glass of
+wine, contrasted strangely with the typical lawyer of the States. Flushed
+and not in his business mood, the man of law cast his eyes over the
+document before him, reading bits of it here and there and seeming not
+inclined to bother himself by a concentration of his full energies on the
+matter.
+
+Then, suddenly, his eyes became fixed on a paragraph which he re-read as
+though puzzled by the meaning of it. Then he looked up at the other over
+his glasses.
+
+"Why, what's this?" said he. "He has made _you_ Phyl's guardian. _You!_"
+
+Pinckney laughed.
+
+"Yes, that was the chief thing that brought me over. He has made me her
+guardian, till she's twenty, and he made me promise to look after her
+interests and see to all business arrangements. He said he had no near
+relations in Ireland, and he said that he'd sooner trust the devil than
+the few relatives he had, that they were Papists--that is to say Roman
+Catholics--he seemed to fear them like the deuce and their influence on
+the girl. I couldn't understand him. I've never seen any harm in Roman
+Catholics; there are loads in the States and they seem to be just as good
+citizens as the others, better, for they seem to stick tighter by their
+religion. Anyhow, there you are. Berknowles had them on the brain and
+nothing would do him but I must come over to look after the business
+myself."
+
+Hennessey, with his finger on the will, had been staring at Pinckney
+during this. He looked down now at the document and then up again.
+
+"But you--her guardian--why, it's absurd," said he. "You aren't old enough
+to be a guardian, why, Lord bless my soul, what'll people be doing next? A
+young chap like you to be the guardian of a girl like Phyl--why, it's not
+proper."
+
+"Not only am I to be her guardian," said Pinckney with a twinkle in his
+eyes, "but she's to come and live under my roof at Charleston. I promised
+Berknowles that--He was dying, you see, and one can refuse nothing to a
+dying man."
+
+Hennessey rose up in an abstracted sort of way, went to the sideboard,
+poured himself out a whisky and soda, took a sip, and sat down again.
+
+"Extraordinary, isn't it?" said Pinckney, tapping the ash off his
+cigarette. "All the same, you need not be worried at the impropriety of
+the business; there's none, nothing improper could live in the same house
+with my aunt, Maria Pinckney. Vernons belongs to her though I live
+there."
+
+"Vernons," put in the other. "What's that?"
+
+"It's the name of our house in Charleston. It's mine, really, but my
+father left it to Maria to live in; it comes to me at her death. I don't
+want that house at all. I want her to keep it forever, but it's such a
+pleasant old place, I like to live there instead of buying a house of my
+own. Vernons isn't exactly a house, it's more like a family
+tree--hollow--with all the ancestors inside instead of hanging on the
+branches."
+
+"But why on earth didn't Berknowles make your aunt guardian to the girl?"
+asked Hennessey. "There'd have been some sense in that--a middle-aged
+woman--"
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Pinckney, "my aunt is not a middle-aged woman,
+she's not fifteen."
+
+"Not what?" said Hennessey.
+
+"Not fifteen--in years of discretion, though she's over seventy as time
+goes. She has no knowledge at all of what money is or what money
+means--she flings it away, doesn't spend it--just flings it away on
+anything and everything but herself. I don't believe there's a charity in
+the States that hasn't squeezed her, or a beggar-man in the South that
+hasn't banked on her. She was sent into the world to grow flowers and look
+after stray dogs and be robbed by hoboes; she has been nearly seventy
+years at it and she doesn't know she has ever been robbed. She's not a
+fool by any manner of means, and she rules the servants at Vernons in the
+good old patriarchal way, but she's lost where money is concerned. That's
+why Berknowles wanted me to look after the girl's interests. As for
+anything else, I guess Maria Pinckney will be the real guardian."
+
+"Well, I don't know," said Hennessey. He was confused by all these new
+ideas shot into his mind suddenly like this after dinner, he could see
+that Pinckney was genuine enough, all the same it irritated him to think
+that Philip Berknowles should have chosen a youth like this to be second
+father to Phyl. What was the matter with himself, Hennessey? Hadn't he a
+fine house in Merrion Square and a wife who would have treated the girl
+like a daughter?
+
+"Well, I don't know," said he. "It's not for me to dispute the wishes of a
+client, but I've known Phyl since she was born and I've known her father
+since we were together at Trinity College and I'd have taken it more
+handsome if he'd left the looking after of her to me."
+
+"I wonder he didn't," said Pinckney. "He spoke of you a good deal to me,
+spoke of you as his best friend; all the same he seemed set on the idea of
+us taking care of the girl. He fell in love with Charleston and he
+cottoned to us; then, of course, there were the family reasons. Phyl's
+mother was a Mascarene; my mother was her mother's first cousin. Vernons
+belonged to the Mascarenes, my mother brought it to my father as part of
+her wedding portion. The Pinckneys' old house was lost to us in the smash
+up after the war. So, you see, Phyl ought to be as much at home at Vernons
+as I am. Funny, isn't it, how things get mixed up and old family houses
+change hands?"
+
+"And when do you want to take her away?" asked Hennessey.
+
+"Upon my word, I've never thought of that," replied the other. "I want to
+see things settled up here and to go over the accounts with you.
+Berknowles said the house had better be let--I should think it would be
+easy to find a good tenant--then I want to go to London on business and
+get back as quick as possible. She need not come back with me, it would
+scarcely give her time to get things ready. There's a Mrs. Van Dusen, a
+friend of ours who lives in New York, she's coming over in a month or so
+and Phyl might come with her as far as New York. It's all plain sailing
+after that."
+
+"Well," said Hennessey, folding up the will and putting it in his pocket.
+"I suppose it's all for the best, but it's hard lines for a man to lose
+his best friend and see a good old estate like Kilgobbin taken off to the
+States--Oh, you needn't tell me, if Phyl goes out there she's done for as
+far as Ireland is concerned. Sure, they never come back, the people that
+go there, and if she does come back it'll be with an American husband and
+he master of Kilgobbin. I know what America is, it never lets go of the
+man or woman it catches hold of."
+
+"You're not far wrong there," said Pinckney. "You see, life is set to a
+faster pace in America than over here and once you learn to step that pace
+you feel coming back here as if you were living in a country where people
+are hobbled. At least that's my experience. Then the air is different.
+There's somehow a feeling of morning in America that goes through the
+whole day--almost--here, afternoon begins somewhere about eleven."
+
+Hennessey yawned, and the two men, rising from the table, left the room
+and crossed the hall to the library.
+
+Here, after a while, Hennessey bade the other good night and departed for
+bed, whilst Pinckney, leaning back in his armchair, fell into a lazy and
+contemplative mood, his eyes wandering from point to point.
+
+All this business was very new to him. Pinckney had inherited his father's
+brains as well as his money. He had discovered that a large fortune
+requires just as much care and attention as a large garden and that a man
+can extract just as much interest and amusement and the physical health
+that comes from both, out of money-tending as out of flower and vegetable
+growing. Knowing all about cotton and nearly everything about wheat, he
+managed occasionally to do a bit of speculative dealing without the least
+danger of burning his fingers. Self-reliant and self-assured, knowing his
+road and all its turnings, he had moved through life up to this with the
+ease of a well-oiled and almost frictionless mechanism.
+
+But here was a new thing of which he had never dreamed. Here was another
+destiny suddenly thrust into his charge and another person's property to
+be conserved and dealt with. Never, never, did he dream when acceding to
+Berknowles' request, of the troubles, little difficulties and causes of
+indecision that were preparing to meet him.
+
+Up till now, one side of his character had been almost unknown to him. He
+had been quite unaware that he possessed a conscience most painfully
+sensitive with regard to the interests of others, a conscience that would
+prick him and poison his peace were he to leave even little things undone
+in the fulfilment of the trust he had undertaken so lightheartedly.
+
+Possessing a keen eye for men he began to recognise now why Berknowles had
+not chosen the easy-going Hennessey to look after Phyl and her affairs,
+and he guessed, just by the little bit he had seen of Kilgobbin and the
+servants, the slipshoddedness and waste going on behind the scenes in the
+absence of a master and mistress.
+
+Pinckney loathed waste as he loathed inefficiency and as he loathed dirt.
+They were all three brothers with Drink in his eyes and as he leaned back
+in the chair now, his gaze travelling about the room, he could not but
+perceive little things that would have brought exclamations from the soul
+of a careful housekeeper. The furniture had been upholstered, or rather
+re-upholstered in leather some five years ago. There is nothing that cries
+out so much against neglect as leather, and the chairs and couch in the
+library of Kilgobbin, without exactly crying out, still told their tale.
+Some of the buttons were gone, and some of them hung actually by the
+thread in the last stage of departure. There was a tiny triangular rent in
+the leather of the armchair wherein Phyl had been sitting and another
+armchair wanted a castor. The huge Persian rug that covered the centre of
+the floor shewed marks left by cigar and cigarette ash, and under a
+Jacobean book-case in the corner were stuffed all sorts of odds and ends,
+old paper-backed novels, a pair of old shoes, a tennis racquet and a
+boxing glove--besides other things.
+
+Pinckney rose up, went to the book-case and placed his fingers on top of
+it, then he looked at his fingers and the bar of dust upon them, brushed
+his hand clean and came back to his chair by the fire. He heard the stable
+clock striking eleven. The sound of the wind that had been raging outside
+all during dinner time had died away and the sounds of the house made
+themselves manifest, the hundred stealthy accountable and unaccountable
+little sounds that night evolves from an old house set in the stillness of
+the country. Just as the night jasmine gives up its perfume to the night,
+so does an old house its past in the form of murmurs and crackings and
+memories and suggestions. Notwithstanding Dunn's attentions there were
+rats alive in the cellars and under the boarding--and mice; the passages
+leading to the kitchen premises made a whispering gallery where murderers
+seemed consulting together if the scullery window were forgotten and left
+open--as it usually was, and boards in the uneven flooring that had been
+preparing for the act for weeks and months would suddenly "go off with a
+bang," a noise startling in the dead of night as the crack of a pistol,
+and produced, heaven knows how, but never by daylight.
+
+Even Pinckney, who did not believe in ghosts, became aware as he sat now
+by the fire that the old house was feeling for him to make him creep,
+feeling for him with its old disjointed fingers and all the artfulness of
+inanimate things.
+
+He was aware that Sir Nicholas Berknowles was looking down at him with the
+terrible patient gaze of a portrait, and he returned the gaze, trying to
+imagine what manner of man this might have been and how he had lived and
+what he had done in those old days that were once real sunlit days filled
+with people with real voices, hearts, and minds.
+
+A gentle creak as though a light step had pressed upon the flooring of the
+hall brought his mind back to reality and he was rising from his chair to
+retire for the night when a sound from outside the window made him sit
+down again. It was the sound of a step on the gravel path, a step stealthy
+and light, a real sound and no contraption of the imagination.
+
+The idea of burglars sprang up in his mind, but was dismissed; that was no
+burglar's footstep--and yet! He listened. The sound had ceased and now
+came a faint rubbing as of a hand feeling for the window followed by the
+sharp rapping of a knuckle on the glass.
+
+"Hullo," cried Pinckney, jumping to his feet and approaching the shuttered
+window. "Who's there?"
+
+"It's me," said a voice. "I'm locked out. Byrne's bolted the front door.
+Go to the hall door, will you, please, and let me in?"
+
+"Phyl," said Pinckney to himself. "Good heavens!" Then to the other, "I'm
+coming."
+
+Byrne had left a lamp lighted in the hall and the guest's candlestick
+waiting for him on the table. The lamp was sufficient to show him the
+executive side of the big front door that had been nearly battered in in
+the time of the Fenians and still possessed the ponderous locks and bars
+of a past day when the tenants of Kilgobbin had fought the pikemen of
+Arranakilty and Rupert Berknowles had hung seventeen rebels, no less, on
+the branches of the big oak "be the gates."
+
+Pinckney undid bolt and bar, turned the key in the great lock and flung
+the door open, disclosing Phyl standing in the moonlight. The contrast
+between the forbidding and ponderous door and the charming little figure
+against which it had stood as a barrier might have struck him had his mind
+been less astonished. As it was he could think of nothing but the
+strangeness of the business in hand.
+
+"Where on earth have you been?" said he.
+
+"Out in the woods," said Phyl, entering quite unconcerned and removing her
+cloak. "A fox got trapped in the woods and I went to let it out and
+couldn't find it, then that old fool Byrne locked the door; lucky you were
+up. I saw the light in the library shining through a crack in the shutters
+and knocked."
+
+Pinckney was putting up the bar and sliding the bolts. He said nothing.
+Had Phyl been another girl, he might have laughed and joked over the
+matter, but care of Phyl's well-being was now part of his business in life
+and that consideration just checked his speech. There was nothing at all
+wrong in the affair, and never for a moment did he dream of making the
+slightest remonstrance; still, the unwisdom of a young girl wandering
+about in the woods at night after trapped foxes was a patent fact which
+disturbed the mind of this guardian unto dumbness.
+
+Phyl, who was as sensitive to impressions as a radiometer to light, noted
+the silence of the other and resented it as she hung up her old hat and
+cloak. She knew nothing of the true facts of the case, she looked on
+Pinckney as a being almost of her own age, and that he should dare to
+express disapproval of an act of hers not concerning him, even by silence,
+was an intolerable insult. She knew that she loathed him now.--Prig!
+
+This was the first real meeting of these two and Fate, with the help of
+Irish temper and the Pinckney conscience, was making a fine fiasco of it.
+
+Phyl, having hung up the hat and coat, turned without a word, marched into
+the library and finding the book she had been reading that day, put it
+under her arm.
+
+"Good night," said she as she passed him in the hall.
+
+"Good night," he replied.
+
+He watched her disappearing up the stairs, stood for a moment irresolute,
+and then went into the library. He knew he had offended her and he knew
+exactly how he had offended her. There are silences that can be more
+hurting than speech--yet what could he have said? He rummaged in his mind
+to find something he might have said and could find nothing more
+appropriate than a remark about the weather and the fineness of the night.
+Yet a bald and decrepit remark like that would have been as bad almost as
+silence, for it would have ignored the main point at issue--the
+night-wandering of his ward.
+
+He sat down again for a moment in the armchair by the fireplace and began
+to wrestle with the position in which he found himself. This was a small
+business, but if Phyl in the future was to do things that he did not
+approve of it would be his plain duty to remonstrate with her. An odious
+position for youth to be placed in. How she would loathe and hate him!
+
+Pinckney, though a man of the world in many ways and a good business man,
+was still at heart a boy just as young as Phyl; even in years he was very
+little older than she, and the boy side of his mind was in full revolt at
+the job set before him by fate.
+
+Then he came to a resolution.
+
+"She can do jolly well what she pleases," said he to himself, "without my
+interference. Aunt Maria can attend to that. My business will be to look
+after her property and keep sharks off it. _I'm_ not going to set up in
+business to tell a girl what she ought or oughtn't to do--that's a woman's
+job."
+
+Satisfied with this seeming solution of the difficulty he went to bed.
+
+Meanwhile, Phyl, having marched off with the book under her arm found,
+when she reached her room, that she had forgotten a matchbox, and, too
+proud to return to the hall for one, went to bed in the dark.
+
+She lay awake for an hour, her mind obsessed by thoughts of this man who
+had suddenly stepped into her life, and who possessed such a strange power
+to disturb her being and fill it with feelings of unrest, irritation and,
+strangely enough, a vague attraction.
+
+The attraction one might fancy the iron to feel for the distant magnet, or
+the floating stick for the far-off whirlpool.
+
+Then she fell asleep and dreamed that they were at dinner and Mr.
+Hennessey was waiting at table. Her father was there and, before the dream
+converted itself into something equally fatuous she heard Pinckney's
+voice, also in the dream; he seemed looking for her in the hall and he was
+calling to her, "Phyl--Phyl!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Next morning came with a burst of sunshine and a windy, cloudless sky.
+Pinckney, dressing with his window open, could see the park with the rooks
+wheeling and cawing over the trees, whilst the warm wind brought into the
+room all sorts of winter scents on the very breath of summer.
+
+This rainy land where the snow rarely comes has all sorts of surprises of
+climate and character. Nothing is truly logical in Ireland, not even
+winter. That is what makes the place so delightful to some minds and so
+perplexing to others.
+
+Hennessey was staying for a day or two to go over accounts and explain the
+working of the estate to Pinckney.
+
+He was in the hall when the latter came down, and gave him good morning.
+
+"Where's your mistress?" said Hennessey to old Byrne, as they took their
+seats at the breakfast table.
+
+"Faith, she's been out since six," said Byrne. "She came down threatenin'
+to skin Rafferty alive for layin' fox thraps in the woods, then she had a
+bite of bread and butter and a cup of tea Norah made for her, and off she
+went with Rafferty to hunt out the thraps and take them up. It's little
+she cares for breakfast."
+
+"I was the same way myself when I was her age," said Hennessey to
+Pinckney. "Up at four in the morning and out fishing in Dublin Bay--it's
+well to be young."
+
+"Look here," said the young man, as Byrne left the room, "she was out till
+eleven last night in the woods; she knocked me up as I was sitting in the
+library and I let her in. _I_ don't see anything wrong in the business,
+but all the same, it's not a particularly safe proceeding and I suppose a
+mother or father would have jawed her--I couldn't. I suppose I showed by
+my manner that I didn't approve of her being out so late, for she seemed
+in a huff as she went up to bed. My position is a bit difficult, but I'm
+hanged if I'm going to do the heavy father or careful mother business. If
+she was only a boy, I could talk to her like a Dutch uncle, but I don't
+know anything about girls. I wish--"
+
+Pinckney's wish remained forever unexpressed, for at the moment the door
+opened and in came Phyl.
+
+Her face was glowing with the morning air and she seemed to have forgotten
+the business of the night before as she greeted Pinckney and the lawyer
+and took her place at the table.
+
+"Phyl," said the lawyer, half jocularly, "here's Mr. Pinckney been
+complaining that you were wandering about all night in the woods, knocking
+him up to let you in at two o'clock in the morning."
+
+Phyl, who was helping herself to bacon, looked up at Pinckney.
+
+"Oh, you cad," said her eyes. Then she spoke:
+
+"I came in at eleven. If I had known, I would have called up Byrne or one
+of the servants to let me in."
+
+Pinckney could have slain Hennessey.
+
+"Good gracious," he said. "_I_ wasn't complaining. I only just mentioned
+the fact."
+
+"The fact that I was out till two," said Phyl, with another upward glance
+of scorn.
+
+"I never said any such thing. I said eleven."
+
+"It was my loose way of speaking; but, sure, what's the good of getting
+out of temper?" put in Hennessey. "Mr. Pinckney wasn't meaning anything,
+but you see, Phyl, it's just this way, your father has made him your
+guardian."
+
+"My _what!_" cried the girl.
+
+"_Oh_, Lord!" said Pinckney, in despair at the blundering way of the
+other. Then finding himself again and the saving vein of humour, without
+which man is just a leaden figure:
+
+"Yes, that's it. I'm your guardian. You must on no account go out without
+my permission, or cough or sneeze without a written permit--Oh, Phyl,
+don't be thinking nonsense of that sort. I _am_ your guardian, it seems,
+and by your father's special request, but you are absolutely free to do as
+you like."
+
+"A nice sort of guardian," put in Hennessey with a grin.
+
+"I am only, really, guardian of your money and your interests," went on
+the other, "and your welfare. When you came in last night late, I was a
+bit taken aback and I thought--as a matter of fact, I thought it might be
+dangerous being out alone in this wild part of the country so late at
+night, but I did not want to interfere; you can understand, can't you?
+What I want you to get out of your mind is, that I am that odious thing, a
+meddling person. I'm not."
+
+Phyl was very white. She had risen from the table and was at the window.
+
+Here was her dream come true of the bearded American who had suddenly
+appeared to claim her and Kilgobbin and the servants and everything.
+
+Pinckney had not a beard, but he was an American and he had come to claim
+everything. The word guardian carried such a force and weight and was so
+filled with fantastic possibilities to the mind of Phyl, that she scarcely
+heard his soft words and excuses.
+
+Phyl had the Irish trick of running away with ideas and embroidering the
+most palpable truths with fancies. It was an inheritance from her father,
+and she stood by the window now unable to speak, with the word "Guardian"
+ringing in her ears and the idea pressing on her mind like an incubus.
+
+Hennessey had risen up. He was the first to break silence.
+
+"There's no use in meeting troubles half way," said he vaguely. "You and
+Phyl will get along all right when you know each other better. Come out,
+the two of you, and we'll go round the grounds and you will be able to see
+for yourself the state of the house and what repairs are wanting."
+
+"One moment," said Pinckney. "I want to tell Phyl something--I'm going to
+call you Phyl because I'm your guardian--d'you mind?"
+
+"No," said Phyl, "you can call me anything you like, I suppose."
+
+"I'm not going to call you anything I like--just Phyl-- Well, then, I want
+to tell you what we have to do. It's not my wishes I have to carry out but
+your father's. He wanted to let this house."
+
+"Let Kilgobbin!"
+
+"Yes, that is what he said. He wanted to let it to a good tenant who would
+look after it till you are of age. I think he was right. You see, you
+could not live here all alone, and if the place was shut up it would
+deteriorate."
+
+"It would go to wrack and ruin," said Hennessey.
+
+"And the servants?" said Phyl.
+
+"We will look after them," said Pinckney, "the new tenant might take them
+on; if not, we'll give them time to get new places."
+
+"Byrne's been here before I was born," said the girl, with dry lips, "so
+has Mrs. Driscoll. They are part of the place; it would ruin their lives
+to send them away."
+
+"Well," said Pinckney, "I don't want to be the ogre to ruin their lives;
+you can do anything you like about them. If the new tenant didn't take
+them, you might pension them. I want you to be perfectly happy in your
+mind and I want you to feel that though I am, so to speak, the guardian of
+your money, still, that money is yours."
+
+She was beginning to understand now that not only was he striving to
+soothe her feelings and propitiate her, but that he was very much in
+earnest in this business, and crowding through her mind came a great wave
+of revulsion against herself.
+
+Phyl's nature was such that whilst always ready to fly into wrath and
+easily moved to bitter resentment, one touch of kindness, one soft word,
+had the power to disarm her.
+
+One soft word from an antagonist had the power to wound her far more than
+a dozen words of bitterness.
+
+Filled now with absolutely superfluous self-reproach, she stood for a
+moment unable to speak. Then she said, raising her eyes to his:
+
+"I am sure you mean to do what is for the best.--It was stupid of me--"
+
+"Not a bit," said the other, cheerfully. "I want to do the things that
+will make you happy--that's all. I'm a business man and I know the value
+of money. Money is just worth the amount of happiness it brings."
+
+"Faith, that's true," said Hennessey, who had taken his seat again and was
+in the act of lighting a cigar.
+
+"When I was a boy," went on the other. "I was always kept hard up by my
+father. It was like pulling gum teeth to get the price of a fishing rod
+out of him. When I think of all the fun I might have bought with a few
+dollars, it makes me wild. You can't buy fun when you get old; you may buy
+an opera house or a yacht, but you can't buy the real stuff that makes
+life worth living."
+
+Phyl glanced out of the window at the park, then as though she had found
+some inspiration there, she turned to Pinckney.
+
+"If you don't mind about the money, then why don't you let me live here
+instead of letting the place? I can live here by myself and I would be
+happy here. I won't be happy if I leave it."
+
+"Well," said Pinckney, "there's your father's wish, first of all."
+
+"I'm sure if he knew how I felt, he wouldn't mind," said Phyl mournfully,
+turning her gaze again to the park.
+
+"On top of that," went on Pinckney, "there's--your age. Phyl, it wouldn't
+ever do; it's not I that am saying it, it's custom, the world, society."
+
+Phyl, like the hooked salmon that has taken the gaudy fly, felt a check
+and recognised that a Power had her in hand, recognised in the light-going
+and fair-speaking Pinckney something of adamant, a will not to be broken
+or bent.
+
+She felt for a moment a revolt against herself for having fallen to the
+lure and allowed herself to come to friendly terms with him. Then this
+feeling faded a bit. The very young are very weak in the face of
+constituted authority--besides, there was always at the back of Pinckney
+her father's wish.
+
+"And then again, on top of that," he went on, "there's the question of
+your coming to live with us; your father wished it."
+
+"In America!" cried Phyl. "Do you mean I am to live in America?"
+
+"Well, we live there; why not? It's not a bad place to live in--and what
+else are you to do?"
+
+She could not answer him. This time she saw that the bogey man had got her
+and no mistake. America to her seemed as far as the moon and far less
+familiar. If Pinckney had declared that it was necessary for her to die,
+she would have been a great deal more frightened, but the prospect would
+not have seemed much more desolate and forbidding and final.
+
+He saw at once the trouble in her mind and guessed the cause. He had a
+rare intuition for reading minds, and it seemed to him he could read
+Phyl's as easily as though the outside of her head were clear glass--he
+had cause to modify this cocksure opinion later on.
+
+"Don't worry," he said. "If you don't like America when you see it, you
+can come back to Ireland. I daresay we can arrange something; anyhow,
+don't let us meet troubles half way."
+
+"When am I to go?" said Phyl.
+
+"Sure, Phyl, you can stay as long as you like with us," said Mr.
+Hennessey. "The doors of 10, Merrion Square, are always open to you, and
+never will they be shut on you except behind your back."
+
+Pinckney laughed; and a servant coming in to clear the breakfast things,
+Hennessey led the way from the room to show Pinckney the premises.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+They crossed the hall, and passing through a green-baize covered door went
+down a passage that led to the kitchen.
+
+"This is the housekeeper's room," said Hennessey, pointing to a half open
+door, "and the servants' hall is that door beyond. This is the kitchen."
+
+They paused for a moment in the great old-fashioned kitchen, with an open
+range capable of roasting a small ox, one might have fancied. Norah, the
+cook, was busy in the scullery with her sleeves tucked up, and under the
+table was seated Susie Gallagher, a small and grubby hanger-on engaged in
+the task of washing potatoes. The potatoes were beside her on the floor
+and she was washing them in a tin basin of water with the help of an old
+nail-brush.
+
+There was a horse-shoe hung up, for luck, on the wall over the range, and
+a pile of dinner plates, from last night's dinner and still unwashed,
+stood on the dresser, where also stood a half-bottle of Guinness' stout
+and a tumbler; an old setter bitch lay before the fire and a jackdaw in a
+wicker cage set up a yell at the sight of the visitors, that brought Norah
+out of the scullery to receive them, a broad smile on her face and her
+arms tucked up in her apron.
+
+"He always yells like that at the sight of tramps or stray people about,"
+apologised the cook. "He's better than a watch-dog. Hold your tongue, you
+baste; don't you know your misthress when you see her?"
+
+"Rafferty caught him in the park," said Phyl, "and cut his tongue with a
+sixpence so as to make him able to speak."
+
+They left the kitchen and came into the yard. A big tin can of refuse was
+standing by the kitchen door, and on top of all sorts of rubbish, potato
+peelings, cabbage stalks and so forth, lay the carcass of a boiled fowl.
+It was the fowl they had dined off the night before and it lay there just
+as it had gone from the table, that is to say, minus both wings and the
+greater part of the breast, but with the legs intact.
+
+Pinckney stared at this sinful sight. Then he pointed to it.
+
+"What's that doing there?" he asked.
+
+"Waitin' to be took away be the stable boy, sor," replied the cook, who
+had followed them to the door. "All the rubbish is took away in that ould
+can every mornin'."
+
+"Good God!" said Pinckney under his breath. The expression was shaken out
+of him, so to speak, and out of a pocket of his character which had never
+been fully explored, of whose existence, indeed, he was not particularly
+aware. This Irish expedition was to show him a good many things in life
+and in himself of which up to this he had been in ignorance. He had never
+been brought face to face with waste, bald waste without a hat on or
+covering of any sort, before.
+
+"Haven't you any poor people about here?" he asked.
+
+"Hapes, sor."
+
+Pinckney was on the point of saying something more, but he checked
+himself, remembering that in the eyes of the servants he was here in the
+position of a guest.
+
+He followed Hennessey across to the stable yard, where Larry, the groom,
+was washing the carriage that had fetched him from the station the night
+before.
+
+"The servants won't eat chicken," said Phyl, in an apologetic way. She had
+noted everything and she guessed his thoughts. "They won't eat game
+either--and they throw things away if they don't like them--of course,
+it's wasteful, but they _do_ give things to the poor. Lots of poor people
+come here, every day nearly, but they don't care for scraps--you see, it
+_is_ insulting to give a poor person scraps, just as though they were
+animals. I remember the cook we had before Norah did it when she came
+first, and all the poor people stopped coming to the house. Said she ought
+to know better than to offer them the leavings."
+
+"Cheek!"
+
+"Well, I don't know," said Phyl. "We've done it for hundreds of years."
+
+She closed her mouth in a way she had when she did not wish to pursue a
+subject further. Despite the fact that she had made friends with Pinckney,
+she was galled by his attitude of criticism. Guardian or no guardian, he
+was a stranger; relation or no relation, he was a stranger, and what right
+had a stranger to dare to come and turn up his nose at the poor people or
+make remarks--he hadn't said a word--about the wastefulness of the
+servants?
+
+The redoubtable Rafferty was standing in the yard chewing a straw and
+watching Larry at work.
+
+Rafferty was a man of genius, who had started as a helper and odd job
+person, and had risen to the position of factotum. He had ousted the
+Scotch gardener and insinuated a relation of his own in his place. There
+was scarcely a servant about the estate that was not a relation of
+Rafferty's. Philip Berknowles had put up with a lot from Rafferty simply
+because Rafferty was an invaluable person in his way when not crossed.
+Everything went smoothly when the factotum was not interfered with. Cross
+him and there were immediate results ranging from ill-groomed horses to
+general unrest. He was a dark individual, half groom, half game-keeper in
+dress, a "wicked-looking divil," according to the description of his
+enemies, and an exceedingly foxy-looking individual in the eyes of
+Pinckney.
+
+"Rafferty," said Mr. Hennessey, "I want to show this gentleman round.
+Let's see the stables."
+
+Rafferty touched his cap and led the way, showing first the stalls and
+boxes where four or five horses were stabled, and then leading the way
+through the coach-house to the path from which opened the kitchen
+gardens.
+
+They were immense and walled in with red brick, capable, one might fancy,
+of supplying the wants of three or four houses the size of Kilgobbin.
+
+Pinckney noted this fact, also that the home farm to which the kitchen
+gardens led was apparently a prosperous and going little concern, with its
+fowls and chickens penned or loose, styes filled with grunting pigs, and
+turkeys gobbling and spreading their tails in the sun.
+
+"Who looks after all this?" asked Pinckney.
+
+"I do, sor," replied Rafferty.
+
+"What are the takings?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, sor?"
+
+"The profits, I mean. You sell these things, don't you?"
+
+"Kilgobbin isn't a farm, sor, it's a gintleman's estate."
+
+Pinckney, not at all set back by this snub, turned and looked the factotum
+in the face.
+
+"Just so," said he, "but I've never heard of gentlemen growing pigs to
+look at; peacocks, maybe, but not pigs. However, we'll have another look
+at the business later."
+
+He turned and they went on, Rafferty disturbed in his mind and much put
+about by the manner of the other in whom he began to divine something more
+than a casual guest, Phyl almost as much put out as Rafferty.
+
+The idea that the factotum might have been robbing her father right and
+left never occurred to her; even if it had, it would not have softened the
+fact that a strange hand was at work in her old home turning over things,
+inspecting them, holding them up for comment.
+
+She managed to drop behind as they left the farm yard for the paddocks,
+then turning down the yew lane that led back to the house, she ran as
+though hounds were after her, reached the house, locked herself in her
+bedroom, and flung herself on the bed in a tempest of weeping, dragging a
+pillow over her head as if to shield herself from the blows that the world
+was aiming at her.
+
+Phyl, without mother, brothers or sisters, had centred all her affection
+on her father and Kilgobbin; the servants, the place itself and all the
+things and people about it were part and parcel with her life, and the
+death of her father had intensified her love of the place and the people.
+
+If Pinckney had only known, he might have put the business of the
+inspection of the property and the dealing with the servants into other
+hands, but Pinckney was young and full of energy and business ability; he
+was full of conscientiousness and the determination to protect his ward's
+interests; he had scented a rogue in Rafferty, and at this very minute
+returning to the house with Hennessey, he was declaring his intention to
+make an overhaul of the working of the estate.
+
+Rafferty was to appear before him and produce his accounts and make
+explanations. Mrs. Driscoll was to be examined as to the expenditure,
+etc.
+
+He little knew the hornet's nest into which he was about to poke his
+finger.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+The grand inquisition began that evening after dinner--Phyl did not appear
+at dinner, alleging a headache--and Rafferty, summoned to the library, had
+to stand whilst Pinckney, seated at the table with a pen in his hand and a
+sheet of paper before him, went into the business of accounts.
+
+Mark how the unexpected occurs in life. Rafferty, who had been pilfering
+for years, selling garden produce and keeping the profits, robbing corn
+from the corn bin in the stable, poaching and selling birds and ground
+game to a dealer in Arranakilty, receiving illicit commissions and so
+forth, had on the death of his master shaken off all restraint and
+prepared for a campaign of open plunder. The very last thing he could have
+imagined was the sudden appearance of an American business man on the
+scene, armed with absolute power and possessing the eye of a hawk.
+
+"Your master asked me just before he died to look after this estate,"
+began Pinckney; "in fact, he has appointed me to act as guardian to Miss
+Berknowles, so I just want to see how things stand. Now, to begin with the
+horses. I want to know everything about the stables during the last--shall
+we say--six months. Who supplies the corn and the hay and the straw?"
+
+"I've been gettin' some from Faulkner of Arranakilty, sor, and some from
+Doyle of Bally-brack."
+
+"Don't you grow any horse food on the estate?"
+
+"We don't grow no corn, sor."
+
+"Well, hay and straw?"
+
+"You can't get straw, sor, widout you grow corn."
+
+"I know that--but how about hay--surely you grow lots of grass?"
+
+"We graze the grass, sor."
+
+"Do you let the grazing?"
+
+"Well, sor, it's this way; the masther was never very shtrict about the
+grazin'; we puts some of the horses out to grass, ourselves, and we lets
+poor folk have a bit of grazin' now and then for their cattle, though
+master was never after makin' money from the estate--"
+
+"Just so. Have you the receipted bills for the fodder during the last six
+months?"
+
+"Yes, sor. The master always sent me wid the money to pay the bills."
+
+"You have got the receipts?"
+
+"The which, sor?"
+
+"The bills receipted."
+
+"Bills, sure, what's the good of keepin' bills, sor, when the money's
+paid. I b'lave they're somewhere in an ould crock in the stable, at laste
+that's where I saw thim last."
+
+"Well," said Pinckney, "you can fetch them for me to-morrow morning, and
+now let's talk about the garden."
+
+Rafferty, not knowing what Pinckney might discover and so being unable to
+lie with confidence, had a very bad quarter of an hour over the garden.
+
+Pinckney was not a man to press another unduly, nor was he a man to haggle
+about halfpence or worry servants over small peccadillos. He knew quite
+well that grooms are grooms, and will be so as long as men are men. He
+would never have bothered about little details had Rafferty been an
+ordinary servant. He recognised in Rafferty, not a servant to be dismissed
+or corrected, but an antagonist to be fought. It was the case of the dog
+and badger. Rafferty was Graft and all it implies, Pinckney was Straight
+Dealing. And Straight Dealing knew quite well that the only way to get
+Graft by the throat is to ferret out details, no matter how small.
+
+So Rafferty was taken over details. He had to admit that he had "given
+away" some of the stuff from the garden and sold "a bit," sending it up to
+Dublin for that purpose; but he was not to be caught.
+
+"And the profits," said Pinckney. "I suppose you handed them over to Mr.
+Berknowles?"
+
+"No, sor; the master always tould me to keep any bit of money I might draa
+from anything I planted extra for me perkisites, that was the
+understandin' I had with him."
+
+"And over the farmyard, I suppose anything you could make by selling any
+extra animals you planted was your perquisite?"
+
+"Yes, sor."
+
+"Very well, Rafferty, that will do for to-night; get me those receipted
+bills to-morrow morning. Come here at ten o'clock and we will have another
+talk."
+
+Rafferty went off, feeling more comfortable in his mind.
+
+The word Perquisites might be made to cover a multitude of sins, but he
+would not have been so easy if he had known that Mrs. Driscoll had been
+called up immediately after his departure. Mrs. Driscoll was one of those
+terrible people who say nothing yet see everything; for the last year and
+a half she had been watching Rafferty; knowing it to be quite useless to
+report what she knew to her easy-going master, she had, none the less,
+kept on watching. As a result, she was now able to bring up a hard fact, a
+small hard fact more valuable than worlds of ductile evidence. Rafferty
+had "nicked"--it was the lady's expression--a brand-new lawn mower.
+
+"I declare to God, sir, I don't know what he _has_ took, for me eyes can't
+be everywhere, but I do know he's took the mower."
+
+"Why did you not tell Miss Phyl?"
+
+"I did, sir, and she only said, 'Oh, there must be a mistake--what would
+he be doin' with it,' says she. 'Sellin' it,' says I. 'Nonsense,' says
+she. You see, sir, Rafferty and she has always been hand in glove, what
+with the fishin' and shootin', and the horses and such like, and she won't
+hear a word against him."
+
+Mrs. Driscoll had called Rafferty a sly devil--he was.
+
+At eleven o'clock next morning, Phyl, crossing the stable yard with some
+sugar for the horses, met Rafferty. He was crying.
+
+"Why, what on earth's the matter, Rafferty?" asked the girl.
+
+"I've got the shove, miss," replied Rafferty, "after all me years of
+service, I'm put out to end me days in a ditch."
+
+"You mean you're discharged!" she cried. "Was it Mr. Pinckney?"
+
+"That's him," replied Rafferty. "Says he's the masther of us all. 'Out you
+get,' says he, 'or it's I that'll be callin' a p'leeceman to put you,'
+says he. Flung it in me face that I'd stolen a laan mower. Me that's ben
+on the estate man and boy for forty year. A laan mower! Sure, Miss Phyl,
+what would I be doin' with a laan mower?"
+
+Phyl turned from him and ran to the house. Pinckney and Hennessey were
+seated in the library when the door burst open and in came Phyl. Her eyes
+were bright and her lips were pale.
+
+"You told me you would keep all the servants," said she. "Rafferty tells
+me you have dismissed him."
+
+"I should think I had," said Pinckney lightly, and not gauging the mad
+disturbance of the other, "and it's lucky for him I haven't put him in
+prison."
+
+The word prison was all that was wanted to fire the mine. Pinckney stood
+for a moment aghast at the change in the girl.
+
+"I _hate_ you," she cried, coming a step closer to him. "I loathe
+you--master of us all, are you? Dare to touch any one here and I'll burn
+the house down with my own hands--you--you--"
+
+She paused for want of breath, her chest heaving and her hands clenched.
+
+Then Pinckney exploded.
+
+The good old fiery Pinckney blood was up. Oh, without any manner of doubt
+our ancestors are still able to speak, and it was old Roderick
+Pinckney--"Pepper Pinckney" was his nickname--that blazed out now. It was
+also the fire of youth answering the fire of youth.
+
+"Damn it!" he cried. "I've come here to do my best--I don't care--keep who
+you want--be robbed if you like it--I'm off--" He caught up all the sheets
+of paper he had been covering with figures and tore them across.
+
+"Beast!" cried Phyl.
+
+She rushed from the room and upstairs like a mad creature. The bang of her
+bedroom door closed the incident.
+
+"Now don't be taking on so," said Hennessey. "You've both of you lost your
+temper."
+
+"Lost my temper--maybe. I'm going all the same. Right back to the States.
+I'm off to Dublin by the next train and you'd better come and finish the
+business there. You'd better have her to stay with you in Dublin. I don't
+want to see her again. Anyhow, we'll settle all that later."
+
+"Maybe that's the best," said Hennessey. "My wife will look after her till
+she's ready to go to the States--if she wants to."
+
+"Please God she doesn't," replied the other.
+
+Phyl did not see Pinckney again. He went off to Dublin by the two-ten
+train with Hennessey, the latter promising to be back on the morrow to
+arrange things.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Dublin can never have been a cheerful city. Even in the days when the
+butchers joined in street fights and hung their antagonists when caught on
+steel hooks--like legs of mutton--the gaiety of Dublin one may fancy to
+have been more a matter of spirits than of spirit.
+
+Echoes from the days when the Parliament sat in Stephen's Green come down
+to us through the works of Charles Lever, but the riotous gaiety of the
+old days when Barrington was a judge of the Admiralty Court, the Hell Fire
+Club an institution, and Count Considine a figure in society, must be
+taken with a grain of salt.
+
+Mangan shows you the old Dublin as it was in those glorious times, and in
+the new Dublin of to-day the shade of Mangan seems still to walk arm in
+arm with the shade of Mathurin. Gloomy ghosts addicted to melancholy,
+noting with satisfaction that the streets are as dirty as ever, the old
+Public Houses still standing, that, despite the tramways--those
+extraordinary new modern inventions--the tide of life runs pretty much the
+same as of old. The ghosts of Mangan and Mathurin have never seen a taxi
+cab.
+
+Dublin at the present day is a splendid city for old ghosts to wander in
+without having their corns trodden on or their susceptibilities injured.
+Phyl had come to Dublin to live with the Hennesseys in Merrion Square.
+
+"Never shall my door be shut on you except behind your back," Hennessey
+had said, and he meant it.
+
+The girl was worth several thousand a year; had she been penniless it
+would have been just the same.
+
+You may meet many geniuses in your journey through life, many brilliant
+people, many beautiful people, many fascinating people, but you will not
+meet many friends. Hennessey belonged to the society of Friends, his wife
+was a member of the same community, and he would have been ruined only for
+his partner Niven, who was an ordinary lowdown human creature who believed
+in no one and kept the business together.
+
+On the day of her arrival at Merrion Square and during her first interview
+with Mrs. Hennessey in the large, cheerless drawing-room where
+decalcomanied flower pots lingered like relics of the Palaeolithic age of
+Art, Phyl kept herself above tears, just as a swimmer keeps his head above
+water in a choppy sea.
+
+It was all so gloomy, yet so friendly, that the mind could not openly
+revolt at the gloom; it was all so different from the wind and trees and
+freedom of Kilgobbin, and Mrs. Hennessey, whom she had only seen once
+before, was so different, on closer acquaintance, from any of the people
+she had hitherto met in her little world.
+
+Mrs. Hennessey, with a soul above dust and housekeeping, a faded woman,
+not very tidy, with an exalted air, pouring out tea from a Britannia metal
+ware teapot and talking all the time about Willy Yeates, the Irish Players
+and Lady Gregory's last play, fascinated the girl, who did not know who
+Willy Yeates was and who had never seen the Irish Players.
+
+Nor could she learn from Mrs. Hennessey. It was impossible to get a word
+in edgeways with that lady. Sometimes, indeed, during a lull in her mind
+disturbance, she would remain quiet whilst you answered some question,
+only to find that she had totally forgotten the question and was not
+listening to your reply.
+
+Phyl got so used to Mrs. Hennessey after a few days that she did not
+listen to her questions, and so the two being matched, they got on well
+together. Young people soon accommodate themselves to their surroundings,
+and in a month the girl had grown to the colour of her new life, at least,
+on the outside of her mind. It seemed to her that she had lived years in
+Merrion Square. Kilgobbin--Hennessey had managed to let the place--seemed
+a dream of her childhood. She saw no future, and rebellion was impossible;
+there was nothing to rebel against--except the dulness and greyness of
+life. No people could have been kinder than the Hennesseys; unfortunately
+they had numerous friends, and the friends of the Hennesseys did not
+appeal to Phyl.
+
+A boy in her position would have adapted himself quickly enough, and been
+hail fellow well met with Mr. Mattram, the dentist of Westland Row, or the
+young Farrels, whose father owned one of the biggest wine merchants'
+businesses in the city; but the feminine instinct told Phyl that these
+were not the sort of people from whose class she had sprung, that their
+circle was not her circle and that she had stepped down in life in some
+mysterious way. This fact was brought sharply home to her by a young
+Farrel, a male of the Farrel brood, a hobbledehoy, good-looking enough but
+with a Dublin accent and a cheeky manner.
+
+This immature wine merchant at a party given by Mrs. Hennessey had made
+love to Phyl and had tried to kiss her behind the dining-room door.
+
+The recollection of the smack in the face she had given him soothed her
+that night as she lay tossing in her bed, and it was on this night and for
+the first time since she left Kilgobbin that the recollection of Pinckney
+came before her otherwise than as a shadow. He stood with the Hennessey
+circle as his background, a bright, good-looking figure and a gentleman to
+his finger-tips.
+
+Why had she cast aside her own people--even though they were distant
+relations? What stupidity had caused her to insult Pinckney by telling him
+she hated him? She found herself asking that question without being able
+to answer it.
+
+After all that fuss at Kilgobbin and Pinckney's departure, Mr. Hennessey
+had proved to her that Rafferty was a rogue who deserved no quarter; the
+man had been dismissed, the whole business was done with and over, and
+now, looking back in cool blood, she was utterly unable to reconstruct and
+put together the reasons for the outburst of anger that had severed her
+from the one kinsman who had put out his hand to help her.
+
+She could no longer conjure up the feeling that Pinckney was an interloper
+come to break up Kilgobbin and spoil the home she had known from
+childhood.
+
+Fate had done that. Kilgobbin was gone--let to strangers; Hennessey had
+taken over her guardianship _pro tem_, and it was entirely owing to
+herself that she was in her present position. She had no right to
+criticise the friends of the Hennesseys; she had deliberately walked into
+that circle from which she felt she never could escape now.
+
+Just as Pinckney had discovered that guardianship was showing him traits
+in his character hitherto unknown to him, Phyl was discovering her woman's
+instinct as regards social matters.
+
+She recognised that once having taken her place amongst the Hennessey set,
+her position for life was fixed, as far as Ireland was concerned. She was
+branded.
+
+The Berknowles were an old family, but she was the last of them. The
+relatives living in the south could be no help to her; they were poor,
+rabid Catholics and had fallen to little account, owing to unwise
+marriages and that irresponsible fatuous apathy in affairs which is the
+dry rot of Ireland and the Irish people. They were proud as Lucifer, but
+no one was proud of them.
+
+If only Philip Berknowles had been a man to make fast friends amongst his
+own class, some of those friends might have come to his daughter's rescue
+now. But Berknowles had lived his own life since the death of his wife, an
+easy-going country gentleman in a county mostly inhabited by squireens and
+cottage folk, caring little for the _convenances_ and with no taste for
+women's society.
+
+Thoughts born of all these facts, some of which were only half understood,
+filled the mind of the girl as she lay awake with the noise of that
+raucous party ringing in her ears; and when she fell asleep, it was only
+to awake with a sense of despondency weighing upon her and the odious
+Farrel incident waiting to follow her through the day.
+
+About a week later, coming down to breakfast one morning, she found a
+letter on her plate. A letter with American stamps on it and the address,
+Miss Phylice Berknowles, Merrion Square, Dublin, Ireland, written in a
+firm, bold hand.
+
+Mrs. Hennessey was not down and Mr. Hennessey had departed for the office,
+so Phyl had the breakfast table to herself--and the letter.
+
+She knew at once whom it was from, even before she read the postmark,
+"Charleston."
+
+Pinckney, the man who had been in her thoughts during the past six or
+seven days, the man who had left Ireland righteously disgusted with her,
+the man to whom she had said, "I hate you!"
+
+The scene flashed before her as she tore the envelope open, his sudden
+blaze of anger, the way he had torn the papers up, his departure. What was
+he going to say to her now? She flushed at the thought that this thing in
+her hand might prove to be his opinion of her in cold blood, a reproof, a
+remonstrance--she opened the folded sheet--ah!
+
+  "Dear Phyl,
+
+  "Aunt Maria was greatly disappointed when I returned here without
+  you, she had quite made up her mind that you were coming back with
+  me. We both lost our temper that day, but I was the worse, for I said
+  a word I shouldn't have said, and for which I apologise. Aunt Maria
+  says it was the Pinckney temper. However that may be, we shall be
+  delighted to see you. Mrs. Van Dusen leaves on the 6th of next month.
+  I am sending all particulars to Mr. Hennessey. You could meet Mrs.
+  Van Dusen at Liverpool and go with her as far as New York. Let me
+  have a cable to know if you are coming. Pinckney, Vernons,
+  Charleston, U. S. A., is the cable address.
+
+                        "Your affectionate guardian--also cousin--
+                                                      "R. Pinckney."
+
+Then underneath, in an angular, old-fashioned hand, one of those
+handwritings we associate with crossed letters, rosewood desks, valentines
+and wafers:
+
+  "Be sure to come. I am very anxious to see you, and I only hope you
+  will like me as much as I am sure to like you.
+
+                                                   "Maria Pinckney."
+
+Phyl caught her breath back when she read this and her eyes filled with
+tears. It was the woman's voice that touched her, coming after Pinckney's
+business-like and jerky sentences.
+
+Then she sat with the letter before her, looking at the new prospect it
+had opened for her.
+
+Was Pinckney still angry, despite his talk about the Pinckney temper; had
+he written not of his own free will but at the desire of Maria Pinckney?
+She read the thing over again without finding any solution to this
+question.
+
+But one fact was clear. Maria Pinckney was genuine in her invitation.
+
+"I'll go," said Phyl.
+
+She rose up from the table as though determined then and there to start
+off for America, left the room, went upstairs and knocked at Mrs.
+Hennessey's door.
+
+That lady was sitting up in bed with a stocking tied round her throat--she
+was suffering from a slight attack of tonsilitis--and the Irish _Times_
+spread on her knees.
+
+"Mrs. Hennessey," said Phyl, "I have just had a letter from my cousins in
+America, and they want me to go out to them."
+
+"Want you to go to America!" said Mrs. Hennessey. "On a visit, I
+suppose?"
+
+"No, to stay there."
+
+"To stay in America; but what on earth do they want you to do that for?
+Who on earth would dream of leaving Dublin to live in America! It's
+extraordinary the ideas some people get hold of. Then, of course, they
+don't know, that's all that's to be said for them. It's like hearing
+people talking and talking of all the fine views abroad, and you'd think
+they'd never seen the Dargle or the Glen of the Downs; they don't know the
+beauty of their own country or haven't eyes to see it, and they must go
+raving of the Bay of Naples with Kiliney Bay a stone's throw away from
+them, and talking of Paris with Dublin outside their doors, and praising
+up foreign actors with never a word of the Irish Players. Dublin giving
+her best to them, and they with deaf ears to her music and blind eyes to
+her sons."
+
+"But, you see, Mrs. Hennessey, the Pinckneys are my relations."
+
+"Irish?" cried the good woman, absolutely unconscious of everything but
+the vision before her. "Those that can't see their own land aren't Irish.
+Mongrels is the name for them, without pride of heart or light of
+understanding."
+
+She was off.
+
+With a far, fixed gaze and her mind in a state of internal combustion, she
+seemed a thousand miles away from Phyl and her affairs, fighting the
+battles of Ireland.
+
+Phyl gathered the impression that, if she went to America Mrs. Hennessey
+would grieve less over the fact that she (Phyl) was leaving Merrion
+Square, than over the fact that she was leaving Dublin. She escaped,
+carrying this impression with her, went upstairs, dressed, and then
+started off for Mr. Hennessey's office.
+
+It was a cold, bright day and Dublin looked almost cheerful in the
+sunlight.
+
+The lawyer looked surprised when she was shown into his private room;
+then, when she had told him her business, he fumbled amongst the papers on
+his desk and produced a letter.
+
+"This is from Pinckney," said he. "It came by the same post as yours, only
+it was directed to the office. It's the same story, too. He wants you to
+go over."
+
+"I've been thinking over the whole business," said Phyl, "and I feel I
+ought to go."
+
+"Aren't you happy in Dublin?" asked he.
+
+"M'yes," answered the other. "But, you see--at least, I'm as happy as I
+suppose I'll be anywhere, only they are my people and I feel I ought to go
+to them. It's very lonely to have no people of one's own. You and Mrs.
+Hennessey have been very kind to me, and I shall always be grateful,
+but--"
+
+"But we aren't your own flesh and blood. You're right. Well, there it is.
+We'll be sorry to lose you, but, maybe, though you haven't much experience
+of the world, you've hit the nail on the head. We aren't your flesh and
+blood, and though the Pinckneys aren't much more to you, still, one drop
+of blood makes all the difference in the world. Then again, you're a cut
+above us; we're quite simple people, but the Berknowles were always in the
+Castle set and a long chalk above the Hennesseys. I was saying that to
+Norah only last night when I was reading the account of the big party at
+the Viceregal Lodge and the names of all the people that were there, and I
+said to her, 'Phyl ought to be going to parties like that by and by when
+she grows older, and we can't do much for her in that way,' and off she
+goes in a temper. 'Who's the Aberdeens?' says she. 'A lot of English
+without an Irish feather in their tails, and he opening the doors to
+visitors in his dressing gown--Castle,' she says, 'it's little Castle
+there'll be when we have a Parliament sitting in Dublin.'"
+
+"I don't want to go to parties at the Viceregal Lodge," said Phyl,
+flushing to think of what a snob she had been when only a few days back
+she had criticised the Hennesseys and their set in her own mind. These
+honest, straightforward good people were not snobs, whatever else they
+might be, and if her desire for America had been prompted solely by the
+desire to escape from the social conditions that environed her friends,
+she would now have smothered it and stamped on it. But the call from
+Charleston that had come across the water to her was an influence far more
+potent than that. That call from the country where her mother had been
+born and where her mother's people had always lived had more in it than
+the voices that carried the message.
+
+"Well," said Hennessey, "you mayn't want to go to parties now, but you
+will when you are a bit older. However, you can please yourself--Do you
+want to go to America?"
+
+"I do," said Phyl. "It's not that I want to leave you, but there is
+something that tells me I have got to go. When I read the letter first
+this morning, I was delighted to think that Mr. Pinckney was not still
+angry with me, and I liked the idea of the change, for Dublin is a bit
+dreary after Kilgobbin and--and well, I _will_ say it--I don't care for
+some of the people I have met in Dublin. But since then a new feeling has
+come over me. I think it came as I was walking down here to the office.
+It's a feeling as if something were pulling me ever so slightly, yet still
+pulling me from over there. My father said that there was more of mother
+in me than him. I remember he said that once--well, perhaps it's that. She
+came from over there."
+
+"Maybe it is," said Hennessey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+The thing was settled definitely that night, Mrs. Hennessey resisting the
+idea at first, more, one might have fancied from her talk, because the
+idea was anti-national than from love of Phyl, though, as a matter of
+fact, she was fond enough of the girl.
+
+"It's what's left Ireland what it is," went on the good lady. "Cripples
+and lunatics, that's all that's left of us with your emigration; all the
+good blood of Ireland flowing away from her and not a drop, scarcely,
+coming back."
+
+"I'll come back," said Phyl, "you need not fear about that--some day."
+
+"Ay, some day," said Mrs. Hennessey, and stared into the fire. Then the
+spirit moving her, she began to discant on things past and people
+vanished.
+
+Synge, and Oscar Wilde and Willie Wilde, who was the real genius of the
+family, only his genius "stuck in him somehow and wouldn't come out." She
+passed from people who had vanished to places that had changed, and only
+stopped when the servant came in with the announcement that supper was
+ready.
+
+Then at supper, lo and behold! she discussed the going away of Phyl, as
+though it were a matter arranged and done with and carrying her full
+consent and approval.
+
+During the weeks following, Phyl's impending journey kept Mrs. Hennessey
+busy in a spasmodic way. One might have fancied from the preparations and
+lists of things necessary that the girl was off to the wilds of New Guinea
+or some region equally destitute of shops.
+
+Hennessey remonstrated, and then let her have her way--it kept her quiet,
+and Phyl, nothing loath, spent most of her time now in shops, Tod and
+Burns, and Cannock and White's, examining patterns and being fitted,
+varying these amusements by farewell visits. She was invited out by all
+the Hennesseys' friends, the Farrels and the Rourkes, and the Longs and
+the Newlands, and the Pryces and the Oldhams, all prepared tea-parties in
+her honour, made her welcome, and made much of her, just as we make much
+of people who have not long to live.
+
+She was the girl that was going to America. She did not appreciate the
+real kindness underlying this terrible round of festivities till she was
+standing on the deck of the _Hybernia_ at Kingstown saying good-bye to
+Hennessey.
+
+Then, as the boat drew away from the Carlisle pier, as it passed the
+guardship anchorage and the batteries at the ends of the east and west
+piers, all those people from whom she had longed to escape seemed to her
+the most desirable people on earth.
+
+Bound for a world unknown, peopled with utter strangers, Ireland, beloved
+Ireland, called after her as a mother calls to her child.
+
+Oh, the loneliness! the desolation!
+
+As she stood watching the Wicklow mountains fading in the grey distance,
+she knew for the first time the meaning of those words, "Gone West"; and
+she knew what the thousands suffered who, driven from their cabins on the
+hillside or the moor, went West in the old days when the emigrant ship
+showed her tall masts in Queenstown Harbour and her bellying canvas to the
+sunset of the Atlantic.
+
+At Liverpool, she found Mrs. Van Dusen, a tall, rather good-looking,
+rather hard-looking but exceedingly fashionable individual, at the hotel
+where it was arranged they should meet.
+
+Phyl, looking like a lost dog, confused by travel and dumb from dejection,
+had little in common with this lady, nor did a rough passage across the
+Atlantic extend their knowledge of one another, for Mrs. Van Dusen
+scarcely appeared from her state-room till the evening when, the great
+ship coming to her moorings, New York sketched itself and its blazing
+skyscrapers against the gloom before the astonished eyes of Phyl.
+
+PART II
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Holyhead, Liverpool, New York, each of these stopping places had impressed
+upon Phyl the distance she was putting between herself and her home,
+making her feel that if this business was not death it was, at least, a
+very good imitation of dying.
+
+But the south-bound express from New York was to show her just what people
+may be expected to feel _after_ they are dead.
+
+America had been for Phyl little more than a geographical expression.
+"Uncle Tom's Cabin," "The Last of the Mohicans," "The Settlers in Canada"
+and "Round the World in Eighty Days," had given her pictures, and from
+these she had built up a vague land of snow and forests, log huts, plains,
+Red Indians, runaway negroes and men with bowie knives.
+
+New York had given this fantastic idea a rough joggle, the south-bound
+express tumbled it all to pieces.
+
+Forests and mountains and plains would have been familiar to her
+imagination, but the south-bound express was producing for her inspection
+quite different things from these.
+
+New Jersey with its populous towns, for instance, towns she never could
+have imagined or dreamed of, filled with people whose existence she could
+not picture.
+
+What gave her a cold grue was the suddenly grasped fact that all this
+great mechanism of life, cities, towns, roaring railways, agricultural
+lands, manufacturing districts filled with English speaking people--that
+all this was alien, knew nothing of Ireland or England, except as it might
+know of Japan or a dream of the past.
+
+The people in the train were talking English--were English to all intents
+and purposes, and yet, as far as England and Ireland were concerned, she
+knew them to be dead.
+
+It had been freezing in New York, a great rainstorm was blowing across the
+world as they crossed the Delaware; it passed, sweeping away east under
+the arch of a vast rainbow, even the rainbow seemed alien and different to
+Irish rainbows--it was too big.
+
+Then came Philadelphia, where some of the dead folk left the train and
+others got in. One had an Irish voice and accent. He was a big man with a
+hard, pushful face and a great under jaw. Phyl knew him at once for what
+he was, and that he had died to Ireland long years ago.
+
+Then came Wilmington and Baltimore, and then, long after sunset in the
+dark, a warmer air that entered the train like a viewless passenger, nerve
+soothing and mind lulling--the first breath of the South.
+
+Next morning, looking from the windows of the car, she saw the South. Vast
+spaces of low-lying land broken by river and bayou, flooded by the light
+of the new risen sun and touched by a vague mist from the sea, soft as a
+haze of summer, warm with light and everywhere hinting at the blue deep
+sky beyond.
+
+Youth, morning, and the spirit of the sea all lay in that luminous haze,
+that warm light filled with the laziness of June; and, for one delightful
+moment, it seemed to Phyl that summer days long forgotten, rapturous
+mornings half remembered were here again.
+
+The rumble of trestle and boom of bridge filled the train, and now the
+masts of ships showed thready against the hazy blue of the sky; frame
+houses sprang up by the track and fences with black children roosting on
+them; then the mean streets of the coloured quarter and now, as the cars
+slackened speed, came the bustle that marks the end of a journey. People
+were getting their light luggage together, and as Phyl was strapping the
+bundle that held her travelling rug and books, a waft of tepid,
+salt-scented air came through the compartment and on it the voice of the
+negro attendant rousing some drowsy passenger.
+
+"Charleston, sah."
+
+She got out, dazed and numbed by the journey, and stood with the rug
+bundle in her hand looking about her, half undecided what to do, half
+absorbed by the bustle and movement of the platform.
+
+Then, pushing towards her through the crowd, she saw Pinckney.
+
+He had come to meet her, and as they shook hands, Phyl laughed.
+
+He seemed so bright and cheerful, and the relief at finding a friend after
+that long, friendless journey was so great that she laughed right out with
+pleasure, like a little child--laughed right into his eyes.
+
+It seemed to Pinckney that he had never seen the real Phyl before.
+
+He took the bundle from her and gave it to a negro servant, and then,
+giving the luggage checks to the servant and leaving him to bring on the
+luggage, he led the girl through the crowd.
+
+"We'll walk to the house," said he, "if you are not too tired; it's only a
+few steps away--well--how do you like America?"
+
+"America?" she replied. "I don't know--it's different from what I thought
+it would be, ever so much different--and this place--why, it is like
+summer here."
+
+"It's the South," said Pinckney. "Look, this is Meeting Street."
+
+They had turned from the street leading from the station into a broad,
+beautiful highway, placid, sun flooded, and leading away to the Battery,
+that chief pride and glory of Charleston.
+
+On either side of the street, half hidden by their garden walls, large
+stately houses of the Georgian era showed themselves. Mansions that had
+slumbered in the sun for a hundred years, great, solid houses whose
+yellow-wash seemed the incrustation left by golden and peaceful
+afternoons, houses of old English solidity yet with the Southern touch of
+deep verandas and the hint of palm trees in their jealously walled
+gardens.
+
+"Oh, how beautiful!" said Phyl. She stopped, looked about her, and then
+gazed away down the street. It was as though the old stately street--and
+surely the Street of Other Days might be its name--had been waiting for
+her all her life, waiting for her to turn that corner leading from the
+commonplace station, waiting to greet her like the ghost of some friend of
+childhood. Surely she knew it! Like the recollection of a dream once
+dreamed, it lay before her with its walled gardens, its vaguely familiar
+houses, its sunlight and placidity.
+
+Pinckney, proud of his native town and pleased at this appreciation of it,
+stood by without speaking, watching the girl who seemed to have forgotten
+his existence for a moment. Her head was raised as if she were inhaling
+the sea wind lazily blowing from the Battery, and bearing with it stray
+scents from the gardens by the way.
+
+Then she came back to herself, and they walked on.
+
+"It's just as if I knew the place," said she, "and yet I never remember
+seeing anything like it before."
+
+"I've felt that way sometimes about places," said Pinckney. "It seemed to
+me that I knew Paris quite well when I went there, though I'd never been
+there before. Charleston is pretty English, anyway, and maybe it's that
+that makes it seem familiar. But I'm glad you like it. You like it, don't
+you?"
+
+"Like it!" said she. "I should think I did--It's more than liking--I love
+it."
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Better than Dublin?"
+
+It was her turn to laugh.
+
+"I never loved Dublin." She turned her head to glance at a peep of garden
+showing through a wrought iron gate. "Oh, Dublin!--don't talk to me about
+it here. I want to keep on feeling I'm here really and that there's
+nowhere else."
+
+"There isn't," said he, disclosing for the first time in his life, and
+quite unconsciously, his passion for the place where he had been born.
+"There's nowhere else but Charleston worth anything--I don't know what it
+is about, but it's so."
+
+They were passing a wall across whose top peeped an elbow of ivy geranium.
+It was as though the unseen garden beyond, tired of constraint and
+drowsily stretching, had disclosed this hint of a geranium coloured arm.
+
+Pinckney paused at a wrought iron gate and opened it.
+
+"This is Vernons," said he.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+A grosbeak was singing in the magnolia tree by the gate and the warmth of
+the morning sun was filling the garden with a heart-snatching perfume of
+jessamine.
+
+Jessamine and the faint bitterness of sun warmed foliage.
+
+It was a garden sure to be haunted by birds; not large and, though well
+kept, not trim, and sing the birds as loud as they might, they never could
+break the charm of silence cast by Time on this magic spot.
+
+In the centre of the lawn stood a dial, inscribed with the old dial
+motto:
+
+                      The Hours Pass and are Numbered.
+
+Phyl paused for a moment just as she had paused in the street, and
+Pinckney looking at her noticed again that uptilt of the head, and that
+far away look as of a person who is trying to remember or straining to
+hear.
+
+Then a voice from the house came across the broad veranda leading from the
+garden to the lower rooms.
+
+A female voice that seemed laughing and scolding at the same time.
+
+"Dinah! Dinah! bless the girl, will she never learn sense-- Dinah! Ah,
+there you are. How often have I told you to put General Grant in the sun
+first thing in the morning?-- You've been dusting! I'll dust you. Here,
+get away."
+
+Out on the veranda, parrot cage in hand, came a most surprising lady.
+Antique yet youthful, dressed as ladies were wont to dress of a morning in
+long forgotten years, bright eyed, and wrathfully agitated.
+
+"Aunt," cried Pinckney. "Here we are."
+
+The sun was in Miss Pinckney's eyes; she put the cage down, shaded her
+eyes and stared full at Phyl.
+
+"God bless me!" said Miss Pinckney.
+
+"This is Phyl," said he, as they came up to the verandah steps.
+
+Miss Pinckney, seeming not to hear him in the least, took the girl by both
+hands, and holding her so as if for inspection stared at her.
+
+Then she turned on Pinckney with a snap.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me--she's--why, she's a Mascarene. Well, of all the
+astonishing things in the world-- Child--child, where did you get that
+face?"
+
+Before Phyl could answer this recondite question, she found herself
+enveloped in frills and a vague perfume of stephanotis. Maria Pinckney had
+taken her literally to her heart, and was kissing her as people kiss small
+children, kissing her and half crying at the same time, whilst Pinckney
+stood by wondering.
+
+He thought that he knew everything about Maria Pinckney, just as he had
+fancied he knew himself till Phyl had shewn him, over there in Ireland,
+that there were a lot of things in his mind and character still to be
+known by himself. This, as regards him, seemed the special mission of Phyl
+in the world.
+
+"It's the likeness," said Miss Pinckney. "I thought it was Juliet
+Mascarene there before me in the sun, Juliet dead those years and years."
+Then commanding herself, and with one of those reverses, sudden changes of
+manner and subject peculiar to herself:
+
+"Where's your luggage?"
+
+"Abraham is bringing it along."
+
+"Abraham! Do you mean you didn't drive, _walked_ here from the station?"
+
+"Yes," said Pinckney shamefacedly, almost, and wondering what sin against
+the _covenances_ he had committed now.
+
+"And she after that journey from N'York. Richard Pinckney, you are
+a--man--I was going to have called you a fool--but it's the same thing.
+Here, come on both of you--the child must be starving. This is the
+breakfast room, Phyl--Phyl! I will never get used to that name; no matter,
+I'm getting an old woman, and mustn't grumble--mustn't grumble--umph!"
+
+She took Pinckney's walking-stick from him and, with the end of it, picked
+up a duster that the mysterious Dinah, evidently, had left lying on the
+floor.
+
+She put the duster out on the veranda, rang a bell and ordered the
+coloured boy who answered it to send in breakfast.
+
+Phyl, commanded by Miss Pinckney, sat down to table just as she was
+without removing her hat.
+
+The old lady had come to the conclusion that the newcomer must be faint
+with hunger after her journey, and when Miss Pinckney came to one of her
+conclusions, there was nothing more to be said on the matter.
+
+It was a pleasant room, chintzy and sunny; they sat down to a gate-legged
+table that would just manage to seat four comfortably whilst the urn was
+brought in, a copper urn in which the water was kept at boiling point by a
+red hot iron contained in a cylinder.
+
+Phyl knew that urn. They had one like it at Kilgobbin and she said so, but
+Miss Pinckney did not seem to hear her. There were times when this lady
+was almost rude--or seemed so owing to inattention, her bustling mind
+often outrunning the conversation or harking back to the past when it
+ought to have been in the present.
+
+Tea making, and the making of tea was a solemn rite at Vernons, absorbed
+her whole attention, but Pinckney noticed this morning that the hand, that
+old, perfect, delicately shaped hand, trembled ever so slightly as it
+measured the tea from the tortoise-shell covered tea caddy, and that the
+thin lips, lips whose thinness seemed only the result of the kisses of
+Time, were moving as though debating some question unheard.
+
+He recognised that the coming of Phyl had produced a great effect on Maria
+Pinckney. No one knew her better than he, for no one loved her so well.
+
+It was she who ordered him about, still, just as though he were a small
+boy, and sometimes as he sat watching her, so fragile, so indomitable,
+like the breath of winter would come the thought that a day would come--a
+day might come soon when he would be no longer ordered about, told to put
+his hat in the hall--which is the proper place for hats--told not to dare
+to bring cigars into the drawing-room.
+
+To Phyl, Maria Pinckney formed part of the spell that was surrounding her;
+Meeting Street had begun the weaving of this spell, Vernons was completing
+it with the aid of Maria Pinckney.
+
+The song of the Cardinal Grosbeak in the garden, the stirring of the
+window curtains in the warm morning air, the feel of morning and sunlight,
+the scent of the tea that was filling the room, the room itself
+old-fashioned yet cheerful, chintzy and sunny, all the things had the
+faint familiarity of the street. It was as though the blood of her
+mother's people coursing in her veins had retained and brought to her some
+thrill and warmth from all these things; these things they knew and loved
+so well.
+
+"There's the carriage," said Miss Pinckney, whose ears had picked out the
+sound of it drawing up at the front door. "They know where to take the
+luggage. Richard, go and see that they don't knock the bannisters about.
+Abraham is all thumbs and has no more sense in moving things than Dinah
+has'n dusting them. Only last week when Mrs. Beamis was going away, he let
+that trunk of hers slip and I declare to goodness I thought it was a
+church falling down the stairs and tearing the place to pieces."
+
+There was little of the stately languor of the South in Miss Pinckney's
+speech. She was Northern on the mother's side. But in her prejudices she
+was purely Southern, or, at least, Charlestonian.
+
+Pinckney laughed.
+
+"I don't think Phyl's luggage will hurt much even if it falls," said he.
+"English luggage is generally soft."
+
+"It's only a trunk and a portmanteau," said Phyl, as he left the room, but
+Miss Pinckney did not seem to hear; pouring herself out another cup of tea
+(she was the best and the worst hostess in the whole world) and seeming
+not to notice that Phyl's cup was empty, she was off on one of her mind
+wandering expeditions, a state of soul that sometimes carried her into the
+past, sometimes into the future, that led her anywhere and to the wrapt,
+inward contemplation of all sorts of things and subjects from the doings
+of the Heavenly Host to the misdoings of Dinah.
+
+She talked on these expeditions.
+
+"Well, I'm sure and I'm sure I don't know what folk want with the luggage
+they carry about with them nowadays-- The old folk didn't. Not Saratoga
+trunks, anyhow. I remember 'swell as if it was yesterday way back in 1880,
+when Richard's father and mother were married, old Simon Mascarene--he
+belonged to your mother's lot, the Mascarenes of Virginia-- He came to the
+wedding, and all he brought was a carpet-bag. I can see the roses on it
+still. He wore a beaver hat. They'd been out of fashion for years and
+years. So was he. Twenty dollars apiece they cost him, and his clothes
+were the same. Looked like a picture out of Dickens. Your grandmother was
+there, too, came from Richmond for the wedding, drove here in her own
+carriage. She and Simon were the last of the Virginia Mascarenes and they
+looked it. Seems to me some people never can be new nor get away from
+their ancestors. If you'd dressed Simon in kilts it wouldn't have made any
+difference, much, he'd still have been Simon Mascarene of Virginia, just
+as stiff and fine and proud and old-fashioned."
+
+"It seems funny that my people should have been the Virginia Mascarenes,"
+said Phyl, "because--because--well, I feel as if my people had always
+lived here--this feels like home--I don't know what it is, but just as I
+came into the street outside there I seemed to know it, and this house--"
+
+"Why, God bless my soul," said Miss Pinckney, whose eyes had just fallen
+on the girl's empty cup, "here have I been talking and talking, and you
+waiting for some more tea. Why didn't you ask, child?--What were you
+saying? The Virginia Mascarenes-- Oh, they often came here, and your
+mother knew this house as well as Planters. That was the name of their
+house in Richmond. But what I can't get over is your likeness to Juliet.
+She might have been your sister to look at you both--and she dead all
+these years."
+
+"Who was Juliet?"
+
+"She was the girl who died," said Miss Pinckney. "You know, although
+Richard calls me Aunt, I am not really his aunt; it's just an easy name
+for an old woman who is an interloper, a Pinckney adrift. It was this way
+I came in. Long before the Civil War, the Pinckneys lived at a house
+called Bures in Legare Street. A fine old house it was, and is still.
+Well, I was a cousin with a little money of my own, and I was left lonely
+and they took me in. James Pinckney was head of the family then, and he
+had two sons, Rupert and Charles. I might have been their sister the way
+we all lived together and loved each other--and quarrelled. Dear me, dear
+me, what is Time at all that it leaves everything the same? The same sun,
+and flowers and houses, and all the people gone or changed-- Well, I am
+trying to tell you-- Rupert fell in love with Juliet Mascarene, who lived
+here. He was killed suddenly in '61-- I don't want to talk of it--and she
+died of grief the year after. She died of grief--simply died of grief.
+Charles lived and married in 1880 when he was forty years old. He married
+Juliet's brother's daughter and Vernons came to him on the marriage. He
+hadn't a son till ten years later. That son was Richard. Charles left
+Richard all his property and Vernons on the condition that I always lived
+here--till I died, and that's how it is. I'm not Richard's aunt, it's only
+a name he gives me--I'm only just an old piece of furniture left with the
+house to him. I'm so fond of the place, it would kill me to leave it;
+places grow like that round one, though I'm sure I don't know why."
+
+"I don't wonder at you loving Vernons," said Phyl. "I was just the same
+about our place in Ireland, Kilgobbin--I thought it would kill me to leave
+it."
+
+"Tell me about it," said Miss Pinckney. Phyl told, or tried to tell.
+
+Looking back, she found between herself and Ireland the sunlight of
+Charleston, the garden with the magnolia trees where the red bird was
+singing and the jessamine casting its perfume. Ireland looked very far
+away and gloomy, desolate as Kilgobbin without its master and with the
+mist of winter among the trees.
+
+All that was part of the Past gone forever, and so great was the magic of
+this new place that she found herself recognising with a little chill that
+this Past had separated itself from her, that her feeling towards it was
+faintly tinged by something not unlike indifference.
+
+"Well," said Miss Pinckney, when she had finished, "it must be a beautiful
+old place, though I can't seem to see it-- You see, I've never been in
+Ireland and I can't picture it any more than the new Jerusalem. Now Dinah
+knows all about the new Jerusalem, from the golden slippers right up she
+sees it--I can't. Haven't got the gift of seeing things, and it seems
+strange that the A'mighty should shower it on a coloured girl and leave a
+white woman wanting; but it appears to be the A'mighty knows his own
+business, so I don't grumble. Now I'm going to show you the house and your
+room. I've given you a room looking right on the garden, this side. You've
+noticed how all our houses here are built with their sides facing the
+street and their fronts facing the garden, or maybe you haven't noticed it
+yet, but you will. 'Pears to me our ancestors had some sense in their
+heads, even though they didn't invent telegraphs to send bad news in a
+hurry and railway cars to smash people to bits, and telephones to let
+strangers talk right into one's house just by ringing a bell. Not that I'd
+let one into Vernons. You may hunt high or low, garret or basement, you
+won't find one of those boxes of impudence in Vernons--not while I have
+servants to go my messages."
+
+Miss Pinckney was right. For years she had fought the telephone and kept
+it out, making Richard Pinckney's life a tissue of small inconveniences,
+and suffering this epitaph on her sanity to be written by all sorts of
+inferior people, "Plumb crazy."
+
+She led the way from the breakfast-room and passed into the hall.
+
+The spirit of Vernons inhabited the hall. One might have fancied it as a
+stout and prosperous gentleman attired in a blue coat with brass buttons,
+shorts, and wearing a bunch of seals at his fob. Oak, brought from
+England, formed the panelling, and a great old grandfather's clock, with
+the maker's name and address, "Whewel. Coggershall," blazoned on its brass
+face, told the time, just as it had told the time when the Regent was
+ruling at St. James's in those days which seem so spacious, yet so trivial
+in their pomp and vanity.
+
+Sitting alone here of an afternoon with the sun pointing fingers through
+the high leaded windows, Whewel of Coggershall took you under his spell,
+the spell of old ghosts of long forgotten afternoons, spacious afternoons
+filled with the cawing of rooks and the drone of bees. English afternoons
+of the good old time when the dust of the post chaise was the only mark of
+hurry across miles of meadow land and cowslip weather. And then as you sat
+held by the sound of the slow-slipping seconds, maybe, from some door
+leading to the servants' quarters suddenly left open a voice would come,
+the voice of some darky singing whilst at work.
+
+A snatch of the South mixing with your dream of England and the past, and
+making of the whole a charm beyond words.
+
+That is Charleston.
+
+Set against the panelling and almost covering it in parts were prints,
+wood-cuts, engravings, portraits in black and white.
+
+Here was a silhouette of Colonel Vernon, the founder of the house, and
+another of his wife. Here was an early portrait of Jeff Davis,
+hollow-cheeked and goatee-bearded, and here was Mayflower, the property of
+Colonel Seth Mascarene, the fastest trotting horse in Virginia, worshipped
+by her owner whose portrait hung alongside.
+
+Phyl glanced at these pictures as she followed Miss Pinckney, who opened
+doors shewing the dining-room, a room rather heavily furnished, hung with
+portraits of long-faced gentlemen and ladies of old time, and then the
+drawing-room. A real drawing-room of the Sixties, a thing preserved in its
+entirety, in all its original stiffness, interesting as a valentine,
+perfumed like an old rosewood cabinet.
+
+Keepsakes and Books of Beauty lay on the centre table, a gilt clock
+beneath a glass shade marked the moment when it had ceased to keep time
+over twenty-five years ago, the antimacassars on the armchairs were not a
+line out of position; not a speck of dust lay anywhere, and the Dresden
+shepherds and shepherdesses simpered and made love in the same old
+fashion, preserving unaltered the sentiment of spring, the suggestion of
+Love, lambs, and the song of birds.
+
+"It's just as it used to be," said Miss Pinckney. "Nothing at all has been
+changed, and I dust it myself. I would just as soon let a servant loose
+here with a duster as I'd let one of the buzzards from the market-place
+loose in the larder. Those water-colours were done by Mary Mascarene,
+Juliet's sister, who died when she was fifteen; they mayn't be
+masterpieces but they're Mary's, and worth more'n if they were covered
+with gold. Mrs. Beamis sniffed when she came in here--she's the woman
+whose trunk got loose on the stairs I told you about--sniffed as if the
+place smelt musty. She's got a husband who's made a million dollars out of
+dry goods in Chicago, and she thought the room wanted re-furnishing.
+Didn't say it, but I knew. A player-piano is what she wanted. Didn't say
+it, but _I_ knew. Umph!"
+
+Miss Pinckney, having shown Phyl out, looked round the room as if to make
+sure that all the familiar ghosts were in their places, then she shut the
+door with a snap, and turning, led the way upstairs murmuring to herself,
+and with the exalted and far away look which she wore when put out.
+
+Phyl's room lay on the first landing, a bright and cheerful room papered
+with a rather cheap flower and sprig patterned paper, spring-like for all
+its cheapness, and just the background for children's heads when they wake
+up on a bright morning.
+
+A bowl of flowers stood on the dressing-table, and the open window shewed
+across the verandah a bit of the garden, where the cherokee roses were
+blooming.
+
+"This is your room," said Miss Pinckney. "It's one of the brightest in the
+house, and I hope you'll like it-- Listen!"
+
+Through the open window came the chime of church-bells.
+
+"It's the chimes of St. Michael's. You'll never want a clock here, the
+bells ring every quarter, just as they've rung for the last hundred years;
+they're the first thing I remember, and maybe they'll be the last. Well,
+come on and I'll show you some more of the house, if you're not tired and
+don't want to rest."
+
+She led the way from the room and along the corridor, opening doors and
+shewing rooms, and then up a back stairs to the top floor beneath the
+attics.
+
+The house seemed to grow in age as they ascended. Not a door in Vernons
+was exactly true in line; the old house settling itself down quietly
+through the years and assisted perhaps by the great earthquake, though
+that had left it practically unharmed, shewed that deviation from the
+right line in cornice and wainscoting and door space, which is the hall
+mark left on architecture by genius or age. The builders of the Parthenon
+knew this, the builders of Vernons did not-- Age supplied their defects.
+
+Up here the flooring of the passages and rooms frankly sagged in places,
+and the beams bellied downwards ever so little and the ceilings bowed.
+
+"I've seen all these bed-rooms filled in the old days," said Miss
+Pinckney. "We had wounded soldiers here in the war. What Vernons hasn't
+seen of American history isn't worth telling--much. Here's the nursery."
+
+She opened a door with bottle-glass panels, real old bottle-glass worth
+its weight in minted silver, and shewed Phyl into a room.
+
+"This is the nursery," said she.
+
+It was a large room with two windows, and the windows were barred to keep
+small people from tumbling into the garden. The place had the air of
+silence and secrecy that haunts rooms long closed and deserted. An
+old-fashioned paper shewing birds of Paradise covered the walls. A paper
+so old that Miss Pinckney remembered it when, as a child, she had come
+here to tea with the Mascarene children, so good that the dye of the
+gorgeous Paradise birds had scarcely faded.
+
+A beam of morning sun struck across the room, a great solid, golden bar of
+light. Phyl, as she stood for a moment on the threshold, saw motes dancing
+in the bar of light; the air was close and almost stuffy owing to the
+windows being shut. A rocking-horse, much, much the worse for wear stood
+in one corner, he was piebald and the beam of light just failed to touch
+his brush-like tail. A Noah's Ark of the good old pattern stood on the lid
+of a great chest under one of the windows, and in the centre of the room a
+heavy table of plain oak nicked by knives and stained with ink told its
+tale.
+
+There were books in a little hanging book-case, books of the 'forties' and
+'fifties': "Peter Parley," "The Child's Pilgrim's Progress," "The
+Dairy-Maid's Daughter," an odd volume of _Harper's_ _Magazine_ containing
+an instalment of "Little Dorrit," Caroline Chesebro's "Children of Light,"
+and Samuel Irenaeus Prime's "Elizabeth Thornton or the Flower and Fruit of
+Female Piety, and other Sketches." Miss Pinckney opened one of the windows
+to let in air; Phyl, who had said nothing, stood looking about her at the
+forsaken toys, the chairs, and the little three-legged stool most
+evidently once the property of some child.
+
+All nurseries have a generic likeness. It seemed to her that she knew this
+room, from the beam of light with the motes dancing in it to the
+bird-patterned paper. Kilgobbin nursery was papered with a paper giving an
+endless repetition of one subject--a man driving a pig to market--with
+that exception, the two rooms were not unlike. Yet those birds were the
+haunting charm of this place, the things that most appealed to her, things
+that seemed the ghosts of old friends.
+
+She came to the window and looked out through the bars. Across the garden
+of Vernons one caught a glimpse of other gardens, palmetto-tree tops, and
+away, beyond the battery, a hint of the blue harbour. Just the picture to
+fill an imaginative child's mind with all sorts of pleasant fancies about
+the world, and Phyl, forgetting for a moment Miss Pinckney, herself, and
+the room in which she was, stood looking out, caught in a momentary day
+dream, just like a child in one of those reveries that are part of the
+fairy tale of childhood.
+
+That touch of blue sea beyond the red roofs and green palmetto fronds gave
+her mind wings for a moment and a world to fly through. Not the world we
+live in, but the world worth living in. Old sailor-stories, old scraps of
+thought and dreams from nowhere pursued her, haunted her during that
+delightful and tantalising moment, and then she was herself again and Miss
+Pinckney was saying:
+
+"It's a pretty view and hasn't changed since I was a child. Now, in N'York
+they'd have put up skyscrapers; Lord bless you, they'd have put them up at
+a _loss_ so's to seem energetic and spoil the view. That's a N'Yorker in
+two words, happy so long as he's energetic and spoiling views--" Then
+gazing dreamily towards the touch of blue sea. "Well, I guess the Lord
+made N'Yorkers same as he made you and me. His ways are _in_scrutable and
+past finding out; so'r the ways of some of his creatures."
+
+She turned from the window, and her eye fell on the great chest by the
+other window.
+
+Going to it, she opened the lid.
+
+It was full of old toys, mostly broken. She seemed to have forgotten the
+presence of Phyl. Holding the chest's lid open, she gazed at the coloured
+and futile contents.
+
+Then she closed the lid of the chest with a sigh.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The South dines at four o'clock--at least Charleston does.
+
+It was the old English custom and the old Irish custom, too.
+
+In the reign of William the Conqueror people dined at eleven A.M. or was
+it ten? Then, as civilisation advanced, the dinner hour stole forward. In
+the time of the Georges it reached four o'clock. In Ireland, the most
+conservative country on earth, some people even still sit down to table at
+four--in Charleston every one does.
+
+One would not change the custom for worlds, just as one would not change
+the old box pews of St. Michael's or replace the cannon on the Battery
+with modern ordinance.
+
+Richard Pinckney did not dine at home that day. He was dining with the
+Rhetts in Calhoun Street, so Miss Pinckney said as they sat down to table.
+She sniffed as she said it, for the Rhetts, though one of the best
+families in the town, were people not of her way of thinking. The two
+Rhett girls had each a motor-car of her own and drove it--abomination!
+
+The automobile ranked in her mind with the telephone as an invention of
+the devil.
+
+Phyl had not seen Richard Pinckney since the morning and now he was dining
+out. Her heart had warmed to him at the station on the way to Vernons, and
+at breakfast he had appeared to her as a quite different person to the
+Richard Pinckney who had come to Kilgobbin, more boyish and frank, less of
+a man of the world. She had not seen him since he left the room at
+breakfast-time to look after her luggage. Miss Pinckney said he had gone
+off "somewhere or another" and grumbled at him for going off leaving his
+breakfast not quite finished, she said that he was always "scatter
+braining about" either at the yacht club or somewhere else.
+
+Phyl, as she sat now at the dining-table with the dead and gone Mascarene
+men and women looking at her from the canvases on the wall, felt ever so
+slightly hurt.
+
+Youth calls to youth irrespective of sex. She felt as a young person feels
+when another young person shows indifference. Then came the thought: was
+he avoiding her? Was he angry still about the affair at Kilgobbin, or was
+it just that he did not want to be bothered talking to her, looked on her
+as a nuisance in the house, a guest of no interest to him and yet to whom
+he had to be polite?
+
+She could not tell. Neither could she tell why the problem exercised her
+mind in the way it did. Even at Kilgobbin, despite the fact of her
+antagonism towards him, Pinckney had possessed the power of disturbing her
+mind and making her think about him in a way that no one else had ever
+succeeded in doing. No one else had made her feel the short-comings in the
+household _menage_ at Kilgobbin, no one else had made her so fiercely
+critical of herself and her belongings.
+
+She did not recognise the fact, but the fact was there, that it was a
+necessity of her being to stand well in this man's eyes.
+
+When a woman falls in love with a man or a man with a woman, the first
+necessity of his or her being is to stand well in the eyes of the loved
+one, anything that may bring ridicule or adverse criticism or disdain is
+death.
+
+Phyl was not in love with Richard Pinckney, nor had she been in love with
+him at Kilgobbin, all the same the sensitiveness to appearances felt by a
+lover was there. Her anger that night when he had let her in at eleven
+o'clock was due, perhaps, less to his implied reproof then the fact that
+she had felt cheap in his eyes, and now, sitting at dinner with Miss
+Pinckney the idea that he was still angry with her was obscured by the far
+more distasteful idea that she was of absolutely no account in his eyes, a
+creature to whom he had to be civil, an interloper.
+
+Her cheeks flushed and her eyes brightened at the thought, but Miss
+Pinckney did not notice it. She had turned from the subject of the Rhetts
+and their automobiles to Charleston society in general.
+
+"Now that you've come," said she, "you will find there's not a moment you
+won't enjoy yourself if you're fond of gadding about. All the society here
+is in the hands of young people, balls and parties! The St. Cecilias give
+three balls a year. I go always, not to dance but to look on. Richard is a
+St. Cecilia--St. Cecilias? Why, it's just a club a hundred-and-forty years
+old. There are two hundred of them, all men, and they know how to
+entertain. I have been at every ball for the last half century. Not one
+have I missed. Then there's the yacht club and picnics to Summerville and
+the Isle of Palms, and bathing parties and boating by moonlight. If you
+are a gad-about you will enjoy all that."
+
+"But I'm not," said Phyl. "I've never been used to society, much. I like
+books better than people, unless they're--"
+
+"Unless they're what?"
+
+"Well--people I really like."
+
+"Well," said Miss Pinckney, "one wouldn't expect you to like people you
+_didn't_ like--there's no 'really' in liking, it's one thing or the
+other--you don't care for girls, maybe?"
+
+"I haven't seen much of them," replied Phyl, "except at school, and that
+was only for a short time. I--I ran away."
+
+"Ran away! And why did you run away?"
+
+"I was miserable; they were kind enough to me, but I wanted to get
+home--Father was alive then--I felt I had to get home or die--I can't
+explain it--It felt like a sort of madness. I had to get back home."
+
+Miss Pinckney was watching the girl, she scarcely seemed listening to
+her--Then she spoke:
+
+"Impulsive. If I wasn't sitting here in broad daylight, I'd fancy it was
+Juliet Mascarene. What makes you so like her? It's not the face so much,
+though the family likeness runs strong, still, the face is different,
+though like--It's just you yourself--well, I'm sure I don't know, seems to
+me there's a lot of things hid from us. Look at the Pringles, Anthony's
+family, the ones that live in Tradd Street. If you put their noses
+together, they'd reach to Legare Street. It runs in the family. Julian
+Pringle, he died in '70, he was just the same. Now why should a long nose
+run through a family like that, or a bad temper, or the colour of hair? I
+don't know. The world's a puzzle and the older one grows, the more it
+puzzles one."
+
+After dinner, Miss Pinckney ordered Phyl to put on her hat and they
+started out for a drive.
+
+Every day at five o'clock, weather permitting, Miss Pinckney took an
+airing. She was one of the sights of Charleston, she, and the dark
+chestnut horses driven by Abraham the coloured coachman, and the barouche
+in which she drove; a carriage of other times, one of those deathless
+conveyances turned out in Long Acre in the days when varnish was varnish
+and hand labour had not been ousted by machinery. It was painted in a
+basket-work pattern, the pattern peculiar to the English Royal carriages,
+and the whole turn-out had an excellence and a style of its own--a thing
+unpurchasable as yesterday.
+
+They drove in the direction of the Battery and here they drew up to look
+at the view. On one side of them stood the great curving row of mansions
+facing the sea, old Georgian houses and houses more modern, yet without
+offence, set in gardens where the palmetto leaves shivered in the sea wind
+and the pink mimosa mixed its perfume with the salt-scented air. On the
+other side lay the sea. Afternoon, late afternoon, is the time of all
+times to visit this spacious and sunlit place. It is then that the old
+ghosts return, if ever they return, to discuss the news brought by the
+last packet from England, the doings of Mr. Pitt, the Paris fashions.
+
+Looking seaward they would see no change in the changeless sea and little
+change in the city if they turned their eyes that way.
+
+Miss Pinckney got out and they walked a bit, inspecting the guns, each
+with its brass plate and its story.
+
+Far away in the haze stood Fort Sumter,--a fragment of history, a sea
+warrior of the past, voiceless and guarding forever the viewless. It may
+have been some recollection of the Brighton front and of the great harbour
+of Kingstown with the sun upon it, and all this seemed vaguely familiar to
+Phyl, pleasantly familiar and homely. She breathed the sea air deeply and
+then, as she turned, glancing towards the land, a recollection came to her
+of the story she had been reading that evening in the library at
+Kilgobbin--"The Gold Bug." It was near here that Legrand had found the
+treasure. He had come to Charleston to buy the mattocks and picks--no, it
+was Jupp the negro who had come to buy them.
+
+She turned to Miss Pinckney.
+
+"Did you ever read a story called 'The Gold Bug' by Edgar Allan Poe?" she
+asked. "It is about a place near here--Sullivan's Island--that's it--I
+remember now."
+
+"Why, I knew him," said Miss Pinckney.
+
+"Knew Edgar Allan Poe!" said Phyl.
+
+"I knew him when I was a child and I have sat on his knee and I can see
+his face--what a face it was! and the coat he wore--it had a velvet
+collar--his teeth were beautiful, and his hair--beautiful glossy hair it
+was, but he was not handsome as people use that expression, he was
+extraordinary, such eyes--and the most wonderful voice in the world. I'm
+seventy-five years of age and he died in October '49, and I met him three
+years before he died, so you see I was a pretty small child. It was at
+Fordham. He'd just taken a cottage there for his wife, who was ailing with
+consumption, and my aunt, Mary Pinckney, who was a friend of the Osgoods,
+took me there. It must have been summer for I remember a bird hanging in a
+cage in the sunshine, a bob-o'-link it was, he had caught it in the
+woods.
+
+"Dear Lord! I wonder where that summer day's gone to, and the
+bob-o'-link--'pears to me we aren't even memories, for memories live and
+we don't."
+
+They were walking along, Abraham slowly following with the carriage, and
+Miss Pinckney was walking in an exultant manner as though she saw nothing
+about her, as though she were treading air. Phyl had unconsciously set
+free a train of thought in the mind of Miss Pinckney, a train that always
+led to an explosion, and this is exactly how it happened and what she
+said.
+
+"But his memory will live. Look right round you, do you see his statue?"
+
+"No," said Phyl, sweeping the view. "Where is it?"
+
+"Just so, where is it? It's not here, it's not in N'York, it's not in
+Baltimore, it's not in Philadelphia, it's not in Boston. The one real
+splendid writing man that America has produced she's ashamed to put up a
+statue to. Why? Because he drank! Why, God bless my soul, Grant drank. No,
+it wasn't drink, it was Griswold. The man who hated him, the man who
+crucified his reputation and sold the remains for thirty pieces of silver
+to a publisher, Griswold, Rufus Griswold--Judas Griswold that was his real
+name, and he hid it--"
+
+Miss Pinckney had lowered her parasol in her anger, she shut it with a
+snap and then shot it up again; as she did so an automobile driven by a
+girl and which was approaching them, passed, and a young man seated by the
+girl raised his hat.
+
+It was Richard Pinckney.
+
+The girl was a very pretty brunette. This thing was too much for Miss
+Pinckney in her present temper; all her anger against Griswold seemed
+suddenly diverted to the automobile. She snorted.
+
+"There goes Richard with Venetia Frances Rhett," said she. "Ought to be
+ashamed of herself driving along the Battery in that outrageous thing;
+goodness knows, they're bad enough driven by men, scaring people to death
+and killing dogs and chickens, without girls taking to them--"
+
+She stared after the car, then signalling to Abraham, she got into the
+barouche, Phyl followed her and they continued their drive.
+
+That evening after supper Miss Pinckney's mind warmed to thoughts of the
+good old days when motor-cars were undreamed of, and stirred up by the
+recollection of Edgar Allan Poe, discharged itself of reminiscences worth
+much gold could they have been taken down by a stenographer.
+
+She was sitting with Phyl in the piazza, for the night was warm, and
+whilst a big southern moon lit the garden, she let her mind stray over the
+men and women who had made American literature in the '50's and '60's,
+many of whom she had known when young.
+
+Estelle Anna Lewis of Baltimore, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Cullen
+Bryant, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Cornelius Mathews, Frances Sargent Osgood,
+N. P. Willis, Laughton Osborn. She had known Lowell and Longfellow, yet
+her mind seemed to cling mostly to the lesser people, writers in the
+_Southern Literary Messenger_, the _Home Journal_, the _Mirror_ and the
+_Broadway Journal_.
+
+People well-known in their day and now scarcely remembered, yet whose very
+names are capable of evoking the colour and romance of that fascinating
+epoch beyond and around the Civil War.
+
+"They're all dead and gone," said she, "and folk nowadays don't seem to
+trouble about the best of them, or remember their lines, yet there's
+nothing they write now that's as good--I remember poor Thomas Ward.
+'Flaccus' was the name he wrote under, a thin skeleton of a man always
+with his head in the air and his mind somewhere else, used to write in the
+_Knickerbocker Journal_; I heard him recite one of his things.
+
+          "'And, straining, fastened on her lips a kiss,
+          That seemed to suck the life blood from her heart.'
+
+"That stuck in my head, mostly, I expect, because Thomas Ward didn't look
+as if he'd ever kissed a girl, but they are good lines and a lot better
+than they write nowadays."
+
+The wind had risen a bit and was stirring in the leaves of the magnolias,
+white carnations growing near the sun dial shook their ruffles in the
+moonlight, and from near and far away came the sounds of Charleston,
+voices, the sound of traffic and then, a thread of tune tying moonbeams,
+magnolias, carnations and cherokee roses in a great southern bunch, came
+the notes of a banjo, plunk, plunk, and a voice from somewhere away in the
+back premises, the voice of a negro singing one of the old Plantation
+songs.
+
+Just a snatch before some closing door cut the singer off, but enough to
+make Phyl raise her head and listen, listen as though a whole world
+vaguely guessed, a world forgotten yet still warm and loving, youthful and
+sunlit, were striving to reach her and speak to her--As though Charleston
+the mysterious city that had greeted her first in Meeting Street were
+trying to tell her of things delightful, once loved, once known and
+forever vanished.
+
+As she lay awake that night with the moonlight showing through the blinds,
+the whole of that strange day came before her in pictures: the face of
+Frances Rhett troubled her, yet she did not know in the least why; it
+seemed part of the horribleness of automobiles and the anger of Miss
+Pinckney and the tribulations of Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+Then the fantastic band of forgotten _literati_ trooped before her, led by
+"Flaccus," the man who didn't look as if he had ever kissed a girl, yet
+who wrote:
+
+           "And, straining, fastened on her lips a kiss,
+           That seemed to suck the life blood from her heart."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Phyl awoke to the early morning sunlight and the sounds of Charleston.
+
+The chimes of St. Michael's were striking six and through the summery
+sunlit air carried by the sea wind stirring the curtains came the cries of
+the streets and the rumbling of early morning carts.
+
+Oh, those negro cries! the cry of the crab-seller, the orange vendor, the
+man who sells "monkey meat" dolorous, long drawn out, lazy, you do not
+know the South till you have heard them.
+
+The sound of a mat being shaken and beaten on the piazza, adjoining that
+on which her window opened came now, and two voices in dispute.
+
+"Mistress Pinckney she told me to tell you--she mos' sholey did."
+
+"Go wash yo' face, yo' coloured trash, cummin' here wid yo' orders--skip
+out o' my piazza--'clar' to goodness I dunno what's cummin' to niggers
+dese days."
+
+Then Miss Pinckney's voice as from an upper window:
+
+"Dinah! Seth! what's that I hear? Get on with your work the pair of you
+and stop your chattering. You hear me?"
+
+When Phyl came down Richard Pinckney was in the garden smoking a cigarette
+and gathering some carnations.
+
+"They're for aunt," said he, "to propitiate her for my being late last
+night. I wasn't in till one. I'm worse even than you, you see, and the
+next time you are out till eleven and I let you in and grumble at you, you
+can hit back. Have a flower."
+
+He gave her the finest in his bunch and Phyl put it in her belt. If she
+had any doubt as to the sincerity of his welcome his manner this morning
+ought to have set her mind at rest.
+
+She stood looking at him as he tied the stalks of the flowers together and
+he was worth looking at, a fresh, bright figure, the very incarnation of
+youth and health and one might almost say innocence. Clear eyed,
+well-groomed, good to look upon.
+
+"I generally pick a flower and put it on her plate," said he, "but this
+morning she shall have a whole bunch--hope you slept all right?"
+
+"Rather," said Phyl, "I never sleep much the first night in a new
+place--but somehow--oh, I don't know how to express it--but nothing here
+seems new."
+
+"Nothing is," said he laughing, "it's all as old as the hills--you like
+it, don't you?"
+
+"It's not a question of liking--of course I like it, who could help liking
+it--it's more than that. It's a feeling I have that I will either love it
+or hate it, and I don't know which yet, all sorts of things come back to
+me here, you see, my mother knew the place--do people remember what their
+mothers and fathers knew, I wonder? But, if you understood me, it's not so
+much remembering as feeling. All yesterday it seemed to me that I had only
+to turn some corner and come upon something waiting for me, something I
+knew quite well, and the smells and sounds and things are always reminding
+me of something--you know how it is when you have forgotten a name and
+when it's lying just at the back of your mind--that's how I feel here,
+about nearly everything--strange, isn't it?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said the practical Pinckney. "This place is awfully
+English for one thing, sure to remind you of a lot of things in Ireland
+and England, and then there's of course the fact that you are partly
+American, but I don't see why you should ever hate it."
+
+"_Indeed_, I didn't mean that," said she flushing up at the thought that
+in trying to express herself she had made such a blunder. "I meant--I
+meant, that this something about the place that is always reminding me of
+itself might make me hate _it_."
+
+"Or love it?"
+
+"Yes, but I can't explain--the place itself no one could hate, you must
+have thought me rude."
+
+"Not a bit--not the least little bit in the world. Well, I believe you'll
+come to love it, not hate it."
+
+"It," said Phyl. "I don't know that, because I don't know what it is--this
+something that is always peeping round corners at me yet hiding itself."
+
+"_Richard_!" came Miss Pinckney's voice from the piazza where she had just
+appeared, "smoking cigarettes before breakfast, how often have I told you
+I won't have you smoking before breakfast--why, God bless my soul, what
+are you doing with all those carnations?"
+
+He flung the cigarette-end away, but she refused to kiss him on account of
+the tobacco fumes, though she took the flowers.
+
+Cigarettes, like telephones, automobiles, and the memory of Edgar Allan
+Poe, formed a subject upon which once started Miss Pinckney was hard to
+check, and whilst she poured out the tea, she pursued it.
+
+"Dr. Cotton it was who told me, the one who used to live in Tradd Street,
+he was a relative of Dr. Garden the man that gave his name to that flower
+they call the gardenia--had it sent him from somewhere in the South, but
+I'm sure I don't know where--New Orleans, I think, but it doesn't matter.
+I was saying about Dr. Cotton, _old_ Dr. Cotton of Tradd Street, he told
+me that the truth about young William Pringle's death was that he was
+black when he died, from cigarette smoking, black as a crow. Used to smoke
+before breakfast, used to smoke all day, used to smoke in his sleep, I
+b'lieve. Couldn't get rid of the pesky habit and died clinging to it,
+black as a crow. I can't abide the things. Your father used to smoke Bull
+Durham in a corn cob, or a cigar, he'd a' soon have smoked one of those
+cigarettes of yours as soon as he'd have been caught doing tatting. Don't
+tell me, there's no manhood in them, it's just vice in thimble-fulls. I'd
+much sooner see a man lying healthily under the table once in a way than
+always half fuddled, and I'd sooner be poisoned out by a green cigar now
+and then, than always having that nasty sickly cigarette smell round the
+place."
+
+"But good gracious, Aunt, I'm not a cigarette smoker, only once and away
+and at odd times."
+
+"I wasn't talking about you so much as the young men of to-day, and the
+young women, they're the worst, for they encourage the others to make
+fools of themselves, and if they're not smoking themselves they're sucking
+candy. Candy sucking and cigarette smoking is the ruin of the States.
+Those Rhett girls _live_ on candy, and they look it--pasty faces."
+
+"Why!" said he, "what grudge have you got against the Rhetts now,
+Aunt--it's as bad to take a girl's complexion away as a man's
+character--what have the Rhetts been doing to you?"
+
+Miss Pinckney did not seem to hear the question for a moment, then she
+said, speaking as if to some invisible person:
+
+"That Frances Rhett may be reckoned the belle of Charleston, that's what I
+heard old Mr. Outhwaite call her, but she's a belle I wouldn't care to
+have tied round my neck. Belle! She's no more a belle than I am, there are
+hundreds of prettier girls between here and the Battery, but she's one of
+those sort that have the knack of setting young men against each other and
+making them fight for her; she's labelled herself as a prize, which she
+isn't. I declare to goodness the world frightens me at times, the way I
+see fools going about labelled as clever men, and women your grandfathers
+wouldn't have cast an eye at going about labelled as beauties. I do
+believe if I was to give myself out as a beauty to-morrow I'd have half
+the young idiots in Charleston after me, believing me."
+
+"They're after you already," said Pinckney, "only yesterday I heard young
+Reggy Calhoun saying--"
+
+"I know," said Miss Pinckney, "and I want no more of your impudence. Now
+take yourself off if you've finished your breakfast, for Phyl and I have
+work to do."
+
+He got up and went off laughing by way of the piazza and they could hear
+his cheery voice in the garden talking to the old negro gardener.
+
+Miss Pinckney's eyes softened. She was fiddling with a spoon and when she
+spoke she seemed speaking to it, turning it about as if to examine its
+pattern all the time.
+
+"I don't know what mothers with boys feel like, but I do want to see that
+boy safe and married before I go. He's just the sort to be landed in
+unhappiness; he is, most surely; well, I don't know, there's no use in
+warning young folk, you may spank 'em for stealing the jam but you can't
+spank 'em from fooling with the wrong sort of girl."
+
+Miss Pinckney had talked the night before of Phyl's father and had
+proposed taking her this morning to the Magnolia cemetery to see the
+grave. She broke off the conversation suddenly as this fact strayed into
+her mind, and, rising up, invited Phyl to follow her to the kitchen
+premises where she had orders to give before starting.
+
+"I always look after my own house," said she, "and always will. Fine
+ladies nowadays sit in their drawing-rooms and ring their bells for the
+servants to rob them and they aren't any more respected. That's what makes
+the Charleston negro the impudentest lump of blackness under the sun, that
+and knowing they're emancipated. They've got to look on themselves as part
+of the Heavenly Host. Well, I'll have no emancipated rubbish in my house,
+and the consequence is I never lose a servant and I never get impudence.
+They'll all get a pension when they're too old to work, and good food and
+good pay whilst they're working, and I've said to them 'you're no more
+emancipated than I am, we're all slaves to our duty and the only
+difference between now and the old days is I can't sell you--and if you
+were idle enough to make me want to sell you there's no one would buy such
+rubbish nowadays.' Half the trouble is that people these times don't know
+how to talk to coloured folk, and the other half is that they don't want
+to talk to them."
+
+She led the way down passages to the great kitchen, stonebuilt, clean and
+full of sunlight. The door was open on to the yard and through an open
+side door one could get a glimpse of the scullery, the great washing up
+sink, generations old, and worn with use, and above it the drying
+dresser.
+
+There were no new-fangled cooking inventions at Vernons, everything was
+done at an open range of the good old fashion still to be found in many an
+English country house.
+
+Miss Pinckney objected to "baked meat" and the joints at Vernons were
+roast, swinging from a clockwork Jack and basted all the time with a long
+metal ladle.
+
+By the range this morning was seated an old coloured woman engaged in
+cutting up onions. This was Prue the oldest living thing in Vernons and
+perhaps in Charleston; she had been kitchen maid before Miss Pinckney was
+born, then cook, and now, long past work, she was just kept on.
+Twenty-five years ago she had been offered a pension and a cottage for
+herself but she refused both. She wanted to die where she was, so she
+said. So they let her stay, doing odd jobs and bossing the others just as
+though she were still mistress of the kitchen--as in fact she was. She had
+become a legend and no one knew her exact age, she was creepin' close to a
+hundred, and her memory which carried her back to the slave days was
+marvellous in its retentiveness.
+
+She had cooked a dinner for Jeff Davis when he was a guest at Vernons, she
+could still hear the guns of the Civil War, so she said, and the Mascarene
+family history was her Bible.
+
+She looked down on the Pinckneys as trash beside the Mascarenes, and
+interlopers, and this attitude and point of view though well known to Miss
+Pinckney was not in the least resented by her.
+
+But during the last few years this old lady's intellect had been steadily
+coming under eclipse; still insisting on doing little jobs in a futile
+sort of way, silence had been creeping upon her so that she rarely spoke
+now, and when she did, by chance, her words revealed the fact that her
+mind was dwelling in the past.
+
+Rachel, the cook, a sturdy coloured woman with her head bound up in an
+isabelle-coloured handkerchief was standing by the kitchen table on which
+she was resting the fore-finger of her left hand, whilst with the right
+she was turning over some fish that had just been sent in from the
+fishmonger's. She seemed in a critical mood, but what she said to Miss
+Pinckney was lost to Phyl whose attention was attracted by a chuckling
+sound from near the range.
+
+It was Prue.
+
+The old woman at sight of Phyl had dropped the knife and the onion on
+which she had been engaged. She was now seated, hands on knees, chuckling
+and nodding to the girl, then, scarcely raising her right hand from her
+knee, she made a twiddling movement with the fore-finger as if to say,
+"come here--come here--I have something to tell you."
+
+Phyl glanced at Miss Pinckney who was so taken up with what Rachel was
+saying about the fish that she noticed nothing. Then she looked again at
+Prue and, unable to resist the invitation, came towards her. The old woman
+caught her by the arm so that she had to bend her head.
+
+"Miss Julie," whispered Prue, "Massa Pinckney told me tell yo' he be at de
+gate t'night same time 'slas' night. Done you let on 's I told yo'," she
+gave the arm a pinch and relapsed into herself chuckling whilst Phyl stood
+with a little shiver, half of relief at her escape from that bony clutch,
+half of dread--a vague dread as though she had come in contact with
+something uncanny.
+
+She came to the table again and stood without looking at Prue, whilst Miss
+Pinckney completed her orders, then, that lady, having finished her
+business and casting an eye about the place on the chance of finding any
+dirt or litter, saw Prue and asked how she was doing.
+
+"Well, miss, she's doin' fa'r," replied Rachel, "but I'm t'inking she's
+not long fore de new Jerusalem. Sits didderin' dere 'n' smokin' her pipe,
+'n' lays about her wid her stick times, fancyin' there'er dogs comin' into
+de kitchen."
+
+"A dog bit her once way back in the '60's," said Miss Pinckney; "they used
+to keep dogs here then. She don't want for anything?"
+
+"Law no, miss, _she_ done want for nothin'; look at her now laffin' to
+herself. Haven't seen her do that way dis long time. Hi, Prue, what yo'
+laffin' at?"
+
+Prue, instead of answering leant further forward hiding her face without
+checking her merriment.
+
+"Crazy," said Miss Pinckney, "but it's better to be laughing crazy than
+crying crazy like some folk--here's a quarter and get her some candy."
+
+She put the coin on the table and marched off followed by Phyl.
+
+"She wanted to tell me something," said Phyl as they were driving to the
+cemetery; "she beckoned me to her and took hold of my arm and whispered
+something."
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+Phyl, somehow, could not bring herself to betray that crazy confidence.
+
+"I don't know, exactly, but she called me Miss Julie."
+
+"Oh--she called you Miss Julie," said the other. Then she relapsed into
+thought and nothing more was said till they reached their destination.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Charleston's Magnolia Cemetery like everything else about Charleston shows
+the touch of the War. Here the soldiers lie who fought so bravely under
+Wade Hampton and here lies the general himself.
+
+Go south, go north, and you will not find a place touched by the War where
+you will not find noble memories, echoes of heroic deeds, legends of brave
+men.
+
+Miss Pinckney was by no means a peace party and this thought was doubtless
+in her head as she stood surveying the confederate graves. There were
+relations here and men whom she had known as a child.
+
+"That's the War," said she, "and people abuse war as if it was the worst
+thing in the world, insulting the dead. 'Clare to goodness it makes me
+savage to hear the pasty-faces talking of war and making plans to abolish
+it. It's like hearing a lot of children making plans to abolish thunder
+storms. Where would America be now without the War, and where'd her
+history be? You tell me that. It'd just be the history of a big canning
+factory. These men aren't dead, they're still alive and fighting--fighting
+Chicago; fighting pork, and wheat, and cotton and railway-stock and
+everything else that's abolishing the soul of the nation.
+
+"There's Matt Carey's grave. He had everything he wanted, and he wasn't
+young. Now-a-days he'd have been driving in his automobile killing old
+women and chickens, or tarpoon fishing down 'n Florida letting the world
+go rip, or full of neur--what do they call it--that thing that gets on
+their nerves and makes crazy old men of them at forty--I've forgotten.
+_He_ didn't. He took up a gun and died like a lion, and he was a
+middle-aged business man. No one remembers him, I do believe, except,
+maybe me, clean forgotten--and yet he helped to put a brick into the only
+monument worth ten cents that America has got--The War.
+
+"And some northern people would say 'nice sort of brick, seeing he was
+fighting on the wrong side.' Wrong side or right side he was fighting for
+something else than his own hand. _That's_ the point."
+
+She closed up her lips and they went on. Phyl found her father's grave in
+a quiet spot where the live-oaks stood, the long grey moss hanging from
+their branches.
+
+Miss Pinckney, having pointed out the grave, strayed off, leaving the girl
+to herself.
+
+The gloomy, strange-looking trees daunted Phyl, and the grave, too young
+yet to have a headstone, drew her towards it, yet repelled her.
+
+It was like meeting in a dream some one she had loved and who had turned
+into a stranger in a strange place.
+
+Just as Charleston had dimmed Ireland in her mind as a bright light dims a
+lesser light, so had some influence come between her and the memory of her
+father. That memory was just as distinct as ever, but grief had died from
+it, as though Time had been at work on it for years and years.
+
+The Phyl who had stepped out of the south-bound express and the girl of
+this morning were the same in mind and body, but in soul and outlook they
+had changed and were changing as though the air of the south had some
+magic in it, some food that had always been denied her and which was
+necessary for her full being.
+
+Miss Pinckney returned from her wanderings amongst the graves and they
+turned to the gate.
+
+"It used to seem strange to me coming here when I was a girl," said she.
+"It always seemed as if I was come to visit people who could never come to
+see me. I used to pity them, but one gets older and one gets wiser, and I
+fancy it's they that pity us, if they can see us at all, which isn't often
+likely."
+
+"D'you think they come back?" said Phyl.
+
+"My dear child, if I told you what I thought, you'd say I was plum crazy.
+But I'll say this. What do you think the Almighty made folk for? to live a
+few years and then lie in a grave with folk heaping flowers on them?
+There's no such laziness in nature. I don't say there aren't folk who live
+their lives like as if they were dead, covered with flowers and never
+moving a hand to help themselves like some of those N'York women--but they
+don't count. They're against nature and I guess when they die they die,
+for they haven't ever lived." Then, vehemently: "Of course, they come
+back, not as ghosts peekin' about and making nuisances of themselves, but
+they come back as people--which is the sensible way and there's nothing
+unsensible in nature. Mind you, I don't say there aren't ghosts, there
+are, for I've seen 'em; I saw Simon Pinckney, the one that died of drink,
+as plain as my hand same day he died, but he was a no account. He hadn't
+the making of a man, so he couldn't come back as a man, and he wasn't a
+woman, so he couldn't come back as a woman; so he came back as a ghost. He
+was always an uneasy creature, else I don't suppose he'd have come back as
+anything. When a man wears out a suit of clothes he doesn't die, he gets a
+new one, and when he wears out a body--which isn't a bit more than a suit
+of clothes--he gets a new one. If he hasn't piled up grit enough in life
+to pay for a new body, he goes about without one and he's a ghost. That's
+my way of thinking and I know--I know--n'matter."
+
+She put up her sunshade and they returned, driving through the warm spring
+weather. Phyl was silent, the day had taken possession of her. The scent
+of pink mimosa filled the air, the blue sky shewed here and there a few
+feather traces of white cloud and the wind from the sea seemed the very
+breath of the southern spring.
+
+It seemed to Phyl as they drove that never before had she met or felt the
+loveliness of life, never till this moment when turning a corner the song
+of a bird from a garden met them with the perfume of jessamine.
+
+Charleston is full of surprises like that, things that snatch you away
+from the present or catch you for a moment into the embrace of some old
+garden lurking behind a wrought iron gate, or tell you a love story no
+matter how much you don't want to hear it--or tease you, if you are a
+practical business man, with some other futility which has nothing at all
+to do with "real" life.
+
+It seemed to Phyl as though, somehow, the whole of the morning had been
+working up to that moment, as though the perfume of the jessamine and the
+song of the birds were the culmination of the meaning of all sorts of
+things seen and unseen, heard and unheard.
+
+The message of the crazy old negress came back to her. Who was Miss Julie?
+and who was the Mr. Pinckney that was to meet her, and where was the gate
+at which they were to meet in such a secretive manner? Was it just
+craziness, or was it possible that this was some real message delivered
+years and years ago. A real lover's message which the old woman had once
+been charged to deliver and which she had repeated automatically and like
+a parrot.
+
+Miss Julie--could it be possible that she meant Miss Juliet--The Juliet
+Mascarene to whom she, Phyl, bore such a strong family likeness, could it
+be possible that the likeness had started the old woman's mind working and
+had recalled the message of a half-a-century ago to her lips.
+
+It was a fascinating thought. Juliet had been in love with one of the
+Pinckneys and this message was from a Pinckney and one day, perhaps, most
+likely a fine spring day like to-day, Pinckney had given the negro girl a
+message to give to Juliet, and the lovers and the message and the bright
+spring day had vanished utterly and forever leaving only Prue.
+
+The gate would no doubt be the garden gate. Phyl in all her life had never
+given a thought to Love, she had known nothing of sentiment, that much
+abused thing which is yet the salt of life, and Romance for her had meant
+Adventure; all the same she was now weaving all sorts of threads into
+dreams and fancies. What appealed to her most was her own likeness to
+Juliet, the girl who had died so many, many years ago. A likeness
+incomplete enough, according to Miss Pinckney, yet strong enough to awaken
+memories in the mind of Prue.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+"Miss Pinckney," said Phyl, as they sat at luncheon that day, "you
+remember you said yesterday that I was like Juliet Mascarene?"
+
+"So you are," replied the other, "though the likeness is more noticeable
+at first sight as far as the face goes--I've got a picture of her I will
+show you, it's upstairs in her room, the one next yours on the same
+piazza--why do you ask me?"
+
+"I was thinking," replied Phyl, "that the old woman in the
+kitchen--Prue--may have meant Juliet when she called me Julie, and that it
+was the likeness that set her mind going."
+
+"It's not impossible. Prue's like that crazy old clock Selina Pinckney
+left me in her will. It'd tell you the day and the hour _and_ the minute
+and the year and the month and the weather. A little man came out if it
+was going to rain and a little woman if it was going to shine. But if you
+wanted to know the time, it couldn't tell you nearer than the hour before
+last of the day before yesterday, and if you sneezed near it, it'd up and
+strike a hundred and twenty. I gave it to Rachel. She said it was 'some'
+clock, said it was a dandy for striking and the time didn't matter as the
+old kitchen clock saw to that. It's the same with Prue, the time doesn't
+matter, and they look up to her in the kitchen mostly, I expect, because
+she's an oddity, same as Selina Pinckney's clock. Seems to me anything
+crazy and useless is reckoned valuable these days, and not only among
+coloured folk but whites--Dinah, hasn't Mr. Richard come in yet?"
+
+"No, Mistress Pinckney," replied the coloured girl, who had just entered
+the room, "I haven't seen no sign of him."
+
+"Running about without his luncheon," grumbled the lady, "said he had a
+deal in cotton on. I might have guessed it." Then when Dinah had left the
+room and talking half to herself, "There's nothing Richard seems to think
+of but business or pleasure. I'm not saying anything against the boy, he's
+as good and better than any of the rest, but like the rest of them his
+character wants forming round something real. It wasn't so in the old
+days, they were bad enough then and drank a lot more, but they had in them
+something that made for something better than business or pleasure. Matt
+Curry didn't go out and get killed for business or pleasure, and all the
+old Pinckneys didn't fight in the war or fight with one another for
+business or pleasure. There's more in life than fooling with girls or
+buying cotton or sailing yacht races, but Richard doesn't seem to see it.
+I did think that having a ward to look after would have sobered him a bit
+and helped to form his character--well, maybe it will yet."
+
+"I don't want to be looked after," said Phyl flushing up, "and if Mr.
+Pinckney--" she stopped. What she was going to say about Pinckney was not
+clear in her mind, clouded as it was with anger--anger at the thought that
+she was an object to be looked after by her "guardian," anger at the
+implication that he was not bothering to look after her, being too much
+engaged in the business of fooling with girls and buying cotton, and a
+reasonable anger springing from and embracing the whole world that held
+his beyond Vernons.
+
+"Yes?" said Miss Pinckney.
+
+"Oh, nothing," replied the other, trying to laugh and making a failure of
+the business. "I was only going to say that Mr. Pinckney must have lots to
+do instead of wasting his time looking after strangers, and if he hadn't I
+don't want to be looked after. I don't want him to bother about
+me--I--I--" It did not want much more to start her off in a wild fit of
+weeping about nothing, her mind for some reason or other unknown even to
+herself was worked up and seething just as on that day at Kilgobbin when
+the woes of Rafferty had caused her to make such an exhibition of herself
+in the library. Anything was possible with Phyl when under the influence
+of unreasoning emotion like this, anything from flinging a knife at a
+person to breaking into tears.
+
+Miss Pinckney knew it. Without understanding in the least the
+psychological mechanism of Phyl, she knew as a woman and by some
+electrical influence the state of her mind.
+
+She rose from the table.
+
+"Stranger," said she, taking the other by the arm, "you call yourself a
+stranger. Come along upstairs with me. I want to show you something."
+
+Still holding her by the arm, caressingly, she led her off across the hall
+and up the stairs; on the first floor landing she opened a door; it was
+the door of the bedroom next to Phyl's, a room of the same shape and size
+and with the same view over the garden.
+
+Just as the drawing-room had been kept in its entirety without alteration
+or touch save the touch of a duster, so had this room, the bedroom of a
+girl of long ago, a girl who would now have been a woman old and
+decrepit--had she lived.
+
+"Here's the picture you wanted to see," said Miss Pinckney leading Phyl up
+to a miniature hanging on the wall near the bed. "That's Juliet, and if
+you don't see the family likeness, well, then, you must be blind.--And you
+calling yourself a stranger!"
+
+Phyl looked. It was rather a stiff and finicking little portrait; she
+fancied it was like herself but was not sure, the colour of the hair was
+almost the same but the way it was dressed made a lot of difference, and
+she said so.
+
+"Well, they did their hair different then," replied Miss Pinckney, "and
+that reminds me, it's near time you put that tail up." She sat down in a
+rocker by the window and with her hands on her knees contemplated Phyl.
+"I'm your only female relative, and Lord knows I'm far enough off, anyhow
+I'm something with a skirt on it, and brains in its head, and that's what
+a girl most wants when she comes to your age. You'll be asked to parties
+and things here and you'll find that tail in the way; it's good enough for
+a schoolgirl, but you aren't that any longer. I'll get Dinah to do your
+hair, something simple and not too grown-up--you don't mind an old woman
+telling you this--do you?"
+
+"Indeed I don't," said Phyl. "I don't care how my hair is done, you can
+cut it off if you like, but I don't want to go to parties."
+
+"Well, maybe you don't," said Miss Pinckney, "but, all the same, we'll get
+Dinah to look to your hair. Dinah can do most anything in that way; she'd
+get twice the wages as a lady's maid elsewhere and she knows it, but she
+won't go. I've told her over and again to be off and better herself, but
+she won't go, sticks to me like a mosquito. Well, this was Juliet's room
+just as that's her picture; she died in that bed and everything is just
+exactly as she left it. It was kept so after her death. You see, it wasn't
+like an ordinary person dying, it was the tragedy of the whole thing that
+stirred folk so, dying of a broken heart for the man she was in love with.
+It set all the crazy poets off like that clock of Selina Pinckney's I was
+telling you of. The _News and Courier_ had yards of obituary notice and
+verses. It made people forget the war for a couple of days. There's all
+her books on that shelf and the diary the poor thing used to keep. Open
+one of the drawers in that chest."
+
+Phyl did so. The drawer was packed with clothes neatly folded. The air
+became filled with the scent of lavender.
+
+"There are her things, everything she ever had when she died. It may seem
+foolish to keep everything like that, foolish and sentimental, and if
+she'd died of measles or fallen down the stairs and killed herself maybe
+her old things would have been given away, but dying as she did--well,
+somehow, it didn't seem right for coloured girls to be parading about in
+her things. Mrs. Beamis sniffed here just as she sniffed in the
+drawing-room, and she said, one night, something about sentiment, as if
+she was referring to chicken cholera. I knew what she meant. She meant we
+were a pack of fools. Well, she ought to know. I reckon she ought to be a
+judge of folly--the life she leads in Chicago. Umph!--Now I'm going to lie
+down for an hour, and if you take my advice you'll do the same. The middle
+of the day was meant to rest in. You can get to your room by the window."
+
+She kissed Phyl and went off.
+
+Phyl, instead of going to her room, took her seat in the rocker and looked
+around her. The place held her, something returned to it that had been
+driven away perhaps by Miss Pinckney's cheerful and practical presence,
+the faint odour of lavender still clung to the air, and the silence was
+unbroken except for a faint stirring of the window curtains now and then
+to the breeze from outside. Everything was, indeed, just as it had been
+left, the toilet tidies and all the quaint contraptions of the '50's and
+'60's in their places. On the wall opposite the bed hung several water
+colours evidently the work of that immature artist Mary Mascarene, a watch
+pocket hung above the bed, a thing embroidered with blue roses, enough to
+disturb the sleep of any aesthete, yet beautiful enough in those old days.
+There was only one stain mark in the scrupulous cleanliness and neatness
+of the place--a panel by the window, once white painted but now dingy-grey
+and scored with lines. Phyl got up and inspected it more closely.
+Children's heights had evidently been measured here. There was a scale of
+feet marked in pencil, initials, and dates. Here was "M. M.," probably
+Mary Mascarene, "2 ft. 6 inches. Nineteen months," and the date "April,
+1845," and again a year later, "M. M. 2 ft. 9-1/2 inches, May, 1846." So
+she had grown three and a half inches in a year. "J. M."--Juliet without
+doubt--"3 feet, 3 years old, 1845." Juliet was evidently the elder--so it
+went on right into the early '60's, mixed here and there with other
+initials, amongst which Phyl made out "J. J." and "R. P.," children maybe
+staying at the house and measured against the Mascarene children--children
+now old men and women, possibly not even that. It was in the kindly spirit
+of Vernons not to pass a painter's brush over these scratchings, records
+of the height of a child that lingered only in the memory of the old
+house.
+
+Phyl turned from them to the bookshelf and the books it contained. "Noble
+Deeds of American Women," "Precept on Precept," "The Dairyman's Daughter,"
+and the "New England Primer"--with a mark against the verses left "by John
+Rogers to his wife and nine small children, and one at the breast, when he
+was burned at the stake at Smithfield in 1555." There were also books of
+poetry, Bryant, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "Powhatan, a metrical romance
+in seven cantos by Seba Smith," and several others.
+
+Phyl did something characteristic. She gathered every single book into a
+pile in her arms and sat down on the floor with them to have a feast. This
+devourer of books was omnivorous in her tastes, especially if it were a
+question of sampling, and she had enough critical faculty to enable her to
+enjoy rubbish. She lingered over Powhatan and its dedication to the "Young
+People of the United States" and then passed on to the others till she
+came to a little black book. It was Juliet Mascarene's diary and
+proclaimed the fact openly on the first page with the statements: "I am
+twelve years old to-day and Aunt Susan has given me this book to keep as
+my diary and not to forget to write each day my evil deeds as well as my
+good, which I will if I remember them. She didn't give me anything else. I
+had to-day a Paris doll from Cousin Jane Pinckney who has winking eyes
+which shut when you lay her on her back and pantalettes with scallops
+which take off and on and a trunk of clothes with a little key to it.
+Father gave me a Bible and I have had other things too numerous for
+mension.
+
+                                              "Signed Juliet Mascarene."
+
+with never a date.
+
+Then:
+
+"I haven't done any evil deeds, or good ones that I can remember, so I
+haven't written in this book for maybe a week. Mary and I, we went to a
+party at the Pinckneys to-day at Bures, the Calhoun children and the
+Rutledges were there and we had Lady Baltimore cake and a good time. Mary
+wore her blue organdie and looked very nice and Rupert Pinckney was there,
+he's fourteen and wouldn't talk to the children because they were too
+small for him, I expect. He told me he was going to have a pony same as
+Silas Rhett that threw him in the market place Wednesday last and galloped
+all the way to Battery before he was stopped, only his was to be a better
+one with more shy in it, said Silas Rhett ought to be tied on next time.
+Then old Mr. Pinckney came in and shewed us a musical snuff-box and we
+went home, and driving back Mary kicked me on the shin by axident and I
+pinched her and she didn't cry till we'd got home, then she began to roar
+and mother said it was my ungovernable temper, and I said I wished I was
+dead.
+
+"I shan't go to any more parties because it's always like that after them.
+Father told me I was to pray for a new heart and not to have any supper
+but Prue has brought me up a cake of her own making. So that's one evil
+deed to put down--It's just like Mary, any one else would have cried right
+out in the carriage and not bottled it up and kept it up till she got
+home.
+
+"This is a Friday and Prue says Friday parties are always sure to end in
+trouble for the devil puts powder in the cakes and the only way to stop
+him is to turn them three times round when they're baking and touch them
+each time with a forked hazel twig."
+
+Phyl read this passage over twice. The mention of Prue interested her
+vastly. Prue even then had evidently been a favourite of Juliet's.
+
+She read on hoping to find the name of the coloured woman again, but it
+did not occur.
+
+The diary, indeed, did not run over more than a year and a half, but
+scrappy as it was and short in point of time, the character of Juliet
+shone forth from it, uneasy, impetuous, tormenting and loving.
+
+Many books could not have depicted the people round Vernons so well as
+this scribbling of a child. Mary Mascarene, quiet, rather a spoil-sport
+and something of a tale-teller, dead and gone Pinckneys and Rhetts. Aunt
+Susan, Cousin Jane Pinckney, Uncle George who beat his coloured man,
+Darius, because the said Darius had let him go out with one brass button
+missing from his blue coat. Simon Pinckney--the one whose ghost
+walked--and who "fell down in the garden because he had the hiccups,"
+these and others of their time lived in the little black book given by the
+miserly Aunt Susan "to keep as my diary and not to forget to write each
+day my evil deeds as well as my good."
+
+Towards the end there was another reference to Rupert Pinckney, the tragic
+lover of the future:
+
+"Rupert Pinckney was here to-day with his mother to luncheon and we had a
+palmetto salad and mother said when he was gone he was the most frivulus
+boy in Charleston, whatever that was, and too much of a dandy, but father
+said he had stuff in him and Aunt Susan, who was here too, said 'Yes,
+stuff and nonsense,' and I said he could ride his pony without tumbling
+off like Silas Rhett, anyhow.
+
+"Then they went on talking about his people and how they hadn't as much
+money as they used to have, and Aunt Susan said that was so, and the worst
+of it is they're spending more money than they used to spend, and father
+said, well, anyhow, that wasn't a very common complaint with _some_ people
+and he left the room. He never stays long in the room with Aunt S.
+
+"I think the Pinckneys are real nice."
+
+"Mr. Simon Mascarene from Richmond and his wife came to see us to-day and
+stay for a week. They drove here in their own carriage with four brown
+horses and you could not tell which horse was which, they are so alike,
+they are very fine people and Mr. M. has a red face--not the same red as
+Mr. Simon Pinckney's, but different somehow--more like an apple, and a
+high nose which makes him look very grand and fine." The same Simon
+Mascarene, no doubt, that came to the wedding of Charles Pinckney in 1880
+as old Simon Mascarene, the one whose flowered carpet bag still lingered
+in the memory of Miss Pinckney.
+
+"Mrs. M. is very fine too and beautifully dressed and mother gave her a
+great bouquet of geraniums and garden flowers with a live green
+caterpillar looping about in the green stuff which nobody saw but me, till
+it fell on Mrs. M.'s knee and she screamed. There is to be a big party
+to-morrow and the Pinckneys are coming and Rupert."
+
+There the diary ended.
+
+Phyl put it back on the shelf with the books.
+
+She had not the knowledge necessary to visualise the people referred to,
+those people of another day when Planters kept open house, when slaves
+were slaves and Bures the home of the old gentleman with the musical
+snuff-box, but she could visualise Juliet as a child. The writing in the
+little book had brought the vision up warm from the past and it seemed
+almost as though she might suddenly run in from the sunlit piazza that lay
+beyond the waving window curtains.
+
+There was a bureau in one corner, or rather one of those structures that
+went by the name of Davenports in the days of our fathers. Phyl went to it
+and raised the lid. She did so without a second thought or any feeling
+that it was wrong to poke about in a place like this and pry into secrets.
+Juliet seemed to belong to her as though she had been a sister, her own
+likeness to the dead girl was a bond of attraction stronger than a family
+tie, and Juliet's mournful love story completed the charm.
+
+The desk contained very little, a seal with a dove on it, some sticks of
+spangled sealing-wax, a paper knife of coloured wood with a picture of
+Benjamin Franklin on the handle and some sheets of note-paper with gilt
+edges.
+
+Phyl noticed that the gilt was still bright.
+
+She took out the paper knife and looked at it, and then held the blade to
+her lips to feel the smoothness of it, drawing it along so that her lips
+touched every part of the blade.
+
+Then she put it back, and as she did so a little panel at the back of the
+desk fell forward disclosing a cache containing a bundle of letters tied
+round with ribbon.
+
+Phyl started as though a hand had been laid on her arm. The point of the
+paper knife must have touched the spring of the panel, but it seemed as
+though the desk had suddenly opened its hand, closed and clasping those
+letters for so many years. For a moment she hesitated to touch them. Then
+she thought of all the time they had lain there and a feeling that Juliet
+wouldn't mind and that the old bureau had told its secret without being
+asked, overcame her scruples. She took the letters and sitting down again
+on the floor, untied the ribbon.
+
+There were no envelopes. Each sheet of paper had been carefully folded and
+sealed with green wax, with the seal leaving the impression of the dove.
+There was no address, and they had evidently been tied together in
+chronological order. But the handwriting was the handwriting of Juliet
+Mascarene fully formed now.
+
+The first of these things ran:
+
+"It wasn't my fault. I didn't create old Mr. Gadney and send him to church
+to keep us talking in the street like that. I did _not_ see you. You
+couldn't have passed, and if you did you must have been invisible. I feel
+dreadfully wicked writing to you. Do you know this is a clandestine
+correspondence and must stop at once? You mustn't _ever_ write to me
+again, nor I mustn't see you. Of course I can't help seeing you in church
+and on the street--and I can't help thinking about you. They'll be making
+me try and stop breathing next. I don't care a button for the whole lot of
+them. It was all Aunt Susan's doing, only for her my people would never
+have quarrelled with yours and I wouldn't have been so miserable. I feel
+sometimes as if I could just take a boat and sail off to somewhere where I
+would never see any people again.
+
+"It was clever of you to send your letter by P. This goes to you by the
+same hand."
+
+There was no signature and no date.
+
+Phyl turned the sheet of paper over to make sure again that there was no
+address. As she did so a faint, quaint perfume came to her as though the
+old-fashioned soul of the letter were released for a moment. It was
+vervain, the perfume of long ago, beloved of the Duchesse de Chartres and
+the ladies of the forties.
+
+She laid the letter down and took up the next.
+
+"It is _wicked_ of you. My people never would be so mean as to quarrel
+with your people or look down on them because they have lost money. Why
+did you say that--and you know I said in my last letter that I could not
+write to you again. I was shocked when P. pinched my arm as I was passing
+her on the stairs and handed me your note--Don't you--don't you--how shall
+I say it? Don't you think you and I could meet and speak to one another
+somewhere instead of always writing like this? Somewhere where no one
+could see us. Do you know--do you know--do you, ahem! O dear me--know that
+just inside our gate there's a little arbour. The tiniest place. When I
+was a child I used to play there with Mary at keeping house, there's a
+seat just big enough for two and we used to sit there with our dolls. No
+one can see the gate from the lower piazza, and the gate doesn't make any
+noise opening, for father had it oiled--it used to squeak a bit from rust,
+but it doesn't now and I'll be there to-morrow night at nine--in the
+arbour--at least I _may_ be there. I just want to tell you in a way I
+can't in a letter that my people aren't the sort of folk to sneer at any
+one because they have lost money.
+
+"I am sending this by P.
+
+"The arbour is just back of the big magnolia as you come in, on the
+left."
+
+Phyl gave a little laugh. Then with half-closed eyes she kissed the
+letter, laid it softly on the floor beside the first and went on to the
+next.
+
+"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. No one sees us
+meet. No one knows, and yet I fear them finding out just by instinct.
+Father said to me the other day, 'What makes you seem so happy these
+times?' If Mary had been alive she would have found out long ago, for I
+never could keep anything hid from her. I was nearly saying to him, 'If
+you want to know why I am so happy go and ask the magnolia tree by the
+gate.'
+
+"Sometimes I feel as if I were deceiving him and everybody. I am, and I
+don't care--I don't care if they knew. O 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."
+
+Phyl's eyes grew half blind with tears.
+
+This cry from the Past went to her heart like a knife. The wind,
+strengthening for a moment, moved the window curtains, bringing with it
+the drowsy afternoon sounds of Charleston, sounds that seemed to mock at
+this voice declaring the deathlessness of its love. It was impossible to
+go on reading. Impossible to expose any more this heart that had ceased to
+beat.
+
+The meetings in the arbour behind the magnolia tree, the kisses, the words
+that the leaves and birds alone could hear--they had all ended in death.
+
+It did not matter now if the garden gate creaked on its hinges, or if
+watching eyes from the piazza saw the glossy leaves stirring when no wind
+could shake them--nothing mattered at all to these people now.
+
+She put all the letters back in the bureau, carefully closing them in the
+secret drawer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+"Miss Pinckney," said Phyl that night as they sat at supper, "when you
+left me this afternoon in Juliet's room I stopped to look at the books and
+things and when I opened the bureau I touched a spring by accident and a
+little panel fell out and I found a lot of old letters behind it. It was
+wrong of me to go meddling about and I thought I ought to tell you."
+
+"Old letters," said Miss Pinckney, "you don't say--what were they about?"
+
+"I read one or two," said the girl. "I'd never, never have dreamed of
+touching them only--only they were hers--they were to him."
+
+"Rupert?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Love letters?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Miss Pinckney sighed.
+
+"He kept all her letters," said she, "and they came back to her after he
+was killed. He was killed here in Charleston, at Fort Sumter, in the war;
+they brought him across here and carried him on a stretcher and she--well,
+well, it's all done with and let it rest, but it is strange that those
+letters should have fallen into your hands."
+
+"Why, strange?"
+
+"Why?" burst out Miss Pinckney. "Why I have dusted that old bureau inside
+and out a hundred times, and pulled out the drawers and pushed them in and
+it never shewed sign of having anything in it but emptiness, and you don't
+do more'n look at it and you find those letters. It's just as if the thing
+had deceived me. I don't mind, and I don't want to see them, they weren't
+intended for other eyes than his and hers--and maybe yours since they were
+shewn you like that."
+
+"Was it wrong of me to look at them?" asked Phyl. "I never would have done
+it only--only--Oh, I don't know, I somehow felt she wouldn't mind. She
+seemed like a sister--I would never dream of looking at another person's
+letters but she did not seem like another person. I can't explain. It was
+just as though the letters were my own--just exactly as though they were
+my own when I found them in my hands."
+
+Phyl was talking with her eyes fixed before her as though she were looking
+across some great distance.
+
+Miss Pinckney gave a little shiver, then supper being over she rose from
+the table and led the way from the room.
+
+Richard Pinckney had dined with them but he was out for supper somewhere
+or another. They went to the drawing-room and had not been there for more
+than a few minutes when Frances Rhett was announced.
+
+The Rhetts were on intimate enough terms with the Pinckneys to call in
+like this without ceremony; Frances had called to speak to Miss Pinckney
+about some charity affair she was getting up in a hurry, but she had not
+been five minutes in the room before Phyl knew that she had called to look
+at her. To look at the girl who had come to live with the Pinckneys, the
+red headed girl. Phyl did not know that girls of Frances' type dread red
+haired girls, if they are pretty, as rabbits dread stoats, but she did
+know in some uncanny way that Frances Rhett considered Richard Pinckney as
+her own property to be protected against all comers.
+
+All at once and new born, the woman awoke in her instinctive, mistrustful
+and armed.
+
+Frances Rhett, despite Miss Pinckney's dispraise of her, was a most
+formidable person as far as the opposite sex was concerned. One of the
+women of whom other women say, "Well, I don't know what he sees in her,
+I'm sure."
+
+A brunette of eighteen who looked twenty, full-blooded, full lipped, full
+curved, sleepy-eyed, she seemed dressed by nature for the part of the
+world and the flesh--with a hint of the devil in those deep, dark, pansy
+blue eyes that seemed now by artificial light almost black.
+
+"Well, I'll subscribe ten dollars," said Miss Pinckney; "I reckon the
+darkie babies won't be any the worse for a _creche_ and maybe not very
+much better for it. If you could get up an institution to distil good
+manners and respect for their betters into their heads I'd give you forty.
+I'm sure I don't know what the coloured folk of Charleston are coming to,
+one of them nearly pushed me off the sidewalk the other day, bag of
+impudence! and the way they look at one in the street with that sleery
+leery what-d'-you-call-yourself-you-white-trash grin on their faces
+s'nough to raise Cain in any one's heart."
+
+"I know," replied the dark girl, "and they are getting worse; the whip is
+the only thing that as far as I can see ever made them possible, and what
+we have now is the result of your beautiful Abolitionists."
+
+"Don't call them my beautiful Abolitionists," replied the other. "I didn't
+make 'em. All the same I don't believe in whipping and never did. It's the
+whip that whipped us in the war. If white folk had treated black folk like
+Christians slavery would have been the greatest god-send to blacks. It was
+what stays are to women. But they didn't. The low down white made slavery
+impossible with his whipping and oppression and _we_ had to suffer. Well,
+we haven't ended our sufferings and if these folk go on multiplying like
+rabbits there's no knowing what we've got to suffer yet."
+
+Miss Rhett concurred and took her departure. "Now, that girl," said the
+elder lady when Frances Rhett was gone, "is just the type of the people I
+was telling her about. No idea but whipping. _She_ wouldn't have much
+mercy on a human creature black or tan _or_ white. Thick skinned. She
+didn't even see that I was telling her so to her face. Wonder what brought
+her here this hour with her _creche_. It's just a fad. If they got up a
+charity to make alligator bait of the black babies so's to sell the
+alligator skins to buy pants with texts on them for the Hottentots it'd be
+all the same to her. Something to gad about with. I wish I'd kept that ten
+dollars in my pocket."
+
+Miss Pinckney went to bed early that night--before ten--and Phyl, who was
+free to do as she chose, sat for a while in the lower piazza watching the
+moon rising above the trees. She had a little plan in her mind, a plan
+that had only occurred to her just before the departure of Miss Pinckney
+for bed.
+
+She sat now watching the garden growing ghostly bright, the sun dial
+becoming a moon dial, the carnations touched by that stillness and mystery
+which is held only in the light of the moon and the light of the dawn.
+
+Phyl found herself sitting between two worlds. In the light of the
+northern moon in summer there is a vague rose tinge to be caught at times
+and in places when it falls full on house wall or the road on which one is
+walking. The piazza to-night had this living and warm touch. It seemed lit
+by a glorified ethereal day. A day that had never grown up and would never
+lose the charm of dawn.
+
+Yet the garden to which she would now turn her eyes shewed nothing of
+this. Night reigned there from the cherokee roses moving in the wind to
+the carnations motionless, moon stricken, deathly white.
+
+Sure that Miss Pinckney would not come down again, Phyl rose and crossed
+the garden towards the gate.
+
+She wanted to see if the trysting place behind the magnolia and the bushes
+that grew about it were still there.
+
+At the gate she paused for a moment, glancing back at the house as Juliet
+Mascarene might have done on those evenings when she had an appointment
+with her lover. Then, pushing through the bushes and past the magnolia
+trees she found herself in a little half moonlit space, a natural arbour
+through whose roof of leaves the moonlight came in quavering shafts. She
+stood for a moment absolutely still whilst her eyes accustomed themselves
+to the light. Then she began to search for the seat she guessed to be
+there, and found it. It was between an oak bole and the wall of the
+garden, and the bushes behind had grown so that their branches half
+covered it. Neglected, forsaken, unknown, perhaps, to the people now
+living in Vernons it had lingered with the fidelity of inanimate things,
+protected by the foliage of the southern garden from prying eyes.
+
+She pushed back the leaves and branches and bent them out of the way, then
+she took her seat, and as she did so several of the bent branches released
+themselves and closed half round her in a delightful embrace.
+
+From here she could see brokenly the garden and the walk leading from the
+gate, with the light of the moon now strong upon the walk. The night
+sounds of the street just beyond the wall came mixed with the stir of
+foliage as the wind from the sea pressed over the trees like the hand of a
+mesmerist inducing sleep.
+
+So it was here that Juliet Mascarene had sat with Rupert Pinckney on those
+summer nights when the world was younger, before the war. The war that had
+changed everything whilst leaving the roses untouched and the moonlight
+the same on the bird-haunted garden of Vernons.
+
+Everything was the same here in this little space of flowers and trees.
+But the lovers had vanished.
+
+"For man walketh in a vain shadow and disquieteth himself in vain." The
+words strayed across Phyl's mind brought up by recollection. "He cometh up
+and is cut down like a flower, he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never
+continueth in one stay."
+
+The trees seemed whispering it, the eternal statement that leaves the
+eternal question unanswered.
+
+The garden was talking to her, the night, the very bushes that clasped her
+in a half embrace; perfumes, moonlight, the voice of the wind, all were
+part of the spell that bound her, held her, whispered to her. It was as
+though the love letter of Juliet had led her here to show her as in a
+glass darkly the vainness of love in the vainness of life.
+
+Vainly, for as she sat watching in imagination the forms of the lost
+lovers parting there at the gate, suddenly there came upon her a stirring
+of the soul, a joyous uplifting as though wings had been given to her mind
+for one wild second raising it to the heights beyond earthly knowledge.
+
+"Love can never die."
+
+It was as though some ghostly voice had whispered this fact in her ear.
+
+Juliet was not dead nor the man she loved, changed maybe but not dead. In
+some extraordinary way she knew it as surely as though she herself had
+once been Juliet.
+
+Religion to Phyl had meant little, the Bible a book of fair promises and
+appalling threats, vague promises but quite definite threats. As a quite
+small child she had gathered the impression that she was sure to be damned
+unless she managed to convert herself into a quite different being from
+the person she knew herself to be. Death was the supreme bogey, the future
+life a thing not to be thought of if one wanted to be happy.
+
+Yet now, just as if she had been through it all, the truth came flooding
+on her like a golden sea, the truth that life never loses touch with life,
+that the body is only a momentary manifestation of the ever living
+spirit.
+
+Meeting Street, the old house so full of memories, Juliet's letters, the
+garden, they had all been stretching out arms to her, trying to tell her
+something, whispering, suggesting, and now all these vague voices had
+become clear, as though strengthened by the moonlight and the mystery of
+night.
+
+Clear as lip-spoken words came the message:
+
+"You have lived before and we say this to you, we, the things that knew
+you and loved you in a past life."
+
+A step that halted outside close to the garden gate broke the spell, the
+gate turned on its hinges shewing through its trellis work the form of a
+man. It was Pinckney just returned from some supper-party or club.
+
+Phyl caught her breath back. Suddenly, and at the sight of Pinckney,
+Prue's words of that morning entered her mind.
+
+"Miss Julie, Massa Pinckney told me tell yo' he be at de gate t'night
+same's las' night. Done you let on as I told you."
+
+And here he was, the man who had been occupying her thoughts and who was
+beginning to occupy her dreams, and here she was as though waiting for him
+by appointment.
+
+But there was much more than that. Worlds and worlds more than that, a
+whole universe of happiness undreamed of.
+
+She rose from the seat and the parted bushes rustled faintly as they
+closed behind her.
+
+Pinckney, who had just shut the gate, heard the whisper of the leaves, he
+turned and saw a figure standing half in shadow and half in moonlight. For
+a moment he was startled, fancying it a stranger, then he saw that it was
+Phyl.
+
+"Hullo," said he. "Why, Phyl, what are you doing here?"
+
+The commonplace question shattered everything like a false note in music.
+
+"Nothing," she answered. Then without a word more she ran past him and
+vanished into the house.
+
+Pinckney cast the stump of his cigar away.
+
+"What on earth is the matter with her now?" said he to himself. "What on
+earth have I done?"
+
+The word she had uttered carried half a sob with it, it might have been
+the last word of a quarrel.
+
+He stood for a moment glancing around. The wild idea had entered his mind
+that she had been there to meet some one and that his intrusion had put
+her out.
+
+But there was no one in the garden; nothing but the trees and the flowers,
+wind shaken and lit by the moon, the same placid moon that had lit the
+garden of Vernons for the lovers of whom he knew nothing except by
+hearsay, and for whom he cared nothing at all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+When Phyl awoke from sleep next morning, the brightness of the South had
+lost some of its charm.
+
+Something magical that had been forming in her mind and taking its life
+from Vernons had been shattered last night by Pinckney's commonplace
+question.
+
+This morning, looking back on yesterday, she could remember details but
+she could not recapture the essence. The exaltation that had raised her
+above and beyond herself. It was like the remembrance of a rose contrasted
+with the reality.
+
+The whole day had been working up to that moment in the little arbour,
+when her mind, tricked or led, had risen to heights beyond thought, to
+happiness beyond experience, only to be cast down from those heights by
+the voice of reality.
+
+The thing was plain enough to common sense; she had let herself be
+over-ruled by Imagination, working upon splendid material. Prue's message,
+her own likeness to Juliet, Juliet's letters, the little arbour, those and
+the magic of Vernons had worked upon her mind singly and together,
+exalting her into a soul-state utterly beyond all previous experience.
+
+It was as though she had played the part of Juliet for a day, suffered
+vaguely and enjoyed in imagination what Juliet had suffered and enjoyed in
+life, known Love as Juliet had known it--for a moment.
+
+The brutal touch of the Real coming at the supreme moment to shatter and
+shrivel everything.
+
+And the strange thing was that she had no regrets.
+
+Looking back on yesterday, the things that had happened seemed of little
+interest. Sleep seemed to have put an Atlantic ocean between her and
+them.
+
+Coming down to breakfast she found Pinckney just coming in from the
+garden; he said nothing about the incident of the night before, nor did
+she, there were other things to talk about. Seth, one of the darkies, had
+been 'kicking up shines,' he had given impudence to Miss Pinckney that
+morning. Impudence to Miss Pinckney! You can scarcely conceive the meaning
+of that statement without a personal knowledge of Miss Pinckney, and a
+full understanding of the magic of her rule.
+
+Seth was, even now, packing up the quaint contraptions he called his
+luggage, and old Darius, the coloured odd job man, was getting a barrow
+out of the tool-house to wheel the said luggage to Seth's grandmother's
+house, somewhere in the negro quarters of the town. The whole affair of
+the impudence and dismissal had not taken two minutes, but the effects
+were widespread and lasting. Dinah was weeping, the kitchen in confusion;
+one might have thought a death had occurred in the house, and Miss
+Pinckney presiding at the breakfast table was voluble and silent by
+turns.
+
+"Never mind," said Pinckney with all the light-heartedness of a man
+towards domestic affairs. "Seth's not the only nigger in Charleston."
+
+"I'm not bothering about his going," replied Miss Pinckney. "He was all
+thumbs and of no manner of use but to make work; what upsets me is the way
+he hid his nature. Time and again I've been good to that boy. He looked
+all black grin and frizzled head, nothing bad in him you'd say--and then!
+It's like opening a cupboard and finding a toad, and there's Dinah going
+on like a fool; she's crying because he's going, not because he gave me
+impudence. Rachel's the same, and I'm just going now to the kitchen to
+give them a talking to all round."
+
+Off she went.
+
+"I know what that means," said Pinckney. "It's only once in a couple of
+years that there's any trouble with servants and then--oh, my! You see
+Aunt Maria is not the same as other people because she loves every one
+dearly, and looks on the servants as part of the family. I expect she
+loves that black imp Seth, for all his faults, and that's what makes her
+so upset."
+
+"Same as I was about Rafferty," said Phyl with a little laugh.
+
+Pinckney laughed also and their eyes met. Just like a veil swept aside,
+something indefinable that had lain between them, some awkwardness
+arising, maybe, from the Rafferty incident, vanished in that moment.
+
+Phyl had been drawing steadily towards him lately, till, unknown to her,
+he had entered into the little romance of Juliet, so much so that if last
+night, at that magical moment when he met her on entering the gate--if at
+that moment he had taken her in his arms and kissed her, Love might have
+been born instantly from his embrace.
+
+But the psychological moment had passed, a crisis unknown to him and
+almost unknown to her.
+
+And now, as if to seal the triumph of the commonplace, suddenly, the vague
+reservation that had lain between them, disappeared.
+
+"Do you know," said he, "you taught me a lesson that day, a lesson every
+man ought to be taught before he leaves college."
+
+"What was that?" asked Phyl.
+
+"Never to interfere in household affairs. Of course Rafferty wasn't
+exactly a household affair because he belonged mostly to the stable, still
+he was your affair more than mine. Household affairs belong to women, and
+men ought to leave them alone."
+
+"Maybe you're right," said Phyl, "but all the same I was wrong. Do you
+know I've never apologised for what I said."
+
+"What did you say?" asked he with an artless air of having forgotten.
+
+"Oh, I said--things, and--I apologise."
+
+"And I said--things, and I apologise--come on, let's go out. I have no
+business this morning and I'd like to show you the town--if you'd care to
+come."
+
+"What about Miss Pinckney?" asked Phyl.
+
+"Oh, she's all right," he replied. "The Seth trouble will keep her busy
+till lunch time and I'll leave word we've gone out for a walk."
+
+Phyl ran upstairs and put on her hat. As they were passing through the
+garden the thought came to her just for a moment to show him the little
+arbour; then something stopped her, a feeling that this humble little
+secret was not hers to give away, and a feeling that Pinckney wouldn't
+care. Dead lovers vanished so long and their affairs would have little
+interest for his practical mind.
+
+The morning was warmer even than yesterday. The joyous, elusive,
+intoxicating spirit of the Southern spring was everywhere, the air seemed
+filled with the dust of sunbeams, filled with fragrance and lazy sounds.
+The very business of the street seemed part of a great universal gaiety
+over which the sky heat hazy beyond the Battery rose in a dome of deep,
+sublime tranquil blue.
+
+They stopped to inspect the old slave market.
+
+Then the remains of the building that had once been the old Planters Hotel
+held Phyl like a wizard whilst Pinckney explained its history. Here in the
+old days the travelling carriages had drawn up, piled with the luggage of
+fine folk on a visit to Charleston on business or pleasure. The Planters
+was known all through the Georgias and Virginia, all through the States in
+the days when General Washington and John C. Calhoun were living figures.
+
+The ghost of the place held Phyl's imagination. Just as Meeting Street
+seemed filled with friendly old memories on her first entering it, so did
+the air around the ruins of the "Planters."
+
+Then having paused to admire the gouty pillars of St. Michael's they went
+into the church.
+
+The silence of an empty church is a thing apart from all other silences in
+the world. Deeper, more complete, more filled with voices.
+
+As they were entering a negro caretaker engaged in dusting and tidying let
+something fall, and as the silence closed in on the faint echo that
+followed the sound they stopped, just by the font to look around them.
+Here the spirit of spring was not. The shafts of sunlight through the
+windows lit the old fashioned box pews, the double decked pulpit, and the
+font crowned with the dove with the light of long ago. Sunday mornings of
+the old time assuredly had found sanctuary here and the old congregations
+had not yet quite departed.
+
+The occasional noise of the caretaker as he moved from pew to pew scarcely
+disturbed the tranquillity, the scene was set beyond the reach of the
+sounds and daily affairs of this world, and the actors held in a medium
+unshakable as that which holds the ghostly life of bees in amber and birds
+in marqueterie.
+
+"That was George Washington's pew," whispered Pinckney, "at least the one
+he sat in once. That's the old Pinckney pew, belonged to Bures--other
+people sit there now. This is our pew--Vernons. The Mascarenes had it in
+the old days, of course."
+
+Phyl looked at the pew where Juliet Mascarene had sat often enough, no
+doubt, whilst the preacher had preached on the vanity of life, on the
+delusions of the world and the shortness of Time.
+
+Many an eloquent divine had stood in the pulpit of St. Michael's, but none
+have ever preached a sermon so poignant, so real, so searching as that
+which the old church preaches to those who care to hear.
+
+They turned to go.
+
+Outside Phyl was silent and Pinckney seemed occupied by thoughts of his
+own. They had got to that pleasant stage of intimacy where conversation
+can be dropped without awkwardness and picked up again haphazard, but you
+cannot be silent long in the streets of Charleston on a spring day. They
+visited the market-place and inspected the buzzards and then, somehow,
+without knowing it, they drifted on to the water side. Here where the
+docks lie deserted and the green water washes the weed grown and rotting
+timbers of wharves they took their seats on a baulk of timber to rest and
+contemplate things.
+
+"There used to be ships here once," said he. "Lots of ships--but that was
+before the war."
+
+He was silent and Phyl glanced sideways at him, wondering what was in his
+mind. She soon found out. A struggle was going on between his two selves,
+his business self that demanded up-to-dateness, bustle, and the energetic
+conduct of affairs, and his other self that was content to let things lie,
+to see Charleston just as she was, unspoiled by the thing we call Business
+Prosperity. It was a battle between the South and the North in him.
+
+He talked it out to her. Went into details, pointed to Galveston and New
+Orleans, those greedy sea mouths that swallow the goods of the world and
+give out cotton, whilst Charleston lay idle, her wharves almost deserted,
+her storehouses empty.
+
+He spoke almost vehemently, spoke as a business man speaks of wasted
+chances and things neglected. Then, when he had finished, the girl put in
+her word.
+
+"Well," said she, "it may be so but I don't want it any different from
+what it is."
+
+Pinckney laughed, the laugh of a man who is confessing a weakness.
+
+"I don't know that I do either," said he.
+
+It was rank blasphemy against Business. At the club you would often find
+him bemoaning the business decay of the city he loved, but here, sitting
+by the girl on the forsaken wharf, in the sunshine, the feeling suddenly
+came to him that there was something here that business would drive away.
+Something better than Prosperity.
+
+It was as though he were looking at things for a moment through her eyes.
+
+They came back through the sunlit streets to find Miss Pinckney recovered
+from the Seth business, and after luncheon that day, assisted by Dinah and
+the directions of Miss Pinckney, Phyl's hair "went up."
+
+"It's beautiful," said the old lady, as she contemplated the result, "and
+more like Juliet than ever. Take the glass and look at yourself."
+
+Phyl did.
+
+She did not see the beauty but she saw the change. Her childhood had
+vanished as though some breath had blown it away in the magic mirror.
+
+PART III
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+In a fortnight Phyl had adjusted herself to her new environment so
+completely that to use Pinckney's expression, she might have been bred and
+born in Charleston.
+
+Custom and acquaintanceship had begun to dull without destroying the charm
+of the place and the ghostly something, the something that during the
+first two days had seemed to haunt Vernons, the something indefinable she
+had called "It" had withdrawn.
+
+The spell, whatever it was, had been broken that night in the garden, when
+Pinckney's commonplace remark had shattered the dream-state into which she
+had worked herself with the assistance of Prue, Juliet's letters, the
+little secret arbour and the moonlight of the South.
+
+One morning, coming down to breakfast, she found Miss Pinckney in
+agitation, an open telegram in one hand and a feather duster in the
+other.
+
+It was one of the early morning habits of Miss Pinckney to range the house
+superintending things with a feather duster in hand, not so much for use
+as for the purpose of encouraging others. She was in the breakfast room
+now dusting spasmodically things that did not require dusting and talking
+all the time, pausing every now and then to have another glance at the
+telegram whilst Richard Pinckney, unable to get a word in, sat on a chair,
+and Jim, the little coloured page, who had brought in the urn, stood by
+listening and admiring.
+
+"Forty miles from here and ten from a railway station," said Miss
+Pinckney, "and how am I to get there?"
+
+"Automobile," said Pinckney.
+
+It was evidently not his first suggestion as to this means of locomotion,
+for the suggestion was received without an outburst, neither resented nor
+assented to in fact. They took their seats at table and then it all came
+out.
+
+Colonel Seth Grangerson of Grangerson House, Grangerville, S. Carolina,
+was ill. Miss Pinckney was his nearest relative, the nearest at least with
+whom he was not fighting, and he had wired to her, or rather his son had
+wired to her, to come at once.
+
+"As if I were a bird," said the old lady. Grangerville was a backwater
+place, badly served by the railway, and it would take the best part of a
+day to get there by ordinary means.
+
+"A car will get you there inside a couple of hours," said Pinckney.
+
+"As if he couldn't have sent for Susan Revenall," went on she as though
+oblivious to the suggestion, "but I suppose he's fought with them again. I
+patched up a peace between them last midsummer, but I suppose the patches
+didn't stick; he's fought with the Revenalls, he's fought with the
+Calhouns, he's fought with the Beauregards, he's fought with the
+Tredegars--that man would fight with his own front teeth if he couldn't
+get anything better to fight with, and now he's dying I expect he reckons
+to have a fight with me, just to finish off with. He killed his poor wife,
+and Dick Grangerson would never have gone off and got drowned only for
+him--Oh, he's not so bad," turning to Phyl, "he's good enough only for
+that--will fight."
+
+"Too much pep," said Pinckney.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know what it is. They're the queerest lot the Almighty
+ever put feet on, and I don't mind saying it, even though they are
+relatives." Turning to Phyl. "I suppose you know, least I suppose you
+think, that the Civil War was fought for the emancipation of the darkies
+and that they _were_ emancipated."
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Well, they weren't--at least not at Grangersons. While the Colonel's
+father was fighting in the Civil War, his first wife, she was a Dawson,
+kept things going at home, and after the war was over and he was back he
+took up the rule again. Emancipation--no one would have dared to say the
+word to him, he'd have killed you with a look. The North never beat
+Grangerson, it beat Davis and one man and another but it never beat
+Grangerson, he carried on after the war just as he carried on before, told
+the darkies that emancipation was nigger talk and they believed him.
+People came round telling them they were free, and all they got was broken
+heads. They were a very tetchy lot, those niggers, are still what are left
+of them. You see, they've always been proud of being Grangerson's niggers,
+that's the sort of man he is, able to make them feel like that."
+
+"Silas helps to carry on the place, doesn't he?" asked Pinckney.
+
+"Yes, and just in the same tradition, only he's finding it doesn't work, I
+suspect. You see, the old darkies are all right, but when he's forced to
+get new labour he has to get the new darkies and they're all wrong, and he
+thrashes them and they run away. They never take the law of him either. I
+reckon when they get clear of Silas they don't stop running till they get
+to Galveston."
+
+They talked of other things and then, breakfast over, Miss Pinckney turned
+to Richard.
+
+"Well, what about that automobile?"
+
+"I'll have one at the door for you at ten," said he.
+
+She turned to Phyl.
+
+"You'd better go with me--if you'd like to; you'd be lonely here all by
+yourself, and you may as well see Grangersons whilst the old man's there,
+though maybe he'll be gone before we arrive. We may be there for a couple
+of days, so you'd better take enough things."
+
+Then she went off to dress herself for the journey, and an hour later she
+appeared veiled and apparelled, Dick following her with the luggage, a
+bandbox and a bag of other days.
+
+She got into the big touring car without a word. Phyl followed her and
+Pinckney tucked the rug round their knees.
+
+"You've got the most careful driver in Charleston," said he, "and he knows
+the road."
+
+Miss Pinckney nodded.
+
+She was flying straight in the face of her pet prejudice. She was not in
+the least afraid of a break down or an overset. An accident that did not
+rob her of life or limb would indeed have been an opportunity for saying
+"I told you so." She was chiefly afraid of running over things.
+
+As Pinckney was closing the door on them who should appear but Seth--Seth
+in a striped sleeved jacket, all grin and frizzled head and bearing a
+bunch of flowers in his hand. He had not been dismissed after all. When
+Miss Pinckney had gone into the kitchen to pay him his wages he had
+carried on so that she forgave him. The flowers--her own flowers just
+picked from the garden--were an offering, not to propitiate but to
+please.
+
+Pinckney laughed, but Miss Pinckney as she took the bouquet scarcely
+noticed either him or Seth, her mind was busy with something else.
+
+She leaned over towards the chauffeur.
+
+"Mind you don't run over any chickens," said she.
+
+It was a gorgeous morning, with the sea mists blowing away on the sea
+wind, swamp-land and river and bayou showing streets and ponds of sapphire
+through the vanishing haze.
+
+Phyl was in high spirits; the tune of Camptown Races, which a street boy
+had been whistling as they started, pursued her. Miss Pinckney, dumb
+through the danger zone where chickens and dogs and nigger children might
+be run over, found her voice in the open country.
+
+The bunch of flowers presented to her by Seth and which she was holding on
+her lap started her off.
+
+"I hope it is not a warning," said she; "wouldn't be a bit surprised to
+find Seth Grangerson in his coffin waiting for the flowers to be put on
+him; what put it in to the darkey's head to give me them! I don't know,
+I'm sure, same thing I suppose that put it into his head to give me
+impudence."
+
+"You've taken him back," said Phyl.
+
+"Well, I suppose I have," said the other in a resigned voice, "and likely
+to pay for my foolishness."
+
+Pinckney had said that it was only a two hours' run from Charleston to
+Grangerville, but he had reckoned without taking into consideration the
+badness of some of the roads, and the intricacies of the way, for it was
+after one o'clock when they reached the little town beyond which, a mile
+to the West, lay the Colonel's house.
+
+Grangerville lies on the border of Clarendon county, a tiny place that yet
+supports a newspaper of its own, the _Grangerville Courier_. The _Courier_
+office, the barber's shop and the hotel are the chief places in
+Grangerville, and yellow dogs and black children seem the bulk of the
+population, at least of a warm afternoon, when drowsiness holds the place
+in her keeping, and the light lies broad and steadfast and golden upon the
+cotton fields, and the fields of Indian corn, and the foliage of the woods
+that spread to southward, enchanted woods, fading away into an enchanted
+world of haze and sun and silence.
+
+When the great Southern moon rises above the cotton fields, Romance
+touches even Grangerville itself, the baying of the yellow dog, darkey
+voices, the distant plunking of a banjo, the owl in the trees--all are the
+same as of old--and the houses are the same, nearly, and the people, and
+it is hard to believe that over there to the North the locomotives of the
+Atlantic Coast railway are whistling down the night, that men are able to
+talk to one another at a distance of a thousand miles, fly like birds,
+live like fish, and perpetuate their shadows in the "movies."
+
+Grangersons lay a mile beyond the little town, a solidly built mansion set
+far back from the road, and approached by an avenue of cypress. As they
+drew up before the pillared piazza, upon which the front door opened, from
+the doorway, wide open this warm day, appeared an old gentleman.
+
+A very fine looking old man he was. His face, with its predominant nose,
+long white moustache and firm cleft chin, was of that resolute and
+obstinate type which seems a legacy of the Roman Empire, whose legionaries
+left much more behind them in Gaul and Britain than Trajan arches and
+Roman roads. He was dressed in light grey tweeds, his linen was
+immaculate--youthful and still a beau in point of dress, and bearing
+himself erect with the aid of a walking stick, a crutch handled stick of
+clouded malacca, Colonel Seth Grangerson, for he it was, had come to his
+front door, drawn by the sound of the one thing he detested more than
+anything in life, a motor car.
+
+"Why, Lord! He's not even in bed," cried the outraged Miss Pinckney, who
+recognised him at once. "All this journey and he up and about--it beats
+Seth and his impudence!"
+
+The Colonel, whose age dimmed eyes saw nothing but the automobile, came
+down the steps, panama hat in hand, courtly, freezing, yet ready to
+explode on the least provocation. Within touch of the car he recognised
+the chief occupant.
+
+"Why, God bless my soul," cried he, "it's Maria Pinckney."
+
+"Yes, it's me," said the lady, "and I expected to find you in bed or
+worse, and here you are up. Silas sent me a telegram."
+
+"He's a fool," cut in the old gentleman. "I had one of my old attacks last
+night, and I told him I'd be up and about in the morning--and I am. Good
+Gad! Maria, you're the last person in the world I'd ever have expected to
+see in one of these outrageous things." He had opened the door of the car
+and was presenting his arm to the lady.
+
+"You can shut the door," said Miss Pinckney. "I'm not getting out. The
+thing's not more outrageous than your getting up like that right after an
+attack and dragging me a hundred miles from Charleston over hill and
+dale--I'm not getting out, I'm going right back--right back to
+Charleston."
+
+The Colonel turned his head and called to a darkey that had appeared at
+the front door.
+
+"Take the luggage in," said he. Miss Pinckney got out of the car despite
+herself, half laughing, half angry, and taking the gallantly proffered arm
+found herself being led up the steps of Grangersons, pausing half way up
+to introduce Phyl, whom she had completely forgotten till now.
+
+The Colonel, like his son Silas, as will presently be seen, had a direct
+way with women; the Grangersons had pretty nearly always fallen in love at
+sight and run away with their wives. Colonel Seth's father had done this,
+meeting, marrying and fascinating the beautiful Maria Tredegar, and
+carrying her off under his arm like a hypnotised fowl, and from under the
+noses of half a dozen more eligible suitors, just as now, the Colonel was
+carrying Maria Pinckney off into his house half against her will. Phyl
+following them, gazed round at the fine old oak panelled hall, from which
+they were led into the drawing room, a room not unlike the drawing room at
+Vernons, but larger and giving a view of the garden where the oleanders
+and cherokee money and the crescent leaves of the blue gum trees were
+moving in the wind. Colonel Seth, despite the war, had plenty of roses and
+Grangersons was kept up in the old style. Just as in Nuremberg and
+Vittoria we see mediaeval cities preserved, so to speak, under glass, so at
+Grangersons one found the old Plantation, house and all, miraculously
+intact, living, almost, one might say, breathing.
+
+The price of cotton did not matter much to the Colonel, nor the price of
+haulage. This son of the Southerner who had refused to be beaten by the
+North in the war, cared for nothing much beyond the ring of sky that made
+his horizon. Twice a year he made a visit to Charleston, driving in his
+own carriage, occasionally he visited Richmond or Durham, where he had an
+interest in tobacco; New York he had never seen. He loathed railways and
+automobiles, mainly, perhaps, because they were inventions of the North,
+that is to say the devil. He had a devilish hatred of the North. Not of
+Northerners, but just of the North.
+
+The word North set his teeth on edge. It did not matter to him that
+Charleston was picking up some prosperity in the way of phosphates, or
+that Chattanooga was smelting ore into money, or that industrial
+prosperity was abroad in the land; he was old enough to have a
+recollection of old days, and from the North had come the chilly blast
+that had blown away that age.
+
+A servant brought in cake and wine to stay the travellers till dinner
+time, refreshment that Miss Pinckney positively refused at first.
+
+"You will stay the night," said the Colonel, as he helped her, "and Sarah
+will show you to your rooms when we have had a word together."
+
+Miss Pinckney, sipping her wine, made no reply, then placing the scarcely
+touched glass on the table and with her bonnet strings thrown back, she
+turned to the Colonel.
+
+"Do you see the likeness?" said she.
+
+"What likeness?" asked the old gentleman.
+
+"Why, God bless my soul, the likeness to Juliet Mascarene. Phyl, turn your
+face to the light."
+
+The Colonel, searching in his waistcoat pocket, found a pair of folding
+glasses and put them on.
+
+"She gets it from her mother's side," said Miss Pinckney, "the Lord knows
+how it is these things happen, but it's Juliet, isn't it?"
+
+The Colonel removed his glasses, wiped them with his handkerchief, and
+returned them to his pocket.
+
+"It is," said he. Then in the fine old fashion he turned to the girl,
+raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.
+
+"Phyl," said Miss Pinckney, "would not you like to have a look at the
+garden whilst we have a chat? Old people's talk isn't of much interest to
+young people."
+
+"Old people," cried the warrior. "There are no old people in this room."
+He made for the door and opened it for Phyl, then he accompanied her into
+the hall, where at the still open door he pointed the way to the garden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Outside Phyl stood for a moment to breathe the warm scented air and look
+around her.
+
+To be treated like a child by any other person than Maria Pinckney would
+have incensed her, all the same to be told to do a thing because it was
+good for her, or because it was a pleasant thing to do, in the teller's
+opinion, was an almost certain way of making her do the exact opposite.
+
+The garden did not attract her, the place did.
+
+That cypress avenue with the sun upon it, that broad sweep of drive in
+front of the house, the distant peeps of country between trees and the
+languorous lazy atmosphere of the perfect day fascinated her mind. She
+came along the house front to the right, and found herself at the gate of
+the stable yard.
+
+The stable yard of Grangersons was an immense flagged quadrangle bounded
+on the right, counting from the point of entrance, by the kitchen
+premises.
+
+There was stable room for forty horses, coach-house accommodation for a
+dozen or more carriages.
+
+The car had been run into one of the coach-houses and the yard stood
+empty, sunlit, silent, save for the voices of the pigeons wheeling in the
+air, or strutting on the roof of the great barn adjoining the stables.
+
+One of the stable doors was open and as Phyl crossed the yard a young man
+appeared at the open door, shaded his eyes and looked at her. Then he came
+forward. It was Silas Grangerson, and Phyl thought he was the handsomest
+and most graceful person she had ever seen in her life.
+
+Silas was a shade over six feet in height, dark, straight, slim yet
+perfectly proportioned; his face was extraordinary, the most vivid thing
+one would meet in a year's journey, and with a daring, and at times,
+almost a mad look unforgettable when once glimpsed. Like the Colonel and
+like his ancestors Silas had a direct way with women.
+
+"Hallo," said he, with the sunny smile of old acquaintanceship, "where
+have _you_ sprung from?"
+
+Phyl was startled for a moment, then almost instantly she came in touch
+with the vein and mood and mind of the other and laughed.
+
+"I came with Miss Pinckney," said she.
+
+"You're not from Charleston?"
+
+"Yes, indeed I am."
+
+"But where do you live in Charleston? I've never seen you and I know
+every--besides you don't look as if you belonged to Charleston--I don't
+believe you've come from there."
+
+"Then where do you think I've come from?"
+
+"I don't know," said Silas laughing, "but it doesn't matter as long as
+you're here, does it? 'Scuse my fooling, won't you--I wouldn't with a
+stranger, but you don't seem a stranger somehow--though I don't know your
+name."
+
+"Phylice Berknowles," said Phyl, glancing up at him and half wondering how
+it was that, despite his good looks, his manhood, and their total
+unacquaintanceship, she felt as little constrained in his presence as
+though he were a boy.
+
+"And my name is Silas Grangerson. Say, is Maria Pinckney in the house with
+father?"
+
+"She is."
+
+"Talking over old times, I s'pose?" said Silas.
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"I can hear them. It's always the same when they get together--and I
+suppose you got sick of it and came out?"
+
+"No, they put me out--asked me wouldn't I like to look at the garden."
+
+Already she had banded herself with him in mild opposition to the elders.
+
+"Great--Jerusalem. They're just like a pair of old horses wanting to be
+left quiet and rub their nose-bags together. Look at the garden! I can
+hear them--come on and look at the horses."
+
+He led the way to a loose box and opened the upper door.
+
+"That's Flying Fox, she's mine, the fastest trotter in the Carolinas--you
+know anything about horses?"
+
+"Rather!"
+
+"I thought you did, somehow. Mind! she doesn't take to strangers. Mind!
+she bites like an alligator."
+
+"Not me," said Phyl, fondling the lovely but fleering-eyed head protruding
+above the lower door.
+
+"So she doesn't," said Silas admiringly, "she's taken to you--well, I
+don't blame her. Here's John Barleycorn," opening another door, "own
+brother to the Fox, he's Pap's; he's a bolter, and kicks like a duck gun.
+She's got all her vice at one end of her and he at the other, match pair."
+He whistled between his teeth as he put up the bars, then he shewed other
+horses, Phyl watching his every movement, and wondering what it was that
+gave pleasure to her in watching. Silas moved, or seemed to move,
+absolutely without effort, and his slim brown hands touched everything
+delicately, as though they were touching fragile porcelain, yet those same
+hands could bend an iron bar, or rein in John Barleycorn even when the bit
+was between the said J. B.'s teeth.
+
+"That's the horses," said he, flinging open a coach-house door, "and
+that's the shandrydan the governor still drives in when he goes to
+Charleston. Look at it. It was made in the forties, and you should see it
+with a darkey on the box and Pap inside, and all his luggage behind, and
+he going off to Charleston, and the nigger children running after it."
+
+Phyl inspected the mustard-yellow vehicle. Then he closed the door on it,
+put up the bar, and, the business of showing things over, did a little
+double shuffle as though Phyl were not present, or as though she were a
+boy friend and not a strange young woman.
+
+"Say, do you like poetry?" said he, breaking off and seeming suddenly to
+remember her presence.
+
+"No," said Phyl. "At least--"
+
+"Well, here's some.
+
+  "'There was an old hen and she had a wooden leg, She went to the barn
+  and she laid a wooden egg, She laid it right down by the barn--don't
+  you think.'"
+
+"Well?" said she, laughing.
+
+"'It's just about time for another little drink--' some sense in poetry
+like that, isn't there? But all the drinks are in the house and I don't
+want to go in. I'm hiding from Pap. Last night when he was ratty with
+rheumatism, he let out at me, saying the young people weren't any good,
+saying Maria Pinckney was the only person he knew with sense in her head,
+called me a name because I poured him out a dose of liniment instead of
+medicine, by mistake--though he didn't swallow it--and wished Maria was
+here. So I just sent Jake, the page boy, off with a wire to her; didn't
+tell any one, just sent it. Come on and look at the garden--you've got to
+look at the garden, you know."
+
+He led the way past the barn to a farmyard, where hens were clucking and
+scratching and scraping in the sunshine; the deep double bass grunting of
+pigs came from the sties, by the low wall across which one could see the
+country stretching far away, the cotton fields, the woods, all hazed by
+the warmth of the afternoon.
+
+"Let's sit down and look at the garden," said he, pointing to a huge log
+by the near wall--"and aren't the convolvuluses beautiful?"
+
+"Beautiful," said Phyl, falling into the vein of the other. "And listen to
+the roses."
+
+"They grunt like that because it's near dinner time--they're pretty much
+like humans." He took a cigarette case from his pocket and a cigarette
+from the case.
+
+"You don't mind smoking, do you?"
+
+"Not a bit."
+
+"Have one?"
+
+"I daren't."
+
+"Maria Pinckney won't know."
+
+"It's not her--I smoked one once and it made me sick."
+
+"Well, try another--I won't look if you are."
+
+"They'll--she'll smell it."
+
+"Not she, you can eat some parsley, that takes the smell away."
+
+"Oh, I don't mind telling her--it's only--well, there."
+
+She took a cigarette and he lit it for her.
+
+"Blow it through your nose," he commanded, "that's the way. Now let's
+pretend we're two old darkies sitting on a log, you push against me and
+I'll push against you, you're Jim and I'm Uncle Joseph. 'What yo' crowding
+me for, Jim,'" he squeezed up gently against her, and Phyl jumped to her
+feet.
+
+He glanced up at her, sideways, laughing, and for the life of her she
+could not be angry.
+
+"Don't you think we'd better go and look at the garden?" said she.
+
+"In a minute, sit down again. I won't knock against you. It was only my
+fun. We'll pretend I'm Pap, and you're Maria Pinckney, if you like. You've
+let your cigarette go out."
+
+"So I have."
+
+"You can light it from mine."
+
+Phyl hesitated and was lost.
+
+It was the nearest thing to a kiss, and as she drew back with the lighted
+cigarette between her lips, she felt a not unpleasant sense of wickedness,
+such as the virtuous boy feels when led to adventure by the bad boy.
+Sitting on a log, smoking cigarettes, talking familiarly with a stranger,
+taking a light from him in such a fashion with her face so close to his
+that his eyes-- They smoked in silence for a moment.
+
+Then Silas spoke:
+
+"Do you ever feel lonesome?" said he.
+
+"Awfully--sometimes."
+
+"So do I."
+
+Silence for a moment. Then:
+
+"I go off to Charleston when I feel like that--once in a fortnight or
+so--Where do you live in Charleston?"
+
+"I live with Miss Pinckney--I thought you knew."
+
+"You didn't say that. You only said you came with her."
+
+"Well, I live with her at Vernons. I'm Irish, y' know. My--my father died
+in Charleston, and I came from Ireland to live with Miss Pinckney. Mr.
+Richard Pinckney is my guardian."
+
+"Your which? Dick Pinckney your guardian! Why, he's not older than I
+am--that fellow your guardian--why, he wears a flannel petticoat."
+
+"He doesn't," cried Phyl, flinging away the cigarette, which had become
+noxious, and roused to sudden anger by the slighting tone of the other.
+"What do you mean by saying such a thing?"
+
+"Oh, I only meant that he's too awfully proper for this life. He goes to
+Charleston races, but never backs a horse, scarcely, and one Mint Julep
+would make him see two crows. He's a sort of distant relation of ours."
+
+Phyl was silent. She resented his criticism of her friend, and just in
+this moment the something mad and harum scarum in the character of Silas
+seemed shown up to her with electrical effect. Criticism is a most
+dangerous thing to indulge in, unless anonymously in the pages of a
+journal, for the right to criticise has to be made good in the mind of the
+audience, unless the audience is hostile to the criticised.
+
+Then she said: "I don't know anything about Mint Juleps or race courses,
+but I do know that Mr. Pinckney has been--is--is my friend, and I'd rather
+not talk about him, if you please."
+
+"Now, you're huffed," cried Silas exultingly, as though he had scored a
+point at some game.
+
+"I'm not."
+
+"You are--you've flushed."
+
+Phyl turned pale, a deadly sign.
+
+"I'd never dream of getting out of temper with _you_," said she.
+
+It was his turn to flush. You might have struck Silas Grangerson without
+upsetting his balance, but the slightest suspicion of a sneer raised all
+the devil in him. Had Phyl been a man he would have knocked him off the
+log. He cast the stump of his cigarette on the ground and pounded it with
+his heel. Had there been anything breakable within reach he would have
+broken it. Her anger with him vanished and she laughed.
+
+"You've flushed now," said she.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+When they came round to the front of the house they found Colonel
+Grangerson and Miss Pinckney coming down the steps.
+
+They were going to the garden in search of Phyl.
+
+"We've been looking at the horses," said Silas, after he had greeted Miss
+Pinckney. "No, sir, I did not leave any of the doors open, but I've been
+looking for Sam with a blacksnake whip to liven him up. He left the grey
+without grooming after she was brought in this morning, and I was rubbing
+her down myself when this lady came into the yard."
+
+"I'll skin that nigger," cried the Colonel.
+
+"I reckon I'll save you that trouble, sir," replied the son, as they
+turned garden-wards.
+
+Silas had little use for "r's" and said "suh" for "sir" and "wah" for
+"war." He was also quite a different person in the presence of his father
+from what he was when alone or in the presence of strangers.
+
+In the presence of his father, past generations spoke in his every word
+and action, he became sedate, deferential, leisurely. It was not fear of
+the elder man that caused this change, it was reflection from him.
+
+The shadows were long in the garden, and away across the pastures,
+glimpsed beyond the cypress hedge and bordering the cotton fields, the
+pond-shadows cast by the live oaks at noon had become river shadows,
+flowing eastward; the murmur of bees filled the air like a haze of sound,
+and here and there as they passed a bush coloured flowers detached
+themselves and became butterflies.
+
+They sat down on a great old stone bench lichened and sun warmed to enjoy
+the view, and the Colonel talked of tobacco and politics and cotton,
+including them all in his conversation in the grand patriarchal manner.
+
+Phyl understanding little, and half drowsed by the warmth and the buzzing
+of the bees and the voice of the speaker, had given herself up to that
+lazy condition of mind which is the next best thing to sleep, when she was
+suddenly aroused. She was seated between Miss Pinckney and Silas. Silas
+had pinched her little finger.
+
+She snatched her hand away, and turned towards him. He was looking away
+over the pastures; his profile showed nothing but its absolute
+correctness. Miss Pinckney had noticed nothing, and the Colonel, who had
+finished with cotton, looking at his watch, declared that it was close on
+dinner time.
+
+After supper that night, Phyl found herself in the garden. Silas had not
+appeared at supper; the Colonel had brought down a book of old
+photographs, photographs of people and places dead or changed, and he and
+Miss Pinckney became so absorbed in them that they had little thought for
+the girl.
+
+She went out to look at the moon, and it was worth looking at, rising like
+a honey coloured shield above the belt of the eastern woods.
+
+The whole world was filled with the moonlight, warm tinted, and ghostly as
+the light of vanished days, white moths were flitting above the bushes,
+and on the almost windless air the voice of an owl came across the cotton
+fields.
+
+Phyl reached the seat where they had all sat that afternoon. It was still
+warm from the all-day sunshine, and she sat down to rest and listen.
+
+The owl had ceased crying, and through the league wide silence faint
+sounds far and near told of the life moving and thrilling beneath the
+night; the boom of a beetle, voices from the distant road, and now and
+then a whisper of wind rising and dying out across the garden and the
+trees.
+
+A faint sound came from behind the seat, and before Phyl could turn two
+warm hands covered her eyes.
+
+She plucked them away and stood up.
+
+"I _wish_ you wouldn't do things like that," she cried. "How _dare_ you?"
+
+"I couldn't help it," replied the other, "you looked so comfortable. I
+didn't mean to startle you. I thought you must have heard me coming across
+the grass."
+
+"I didn't--and you shouldn't have done it."
+
+"Well, I'm sorry. There, I've apologised, make friends."
+
+"There is nothing to make friends about," she replied stiffly. "No, I
+don't want to shake hands--I'm not angry, let us go into the house."
+
+"Don't," said Silas imploringly. "He and she are sitting over that old
+album, comparing notes. I saw them through the window, that's why I came
+to look for you in the garden. Do you know, I believe the Governor was
+gone once on Maria, years ago, but they never got married. He married my
+mother instead."
+
+Phyl forgot her resentment.
+
+The faint idea that Colonel Grangerson and Maria Pinckney had perhaps been
+more than friends in long gone days, had strayed across her mind, to be
+dismissed as a fancy. It interested her to find Silas confirming it.
+
+"Of course, I can't say for certain," he went on, lighting a cigarette. "I
+only judge by the way they go on when they're together, and the way he
+talks of her. Say, do you ever want to grow old?"
+
+"No, I don't--ever."
+
+"Neither do I. I hope I'll be kicked to death by a horse, or drowned or
+shot before I'm forty. I don't want to die in any beds with doctors round
+me. I reckon if I'm ever like that I'll drink the liniment instead of the
+medicine--same as I nearly drenched Pap--and go to heaven with a red label
+for my ticket. Sit down for a while and let's talk."
+
+"No, I don't care to sit down."
+
+"I won't touch you. I promise."
+
+Phyl hesitated a moment and then sat down. She was not afraid of Silas in
+the least, but his tricks of an overgrown boy did not please her; it
+seemed to her sometimes as though his irresponsibility was less an
+inheritance from youth, than from some ancestor ill-balanced to the point
+of craziness. If any other man of his age had acted and spoken to her as
+he had done she would have smacked his face, but Silas was Silas, and his
+good looks and seeming innocence, and something really charming that lay
+away at the back of his character and gave colour to this personality,
+managed, somehow, to condone his queerness of conduct.
+
+All the same she sat a foot away from him on the seat, and kept her hands
+folded on her lap.
+
+Silas sat for a while smoking in silence, then he spoke.
+
+"Where's this you said you came from?"
+
+"Ireland."
+
+"You don't talk like a Paddy a bit."
+
+"Don't I?"
+
+"Not a bit, nor look like one."
+
+"Have you seen many Irish people?"
+
+"No, mostly in pictures--comic papers, you know, like _Puck_."
+
+"I think it's a shame," broke out Phyl. "People are always making fun of
+the Irish, drawing them like monkeys with great upper lips--but it's only
+ignorant people who never travel who think of them like that."
+
+"That's so, I expect," replied Silas, either unconscious of the dig at
+himself or undesirous of a quarrel, "and the next few dollars I have to
+spare I'll go to Ireland. I'm crazy now to see it."
+
+"What's made you crazy to see it?"
+
+"Because it's the place you come from."
+
+Phyl sniffed.
+
+"I hate compliments."
+
+"I wasn't complimenting you, I was complimenting Ireland," said Silas
+sweetly. She was silent, a white moth passing close to her held her gaze
+for a moment, then it flitted away across the bushes.
+
+"Let's forget Ireland for a moment," said she, "and talk of Charleston. Do
+you know many people there?"
+
+"I know most every one. The Pinckneys and Calhouns and Tredegars and
+Revenalls and--"
+
+"Rhetts."
+
+"Yes--but there are a dozen Rhetts; same as there's half a hundred
+Pinckneys and Calhouns, families, I mean. What's his name--Richard
+Pinckney, your guardian, is engaged to a Rhett."
+
+"He is not."
+
+"He is--Venetia Frances, the one that lives in Legare Street. Why, I've
+seen them canoodling often, and every one says they are engaged."
+
+"Well, he's not, or Miss Pinckney would have told me."
+
+"Oh, she's blind. I tell you he is, and she'll be your guardian when he's
+married her."
+
+"That she won't," said Phyl.
+
+"How'll you help it? A man and wife are one."
+
+"He's only guardian of my property."
+
+"Well, Heaven help your property when she gets a finger in the pie; she'll
+spend it on hats--sure."
+
+This outrageous statement, uttered with a laugh, left Phyl cold. The
+statement about Frances Rhett had disturbed her, she could not tell
+exactly why, for it was none of her business whom Pinckney might choose to
+marry--still--Frances Rhett! It was almost as though an antagonism had
+existed between them since that afternoon when she had seen Frances first,
+driving in the car with Richard Pinckney.
+
+She rose to her feet and Silas rose also, throwing away the end of his
+cigarette.
+
+"Going into the house?" said he.
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Well, you'll be off to-morrow morning, and I won't see you, for I have to
+be out early, but I'll see you in Charleston, though not at Vernons maybe,
+for I'm not in love with Richard Pinckney, and I don't care much for
+visiting his house. But I'll see you somewhere, sure."
+
+"Good-bye," said she holding out her hand. He took it, held it, and then,
+all of a sudden, she found herself in his arms.
+
+Helpless as a child, in his arms and smothered with kisses. He kissed her
+on the mouth, on the forehead, on the chin, and with a last kiss on the
+mouth that made her feel as though her life were going from her, he
+vanished. Vanished amidst the bushes whilst she stood, tottering, dazed,
+breathless, outraged, yet--in some extraordinary way not angry. Pulled
+between tears and laughter, resentment, and a strange new feeling suddenly
+born in her from his burning lips, and the strength that had held her for
+a moment to itself.
+
+In one moment, and as though with the stroke of a sword, Silas had cut
+down the barrier that had divided her from the reality of things. He had
+kissed away her childhood.
+
+Then throwing out her hands as though pushing away some presence that was
+surrounding her, she ran to the house. In the hall she sat down for a
+moment to recover herself before going into the drawing room, where Miss
+Pinckney and the Colonel were closing the book which held for them the
+people and the places they had known in youth, and between its leaves who
+knows what old remembrances, like the withered flower that has once formed
+part of a summer's day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+They started at ten o'clock next morning for Charleston, the Colonel
+standing on the house steps and waving his hand to them as they drove off.
+Silas was nowhere to be seen, he had gone out before breakfast, so the
+butler said, and had not returned. Miss Pinckney resented this casual
+treatment.
+
+"He ought to have been here to bid us good-bye," said she, as they cleared
+the avenue. "He's got the name for being a mad creature, but even mad
+creatures may show common courtesy. I'm sure I don't know where he gets
+his manners from unless it's his mother's lot, same place as he got his
+good looks."
+
+"Why do you say he's mad?" asked Phyl.
+
+"Because he is. Not exactly mad, maybe, but eccentric, he swum Charleston
+harbour with his clothes on because some one dared him, and was nearly
+drowned with the tide coming in or going out, I forget which; and another
+day he got on the engine at Charleston station and started the train,
+drove it too, till they managed to climb over the top of the carriages or
+something and stop him--at least that's the story. He'll come to a bad
+end, that boy, unless he mends his ways. Lots of people say he's got good
+in him. So he has, perhaps, but it's just that sort that come to the worst
+end, unless the good manages to fight the bad and get it under in time."
+
+Phyl said nothing. Her mind was disturbed. She had slept scarcely at all
+during the night, and her feelings towards Silas Grangerson, now that she
+was beyond his reach, were alternating in the strangest way between
+attraction and repulsion.
+
+They would have repelled the thought of him entirely but for the
+instinctive recognition of the fact that his conduct had been the result
+of impulse, the impulse of a child, ill governed, and accustomed to seize
+what it wanted. Added to that was the fact of his entire naturalness. From
+the moment of their first meeting he had talked to her as though they were
+old acquaintances. Unless when talking to his father, everything in his
+manner, tone, conversation was free, unfettered by convention, fresh, if
+at times startling. This was his great charm, and at the same time his
+great defect, for it revealed his want of qualities no less than his
+qualities.
+
+Do what she could she was unable to escape from the incident of last
+night, it was as though those strong arms had not quite released their
+hold upon her, as though Pan had broken from the bushes, shown her by his
+magic things she had never dreamed of, and vanished.
+
+It was nearly two o'clock when they reached Vernons. Richard Pinckney was
+at home, and at the sight of him Phyl's heart went out towards him. Clean,
+well groomed, honest, kindly, he was like a breath of fresh sea air after
+breathing tropical swamp atmosphere.
+
+Strange to say Miss Pinckney seemed to feel somewhat the same.
+
+"Yes, we're back," said she, as they passed into the dining-room where
+some refreshments were awaiting them, "and glad I am to be back. Vernons
+smells good after Grangersons. Oh, dear me, what is it that clings to that
+place? It's like opening an old trunk that's been shut for years. I told
+Seth Grangerson, right out flat, he ought to get away from there into the
+world somewhere, but there he sits clinging to his rheumatism and the
+past. I declare I nearly cried last night as he was showing me all those
+old pictures."
+
+"He's not very ill then," said Richard.
+
+"Ill! Not he. It was that fool Silas sent the telegram. Just an attack of
+rheumatism."
+
+She went upstairs to change and the two young people went into the garden,
+where Richard Pinckney was having some alterations done.
+
+On the day Phyl's hair went up it seemed to Richard that a new person had
+come to live with them. Phyl had suddenly turned into a young woman--and
+such a young woman! He had never considered her looks before, to young men
+of his age and temperament girls in pigtails are, as far as the manhood in
+them is concerned, little more and sometimes less than things. But Phyl
+with her hair up was not to be denied, and had he not been philandering
+after Frances Rhett, and had Phyl been a total stranger suddenly seen, it
+is quite possible that a far warmer feeling than admiration might have
+been the result. As it was she formed a new interest in life.
+
+He showed her the alterations he was making, slight enough and causing
+little change in the general plan of the garden.
+
+"I scarcely like doing anything," said he, "but that new walk will be no
+end of an improvement, and it will save that bit of grass which is being
+trodden to death by people crossing it, then there's all those bushes by
+the gate, they're going, those behind the tree,--a little space there will
+make all the difference in the world."
+
+"Behind the magnolia?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't," said Phyl.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because they have been there always and--well, look!"
+
+She led the way behind the tree, pushed the bushes aside and disclosed the
+seat.
+
+She no longer felt that she was betraying a secret. Her experience at
+Grangersons had in some way made Vernons seem to her now really her home,
+and Richard Pinckney closer to her in relationship.
+
+"Why, how did you know that was there?" said Richard. "I've never seen
+it."
+
+"Juliet Mascarene used to sit there with--with some one she was in love
+with. I found some of her old letters and they told about it--see, it's a
+little arbour, used to be, though it's all so overgrown now."
+
+"Juliet," said he. "That was the girl who died. I have heard Aunt Maria
+talk about her and she keeps her room just as it used to be. Who was the
+somebody?"
+
+"It was a Mr. Rupert Pinckney."
+
+"I knew there was a love story of some sort connected with her, but I
+never worried about the details. So they used to come and sit here."
+
+"Yes, he'd come to the gate at night and she'd meet him. Her people did
+not want her to marry him and so they had to meet in secret."
+
+"That was a long time ago."
+
+"Before you were born," said Phyl.
+
+He looked at her.
+
+"Aunt is always saying how like you are to her," said he, "but she's mad
+on family likenesses, and I never thought of it. It may be a want in me
+but I've never taken much interest in dead relatives; but somehow, finding
+this little place tucked away here gives one a jog. It's like finding a
+nest in a tree. How long have you known of it?"
+
+"Oh, some time. I found a bundle of her old letters--" she paused. Richard
+Pinckney had taken his place on the little seat, just as one sits down in
+an armchair to see if it is comfortable, and was leaning back amidst the
+bush branches.
+
+"This is all right," said he, "sit down, there's lots of room--you found
+her letter, tell us all about it."
+
+Phyl sat down and told the little story. It seemed to interest him.
+
+"The Pinckneys lost money," said he, "and that's why the old Mascarene
+birds were set against her marrying him, I suppose. Makes one wild that
+sort of thing. What right have people to interfere?"
+
+"Money seems everything in this world," said Phyl.
+
+"It's not--it seems to be, but it's not. Money can't buy happiness after
+one is grown up. You remember I told you that over in Ireland; when candy
+and fishing rods mean happiness money is all right--after that money is
+useful enough, but it's the making of it and not the spending it that
+counts,--that and a lot of things that have nothing to do with money. If
+the Mascarenes hadn't been fools they'd have seen that a poor man with
+kick in him--and the Pinckneys always had that--was as good as a rich man,
+and those two might have got married."
+
+"No," said Phyl, "they never could have got married, he had to die. He was
+killed, you know, at the beginning of the war."
+
+"You're a fatalist."
+
+"Well, things happen."
+
+"Yes, but you can stop them happening very often."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Just by willing it."
+
+"Yes," said Phyl meditatively, "but how are you to use your will against
+what comes unexpectedly. Now that telegram yesterday morning took me to
+Grangersons with Miss Pinckney. Suppose--suppose I had broken my leg or,
+say, fallen into a well there and got drowned--that would have been
+Fate."
+
+"No," said Pinckney, "carelessness, the telegram would not have drowned
+you, but your carelessness in going too close to the well."
+
+"Suppose," said Phyl, "instead of that, Mr. Silas Grangerson had shot me
+by accident with a gun--the telegram would have brought me to that without
+any carelessness of mine."
+
+"No, it couldn't," said Pinckney lightly, "it would still have been your
+own fault for going near such a hare-brained scamp. Oh, I'm only joking,
+what I really mean is that nine times out of ten the thing people call
+Fate is nothing more than want of foresight."
+
+"And the tenth time it is Fate," said Phyl rising.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Next morning brought Phyl a letter. It came by the early post, so that she
+got it in her bedroom before coming down.
+
+Phyl had few correspondents and she looked at the envelope curiously
+before opening it.
+
+                        "Miss Berknowles,
+                        at Vernons. Charleston."
+
+ran the address written in a large, boyish, yet individual hand. She knew
+at once and by instinct whom it was from.
+
+"I'm coming to Charleston in a day or two, and I want to see you," ran the
+letter which had neither address nor date, "but I'm not coming to
+Pinckneys. I'll be about town and sure to find you somewhere. I can't get
+you out of my mind since last night. Tried to, but can't."
+
+That was all. Phyl put the letter back in its envelope. She was not angry,
+she was disturbed. There was an assurance about Silas Grangerson daunting
+in its simplicity and directness. Something that raised opposition to him
+in her heart, yet paralysed it. Instinct told her to avoid him, to drive
+him from her mind, ay and something more than instinct. The spirit of
+Vernons, the calm sweet soul of the place, that seemed to hold the past
+and the present, Juliet and herself, peace and happiness with the promise
+of all good things in the future, this spirit rose up against Silas
+Grangerson as though he were the antagonist to happiness and peace, Juliet
+and herself, the present and the past.
+
+Rose up, without prevailing entirely.
+
+Silas had impressed himself upon her mind in such a manner that she could
+not free herself from the impression. Young as she was, with the terribly
+clear perception of the male character which all women possess in
+different degrees, she recognised that Silas was dangerous to that logical
+and equitable state of existence we call happiness, not on account of his
+wildness or his eccentricities, but because of some want inherent in his
+nature, something that spoke vaguely in his words and his actions, in his
+handsome face and in his careless and graceful manner.
+
+All the same she could not free herself from the impression he had made
+upon her, she could not drive him from her mind, he had in some way
+paralysed her volition, called forces to his aid from some unknown part of
+her nature, perhaps with those kisses which she still felt upon the very
+face of her soul.
+
+She came down to breakfast, and afterwards finding herself alone with Miss
+Pinckney, she took Silas's letter from her pocket and handed it to her.
+She had been debating in her own mind all breakfast time as to whether she
+ought to show the letter; the struggle had been between her instinct to do
+the right thing, and a powerful antagonism to this instinct which was a
+new thing in her.
+
+The latter won.
+
+And then, lo and behold, when she found herself alone with Miss Pinckney
+in the sunlit breakfast room, almost against her will and just as though
+her hand had moved of its own volition, she put it in her pocket and
+produced the letter.
+
+Miss Pinckney read it.
+
+"Well, of all the crazy creatures!" said she. "Why, he has only met you
+once. He's mad! No, he isn't--he's a Grangerson. I know them."
+
+She stopped short and re-read the letter, turned it about and then laid it
+down.
+
+"Just as if he'd known you for years. And you scarcely spoke to him. Did
+he _say_ anything to you as if he cared for you?"
+
+"No, he didn't," said Phyl quite truthfully.
+
+"Did he look at you as if he cared for you?"
+
+"No," replied the other, dreading another question. But Miss Pinckney did
+not put it. She could not conceive a man kissing a girl who had never
+betrayed his feelings for her by word or glance.
+
+"Well, it gets me. It does indeed; acting like a dumb creature and then
+writing this-- Do you care for _him_?"
+
+"I--I--no--you see, I don't know him--much."
+
+"Well, he seems to know you pretty well, there's no doubt about one thing,
+Silas Grangerson can make up his mind pretty quick. He won't come to
+Vernons, won't he? Well, maybe it's better for him not, for I've no
+patience with oddities. That's what's wrong with him, he's an oddity, and
+it's those sort of people make the trouble in life--they're worse than
+whisky and cards for bringing unhappiness. Years and years and years
+ago--I'm telling you this though I've never told it to any one else--Seth
+Grangerson, Silas's father, seemed to care for me, not much, still he
+seemed to care. Then one day all at once he came into the room where I
+was, through the window, and told me to come off and get married to him,
+wanted me to go away right off. I was a fool in those days, but not all a
+fool, and when he tried to put his arm round my waist, my hand went up and
+smacked his face.
+
+"We are good enough friends now, but I've often thought of what I escaped
+by not marrying him. You saw him and the life he's leading at that out of
+the way place, but you didn't see his obstinacy and his queerness, and
+Silas is ten times worse, more crazy--well, there, you're warned--but mind
+you I don't want to be meddling. I've seen so many carefully prepared
+marriages turn out pure miseries, and so many crazy matches turn out
+happily, that I'm more than cautious in giving advice. Seems to me that
+people before they are married are quite different creatures to what they
+turn out after they are married."
+
+"But I don't want to get married," said Phyl.
+
+"No, but, seems to me, Silas does," replied the other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+One bright morning three days later, as Phyl was crossing Meeting Street
+near the Charleston Hotel, whom should she meet but Silas.
+
+Silas in town get up, quite a different looking individual from the Silas
+of Grangersons, dressed in perfectly fitting light grey tweed, a figure
+almost condoning one for the use of that old-time, half-discredited word
+"Elegant."
+
+"There you are," said Silas, his face lighting up. "I thought it wouldn't
+be long before I met you. Meeting Street is like a rabbit run, and I
+reckon the whole of Charleston passes through it twice a day."
+
+His manner was genuinely frank and open, and he seemed to have completely
+forgotten the incident of the kissing. Phyl said nothing for a moment; she
+felt put out, angry at having been caught like a rabbit, and not over
+pleased at being compared to one.
+
+Then she spoke freezingly enough:
+
+"I don't know much about the habits of Charleston; you will not find _me_
+here every day. I have only been out twice here alone and--I'm in a
+hurry."
+
+"Why, what's the matter with you?" cried Silas in a voice of
+astonishment.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"But there is, you're not angry with me, are you?"
+
+"Not in the least," replied the other, quite determined to avoid being
+drawn into explanations.
+
+"Well, that's all right. You don't mind my walking with you a bit?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"I only came here last night, and I'm putting up at the Charleston," said
+Silas. "Of course there are a lot of friends I could stay with but I
+always prefer being free; one is never quite free in another person's
+house; for one thing you can't order the servants about, though, upon my
+word, now-a-days one can't do that, much, anywhere."
+
+"I suppose not," said Phyl.
+
+The fact was being borne in upon her that Silas in town was a different
+person from Silas in the country, or seemed so; more sedate and more
+conventional. She also noticed as they walked along that he was saluted by
+a great many people, and also, before she had done with him that morning,
+she noticed that the leery, impudent looking, coloured folk seemed to come
+under a blight as they passed him, giving him the wall and yards to spare.
+It was as though the impersonification of the blacksnake whip were walking
+with her as well as a most notoriously dangerous man, a man who would
+strike another down, white or coloured, for a glance, not to say a word.
+
+She had come out on business, commissioned by Miss Pinckney to purchase a
+ball of magenta Berlin wool. Miss Pinckney still knitted antimacassars,
+and the construction of antimacassars is impossible without Berlin
+wool--that obsolete form of German Frightfulness.
+
+She bestowed the things on poor folk to brighten their homes.
+
+When Phyl went into the store to buy the wool Silas waited outside, and
+when she came out they walked down the street together.
+
+She had intended returning straight home after making her purchase but
+they were walking now not towards Vernons but towards the Battery.
+
+"What do you do with yourself all day?" asked Silas, suddenly breaking
+silence.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," she replied, "nothing much--we go out for drives."
+
+"In that old basket carriage thing?"
+
+"With Miss Pinckney."
+
+"I know, I've seen her often--what else do you do?"
+
+"Oh, I read."
+
+"What do you read?"
+
+"Books."
+
+"Doesn't Pinckney ever take you out?"
+
+"No, I don't go out much with Mr. Pinckney; you see, he's generally so
+busy."
+
+Silas sniffed. They had reached the Battery and were standing looking over
+the blue water of the harbour. The day was perfect, dreamy, heavenly, warm
+and filled with sea scents and harbour sounds; scarcely a breath of wind
+stirred across the water where a three-master was being towed to her
+moorings by a tug.
+
+"She's coming up to the wharves," said Silas. "They steer by the spire of
+St. Philips, the line between there and Fort Sumpter is all deep water.
+How'd you like to be a sailor?"
+
+"Wouldn't mind," said Phyl.
+
+"How'd you like to take a boat--I mean a decent sized fishing yawl and go
+off round the world, or even down Florida way? Florida's fine, you don't
+know Florida, it's got two coasts and it's hard to tell which is the best.
+From Indian River right round and up to Cedar Keys there's all sorts of
+fishing, and you can camp out on the reefs; one cooks one's own food and
+you can swim all day. There's tarpon and barracuda and sword fish, and
+nights when there's a moon you could see to read a book."
+
+"How jolly!"
+
+"Let's go there?"
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"Oh, just you and I. I'm fed up with everything. We could have a boatman
+to help sail and steer."
+
+He spoke lightly and laughingly, and without much enthusiasm and as though
+he were talking to some one of his own sex, and Phyl, not knowing how to
+take him, said nothing.
+
+He went on, his tone growing warmer.
+
+"I'm not joking, I'm dead sick of Grangersons and Charleston, and I reckon
+you are too--aren't you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You may think so, but you are, all the same, without knowing it."
+
+"I think you are talking nonsense," said Phyl hurriedly, fighting against
+a deadly sort of paralysis of mind such as one may suppose comes upon the
+mind of a bird under the spell of a serpent.
+
+"No one could be kinder than Miss Pinckney, and so no one could be happier
+than I am. I love Vernons."
+
+"All the same," said Silas, "you are not really alive there. It's the life
+of a cabbage, must be, there's only you and Maria and--Pinckney. Maria is
+a decent old sort but she's only a woman, and as for Pinckney--he doesn't
+care for you."
+
+This statement suddenly brought Phyl to herself. It went through her like
+a knife. She had ceased to think of Richard Pinckney in any way but as a
+friend. At one time, during the first couple of days at Vernons, her heart
+had moved mysteriously towards him; the way he had connected himself
+through Prue's message with the love story of Juliet had drawn her towards
+him, but that spell had snapped; she was conscious only of friendliness
+towards Richard Pinckney. Why, then, this sudden pain caused by Silas's
+words?
+
+"How do you know?" she flashed out. "What right have you to dare--" She
+stopped.
+
+The blaze of her anger seemed to Silas evidence that she cared for
+Pinckney.
+
+"You're in love with him," said he, flying out. The bald and brutal
+statement took Phyl's breath from her. She turned on him, saw the anger in
+his face, and then--turned away.
+
+His state of mind condoned his words. To a woman a blow received from the
+passion she has roused is a rude sort of compliment, unlike other
+compliments it is absolutely honest.
+
+"I am in love with no one," said she; "you have no right to say such
+things--no right at all--they are insulting."
+
+A gull, white as snow, came flitting by and wheeled out away over the
+harbour; as her eyes followed it he stood looking at her, his anger gone,
+but his mind only half convinced by her feeble words.
+
+"I didn't mean to insult you," he said; "don't let us quarrel. When I'm in
+a temper I don't know what I say or do--that's the truth. I want to have
+you all for myself, have ever since the first moment I saw you over there
+at Grangersons."
+
+"Don't," said Phyl. "I can't listen to you if you talk like that--Please
+don't."
+
+"Very well," said Silas.
+
+The quick change that was one of his characteristics showed itself in his
+altered voice. His was a mind that seemed always in ambush, darting out on
+predatory expeditions and then vanishing back into obscurity.
+
+They turned away from the sea front and began to retrace their steps,
+silently at first, and then little by little falling into ordinary
+conversation again as though nothing had happened.
+
+Silas knew every corner of Charleston, and the history of every corner,
+and when he chose he could make his knowledge interesting. In this mood he
+was a pleasant companion, and Phyl, her recent experience almost
+forgotten, let herself be led and instructed, not knowing that this
+armistice was the equivalent of a defeat.
+
+She had already drawn much closer to him in mind, this companionship and
+quiet conversation was a more sure and deadly thing than any kisses or
+wild words. It would linger in her mind warm and quietly. Put in a woman's
+mind a pleasant recollection of yourself and you have established a force
+whose activity may seem small, but is in reality great, because of its
+permanency.
+
+They did not take a direct line in the direction of Vernons, and so
+presently found themselves in front of St. Michael's. The gate of the
+cemetery was open and they wandered in.
+
+The place was deserted, save by the birds, and the air perfumed by all
+manner of Southern growing things. Sun, shadow, silence, and that strange
+peace which hangs over the homes of the dead, all were here, ringed in by
+the old walls and the faint murmur of the living city beyond.
+
+They walked along the paths, looking at the tombstones, and pausing to
+read the inscriptions, Phyl gradually entering into that state of mind
+wherein reality and material things fall out of perspective. The fragrant
+elusive poetry of death, which can speak in the songs of birds and the
+scent of flowers in the sunshine and the shade of trees more clearly than
+in the voice of man, was speaking to her now.
+
+All these people here lying, all these names here inscribed, all these
+were the representatives of days once bright and now forgotten, love once
+sweet and now unknown.
+
+Then, as though something had led or betrayed her to the place, she paused
+where the graves lay half shadowed by a magnolia, she read the nearest
+inscription with a little catch of her breath. Then the further one. They
+were the graves of Juliet Mascarene and Rupert Pinckney, the dead lovers
+who had passed from the world almost together, whose bodies lay side by
+side in the cold bed of earth.
+
+In a moment the spell of the little arbour was around her again, in a
+moment the pregnant first impression of Vernons had re-seized her, fresh
+as though the commonplace touch of everyday life had never spoiled it.
+
+It was as though the spirit of Juliet and the spirit of the old house were
+saying to her "Have you forgotten us?"
+
+Tears welled to her eyes. Silas standing beside her was saying something,
+she did not know what. She scarcely heard him.
+
+Misinterpreting her silence, unconscious as an animal of her state of mind
+and the direction of her thoughts, the man at her side moved towards her
+slightly, seemed to hesitate, and then, suddenly clasping her by the waist
+kissed her upon the side of the neck.
+
+Phyl straightened like a bow when the string is released. Then she struck
+him, struck him open handed in the face, so that the sound of the blow
+might have been heard beyond the wall.
+
+His face blanched so that the mark on it showed up, he took a step back.
+For a moment Phyl thought he was going to spring upon her. Then he
+mastered himself, but if murder ever showed itself upon the countenance of
+man it showed itself in that half second on the countenance of Silas
+Grangerson.
+
+"You'll be sorry for that," said he.
+
+"Don't speak to me," said Phyl. "You are horrible--bad--wicked--I will
+tell Richard Pinckney."
+
+"Do," said Silas. "Tell him also I'll be even with him yet. You're in love
+with him, that's what's the matter with you--well, wait."
+
+He turned on his heel and walked off. He did not look back once. As he
+vanished from sight Phyl clasped her hands together.
+
+It was as though she had suddenly been shown the real Silas--or rather the
+something light and evil and dangerous, the something inscrutable and
+allied to insanity that inhabited his mind.
+
+She was not thinking of herself, she was thinking of Richard Pinckney. She
+felt that she had been the unconscious means of releasing against him an
+evil force. A force that might injure or destroy him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+She came out of the cemetery. There was no sign of Silas in the street nor
+on the front of the church.
+
+Phyl had a full measure of the Celtic power to meet trouble halfway, to
+imagine disaster. As she hurried home she saw all manner of trouble,
+things happening to Richard Pinckney, and all brought about through
+herself. Amidst all these fancies she saw one fact: He must be warned.
+
+She found Miss Pinckney in the linen room. The linen room at Vernons was a
+treasure house beyond a man's description, perhaps even beyond his true
+appreciation. There in the cupboards with their thin old fashioned ring
+handles and on the shelves of red cedar reposed damask and double damask
+of the time when men paid for their purchases in guineas, miraculous
+preservations. Just as the life of a china vase is a perpetual escape from
+the stupidity of servant maids and the heaviness of clumsy fingers, so the
+life of these cream white oblongs, in which certain lights brought forth
+miraculous representations of flowers, festoons and birds, was a perpetual
+preservation from the moth, from damp, from dryness, from the dust that
+corrupts.
+
+A house like Vernons exists not by virtue of its brick and mortar; to keep
+it really alive it must be preserved in all its parts, not only from damp
+and decay, but from innovation; one can fancy a gas cooker sending a
+perpetual shudder through it, a telephone destroying who knows what
+fragrant old influences; the store cupboards and still room are part of
+its bowels, its napery, bed sheets, and hangings part of its dress. The
+man knew what he was doing who left Miss Pinckney a life interest in
+Vernons, it was that interest that kept Vernons alive.
+
+She was exercising it on the critical examination of some sheets when Phyl
+came into the room, now, with the wool she had purchased and the tale she
+had to tell.
+
+Miss Pinckney carefully put the sheet she was examining on one side,
+opened the parcel and looked at the wool.
+
+"I met Silas Grangerson," said Phyl as the other was examining the
+purchase with head turned on one side, holding it now in this light, now
+in that.
+
+"Silas Grangerson! Why, where on earth has he sprung from?" asked Miss
+Pinckney in a voice of surprise.
+
+"I don't know, but I met him in the street and we walked as far as the
+Battery and--and--"
+
+She hesitated for a moment, then it all came out. To no one but Maria
+Pinckney could she have told that story.
+
+"Well, of all the astounding creatures," said Miss Pinckney at last. "Did
+he ask you to marry him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Just to run away with him--kissed you."
+
+"He kissed me at Grangersons."
+
+"At Grangersons. When?"
+
+"That night. I went into the garden and he came out from amongst some
+bushes."
+
+"Umph-- It's the family disease-- Well, if I get my fingers in his hair I
+promise to cure him. He wants curing. He'll just apologise, and that
+before he's an hour older. Where's he staying?"
+
+"No, no," said Phyl, "you mustn't ever say I told you. I don't mind. I
+would have said nothing only for Mr. Pinckney."
+
+"You mean Richard?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What has he to do with it?"
+
+Phyl did not hesitate nor turn her head away, though her cheeks were
+burning.
+
+"Silas Grangerson thinks I care for Mr. Pinckney, he said he would be even
+with him. I know he intends doing him some injury. I feel it--and I want
+you to warn him to be careful--without telling him, of course, what I have
+said."
+
+Miss Pinckney was silent for a moment. She had already matched Phyl and
+Richard in her mind. She had come to a very full understanding of her
+character, and she would have given all the linen at Vernons for the
+certainty that those two cared for one another.
+
+Frances Rhett rode her like an obsession. Life and nature had given Maria
+Pinckney an acquired and instinctive knowledge of character, and in the
+union of Richard and Frances Rhett she divined unhappiness, just as a
+clever seaman divines the unseen ice-berg in the ship's track. She smelt
+it.
+
+"Phyl," said she, "do you care for Richard?"
+
+The question quickly put and by those lips caused no confusion in the
+girl's mind.
+
+"No," said she. "At least-- Oh, I don't know how to explain it--I care for
+everything here, for Vernons and everything in it, it is all like a story
+that I love--Juliet and Vernons and the past and the present. He's part of
+it too. I want to have it always just as it is. I didn't tell you, but
+when that happened in the cemetery, I was looking at her grave; you never
+told me it was there with his. I came on it by accident and she was
+seeming to speak to me out of it. I was thinking of her and him,
+when--that happened. It was just as though some one had struck _her_ and
+him. I can't explain exactly."
+
+"Strange," said Miss Pinckney.
+
+She turned and began to put away with a thoughtful air the linen she had
+been examining. Then she said:
+
+"I'll tell Richard and warn him to keep away from that fool, not that
+there is any danger--but it is just as well to warn him."
+
+Phyl helped to put away the linen and then she went upstairs to her room.
+She felt easier in her mind and taking her seat on a cane couch by the
+window she fell into a book. The History of the Civil War. This bookworm
+had always one sure refuge in trouble--books.
+
+Books! Have we ever properly recognised the mystery and magic that lies in
+that word, the magic that allows a man to lead ever so many other lives
+than his own, to be other people, to travel where he has never been, to
+laugh with folk he has never seen, to know their sorrows as he can never
+know the sorrows of "real people"--and their joys.
+
+Phyl had been Robinson Crusoe and Jane Eyre, Monte Cristo and Jo.
+
+History which is so horribly unreal because it deals with real people had
+never appealed to her, but the history of the Civil War was different from
+others.
+
+It had to do with Vernons.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+When Silas Grangerson left the cemetery of St. Michael's he walked for
+half a mile without knowing or caring in what direction he was going.
+
+Phyl had done more than slap his face. She had slapped his pride, his
+assurance of himself, and his desire for her all at the same time.
+
+Silas rarely bothered about girls, yet he knew that he had the power to
+fascinate any woman once he put his mind to the work. He had not tried his
+powers of fascination on Phyl. It was the other way about. Phyl absolutely
+unconsciously had used her fascination upon him.
+
+Something in her, recognised by him on their first meeting in the stable
+yard, had put away the barrier of sex. He had talked to her as if she had
+been a boy. Sitting on the seat beside her whilst the Colonel had been
+prosing over politics and tobacco, the prompting came to Silas to pinch
+her finger just for fun; when he had put his hands over her eyes that
+night it was in obedience to the same prompting, but at the moment of
+parting from her, a desire quite new had overmastered him.
+
+He had kissed a good many girls, but never in his life had he kissed a
+girl as he kissed Phyl.
+
+Something cynical in his feelings for the other sex had always left him
+somewhat cold, but Phyl was different from the others, she had in some way
+struck straight at his real being.
+
+When he left her that night at Grangersons he was almost as disturbed as
+she.
+
+He scarcely slept. He was out at dawn and on his return after she had left
+he sat down and wrote the letter which Phyl received next morning.
+
+Silas was in love for the first time in his life, but love with Silas was
+a thing apart from the love of ordinary men.
+
+There was no worship of the object; the something that crystallises out in
+the form of love-letters, verses, bouquets, and candy was not there. He
+wanted Phyl.
+
+He had no more idea of marriage than the great god Pan. If she had
+consented he would have taken her off on that yawl of his imagination
+round the world or down to Florida, without thought of the morrow or the
+_convenances_, or Society; but please do not imagine this rather primitive
+gentleman a chartered libertine. He would have married her as soon as not,
+but he had neither the genius nor the inclination for the courtship that
+leads by slow degrees up to the question, "Will you marry me?"
+
+He wanted her at once.
+
+As he walked along now with the devil awake in his heart, he felt no anger
+towards Phyl; all his rage was against Pinckney; he had never liked
+Pinckney, he more than suspected that Phyl cared for him and he wanted
+some one to hate badly.
+
+He had walked himself into a reasonable state of mind when he found
+himself outside the Queen City Club. He went in and one of the first men
+he met was Pinckney.
+
+So well did he hold himself in hand that Pinckney suspected nothing of his
+feelings. Silas was far too good a sportsman to shout at the edge of the
+wood, too much of a gentleman to desire a brawl in public. He was going to
+knife Pinckney, he was also going to capture Phyl, but the knifing of
+Pinckney was the main objective and that required time and thought. He did
+not desire the blood of the gentleman; he wanted his pride and _amour
+propre_. He wanted to hit him on the raw, but he did not know yet where,
+exactly, the raw was nor how to hit it. Time would tell him.
+
+He was specially civil to his intended victim, and he went off home that
+evening plotting all the way, but arriving at nothing. He was trying to
+make bricks without straw. Pinckney did not drink, nor did he gamble, and
+he was far too good a business man to be had in that way. However, all
+things come to him who waits, and next morning's post brought him a ray of
+light in the midst of his darkness.
+
+It brought him an invitation to the Rhetts' dance on the following
+Wednesday; nearly a week to wait, but, still, something to wait for.
+
+"What are you thinking about, Silas?" asked old Seth Grangerson as they
+sat at breakfast.
+
+"I'm thinking of a new rabbit trap, suh," responded the son.
+
+The rabbit trap seemed to give him a good deal of food for thought during
+the week that followed; food that made him hilarious and gloomy by turns,
+restless also.
+
+Had he known it, Phyl away at Charleston, was equally restless. She no
+longer thought of Silas. She had dismissed him from her mind, she no
+longer feared him as a possible source of danger to the man she loved.
+Love had her entirely in his possession to torture as he pleased. She knew
+only one danger, the danger that Richard Pinckney did not care in the
+least for her, and as day followed day that danger grew more defined and
+concrete. Richard had taken to avoiding her, she became aware of that.
+
+She fancied that she displeased him.
+
+If she had only known!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+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
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ghost Girl, by H. De Vere Stacpoole
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