The Ghost Girl
Page 10
CHAPTER I
Holyhead, Liverpool, New York, each of these stopping places had impressedupon 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, avery good imitation of dying.
But the south-bound express from New York was to show her just what peoplemay 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 fromthese 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-boundexpress tumbled it all to pieces.
Forests and mountains and plains would have been familiar to herimagination, but the south-bound express was producing for her inspectionquite different things from these.
New Jersey with its populous towns, for instance, towns she never couldhave imagined or dreamed of, filled with people whose existence she couldnot picture.
What gave her a cold grue was the suddenly grasped fact that all thisgreat mechanism of life, cities, towns, roaring railways, agriculturallands, manufacturing districts filled with English speaking people--thatall this was alien, knew nothing of Ireland or England, except as it mightknow of Japan or a dream of the past.
The people in the train were talking English--were English to all intentsand purposes, and yet, as far as England and Ireland were concerned, sheknew them to be dead.
It had been freezing in New York, a great rainstorm was blowing across theworld as they crossed the Delaware; it passed, sweeping away east underthe arch of a vast rainbow, even the rainbow seemed alien and different toIrish rainbows--it was too big.
Then came Philadelphia, where some of the dead folk left the train andothers got in. One had an Irish voice and accent. He was a big man with ahard, pushful face and a great under jaw. Phyl knew him at once for whathe was, and that he had died to Ireland long years ago.
Then came Wilmington and Baltimore, and then, long after sunset in thedark, a warmer air that entered the train like a viewless passenger, nervesoothing and mind lulling--the first breath of the South.
Next morning, looking from the windows of the car, she saw the South. Vastspaces of low-lying land broken by river and bayou, flooded by the lightof the new risen sun and touched by a vague mist from the sea, soft as ahaze of summer, warm with light and everywhere hinting at the blue deepsky 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 delightfulmoment, it seemed to Phyl that summer days long forgotten, rapturousmornings half remembered were here again.
The rumble of trestle and boom of bridge filled the train, and now themasts of ships showed thready against the hazy blue of the sky; framehouses sprang up by the track and fences with black children roosting onthem; then the mean streets of the coloured quarter and now, as the carsslackened speed, came the bustle that marks the end of a journey. Peoplewere getting their light luggage together, and as Phyl was strapping thebundle that held her travelling rug and books, a waft of tepid,salt-scented air came through the compartment and on it the voice of thenegro attendant rousing some drowsy passenger.
"Charleston, sah."
She got out, dazed and numbed by the journey, and stood with the rugbundle in her hand looking about her, half undecided what to do, halfabsorbed 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 afterthat long, friendless journey was so great that she laughed right out withpleasure, 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 theluggage, he led the girl through the crowd.
"We'll walk to the house," said he, "if you are not too tired; it's only afew steps away--well--how do you like America?"
"America?" she replied. "I don't know--it's different from what I thoughtit would be, ever so much different--and this place--why, it is likesummer 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, largestately houses of the Georgian era showed themselves. Mansions that hadslumbered in the sun for a hundred years, great, solid houses whoseyellow-wash seemed the incrustation left by golden and peacefulafternoons, houses of old English solidity yet with the Southern touch ofdeep verandas and the hint of palm trees in their jealously walledgardens.
"Oh, how beautiful!" said Phyl. She stopped, looked about her, and thengazed away down the street. It was as though the old stately street--andsurely the Street of Other Days might be its name--had been waiting forher all her life, waiting for her to turn that corner leading from thecommonplace station, waiting to greet her like the ghost of some friend ofchildhood. Surely she knew it! Like the recollection of a dream oncedreamed, it lay before her with its walled gardens, its vaguely familiarhouses, 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 forgottenhis existence for a moment. Her head was raised as if she were inhalingthe sea wind lazily blowing from the Battery, and bearing with it strayscents 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 rememberseeing anything like it before."
"I've felt that way sometimes about places," said Pinckney. "It seemed tome that I knew Paris quite well when I went there, though I'd never beenthere before. Charleston is pretty English, anyway, and maybe it's thatthat makes it seem familiar. But I'm glad you like it. You like it, don'tyou?"
"Like it!" said she. "I should think I did--It's more than liking--I loveit."
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 gardenshowing through a wrought iron gate. "Oh, Dublin!--don't talk to me aboutit here. I want to keep on feeling I'm here really and that there'snowhere else."
"There isn't," said he, disclosing for the first time in his life, andquite unconsciously, his passion for the place where he had been born."There's nowhere else but Charleston worth anything--I don't know what itis 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 anddrowsily 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.