The Ghost Girl

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

  CHAPTER VI

  "Miss Pinckney," said Phyl, as they sat at luncheon that day, "youremember you said yesterday that I was like Juliet Mascarene?"

  "So you are," replied the other, "though the likeness is more noticeableat first sight as far as the face goes--I've got a picture of her I willshow you, it's upstairs in her room, the one next yours on the samepiazza--why do you ask me?"

  "I was thinking," replied Phyl, "that the old woman in thekitchen--Prue--may have meant Juliet when she called me Julie, and that itwas the likeness that set her mind going."

  "It's not impossible. Prue's like that crazy old clock Selina Pinckneyleft me in her will. It'd tell you the day and the hour _and_ the minuteand the year and the month and the weather. A little man came out if itwas going to rain and a little woman if it was going to shine. But if youwanted to know the time, it couldn't tell you nearer than the hour beforelast of the day before yesterday, and if you sneezed near it, it'd up andstrike 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 theold kitchen clock saw to that. It's the same with Prue, the time doesn'tmatter, and they look up to her in the kitchen mostly, I expect, becauseshe's an oddity, same as Selina Pinckney's clock. Seems to me anythingcrazy and useless is reckoned valuable these days, and not only amongcoloured folk but whites--Dinah, hasn't Mr. Richard come in yet?"

  "No, Mistress Pinckney," replied the coloured girl, who had just enteredthe room, "I haven't seen no sign of him."

  "Running about without his luncheon," grumbled the lady, "said he had adeal in cotton on. I might have guessed it." Then when Dinah had left theroom and talking half to herself, "There's nothing Richard seems to thinkof but business or pleasure. I'm not saying anything against the boy, he'sas good and better than any of the rest, but like the rest of them hischaracter wants forming round something real. It wasn't so in the olddays, they were bad enough then and drank a lot more, but they had in themsomething that made for something better than business or pleasure. MattCurry didn't go out and get killed for business or pleasure, and all theold Pinckneys didn't fight in the war or fight with one another forbusiness or pleasure. There's more in life than fooling with girls orbuying 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 bitand 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 notclear in her mind, clouded as it was with anger--anger at the thought thatshe was an object to be looked after by her "guardian," anger at theimplication that he was not bothering to look after her, being too muchengaged in the business of fooling with girls and buying cotton, and areasonable anger springing from and embracing the whole world that heldhis beyond Vernons.

  "Yes?" said Miss Pinckney.

  "Oh, nothing," replied the other, trying to laugh and making a failure ofthe business. "I was only going to say that Mr. Pinckney must have lots todo instead of wasting his time looking after strangers, and if he hadn't Idon't want to be looked after. I don't want him to bother aboutme--I--I--" It did not want much more to start her off in a wild fit ofweeping about nothing, her mind for some reason or other unknown even toherself was worked up and seething just as on that day at Kilgobbin whenthe woes of Rafferty had caused her to make such an exhibition of herselfin the library. Anything was possible with Phyl when under the influenceof unreasoning emotion like this, anything from flinging a knife at aperson to breaking into tears.

  Miss Pinckney knew it. Without understanding in the least thepsychological mechanism of Phyl, she knew as a woman and by someelectrical influence the state of her mind.

  She rose from the table.

  "Stranger," said she, taking the other by the arm, "you call yourself astranger. Come along upstairs with me. I want to show you something."

  Still holding her by the arm, caressingly, she led her off across the halland up the stairs; on the first floor landing she opened a door; it wasthe door of the bedroom next to Phyl's, a room of the same shape and sizeand with the same view over the garden.

  Just as the drawing-room had been kept in its entirety without alterationor touch save the touch of a duster, so had this room, the bedroom of agirl of long ago, a girl who would now have been a woman old anddecrepit--had she lived.

  "Here's the picture you wanted to see," said Miss Pinckney leading Phyl upto a miniature hanging on the wall near the bed. "That's Juliet, and ifyou don't see the family likeness, well, then, you must be blind.--And youcalling yourself a stranger!"

  Phyl looked. It was rather a stiff and finicking little portrait; shefancied it was like herself but was not sure, the colour of the hair wasalmost the same but the way it was dressed made a lot of difference, andshe said so.

  "Well, they did their hair different then," replied Miss Pinckney, "andthat reminds me, it's near time you put that tail up." She sat down in arocker 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, anyhowI'm something with a skirt on it, and brains in its head, and that's whata girl most wants when she comes to your age. You'll be asked to partiesand things here and you'll find that tail in the way; it's good enough fora schoolgirl, but you aren't that any longer. I'll get Dinah to do yourhair, something simple and not too grown-up--you don't mind an old womantelling you this--do you?"

  "Indeed I don't," said Phyl. "I don't care how my hair is done, you cancut 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 getDinah to look to your hair. Dinah can do most anything in that way; she'dget twice the wages as a lady's maid elsewhere and she knows it, but shewon't go. I've told her over and again to be off and better herself, butshe won't go, sticks to me like a mosquito. Well, this was Juliet's roomjust as that's her picture; she died in that bed and everything is justexactly as she left it. It was kept so after her death. You see, it wasn'tlike an ordinary person dying, it was the tragedy of the whole thing thatstirred 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 wastelling you of. The _News and Courier_ had yards of obituary notice andverses. It made people forget the war for a couple of days. There's allher books on that shelf and the diary the poor thing used to keep. Openone of the drawers in that chest."

  Phyl did so. The drawer was packed with clothes neatly folded. The airbecame filled with the scent of lavender.

  "There are her things, everything she ever had when she died. It may seemfoolish to keep everything like that, foolish and sentimental, and ifshe'd died of measles or fallen down the stairs and killed herself maybeher 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 inher things. Mrs. Beamis sniffed here just as she sniffed in thedrawing-room, and she said, one night, something about sentiment, as ifshe was referring to chicken cholera. I knew what she meant. She meant wewere a pack of fools. Well, she ought to know. I reckon she ought to be ajudge of folly--the life she leads in Chicago. Umph!--Now I'm going to liedown for an hour, and if you take my advice you'll do the same. The middleof 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 lookedaround her. The place held her, something returned to it that had beendriven away perhaps by Miss Pinckney's cheerful and practical presence,the faint odour of lavender still clung to the air, and the silence wasunbroken except for a faint stirring of the window curtains now and thento the breeze from outside. Everything was, indeed, just as it had beenleft, 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 watercolours evidentl
y the work of that immature artist Mary Mascarene, a watchpocket hung above the bed, a thing embroidered with blue roses, enough todisturb the sleep of any aesthete, yet beautiful enough in those old days.There was only one stain mark in the scrupulous cleanliness and neatnessof the place--a panel by the window, once white painted but now dingy-greyand scored with lines. Phyl got up and inspected it more closely.Children's heights had evidently been measured here. There was a scale offeet marked in pencil, initials, and dates. Here was "M. M.," probablyMary 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." Soshe had grown three and a half inches in a year. "J. M."--Juliet withoutdoubt--"3 feet, 3 years old, 1845." Juliet was evidently the elder--so itwent on right into the early '60's, mixed here and there with otherinitials, amongst which Phyl made out "J. J." and "R. P.," children maybestaying at the house and measured against the Mascarene children--childrennow old men and women, possibly not even that. It was in the kindly spiritof Vernons not to pass a painter's brush over these scratchings, recordsof the height of a child that lingered only in the memory of the oldhouse.

  Phyl turned from them to the bookshelf and the books it contained. "NobleDeeds of American Women," "Precept on Precept," "The Dairyman's Daughter,"and the "New England Primer"--with a mark against the verses left "by JohnRogers to his wife and nine small children, and one at the breast, when hewas burned at the stake at Smithfield in 1555." There were also books ofpoetry, Bryant, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "Powhatan, a metrical romancein seven cantos by Seba Smith," and several others.

  Phyl did something characteristic. She gathered every single book into apile in her arms and sat down on the floor with them to have a feast. Thisdevourer of books was omnivorous in her tastes, especially if it were aquestion of sampling, and she had enough critical faculty to enable her toenjoy rubbish. She lingered over Powhatan and its dedication to the "YoungPeople of the United States" and then passed on to the others till shecame to a little black book. It was Juliet Mascarene's diary andproclaimed the fact openly on the first page with the statements: "I amtwelve years old to-day and Aunt Susan has given me this book to keep asmy diary and not to forget to write each day my evil deeds as well as mygood, which I will if I remember them. She didn't give me anything else. Ihad to-day a Paris doll from Cousin Jane Pinckney who has winking eyeswhich shut when you lay her on her back and pantalettes with scallopswhich 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 formension.

  "Signed Juliet Mascarene."

  with never a date.

  Then:

  "I haven't done any evil deeds, or good ones that I can remember, so Ihaven't written in this book for maybe a week. Mary and I, we went to aparty at the Pinckneys to-day at Bures, the Calhoun children and theRutledges were there and we had Lady Baltimore cake and a good time. Marywore 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 toosmall for him, I expect. He told me he was going to have a pony same asSilas Rhett that threw him in the market place Wednesday last and gallopedall the way to Battery before he was stopped, only his was to be a betterone 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 wewent home, and driving back Mary kicked me on the shin by axident and Ipinched her and she didn't cry till we'd got home, then she began to roarand mother said it was my ungovernable temper, and I said I wished I wasdead.

  "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 supperbut Prue has brought me up a cake of her own making. So that's one evildeed to put down--It's just like Mary, any one else would have cried rightout in the carriage and not bottled it up and kept it up till she gothome.

  "This is a Friday and Prue says Friday parties are always sure to end introuble for the devil puts powder in the cakes and the only way to stophim is to turn them three times round when they're baking and touch themeach time with a forked hazel twig."

  Phyl read this passage over twice. The mention of Prue interested hervastly. 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 itdid not occur.

  The diary, indeed, did not run over more than a year and a half, butscrappy as it was and short in point of time, the character of Julietshone forth from it, uneasy, impetuous, tormenting and loving.

  Many books could not have depicted the people round Vernons so well asthis scribbling of a child. Mary Mascarene, quiet, rather a spoil-sportand something of a tale-teller, dead and gone Pinckneys and Rhetts. AuntSusan, Cousin Jane Pinckney, Uncle George who beat his coloured man,Darius, because the said Darius had let him go out with one brass buttonmissing from his blue coat. Simon Pinckney--the one whose ghostwalked--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 themiserly Aunt Susan "to keep as my diary and not to forget to write eachday my evil deeds as well as my good."

  Towards the end there was another reference to Rupert Pinckney, the tragiclover of the future:

  "Rupert Pinckney was here to-day with his mother to luncheon and we had apalmetto salad and mother said when he was gone he was the most frivulusboy in Charleston, whatever that was, and too much of a dandy, but fathersaid 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 tumblingoff like Silas Rhett, anyhow.

  "Then they went on talking about his people and how they hadn't as muchmoney as they used to have, and Aunt Susan said that was so, and the worstof it is they're spending more money than they used to spend, and fathersaid, well, anyhow, that wasn't a very common complaint with _some_ peopleand 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 andstay for a week. They drove here in their own carriage with four brownhorses 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 asMr. Simon Pinckney's, but different somehow--more like an apple, and ahigh nose which makes him look very grand and fine." The same SimonMascarene, no doubt, that came to the wedding of Charles Pinckney in 1880as old Simon Mascarene, the one whose flowered carpet bag still lingeredin the memory of Miss Pinckney.

  "Mrs. M. is very fine too and beautifully dressed and mother gave her agreat bouquet of geraniums and garden flowers with a live greencaterpillar looping about in the green stuff which nobody saw but me, tillit fell on Mrs. M.'s knee and she screamed. There is to be a big partyto-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 slaveswere slaves and Bures the home of the old gentleman with the musicalsnuff-box, but she could visualise Juliet as a child. The writing in thelittle book had brought the vision up warm from the past and it seemedalmost as though she might suddenly run in from the sunlit piazza that laybeyond the waving window curtains.

  There was a bureau in one corner, or rather one of those structures thatwent by the name of Davenports in the days of our fathers. Phyl went to itand raised the lid. She did so without a second thought or any feelingthat 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 ownlikeness to the dead girl was a bond of attraction stronger than a familytie, and Juliet's mournful love story completed the charm.

  The desk contained very little, a seal with a dove on it, some sticks o
fspangled sealing-wax, a paper knife of coloured wood with a picture ofBenjamin Franklin on the handle and some sheets of note-paper with giltedges.

  Phyl noticed that the gilt was still bright.

  She took out the paper knife and looked at it, and then held the blade toher lips to feel the smoothness of it, drawing it along so that her lipstouched every part of the blade.

  Then she put it back, and as she did so a little panel at the back of thedesk fell forward disclosing a cache containing a bundle of letters tiedround with ribbon.

  Phyl started as though a hand had been laid on her arm. The point of thepaper knife must have touched the spring of the panel, but it seemed asthough the desk had suddenly opened its hand, closed and clasping thoseletters for so many years. For a moment she hesitated to touch them. Thenshe thought of all the time they had lain there and a feeling that Julietwouldn't mind and that the old bureau had told its secret without beingasked, overcame her scruples. She took the letters and sitting down againon the floor, untied the ribbon.

  There were no envelopes. Each sheet of paper had been carefully folded andsealed with green wax, with the seal leaving the impression of the dove.There was no address, and they had evidently been tied together inchronological order. But the handwriting was the handwriting of JulietMascarene 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 churchto keep us talking in the street like that. I did _not_ see you. Youcouldn't have passed, and if you did you must have been invisible. I feeldreadfully wicked writing to you. Do you know this is a clandestinecorrespondence and must stop at once? You mustn't _ever_ write to meagain, nor I mustn't see you. Of course I can't help seeing you in churchand on the street--and I can't help thinking about you. They'll be makingme try and stop breathing next. I don't care a button for the whole lot ofthem. It was all Aunt Susan's doing, only for her my people would neverhave quarrelled with yours and I wouldn't have been so miserable. I feelsometimes as if I could just take a boat and sail off to somewhere where Iwould never see any people again.

  "It was clever of you to send your letter by P. This goes to you by thesame hand."

  There was no signature and no date.

  Phyl turned the sheet of paper over to make sure again that there was noaddress. As she did so a faint, quaint perfume came to her as though theold-fashioned soul of the letter were released for a moment. It wasvervain, the perfume of long ago, beloved of the Duchesse de Chartres andthe 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 quarrelwith your people or look down on them because they have lost money. Whydid you say that--and you know I said in my last letter that I could notwrite to you again. I was shocked when P. pinched my arm as I was passingher on the stairs and handed me your note--Don't you--don't you--how shallI say it? Don't you think you and I could meet and speak to one anothersomewhere instead of always writing like this? Somewhere where no onecould see us. Do you know--do you know--do you, ahem! O dear me--know thatjust inside our gate there's a little arbour. The tiniest place. When Iwas a child I used to play there with Mary at keeping house, there's aseat just big enough for two and we used to sit there with our dolls. Noone can see the gate from the lower piazza, and the gate doesn't make anynoise 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 thearbour--at least I _may_ be there. I just want to tell you in a way Ican't in a letter that my people aren't the sort of folk to sneer at anyone 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 theleft."

  Phyl gave a little laugh. Then with half-closed eyes she kissed theletter, laid it softly on the floor beside the first and went on to thenext.

  "Not to-night. I have to go to the Calhouns. It is just as well, for Ihave a dread of people suspecting if we meet too often. No one sees usmeet. 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 thesetimes?' If Mary had been alive she would have found out long ago, for Inever could keep anything hid from her. I was nearly saying to him, 'Ifyou want to know why I am so happy go and ask the magnolia tree by thegate.'

  "Sometimes I feel as if I were deceiving him and everybody. I am, and Idon't care--I don't care if they knew. O my darling! My darling! Mydarling! If the whole world were against you I would love you all themore. 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 itthe drowsy afternoon sounds of Charleston, sounds that seemed to mock atthis voice declaring the deathlessness of its love. It was impossible togo on reading. Impossible to expose any more this heart that had ceased tobeat.

  The meetings in the arbour behind the magnolia tree, the kisses, the wordsthat 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 ifwatching eyes from the piazza saw the glossy leaves stirring when no windcould shake them--nothing mattered at all to these people now.

  She put all the letters back in the bureau, carefully closing them in thesecret drawer.