The Ghost Girl
Page 17
CHAPTER VIII
When Phyl awoke from sleep next morning, the brightness of the South hadlost some of its charm.
Something magical that had been forming in her mind and taking its lifefrom Vernons had been shattered last night by Pinckney's commonplacequestion.
This morning, looking back on yesterday, she could remember details butshe could not recapture the essence. The exaltation that had raised herabove and beyond herself. It was like the remembrance of a rose contrastedwith 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, tohappiness beyond experience, only to be cast down from those heights bythe voice of reality.
The thing was plain enough to common sense; she had let herself beover-ruled by Imagination, working upon splendid material. Prue's message,her own likeness to Juliet, Juliet's letters, the little arbour, those andthe 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, sufferedvaguely and enjoyed in imagination what Juliet had suffered and enjoyed inlife, known Love as Juliet had known it--for a moment.
The brutal touch of the Real coming at the supreme moment to shatter andshrivel everything.
And the strange thing was that she had no regrets.
Looking back on yesterday, the things that had happened seemed of littleinterest. Sleep seemed to have put an Atlantic ocean between her andthem.
Coming down to breakfast she found Pinckney just coming in from thegarden; he said nothing about the incident of the night before, nor didshe, there were other things to talk about. Seth, one of the darkies, hadbeen 'kicking up shines,' he had given impudence to Miss Pinckney thatmorning. Impudence to Miss Pinckney! You can scarcely conceive the meaningof that statement without a personal knowledge of Miss Pinckney, and afull understanding of the magic of her rule.
Seth was, even now, packing up the quaint contraptions he called hisluggage, and old Darius, the coloured odd job man, was getting a barrowout of the tool-house to wheel the said luggage to Seth's grandmother'shouse, somewhere in the negro quarters of the town. The whole affair ofthe impudence and dismissal had not taken two minutes, but the effectswere widespread and lasting. Dinah was weeping, the kitchen in confusion;one might have thought a death had occurred in the house, and MissPinckney presiding at the breakfast table was voluble and silent byturns.
"Never mind," said Pinckney with all the light-heartedness of a mantowards domestic affairs. "Seth's not the only nigger in Charleston."
"I'm not bothering about his going," replied Miss Pinckney. "He was allthumbs and of no manner of use but to make work; what upsets me is the wayhe hid his nature. Time and again I've been good to that boy. He lookedall 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 goingon like a fool; she's crying because he's going, not because he gave meimpudence. Rachel's the same, and I'm just going now to the kitchen togive them a talking to all round."
Off she went.
"I know what that means," said Pinckney. "It's only once in a couple ofyears that there's any trouble with servants and then--oh, my! You seeAunt Maria is not the same as other people because she loves every onedearly, and looks on the servants as part of the family. I expect sheloves that black imp Seth, for all his faults, and that's what makes herso 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 awkwardnessarising, 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 lastnight, at that magical moment when he met her on entering the gate--if atthat moment he had taken her in his arms and kissed her, Love might havebeen born instantly from his embrace.
But the psychological moment had passed, a crisis unknown to him andalmost unknown to her.
And now, as if to seal the triumph of the commonplace, suddenly, the vaguereservation that had lain between them, disappeared.
"Do you know," said he, "you taught me a lesson that day, a lesson everyman ought to be taught before he leaves college."
"What was that?" asked Phyl.
"Never to interfere in household affairs. Of course Rafferty wasn'texactly a household affair because he belonged mostly to the stable, stillhe was your affair more than mine. Household affairs belong to women, andmen ought to leave them alone."
"Maybe you're right," said Phyl, "but all the same I was wrong. Do youknow 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 nobusiness this morning and I'd like to show you the town--if you'd care tocome."
"What about Miss Pinckney?" asked Phyl.
"Oh, she's all right," he replied. "The Seth trouble will keep her busytill 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 thegarden the thought came to her just for a moment to show him the littlearbour; then something stopped her, a feeling that this humble littlesecret was not hers to give away, and a feeling that Pinckney wouldn'tcare. Dead lovers vanished so long and their affairs would have littleinterest for his practical mind.
The morning was warmer even than yesterday. The joyous, elusive,intoxicating spirit of the Southern spring was everywhere, the air seemedfilled with the dust of sunbeams, filled with fragrance and lazy sounds.The very business of the street seemed part of a great universal gaietyover 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 Hotelheld Phyl like a wizard whilst Pinckney explained its history. Here in theold days the travelling carriages had drawn up, piled with the luggage offine folk on a visit to Charleston on business or pleasure. The Planterswas known all through the Georgias and Virginia, all through the States inthe days when General Washington and John C. Calhoun were living figures.
The ghost of the place held Phyl's imagination. Just as Meeting Streetseemed filled with friendly old memories on her first entering it, so didthe air around the ruins of the "Planters."
Then having paused to admire the gouty pillars of St. Michael's they wentinto the church.
The silence of an empty church is a thing apart from all other silences inthe world. Deeper, more complete, more filled with voices.
As they were entering a negro caretaker engaged in dusting and tidying letsomething fall, and as the silence closed in on the faint echo thatfollowed the sound they stopped, just by the font to look around them.Here the spirit of spring was not. The shafts of sunlight through thewindows lit the old fashioned box pews, the double decked pulpit, and thefont crowned with the dove with the light of long ago. Sunday mornings ofthe old time assuredly had found sanctuary here and the old congregationshad not yet quite departed.
The occasional noise of the caretaker as he moved from pew to pew scarcelydisturbed the tranquillity, the scene was set beyond the reach of thesounds and daily affairs of this world, and the actors held in a mediumunshakable as that which holds the ghostly life of bees in amber and birdsin marqueterie.
"That was George Washington's pew," whispered Pinckney, "at least the onehe sat in once. That's the old Pinckney pew, belonged to Bures--otherpeople sit there now. This is our pew--Vernons. The Mascarenes had it inthe old days, of course."
Phyl looked at the pew where Juliet Mascarene had sat often enough, nodoubt, whilst
the preacher had preached on the vanity of life, on thedelusions of the world and the shortness of Time.
Many an eloquent divine had stood in the pulpit of St. Michael's, but nonehave ever preached a sermon so poignant, so real, so searching as thatwhich 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 hisown. They had got to that pleasant stage of intimacy where conversationcan be dropped without awkwardness and picked up again haphazard, but youcannot be silent long in the streets of Charleston on a spring day. Theyvisited the market-place and inspected the buzzards and then, somehow,without knowing it, they drifted on to the water side. Here where thedocks lie deserted and the green water washes the weed grown and rottingtimbers of wharves they took their seats on a baulk of timber to rest andcontemplate things.
"There used to be ships here once," said he. "Lots of ships--but that wasbefore the war."
He was silent and Phyl glanced sideways at him, wondering what was in hismind. She soon found out. A struggle was going on between his two selves,his business self that demanded up-to-dateness, bustle, and the energeticconduct 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 BusinessProsperity. 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 NewOrleans, those greedy sea mouths that swallow the goods of the world andgive out cotton, whilst Charleston lay idle, her wharves almost deserted,her storehouses empty.
He spoke almost vehemently, spoke as a business man speaks of wastedchances and things neglected. Then, when he had finished, the girl put inher word.
"Well," said she, "it may be so but I don't want it any different fromwhat 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 findhim bemoaning the business decay of the city he loved, but here, sittingby the girl on the forsaken wharf, in the sunshine, the feeling suddenlycame 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 recoveredfrom the Seth business, and after luncheon that day, assisted by Dinah andthe directions of Miss Pinckney, Phyl's hair "went up."
"It's beautiful," said the old lady, as she contemplated the result, "andmore 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 hadvanished as though some breath had blown it away in the magic mirror.
PART III