The Ghost Girl

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

  CHAPTER III

  When they came round to the front of the house they found ColonelGrangerson 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 MissPinckney. "No, sir, I did not leave any of the doors open, but I've beenlooking for Sam with a blacksnake whip to liven him up. He left the greywithout grooming after she was brought in this morning, and I was rubbingher 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 theyturned 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 fatherfrom what he was when alone or in the presence of strangers.

  In the presence of his father, past generations spoke in his every wordand action, he became sedate, deferential, leisurely. It was not fear ofthe 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, thepond-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 detachedthemselves and became butterflies.

  They sat down on a great old stone bench lichened and sun warmed to enjoythe 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 buzzingof the bees and the voice of the speaker, had given herself up to thatlazy condition of mind which is the next best thing to sleep, when she wassuddenly aroused. She was seated between Miss Pinckney and Silas. Silashad pinched her little finger.

  She snatched her hand away, and turned towards him. He was looking awayover the pastures; his profile showed nothing but its absolutecorrectness. Miss Pinckney had noticed nothing, and the Colonel, who hadfinished with cotton, looking at his watch, declared that it was close ondinner time.

  After supper that night, Phyl found herself in the garden. Silas had notappeared at supper; the Colonel had brought down a book of oldphotographs, photographs of people and places dead or changed, and he andMiss Pinckney became so absorbed in them that they had little thought forthe girl.

  She went out to look at the moon, and it was worth looking at, rising likea honey coloured shield above the belt of the eastern woods.

  The whole world was filled with the moonlight, warm tinted, and ghostly asthe 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 cottonfields.

  Phyl reached the seat where they had all sat that afternoon. It was stillwarm from the all-day sunshine, and she sat down to rest and listen.

  The owl had ceased crying, and through the league wide silence faintsounds far and near told of the life moving and thrilling beneath thenight; the boom of a beetle, voices from the distant road, and now andthen a whisper of wind rising and dying out across the garden and thetrees.

  A faint sound came from behind the seat, and before Phyl could turn twowarm 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. Ididn't mean to startle you. I thought you must have heard me coming acrossthe 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, Idon'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 oldalbum, comparing notes. I saw them through the window, that's why I cameto look for you in the garden. Do you know, I believe the Governor wasgone once on Maria, years ago, but they never got married. He married mymother instead."

  Phyl forgot her resentment.

  The faint idea that Colonel Grangerson and Maria Pinckney had perhaps beenmore than friends in long gone days, had strayed across her mind, to bedismissed 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. "Ionly judge by the way they go on when they're together, and the way hetalks 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 orshot before I'm forty. I don't want to die in any beds with doctors roundme. I reckon if I'm ever like that I'll drink the liniment instead of themedicine--same as I nearly drenched Pap--and go to heaven with a red labelfor 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 inthe least, but his tricks of an overgrown boy did not please her; itseemed to her sometimes as though his irresponsibility was less aninheritance from youth, than from some ancestor ill-balanced to the pointof craziness. If any other man of his age had acted and spoken to her ashe had done she would have smacked his face, but Silas was Silas, and hisgood looks and seeming innocence, and something really charming that layaway 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 handsfolded 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 ofthe Irish, drawing them like monkeys with great upper lips--but it's onlyignorant people who never travel who think of them like that."

  "That's so, I expect," replied Silas, either unconscious of the dig athimself or undesirous of a quarrel, "and the next few dollars I have tospare 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 Silassweetly. She was silent, a white moth passing close to her held her gazefor a moment, then it flitted away across the bushes.

  "Let's forget Ireland for a moment," said she, "and talk of Charleston. Doyou know many people there?"

  "I know most every one. The Pinckneys and Calhouns and Tredegars andRevenalls and--"

  "Rhetts."

  "Yes--but there are a dozen Rhetts; same as there's half a hundredPinckneys and Calhouns, families, I mean. What's his name--RichardPinckney, your guardian, is engaged to a Rhett."

  "He is not."

  "He is--Venetia Frances, the one that lives in Legare Street. Why, I'veseen 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'smarried 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'llspend it on hats--sure."

  This outrageous statement, uttered with a laugh, left Phyl cold. Thestatement about Frances Rhett had disturbed her, sh
e could not tellexactly why, for it was none of her business whom Pinckney might choose tomarry--still--Frances Rhett! It was almost as though an antagonism hadexisted 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 hiscigarette.

  "Going into the house?" said he.

  "Yes!"

  "Well, you'll be off to-morrow morning, and I won't see you, for I have tobe 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 forvisiting 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 heron the mouth, on the forehead, on the chin, and with a last kiss on themouth that made her feel as though her life were going from her, hevanished. Vanished amidst the bushes whilst she stood, tottering, dazed,breathless, outraged, yet--in some extraordinary way not angry. Pulledbetween tears and laughter, resentment, and a strange new feeling suddenlyborn in her from his burning lips, and the strength that had held her fora moment to itself.

  In one moment, and as though with the stroke of a sword, Silas had cutdown the barrier that had divided her from the reality of things. He hadkissed away her childhood.

  Then throwing out her hands as though pushing away some presence that wassurrounding her, she ran to the house. In the hall she sat down for amoment to recover herself before going into the drawing room, where MissPinckney and the Colonel were closing the book which held for them thepeople and the places they had known in youth, and between its leaves whoknows what old remembrances, like the withered flower that has once formedpart of a summer's day.