The Ghost Girl Part 10

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 pa.s.senger.

"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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sing 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-s.n.a.t.c.hing 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 Pa.s.s 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.

"G.o.d 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.