The Ghost Girl Part 11

He thought that he knew everything about Maria Pinckney, just as he had fancied he knew himself till Phyl had shewn him, over there in Ireland, that there were a lot of things in his mind and character still to be known by himself. This, as regards him, seemed the special mission of Phyl in the world.

"It's the likeness," said Miss Pinckney. "I thought it was Juliet Mascarene there before me in the sun, Juliet dead those years and years."

Then commanding herself, and with one of those reverses, sudden changes of manner and subject peculiar to herself:

"Where's your luggage?"

"Abraham is bringing it along."

"Abraham! Do you mean you didn't drive, _walked_ here from the station?"

"Yes," said Pinckney shamefacedly, almost, and wondering what sin against the _covenances_ he had committed now.

"And she after that journey from N'York. Richard Pinckney, you are a--man--I was going to have called you a fool--but it's the same thing.

Here, come on both of you--the child must be starving. This is the breakfast room, Phyl--Phyl! I will never get used to that name; no matter, I'm getting an old woman, and mustn't grumble--mustn't grumble--umph!"

She took Pinckney's walking-stick from him and, with the end of it, picked up a duster that the mysterious Dinah, evidently, had left lying on the floor.

She put the duster out on the veranda, rang a bell and ordered the coloured boy who answered it to send in breakfast.

Phyl, commanded by Miss Pinckney, sat down to table just as she was without removing her hat.

The old lady had come to the conclusion that the newcomer must be faint with hunger after her journey, and when Miss Pinckney came to one of her conclusions, there was nothing more to be said on the matter.

It was a pleasant room, chintzy and sunny; they sat down to a gate-legged table that would just manage to seat four comfortably whilst the urn was brought in, a copper urn in which the water was kept at boiling point by a red hot iron contained in a cylinder.

Phyl knew that urn. They had one like it at Kilgobbin and she said so, but Miss Pinckney did not seem to hear her. There were times when this lady was almost rude--or seemed so owing to inattention, her bustling mind often outrunning the conversation or harking back to the past when it ought to have been in the present.

Tea making, and the making of tea was a solemn rite at Vernons, absorbed her whole attention, but Pinckney noticed this morning that the hand, that old, perfect, delicately shaped hand, trembled ever so slightly as it measured the tea from the tortoise-sh.e.l.l covered tea caddy, and that the thin lips, lips whose thinness seemed only the result of the kisses of Time, were moving as though debating some question unheard.

He recognised that the coming of Phyl had produced a great effect on Maria Pinckney. No one knew her better than he, for no one loved her so well.

It was she who ordered him about, still, just as though he were a small boy, and sometimes as he sat watching her, so fragile, so indomitable, like the breath of winter would come the thought that a day would come--a day might come soon when he would be no longer ordered about, told to put his hat in the hall--which is the proper place for hats--told not to dare to bring cigars into the drawing-room.

To Phyl, Maria Pinckney formed part of the spell that was surrounding her; Meeting Street had begun the weaving of this spell, Vernons was completing it with the aid of Maria Pinckney.

The song of the Cardinal Grosbeak in the garden, the stirring of the window curtains in the warm morning air, the feel of morning and sunlight, the scent of the tea that was filling the room, the room itself old-fashioned yet cheerful, chintzy and sunny, all the things had the faint familiarity of the street. It was as though the blood of her mother's people coursing in her veins had retained and brought to her some thrill and warmth from all these things; these things they knew and loved so well.

"There's the carriage," said Miss Pinckney, whose ears had picked out the sound of it drawing up at the front door. "They know where to take the luggage. Richard, go and see that they don't knock the bannisters about.

Abraham is all thumbs and has no more sense in moving things than Dinah has'n dusting them. Only last week when Mrs. Beamis was going away, he let that trunk of hers slip and I declare to goodness I thought it was a church falling down the stairs and tearing the place to pieces."

There was little of the stately languor of the South in Miss Pinckney's speech. She was Northern on the mother's side. But in her prejudices she was purely Southern, or, at least, Charlestonian.

Pinckney laughed.

"I don't think Phyl's luggage will hurt much even if it falls," said he.

"English luggage is generally soft."

"It's only a trunk and a portmanteau," said Phyl, as he left the room, but Miss Pinckney did not seem to hear; pouring herself out another cup of tea (she was the best and the worst hostess in the whole world) and seeming not to notice that Phyl's cup was empty, she was off on one of her mind wandering expeditions, a state of soul that sometimes carried her into the past, sometimes into the future, that led her anywhere and to the wrapt, inward contemplation of all sorts of things and subjects from the doings of the Heavenly Host to the misdoings of Dinah.

She talked on these expeditions.

"Well, I'm sure and I'm sure I don't know what folk want with the luggage they carry about with them nowadays-- The old folk didn't. Not Saratoga trunks, anyhow. I remember 'swell as if it was yesterday way back in 1880, when Richard's father and mother were married, old Simon Mascarene--he belonged to your mother's lot, the Mascarenes of Virginia-- He came to the wedding, and all he brought was a carpet-bag. I can see the roses on it still. He wore a beaver hat. They'd been out of fashion for years and years. So was he. Twenty dollars apiece they cost him, and his clothes were the same. Looked like a picture out of d.i.c.kens. Your grandmother was there, too, came from Richmond for the wedding, drove here in her own carriage. She and Simon were the last of the Virginia Mascarenes and they looked it. Seems to me some people never can be new nor get away from their ancestors. If you'd dressed Simon in kilts it wouldn't have made any difference, much, he'd still have been Simon Mascarene of Virginia, just as stiff and fine and proud and old-fashioned."

"It seems funny that my people should have been the Virginia Mascarenes,"

said Phyl, "because--because--well, I feel as if my people had always lived here--this feels like home--I don't know what it is, but just as I came into the street outside there I seemed to know it, and this house--"

"Why, G.o.d bless my soul," said Miss Pinckney, whose eyes had just fallen on the girl's empty cup, "here have I been talking and talking, and you waiting for some more tea. Why didn't you ask, child?--What were you saying? The Virginia Mascarenes-- Oh, they often came here, and your mother knew this house as well as Planters. That was the name of their house in Richmond. But what I can't get over is your likeness to Juliet.

She might have been your sister to look at you both--and she dead all these years."

"Who was Juliet?"

"She was the girl who died," said Miss Pinckney. "You know, although Richard calls me Aunt, I am not really his aunt; it's just an easy name for an old woman who is an interloper, a Pinckney adrift. It was this way I came in. Long before the Civil War, the Pinckneys lived at a house called Bures in Legare Street. A fine old house it was, and is still.

Well, I was a cousin with a little money of my own, and I was left lonely and they took me in. James Pinckney was head of the family then, and he had two sons, Rupert and Charles. I might have been their sister the way we all lived together and loved each other--and quarrelled. Dear me, dear me, what is Time at all that it leaves everything the same? The same sun, and flowers and houses, and all the people gone or changed-- Well, I am trying to tell you-- Rupert fell in love with Juliet Mascarene, who lived here. He was killed suddenly in '61-- I don't want to talk of it--and she died of grief the year after. She died of grief--simply died of grief.

Charles lived and married in 1880 when he was forty years old. He married Juliet's brother's daughter and Vernons came to him on the marriage. He hadn't a son till ten years later. That son was Richard. Charles left Richard all his property and Vernons on the condition that I always lived here--till I died, and that's how it is. I'm not Richard's aunt, it's only a name he gives me--I'm only just an old piece of furniture left with the house to him. I'm so fond of the place, it would kill me to leave it; places grow like that round one, though I'm sure I don't know why."

"I don't wonder at you loving Vernons," said Phyl. "I was just the same about our place in Ireland, Kilgobbin--I thought it would kill me to leave it."

"Tell me about it," said Miss Pinckney. Phyl told, or tried to tell.

Looking back, she found between herself and Ireland the sunlight of Charleston, the garden with the magnolia trees where the red bird was singing and the jessamine casting its perfume. Ireland looked very far away and gloomy, desolate as Kilgobbin without its master and with the mist of winter among the trees.

All that was part of the Past gone forever, and so great was the magic of this new place that she found herself recognising with a little chill that this Past had separated itself from her, that her feeling towards it was faintly tinged by something not unlike indifference.

"Well," said Miss Pinckney, when she had finished, "it must be a beautiful old place, though I can't seem to see it-- You see, I've never been in Ireland and I can't picture it any more than the new Jerusalem. Now Dinah knows all about the new Jerusalem, from the golden slippers right up she sees it--I can't. Haven't got the gift of seeing things, and it seems strange that the A'mighty should shower it on a coloured girl and leave a white woman wanting; but it appears to be the A'mighty knows his own business, so I don't grumble. Now I'm going to show you the house and your room. I've given you a room looking right on the garden, this side. You've noticed how all our houses here are built with their sides facing the street and their fronts facing the garden, or maybe you haven't noticed it yet, but you will. 'Pears to me our ancestors had some sense in their heads, even though they didn't invent telegraphs to send bad news in a hurry and railway cars to smash people to bits, and telephones to let strangers talk right into one's house just by ringing a bell. Not that I'd let one into Vernons. You may hunt high or low, garret or bas.e.m.e.nt, you won't find one of those boxes of impudence in Vernons--not while I have servants to go my messages."

Miss Pinckney was right. For years she had fought the telephone and kept it out, making Richard Pinckney's life a tissue of small inconveniences, and suffering this epitaph on her sanity to be written by all sorts of inferior people, "Plumb crazy."

She led the way from the breakfast-room and pa.s.sed into the hall.

The spirit of Vernons inhabited the hall. One might have fancied it as a stout and prosperous gentleman attired in a blue coat with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, shorts, and wearing a bunch of seals at his fob. Oak, brought from England, formed the panelling, and a great old grandfather's clock, with the maker's name and address, "Whewel. Coggershall," blazoned on its bra.s.s face, told the time, just as it had told the time when the Regent was ruling at St. James's in those days which seem so s.p.a.cious, yet so trivial in their pomp and vanity.

Sitting alone here of an afternoon with the sun pointing fingers through the high leaded windows, Whewel of Coggershall took you under his spell, the spell of old ghosts of long forgotten afternoons, s.p.a.cious afternoons filled with the cawing of rooks and the drone of bees. English afternoons of the good old time when the dust of the post chaise was the only mark of hurry across miles of meadow land and cowslip weather. And then as you sat held by the sound of the slow-slipping seconds, maybe, from some door leading to the servants' quarters suddenly left open a voice would come, the voice of some darky singing whilst at work.

A s.n.a.t.c.h of the South mixing with your dream of England and the past, and making of the whole a charm beyond words.

That is Charleston.

Set against the panelling and almost covering it in parts were prints, wood-cuts, engravings, portraits in black and white.

Here was a silhouette of Colonel Vernon, the founder of the house, and another of his wife. Here was an early portrait of Jeff Davis, hollow-cheeked and goatee-bearded, and here was Mayflower, the property of Colonel Seth Mascarene, the fastest trotting horse in Virginia, worshipped by her owner whose portrait hung alongside.

Phyl glanced at these pictures as she followed Miss Pinckney, who opened doors shewing the dining-room, a room rather heavily furnished, hung with portraits of long-faced gentlemen and ladies of old time, and then the drawing-room. A real drawing-room of the Sixties, a thing preserved in its entirety, in all its original stiffness, interesting as a valentine, perfumed like an old rosewood cabinet.

Keepsakes and Books of Beauty lay on the centre table, a gilt clock beneath a gla.s.s shade marked the moment when it had ceased to keep time over twenty-five years ago, the antimaca.s.sars on the armchairs were not a line out of position; not a speck of dust lay anywhere, and the Dresden shepherds and shepherdesses simpered and made love in the same old fashion, preserving unaltered the sentiment of spring, the suggestion of Love, lambs, and the song of birds.

"It's just as it used to be," said Miss Pinckney. "Nothing at all has been changed, and I dust it myself. I would just as soon let a servant loose here with a duster as I'd let one of the buzzards from the market-place loose in the larder. Those water-colours were done by Mary Mascarene, Juliet's sister, who died when she was fifteen; they mayn't be masterpieces but they're Mary's, and worth more'n if they were covered with gold. Mrs. Beamis sniffed when she came in here--she's the woman whose trunk got loose on the stairs I told you about--sniffed as if the place smelt musty. She's got a husband who's made a million dollars out of dry goods in Chicago, and she thought the room wanted re-furnishing.

Didn't say it, but I knew. A player-piano is what she wanted. Didn't say it, but _I_ knew. Umph!"