The Ghost Girl Part 19

"Never to interfere in household affairs. Of course Rafferty wasn't exactly a household affair because he belonged mostly to the stable, still he was your affair more than mine. Household affairs belong to women, and men ought to leave them alone."

"Maybe you're right," said Phyl, "but all the same I was wrong. Do you know 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 no business this morning and I'd like to show you the town--if you'd care to come."

"What about Miss Pinckney?" asked Phyl.

"Oh, she's all right," he replied. "The Seth trouble will keep her busy till 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 pa.s.sing through the garden the thought came to her just for a moment to show him the little arbour; then something stopped her, a feeling that this humble little secret was not hers to give away, and a feeling that Pinckney wouldn't care. Dead lovers vanished so long and their affairs would have little interest for his practical mind.

The morning was warmer even than yesterday. The joyous, elusive, intoxicating spirit of the Southern spring was everywhere, the air seemed filled with the dust of sunbeams, filled with fragrance and lazy sounds.

The very business of the street seemed part of a great universal gaiety over 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 Hotel held Phyl like a wizard whilst Pinckney explained its history. Here in the old days the travelling carriages had drawn up, piled with the luggage of fine folk on a visit to Charleston on business or pleasure. The Planters was known all through the Georgias and Virginia, all through the States in the days when General Washington and John C. Calhoun were living figures.

The ghost of the place held Phyl's imagination. Just as Meeting Street seemed filled with friendly old memories on her first entering it, so did the air around the ruins of the "Planters."

Then having paused to admire the gouty pillars of St. Michael's they went into the church.

The silence of an empty church is a thing apart from all other silences in the world. Deeper, more complete, more filled with voices.

As they were entering a negro caretaker engaged in dusting and tidying let something fall, and as the silence closed in on the faint echo that followed the sound they stopped, just by the font to look around them.

Here the spirit of spring was not. The shafts of sunlight through the windows lit the old fashioned box pews, the double decked pulpit, and the font crowned with the dove with the light of long ago. Sunday mornings of the old time a.s.suredly had found sanctuary here and the old congregations had not yet quite departed.

The occasional noise of the caretaker as he moved from pew to pew scarcely disturbed the tranquillity, the scene was set beyond the reach of the sounds and daily affairs of this world, and the actors held in a medium unshakable as that which holds the ghostly life of bees in amber and birds in marqueterie.

"That was George Washington's pew," whispered Pinckney, "at least the one he sat in once. That's the old Pinckney pew, belonged to Bures--other people sit there now. This is our pew--Vernons. The Mascarenes had it in the old days, of course."

Phyl looked at the pew where Juliet Mascarene had sat often enough, no doubt, whilst the preacher had preached on the vanity of life, on the delusions of the world and the shortness of Time.

Many an eloquent divine had stood in the pulpit of St. Michael's, but none have ever preached a sermon so poignant, so real, so searching as that which 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 his own. They had got to that pleasant stage of intimacy where conversation can be dropped without awkwardness and picked up again haphazard, but you cannot be silent long in the streets of Charleston on a spring day. They visited the market-place and inspected the buzzards and then, somehow, without knowing it, they drifted on to the water side. Here where the docks lie deserted and the green water washes the weed grown and rotting timbers of wharves they took their seats on a baulk of timber to rest and contemplate things.

"There used to be ships here once," said he. "Lots of ships--but that was before the war."

He was silent and Phyl glanced sideways at him, wondering what was in his mind. She soon found out. A struggle was going on between his two selves, his business self that demanded up-to-dateness, bustle, and the energetic conduct 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 Business Prosperity. 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 New Orleans, those greedy sea mouths that swallow the goods of the world and give out cotton, whilst Charleston lay idle, her wharves almost deserted, her storehouses empty.

He spoke almost vehemently, spoke as a business man speaks of wasted chances and things neglected. Then, when he had finished, the girl put in her word.

"Well," said she, "it may be so but I don't want it any different from what 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 find him bemoaning the business decay of the city he loved, but here, sitting by the girl on the forsaken wharf, in the sunshine, the feeling suddenly came 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 recovered from the Seth business, and after luncheon that day, a.s.sisted by Dinah and the directions of Miss Pinckney, Phyl's hair "went up."

"It's beautiful," said the old lady, as she contemplated the result, "and more like Juliet than ever. Take the gla.s.s and look at yourself."

Phyl did.

She did not see the beauty but she saw the change. Her childhood had vanished as though some breath had blown it away in the magic mirror.

PART III

CHAPTER I

In a fortnight Phyl had adjusted herself to her new environment so completely that to use Pinckney's expression, she might have been bred and born in Charleston.

Custom and acquaintanceship had begun to dull without destroying the charm of the place and the ghostly something, the something that during the first two days had seemed to haunt Vernons, the something indefinable she had called "It" had withdrawn.

The spell, whatever it was, had been broken that night in the garden, when Pinckney's commonplace remark had shattered the dream-state into which she had worked herself with the a.s.sistance of Prue, Juliet's letters, the little secret arbour and the moonlight of the South.

One morning, coming down to breakfast, she found Miss Pinckney in agitation, an open telegram in one hand and a feather duster in the other.

It was one of the early morning habits of Miss Pinckney to range the house superintending things with a feather duster in hand, not so much for use as for the purpose of encouraging others. She was in the breakfast room now dusting spasmodically things that did not require dusting and talking all the time, pausing every now and then to have another glance at the telegram whilst Richard Pinckney, unable to get a word in, sat on a chair, and Jim, the little coloured page, who had brought in the urn, stood by listening and admiring.

"Forty miles from here and ten from a railway station," said Miss Pinckney, "and how am I to get there?"

"Automobile," said Pinckney.

It was evidently not his first suggestion as to this means of locomotion, for the suggestion was received without an outburst, neither resented nor a.s.sented to in fact. They took their seats at table and then it all came out.

Colonel Seth Grangerson of Grangerson House, Grangerville, S. Carolina, was ill. Miss Pinckney was his nearest relative, the nearest at least with whom he was not fighting, and he had wired to her, or rather his son had wired to her, to come at once.

"As if I were a bird," said the old lady. Grangerville was a backwater place, badly served by the railway, and it would take the best part of a day to get there by ordinary means.