The Ghost Girl Part 24

"Rhetts."

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

"He is not."

"He is--Venetia Frances, the one that lives in Legare Street. Why, I've seen 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's married 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'll spend it on hats--sure."

This outrageous statement, uttered with a laugh, left Phyl cold. The statement about Frances Rhett had disturbed her, she could not tell exactly why, for it was none of her business whom Pinckney might choose to marry--still--Frances Rhett! It was almost as though an antagonism had existed 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 his cigarette.

"Going into the house?" said he.

"Yes!"

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

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

Then throwing out her hands as though pushing away some presence that was surrounding her, she ran to the house. In the hall she sat down for a moment to recover herself before going into the drawing room, where Miss Pinckney and the Colonel were closing the book which held for them the people and the places they had known in youth, and between its leaves who knows what old remembrances, like the withered flower that has once formed part of a summer's day.

CHAPTER IV

They started at ten o'clock next morning for Charleston, the Colonel standing on the house steps and waving his hand to them as they drove off.

Silas was nowhere to be seen, he had gone out before breakfast, so the butler said, and had not returned. Miss Pinckney resented this casual treatment.

"He ought to have been here to bid us good-bye," said she, as they cleared the avenue. "He's got the name for being a mad creature, but even mad creatures may show common courtesy. I'm sure I don't know where he gets his manners from unless it's his mother's lot, same place as he got his good looks."

"Why do you say he's mad?" asked Phyl.

"Because he is. Not exactly mad, maybe, but eccentric, he swum Charleston harbour with his clothes on because some one dared him, and was nearly drowned with the tide coming in or going out, I forget which; and another day he got on the engine at Charleston station and started the train, drove it too, till they managed to climb over the top of the carriages or something and stop him--at least that's the story. He'll come to a bad end, that boy, unless he mends his ways. Lots of people say he's got good in him. So he has, perhaps, but it's just that sort that come to the worst end, unless the good manages to fight the bad and get it under in time."

Phyl said nothing. Her mind was disturbed. She had slept scarcely at all during the night, and her feelings towards Silas Grangerson, now that she was beyond his reach, were alternating in the strangest way between attraction and repulsion.

They would have repelled the thought of him entirely but for the instinctive recognition of the fact that his conduct had been the result of impulse, the impulse of a child, ill governed, and accustomed to seize what it wanted. Added to that was the fact of his entire naturalness. From the moment of their first meeting he had talked to her as though they were old acquaintances. Unless when talking to his father, everything in his manner, tone, conversation was free, unfettered by convention, fresh, if at times startling. This was his great charm, and at the same time his great defect, for it revealed his want of qualities no less than his qualities.

Do what she could she was unable to escape from the incident of last night, it was as though those strong arms had not quite released their hold upon her, as though Pan had broken from the bushes, shown her by his magic things she had never dreamed of, and vanished.

It was nearly two o'clock when they reached Vernons. Richard Pinckney was at home, and at the sight of him Phyl's heart went out towards him. Clean, well groomed, honest, kindly, he was like a breath of fresh sea air after breathing tropical swamp atmosphere.

Strange to say Miss Pinckney seemed to feel somewhat the same.

"Yes, we're back," said she, as they pa.s.sed into the dining-room where some refreshments were awaiting them, "and glad I am to be back. Vernons smells good after Grangersons. Oh, dear me, what is it that clings to that place? It's like opening an old trunk that's been shut for years. I told Seth Grangerson, right out flat, he ought to get away from there into the world somewhere, but there he sits clinging to his rheumatism and the past. I declare I nearly cried last night as he was showing me all those old pictures."

"He's not very ill then," said Richard.

"Ill! Not he. It was that fool Silas sent the telegram. Just an attack of rheumatism."

She went upstairs to change and the two young people went into the garden, where Richard Pinckney was having some alterations done.

On the day Phyl's hair went up it seemed to Richard that a new person had come to live with them. Phyl had suddenly turned into a young woman--and such a young woman! He had never considered her looks before, to young men of his age and temperament girls in pigtails are, as far as the manhood in them is concerned, little more and sometimes less than things. But Phyl with her hair up was not to be denied, and had he not been philandering after Frances Rhett, and had Phyl been a total stranger suddenly seen, it is quite possible that a far warmer feeling than admiration might have been the result. As it was she formed a new interest in life.

He showed her the alterations he was making, slight enough and causing little change in the general plan of the garden.

"I scarcely like doing anything," said he, "but that new walk will be no end of an improvement, and it will save that bit of gra.s.s which is being trodden to death by people crossing it, then there's all those bushes by the gate, they're going, those behind the tree,--a little s.p.a.ce there will make all the difference in the world."

"Behind the magnolia?"

"Yes."

"I wish you wouldn't," said Phyl.

"Why?"

"Because they have been there always and--well, look!"

She led the way behind the tree, pushed the bushes aside and disclosed the seat.

She no longer felt that she was betraying a secret. Her experience at Grangersons had in some way made Vernons seem to her now really her home, and Richard Pinckney closer to her in relationship.

"Why, how did you know that was there?" said Richard. "I've never seen it."

"Juliet Mascarene used to sit there with--with some one she was in love with. I found some of her old letters and they told about it--see, it's a little arbour, used to be, though it's all so overgrown now."

"Juliet," said he. "That was the girl who died. I have heard Aunt Maria talk about her and she keeps her room just as it used to be. Who was the somebody?"

"It was a Mr. Rupert Pinckney."

"I knew there was a love story of some sort connected with her, but I never worried about the details. So they used to come and sit here."