The Ghost Girl Part 32

The moon was nearing the full and her light cut the tree shadows distinctly on the paths. Pa.s.sing a seat occupied by one of the sitting out couples, Pinckney noticed the woman's fan which her partner was playing with; it was his own gift to Frances Rhett. The man was Silas Grangerson and the woman was Frances. They were talking, but as he pa.s.sed them their voices ceased.

He felt their eyes upon him, then, when he had got twenty paces or so away, he heard Frances laugh.

He imagined that she was laughing at him. Already angry with Silas, he halted and half turned, intending to go back and have it out with him, then he thought better of it and went his way. He would deal with Silas later and in some place where he could get him alone or in the presence of men only. Pinckney had a horror of scenes, especially in the presence of women.

Twenty minutes later he had his opportunity. He was crossing the hall from the supper room, when he came face to face with Silas. They were alone.

"Excuse me," said Richard Pinckney, halting in front of the other, "I want a word with you."

"Certainly," answered Silas, guessing at once what was coming.

"You made some remarks about me to Miss Rhett this evening," went on the other. "You coupled my name with the name of a lady in a most unjustifiable manner and I want your explanation here and now."

"Who was the lady?" asked Silas, seemingly quite unmoved.

"Miss Berknowles."

"In what way did I couple your name with her, may I ask?"

"No, you mayn't." Richard had turned pale before the calm insolence of the other. "You know quite well what you said and if you are a gentleman you will apologise-- If you aren't you won't and I will deal with you in Charleston accordingly."

Phyl was at that moment coming out of the supper room with young Reggie Calhoun--the same who, according to Richard that morning at breakfast long ago, was an admirer of Maria Pinckney.

She saw the two men, in profile, facing one another, and she saw Silas's right hand, which he was holding behind his back, opening and shutting convulsively.

She saw the blow given by Pinckney, she saw Silas step back and the knife which he always carried, as the wasp carries its sting, suddenly in his hand.

Then she was gripping his wrist.

Face to face with madness for a moment, holding it, fighting eye to eye.

Had she faltered, had her gaze left his for the hundredth part of a second, he would have cast her aside and fallen upon his prey.

It was her soul that held him, her spirit--call it what you will, the something that speaks alone through the eye.

Calhoun and Pinckney stood, during that tremendous moment, stricken, breathless, without making the slightest movement. They saw she was holding him by the power of her eye alone; so vividly did this fact strike them that for a dazed moment it seemed to them that the battle was not theirs, that the contest was beyond the earthly plane, that this was no struggle between human beings, but a battle between sanity and madness.

Its duration might have been spanned by three ticks of the great old clock that stood in the corner of the hall telling the time.

Then came the ring of the knife falling on the floor. It was like the breaking of a spell. Silas, white and bewildered-looking as a man suddenly awakened from sleep, stood looking now at his released hand as though it did not belong to him, then at Pinckney, and then at Phyl who had turned her back upon him and was tottering as though about to fall. Pinckney, stepping forward, was about to speak, when at that moment the door of the supper room opened and a band of young people came out chatting and laughing.

Calhoun, who was a man of resource, kicked the knife which slithered away under one of the seats. Phyl, recovering herself, walked away towards the stairs; Silas without a word, turned and vanished from sight past the curtain of the corridor that led to the cloakroom.

Calhoun and Pinckney were left alone.

"What are you going to do?" asked Calhoun.

"I am at his disposal," replied the other. "I struck him."

"Struck him, d.a.m.nation! He drew a knife on you; he ought to be hoofed out of the club; he'd have had you only for that girl. I never saw anything so splendid in my life."

"Yes," said Pinckney, "she saved my life. He was clean mad, but thank G.o.d no one knows anything about it and we avoided a scene. Say nothing to any one unless he wants to push the matter further. I am quite at his disposal."

PART IV

CHAPTER I

When Silas reached the cloakroom he took a glance at himself in the mirror, then putting on his overcoat and taking his hat from the attendant he came back into the hall. Pinckney and Calhoun had just strolled away into the ballroom; there was no one in the hall, and without a thought of saying good-bye to his hostess, he left the house.

He felt no anger against Pinckney, nor did he think as he walked down Legare Street that but for the mercy of G.o.d and the intervention of Phyl he might at that moment have been walking between two constables, a murderer with the blood of innocence on his hands.

Not that he was insensible to reason or the fitness of things, he had always known and acknowledged that when in a pa.s.sion he was not accountable for his acts; he admitted the fact with regret and also with a certain pride. To-night he might have felt the regret without any pride to leaven it but for the fact that his mind was lost to every consideration but one--Phyl.

All through his life Silas had followed with an iron will the line that pleased him, never for a moment had he counted the cost of his actions; just as he had swum the harbour with his clothes on so had he plunged into any adventure that came to hand; he knew Fear just as little as he knew Consequence. Well, now he found himself for the first time in his life face to face with Fate. All his adventures up to this had been little things involving at worst loss of life by accident. This was different; it involved his whole future and the future of the girl who had mastered his mind.

Leaving Legare Street he reached Meeting Street and pa.s.sed up it till he reached Vernons. The moon, high in the sky now, showed the garden through the trellis-work of the iron gate, and Silas paused for a moment and looked in.

The garden, seen like this with the moonlight upon the roses and the glossy leaves of the southern trees, presented a picture charming, dream-like, almost unreal in its beauty. He tried the gate. It was locked.

On ordinary nights it would be open till the house closed, or in the event of Pinckney being out, until he returned, but to-night, owing to the absence of the family, it was locked.

Then, turning from the gate he crossed the road and took up his position in a corner of shadow. Five minutes pa.s.sed, then twenty, but still he kept watch. There were few pa.s.sers-by at that hour and little traffic; he had a long view of the moonlit street and presently he saw the carriage he was waiting for approaching.

It drew up at the front door of Vernons and he watched whilst the occupants got out; he caught a glimpse of Phyl as she entered the house following Miss Pinckney and followed by Richard, then the door shut and the carriage drove away.

Silas left his concealment and crossed the road. He paced for a while up and down outside the door of Vernons, then he came to the garden gate again and looked in.

From here one could get a glimpse of the first and second floor piazzas and the windows opening upon them. He could not tell which was the window of Phyl's room, it was enough for him that the place held her.

In the way in which he had crossed the road, in his uneasy prowling up and down before the house, and now in his att.i.tude as he stood motionless with head raised there was something ominous, animal-like, almost wolfish.

As he stood a call suddenly came from the garden. It was the call of an owl, a white owl that rose on the sound and flitted softly as a moth across the trees to the garden beyond.

Silas turned away from the gate and came back down the street towards his hotel, arrived there he went straight to his room and to bed.

But he did not go to sleep. His head was full of plans, the craziest and maddest plans. Pinckney he had quite dismissed from his mind, the consciousness of having committed a vile action in drawing a knife upon an unarmed man was with him, and the knowledge that the consequences might include his expulsion from Charleston society, but all that instead of sobering him made him more reckless. He would have Phyl despite the Devil himself. He would seize her and carry her off, trap her like a bird.

He determined on the morrow to return early to Grangersons and think things out.

CHAPTER II

Whilst he was lying in bed thinking things out, the folk at Vernons were retiring to rest.