The Ghost Girl Part 40

CHAPTER VII

Miss Pinckney and Phyl left Grangersons next morning at seven o'clock to return to Charleston.

During the night the Colonel had sent after the horses and they had been captured and brought back. The broken phaeton was left for the present.

"I'll make Silas go and fetch it himself when he comes back," said the Colonel. "I reckon the exercise will do him good."

"Do," said Miss Pinckney, "and then send him on to me. I reckon what I'll give him will help him to forget the exercise."

On the way back she said little. She was reckoning with the fact that she had deceived Richard. Now that everything had turned out so innocently and so well she decided to tell him the bare facts of the matter. There was nothing to hide except the fact of Phyl's stupidity in going with Silas.

Richard Pinckney was not in when they arrived but he returned shortly before luncheon time and Miss Pinckney, who was waiting for him, carried him off into the library.

She shut the door and faced him.

"Richard," said Miss Pinckney, "Seth Grangerson is as well as you are. I didn't go to see him because he was ill, I went because of Phyl. She did a stupid thing and I went to set matters right."

She explained the whole affair. How Phyl had met Silas, how he had persuaded her to get into the phaeton with him, the accident and all the rest. The story as told by Miss Pinckney was quite simple and without any dark patches, and no man, one might fancy, could find cause for offence in it.

Miss Pinckney, however, was quite unconscious of the fact that Silas Grangerson had attempted to take Richard Pinckney's life on the night of the Rhetts' dance.

To Richard the thought that Phyl should have met Silas only a few hours after that event, talked to him, made friends with him, and got into his carriage was a monstrous thought. He could not understand the business in the least, he could only recognise the fact.

Had he known that it was her love for him and her despair at losing him that led her to the act it would have been different.

He said nothing for a moment after Miss Pinckney had finished. Having already confessed to her his love for Phyl he was too proud to show his anger against her now.

"It was unwise of her," he said at last, turning away to the window and looking out.

"Most," replied she, "but you cannot put old heads on young shoulders.

Well, there, it's over and done with and there's no more to be said. Well, I must go up and change before luncheon. You are having luncheon here?"

"No," said he, "I have to meet a man at the club. I only just ran in to see if you were back."

He went off and that day Miss Pinckney and Phyl had luncheon alone.

CHAPTER VIII

Richard Pinckney, like most people, had the defects of his qualities, but he was different from others in this: his temper was quick and blazing when roused, yet on rare occasions it could hold its heat and smoulder, and keep alive indefinitely.

When in this condition he shewed nothing of his feelings except towards the person against whom he was in wrath.

Towards them he exhibited the two main characteristics of the North Pole--Distance and Ice.

Phyl felt the frost almost immediately. He talked to her just the same as of old but his pleasantness and laughter were gone and he never sought her eye. She knew at once that it was the business with Silas that had caused this change, and she would have been entirely miserable but for the knowledge of two great facts: she was innocent of any disloyalty to him, he had broken off his engagement to Frances Rhett. Instinct told her that he cared for her, Miss Pinckney had told her the same thing.

Yet day after day pa.s.sed without bringing the slightest change in Richard Pinckney.

That gentleman after many debates with himself had arrived at the determination against will, against reason, against Love, and against nature to have nothing more to do with Phyl.

Old Pepper Pinckney, that volcano of the past had suffered a fancied insult from his wife; no one knew of it, no one suspected it till on his death his will disclosed it by the fact that he had left the lady--one dollar. The will being unwitnessed--that was the sort of man he was--did not hold; all the same, it held an unsuspected part of his character up for public inspection.

Richard, incapable of such an act, still had Pepper Pinckney for an ancestor. Ancestors leave us more than their pictures.

Having come to this momentous decision, he arrived at another.

One morning at breakfast he announced his intention of going to New York on business, he would start on the morrow and be gone a month. The Beauregards had always been bothering him to go on a visit and he might as well kill two birds with one stone.

Miss Pinckney made little resistance to the idea. She had noticed the coolness between the young people; knowing how much they cared one for the other she had little fear as to the end of the matter and she fancied a change might do good.

But to Phyl it seemed that the end of the world had come.

All that day she scarcely spoke except to Miss Pinckney. She was like a person stunned by some calamity.

Richard Pinckney, notwithstanding the fact that he was to leave for New York on the morrow, did not return to dinner that night. Phyl went upstairs early but she did not go to her room, she went to Juliet's.

Sorrow attracts sorrow. Juliet had always seemed more than a friend, more than a sister, even.

There were times when the ungraspable idea came before her that Juliet was herself. The vision of the Civil War sometimes came back to her and always with the hint, like a half veiled threat, that Richard the man she loved was Rupert the man she had loved, that following the dark law of duplication that works alike for types and events, forms and ideas, her history was to repeat the history of Juliet.

She had saved Richard from death at the hands of Silas Grangerson, her love for him had met Fate face to face and won, but Fate has many reserve weapons. She is an old warrior, and the conqueror of cities and kings does not turn from her purpose because of a momentary defeat.

Phyl shut the door of the room, put the lamp she was carrying on a table and opened the long windows giving upon the piazza. The night was absolutely still, not a breath of wind stirred the foliage of the garden and the faint sounds of the city rose through the warm night. The waning moon would not rise yet for an hour and the stars had the sky to themselves.

She turned from the window and going to the little bureau by the door opened the secret drawer and took out the packet of letters. Then drawing an armchair close to the table and the lamp she sat down, undid the ribbon and began to read the letters.

She felt just as though Juliet were talking to her, telling her of her troubles. She read on placing each letter on the table in turn, one upon the other.

The chimes of St. Michael's came through the open window but they were unheeded.

When she had read through all the letters she picked out one. The one containing the pa.s.sionate declaration of Juliet's love.

She re-read it and then placed it on the table on top of the others.

If she could speak of Richard like that!

But she could do nothing and say nothing. It is one of the curses of womanhood that a woman may not say to a man "I love you," that the initiative is taken out of her hands.

Phyl was a creature of impulse and it was now for the first time in her life that she recognised this fatal barrier on the woman's side. With the recognition came the impulse to over jump it.

He cared for her, she knew, or had cared for her. She felt that it only required a movement on her side, a touch, a word to destroy the ice that had formed between them. If he were to go away he might never return, nay, he would never return, of that she felt sure.

And he would go away unless she spoke. She must speak, not to-morrow in the cold light of day when things were impossible, but now, at once, she would say to him simply the truth, "I love you." If he were to turn away or repulse her it would kill her. No matter, life was absolutely nothing.

She rose from her chair and was just on the point of turning to the door when something checked her.