The Ghost Girl Part 5

Here was her dream come true of the bearded American who had suddenly appeared to claim her and Kilgobbin and the servants and everything.

Pinckney had not a beard, but he was an American and he had come to claim everything. The word guardian carried such a force and weight and was so filled with fantastic possibilities to the mind of Phyl, that she scarcely heard his soft words and excuses.

Phyl had the Irish trick of running away with ideas and embroidering the most palpable truths with fancies. It was an inheritance from her father, and she stood by the window now unable to speak, with the word "Guardian"

ringing in her ears and the idea pressing on her mind like an incubus.

Hennessey had risen up. He was the first to break silence.

"There's no use in meeting troubles half way," said he vaguely. "You and Phyl will get along all right when you know each other better. Come out, the two of you, and we'll go round the grounds and you will be able to see for yourself the state of the house and what repairs are wanting."

"One moment," said Pinckney. "I want to tell Phyl something--I'm going to call you Phyl because I'm your guardian--d'you mind?"

"No," said Phyl, "you can call me anything you like, I suppose."

"I'm not going to call you anything I like--just Phyl-- Well, then, I want to tell you what we have to do. It's not my wishes I have to carry out but your father's. He wanted to let this house."

"Let Kilgobbin!"

"Yes, that is what he said. He wanted to let it to a good tenant who would look after it till you are of age. I think he was right. You see, you could not live here all alone, and if the place was shut up it would deteriorate."

"It would go to wrack and ruin," said Hennessey.

"And the servants?" said Phyl.

"We will look after them," said Pinckney, "the new tenant might take them on; if not, we'll give them time to get new places."

"Byrne's been here before I was born," said the girl, with dry lips, "so has Mrs. Driscoll. They are part of the place; it would ruin their lives to send them away."

"Well," said Pinckney, "I don't want to be the ogre to ruin their lives; you can do anything you like about them. If the new tenant didn't take them, you might pension them. I want you to be perfectly happy in your mind and I want you to feel that though I am, so to speak, the guardian of your money, still, that money is yours."

She was beginning to understand now that not only was he striving to soothe her feelings and propitiate her, but that he was very much in earnest in this business, and crowding through her mind came a great wave of revulsion against herself.

Phyl's nature was such that whilst always ready to fly into wrath and easily moved to bitter resentment, one touch of kindness, one soft word, had the power to disarm her.

One soft word from an antagonist had the power to wound her far more than a dozen words of bitterness.

Filled now with absolutely superfluous self-reproach, she stood for a moment unable to speak. Then she said, raising her eyes to his:

"I am sure you mean to do what is for the best.--It was stupid of me--"

"Not a bit," said the other, cheerfully. "I want to do the things that will make you happy--that's all. I'm a business man and I know the value of money. Money is just worth the amount of happiness it brings."

"Faith, that's true," said Hennessey, who had taken his seat again and was in the act of lighting a cigar.

"When I was a boy," went on the other. "I was always kept hard up by my father. It was like pulling gum teeth to get the price of a fishing rod out of him. When I think of all the fun I might have bought with a few dollars, it makes me wild. You can't buy fun when you get old; you may buy an opera house or a yacht, but you can't buy the real stuff that makes life worth living."

Phyl glanced out of the window at the park, then as though she had found some inspiration there, she turned to Pinckney.

"If you don't mind about the money, then why don't you let me live here instead of letting the place? I can live here by myself and I would be happy here. I won't be happy if I leave it."

"Well," said Pinckney, "there's your father's wish, first of all."

"I'm sure if he knew how I felt, he wouldn't mind," said Phyl mournfully, turning her gaze again to the park.

"On top of that," went on Pinckney, "there's--your age. Phyl, it wouldn't ever do; it's not I that am saying it, it's custom, the world, society."

Phyl, like the hooked salmon that has taken the gaudy fly, felt a check and recognised that a Power had her in hand, recognised in the light-going and fair-speaking Pinckney something of adamant, a will not to be broken or bent.

She felt for a moment a revolt against herself for having fallen to the lure and allowed herself to come to friendly terms with him. Then this feeling faded a bit. The very young are very weak in the face of const.i.tuted authority--besides, there was always at the back of Pinckney her father's wish.

"And then again, on top of that," he went on, "there's the question of your coming to live with us; your father wished it."

"In America!" cried Phyl. "Do you mean I am to live in America?"

"Well, we live there; why not? It's not a bad place to live in--and what else are you to do?"

She could not answer him. This time she saw that the bogey man had got her and no mistake. America to her seemed as far as the moon and far less familiar. If Pinckney had declared that it was necessary for her to die, she would have been a great deal more frightened, but the prospect would not have seemed much more desolate and forbidding and final.

He saw at once the trouble in her mind and guessed the cause. He had a rare intuition for reading minds, and it seemed to him he could read Phyl's as easily as though the outside of her head were clear gla.s.s--he had cause to modify this c.o.c.ksure opinion later on.

"Don't worry," he said. "If you don't like America when you see it, you can come back to Ireland. I daresay we can arrange something; anyhow, don't let us meet troubles half way."

"When am I to go?" said Phyl.

"Sure, Phyl, you can stay as long as you like with us," said Mr.

Hennessey. "The doors of 10, Merrion Square, are always open to you, and never will they be shut on you except behind your back."

Pinckney laughed; and a servant coming in to clear the breakfast things, Hennessey led the way from the room to show Pinckney the premises.

CHAPTER VI

They crossed the hall, and pa.s.sing through a green-baize covered door went down a pa.s.sage that led to the kitchen.

"This is the housekeeper's room," said Hennessey, pointing to a half open door, "and the servants' hall is that door beyond. This is the kitchen."

They paused for a moment in the great old-fashioned kitchen, with an open range capable of roasting a small ox, one might have fancied. Norah, the cook, was busy in the scullery with her sleeves tucked up, and under the table was seated Susie Gallagher, a small and grubby hanger-on engaged in the task of washing potatoes. The potatoes were beside her on the floor and she was washing them in a tin basin of water with the help of an old nail-brush.

There was a horse-shoe hung up, for luck, on the wall over the range, and a pile of dinner plates, from last night's dinner and still unwashed, stood on the dresser, where also stood a half-bottle of Guinness' stout and a tumbler; an old setter b.i.t.c.h lay before the fire and a jackdaw in a wicker cage set up a yell at the sight of the visitors, that brought Norah out of the scullery to receive them, a broad smile on her face and her arms tucked up in her ap.r.o.n.

"He always yells like that at the sight of tramps or stray people about,"

apologised the cook. "He's better than a watch-dog. Hold your tongue, you baste; don't you know your misthress when you see her?"

"Rafferty caught him in the park," said Phyl, "and cut his tongue with a sixpence so as to make him able to speak."