CHAPTER II
A grosbeak was singing in the magnolia tree by the gate and the warmth ofthe morning sun was filling the garden with a heart-snatching perfume ofjessamine.
Jessamine and the faint bitterness of sun warmed foliage.
It was a garden sure to be haunted by birds; not large and, though wellkept, not trim, and sing the birds as loud as they might, they never couldbreak the charm of silence cast by Time on this magic spot.
In the centre of the lawn stood a dial, inscribed with the old dialmotto:
The Hours Pass and are Numbered.
Phyl paused for a moment just as she had paused in the street, andPinckney looking at her noticed again that uptilt of the head, and thatfar away look as of a person who is trying to remember or straining tohear.
Then a voice from the house came across the broad veranda leading from thegarden to the lower rooms.
A female voice that seemed laughing and scolding at the same time.
"Dinah! Dinah! bless the girl, will she never learn sense-- Dinah! Ah,there you are. How often have I told you to put General Grant in the sunfirst thing in the morning?-- You've been dusting! I'll dust you. Here,get away."
Out on the veranda, parrot cage in hand, came a most surprising lady.Antique yet youthful, dressed as ladies were wont to dress of a morning inlong forgotten years, bright eyed, and wrathfully agitated.
"Aunt," cried Pinckney. "Here we are."
The sun was in Miss Pinckney's eyes; she put the cage down, shaded hereyes and stared full at Phyl.
"God bless me!" said Miss Pinckney.
"This is Phyl," said he, as they came up to the verandah steps.
Miss Pinckney, seeming not to hear him in the least, took the girl by bothhands, and holding her so as if for inspection stared at her.
Then she turned on Pinckney with a snap.
"Why didn't you tell me--she's--why, she's a Mascarene. Well, of all theastonishing things in the world-- Child--child, where did you get thatface?"
Before Phyl could answer this recondite question, she found herselfenveloped in frills and a vague perfume of stephanotis. Maria Pinckney hadtaken her literally to her heart, and was kissing her as people kiss smallchildren, kissing her and half crying at the same time, whilst Pinckneystood by wondering.
He thought that he knew everything about Maria Pinckney, just as he hadfancied he knew himself till Phyl had shewn him, over there in Ireland,that there were a lot of things in his mind and character still to beknown by himself. This, as regards him, seemed the special mission of Phylin the world.
"It's the likeness," said Miss Pinckney. "I thought it was JulietMascarene there before me in the sun, Juliet dead those years and years."Then commanding herself, and with one of those reverses, sudden changes ofmanner and subject peculiar to herself:
"Where's your luggage?"
"Abraham is bringing it along."
"Abraham! Do you mean you didn't drive, _walked_ here from the station?"
"Yes," said Pinckney shamefacedly, almost, and wondering what sin againstthe _covenances_ he had committed now.
"And she after that journey from N'York. Richard Pinckney, you area--man--I was going to have called you a fool--but it's the same thing.Here, come on both of you--the child must be starving. This is thebreakfast room, Phyl--Phyl! I will never get used to that name; no matter,I'm getting an old woman, and mustn't grumble--mustn't grumble--umph!"
She took Pinckney's walking-stick from him and, with the end of it, pickedup a duster that the mysterious Dinah, evidently, had left lying on thefloor.
She put the duster out on the veranda, rang a bell and ordered thecoloured boy who answered it to send in breakfast.
Phyl, commanded by Miss Pinckney, sat down to table just as she waswithout removing her hat.
The old lady had come to the conclusion that the newcomer must be faintwith hunger after her journey, and when Miss Pinckney came to one of herconclusions, there was nothing more to be said on the matter.
It was a pleasant room, chintzy and sunny; they sat down to a gate-leggedtable that would just manage to seat four comfortably whilst the urn wasbrought in, a copper urn in which the water was kept at boiling point by ared hot iron contained in a cylinder.
Phyl knew that urn. They had one like it at Kilgobbin and she said so, butMiss Pinckney did not seem to hear her. There were times when this ladywas almost rude--or seemed so owing to inattention, her bustling mindoften outrunning the conversation or harking back to the past when itought to have been in the present.
Tea making, and the making of tea was a solemn rite at Vernons, absorbedher whole attention, but Pinckney noticed this morning that the hand, thatold, perfect, delicately shaped hand, trembled ever so slightly as itmeasured the tea from the tortoise-shell covered tea caddy, and that thethin lips, lips whose thinness seemed only the result of the kisses ofTime, were moving as though debating some question unheard.
He recognised that the coming of Phyl had produced a great effect on MariaPinckney. No one knew her better than he, for no one loved her so well.
It was she who ordered him about, still, just as though he were a smallboy, and sometimes as he sat watching her, so fragile, so indomitable,like the breath of winter would come the thought that a day would come--aday might come soon when he would be no longer ordered about, told to puthis hat in the hall--which is the proper place for hats--told not to dareto bring cigars into the drawing-room.
To Phyl, Maria Pinckney formed part of the spell that was surrounding her;Meeting Street had begun the weaving of this spell, Vernons was completingit with the aid of Maria Pinckney.
The song of the Cardinal Grosbeak in the garden, the stirring of thewindow curtains in the warm morning air, the feel of morning and sunlight,the scent of the tea that was filling the room, the room itselfold-fashioned yet cheerful, chintzy and sunny, all the things had thefaint familiarity of the street. It was as though the blood of hermother's people coursing in her veins had retained and brought to her somethrill and warmth from all these things; these things they knew and lovedso well.
"There's the carriage," said Miss Pinckney, whose ears had picked out thesound of it drawing up at the front door. "They know where to take theluggage. Richard, go and see that they don't knock the bannisters about.Abraham is all thumbs and has no more sense in moving things than Dinahhas'n dusting them. Only last week when Mrs. Beamis was going away, he letthat trunk of hers slip and I declare to goodness I thought it was achurch falling down the stairs and tearing the place to pieces."
There was little of the stately languor of the South in Miss Pinckney'sspeech. She was Northern on the mother's side. But in her prejudices shewas purely Southern, or, at least, Charlestonian.
Pinckney laughed.
"I don't think Phyl's luggage will hurt much even if it falls," said he."English luggage is generally soft."
"It's only a trunk and a portmanteau," said Phyl, as he left the room, butMiss Pinckney did not seem to hear; pouring herself out another cup of tea(she was the best and the worst hostess in the whole world) and seemingnot to notice that Phyl's cup was empty, she was off on one of her mindwandering expeditions, a state of soul that sometimes carried her into thepast, sometimes into the future, that led her anywhere and to the wrapt,inward contemplation of all sorts of things and subjects from the doingsof the Heavenly Host to the misdoings of Dinah.
She talked on these expeditions.
"Well, I'm sure and I'm sure I don't know what folk want with the luggagethey carry about with them nowadays-- The old folk didn't. Not Saratogatrunks, anyhow. I remember 'swell as if it was yesterday way back in 1880,when Richard's father and mother were married, old Simon Mascarene--hebelonged to your mother's lot, the Mascarenes of Virginia-- He came to thewedding, and all he brought was a carpet-bag. I can see the roses on itstill. He wore a beaver hat. They'd been out of fashion for years andyears. So was he. Twenty dollars apiece they cost him, and his clotheswere the same. Looked like a
picture out of Dickens. Your grandmother wasthere, too, came from Richmond for the wedding, drove here in her owncarriage. She and Simon were the last of the Virginia Mascarenes and theylooked it. Seems to me some people never can be new nor get away fromtheir ancestors. If you'd dressed Simon in kilts it wouldn't have made anydifference, much, he'd still have been Simon Mascarene of Virginia, justas stiff and fine and proud and old-fashioned."
"It seems funny that my people should have been the Virginia Mascarenes,"said Phyl, "because--because--well, I feel as if my people had alwayslived here--this feels like home--I don't know what it is, but just as Icame into the street outside there I seemed to know it, and this house--"
"Why, God bless my soul," said Miss Pinckney, whose eyes had just fallenon the girl's empty cup, "here have I been talking and talking, and youwaiting for some more tea. Why didn't you ask, child?--What were yousaying? The Virginia Mascarenes-- Oh, they often came here, and yourmother knew this house as well as Planters. That was the name of theirhouse in Richmond. But what I can't get over is your likeness to Juliet.She might have been your sister to look at you both--and she dead allthese years."
"Who was Juliet?"
"She was the girl who died," said Miss Pinckney. "You know, althoughRichard calls me Aunt, I am not really his aunt; it's just an easy namefor an old woman who is an interloper, a Pinckney adrift. It was this wayI came in. Long before the Civil War, the Pinckneys lived at a housecalled Bures in Legare Street. A fine old house it was, and is still.Well, I was a cousin with a little money of my own, and I was left lonelyand they took me in. James Pinckney was head of the family then, and hehad two sons, Rupert and Charles. I might have been their sister the waywe all lived together and loved each other--and quarrelled. Dear me, dearme, what is Time at all that it leaves everything the same? The same sun,and flowers and houses, and all the people gone or changed-- Well, I amtrying to tell you-- Rupert fell in love with Juliet Mascarene, who livedhere. He was killed suddenly in '61-- I don't want to talk of it--and shedied of grief the year after. She died of grief--simply died of grief.Charles lived and married in 1880 when he was forty years old. He marriedJuliet's brother's daughter and Vernons came to him on the marriage. Hehadn't a son till ten years later. That son was Richard. Charles leftRichard all his property and Vernons on the condition that I always livedhere--till I died, and that's how it is. I'm not Richard's aunt, it's onlya name he gives me--I'm only just an old piece of furniture left with thehouse to him. I'm so fond of the place, it would kill me to leave it;places grow like that round one, though I'm sure I don't know why."
"I don't wonder at you loving Vernons," said Phyl. "I was just the sameabout our place in Ireland, Kilgobbin--I thought it would kill me to leaveit."
"Tell me about it," said Miss Pinckney. Phyl told, or tried to tell.
Looking back, she found between herself and Ireland the sunlight ofCharleston, the garden with the magnolia trees where the red bird wassinging and the jessamine casting its perfume. Ireland looked very faraway and gloomy, desolate as Kilgobbin without its master and with themist of winter among the trees.
All that was part of the Past gone forever, and so great was the magic ofthis new place that she found herself recognising with a little chill thatthis Past had separated itself from her, that her feeling towards it wasfaintly tinged by something not unlike indifference.
"Well," said Miss Pinckney, when she had finished, "it must be a beautifulold place, though I can't seem to see it-- You see, I've never been inIreland and I can't picture it any more than the new Jerusalem. Now Dinahknows all about the new Jerusalem, from the golden slippers right up shesees it--I can't. Haven't got the gift of seeing things, and it seemsstrange that the A'mighty should shower it on a coloured girl and leave awhite woman wanting; but it appears to be the A'mighty knows his ownbusiness, so I don't grumble. Now I'm going to show you the house and yourroom. I've given you a room looking right on the garden, this side. You'venoticed how all our houses here are built with their sides facing thestreet and their fronts facing the garden, or maybe you haven't noticed ityet, but you will. 'Pears to me our ancestors had some sense in theirheads, even though they didn't invent telegraphs to send bad news in ahurry and railway cars to smash people to bits, and telephones to letstrangers talk right into one's house just by ringing a bell. Not that I'dlet one into Vernons. You may hunt high or low, garret or basement, youwon't find one of those boxes of impudence in Vernons--not while I haveservants to go my messages."
Miss Pinckney was right. For years she had fought the telephone and keptit out, making Richard Pinckney's life a tissue of small inconveniences,and suffering this epitaph on her sanity to be written by all sorts ofinferior people, "Plumb crazy."
She led the way from the breakfast-room and passed into the hall.
The spirit of Vernons inhabited the hall. One might have fancied it as astout and prosperous gentleman attired in a blue coat with brass buttons,shorts, and wearing a bunch of seals at his fob. Oak, brought fromEngland, formed the panelling, and a great old grandfather's clock, withthe maker's name and address, "Whewel. Coggershall," blazoned on its brassface, told the time, just as it had told the time when the Regent wasruling at St. James's in those days which seem so spacious, yet so trivialin their pomp and vanity.
Sitting alone here of an afternoon with the sun pointing fingers throughthe high leaded windows, Whewel of Coggershall took you under his spell,the spell of old ghosts of long forgotten afternoons, spacious afternoonsfilled with the cawing of rooks and the drone of bees. English afternoonsof the good old time when the dust of the post chaise was the only mark ofhurry across miles of meadow land and cowslip weather. And then as you satheld by the sound of the slow-slipping seconds, maybe, from some doorleading to the servants' quarters suddenly left open a voice would come,the voice of some darky singing whilst at work.
A snatch of the South mixing with your dream of England and the past, andmaking of the whole a charm beyond words.
That is Charleston.
Set against the panelling and almost covering it in parts were prints,wood-cuts, engravings, portraits in black and white.
Here was a silhouette of Colonel Vernon, the founder of the house, andanother of his wife. Here was an early portrait of Jeff Davis,hollow-cheeked and goatee-bearded, and here was Mayflower, the property ofColonel Seth Mascarene, the fastest trotting horse in Virginia, worshippedby her owner whose portrait hung alongside.
Phyl glanced at these pictures as she followed Miss Pinckney, who openeddoors shewing the dining-room, a room rather heavily furnished, hung withportraits of long-faced gentlemen and ladies of old time, and then thedrawing-room. A real drawing-room of the Sixties, a thing preserved in itsentirety, in all its original stiffness, interesting as a valentine,perfumed like an old rosewood cabinet.
Keepsakes and Books of Beauty lay on the centre table, a gilt clockbeneath a glass shade marked the moment when it had ceased to keep timeover twenty-five years ago, the antimacassars on the armchairs were not aline out of position; not a speck of dust lay anywhere, and the Dresdenshepherds and shepherdesses simpered and made love in the same oldfashion, preserving unaltered the sentiment of spring, the suggestion ofLove, lambs, and the song of birds.
"It's just as it used to be," said Miss Pinckney. "Nothing at all has beenchanged, and I dust it myself. I would just as soon let a servant loosehere with a duster as I'd let one of the buzzards from the market-placeloose in the larder. Those water-colours were done by Mary Mascarene,Juliet's sister, who died when she was fifteen; they mayn't bemasterpieces but they're Mary's, and worth more'n if they were coveredwith gold. Mrs. Beamis sniffed when she came in here--she's the womanwhose trunk got loose on the stairs I told you about--sniffed as if theplace smelt musty. She's got a husband who's made a million dollars out ofdry goods in Chicago, and she thought the room wanted re-furnishing.Didn't say it, but I knew. A player-piano is what she wanted. Didn't sayit, but _I_ knew. Umph!"
Miss Pinckney, having shown Phyl out
, looked round the room as if to makesure that all the familiar ghosts were in their places, then she shut thedoor with a snap, and turning, led the way upstairs murmuring to herself,and with the exalted and far away look which she wore when put out.
Phyl's room lay on the first landing, a bright and cheerful room paperedwith a rather cheap flower and sprig patterned paper, spring-like for allits cheapness, and just the background for children's heads when they wakeup on a bright morning.
A bowl of flowers stood on the dressing-table, and the open window shewedacross the verandah a bit of the garden, where the cherokee roses wereblooming.
"This is your room," said Miss Pinckney. "It's one of the brightest in thehouse, and I hope you'll like it-- Listen!"
Through the open window came the chime of church-bells.
"It's the chimes of St. Michael's. You'll never want a clock here, thebells ring every quarter, just as they've rung for the last hundred years;they're the first thing I remember, and maybe they'll be the last. Well,come on and I'll show you some more of the house, if you're not tired anddon't want to rest."
She led the way from the room and along the corridor, opening doors andshewing rooms, and then up a back stairs to the top floor beneath theattics.
The house seemed to grow in age as they ascended. Not a door in Vernonswas exactly true in line; the old house settling itself down quietlythrough the years and assisted perhaps by the great earthquake, thoughthat had left it practically unharmed, shewed that deviation from theright line in cornice and wainscoting and door space, which is the hallmark left on architecture by genius or age. The builders of the Parthenonknew this, the builders of Vernons did not-- Age supplied their defects.
Up here the flooring of the passages and rooms frankly sagged in places,and the beams bellied downwards ever so little and the ceilings bowed.
"I've seen all these bed-rooms filled in the old days," said MissPinckney. "We had wounded soldiers here in the war. What Vernons hasn'tseen of American history isn't worth telling--much. Here's the nursery."
She opened a door with bottle-glass panels, real old bottle-glass worthits weight in minted silver, and shewed Phyl into a room.
"This is the nursery," said she.
It was a large room with two windows, and the windows were barred to keepsmall people from tumbling into the garden. The place had the air ofsilence and secrecy that haunts rooms long closed and deserted. Anold-fashioned paper shewing birds of Paradise covered the walls. A paperso old that Miss Pinckney remembered it when, as a child, she had comehere to tea with the Mascarene children, so good that the dye of thegorgeous Paradise birds had scarcely faded.
A beam of morning sun struck across the room, a great solid, golden bar oflight. Phyl, as she stood for a moment on the threshold, saw motes dancingin the bar of light; the air was close and almost stuffy owing to thewindows being shut. A rocking-horse, much, much the worse for wear stoodin one corner, he was piebald and the beam of light just failed to touchhis brush-like tail. A Noah's Ark of the good old pattern stood on the lidof a great chest under one of the windows, and in the centre of the room aheavy table of plain oak nicked by knives and stained with ink told itstale.
There were books in a little hanging book-case, books of the 'forties' and'fifties': "Peter Parley," "The Child's Pilgrim's Progress," "TheDairy-Maid's Daughter," an odd volume of _Harper's_ _Magazine_ containingan instalment of "Little Dorrit," Caroline Chesebro's "Children of Light,"and Samuel Irenaeus Prime's "Elizabeth Thornton or the Flower and Fruit ofFemale Piety, and other Sketches." Miss Pinckney opened one of the windowsto let in air; Phyl, who had said nothing, stood looking about her at theforsaken toys, the chairs, and the little three-legged stool mostevidently once the property of some child.
All nurseries have a generic likeness. It seemed to her that she knew thisroom, from the beam of light with the motes dancing in it to thebird-patterned paper. Kilgobbin nursery was papered with a paper giving anendless repetition of one subject--a man driving a pig to market--withthat exception, the two rooms were not unlike. Yet those birds were thehaunting charm of this place, the things that most appealed to her, thingsthat seemed the ghosts of old friends.
She came to the window and looked out through the bars. Across the gardenof Vernons one caught a glimpse of other gardens, palmetto-tree tops, andaway, beyond the battery, a hint of the blue harbour. Just the picture tofill an imaginative child's mind with all sorts of pleasant fancies aboutthe world, and Phyl, forgetting for a moment Miss Pinckney, herself, andthe room in which she was, stood looking out, caught in a momentary daydream, just like a child in one of those reveries that are part of thefairy tale of childhood.
That touch of blue sea beyond the red roofs and green palmetto fronds gaveher mind wings for a moment and a world to fly through. Not the world welive in, but the world worth living in. Old sailor-stories, old scraps ofthought and dreams from nowhere pursued her, haunted her during thatdelightful and tantalising moment, and then she was herself again and MissPinckney was saying:
"It's a pretty view and hasn't changed since I was a child. Now, in N'Yorkthey'd have put up skyscrapers; Lord bless you, they'd have put them up ata _loss_ so's to seem energetic and spoil the view. That's a N'Yorker intwo words, happy so long as he's energetic and spoiling views--" Thengazing dreamily towards the touch of blue sea. "Well, I guess the Lordmade N'Yorkers same as he made you and me. His ways are _in_scrutable andpast finding out; so'r the ways of some of his creatures."
She turned from the window, and her eye fell on the great chest by theother window.
Going to it, she opened the lid.
It was full of old toys, mostly broken. She seemed to have forgotten thepresence of Phyl. Holding the chest's lid open, she gazed at the colouredand futile contents.
Then she closed the lid of the chest with a sigh.