CHAPTER VII
She came out of the cemetery. There was no sign of Silas in the street noron the front of the church.
Phyl had a full measure of the Celtic power to meet trouble halfway, toimagine disaster. As she hurried home she saw all manner of trouble,things happening to Richard Pinckney, and all brought about throughherself. Amidst all these fancies she saw one fact: He must be warned.
She found Miss Pinckney in the linen room. The linen room at Vernons was atreasure house beyond a man's description, perhaps even beyond his trueappreciation. There in the cupboards with their thin old fashioned ringhandles and on the shelves of red cedar reposed damask and double damaskof the time when men paid for their purchases in guineas, miraculouspreservations. Just as the life of a china vase is a perpetual escape fromthe stupidity of servant maids and the heaviness of clumsy fingers, so thelife of these cream white oblongs, in which certain lights brought forthmiraculous representations of flowers, festoons and birds, was a perpetualpreservation from the moth, from damp, from dryness, from the dust thatcorrupts.
A house like Vernons exists not by virtue of its brick and mortar; to keepit really alive it must be preserved in all its parts, not only from dampand decay, but from innovation; one can fancy a gas cooker sending aperpetual shudder through it, a telephone destroying who knows whatfragrant old influences; the store cupboards and still room are part ofits bowels, its napery, bed sheets, and hangings part of its dress. Theman knew what he was doing who left Miss Pinckney a life interest inVernons, it was that interest that kept Vernons alive.
She was exercising it on the critical examination of some sheets when Phylcame into the room, now, with the wool she had purchased and the tale shehad to tell.
Miss Pinckney carefully put the sheet she was examining on one side,opened the parcel and looked at the wool.
"I met Silas Grangerson," said Phyl as the other was examining thepurchase with head turned on one side, holding it now in this light, nowin that.
"Silas Grangerson! Why, where on earth has he sprung from?" asked MissPinckney in a voice of surprise.
"I don't know, but I met him in the street and we walked as far as theBattery and--and--"
She hesitated for a moment, then it all came out. To no one but MariaPinckney could she have told that story.
"Well, of all the astounding creatures," said Miss Pinckney at last. "Didhe ask you to marry him?"
"No."
"Just to run away with him--kissed you."
"He kissed me at Grangersons."
"At Grangersons. When?"
"That night. I went into the garden and he came out from amongst somebushes."
"Umph-- It's the family disease-- Well, if I get my fingers in his hair Ipromise to cure him. He wants curing. He'll just apologise, and thatbefore he's an hour older. Where's he staying?"
"No, no," said Phyl, "you mustn't ever say I told you. I don't mind. Iwould have said nothing only for Mr. Pinckney."
"You mean Richard?"
"Yes."
"What has he to do with it?"
Phyl did not hesitate nor turn her head away, though her cheeks wereburning.
"Silas Grangerson thinks I care for Mr. Pinckney, he said he would be evenwith him. I know he intends doing him some injury. I feel it--and I wantyou to warn him to be careful--without telling him, of course, what I havesaid."
Miss Pinckney was silent for a moment. She had already matched Phyl andRichard in her mind. She had come to a very full understanding of hercharacter, and she would have given all the linen at Vernons for thecertainty that those two cared for one another.
Frances Rhett rode her like an obsession. Life and nature had given MariaPinckney an acquired and instinctive knowledge of character, and in theunion of Richard and Frances Rhett she divined unhappiness, just as aclever seaman divines the unseen ice-berg in the ship's track. She smeltit.
"Phyl," said she, "do you care for Richard?"
The question quickly put and by those lips caused no confusion in thegirl's mind.
"No," said she. "At least-- Oh, I don't know how to explain it--I care foreverything here, for Vernons and everything in it, it is all like a storythat I love--Juliet and Vernons and the past and the present. He's part ofit too. I want to have it always just as it is. I didn't tell you, butwhen that happened in the cemetery, I was looking at her grave; you nevertold me it was there with his. I came on it by accident and she wasseeming to speak to me out of it. I was thinking of her and him,when--that happened. It was just as though some one had struck _her_ andhim. I can't explain exactly."
"Strange," said Miss Pinckney.
She turned and began to put away with a thoughtful air the linen she hadbeen examining. Then she said:
"I'll tell Richard and warn him to keep away from that fool, not thatthere is any danger--but it is just as well to warn him."
Phyl helped to put away the linen and then she went upstairs to her room.She felt easier in her mind and taking her seat on a cane couch by thewindow she fell into a book. The History of the Civil War. This bookwormhad always one sure refuge in trouble--books.
Books! Have we ever properly recognised the mystery and magic that lies inthat word, the magic that allows a man to lead ever so many other livesthan his own, to be other people, to travel where he has never been, tolaugh with folk he has never seen, to know their sorrows as he can neverknow the sorrows of "real people"--and their joys.
Phyl had been Robinson Crusoe and Jane Eyre, Monte Cristo and Jo.
History which is so horribly unreal because it deals with real people hadnever appealed to her, but the history of the Civil War was different fromothers.
It had to do with Vernons.
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