CHAPTER IV
Twenty yards from the fence the off side wheel had gone.
The phaeton, flinging its occupants out, tilted, struck the earth at thetrace coupling just as a man might strike it with his shoulder, draggedfor five yards or so, breaking dash board and mud guard and brought theoff side horse down as though it had been poleaxed.
Silas, with the luck that always fell to him in accidents, was not evenstunned. Phyl was lying like a dead creature just where she had been flungamongst some bent grass.
He rushed to her. She was not dead, her pulse told that, nor did she seeminjured in any way. He left her, ran to the horses, undid the traces andgot the fallen horse on its feet, then he stripped them of their harnessand turned them loose.
Having done this he returned to the girl. Phyl was just regainingconsciousness; as he reached her she half sat up leaning on her rightarm.
"Where are the horses?" said she. They were her first thought.
"I've let them loose--there they are."
She turned her head in the direction towards which he pointed. The horses,free of their harness, had already found a grass patch and were beginningto graze. The broken phaeton lay in the sunshine and the cushions flung toright and left showed as blue squares amidst the green of the grass; alight wind from the west was stirring the grass tops and a bird wassinging somewhere its thin piping note, the only sound from all thatexpanse of radiant blue sky and green forsaken country.
"How do you feel now?" asked Silas.
"All right," said Phyl.
"We'd better get somewhere," he went on; "there are some cabins beyondthat rice field, I can see their tops. There's sure to be some one thereand we can send for help."
Phyl struggled to her feet, refusing assistance.
"Let us go there," said she. She turned to look at the horses.
"They'll be all right," said Silas; "there's lots of grass and there's apond over there--they'd live here a month without harm."
He led the way to the fence, helped her over, and then, without a wordthey began to plod across the rice field.
When they reached the cabins they found them deserted, almost in ruins.They faced a great tract of tree-grown ground. In the old plantation daysthis place would have been populous, for to the right there were ruins ofother cabins stretching along and bordering an old grass road that bentwestward to lose itself amongst the trees, but now there was nothing butdesolation and the wind that stirred the mossy beards of the live oaks andthe rank green foliage of weeds and sunflowers. An old disused well facedthe cabins.
Phyl gave a little shudder as she looked around her. Her mind, stillslightly confused by the accident and beaten upon by troubles, could findnothing with which to reply to the facts of the situation--alone here withSilas Grangerson, lost, both of them, what explanation could she make,even to herself, of the position?
In the nearest cabin to the right some rough dry grass had been stored asif for the bedding of an animal. It was too coarse for fodder. Silas madeher sit down on it to rest. Then he stood before her in the doorway.
For the first time in his life he seemed disturbed in mind.
"I'll have to go and get help," said he, "and find out where we are. It'smy fault. I'm sorry, but there's no use in going over that. You aren't fitto walk. I'll go and leave you here. You won't be afraid to stay byyourself?"
"No," said Phyl.
"You needn't be a bit, there's no danger here."
"I am thirsty," said she.
"Wait."
He went to the well head. The windlass and chain were there rusty butpracticable and a bucket lay amongst the grass. It was in good repair andhad evidently been used recently. He lowered it and brought up some water.The water was clear diamond bright, and cold as ice. Having satisfiedhimself that it was drinkable he brought the bucket to Phyl and tilted itslightly whilst she drank. Then he put it by the door.
"Now I'll go," said he, "and I shan't be long. Sure you won't be afraid?"
"No," she replied.
"You're not angry with me?"
"No, I'm not angry."
He bent down, took her hand and kissed it. She did not draw it away orshow any sign of resentment; it was cold like the hand of a dead person.
He glanced back as he turned to go. She saw him stand at the doorway for amoment looking down along the grass road, his figure cut against the blazeof light outside, then the doorway was empty.
She was never to see him again.
* * * * *
Outside in the sunlight Silas hesitated for a moment as though he wasabout to turn back, then he went on, striking along the grass road andbetween the trees.
Although he had never been over the ground before, he guessed it to be apart of the old Beauregard plantation and the distance from Grangervilleto be not more than eight miles as the crow flies. By the road, reckoningfrom where the accident had occurred, it would be fifteen. But the lie ofthe place or the distance from Grangersons mattered little to Silas. Hismind was going through a process difficult to describe.
Silas had never cared for anything, not even for himself. Danger or safetydid not enter into his calculations. Religion was for him the name of athing he did not understand. He had no finer feelings except inrelationship to things strong, swift and brilliant, he had no tendernessfor the weakness of others, even the weakness of women.
He had seized on Phyl as a Burgomaster gull might seize on a puffin chick,he had picked her up on the road to carry her off regardless of everythingbut his own desire for her--a desire so strong that he would have dashedher and himself to pieces rather than that another should possess her.
Well, as he watched her seated on the straw in that ruined cabin, subdued,without energy, and entirely at his mercy, a will that was not his willrose in opposition to him. Some part of himself that had remained in utterdarkness till now woke to life. It was perhaps the something that despiteall his strange qualities made him likeable, the something that instinctguessed to be there.
It stood between him and Phyl. He was conscious of no struggle with itbecause it took the form of helplessness.
Nothing but force could make her give him what he wanted. The thing wasimpossible, beyond him. He felt that he could do everything, fighteverything, subdue everything--but the subdued.
There was something else. Weakness had always repelled him, whether it wasthe weakness of the knees of a horse or the weakness of the will of a man.Phyl's weakness did not repel him but it took the edge from his passion.It was almost a form of ugliness.
He had determined on finding help to send some one back for Phyl; any ofthe coloured folk hereabouts would be able to pilot her to Grangersons. Hewas not troubling about the broken phaeton or the horses; the horses hadplenty of food and water; so far from suffering they would have the timeof their lives. They might be stolen--he did not care, and nothing wasmore indicative of his mental upset than this indifference toward thethings he treasured most.
All to the left of the grass road, the trees were thin, showing tracts ofmarsh land and pools, and the melancholy green of swamp weeds andvegetation.
The vegetable world has its reptiles and amphibians no less than theanimal; its savages, its half civilised populations, and its civilised.The two worlds are conterminous, and just as cultivated flowers andcivilised people are mutually in touch, here you would find poisonousplants giving shelter to poisonous life, and the amphibious giving home tothe amphibious.
The woods on the right were healthier, more dense, more cheerful, onhigher ground; one might have likened the grass road to the life of a manpursuing its way between his two mysteriously different characters.
Silas had determined to make straight for home after having sentassistance for Phyl, what he was going to do after arriving home was notevident to his mind; he had a vague idea of clearing out somewhere so thathe might forget the business. He had done with Phyl, so he told himself.
But Phyl had not done w
ith him. He had been scarcely ten minutes on hisroad when her image came into his mind. He saw her, not as he had seen herlast seated on the straw in the miserable cabin, but as he had seen her atthe ball.
The curves of her limbs, the colour of her hair, her face, all were drawnfor him by imagination, a picture more beautiful even than the reality.
Well, he had done with her, and there was no use in thinking of her--shecared for that cursed Pinckney and she was as good as dead to him, Silas.
An ordinary man would have seen hope at the end of waiting, but Silas wasnot an ordinary man, a long and dubious courtship was beyond hisimagination and his powers. Courtship, anyhow, as courtship is recognisedby the world was not for him. He wanted Phyl, he did not want to writeletters to her.
There is something to be said for this manner of love-making, it issincere at all events.
He tried to think of something else and he only succeeded in thinking ofPhyl in another dress. He saw her as he saw her that first day in thestable yard at Grangersons. Then he saw her as she was dressed that day inCharleston.
Then he remembered the scene in the churchyard. He could still feel thesmack she had given him on the face. The smack had not angered him withher but the remembrance of it angered him now. She would not have donethat to Pinckney.
Turning a corner of the road he came upon a clear space and on the bordersof the clearing to the right some cottages. There were some half-nakedpikaninnies playing in the grass before them; and a coloured woman,washing at a tub set on trestles, catching sight of him, stood, shadingher eyes and looking in his direction.
Silas paused for a moment as if undecided, then he came on. He asked thewoman his whereabouts and then whether she could sell him some food. Shehad nothing but some corn bread and cold bacon to offer him and he boughtit, paying her a dollar and not listening to her when she told him shecould not make change.
He was like a man doing things in his sleep; his mind seemed a thousandmiles away. The woman packed the bread and bacon in a mat basket with aplate and knife and watched him turn back in his tracks and vanish roundthe bend of the road, glad to see the last of him. She reckoned himcrazy.
He was going back to Phyl.
His resolution never to see her again had vanished. She was his and he wasgoing to keep her, no matter what happened.
He would never part with her alive, if she killed him, if he killed her,what matter. Nothing would stand in his path.
He reached the turning and there in the sunlight lay the half ruinedcabins and the well.
Walking softly he came to the door of the cabin where he had left Phyl.She was there lying on the straw fast asleep. It was the sleep that comesafter exhaustion or profound excitement; she scarcely seemed to breathe.
Putting his bundle down by the door he came in softly and knelt downbeside her. His face was so close to hers that he could feel her breathupon his mouth.
It only wanted that to complete his madness. He was about to cast himselfbeside her when a pain, vicious and sharp as the stab of a red hot needlestruck him just above his right instep.
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