PART IV
PART IV
CHAPTER I
When Silas reached the cloakroom he took a glance at himself in the mirror, then putting on his overcoat and taking his hat from the attendant he came back into the hall. Pinckney and Calhoun had just strolled away into the ballroom; there was no one in the hall, and without a thought of saying good-bye to his hostess, he left the house.
He felt no anger against Pinckney, nor did he think as he walked down Legare Street that but for the mercy of God and the intervention of Phyl he might at that moment have been walking between two constables, a murderer with the blood of innocence on his hands.
Not that he was insensible to reason or the fitness of things, he had always known and acknowledged that when in a passion he was not accountable for his acts; he admitted the fact with regret and also with a certain pride. To-night he might have felt the regret without any pride to leaven it but for the fact that his mind was lost to every consideration but one—Phyl.
All through his life Silas had followed with an iron will the line that pleased him, never for a moment had he counted the cost of his actions; justas he had swum the harbour with his clothes on so had he plunged into any adventure that came to hand; he knew Fear just as little as he knew Consequence. Well, now he found himself for the first time in his life face to face with Fate. All his adventures up to this had been little things involving at worst loss of life by accident. This was different; it involved his whole future and the future of the girl who had mastered his mind.
Leaving Legare Street he reached Meeting Street and passed up it till he reached Vernons. The moon, high in the sky now, showed the garden through the trellis-work of the iron gate, and Silas paused for a moment and looked in.
The garden, seen like this with the moonlight upon the roses and the glossy leaves of the southern trees, presented a picture charming, dream-like, almost unreal in its beauty. He tried the gate. It was locked. On ordinary nights it would be open till the house closed, or in the event of Pinckney being out, until he returned, but to-night, owing to the absence of the family, it was locked.
Then, turning from the gate he crossed the road and took up his position in a corner of shadow. Five minutes passed, then twenty, but still he kept watch. There were few passers-by at that hour and little traffic; he had a long view of the moonlit street and presently he saw the carriage he was waiting for approaching.
It drew up at the front door of Vernons and he watched whilst the occupants got out; he caught a glimpse of Phyl as she entered the house followingMiss Pinckney and followed by Richard, then the door shut and the carriage drove away.
Silas left his concealment and crossed the road. He paced for a while up and down outside the door of Vernons, then he came to the garden gate again and looked in.
From here one could get a glimpse of the first and second floor piazzas and the windows opening upon them. He could not tell which was the window of Phyl’s room, it was enough for him that the place held her.
In the way in which he had crossed the road, in his uneasy prowling up and down before the house, and now in his attitude as he stood motionless with head raised there was something ominous, animal-like, almost wolfish.
As he stood a call suddenly came from the garden. It was the call of an owl, a white owl that rose on the sound and flitted softly as a moth across the trees to the garden beyond.
Silas turned away from the gate and came back down the street towards his hotel, arrived there he went straight to his room and to bed.
But he did not go to sleep. His head was full of plans, the craziest and maddest plans. Pinckney he had quite dismissed from his mind, the consciousness of having committed a vile action in drawing a knife upon an unarmed man was with him, and the knowledge that the consequences might include his expulsion from Charleston society, but all that instead of sobering him made him more reckless. He would have Phyl despite the Devil himself. Hewould seize her and carry her off, trap her like a bird.
He determined on the morrow to return early to Grangersons and think things out.
CHAPTER II
Whilst he was lying in bed thinking things out, the folk at Vernons were retiring to rest.
Maria Pinckney knew nothing of what had occurred between Silas and Richard. Richard Pinckney, Phyl and Reggie Calhoun were the only three persons in Charleston, leaving Silas aside, who knew of the business and in a hurried consultation just before leaving the Rhetts they had agreed to say nothing.
Calhoun was for publishing the affair.
“The man’s dangerous,” said he; “some day or another he’ll do the same thing again to some one and succeed and swing.”
“I think he’s had his lesson,” said Pinckney; “he went clean mad for the moment. Then there’s the fact that I struck him. No, taking everything into consideration, we’ll let it be. I don’t feel any animosity against him, not half as much as if he’d stabbed me behind the back with a libel— He did tell a lie about me to-night but it was the stupid sort of lie a child might have told. The man has his good points as well as his bad and I don’t want to push the thing against him.”
“I don’t think he will do it again,” said Phyl.
She, like Richard, felt no anger against Silas; itwas as though they recognised that Silas was the man really attacked that night, attacked by the Devil.
They both recognised instinctively his good qualities. Miss Pinckney, it will be remembered, once said that it is the man with good in him that comes to the worst end unless the good manages to fight the bad and get it under in time. She had a terrible instinct for the truth of things.
“Well,” said Calhoun, “it’s not my affair; if you choose to take pity on him, well and good; if it were my business I’d give him a cold bath, that might stop him from doing a thing like that again. I’ll say nothing.”
Though Miss Pinckney was in ignorance of the affair she was strangely silent during the drive home and when Phyl went to her room to bid her good night, she found her in tears, a very rare occurrence with Miss Pinckney.
She was seated in an armchair crying and Phyl knelt down beside her and took her hand.
Then it all came out.
“I had hoped and hoped and hoped for him, goodness knows he has been my one thought, and now he has thrown himself away. Richard is engaged to Frances Rhett. He told me so to-night—well, there, it’s all ended, there’s no hope anywhere, she’ll never let him go, and she’ll have Vernons when I’m gone. She picked him out from all the other men—why?— Why, because he’s the best of the lot for money and position. Care about him! She cares no more for him than I do for old Darius. I’m sure I don’t know why this trouble should have fallen onme. I suppose I have committed some sin or another though I can’t tell what. I’ve tried to live blameless and there’s others that haven’t, yet they seem to prosper and get their wishes—and there’s no use telling me to be resigned,” finished she with a snap and as if addressing some viewless mentor. “I can’t—and what’s more I won’t. Never will I resign myself to wickedness, and stupidity is wickedness, not even a decent, honest wickedness, but a crazy, sap-headed sort of wickedness, same as influenza isn’t a disease but just an ailment that kills you all the same.”
Phyl, kneeling beside Miss Pinckney, had turned deathly white. Only half an hour ago when the little conference with Calhoun had been concluded, Richard Pinckney had taken her hand. His words were still ringing in her ears:
“You saved my life. I can’t say what I feel, at least not now.”
He had looked straight into her eyes, and now half an hour later—This.
Engaged to Frances Rhett!
She rose up and stood beside Miss Pinckney for a moment whilst that lady finished her complaints. Then she made her escape and returned to her room—
As she closed the door she caught a glimpse of herself in the old-fashioned cheval glass that had been brought up by Dinah and Seth to help her in dressing for the dance and which had not been removed. Every picture in every mirror is the work of an artist—the man who makes a mirror is anartist; according to the perfection of his work is the perfection of the picture. The old cheval glass was as truthful in its way as Gainsborough, but Gainsborough had never such a lovely subject as Phyl.
She started at her own reflection as though it had been that of a stranger. Then she looked mournfully at herself as a man might look at his splendid gifts which he has thrown away. All that was no use now.
She sat down on the side of her bed with her hands clasped together just as a child clasps its hands in grief.
Sitting like this with her eyes fixed before her she was looking directly at Fate.
It was not only Richard Pinckney that she was about to lose but Vernons and the Past— Just as Juliet Mascarene had lost everything so was it to happen to her. Or rather so had it happened, for she felt that the game was lost—some vague, mysterious, extraordinary game played by unknown powers had begun on that evening in Ireland when standing by the window of the library she had heard Pinckney’s voice for the first time.
The sense of Fatality came to her from the case of Juliet. Consciously and unconsciously she had linked herself to Juliet. The extravagant idea that she herself was Juliet returned and that Richard Pinckney was Rupert had come to her more than once since that dream or vision in which the guns had sounded in her ears. The idea had frightened her at first, then pleased her vaguely. Then she had dismissed it, heregorefusing any one else a share inher love for Richard, any one—even herself masquerading under the guise of Juliet.
The idea came back to her now leaving her utterly cold, and yet stirring her mind anew with the sense of Fate.
When she fell asleep that night she passed into the dreamless condition which is the nearest thing we know to oblivion, yet her sub-conscious mind must have carried on its work, for when she awoke just as dawn was showing at the window it was with the sense of having passed through a long season of trouble, of having fought with—without conquering—all sorts of difficulties.
She rose and dressed herself, put on her hat and came down into the garden.
Vernons was just wakening for the day, and in the garden alive with birds, she could hear the early morning sounds of the city, and from the servants’ quarters of the house, voices, the sound of a mat being beaten and now and then the angry screech of a parrot. General Grant slept in the kitchen and his cage was put out in the yard every morning at this hour. Later it would be brought round to the piazza. He resented the kitchen yard as beneath his dignity and he let people know it.
Phyl tried the garden gate, it was locked and Seth appearing at that moment on the lower piazza, she called to him to fetch the key. He let her out and she stood for a moment undecided as to whether she would walk towards the Battery or in the opposite direction. Meeting Street never looked more charmingthan now in the very early morning sunlight; under the haze-blue sky, almost deserted, it seemed for a moment to have recaptured its youth. A negro crab vendor was wheeling his barrow along, crying his wares. His voice came lazily on the warm scented air.
She turned in the direction of the station. The voice of the crab seller had completed in some uncanny way the charm of the deserted street and the early sunlight. She was going to lose all this. Vernons and the city she loved, Juliet, Miss Pinckney, the past and the present, she was going to lose them all, they were all in some miraculous way part of the man she loved, her love of them was part of her love for him. She could no longer stay in Charleston; she must go—where? She could think of nowhere to go but Ireland.
To stay here would be absolutely impossible.
As she walked without noticing whither she was going her mind cleared, she began to form plans.
She would go that very day. Nothing would stop her. The thing had to be done. Let it be done at once. She would explain everything to Miss Pinckney. She would escape without seeing Richard again. What she was proposing to herself was death, the ruin of everything she cared for, the destruction of all the ties that bound her to the world, the present and the past. It was the recognition that these ties had been broken for her and all these things taken away by the woman who had taken away Richard.
Presently she found herself in the suburbs, in astreet where coloured children were playing in the gutter, and where the houses were unsubstantial looking as rabbit-hutches, but there was a glimpse of country beyond and she did not turn back. She did not want breakfast. If she returned to Vernons by ten o’clock it would give her plenty of time to pack her things, say good-bye to Miss Pinckney and take her departure before Richard returned to luncheon—if he did return.
It did not take her long to pass through the negro quarter, and now, out in the open country, out amidst those great flat lands in the broad day and under the lonely blue sky her mood changed.
Phyl was no patient Grizel, the very last person to be trapped in the bog of love’s despondency. Abstract melancholy produced by colours, memories, or sounds was an easy enough matter with her, but she was not the person to mourn long over the loss of a man snatched from her by another woman.
As she walked, now, breathing the free fresh air, a feeling of anger and resentment began to fill her mind. Anger at first against Frances Rhett but spreading almost at once towards Richard Pinckney. Soon it included herself, Maria Pinckney, Charleston—the whole world. It was the anger which brings with it perfect recklessness, akin to that which had seized her the day in Ireland when in her rage over Rafferty’s dismissal she had called Pinckney a Beast. Only this anger was less acute, more diffuse, more lasting.
The sounds of wheels and horses’ hoofs on the road behind her made her turn her head. A carriagewas approaching, an English mail phaëton drawn by two high-stepping chestnuts and driven by a young man.
It was Silas Grangerson. Returning to Grangerson’s to make plans for the capture of Phyl, here she was on the road before him and going in the same direction.
For a moment he could scarcely believe his eyes. Then reining in and leaving the horses with the groom he jumped down and ran towards her.
After the affair of last night one might fancy that he would have shown something of it in his manner.
Not a bit.
“I didn’t expect to come acrossyouon the road,” said he. “Won’t you speak to me—are you angry with me?”
“It’s not a question of being angry,” said Phyl, stiffly.
She walked on and he walked beside her, silent for a moment.
“If you mean about that affair last night,” said he, “I’m sorry I lost my temper—but he hit me—you don’t understand what that means to me.”
“You tried to—”
“Kill him, I did, and only for you I’d have done it. You can’t understand it all. I can scarcely understand it myself. Hehitme.”
“I don’t think you knew what you were doing,” said Phyl.
“I most surely did not. I was rousted out of myself. I reckon he didn’t know what he was doingeither when he struck. He ought to have known I was not the person to hit. I’ll show you, just stand before me for a moment.”
Phyl faced him. He pretended to strike at her and she started back.
“There you are,” said he; “you know I wasn’t going to touch you but you had to dodge. Your mind had nothing to do with it, just your instinct. That was how I was. When he landed his blow I went for my knife by instinct. If you tread on a snake he lets out at you just the same way. He doesn’t think. He’s wound up by nature to hit back.”
“But you are not a snake.”
“How do you know what’s in a man? I reckon we’ve all been animals once, maybe I was a snake. There are worse things than snakes. Snakes are all right, they don’t meddle with you if you don’t meddle with them. They’ve got a bad name they don’t deserve. I like them. They’re a lot better citizens, the way they look after their wives and families, than some others and they know how to hit back prompt—say, where are you going to?”
“I don’t know,” said Phyl. “I just came for a walk—I’m leaving Charleston.”
She spoke with a little catch in her voice. All Silas’s misdoings were forgotten for the moment, the fact that the man was dangerous as Death to himself and others had been neutralised in her mind by the fact, intuitively recognised, that there was nothing small or mean in his character. Despite his conduct in the cemetery, despite his lunaticoutburst of the night before, in her heart of hearts she liked him; besides that, he was part of Charleston, part of the place she loved.
Ah, how she loved it! Had you dissected her love for Richard Pinckney you would have found a thousand living wrappings before you reached the core. Vernons, the garden, the birds, the flowers, the blue sky, the sunlight, Meeting Street, the story of Juliet, Miss Pinckney, even old Prue. Memories, sounds, scents, and colours all formed part of the living thing that Frances Rhett had killed.
“Leaving Charleston!” said Silas, speaking in a dazed sort of way.
“Yes. I cannot stay here any longer.”
“Going—say—it’s not because of what I did last night.”
“You—oh, no. It has nothing to do with you.” She spoke almost disdainfully.
“But where are you going?”
“Back to Ireland.”
“When?”
“To-day.”
Then, suddenly, in some curious manner, he knew. But he was clever enough, for once in his life, to restrain himself and say nothing.
“I will go this afternoon,” said she, as though she were talking of a journey of a few miles.
“Have you any friends to go to?”
Phyl thought of Mr. Hennessy sitting in his gloomy office in gloomy Dublin.
“Yes, one.”
“In Ireland?”
“Yes.”
“Can’t you think of any other friends?”
“No.”
“Not even me?”
“I don’t know,” said poor Phyl, “I never could understand you quite, but now that I am in trouble you seem a friend—I’m miserable—but there’s no use having friends here. It only makes it the worse having to go.”
“Do you remember the day I asked you to run off to Florida with me,” said Silas, “and leave this damned place? It’s no good for any one here and you’ve found it out—the place is all right, it’s the people that are wrong.”
Phyl made no reply.
“You’re not going back,” he finished.
She glanced at him.
“You’re going to stay here—here with me.”
“I am going back to Ireland to-day,” said Phyl.
“You are not, you are going to stay here.”
“No. I am going back.”
She spoke as a person speaks who is half drowsy, and Silas spoke like a person whose mind is half absent. It was the strangest conversation to listen to, knowing their relationship and the point at issue.
“You are going to stay here,” he went on. “If I lost you now I’d never find you again. I’ve been wanting you ever since I saw you that day first in the yard— D’you remember how we sat on the log together?—you can’t tramp all the way back to Charleston— Come with me and you’ll be happy always, all the time and all your life—”
“No,” said Phyl, “I mustn’t—I can’t.” Her mind, half dazed by all she had gone through, by the mesmerism of his voice, by the brilliant light of the day, was capable of no real decision on any point. The dark streets of Dublin lay before her, a vague and nightmare vision. To return to Vernons would be only her first step on the return to Ireland, and yet if she did not return to Vernons, where could she go?
Silas’s invitation to go with him neither raised her anger nor moved her to consent. Phyl was an absolute Innocent in the ways of the world. No careful mother had sullied her mind with warnings and suggestions, and her mind was by nature unspeculative as to the material side of life.
Instinctively she knew a great deal. How much knowledge lies in the sub-conscious mind is an open question.
They walked on for a bit without speaking and then Silas began again.
“You can’t go back all that way. It’s absurd. You talk of going off to-day, why, good heavens, it takes time even to start on a journey like that. You have to book your passage in a ship—and how are you to go alone?”
“I don’t know,” said Phyl.
His voice became soft. It was the first time in his life, perhaps, that he had spoken with tenderness, and the effect was perfectly magical.
“You are not going,” he said, “you are not; indeed, I want you far too much to let you go; there’snothing else I want at all in the world. I don’t count anything worth loving beside you.”
No reply.
He turned.
The coloured groom was walking the horses, they were only a few yards away. He went to the man and gave him some money with the order to return to Charleston and go back to Grangersons by train, or at least to the station that was ten miles from Grangerville.
Then as the man went off along the road he stood holding the near horse by the bridle and talking to Phyl.
“You can’t walk back all that way; put your foot on the step and get in, leave all your trouble right here. I’ll see that you never have any trouble again. Put your foot on the step.”
Phyl looked away down the road.
She hesitated just as she had hesitated that morning long ago when she had run away from school. She had run away, not so much to get home as to get away from homesickness.
Still she hesitated, urged by the recklessness that prompted her to break everything at one blow, urged by the dismal and hopeless prospect towards which the road to Charleston led her mind, held back by all sorts of hands that seemed reaching to her from the past.
Confused, bewildered, tempted yet resisting, all might have been well had not a vision suddenly risen before her clear, definite, and destructive to her reason.
The vision of Frances Rhett.
Everything bad and wild in Phyl surged up before that vision. For a second it seemed to her that she loathed the man she loved.
She put her foot on the step and got into the phaëton. Silas, without a word, jumped up beside her, and the horses started.
CHAPTER III
She had committed the irrevocable.
When the contract is signed, when the china vase is broken, all the regret in the world will not alter the fact.
It was not till they had gone ten miles on their way that the regret came, sudden and painful as the stab of a dagger.
Miss Pinckney’s kindly old face suddenly rose up before Phyl. She would have been waiting breakfast for her. She saw the breakfast room, sunny and pleasant, the tea urn on the table, the garden through the open window—
Then came the thought—what matter.
All that was lost to her anyhow. It did not matter in the least what she did.
She was running away with Silas Grangerson.
She had a vague sort of idea that they were running away to be married, that she would have to explain things to Colonel Grangerson when they got to the house and that things would arrange themselves somehow.
But now, she sat voiceless beside her companion, answering only in monosyllables when he spoke; a voice began to trouble her, a voice that repeated the half statement, half question, over and over again.
“You are running away to be married to Silas Grangerson?”
She was running away from her troubles, from the prospect of returning to Ireland, from the idea of banishment from Vernons. She was running away out of anger against the woman who had taken Richard. She was running away because of pique, anger and the reckless craving to smash everything and dash everything to pieces—but to marry Silas Grangerson!
“Stop!” cried Phyl.
Silas glanced sideways at her.
“What’s the matter now?”
“I want to go back.”
“Back to Charleston!”
“Yes, stop, stop at once—I must go back, I should never have come.”
Silas was on the point of flashing out but he shut his lips tight, then he reined in.
“Wait a moment,” said he with his hand on her arm, “you can’t walk back, we are nearly half way to Grangersons. I can’t drive you because I don’t want to return to Charleston. If you have altered your mind you can go back when we reach Grangersons, you can wire from there. The old man will make it all right with Maria Pinckney.”
Phyl hesitated, then she began to cry.
It was the rarest thing in the world for her to cry like this. Tears with her meant a storm, but now she was crying quietly, hopelessly, like a lost child.
“Don’t cry,” said he, “everything will be all right when we get to Grangersons—we’ll just go on.”
The horses started again and Phyl dried her eyes. They covered another five miles without speaking, and then Silas said:
“You don’t mean to stick to me, then?”
“I can’t,” said Phyl.
“You care for some one else better?”
“Yes.”
“Is it Pinckney?”
“Yes.”
“God!” said he. He cut the off horse with the whip. The horses nearly bolted, he reined them in and they settled down again to their pace.
The country was very desolate just here, cotton fields and swampy grounds with here and there a stretch of water reflecting the blue of the sky.
After a moment’s silence he began again.
There was something in Silas’s mentality that seemed to have come up from the world of automata, something tireless and persistent akin to the energy that drives a beetle over all obstacles in its course, on or round them.
“That’s all very well,” said he, “but you can’t always go on caring for Pinckney.”
“Can’t I?” said Phyl.
“No, you can’t. He’s going to get married and then where will you be?”
Phyl, staring over the horses’ heads as though she were staring at some black prospect, set her teeth. Then she spoke and her voice was like the voice of a person who speaks under mesmerism.
“I cared for him before he was born and I’ll care for him after I’m dead and there’s no use inbothering a bit about it now.Youcouldn’t understand. No one can understand, not even he.”
The road here bordered a stretch of waste land; Silas gazed over it, his face was drawn and hard.
Then he suddenly blazed out.
Laying the whip over the horses and turning them so sharply that the phaëton was all but upset he put them over the waste land; another touch of the whip and they bolted.
Beyond the waste land lay a rice field and between field and waste land stood a fence; there was doubtless a ditch on the other side of the fence.
“You’ll kill us!” cried Phyl.
“Good—so,” replied Silas, “horses and all.”
She had half risen from her seat, she sat down again holding tight to the side rail and staring ahead. Death and destruction lay waiting behind that fence, leaping every moment nearer. She did not care in the least.
She could see that Silas, despite his words, was making every effort to rein in, the impetus to drive to hell and smash everything up had passed; she watched his hands grow white all along the tendon ridges with the strain. The whole thing was extraordinary and curious but unfearful, a storm of wind seemed blowing in her face. Then like a switched out light all things vanished.
CHAPTER IV
Twenty yards from the fence the off side wheel had gone.
The phaëton, flinging its occupants out, tilted, struck the earth at the trace coupling just as a man might strike it with his shoulder, dragged for five yards or so, breaking dash board and mud guard and brought the off side horse down as though it had been poleaxed.
Silas, with the luck that always fell to him in accidents, was not even stunned. Phyl was lying like a dead creature just where she had been flung amongst some bent grass.
He rushed to her. She was not dead, her pulse told that, nor did she seem injured in any way. He left her, ran to the horses, undid the traces and got the fallen horse on its feet, then he stripped them of their harness and turned them loose.
Having done this he returned to the girl. Phyl was just regaining consciousness; as he reached her she half sat up leaning on her right arm.
“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 phaëton lay in the sunshine and the cushions flung to right and left showed as blue squares amidst the green of the grass; a light wind from the west was stirring the grass tops and a bird was singing somewhere its thin piping note, the only sound from all that expanse 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 beyond that rice field, I can see their tops. There’s sure to be some one there and 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 a pond over there—they’d live here a month without harm.”
He led the way to the fence, helped her over, and then, without a word they 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 days this place would have been populous, for to the right there were ruins of other cabins stretching along and bordering an old grass road that bent westward to lose itself amongst the trees, but now there was nothing but desolation and the wind that stirred the mossy beards of the live oaks and therank green foliage of weeds and sunflowers. An old disused well faced the cabins.
Phyl gave a little shudder as she looked around her. Her mind, still slightly confused by the accident and beaten upon by troubles, could find nothing with which to reply to the facts of the situation—alone here with Silas 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 as if for the bedding of an animal. It was too coarse for fodder. Silas made her 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’s my fault. I’m sorry, but there’s no use in going over that. You aren’t fit to walk. I’ll go and leave you here. You won’t be afraid to stay by yourself?”
“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 but practicable and a bucket lay amongst the grass. It was in good repair and had evidently been used recently. He lowered it and brought up some water. The water was clear diamond bright, and cold as ice. Having satisfied himself that it was drinkable he brought the bucketto Phyl and tilted it slightly 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 or show 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 a moment looking down along the grass road, his figure cut against the blaze of 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 was about to turn back, then he went on, striking along the grass road and between the trees.
Although he had never been over the ground before, he guessed it to be a part of the old Beauregard plantation and the distance from Grangerville to be not more than eight miles as the crow flies. By the road, reckoning from where the accident had occurred, it would be fifteen. But the lie of the place or the distance from Grangersons mattered little to Silas. His mind was going through a process difficult to describe.
Silas had never cared for anything, not even for himself. Danger or safety did not enter into his calculations. Religion was for him the name of athing he did not understand. He had no finer feelings except in relationship to things strong, swift and brilliant, he had no tenderness for 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 everything but his own desire for her—a desire so strong that he would have dashed her 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 will rose in opposition to him. Some part of himself that had remained in utter darkness till now woke to life. It was perhaps the something that despite all his strange qualities made him likeable, the something that instinct guessed to be there.
It stood between him and Phyl. He was conscious of no struggle with it because it took the form of helplessness.
Nothing but force could make her give him what he wanted. The thing was impossible, beyond him. He felt that he could do everything, fight everything, subdue everything—but the subdued.
There was something else. Weakness had always repelled him, whether it was the 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 someone back for Phyl; any of the coloured folk hereabouts would be able to pilot her to Grangersons. He was not troubling about the broken phaëton or the horses; the horses had plenty of food and water; so far from suffering they would have the time of their lives. They might be stolen—he did not care, and nothing was more indicative of his mental upset than this indifference toward the things he treasured most.
All to the left of the grass road, the trees were thin, showing tracts of marsh land and pools, and the melancholy green of swamp weeds and vegetation.
The vegetable world has its reptiles and amphibians no less than the animal; its savages, its half civilised populations, and its civilised. The two worlds are conterminous, and just as cultivated flowers and civilised people are mutually in touch, here you would find poisonous plants giving shelter to poisonous life, and the amphibious giving home to the amphibious.
The woods on the right were healthier, more dense, more cheerful, on higher ground; one might have likened the grass road to the life of a man pursuing its way between his two mysteriously different characters.
Silas had determined to make straight for home after having sent assistance for Phyl, what he was going to do after arriving home was not evident to his mind; he had a vague idea of clearing out somewhere so that he might forget the business. He had done with Phyl, so he told himself.
But Phyl had not done with him. He had been scarcely ten minutes on his road when her image came into his mind. He saw her, not as he had seen her last seated on the straw in the miserable cabin, but as he had seen her at the ball.
The curves of her limbs, the colour of her hair, her face, all were drawn for 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—she cared 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 was not an ordinary man, a long and dubious courtship was beyond his imagination and his powers. Courtship, anyhow, as courtship is recognised by the world was not for him. He wanted Phyl, he did not want to write letters to her.
There is something to be said for this manner of love-making, it is sincere at all events.
He tried to think of something else and he only succeeded in thinking of Phyl in another dress. He saw her as he saw her that first day in the stable yard at Grangersons. Then he saw her as she was dressed that day in Charleston.
Then he remembered the scene in the churchyard. He could still feel the smack she had given him on the face. The smack had not angered him with her but the remembrance of it angered him now. She would not have done that to Pinckney.
Turning a corner of the road he came upon a clear space and on the borders of the clearing tothe right some cottages. There were some half-naked pikaninnies playing in the grass before them; and a coloured woman, washing at a tub set on trestles, catching sight of him, stood, shading her eyes and looking in his direction.
Silas paused for a moment as if undecided, then he came on. He asked the woman his whereabouts and then whether she could sell him some food. She had nothing but some corn bread and cold bacon to offer him and he bought it, paying her a dollar and not listening to her when she told him she could not make change.
He was like a man doing things in his sleep; his mind seemed a thousand miles away. The woman packed the bread and bacon in a mat basket with a plate and knife and watched him turn back in his tracks and vanish round the bend of the road, glad to see the last of him. She reckoned him crazy.
He was going back to Phyl.
His resolution never to see her again had vanished. She was his and he was going 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 ruined cabins 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 comes after exhaustion or profound excitement; she scarcely seemed to breathe.
Putting his bundle down by the door he came in softly and knelt down beside her. His face was so close to hers that he could feel her breath upon his mouth.
It only wanted that to complete his madness. He was about to cast himself beside her when a pain, vicious and sharp as the stab of a red hot needle struck him just above his right instep.