H. De Vere Stacpoole

“ 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.” ”

“ When the great Southern moon rises above the cotton fields, Romance touches even Grangerville itself, the baying of the yellow dog, darkey voices, the distant plunking of a banjo, the owl in the trees—all are the same as of old—and the houses are the same, nearly, and the people, and it is hard to believe that over there to the North the locomotives of the Atlantic Coast railway are whistling down the night, that men are able to talk to one another at a distance of a thousand miles, fly like birds, live like fish, and perpetuate their shadows in the “movies.” ”

“ It seemed to Phyl as they drove that never before had she met or felt the loveliness of life, never till this moment when turning a corner the song of a bird from a garden met them with the perfume of jessamine. 131
Charleston is full of surprises like that, things that snatch you away from the present or catch you for a moment into the embrace of some old garden lurking behind a wrought iron gate, or tell you a love story no matter how much you don’t want to hear it—or tease you, if you are a practical business man, with some other futility which has nothing at all to do with “real” life. ”

“ Here, after a while, Hennessey bade the other good night and departed for bed, whilst Pinckney, leaning back in his armchair, fell into a lazy and contemplative mood, his eyes wandering from point to point.
All this business was very new to him. Pinckney had inherited his father’s brains as well as his money. He had discovered that a large fortune requires just as much care and attention as a large garden and that a man can extract just as much interest and amusement and the physical health that comes from both, out of money-tending as out of flower and vegetable growing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The gate would no doubt be the garden gate. Phyl in all her life had never given a thought to Love, she had known nothing of sentiment, that much abused thing which is yet the salt of life, and Romance for her had meant Adventure; all the same she was now weaving all sorts of threads into dreams and fancies. What appealed to her most was her own likeness to Juliet, the girl who had died so many, many years ago. A likeness incomplete enough, according to Miss Pinckney, yet strong enough to awaken memories in the mind of Prue. ”

“ Next morning, looking from the windows of the 85 car, she saw the South. Vast spaces of low-lying land broken by river and bayou, flooded by the light of the new risen sun and touched by a vague mist from the sea, soft as a haze of summer, warm with light and everywhere hinting at the blue deep sky beyond.
Youth, morning, and the spirit of the sea all lay in that luminous haze, that warm light filled with the laziness of June; and, for one delightful moment, it seemed to Phyl that summer days long forgotten, rapturous mornings half remembered were here again. ”

“ The Vernons people were late, so late that when they arrived they were the last of the guests; dancing was in progress and, on entering the ballroom, Richard Pinckney was treated to the pleasing sight of his fiancée whirling in the arms of Silas Grangerson.
Phyl, looking lovely in the simple, rather old-fashioned dress evolved for her by the combined geniuses of Maria Pinckney and Madame Organdie, produced that sensation which can only be evoked by newness, her effect was instantaneous and profound, it touched not only every one of these strangers but also Maria Pinckney and Richard. ”

“ A house like Vernons exists not by virtue of its 216 brick and mortar; to keep it really alive it must be preserved in all its parts, not only from damp and decay, but from innovation; one can fancy a gas cooker sending a perpetual shudder through it, a telephone destroying who knows what fragrant old influences; the store cupboards and still room are part of its bowels, its napery, bed sheets, and hangings part of its dress. The man knew what he was doing who left Miss Pinckney a life interest in Vernons, it was that interest that kept Vernons alive. ”

“ Had he known it, Phyl away at Charleston, was equally restless. She no longer thought of Silas. She had dismissed him from her mind, she no longer feared him as a possible source of danger to the man she loved. Love had her entirely in his possession to torture as he pleased. She knew only one danger, the danger that Richard Pinckney did not care in the least for her, and as day followed day that danger grew more defined and concrete. Richard had taken to avoiding her, she became aware of that. ”

“ Illusion! Nothing is gained without some sacrifice; you cannot hold the past and the present in the same hand, the concealed elevator spoke in all the rooms once its presence was betrayed, the telephone talked—everywhere was evident the use of yesterday as a veneer of to-day.
However that may be, the old house was gay enough to-night with flowers and lights, and Silas, looking better perhaps than he had ever looked in his life, found himself talking to Frances Rhett with an animation that surprised himself. ”

“ They were both relieved by the withdrawal of the girl, Hennessey because he wanted to talk business, Pinckney because her presence had affected him like a wet blanket.
His first impression of Phyl had been delightful, then, little by little, her stiffness and seeming lifelessness had communicated themselves to him. It seemed to him that he had never met a duller or more awkward schoolgirl. His mind was of that quick order which requires to be caught in the uptake rapidly in order to shine. Slowness, coldness, dulness or hesitancy in others depressed him just as dull weather depressed him. ”

“ Silas’s rabbit trap was in reality a very simple affair, it was a plan to pick a quarrel with Richard through Frances, if possible; to make the imperturbable Pinckney angry, knowing well how easily an angry man can be induced to make a fool of himself. To keep cool and let Richard do the shouting.
Unfortunately for Silas, the sight of Phyl in all her beauty had raised his temperature far above the point of coolness. There were moments when he was dancing, when he could have flung Frances aside, torn Phyl from the arms of her partner and made off with her through the open window. ”

“ Prue’s message, her own likeness to Juliet, Juliet’s letters, the little arbour, those and the magic of Vernons had worked upon her mind singly and together, exalting her into a soul-state utterly beyond all previous experience.
It was as though she had played the part of Juliet for a day, suffered vaguely and enjoyed in imagination what Juliet had suffered and enjoyed in life, 160 known Love as Juliet had known it—for a moment.
The brutal touch of the Real coming at the supreme moment to shatter and shrivel everything. ”

“ The Rhetts’ house in Legare Street was about the same size as Vernons and equally old, but it had not the same charm, the garden was much larger than that at Vernons, but it had not the same touch of the past. Houses, like people, have personalities and the house of the Rhetts had a telephone without resenting the intruder, electric everythings, even to an elevator, modern cookers, modern stoves, everything in a modern way to save labour and make life easy, and all so cunningly and craftily done that the air of antiquity was supposed not to be disturbed. ”

“ If the whole world were against you I would love you all the more. I will love you all my life and I will love you when I am dead.” 148
Phyl’s eyes grew half blind with tears.
This cry from the Past went to her heart like a knife. The wind, strengthening for a moment, moved the window curtains, bringing with it the drowsy afternoon sounds of Charleston, sounds that seemed to mock at this voice declaring the deathlessness of its love. It was impossible to go on reading. Impossible to expose any more this heart that had ceased to beat. ”

“ Mangan shows you the old Dublin as it was in those glorious times, and in the new Dublin of to-day the shade of Mangan seems still to walk arm in arm with the shade of Mathurin. Gloomy ghosts addicted to melancholy, noting with satisfaction that the streets are as dirty as ever, the old Public Houses still standing, that, despite the tramways—those extraordinary new modern inventions—the tide of life runs pretty much the same as of old. ”

“ She had saved Richard from death at the hands of Silas Grangerson, her love for him had met Fate face to face and won, but Fate has many reserve weapons. She is an old warrior, and the conqueror of cities and kings does not turn from her purpose because of a momentary defeat.
Phyl shut the door of the room, put the lamp she was carrying on a table and opened the long windows giving upon the piazza. The night was absolutely still, not a breath of wind stirred the foliage of the garden and the faint sounds of the city rose through the warm night. ”

“ Phyl, as she sat now at the dining-table with the dead and gone Mascarene men and women looking at her from the canvases on the wall, felt ever so slightly hurt.
Youth calls to youth irrespective of sex. She felt as a young person feels when another young person shows indifference. Then came the thought: was he avoiding her? Was he angry still about the affair at Kilgobbin, or was it just that he did not want to be bothered talking to her, looked on her as a nuisance in the house, a guest of no interest to him and yet to whom he had to be polite? ”

“ Juliet was not dead nor the man she loved, changed maybe but not dead. In some extraordinary way she knew it as surely as though she herself had once been Juliet.
Religion to Phyl had meant little, the Bible a book 156 of fair promises and appalling threats, vague promises but quite definite threats. As a quite small child she had gathered the impression that she was sure to be damned unless she managed to convert herself into a quite different being from the person she knew herself to be. Death was the supreme bogey, the future life a thing not to be thought of if one wanted to be happy. ”

“ It’s like hearing a lot of children making plans to abolish thunder storms. Where would America be now without the War, and where’d her history be? You tell me that. It’d just be the history of a big canning factory. These men aren’t dead, they’re still alive and fighting—fighting Chicago; fighting pork, and wheat, 128 and cotton and railway-stock and everything else that’s abolishing the soul of the nation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If he hasn’t piled up grit enough in life to pay for a new body, he goes about without one and he’s a ghost. That’s my way of thinking and I know—I know—n’matter.”
She put up her sunshade and they returned, driving through the warm spring weather. Phyl was silent, the day had taken possession of her. The scent of pink mimosa filled the air, the blue sky shewed here and there a few feather traces of white cloud and the wind from the sea seemed the very breath of the southern spring. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Just as in Nuremberg and Vittoria we see mediæval cities preserved, so to speak, under glass, so at Grangersons one found the old Plantation, house and all, miraculously intact, living, almost, one might say, breathing.
The price of cotton did not matter much to the Colonel, nor the price of haulage. This son of the Southerner who had refused to be beaten by the North in the war, cared for nothing much beyond the ring of sky that made his horizon. ”