The Ghost Girl.
by H. De Vere Stacpoole.
PART I
CHAPTER I
It was a warm, grey, moist evening, typical Irish weather, and Miss Berknowles was curled up in a window-seat of the library reading a book.
Kilgobbin Park lay outside with the rooks cawing in the trees, miles of park land across which the dusk was coming, blotting out all things from Arranakilty to the Slieve Bloom Mountains.
The turf fire burning on the great hearth threw out a rich steady glow that touched the black oak panelling of the room, the book backs, and the long-nosed face of Sir Nicholas Berknowles "attributed to Lely" and looking down at his last descendant from a dusty canvas on the opposite wall.
The girl made a prettier picture. Red hair when it is of the right colour is lovely, and Phylice Berknowles" hair was of the right red, worn in a tail--she was only fifteen--so long that she could bite the end with ease and comfort when she was in a meditative mood, a habit of perdition that no schoolmistress could break her of.
She was biting her tail now as she read, up to her eyes in the marvellous story of the Gold Bug, and now, unable to read any more by the light from the window, she came to the fire, curled herself on the hearthrug and continued the adventures of the treasure-seekers by the light of the burning turf.
What a pretty face it was, seen by the full warm glow of the turf, and what a perfectly shaped head! It was not the face and head of a Berknowles as you could easily have perceived had you compared it with the portraits in the picture gallery, but of a Mascarene.
Phyl"s mother had been a Mascarene, a member of the old, adventurous family that settled in Virginia when Virginia was a wilderness and spread its branches through the Carolinas when the Planter was king of the South.
Red hair had run among the Mascarenes, red hair and a wild spirit that brooked no contradiction and knew no fear. Phyl had inherited something of this restless and daring spirit. She had run away from the Rottingdean Academy for the Daughters of the n.o.bility and Gentry where she had been sent at the age of twelve; making her way back to Ireland like a homing pigeon, she had turned up one morning at breakfast time, quite unshaken by her experiences of travel and with the announcement that she did not like school.
Had her mother been alive the traveller would have been promptly returned, but Phyl"s father, good, easy man, was too much taken up with agrarian disputes, hunting, and the affairs of country life to bother much about the small affair of his daughter"s future and education. He accepted her rejection of his plans, wrote a letter of apology to the Rottingdean Academy, and hired a governess for her. She wore out three in eighteen months, declared herself dissatisfied with governesses and competent to finish the process of educating and polishing herself.
This she did with the aid of all the books in the library, old Dunn, the rat-catcher of Arranakilty, a man profoundly versed in the habits of rodents and birds, Larry the groom, and sundry others of low estate but high intelligence in matters of sport and woodcraft.
Now it might be imagined from the foregoing that hardihood, self-a.s.sertion, and other unpleasant characteristics would be indicated in the manner and personality of this lover of freedom and rebel against restraint. Not at all. She was a most lovable and clinging person, when she could get hold of anything worth clinging to, with a mellifluous Irish voice at once soothing and distracting, a voice with pockets in it but not a trace of a brogue or only the very faintest suspicion. Yet when she spoke she had the Irish turn of words and she used the word "sure" in a manner strange to the English.
She had reached the point in the "Gold Bug" where Jupp is threatening to beat Legrand, when, laying the book down beside her on the hearthrug, she sat with her hands clasping her knees and her eyes fixed on the fire.
The tale had suddenly lost interest. She was thinking of her dead father, the big, hearty man who had gone to America only eight weeks ago and who would never return. He had gone on a visit to some of his wife"s people, fallen ill, and died.
Phyl could not understand it at all. She had cried her heart out amongst the ruins of her little world, but she could not understand why it had been ruined, or what her father had done to be killed like that, or what she had done to deserve such misery. The Reverend Peter Graham of Arranakilty could explain nothing about the matter to her understanding.
She nearly died and then miraculously recovered. Acute grief often ends like that, suddenly. The mourner may be maimed for life but the sharpness of the pain of that dreadful, dreadful disease is gone.
Phyl found herself one morning discussing rats with old Dunn, asking him how many he had caught in the barn and taking a vague sort of interest in what the old fellow was saying; books began to appeal to her again and the old life to run anew in a crippled sort of way. Then other things happened. Mr. Hennessey, the family lawyer, who had been a crony of her father"s and who had known her from infancy, came down to Kilgobbin to arrange matters.
It seemed that Mr. Berknowles before dying had made a will and that the will was being brought over from the States by Mr. Pinckney, his wife"s cousin in whose house he had died.
"I"m sure I don"t know what the chap wants coming over with it for," said Mr. Hennessey. "He said it was by your father"s request he was coming, but it"s a long journey for a man to take at this season of the year--and I hope the will is all right."
There was an implied distrust in his tone and an antagonism to Mr.
Pinckney that was not without its effect on Phyl.
She disliked Mr. Pinckney. She had never seen him but she disliked him all the same, and she feared him. She felt instinctively that this man was coming to make some alteration in her way of life. She did not want any change, she wanted to go on living just as she was with Mrs. Driscoll the housekeeper to look after her and all the old servants to befriend her and Mr. Hennessey to pay the bills.
Mr. Hennessey was in the house now. He had come down that morning from Dublin to receive Mr. Pinckney, who was due to arrive that night.
Phyl, sitting on the hearthrug, was in the act of picking up her book when the door opened and in came Mr. Hennessey.
He had been out in the grounds overlooking things and he came to the fire to warm his hands, telling Phyl to sit easy and not disturb herself. Then, as he held a big foot to the warmth he talked down at the girl, telling her of what he had been about and the ruination Rafferty was letting the greenhouses go to.
"Half-a-dozen panes of gla.s.s out--and "I"ve no putty," says he. "Putty,"
said I to him, "and what"s that head of yours made of?" The stoves are all out of order and there"s a hole in one of the flues I could get my thumb in."
"Rafferty"s awfully good to the dogs," said Phyl in her mellow voice, so well adapted for intercession. "He may be a bit careless, but he never does forget to feed the animals. He"s got the chickens to look after, too, and then there"s the beagles, he knows every dog in the pack and every dog knows him--oh, dear, what"s the good of it all!"
The thought of the beagles had brought up the vision of their master who would never hunt with them again. Her voice became tinged with melancholy and Hennessey changed the subject, taking his seat in one of the armchairs that stood on either side of the fireplace.
He was a big, loosely-made man, an easy going man with a kind heart who would have come to financial disaster long ago only for his partner, Niven.
"He"s almost due to be here by now," said he, taking out his watch and looking at it, "unless the express from Dublin is late."
"What"ll he be like, do you think?" said Phyl.
"There"s no saying," replied Mr. Hennessey. "He"s an American and I"ve never had much dealings with Americans except by letter. By all accounts they are sharp business men, but I daresay he is all right. The thing that gets me is his coming over. Americans don"t go thousands of miles for nothing, but if it"s after any hanky-panky business about the property, maybe he"ll find Jack Hennessey as sharp as any American."
"He"s some sort of a relation of ours," said Phyl. "Father said he was a sort of cousin."
"On your mother"s side," said Hennessey.
"Yes," said Phyl. Then, after a moment"s pause, "D"you know I"ve often thought of all those people over there and wondered what they were like and how they lived--my mother"s people. Father used to talk of them sometimes. He said they kept slaves."
"That was in the old days," said Hennessey. "The slaves are all gone long ago. They used to have sugar plantations and suchlike, but the war stopped all that."
"It"s funny," said Phyl, "to think that my people kept slaves--my mother"s people--Oh, if one could only see back, see all the people that have gone before one so long ago-- Don"t you ever feel like that?"
Mr. Hennessey never had; his forebears had been liquor dealers in Athlone and he was content to let them lie without a too close inquisition into the romances of their lives.
"Mr. Hennessey," said Phyl, after a moment"s silence, "suppose Father has left Mr. Pinckney all his money--what will become of me?"
"The Lord only knows," said Hennessey; "but what"s been putting such fancies in your head?"
"I don"t know," replied the girl. "I was just thinking. Of course he wouldn"t do such a thing--It"s your talking of the will the last time you were here set me on, I suppose, but I dreamed last night Mr. Pinckney came and he was an American with a beard like Uncle Sam in _Punch_ last week, and he said Father had made a will and left him everything--he"d left him me as well as everything else, and the dogs and all the servants and Kilgobbin--then I woke up."
"Well, you were dreaming nonsense," said the practical Hennessey. "A man can"t leave his daughter away from him, though I"m half thinking there"s many a man would be willing enough if he could."
Phyl raised her head. Her quick ear had caught a sound from the avenue.
Then the crash of wheels on gravel came from outside and her companion, rising hurriedly from his chair, went to the window.
"That"s him," said the easy-speaking Hennessey.
CHAPTER II