The garden was talking to her, the night, the very bushes that clasped her in a half embrace; perfumes, moonlight, the voice of the wind, all were part of the spell that bound her, held her, whispered to her. It was as though the love letter of Juliet had led her here to show her as in a gla.s.s darkly the vainness of love in the vainness of life.
Vainly, for as she sat watching in imagination the forms of the lost lovers parting there at the gate, suddenly there came upon her a stirring of the soul, a joyous uplifting as though wings had been given to her mind for one wild second raising it to the heights beyond earthly knowledge.
"Love can never die."
It was as though some ghostly voice had whispered this fact in her ear.
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 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 d.a.m.ned 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.
Yet now, just as if she had been through it all, the truth came flooding on her like a golden sea, the truth that life never loses touch with life, that the body is only a momentary manifestation of the ever living spirit.
Meeting Street, the old house so full of memories, Juliet"s letters, the garden, they had all been stretching out arms to her, trying to tell her something, whispering, suggesting, and now all these vague voices had become clear, as though strengthened by the moonlight and the mystery of night.
Clear as lip-spoken words came the message:
"You have lived before and we say this to you, we, the things that knew you and loved you in a past life."
A step that halted outside close to the garden gate broke the spell, the gate turned on its hinges shewing through its trellis work the form of a man. It was Pinckney just returned from some supper-party or club.
Phyl caught her breath back. Suddenly, and at the sight of Pinckney, Prue"s words of that morning entered her mind.
"Miss Julie, Ma.s.sa Pinckney told me tell yo" he be at de gate t"night same"s las" night. Done you let on as I told you."
And here he was, the man who had been occupying her thoughts and who was beginning to occupy her dreams, and here she was as though waiting for him by appointment.
But there was much more than that. Worlds and worlds more than that, a whole universe of happiness undreamed of.
She rose from the seat and the parted bushes rustled faintly as they closed behind her.
Pinckney, who had just shut the gate, heard the whisper of the leaves, he turned and saw a figure standing half in shadow and half in moonlight. For a moment he was startled, fancying it a stranger, then he saw that it was Phyl.
"Hullo," said he. "Why, Phyl, what are you doing here?"
The commonplace question shattered everything like a false note in music.
"Nothing," she answered. Then without a word more she ran past him and vanished into the house.
Pinckney cast the stump of his cigar away.
"What on earth is the matter with her now?" said he to himself. "What on earth have I done?"
The word she had uttered carried half a sob with it, it might have been the last word of a quarrel.
He stood for a moment glancing around. The wild idea had entered his mind that she had been there to meet some one and that his intrusion had put her out.
But there was no one in the garden; nothing but the trees and the flowers, wind shaken and lit by the moon, the same placid moon that had lit the garden of Vernons for the lovers of whom he knew nothing except by hearsay, and for whom he cared nothing at all.
CHAPTER VIII
When Phyl awoke from sleep next morning, the brightness of the South had lost some of its charm.
Something magical that had been forming in her mind and taking its life from Vernons had been shattered last night by Pinckney"s commonplace question.
This morning, looking back on yesterday, she could remember details but she could not recapture the essence. The exaltation that had raised her above and beyond herself. It was like the remembrance of a rose contrasted with the reality.
The whole day had been working up to that moment in the little arbour, when her mind, tricked or led, had risen to heights beyond thought, to happiness beyond experience, only to be cast down from those heights by the voice of reality.
The thing was plain enough to common sense; she had let herself be over-ruled by Imagination, working upon splendid material. 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, 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.
And the strange thing was that she had no regrets.
Looking back on yesterday, the things that had happened seemed of little interest. Sleep seemed to have put an Atlantic ocean between her and them.
Coming down to breakfast she found Pinckney just coming in from the garden; he said nothing about the incident of the night before, nor did she, there were other things to talk about. Seth, one of the darkies, had been "kicking up shines," he had given impudence to Miss Pinckney that morning. Impudence to Miss Pinckney! You can scarcely conceive the meaning of that statement without a personal knowledge of Miss Pinckney, and a full understanding of the magic of her rule.
Seth was, even now, packing up the quaint contraptions he called his luggage, and old Darius, the coloured odd job man, was getting a barrow out of the tool-house to wheel the said luggage to Seth"s grandmother"s house, somewhere in the negro quarters of the town. The whole affair of the impudence and dismissal had not taken two minutes, but the effects were widespread and lasting. Dinah was weeping, the kitchen in confusion; one might have thought a death had occurred in the house, and Miss Pinckney presiding at the breakfast table was voluble and silent by turns.
"Never mind," said Pinckney with all the light-heartedness of a man towards domestic affairs. "Seth"s not the only n.i.g.g.e.r in Charleston."
"I"m not bothering about his going," replied Miss Pinckney. "He was all thumbs and of no manner of use but to make work; what upsets me is the way he hid his nature. Time and again I"ve been good to that boy. He looked all black grin and frizzled head, nothing bad in him you"d say--and then!
It"s like opening a cupboard and finding a toad, and there"s Dinah going on like a fool; she"s crying because he"s going, not because he gave me impudence. Rachel"s the same, and I"m just going now to the kitchen to give them a talking to all round."
Off she went.
"I know what that means," said Pinckney. "It"s only once in a couple of years that there"s any trouble with servants and then--oh, my! You see Aunt Maria is not the same as other people because she loves every one dearly, and looks on the servants as part of the family. I expect she loves that black imp Seth, for all his faults, and that"s what makes her so upset."
"Same as I was about Rafferty," said Phyl with a little laugh.
Pinckney laughed also and their eyes met. Just like a veil swept aside, something indefinable that had lain between them, some awkwardness arising, maybe, from the Rafferty incident, vanished in that moment.
Phyl had been drawing steadily towards him lately, till, unknown to her, he had entered into the little romance of Juliet, so much so that if last night, at that magical moment when he met her on entering the gate--if at that moment he had taken her in his arms and kissed her, Love might have been born instantly from his embrace.
But the psychological moment had pa.s.sed, a crisis unknown to him and almost unknown to her.
And now, as if to seal the triumph of the commonplace, suddenly, the vague reservation that had lain between them, disappeared.
"Do you know," said he, "you taught me a lesson that day, a lesson every man ought to be taught before he leaves college."
"What was that?" asked Phyl.