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 phaeton. 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."
"G.o.d!" 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 in bothering a bit about it now. _You_ couldn"t understand. No one can understand, not even he."