The Colonel, searching in his waistcoat pocket, found a pair of folding gla.s.ses and put them on.
"She gets it from her mother"s side," said Miss Pinckney, "the Lord knows how it is these things happen, but it"s Juliet, isn"t it?"
The Colonel removed his gla.s.ses, wiped them with his handkerchief, and returned them to his pocket.
"It is," said he. Then in the fine old fashion he turned to the girl, raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.
"Phyl," said Miss Pinckney, "would not you like to have a look at the garden whilst we have a chat? Old people"s talk isn"t of much interest to young people."
"Old people," cried the warrior. "There are no old people in this room."
He made for the door and opened it for Phyl, then he accompanied her into the hall, where at the still open door he pointed the way to the garden.
CHAPTER II
Outside Phyl stood for a moment to breathe the warm scented air and look around her.
To be treated like a child by any other person than Maria Pinckney would have incensed her, all the same to be told to do a thing because it was good for her, or because it was a pleasant thing to do, in the teller"s opinion, was an almost certain way of making her do the exact opposite.
The garden did not attract her, the place did.
That cypress avenue with the sun upon it, that broad sweep of drive in front of the house, the distant peeps of country between trees and the languorous lazy atmosphere of the perfect day fascinated her mind. She came along the house front to the right, and found herself at the gate of the stable yard.
The stable yard of Grangersons was an immense flagged quadrangle bounded on the right, counting from the point of entrance, by the kitchen premises.
There was stable room for forty horses, coach-house accommodation for a dozen or more carriages.
The car had been run into one of the coach-houses and the yard stood empty, sunlit, silent, save for the voices of the pigeons wheeling in the air, or strutting on the roof of the great barn adjoining the stables.
One of the stable doors was open and as Phyl crossed the yard a young man appeared at the open door, shaded his eyes and looked at her. Then he came forward. It was Silas Grangerson, and Phyl thought he was the handsomest and most graceful person she had ever seen in her life.
Silas was a shade over six feet in height, dark, straight, slim yet perfectly proportioned; his face was extraordinary, the most vivid thing one would meet in a year"s journey, and with a daring, and at times, almost a mad look unforgettable when once glimpsed. Like the Colonel and like his ancestors Silas had a direct way with women.
"Hallo," said he, with the sunny smile of old acquaintanceship, "where have _you_ sprung from?"
Phyl was startled for a moment, then almost instantly she came in touch with the vein and mood and mind of the other and laughed.
"I came with Miss Pinckney," said she.
"You"re not from Charleston?"
"Yes, indeed I am."
"But where do you live in Charleston? I"ve never seen you and I know every--besides you don"t look as if you belonged to Charleston--I don"t believe you"ve come from there."
"Then where do you think I"ve come from?"
"I don"t know," said Silas laughing, "but it doesn"t matter as long as you"re here, does it? "Scuse my fooling, won"t you--I wouldn"t with a stranger, but you don"t seem a stranger somehow--though I don"t know your name."
"Phylice Berknowles," said Phyl, glancing up at him and half wondering how it was that, despite his good looks, his manhood, and their total unacquaintanceship, she felt as little constrained in his presence as though he were a boy.
"And my name is Silas Grangerson. Say, is Maria Pinckney in the house with father?"
"She is."
"Talking over old times, I s"pose?" said Silas.
"Yes!"
"I can hear them. It"s always the same when they get together--and I suppose you got sick of it and came out?"
"No, they put me out--asked me wouldn"t I like to look at the garden."
Already she had banded herself with him in mild opposition to the elders.
"Great--Jerusalem. They"re just like a pair of old horses wanting to be left quiet and rub their nose-bags together. Look at the garden! I can hear them--come on and look at the horses."
He led the way to a loose box and opened the upper door.
"That"s Flying Fox, she"s mine, the fastest trotter in the Carolinas--you know anything about horses?"
"Rather!"
"I thought you did, somehow. Mind! she doesn"t take to strangers. Mind!
she bites like an alligator."
"Not me," said Phyl, fondling the lovely but fleering-eyed head protruding above the lower door.
"So she doesn"t," said Silas admiringly, "she"s taken to you--well, I don"t blame her. Here"s John Barleycorn," opening another door, "own brother to the Fox, he"s Pap"s; he"s a bolter, and kicks like a duck gun.
She"s got all her vice at one end of her and he at the other, match pair."
He whistled between his teeth as he put up the bars, then he shewed other horses, Phyl watching his every movement, and wondering what it was that gave pleasure to her in watching. Silas moved, or seemed to move, absolutely without effort, and his slim brown hands touched everything delicately, as though they were touching fragile porcelain, yet those same hands could bend an iron bar, or rein in John Barleycorn even when the bit was between the said J. B."s teeth.
"That"s the horses," said he, flinging open a coach-house door, "and that"s the shandrydan the governor still drives in when he goes to Charleston. Look at it. It was made in the forties, and you should see it with a darkey on the box and Pap inside, and all his luggage behind, and he going off to Charleston, and the n.i.g.g.e.r children running after it."
Phyl inspected the mustard-yellow vehicle. Then he closed the door on it, put up the bar, and, the business of showing things over, did a little double shuffle as though Phyl were not present, or as though she were a boy friend and not a strange young woman.
"Say, do you like poetry?" said he, breaking off and seeming suddenly to remember her presence.
"No," said Phyl. "At least--"
"Well, here"s some.
""There was an old hen and she had a wooden leg, She went to the barn and she laid a wooden egg, She laid it right down by the barn--don"t you think.""
"Well?" said she, laughing.