When they came round to the front of the house they found Colonel Grangerson and Miss Pinckney coming down the steps.
They were going to the garden in search of Phyl.
"We"ve been looking at the horses," said Silas, after he had greeted Miss Pinckney. "No, sir, I did not leave any of the doors open, but I"ve been looking for Sam with a blacksnake whip to liven him up. He left the grey without grooming after she was brought in this morning, and I was rubbing her down myself when this lady came into the yard."
"I"ll skin that n.i.g.g.e.r," cried the Colonel.
"I reckon I"ll save you that trouble, sir," replied the son, as they turned garden-wards.
Silas had little use for "r"s" and said "suh" for "sir" and "wah" for "war." He was also quite a different person in the presence of his father from what he was when alone or in the presence of strangers.
In the presence of his father, past generations spoke in his every word and action, he became sedate, deferential, leisurely. It was not fear of the elder man that caused this change, it was reflection from him.
The shadows were long in the garden, and away across the pastures, glimpsed beyond the cypress hedge and bordering the cotton fields, the pond-shadows cast by the live oaks at noon had become river shadows, flowing eastward; the murmur of bees filled the air like a haze of sound, and here and there as they pa.s.sed a bush coloured flowers detached themselves and became b.u.t.terflies.
They sat down on a great old stone bench lichened and sun warmed to enjoy the view, and the Colonel talked of tobacco and politics and cotton, including them all in his conversation in the grand patriarchal manner.
Phyl understanding little, and half drowsed by the warmth and the buzzing of the bees and the voice of the speaker, had given herself up to that lazy condition of mind which is the next best thing to sleep, when she was suddenly aroused. She was seated between Miss Pinckney and Silas. Silas had pinched her little finger.
She s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand away, and turned towards him. He was looking away over the pastures; his profile showed nothing but its absolute correctness. Miss Pinckney had noticed nothing, and the Colonel, who had finished with cotton, looking at his watch, declared that it was close on dinner time.
After supper that night, Phyl found herself in the garden. Silas had not appeared at supper; the Colonel had brought down a book of old photographs, photographs of people and places dead or changed, and he and Miss Pinckney became so absorbed in them that they had little thought for the girl.
She went out to look at the moon, and it was worth looking at, rising like a honey coloured shield above the belt of the eastern woods.
The whole world was filled with the moonlight, warm tinted, and ghostly as the light of vanished days, white moths were flitting above the bushes, and on the almost windless air the voice of an owl came across the cotton fields.
Phyl reached the seat where they had all sat that afternoon. It was still warm from the all-day sunshine, and she sat down to rest and listen.
The owl had ceased crying, and through the league wide silence faint sounds far and near told of the life moving and thrilling beneath the night; the boom of a beetle, voices from the distant road, and now and then a whisper of wind rising and dying out across the garden and the trees.
A faint sound came from behind the seat, and before Phyl could turn two warm hands covered her eyes.
She plucked them away and stood up.
"I _wish_ you wouldn"t do things like that," she cried. "How _dare_ you?"
"I couldn"t help it," replied the other, "you looked so comfortable. I didn"t mean to startle you. I thought you must have heard me coming across the gra.s.s."
"I didn"t--and you shouldn"t have done it."
"Well, I"m sorry. There, I"ve apologised, make friends."
"There is nothing to make friends about," she replied stiffly. "No, I don"t want to shake hands--I"m not angry, let us go into the house."
"Don"t," said Silas imploringly. "He and she are sitting over that old alb.u.m, comparing notes. I saw them through the window, that"s why I came to look for you in the garden. Do you know, I believe the Governor was gone once on Maria, years ago, but they never got married. He married my mother instead."
Phyl forgot her resentment.
The faint idea that Colonel Grangerson and Maria Pinckney had perhaps been more than friends in long gone days, had strayed across her mind, to be dismissed as a fancy. It interested her to find Silas confirming it.
"Of course, I can"t say for certain," he went on, lighting a cigarette. "I only judge by the way they go on when they"re together, and the way he talks of her. Say, do you ever want to grow old?"
"No, I don"t--ever."
"Neither do I. I hope I"ll be kicked to death by a horse, or drowned or shot before I"m forty. I don"t want to die in any beds with doctors round me. I reckon if I"m ever like that I"ll drink the liniment instead of the medicine--same as I nearly drenched Pap--and go to heaven with a red label for my ticket. Sit down for a while and let"s talk."
"No, I don"t care to sit down."
"I won"t touch you. I promise."
Phyl hesitated a moment and then sat down. She was not afraid of Silas in the least, but his tricks of an overgrown boy did not please her; it seemed to her sometimes as though his irresponsibility was less an inheritance from youth, than from some ancestor ill-balanced to the point of craziness. If any other man of his age had acted and spoken to her as he had done she would have smacked his face, but Silas was Silas, and his good looks and seeming innocence, and something really charming that lay away at the back of his character and gave colour to this personality, managed, somehow, to condone his queerness of conduct.
All the same she sat a foot away from him on the seat, and kept her hands folded on her lap.
Silas sat for a while smoking in silence, then he spoke.
"Where"s this you said you came from?"
"Ireland."
"You don"t talk like a Paddy a bit."
"Don"t I?"
"Not a bit, nor look like one."
"Have you seen many Irish people?"
"No, mostly in pictures--comic papers, you know, like _Puck_."
"I think it"s a shame," broke out Phyl. "People are always making fun of the Irish, drawing them like monkeys with great upper lips--but it"s only ignorant people who never travel who think of them like that."
"That"s so, I expect," replied Silas, either unconscious of the dig at himself or undesirous of a quarrel, "and the next few dollars I have to spare I"ll go to Ireland. I"m crazy now to see it."
"What"s made you crazy to see it?"
"Because it"s the place you come from."
Phyl sniffed.
"I hate compliments."
"I wasn"t complimenting you, I was complimenting Ireland," said Silas sweetly. She was silent, a white moth pa.s.sing close to her held her gaze for a moment, then it flitted away across the bushes.
"Let"s forget Ireland for a moment," said she, "and talk of Charleston. Do you know many people there?"
"I know most every one. The Pinckneys and Calhouns and Tredegars and Revenalls and--"