"And I believe," said Hennessey, "the South is different now. It used to be all cotton before the war."
"Oh, no," said Pinckney. "Before the war there was a lot of cotton grown but we used to grow other things as well, we used to feed ourselves, the plantation was economically independent. The war broke us. We had to get money, so we grew cotton as cotton was never grown before; the South became a great sheet of cotton. You see, cotton is the only crop you can mortgage, so we grew cotton and mortgaged it. Of course the old-time planter is gone, everything is done now by companies, and that"s the devil of it--"
Pinckney was silent for a moment and sat staring before him as though he were looking at the Past.
"Companies, you see, don"t grow sunflowers to look at, don"t grow trees to shade them, don"t make love in a wild and extravagant manner and shoot other companies for crossing them in their affections--don"t play the guitar, in short.
"Companies don"t breed trotting horses and wear panama hats and put flowers in their b.u.t.tonholes. The old Planter used to do these things and a lot of others. He was a bit of a patriarch in his way, too--well, he"s gone and more"s the pity. He"s like an old house pulled down. No one can ever build it again as it was. The South"s a big industrial region now.
Not only cotton--ore and coal and machinery. We supply the North and East with pig-iron, machinery, G.o.d knows what. Berknowles was very keen on Southern industries, regularly bitten. He was talking of selling off here and coming to settle in Charleston when the illness took him-- and that reminds me."
He took a doc.u.ment from his pocket. "This is the will. I"ve kept it on my person since I started for here. It"s not the thing to trust to a handbag.
It"s in correct form, I believe. Temperley, our solicitor, made it out for him and it leaves everything to the girl when she"s twenty--but just read it and see what you think."
He lit another cigarette whilst Hennessey, putting on his gla.s.ses and pushing his dessert plate away, spread the will on the table.
Pinckney watched him as he read it. Hennessey was a new order of being to him. This easy-going, slipshod, garrulous gentleman, fond of his gla.s.s of wine, contrasted strangely with the typical lawyer of the States. Flushed and not in his business mood, the man of law cast his eyes over the doc.u.ment before him, reading bits of it here and there and seeming not inclined to bother himself by a concentration of his full energies on the matter.
Then, suddenly, his eyes became fixed on a paragraph which he re-read as though puzzled by the meaning of it. Then he looked up at the other over his gla.s.ses.
"Why, what"s this?" said he. "He has made _you_ Phyl"s guardian. _You!_"
Pinckney laughed.
"Yes, that was the chief thing that brought me over. He has made me her guardian, till she"s twenty, and he made me promise to look after her interests and see to all business arrangements. He said he had no near relations in Ireland, and he said that he"d sooner trust the devil than the few relatives he had, that they were Papists--that is to say Roman Catholics--he seemed to fear them like the deuce and their influence on the girl. I couldn"t understand him. I"ve never seen any harm in Roman Catholics; there are loads in the States and they seem to be just as good citizens as the others, better, for they seem to stick tighter by their religion. Anyhow, there you are. Berknowles had them on the brain and nothing would do him but I must come over to look after the business myself."
Hennessey, with his finger on the will, had been staring at Pinckney during this. He looked down now at the doc.u.ment and then up again.
"But you--her guardian--why, it"s absurd," said he. "You aren"t old enough to be a guardian, why, Lord bless my soul, what"ll people be doing next? A young chap like you to be the guardian of a girl like Phyl--why, it"s not proper."
"Not only am I to be her guardian," said Pinckney with a twinkle in his eyes, "but she"s to come and live under my roof at Charleston. I promised Berknowles that--He was dying, you see, and one can refuse nothing to a dying man."
Hennessey rose up in an abstracted sort of way, went to the sideboard, poured himself out a whisky and soda, took a sip, and sat down again.
"Extraordinary, isn"t it?" said Pinckney, tapping the ash off his cigarette. "All the same, you need not be worried at the impropriety of the business; there"s none, nothing improper could live in the same house with my aunt, Maria Pinckney. Vernons belongs to her though I live there."
"Vernons," put in the other. "What"s that?"
"It"s the name of our house in Charleston. It"s mine, really, but my father left it to Maria to live in; it comes to me at her death. I don"t want that house at all. I want her to keep it forever, but it"s such a pleasant old place, I like to live there instead of buying a house of my own. Vernons isn"t exactly a house, it"s more like a family tree--hollow--with all the ancestors inside instead of hanging on the branches."
"But why on earth didn"t Berknowles make your aunt guardian to the girl?"
asked Hennessey. "There"d have been some sense in that--a middle-aged woman--"
"I beg your pardon," said Pinckney, "my aunt is not a middle-aged woman, she"s not fifteen."
"Not what?" said Hennessey.
"Not fifteen--in years of discretion, though she"s over seventy as time goes. She has no knowledge at all of what money is or what money means--she flings it away, doesn"t spend it--just flings it away on anything and everything but herself. I don"t believe there"s a charity in the States that hasn"t squeezed her, or a beggar-man in the South that hasn"t banked on her. She was sent into the world to grow flowers and look after stray dogs and be robbed by hoboes; she has been nearly seventy years at it and she doesn"t know she has ever been robbed. She"s not a fool by any manner of means, and she rules the servants at Vernons in the good old patriarchal way, but she"s lost where money is concerned. That"s why Berknowles wanted me to look after the girl"s interests. As for anything else, I guess Maria Pinckney will be the real guardian."
"Well, I don"t know," said Hennessey. He was confused by all these new ideas shot into his mind suddenly like this after dinner, he could see that Pinckney was genuine enough, all the same it irritated him to think that Philip Berknowles should have chosen a youth like this to be second father to Phyl. What was the matter with himself, Hennessey? Hadn"t he a fine house in Merrion Square and a wife who would have treated the girl like a daughter?
"Well, I don"t know," said he. "It"s not for me to dispute the wishes of a client, but I"ve known Phyl since she was born and I"ve known her father since we were together at Trinity College and I"d have taken it more handsome if he"d left the looking after of her to me."
"I wonder he didn"t," said Pinckney. "He spoke of you a good deal to me, spoke of you as his best friend; all the same he seemed set on the idea of us taking care of the girl. He fell in love with Charleston and he cottoned to us; then, of course, there were the family reasons. Phyl"s mother was a Mascarene; my mother was her mother"s first cousin. Vernons belonged to the Mascarenes, my mother brought it to my father as part of her wedding portion. The Pinckneys" old house was lost to us in the smash up after the war. So, you see, Phyl ought to be as much at home at Vernons as I am. Funny, isn"t it, how things get mixed up and old family houses change hands?"
"And when do you want to take her away?" asked Hennessey.
"Upon my word, I"ve never thought of that," replied the other. "I want to see things settled up here and to go over the accounts with you.
Berknowles said the house had better be let--I should think it would be easy to find a good tenant--then I want to go to London on business and get back as quick as possible. She need not come back with me, it would scarcely give her time to get things ready. There"s a Mrs. Van Dusen, a friend of ours who lives in New York, she"s coming over in a month or so and Phyl might come with her as far as New York. It"s all plain sailing after that."
"Well," said Hennessey, folding up the will and putting it in his pocket.
"I suppose it"s all for the best, but it"s hard lines for a man to lose his best friend and see a good old estate like Kilgobbin taken off to the States--Oh, you needn"t tell me, if Phyl goes out there she"s done for as far as Ireland is concerned. Sure, they never come back, the people that go there, and if she does come back it"ll be with an American husband and he master of Kilgobbin. I know what America is, it never lets go of the man or woman it catches hold of."
"You"re not far wrong there," said Pinckney. "You see, life is set to a faster pace in America than over here and once you learn to step that pace you feel coming back here as if you were living in a country where people are hobbled. At least that"s my experience. Then the air is different.
There"s somehow a feeling of morning in America that goes through the whole day--almost--here, afternoon begins somewhere about eleven."
Hennessey yawned, and the two men, rising from the table, left the room and crossed the hall to the library.
Here, after a while, Hennessey bade the other good night and departed for bed, whilst Pinckney, leaning back in his armchair, fell into a lazy and contemplative mood, his eyes wandering from point to point.
All this business was very new to him. Pinckney had inherited his father"s brains as well as his money. He had discovered that a large fortune requires just as much care and attention as a large garden and that a man can extract just as much interest and amus.e.m.e.nt and the physical health that comes from both, out of money-tending as out of flower and vegetable growing. Knowing all about cotton and nearly everything about wheat, he managed occasionally to do a bit of speculative dealing without the least danger of burning his fingers. Self-reliant and self-a.s.sured, knowing his road and all its turnings, he had moved through life up to this with the ease of a well-oiled and almost frictionless mechanism.
But here was a new thing of which he had never dreamed. Here was another destiny suddenly thrust into his charge and another person"s property to be conserved and dealt with. Never, never, did he dream when acceding to Berknowles" request, of the troubles, little difficulties and causes of indecision that were preparing to meet him.
Up till now, one side of his character had been almost unknown to him. He had been quite unaware that he possessed a conscience most painfully sensitive with regard to the interests of others, a conscience that would p.r.i.c.k him and poison his peace were he to leave even little things undone in the fulfilment of the trust he had undertaken so lightheartedly.
Possessing a keen eye for men he began to recognise now why Berknowles had not chosen the easy-going Hennessey to look after Phyl and her affairs, and he guessed, just by the little bit he had seen of Kilgobbin and the servants, the slipshoddedness and waste going on behind the scenes in the absence of a master and mistress.
Pinckney loathed waste as he loathed inefficiency and as he loathed dirt.
They were all three brothers with Drink in his eyes and as he leaned back in the chair now, his gaze travelling about the room, he could not but perceive little things that would have brought exclamations from the soul of a careful housekeeper. The furniture had been upholstered, or rather re-upholstered in leather some five years ago. There is nothing that cries out so much against neglect as leather, and the chairs and couch in the library of Kilgobbin, without exactly crying out, still told their tale.
Some of the b.u.t.tons were gone, and some of them hung actually by the thread in the last stage of departure. There was a tiny triangular rent in the leather of the armchair wherein Phyl had been sitting and another armchair wanted a castor. The huge Persian rug that covered the centre of the floor shewed marks left by cigar and cigarette ash, and under a Jacobean book-case in the corner were stuffed all sorts of odds and ends, old paper-backed novels, a pair of old shoes, a tennis racquet and a boxing glove--besides other things.
Pinckney rose up, went to the book-case and placed his fingers on top of it, then he looked at his fingers and the bar of dust upon them, brushed his hand clean and came back to his chair by the fire. He heard the stable clock striking eleven. The sound of the wind that had been raging outside all during dinner time had died away and the sounds of the house made themselves manifest, the hundred stealthy accountable and unaccountable little sounds that night evolves from an old house set in the stillness of the country. Just as the night jasmine gives up its perfume to the night, so does an old house its past in the form of murmurs and crackings and memories and suggestions. Notwithstanding Dunn"s attentions there were rats alive in the cellars and under the boarding--and mice; the pa.s.sages leading to the kitchen premises made a whispering gallery where murderers seemed consulting together if the scullery window were forgotten and left open--as it usually was, and boards in the uneven flooring that had been preparing for the act for weeks and months would suddenly "go off with a bang," a noise startling in the dead of night as the crack of a pistol, and produced, heaven knows how, but never by daylight.
Even Pinckney, who did not believe in ghosts, became aware as he sat now by the fire that the old house was feeling for him to make him creep, feeling for him with its old disjointed fingers and all the artfulness of inanimate things.
He was aware that Sir Nicholas Berknowles was looking down at him with the terrible patient gaze of a portrait, and he returned the gaze, trying to imagine what manner of man this might have been and how he had lived and what he had done in those old days that were once real sunlit days filled with people with real voices, hearts, and minds.
A gentle creak as though a light step had pressed upon the flooring of the hall brought his mind back to reality and he was rising from his chair to retire for the night when a sound from outside the window made him sit down again. It was the sound of a step on the gravel path, a step stealthy and light, a real sound and no contraption of the imagination.
The idea of burglars sprang up in his mind, but was dismissed; that was no burglar"s footstep--and yet! He listened. The sound had ceased and now came a faint rubbing as of a hand feeling for the window followed by the sharp rapping of a knuckle on the gla.s.s.
"Hullo," cried Pinckney, jumping to his feet and approaching the shuttered window. "Who"s there?"
"It"s me," said a voice. "I"m locked out. Byrne"s bolted the front door.
Go to the hall door, will you, please, and let me in?"
"Phyl," said Pinckney to himself. "Good heavens!" Then to the other, "I"m coming."
Byrne had left a lamp lighted in the hall and the guest"s candlestick waiting for him on the table. The lamp was sufficient to show him the executive side of the big front door that had been nearly battered in in the time of the Fenians and still possessed the ponderous locks and bars of a past day when the tenants of Kilgobbin had fought the pikemen of Arranakilty and Rupert Berknowles had hung seventeen rebels, no less, on the branches of the big oak "be the gates."