Pinckney undid bolt and bar, turned the key in the great lock and flung the door open, disclosing Phyl standing in the moonlight. The contrast between the forbidding and ponderous door and the charming little figure against which it had stood as a barrier might have struck him had his mind been less astonished. As it was he could think of nothing but the strangeness of the business in hand.
"Where on earth have you been?" said he.
"Out in the woods," said Phyl, entering quite unconcerned and removing her cloak. "A fox got trapped in the woods and I went to let it out and couldn"t find it, then that old fool Byrne locked the door; lucky you were up. I saw the light in the library shining through a crack in the shutters and knocked."
Pinckney was putting up the bar and sliding the bolts. He said nothing.
Had Phyl been another girl, he might have laughed and joked over the matter, but care of Phyl"s well-being was now part of his business in life and that consideration just checked his speech. There was nothing at all wrong in the affair, and never for a moment did he dream of making the slightest remonstrance; still, the unwisdom of a young girl wandering about in the woods at night after trapped foxes was a patent fact which disturbed the mind of this guardian unto dumbness.
Phyl, who was as sensitive to impressions as a radiometer to light, noted the silence of the other and resented it as she hung up her old hat and cloak. She knew nothing of the true facts of the case, she looked on Pinckney as a being almost of her own age, and that he should dare to express disapproval of an act of hers not concerning him, even by silence, was an intolerable insult. She knew that she loathed him now.--Prig!
This was the first real meeting of these two and Fate, with the help of Irish temper and the Pinckney conscience, was making a fine fiasco of it.
Phyl, having hung up the hat and coat, turned without a word, marched into the library and finding the book she had been reading that day, put it under her arm.
"Good night," said she as she pa.s.sed him in the hall.
"Good night," he replied.
He watched her disappearing up the stairs, stood for a moment irresolute, and then went into the library. He knew he had offended her and he knew exactly how he had offended her. There are silences that can be more hurting than speech--yet what could he have said? He rummaged in his mind to find something he might have said and could find nothing more appropriate than a remark about the weather and the fineness of the night.
Yet a bald and decrepit remark like that would have been as bad almost as silence, for it would have ignored the main point at issue--the night-wandering of his ward.
He sat down again for a moment in the armchair by the fireplace and began to wrestle with the position in which he found himself. This was a small business, but if Phyl in the future was to do things that he did not approve of it would be his plain duty to remonstrate with her. An odious position for youth to be placed in. How she would loathe and hate him!
Pinckney, though a man of the world in many ways and a good business man, was still at heart a boy just as young as Phyl; even in years he was very little older than she, and the boy side of his mind was in full revolt at the job set before him by fate.
Then he came to a resolution.
"She can do jolly well what she pleases," said he to himself, "without my interference. Aunt Maria can attend to that. My business will be to look after her property and keep sharks off it. _I"m_ not going to set up in business to tell a girl what she ought or oughtn"t to do--that"s a woman"s job."
Satisfied with this seeming solution of the difficulty he went to bed.
Meanwhile, Phyl, having marched off with the book under her arm found, when she reached her room, that she had forgotten a matchbox, and, too proud to return to the hall for one, went to bed in the dark.
She lay awake for an hour, her mind obsessed by thoughts of this man who had suddenly stepped into her life, and who possessed such a strange power to disturb her being and fill it with feelings of unrest, irritation and, strangely enough, a vague attraction.
The attraction one might fancy the iron to feel for the distant magnet, or the floating stick for the far-off whirlpool.
Then she fell asleep and dreamed that they were at dinner and Mr.
Hennessey was waiting at table. Her father was there and, before the dream converted itself into something equally fatuous she heard Pinckney"s voice, also in the dream; he seemed looking for her in the hall and he was calling to her, "Phyl--Phyl!"
CHAPTER V
Next morning came with a burst of sunshine and a windy, cloudless sky.
Pinckney, dressing with his window open, could see the park with the rooks wheeling and cawing over the trees, whilst the warm wind brought into the room all sorts of winter scents on the very breath of summer.
This rainy land where the snow rarely comes has all sorts of surprises of climate and character. Nothing is truly logical in Ireland, not even winter. That is what makes the place so delightful to some minds and so perplexing to others.
Hennessey was staying for a day or two to go over accounts and explain the working of the estate to Pinckney.
He was in the hall when the latter came down, and gave him good morning.
"Where"s your mistress?" said Hennessey to old Byrne, as they took their seats at the breakfast table.
"Faith, she"s been out since six," said Byrne. "She came down threatenin"
to skin Rafferty alive for layin" fox thraps in the woods, then she had a bite of bread and b.u.t.ter and a cup of tea Norah made for her, and off she went with Rafferty to hunt out the thraps and take them up. It"s little she cares for breakfast."
"I was the same way myself when I was her age," said Hennessey to Pinckney. "Up at four in the morning and out fishing in Dublin Bay--it"s well to be young."
"Look here," said the young man, as Byrne left the room, "she was out till eleven last night in the woods; she knocked me up as I was sitting in the library and I let her in. _I_ don"t see anything wrong in the business, but all the same, it"s not a particularly safe proceeding and I suppose a mother or father would have jawed her--I couldn"t. I suppose I showed by my manner that I didn"t approve of her being out so late, for she seemed in a huff as she went up to bed. My position is a bit difficult, but I"m hanged if I"m going to do the heavy father or careful mother business. If she was only a boy, I could talk to her like a Dutch uncle, but I don"t know anything about girls. I wish--"
Pinckney"s wish remained forever unexpressed, for at the moment the door opened and in came Phyl.
Her face was glowing with the morning air and she seemed to have forgotten the business of the night before as she greeted Pinckney and the lawyer and took her place at the table.
"Phyl," said the lawyer, half jocularly, "here"s Mr. Pinckney been complaining that you were wandering about all night in the woods, knocking him up to let you in at two o"clock in the morning."
Phyl, who was helping herself to bacon, looked up at Pinckney.
"Oh, you cad," said her eyes. Then she spoke:
"I came in at eleven. If I had known, I would have called up Byrne or one of the servants to let me in."
Pinckney could have slain Hennessey.
"Good gracious," he said. "_I_ wasn"t complaining. I only just mentioned the fact."
"The fact that I was out till two," said Phyl, with another upward glance of scorn.
"I never said any such thing. I said eleven."
"It was my loose way of speaking; but, sure, what"s the good of getting out of temper?" put in Hennessey. "Mr. Pinckney wasn"t meaning anything, but you see, Phyl, it"s just this way, your father has made him your guardian."
"My _what!_" cried the girl.
"_Oh_, Lord!" said Pinckney, in despair at the blundering way of the other. Then finding himself again and the saving vein of humour, without which man is just a leaden figure:
"Yes, that"s it. I"m your guardian. You must on no account go out without my permission, or cough or sneeze without a written permit--Oh, Phyl, don"t be thinking nonsense of that sort. I _am_ your guardian, it seems, and by your father"s special request, but you are absolutely free to do as you like."
"A nice sort of guardian," put in Hennessey with a grin.
"I am only, really, guardian of your money and your interests," went on the other, "and your welfare. When you came in last night late, I was a bit taken aback and I thought--as a matter of fact, I thought it might be dangerous being out alone in this wild part of the country so late at night, but I did not want to interfere; you can understand, can"t you?
What I want you to get out of your mind is, that I am that odious thing, a meddling person. I"m not."
Phyl was very white. She had risen from the table and was at the window.