The Ghost Girl Page 8

  CHAPTER VIII

  Dublin can never have been a cheerful city. Even in the days when thebutchers joined in street fights and hung their antagonists when caught onsteel hooks--like legs of mutton--the gaiety of Dublin one may fancy tohave been more a matter of spirits than of spirit.

  Echoes from the days when the Parliament sat in Stephen's Green come downto us through the works of Charles Lever, but the riotous gaiety of theold days when Barrington was a judge of the Admiralty Court, the Hell FireClub an institution, and Count Considine a figure in society, must betaken with a grain of salt.

  Mangan shows you the old Dublin as it was in those glorious times, and inthe new Dublin of to-day the shade of Mangan seems still to walk arm inarm with the shade of Mathurin. Gloomy ghosts addicted to melancholy,noting with satisfaction that the streets are as dirty as ever, the oldPublic Houses still standing, that, despite the tramways--thoseextraordinary new modern inventions--the tide of life runs pretty much thesame as of old. The ghosts of Mangan and Mathurin have never seen a taxicab.

  Dublin at the present day is a splendid city for old ghosts to wander inwithout having their corns trodden on or their susceptibilities injured.Phyl had come to Dublin to live with the Hennesseys in Merrion Square.

  "Never shall my door be shut on you except behind your back," Hennesseyhad said, and he meant it.

  The girl was worth several thousand a year; had she been penniless itwould have been just the same.

  You may meet many geniuses in your journey through life, many brilliantpeople, many beautiful people, many fascinating people, but you will notmeet many friends. Hennessey belonged to the society of Friends, his wifewas a member of the same community, and he would have been ruined only forhis partner Niven, who was an ordinary lowdown human creature who believedin no one and kept the business together.

  On the day of her arrival at Merrion Square and during her first interviewwith Mrs. Hennessey in the large, cheerless drawing-room wheredecalcomanied flower pots lingered like relics of the Palaeolithic age ofArt, Phyl kept herself above tears, just as a swimmer keeps his head abovewater in a choppy sea.

  It was all so gloomy, yet so friendly, that the mind could not openlyrevolt at the gloom; it was all so different from the wind and trees andfreedom of Kilgobbin, and Mrs. Hennessey, whom she had only seen oncebefore, was so different, on closer acquaintance, from any of the peopleshe had hitherto met in her little world.

  Mrs. Hennessey, with a soul above dust and housekeeping, a faded woman,not very tidy, with an exalted air, pouring out tea from a Britannia metalware teapot and talking all the time about Willy Yeates, the Irish Playersand Lady Gregory's last play, fascinated the girl, who did not know whoWilly Yeates was and who had never seen the Irish Players.

  Nor could she learn from Mrs. Hennessey. It was impossible to get a wordin edgeways with that lady. Sometimes, indeed, during a lull in her minddisturbance, she would remain quiet whilst you answered some question,only to find that she had totally forgotten the question and was notlistening to your reply.

  Phyl got so used to Mrs. Hennessey after a few days that she did notlisten to her questions, and so the two being matched, they got on welltogether. Young people soon accommodate themselves to their surroundings,and in a month the girl had grown to the colour of her new life, at least,on the outside of her mind. It seemed to her that she had lived years inMerrion Square. Kilgobbin--Hennessey had managed to let the place--seemeda dream of her childhood. She saw no future, and rebellion was impossible;there was nothing to rebel against--except the dulness and greyness oflife. No people could have been kinder than the Hennesseys; unfortunatelythey had numerous friends, and the friends of the Hennesseys did notappeal to Phyl.

  A boy in her position would have adapted himself quickly enough, and beenhail fellow well met with Mr. Mattram, the dentist of Westland Row, or theyoung Farrels, whose father owned one of the biggest wine merchants'businesses in the city; but the feminine instinct told Phyl that thesewere not the sort of people from whose class she had sprung, that theircircle was not her circle and that she had stepped down in life in somemysterious way. This fact was brought sharply home to her by a youngFarrel, a male of the Farrel brood, a hobbledehoy, good-looking enough butwith a Dublin accent and a cheeky manner.

  This immature wine merchant at a party given by Mrs. Hennessey had madelove to Phyl and had tried to kiss her behind the dining-room door.

  The recollection of the smack in the face she had given him soothed herthat night as she lay tossing in her bed, and it was on this night and forthe first time since she left Kilgobbin that the recollection of Pinckneycame before her otherwise than as a shadow. He stood with the Hennesseycircle as his background, a bright, good-looking figure and a gentleman tohis finger-tips.

  Why had she cast aside her own people--even though they were distantrelations? What stupidity had caused her to insult Pinckney by telling himshe hated him? She found herself asking that question without being ableto answer it.

  After all that fuss at Kilgobbin and Pinckney's departure, Mr. Hennesseyhad proved to her that Rafferty was a rogue who deserved no quarter; theman had been dismissed, the whole business was done with and over, andnow, looking back in cool blood, she was utterly unable to reconstruct andput together the reasons for the outburst of anger that had severed herfrom the one kinsman who had put out his hand to help her.

  She could no longer conjure up the feeling that Pinckney was an interlopercome to break up Kilgobbin and spoil the home she had known fromchildhood.

  Fate had done that. Kilgobbin was gone--let to strangers; Hennessey hadtaken over her guardianship _pro tem_, and it was entirely owing toherself that she was in her present position. She had no right tocriticise the friends of the Hennesseys; she had deliberately walked intothat circle from which she felt she never could escape now.

  Just as Pinckney had discovered that guardianship was showing him traitsin his character hitherto unknown to him, Phyl was discovering her woman'sinstinct as regards social matters.

  She recognised that once having taken her place amongst the Hennessey set,her position for life was fixed, as far as Ireland was concerned. She wasbranded.

  The Berknowles were an old family, but she was the last of them. Therelatives living in the south could be no help to her; they were poor,rabid Catholics and had fallen to little account, owing to unwisemarriages and that irresponsible fatuous apathy in affairs which is thedry rot of Ireland and the Irish people. They were proud as Lucifer, butno one was proud of them.

  If only Philip Berknowles had been a man to make fast friends amongst hisown class, some of those friends might have come to his daughter's rescuenow. But Berknowles had lived his own life since the death of his wife, aneasy-going country gentleman in a county mostly inhabited by squireens andcottage folk, caring little for the _convenances_ and with no taste forwomen's society.

  Thoughts born of all these facts, some of which were only half understood,filled the mind of the girl as she lay awake with the noise of thatraucous party ringing in her ears; and when she fell asleep, it was onlyto awake with a sense of despondency weighing upon her and the odiousFarrel incident waiting to follow her through the day.

  About a week later, coming down to breakfast one morning, she found aletter on her plate. A letter with American stamps on it and the address,Miss Phylice Berknowles, Merrion Square, Dublin, Ireland, written in afirm, bold hand.

  Mrs. Hennessey was not down and Mr. Hennessey had departed for the office,so Phyl had the breakfast table to herself--and the letter.

  She knew at once whom it was from, even before she read the postmark,"Charleston."

  Pinckney, the man who had been in her thoughts during the past six orseven days, the man who had left Ireland righteously disgusted with her,the man to whom she had said, "I hate you!"

  The scene flashed before her as she tore the envelope open, his suddenblaze of anger, the way he had torn the papers up, his departure. What washe going to say to her now? She flus
hed at the thought that this thing inher hand might prove to be his opinion of her in cold blood, a reproof, aremonstrance--she opened the folded sheet--ah!

  "Dear Phyl,

  "Aunt Maria was greatly disappointed when I returned here without you, she had quite made up her mind that you were coming back with me. We both lost our temper that day, but I was the worse, for I said a word I shouldn't have said, and for which I apologise. Aunt Maria says it was the Pinckney temper. However that may be, we shall be delighted to see you. Mrs. Van Dusen leaves on the 6th of next month. I am sending all particulars to Mr. Hennessey. You could meet Mrs. Van Dusen at Liverpool and go with her as far as New York. Let me have a cable to know if you are coming. Pinckney, Vernons, Charleston, U. S. A., is the cable address.

  "Your affectionate guardian--also cousin-- "R. Pinckney."

  Then underneath, in an angular, old-fashioned hand, one of thosehandwritings we associate with crossed letters, rosewood desks, valentinesand wafers:

  "Be sure to come. I am very anxious to see you, and I only hope you will like me as much as I am sure to like you.

  "Maria Pinckney."

  Phyl caught her breath back when she read this and her eyes filled withtears. It was the woman's voice that touched her, coming after Pinckney'sbusiness-like and jerky sentences.

  Then she sat with the letter before her, looking at the new prospect ithad opened for her.

  Was Pinckney still angry, despite his talk about the Pinckney temper; hadhe written not of his own free will but at the desire of Maria Pinckney?She read the thing over again without finding any solution to thisquestion.

  But one fact was clear. Maria Pinckney was genuine in her invitation.

  "I'll go," said Phyl.

  She rose up from the table as though determined then and there to startoff for America, left the room, went upstairs and knocked at Mrs.Hennessey's door.

  That lady was sitting up in bed with a stocking tied round her throat--shewas suffering from a slight attack of tonsilitis--and the Irish _Times_spread on her knees.

  "Mrs. Hennessey," said Phyl, "I have just had a letter from my cousins inAmerica, and they want me to go out to them."

  "Want you to go to America!" said Mrs. Hennessey. "On a visit, Isuppose?"

  "No, to stay there."

  "To stay in America; but what on earth do they want you to do that for?Who on earth would dream of leaving Dublin to live in America! It'sextraordinary the ideas some people get hold of. Then, of course, theydon't know, that's all that's to be said for them. It's like hearingpeople talking and talking of all the fine views abroad, and you'd thinkthey'd never seen the Dargle or the Glen of the Downs; they don't know thebeauty of their own country or haven't eyes to see it, and they must goraving of the Bay of Naples with Kiliney Bay a stone's throw away fromthem, and talking of Paris with Dublin outside their doors, and praisingup foreign actors with never a word of the Irish Players. Dublin givingher best to them, and they with deaf ears to her music and blind eyes toher sons."

  "But, you see, Mrs. Hennessey, the Pinckneys are my relations."

  "Irish?" cried the good woman, absolutely unconscious of everything butthe vision before her. "Those that can't see their own land aren't Irish.Mongrels is the name for them, without pride of heart or light ofunderstanding."

  She was off.

  With a far, fixed gaze and her mind in a state of internal combustion, sheseemed a thousand miles away from Phyl and her affairs, fighting thebattles of Ireland.

  Phyl gathered the impression that, if she went to America Mrs. Hennesseywould grieve less over the fact that she (Phyl) was leaving MerrionSquare, than over the fact that she was leaving Dublin. She escaped,carrying this impression with her, went upstairs, dressed, and thenstarted off for Mr. Hennessey's office.

  It was a cold, bright day and Dublin looked almost cheerful in thesunlight.

  The lawyer looked surprised when she was shown into his private room;then, when she had told him her business, he fumbled amongst the papers onhis desk and produced a letter.

  "This is from Pinckney," said he. "It came by the same post as yours, onlyit was directed to the office. It's the same story, too. He wants you togo over."

  "I've been thinking over the whole business," said Phyl, "and I feel Iought to go."

  "Aren't you happy in Dublin?" asked he.

  "M'yes," answered the other. "But, you see--at least, I'm as happy as Isuppose I'll be anywhere, only they are my people and I feel I ought to goto them. It's very lonely to have no people of one's own. You and Mrs.Hennessey have been very kind to me, and I shall always be grateful,but--"

  "But we aren't your own flesh and blood. You're right. Well, there it is.We'll be sorry to lose you, but, maybe, though you haven't much experienceof the world, you've hit the nail on the head. We aren't your flesh andblood, and though the Pinckneys aren't much more to you, still, one dropof blood makes all the difference in the world. Then again, you're a cutabove us; we're quite simple people, but the Berknowles were always in theCastle set and a long chalk above the Hennesseys. I was saying that toNorah only last night when I was reading the account of the big party atthe Viceregal Lodge and the names of all the people that were there, and Isaid to her, 'Phyl ought to be going to parties like that by and by whenshe grows older, and we can't do much for her in that way,' and off shegoes in a temper. 'Who's the Aberdeens?' says she. 'A lot of Englishwithout an Irish feather in their tails, and he opening the doors tovisitors in his dressing gown--Castle,' she says, 'it's little Castlethere'll be when we have a Parliament sitting in Dublin.'"

  "I don't want to go to parties at the Viceregal Lodge," said Phyl,flushing to think of what a snob she had been when only a few days backshe had criticised the Hennesseys and their set in her own mind. Thesehonest, straightforward good people were not snobs, whatever else theymight be, and if her desire for America had been prompted solely by thedesire to escape from the social conditions that environed her friends,she would now have smothered it and stamped on it. But the call fromCharleston that had come across the water to her was an influence far morepotent than that. That call from the country where her mother had beenborn and where her mother's people had always lived had more in it thanthe voices that carried the message.

  "Well," said Hennessey, "you mayn't want to go to parties now, but youwill when you are a bit older. However, you can please yourself--Do youwant to go to America?"

  "I do," said Phyl. "It's not that I want to leave you, but there issomething that tells me I have got to go. When I read the letter firstthis morning, I was delighted to think that Mr. Pinckney was not stillangry with me, and I liked the idea of the change, for Dublin is a bitdreary after Kilgobbin and--and well, I _will_ say it--I don't care forsome of the people I have met in Dublin. But since then a new feeling hascome over me. I think it came as I was walking down here to the office.It's a feeling as if something were pulling me ever so slightly, yet stillpulling me from over there. My father said that there was more of motherin me than him. I remember he said that once--well, perhaps it's that. Shecame from over there."

  "Maybe it is," said Hennessey.