The Ghost GirlStacpoole, H. De Vere (Henry De Vere)
General
The Ghost Girl
Stacpoole, H. De Vere (Henry De Vere)
Charleston (S.C.) -- Fiction; Guardian and ward -- Fiction; Love stories
"Impulsive. If I wasn't sitting here in broad daylight, I'd fancy it was
Juliet Mascarene. What makes you so like her? It's not the face so much,
though the family likeness runs strong, still, the face is different,
though like--It's just you yourself--well, I'm sure I don't know, seems to
me there's a lot of things hid from us. Look at the Pringles, Anthony's
family, the ones that live in Tradd Street. If you put their noses
together, they'd reach to Legare Street. It runs in the family. Julian
Pringle, he died in '70, he was just the same. Now why should a long nose
run through a family like that, or a bad temper, or the colour of hair? I
don't know. The world's a puzzle and the older one grows, the more it
puzzles one."
After dinner, Miss Pinckney ordered Phyl to put on her hat and they
started out for a drive.
Every day at five o'clock, weather permitting, Miss Pinckney took an
airing. She was one of the sights of Charleston, she, and the dark
chestnut horses driven by Abraham the coloured coachman, and the barouche
in which she drove; a carriage of other times, one of those deathless
conveyances turned out in Long Acre in the days when varnish was varnish
and hand labour had not been ousted by machinery. It was painted in a
basket-work pattern, the pattern peculiar to the English Royal carriages,
and the whole turn-out had an excellence and a style of its own--a thing
unpurchasable as yesterday.
They drove in the direction of the Battery and here they drew up to look
at the view. On one side of them stood the great curving row of mansions
facing the sea, old Georgian houses and houses more modern, yet without
offence, set in gardens where the palmetto leaves shivered in the sea wind
and the pink mimosa mixed its perfume with the salt-scented air. On the
other side lay the sea. Afternoon, late afternoon, is the time of all
times to visit this spacious and sunlit place. It is then that the old
ghosts return, if ever they return, to discuss the news brought by the
last packet from England, the doings of Mr. Pitt, the Paris fashions.
Looking seaward they would see no change in the changeless sea and little
change in the city if they turned their eyes that way.
Miss Pinckney got out and they walked a bit, inspecting the guns, each
with its brass plate and its story.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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