The occasional noise of the caretaker as he moved from pew to pew scarcely disturbed the tranquillity, the scene was set beyond the reach of the sounds and daily affairs of this world, and the actors held in a medium unshakable as that which holds the ghostly life of bees in amber and birds in marqueterie.
“That was George Washington’s pew,” whispered Pinckney, “at least the one he sat in once. That’s the old Pinckney pew, belonged to Bures—other people sit there now. This is our pew—Vernons. The Mascarenes had it in the old days, of course.”
Phyl looked at the pew where Juliet Mascarene had sat often enough, no doubt, whilst the preacher had preached on the vanity of life, on the delusions of the world and the shortness of Time.
Many an eloquent divine had stood in the pulpit of St. Michael’s, but none have ever preached a sermon so poignant, so real, so searching as that which the old church preaches to those who care to hear.
They turned to go.
Outside Phyl was silent and Pinckney seemed occupied by thoughts of his own. They had got to that pleasant stage of intimacy where conversation can be dropped without awkwardness and picked up again haphazard, but you cannot be silent long in the streets of Charleston on a spring day. They visited the market-place and inspected the buzzards and then, somehow, without knowing it, they drifted on to the water side. Here where the docks lie deserted and the green water washes the weed grown and rotting timbers of wharves they took their seats on a baulk of timber to rest and contemplate things.
“There used to be ships here once,” said he. “Lots of ships—but that was before the war.”
He was silent and Phyl glanced sideways at him, wondering what was in his mind. She soon found out. A struggle was going on between his two selves, his business self that demanded up-to-dateness, bustle, and the energetic conduct of affairs, and his other self that was content to let things lie, to see Charleston just as she was, unspoiled by the thing we call Business Prosperity. It was a battle between the South and the North in him.
He talked it out to her. Went into details, pointed to Galveston and New Orleans, those greedy sea mouths that swallow the goods of the world and give out cotton, whilst Charleston lay idle, her wharves almost deserted, her storehouses empty.
He spoke almost vehemently, spoke as a business man speaks of wasted chances and things neglected. Then, when he had finished, the girl put in her word.