charmless, so much positive attraction proving so negative in effect. But he did not. He just took her as he found her and was glad she was gone.

“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 buttonholes. The old Planter used to do these things and a lot 33 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, God 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.”

33

He took a document 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 glasses 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 glass of 

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