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@@ -0,0 +1,6332 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Summer, by Edith Wharton + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Summer + +Author: Edith Wharton + +Release Date: March 12, 2006 [EBook #166] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUMMER *** + + + + +Produced by Meredith Ricker, John Hamm and David Widger + + + + + +SUMMER + +by Edith Wharton + + +1917 + + + + +I + + +A girl came out of lawyer Royall's house, at the end of the one street +of North Dormer, and stood on the doorstep. + +It was the beginning of a June afternoon. The springlike transparent sky +shed a rain of silver sunshine on the roofs of the village, and on the +pastures and larchwoods surrounding it. A little wind moved among the +round white clouds on the shoulders of the hills, driving their shadows +across the fields and down the grassy road that takes the name of street +when it passes through North Dormer. The place lies high and in the +open, and lacks the lavish shade of the more protected New England +villages. The clump of weeping-willows about the duck pond, and the +Norway spruces in front of the Hatchard gate, cast almost the only +roadside shadow between lawyer Royall's house and the point where, at +the other end of the village, the road rises above the church and skirts +the black hemlock wall enclosing the cemetery. + +The little June wind, frisking down the street, shook the doleful +fringes of the Hatchard spruces, caught the straw hat of a young man +just passing under them, and spun it clean across the road into the +duck-pond. + +As he ran to fish it out the girl on lawyer Royall's doorstep noticed +that he was a stranger, that he wore city clothes, and that he was +laughing with all his teeth, as the young and careless laugh at such +mishaps. + +Her heart contracted a little, and the shrinking that sometimes came +over her when she saw people with holiday faces made her draw back into +the house and pretend to look for the key that she knew she had already +put into her pocket. A narrow greenish mirror with a gilt eagle over it +hung on the passage wall, and she looked critically at her reflection, +wished for the thousandth time that she had blue eyes like Annabel +Balch, the girl who sometimes came from Springfield to spend a week with +old Miss Hatchard, straightened the sunburnt hat over her small swarthy +face, and turned out again into the sunshine. + +"How I hate everything!" she murmured. + +The young man had passed through the Hatchard gate, and she had the +street to herself. North Dormer is at all times an empty place, and at +three o'clock on a June afternoon its few able-bodied men are off in +the fields or woods, and the women indoors, engaged in languid household +drudgery. + +The girl walked along, swinging her key on a finger, and looking about +her with the heightened attention produced by the presence of a stranger +in a familiar place. What, she wondered, did North Dormer look like to +people from other parts of the world? She herself had lived there +since the age of five, and had long supposed it to be a place of some +importance. But about a year before, Mr. Miles, the new Episcopal +clergyman at Hepburn, who drove over every other Sunday--when the roads +were not ploughed up by hauling--to hold a service in the North Dormer +church, had proposed, in a fit of missionary zeal, to take the young +people down to Nettleton to hear an illustrated lecture on the Holy +Land; and the dozen girls and boys who represented the future of North +Dormer had been piled into a farm-waggon, driven over the hills to +Hepburn, put into a way-train and carried to Nettleton. + +In the course of that incredible day Charity Royall had, for the first +and only time, experienced railway-travel, looked into shops with +plate-glass fronts, tasted cocoanut pie, sat in a theatre, and listened +to a gentleman saying unintelligible things before pictures that she +would have enjoyed looking at if his explanations had not prevented her +from understanding them. This initiation had shown her that North Dormer +was a small place, and developed in her a thirst for information that +her position as custodian of the village library had previously failed +to excite. For a month or two she dipped feverishly and disconnectedly +into the dusty volumes of the Hatchard Memorial Library; then the +impression of Nettleton began to fade, and she found it easier to take +North Dormer as the norm of the universe than to go on reading. + +The sight of the stranger once more revived memories of Nettleton, and +North Dormer shrank to its real size. As she looked up and down it, from +lawyer Royall's faded red house at one end to the white church at the +other, she pitilessly took its measure. There it lay, a weather-beaten +sunburnt village of the hills, abandoned of men, left apart by railway, +trolley, telegraph, and all the forces that link life to life in modern +communities. It had no shops, no theatres, no lectures, no "business +block"; only a church that was opened every other Sunday if the state +of the roads permitted, and a library for which no new books had been +bought for twenty years, and where the old ones mouldered undisturbed on +the damp shelves. Yet Charity Royall had always been told that she ought +to consider it a privilege that her lot had been cast in North Dormer. +She knew that, compared to the place she had come from, North Dormer +represented all the blessings of the most refined civilization. Everyone +in the village had told her so ever since she had been brought there as +a child. Even old Miss Hatchard had said to her, on a terrible occasion +in her life: "My child, you must never cease to remember that it was Mr. +Royall who brought you down from the Mountain." + +She had been "brought down from the Mountain"; from the scarred cliff +that lifted its sullen wall above the lesser slopes of Eagle Range, +making a perpetual background of gloom to the lonely valley. The +Mountain was a good fifteen miles away, but it rose so abruptly from the +lower hills that it seemed almost to cast its shadow over North Dormer. +And it was like a great magnet drawing the clouds and scattering them +in storm across the valley. If ever, in the purest summer sky, there +trailed a thread of vapour over North Dormer, it drifted to the Mountain +as a ship drifts to a whirlpool, and was caught among the rocks, torn up +and multiplied, to sweep back over the village in rain and darkness. + +Charity was not very clear about the Mountain; but she knew it was a bad +place, and a shame to have come from, and that, whatever befell her +in North Dormer, she ought, as Miss Hatchard had once reminded her, to +remember that she had been brought down from there, and hold her tongue +and be thankful. She looked up at the Mountain, thinking of these +things, and tried as usual to be thankful. But the sight of the young +man turning in at Miss Hatchard's gate had brought back the vision of +the glittering streets of Nettleton, and she felt ashamed of her old +sun-hat, and sick of North Dormer, and jealously aware of Annabel Balch +of Springfield, opening her blue eyes somewhere far off on glories +greater than the glories of Nettleton. + +"How I hate everything!" she said again. + +Half way down the street she stopped at a weak-hinged gate. Passing +through it, she walked down a brick path to a queer little brick temple +with white wooden columns supporting a pediment on which was inscribed +in tarnished gold letters: "The Honorius Hatchard Memorial Library, +1832." + +Honorius Hatchard had been old Miss Hatchard's great-uncle; though she +would undoubtedly have reversed the phrase, and put forward, as her +only claim to distinction, the fact that she was his great-niece. For +Honorius Hatchard, in the early years of the nineteenth century, had +enjoyed a modest celebrity. As the marble tablet in the interior of +the library informed its infrequent visitors, he had possessed marked +literary gifts, written a series of papers called "The Recluse of Eagle +Range," enjoyed the acquaintance of Washington Irving and Fitz-Greene +Halleck, and been cut off in his flower by a fever contracted in Italy. +Such had been the sole link between North Dormer and literature, a +link piously commemorated by the erection of the monument where Charity +Royall, every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, sat at her desk under a +freckled steel engraving of the deceased author, and wondered if he felt +any deader in his grave than she did in his library. + +Entering her prison-house with a listless step she took off her hat, +hung it on a plaster bust of Minerva, opened the shutters, leaned out +to see if there were any eggs in the swallow's nest above one of the +windows, and finally, seating herself behind the desk, drew out a +roll of cotton lace and a steel crochet hook. She was not an expert +workwoman, and it had taken her many weeks to make the half-yard +of narrow lace which she kept wound about the buckram back of a +disintegrated copy of "The Lamplighter." But there was no other way of +getting any lace to trim her summer blouse, and since Ally Hawes, the +poorest girl in the village, had shown herself in church with enviable +transparencies about the shoulders, Charity's hook had travelled faster. +She unrolled the lace, dug the hook into a loop, and bent to the task +with furrowed brows. + +Suddenly the door opened, and before she had raised her eyes she knew +that the young man she had seen going in at the Hatchard gate had +entered the library. + +Without taking any notice of her he began to move slowly about the +long vault-like room, his hands behind his back, his short-sighted eyes +peering up and down the rows of rusty bindings. At length he reached the +desk and stood before her. + +"Have you a card-catalogue?" he asked in a pleasant abrupt voice; and +the oddness of the question caused her to drop her work. + +"A WHAT?" + +"Why, you know----" He broke off, and she became conscious that he was +looking at her for the first time, having apparently, on his entrance, +included her in his general short-sighted survey as part of the +furniture of the library. + +The fact that, in discovering her, he lost the thread of his remark, +did not escape her attention, and she looked down and smiled. He smiled +also. + +"No, I don't suppose you do know," he corrected himself. "In fact, it +would be almost a pity----" + +She thought she detected a slight condescension in his tone, and asked +sharply: "Why?" + +"Because it's so much pleasanter, in a small library like this, to poke +about by one's self--with the help of the librarian." + +He added the last phrase so respectfully that she was mollified, and +rejoined with a sigh: "I'm afraid I can't help you much." + +"Why?" he questioned in his turn; and she replied that there weren't +many books anyhow, and that she'd hardly read any of them. "The worms +are getting at them," she added gloomily. + +"Are they? That's a pity, for I see there are some good ones." He seemed +to have lost interest in their conversation, and strolled away again, +apparently forgetting her. His indifference nettled her, and she picked +up her work, resolved not to offer him the least assistance. Apparently +he did not need it, for he spent a long time with his back to her, +lifting down, one after another, the tall cob-webby volumes from a +distant shelf. + +"Oh, I say!" he exclaimed; and looking up she saw that he had drawn out +his handkerchief and was carefully wiping the edges of the book in his +hand. The action struck her as an unwarranted criticism on her care of +the books, and she said irritably: "It's not my fault if they're dirty." + +He turned around and looked at her with reviving interest. "Ah--then +you're not the librarian?" + +"Of course I am; but I can't dust all these books. Besides, nobody ever +looks at them, now Miss Hatchard's too lame to come round." + +"No, I suppose not." He laid down the book he had been wiping, and stood +considering her in silence. She wondered if Miss Hatchard had sent +him round to pry into the way the library was looked after, and the +suspicion increased her resentment. "I saw you going into her house just +now, didn't I?" she asked, with the New England avoidance of the proper +name. She was determined to find out why he was poking about among her +books. + +"Miss Hatchard's house? Yes--she's my cousin and I'm staying there," the +young man answered; adding, as if to disarm a visible distrust: "My name +is Harney--Lucius Harney. She may have spoken of me." + +"No, she hasn't," said Charity, wishing she could have said: "Yes, she +has." + +"Oh, well----" said Miss Hatchard's cousin with a laugh; and after +another pause, during which it occurred to Charity that her answer +had not been encouraging, he remarked: "You don't seem strong on +architecture." + +Her bewilderment was complete: the more she wished to appear to +understand him the more unintelligible his remarks became. He reminded +her of the gentleman who had "explained" the pictures at Nettleton, and +the weight of her ignorance settled down on her again like a pall. + +"I mean, I can't see that you have any books on the old houses about +here. I suppose, for that matter, this part of the country hasn't been +much explored. They all go on doing Plymouth and Salem. So stupid. My +cousin's house, now, is remarkable. This place must have had a past--it +must have been more of a place once." He stopped short, with the blush +of a shy man who overhears himself, and fears he has been voluble. "I'm +an architect, you see, and I'm hunting up old houses in these parts." + +She stared. "Old houses? Everything's old in North Dormer, isn't it? The +folks are, anyhow." + +He laughed, and wandered away again. + +"Haven't you any kind of a history of the place? I think there was one +written about 1840: a book or pamphlet about its first settlement," he +presently said from the farther end of the room. + +She pressed her crochet hook against her lip and pondered. There was +such a work, she knew: "North Dormer and the Early Townships of Eagle +County." She had a special grudge against it because it was a limp +weakly book that was always either falling off the shelf or slipping +back and disappearing if one squeezed it in between sustaining volumes. +She remembered, the last time she had picked it up, wondering how anyone +could have taken the trouble to write a book about North Dormer and its +neighbours: Dormer, Hamblin, Creston and Creston River. She knew them +all, mere lost clusters of houses in the folds of the desolate ridges: +Dormer, where North Dormer went for its apples; Creston River, where +there used to be a paper-mill, and its grey walls stood decaying by the +stream; and Hamblin, where the first snow always fell. Such were their +titles to fame. + +She got up and began to move about vaguely before the shelves. But she +had no idea where she had last put the book, and something told her that +it was going to play her its usual trick and remain invisible. It was +not one of her lucky days. + +"I guess it's somewhere," she said, to prove her zeal; but she spoke +without conviction, and felt that her words conveyed none. + +"Oh, well----" he said again. She knew he was going, and wished more +than ever to find the book. + +"It will be for next time," he added; and picking up the volume he had +laid on the desk he handed it to her. "By the way, a little air and sun +would do this good; it's rather valuable." + +He gave her a nod and smile, and passed out. + + + + +II + + +The hours of the Hatchard Memorial librarian were from three to five; +and Charity Royall's sense of duty usually kept her at her desk until +nearly half-past four. + +But she had never perceived that any practical advantage thereby +accrued either to North Dormer or to herself; and she had no scruple +in decreeing, when it suited her, that the library should close an hour +earlier. A few minutes after Mr. Harney's departure she formed this +decision, put away her lace, fastened the shutters, and turned the key +in the door of the temple of knowledge. + +The street upon which she emerged was still empty: and after glancing up +and down it she began to walk toward her house. But instead of entering +she passed on, turned into a field-path and mounted to a pasture on the +hillside. She let down the bars of the gate, followed a trail along the +crumbling wall of the pasture, and walked on till she reached a knoll +where a clump of larches shook out their fresh tassels to the wind. +There she lay down on the slope, tossed off her hat and hid her face in +the grass. + +She was blind and insensible to many things, and dimly knew it; but to +all that was light and air, perfume and colour, every drop of blood in +her responded. She loved the roughness of the dry mountain grass under +her palms, the smell of the thyme into which she crushed her face, the +fingering of the wind in her hair and through her cotton blouse, and the +creak of the larches as they swayed to it. + +She often climbed up the hill and lay there alone for the mere pleasure +of feeling the wind and of rubbing her cheeks in the grass. Generally +at such times she did not think of anything, but lay immersed in an +inarticulate well-being. Today the sense of well-being was intensified +by her joy at escaping from the library. She liked well enough to have a +friend drop in and talk to her when she was on duty, but she hated to be +bothered about books. How could she remember where they were, when they +were so seldom asked for? Orma Fry occasionally took out a novel, and +her brother Ben was fond of what he called "jography," and of books +relating to trade and bookkeeping; but no one else asked for anything +except, at intervals, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," or "Opening of a Chestnut +Burr," or Longfellow. She had these under her hand, and could have +found them in the dark; but unexpected demands came so rarely that they +exasperated her like an injustice.... + +She had liked the young man's looks, and his short-sighted eyes, and his +odd way of speaking, that was abrupt yet soft, just as his hands were +sun-burnt and sinewy, yet with smooth nails like a woman's. His hair was +sunburnt-looking too, or rather the colour of bracken after frost; his +eyes grey, with the appealing look of the shortsighted, his smile shy +yet confident, as if he knew lots of things she had never dreamed of, +and yet wouldn't for the world have had her feel his superiority. But +she did feel it, and liked the feeling; for it was new to her. Poor and +ignorant as she was, and knew herself to be--humblest of the humble +even in North Dormer, where to come from the Mountain was the worst +disgrace--yet in her narrow world she had always ruled. It was partly, +of course, owing to the fact that lawyer Royall was "the biggest man +in North Dormer"; so much too big for it, in fact, that outsiders, +who didn't know, always wondered how it held him. In spite of +everything--and in spite even of Miss Hatchard--lawyer Royall ruled in +North Dormer; and Charity ruled in lawyer Royall's house. She had never +put it to herself in those terms; but she knew her power, knew what it +was made of, and hated it. Confusedly, the young man in the library +had made her feel for the first time what might be the sweetness of +dependence. + +She sat up, brushed the bits of grass from her hair, and looked down on +the house where she held sway. It stood just below her, cheerless and +untended, its faded red front divided from the road by a "yard" with +a path bordered by gooseberry bushes, a stone well overgrown with +traveller's joy, and a sickly Crimson Rambler tied to a fan-shaped +support, which Mr. Royall had once brought up from Hepburn to please +her. Behind the house a bit of uneven ground with clothes-lines strung +across it stretched up to a dry wall, and beyond the wall a patch of +corn and a few rows of potatoes strayed vaguely into the adjoining +wilderness of rock and fern. + +Charity could not recall her first sight of the house. She had been told +that she was ill of a fever when she was brought down from the Mountain; +and she could only remember waking one day in a cot at the foot of Mrs. +Royall's bed, and opening her eyes on the cold neatness of the room that +was afterward to be hers. + +Mrs. Royall died seven or eight years later; and by that time Charity +had taken the measure of most things about her. She knew that Mrs. +Royall was sad and timid and weak; she knew that lawyer Royall was harsh +and violent, and still weaker. She knew that she had been christened +Charity (in the white church at the other end of the village) to +commemorate Mr. Royall's disinterestedness in "bringing her down," and +to keep alive in her a becoming sense of her dependence; she knew that +Mr. Royall was her guardian, but that he had not legally adopted her, +though everybody spoke of her as Charity Royall; and she knew why he had +come back to live at North Dormer, instead of practising at Nettleton, +where he had begun his legal career. + +After Mrs. Royall's death there was some talk of sending her to a +boarding-school. Miss Hatchard suggested it, and had a long conference +with Mr. Royall, who, in pursuance of her plan, departed one day for +Starkfield to visit the institution she recommended. He came back the +next night with a black face; worse, Charity observed, than she had ever +seen him; and by that time she had had some experience. + +When she asked him how soon she was to start he answered shortly, "You +ain't going," and shut himself up in the room he called his office; +and the next day the lady who kept the school at Starkfield wrote that +"under the circumstances" she was afraid she could not make room just +then for another pupil. + +Charity was disappointed; but she understood. It wasn't the temptations +of Starkfield that had been Mr. Royall's undoing; it was the thought of +losing her. He was a dreadfully "lonesome" man; she had made that out +because she was so "lonesome" herself. He and she, face to face in that +sad house, had sounded the depths of isolation; and though she felt +no particular affection for him, and not the slightest gratitude, she +pitied him because she was conscious that he was superior to the people +about him, and that she was the only being between him and solitude. +Therefore, when Miss Hatchard sent for her a day or two later, to talk +of a school at Nettleton, and to say that this time a friend of hers +would "make the necessary arrangements," Charity cut her short with the +announcement that she had decided not to leave North Dormer. + +Miss Hatchard reasoned with her kindly, but to no purpose; she simply +repeated: "I guess Mr. Royall's too lonesome." + +Miss Hatchard blinked perplexedly behind her eye-glasses. Her long frail +face was full of puzzled wrinkles, and she leant forward, resting her +hands on the arms of her mahogany armchair, with the evident desire to +say something that ought to be said. + +"The feeling does you credit, my dear." + +She looked about the pale walls of her sitting-room, seeking counsel of +ancestral daguerreotypes and didactic samplers; but they seemed to make +utterance more difficult. + +"The fact is, it's not only--not only because of the advantages. There +are other reasons. You're too young to understand----" + +"Oh, no, I ain't," said Charity harshly; and Miss Hatchard blushed to +the roots of her blonde cap. But she must have felt a vague relief at +having her explanation cut short, for she concluded, again invoking the +daguerreotypes: "Of course I shall always do what I can for you; and in +case... in case... you know you can always come to me...." + +Lawyer Royall was waiting for Charity in the porch when she returned +from this visit. He had shaved, and brushed his black coat, and looked a +magnificent monument of a man; at such moments she really admired him. + +"Well," he said, "is it settled?" + +"Yes, it's settled. I ain't going." + +"Not to the Nettleton school?" + +"Not anywhere." + +He cleared his throat and asked sternly: "Why?" + +"I'd rather not," she said, swinging past him on her way to her room. +It was the following week that he brought her up the Crimson Rambler and +its fan from Hepburn. He had never given her anything before. + +The next outstanding incident of her life had happened two years later, +when she was seventeen. Lawyer Royall, who hated to go to Nettleton, +had been called there in connection with a case. He still exercised +his profession, though litigation languished in North Dormer and its +outlying hamlets; and for once he had had an opportunity that he could +not afford to refuse. He spent three days in Nettleton, won his case, +and came back in high good-humour. It was a rare mood with him, and +manifested itself on this occasion by his talking impressively at the +supper-table of the "rousing welcome" his old friends had given him. He +wound up confidentially: "I was a damn fool ever to leave Nettleton. It +was Mrs. Royall that made me do it." + +Charity immediately perceived that something bitter had happened to him, +and that he was trying to talk down the recollection. She went up to bed +early, leaving him seated in moody thought, his elbows propped on the +worn oilcloth of the supper table. On the way up she had extracted from +his overcoat pocket the key of the cupboard where the bottle of whiskey +was kept. + +She was awakened by a rattling at her door and jumped out of bed. She +heard Mr. Royall's voice, low and peremptory, and opened the door, +fearing an accident. No other thought had occurred to her; but when +she saw him in the doorway, a ray from the autumn moon falling on his +discomposed face, she understood. + +For a moment they looked at each other in silence; then, as he put his +foot across the threshold, she stretched out her arm and stopped him. + +"You go right back from here," she said, in a shrill voice that startled +her; "you ain't going to have that key tonight." + +"Charity, let me in. I don't want the key. I'm a lonesome man," he +began, in the deep voice that sometimes moved her. + +Her heart gave a startled plunge, but she continued to hold him back +contemptuously. "Well, I guess you made a mistake, then. This ain't your +wife's room any longer." + +She was not frightened, she simply felt a deep disgust; and perhaps he +divined it or read it in her face, for after staring at her a moment +he drew back and turned slowly away from the door. With her ear to her +keyhole she heard him feel his way down the dark stairs, and toward +the kitchen; and she listened for the crash of the cupboard panel, but +instead she heard him, after an interval, unlock the door of the house, +and his heavy steps came to her through the silence as he walked down +the path. She crept to the window and saw his bent figure striding up +the road in the moonlight. Then a belated sense of fear came to her +with the consciousness of victory, and she slipped into bed, cold to the +bone. + + +A day or two later poor Eudora Skeff, who for twenty years had been the +custodian of the Hatchard library, died suddenly of pneumonia; and the +day after the funeral Charity went to see Miss Hatchard, and asked to be +appointed librarian. The request seemed to surprise Miss Hatchard: she +evidently questioned the new candidate's qualifications. + +"Why, I don't know, my dear. Aren't you rather too young?" she +hesitated. + +"I want to earn some money," Charity merely answered. + +"Doesn't Mr. Royall give you all you require? No one is rich in North +Dormer." + +"I want to earn money enough to get away." + +"To get away?" Miss Hatchard's puzzled wrinkles deepened, and there was +a distressful pause. "You want to leave Mr. Royall?" + +"Yes: or I want another woman in the house with me," said Charity +resolutely. + +Miss Hatchard clasped her nervous hands about the arms of her chair. Her +eyes invoked the faded countenances on the wall, and after a faint cough +of indecision she brought out: "The... the housework's too hard for you, +I suppose?" + +Charity's heart grew cold. She understood that Miss Hatchard had no +help to give her and that she would have to fight her way out of her +difficulty alone. A deeper sense of isolation overcame her; she felt +incalculably old. "She's got to be talked to like a baby," she thought, +with a feeling of compassion for Miss Hatchard's long immaturity. "Yes, +that's it," she said aloud. "The housework's too hard for me: I've been +coughing a good deal this fall." + +She noted the immediate effect of this suggestion. Miss Hatchard paled +at the memory of poor Eudora's taking-off, and promised to do what she +could. But of course there were people she must consult: the clergyman, +the selectmen of North Dormer, and a distant Hatchard relative at +Springfield. "If you'd only gone to school!" she sighed. She followed +Charity to the door, and there, in the security of the threshold, said +with a glance of evasive appeal: "I know Mr. Royall is... trying at +times; but his wife bore with him; and you must always remember, +Charity, that it was Mr. Royall who brought you down from the Mountain." +Charity went home and opened the door of Mr. Royall's "office." He was +sitting there by the stove reading Daniel Webster's speeches. They had +met at meals during the five days that had elapsed since he had come to +her door, and she had walked at his side at Eudora's funeral; but they +had not spoken a word to each other. + +He glanced up in surprise as she entered, and she noticed that he +was unshaved, and that he looked unusually old; but as she had always +thought of him as an old man the change in his appearance did not move +her. She told him she had been to see Miss Hatchard, and with what +object. She saw that he was astonished; but he made no comment. + +"I told her the housework was too hard for me, and I wanted to earn the +money to pay for a hired girl. But I ain't going to pay for her: you've +got to. I want to have some money of my own." + +Mr. Royall's bushy black eyebrows were drawn together in a frown, and he +sat drumming with ink-stained nails on the edge of his desk. + +"What do you want to earn money for?" he asked. + +"So's to get away when I want to." + +"Why do you want to get away?" + +Her contempt flashed out. "Do you suppose anybody'd stay at North Dormer +if they could help it? You wouldn't, folks say!" + +With lowered head he asked: "Where'd you go to?" + +"Anywhere where I can earn my living. I'll try here first, and if I +can't do it here I'll go somewhere else. I'll go up the Mountain if I +have to." She paused on this threat, and saw that it had taken effect. +"I want you should get Miss Hatchard and the selectmen to take me at the +library: and I want a woman here in the house with me," she repeated. + +Mr. Royall had grown exceedingly pale. When she ended he stood up +ponderously, leaning against the desk; and for a second or two they +looked at each other. + +"See here," he said at length as though utterance were difficult, +"there's something I've been wanting to say to you; I'd ought to have +said it before. I want you to marry me." + +The girl still stared at him without moving. "I want you to marry me," +he repeated, clearing his throat. "The minister'll be up here next +Sunday and we can fix it up then. Or I'll drive you down to Hepburn to +the Justice, and get it done there. I'll do whatever you say." His +eyes fell under the merciless stare she continued to fix on him, and +he shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other. As he +stood there before her, unwieldy, shabby, disordered, the purple veins +distorting the hands he pressed against the desk, and his long orator's +jaw trembling with the effort of his avowal, he seemed like a hideous +parody of the fatherly old man she had always known. + +"Marry you? Me?" she burst out with a scornful laugh. "Was that what you +came to ask me the other night? What's come over you, I wonder? How long +is it since you've looked at yourself in the glass?" She straightened +herself, insolently conscious of her youth and strength. "I suppose +you think it would be cheaper to marry me than to keep a hired girl. +Everybody knows you're the closest man in Eagle County; but I guess +you're not going to get your mending done for you that way twice." + +Mr. Royall did not move while she spoke. His face was ash-coloured and +his black eyebrows quivered as though the blaze of her scorn had blinded +him. When she ceased he held up his hand. + +"That'll do--that'll about do," he said. He turned to the door and took +his hat from the hat-peg. On the threshold he paused. "People ain't been +fair to me--from the first they ain't been fair to me," he said. Then he +went out. + +A few days later North Dormer learned with surprise that Charity had +been appointed librarian of the Hatchard Memorial at a salary of eight +dollars a month, and that old Verena Marsh, from the Creston Almshouse, +was coming to live at lawyer Royall's and do the cooking. + + + + +III + + +It was not in the room known at the red house as Mr. Royall's "office" +that he received his infrequent clients. Professional dignity and +masculine independence made it necessary that he should have a real +office, under a different roof; and his standing as the only lawyer of +North Dormer required that the roof should be the same as that which +sheltered the Town Hall and the post-office. + +It was his habit to walk to this office twice a day, morning and +afternoon. It was on the ground floor of the building, with a separate +entrance, and a weathered name-plate on the door. Before going in +he stepped in to the post-office for his mail--usually an empty +ceremony--said a word or two to the town-clerk, who sat across the +passage in idle state, and then went over to the store on the opposite +corner, where Carrick Fry, the storekeeper, always kept a chair for him, +and where he was sure to find one or two selectmen leaning on the long +counter, in an atmosphere of rope, leather, tar and coffee-beans. Mr. +Royall, though monosyllabic at home, was not averse, in certain moods, +to imparting his views to his fellow-townsmen; perhaps, also, he was +unwilling that his rare clients should surprise him sitting, clerkless +and unoccupied, in his dusty office. At any rate, his hours there were +not much longer or more regular than Charity's at the library; the rest +of the time he spent either at the store or in driving about the country +on business connected with the insurance companies that he represented, +or in sitting at home reading Bancroft's History of the United States +and the speeches of Daniel Webster. + +Since the day when Charity had told him that she wished to succeed +to Eudora Skeff's post their relations had undefinably but definitely +changed. Lawyer Royall had kept his word. He had obtained the place for +her at the cost of considerable maneuvering, as she guessed from the +number of rival candidates, and from the acerbity with which two of +them, Orma Fry and the eldest Targatt girl, treated her for nearly a +year afterward. And he had engaged Verena Marsh to come up from +Creston and do the cooking. Verena was a poor old widow, doddering and +shiftless: Charity suspected that she came for her keep. Mr. Royall was +too close a man to give a dollar a day to a smart girl when he could +get a deaf pauper for nothing. But at any rate, Verena was there, in the +attic just over Charity, and the fact that she was deaf did not greatly +trouble the young girl. + +Charity knew that what had happened on that hateful night would not +happen again. She understood that, profoundly as she had despised Mr. +Royall ever since, he despised himself still more profoundly. If she had +asked for a woman in the house it was far less for her own defense than +for his humiliation. She needed no one to defend her: his humbled pride +was her surest protection. He had never spoken a word of excuse +or extenuation; the incident was as if it had never been. Yet its +consequences were latent in every word that he and she exchanged, in +every glance they instinctively turned from each other. Nothing now +would ever shake her rule in the red house. + +On the night of her meeting with Miss Hatchard's cousin Charity lay in +bed, her bare arms clasped under her rough head, and continued to think +of him. She supposed that he meant to spend some time in North Dormer. +He had said he was looking up the old houses in the neighbourhood; and +though she was not very clear as to his purpose, or as to why anyone +should look for old houses, when they lay in wait for one on every +roadside, she understood that he needed the help of books, and resolved +to hunt up the next day the volume she had failed to find, and any +others that seemed related to the subject. + +Never had her ignorance of life and literature so weighed on her as in +reliving the short scene of her discomfiture. "It's no use trying to be +anything in this place," she muttered to her pillow; and she shrivelled +at the vision of vague metropolises, shining super-Nettletons, +where girls in better clothes than Belle Balch's talked fluently of +architecture to young men with hands like Lucius Harney's. Then she +remembered his sudden pause when he had come close to the desk and had +his first look at her. The sight had made him forget what he was going +to say; she recalled the change in his face, and jumping up she ran over +the bare boards to her washstand, found the matches, lit a candle, and +lifted it to the square of looking-glass on the white-washed wall. Her +small face, usually so darkly pale, glowed like a rose in the faint orb +of light, and under her rumpled hair her eyes seemed deeper and larger +than by day. Perhaps after all it was a mistake to wish they were blue. +A clumsy band and button fastened her unbleached night-gown about the +throat. She undid it, freed her thin shoulders, and saw herself a bride +in low-necked satin, walking down an aisle with Lucius Harney. He would +kiss her as they left the church.... She put down the candle and covered +her face with her hands as if to imprison the kiss. At that moment she +heard Mr. Royall's step as he came up the stairs to bed, and a fierce +revulsion of feeling swept over her. Until then she had merely despised +him; now deep hatred of him filled her heart. He became to her a +horrible old man.... + + +The next day, when Mr. Royall came back to dinner, they faced each other +in silence as usual. Verena's presence at the table was an excuse for +their not talking, though her deafness would have permitted the freest +interchange of confidences. But when the meal was over, and Mr. Royall +rose from the table, he looked back at Charity, who had stayed to help +the old woman clear away the dishes. + +"I want to speak to you a minute," he said; and she followed him across +the passage, wondering. + +He seated himself in his black horse-hair armchair, and she leaned +against the window, indifferently. She was impatient to be gone to the +library, to hunt for the book on North Dormer. + +"See here," he said, "why ain't you at the library the days you're +supposed to be there?" + +The question, breaking in on her mood of blissful abstraction, deprived +her of speech, and she stared at him for a moment without answering. + +"Who says I ain't?" + +"There's been some complaints made, it appears. Miss Hatchard sent for +me this morning----" + +Charity's smouldering resentment broke into a blaze. "I know! Orma Fry, +and that toad of a Targatt girl and Ben Fry, like as not. He's going +round with her. The low-down sneaks--I always knew they'd try to have me +out! As if anybody ever came to the library, anyhow!" + +"Somebody did yesterday, and you weren't there." + +"Yesterday?" she laughed at her happy recollection. "At what time wasn't +I there yesterday, I'd like to know?" + +"Round about four o'clock." + +Charity was silent. She had been so steeped in the dreamy remembrance of +young Harney's visit that she had forgotten having deserted her post as +soon as he had left the library. + +"Who came at four o'clock?" + +"Miss Hatchard did." + +"Miss Hatchard? Why, she ain't ever been near the place since she's been +lame. She couldn't get up the steps if she tried." + +"She can be helped up, I guess. She was yesterday, anyhow, by the +young fellow that's staying with her. He found you there, I understand, +earlier in the afternoon; and he went back and told Miss Hatchard the +books were in bad shape and needed attending to. She got excited, and +had herself wheeled straight round; and when she got there the place was +locked. So she sent for me, and told me about that, and about the other +complaints. She claims you've neglected things, and that she's going to +get a trained librarian." + +Charity had not moved while he spoke. She stood with her head thrown +back against the window-frame, her arms hanging against her sides, and +her hands so tightly clenched that she felt, without knowing what hurt +her, the sharp edge of her nails against her palms. + +Of all Mr. Royall had said she had retained only the phrase: "He told +Miss Hatchard the books were in bad shape." What did she care for the +other charges against her? Malice or truth, she despised them as she +despised her detractors. But that the stranger to whom she had felt +herself so mysteriously drawn should have betrayed her! That at the +very moment when she had fled up the hillside to think of him more +deliciously he should have been hastening home to denounce her +short-comings! She remembered how, in the darkness of her room, she had +covered her face to press his imagined kiss closer; and her heart raged +against him for the liberty he had not taken. + +"Well, I'll go," she said suddenly. "I'll go right off." + +"Go where?" She heard the startled note in Mr. Royall's voice. + +"Why, out of their old library: straight out, and never set foot in +it again. They needn't think I'm going to wait round and let them say +they've discharged me!" + +"Charity--Charity Royall, you listen----" he began, getting heavily out +of his chair; but she waved him aside, and walked out of the room. + +Upstairs she took the library key from the place where she always hid it +under her pincushion--who said she wasn't careful?--put on her hat, and +swept down again and out into the street. If Mr. Royall heard her go +he made no motion to detain her: his sudden rages probably made him +understand the uselessness of reasoning with hers. + +She reached the brick temple, unlocked the door and entered into the +glacial twilight. "I'm glad I'll never have to sit in this old vault +again when other folks are out in the sun!" she said aloud as the +familiar chill took her. She looked with abhorrence at the long dingy +rows of books, the sheep-nosed Minerva on her black pedestal, and the +mild-faced young man in a high stock whose effigy pined above her desk. +She meant to take out of the drawer her roll of lace and the library +register, and go straight to Miss Hatchard to announce her resignation. +But suddenly a great desolation overcame her, and she sat down and laid +her face against the desk. Her heart was ravaged by life's cruelest +discovery: the first creature who had come toward her out of the +wilderness had brought her anguish instead of joy. She did not cry; +tears came hard to her, and the storms of her heart spent themselves +inwardly. But as she sat there in her dumb woe she felt her life to be +too desolate, too ugly and intolerable. + +"What have I ever done to it, that it should hurt me so?" she groaned, +and pressed her fists against her lids, which were beginning to swell +with weeping. + +"I won't--I won't go there looking like a horror!" she muttered, +springing up and pushing back her hair as if it stifled her. She opened +the drawer, dragged out the register, and turned toward the door. As +she did so it opened, and the young man from Miss Hatchard's came in +whistling. + + + + +IV + + +He stopped and lifted his hat with a shy smile. "I beg your pardon," he +said. "I thought there was no one here." + +Charity stood before him, barring his way. "You can't come in. The +library ain't open to the public Wednesdays." + +"I know it's not; but my cousin gave me her key." + +"Miss Hatchard's got no right to give her key to other folks, any more'n +I have. I'm the librarian and I know the by-laws. This is my library." + +The young man looked profoundly surprised. + +"Why, I know it is; I'm so sorry if you mind my coming." + +"I suppose you came to see what more you could say to set her against +me? But you needn't trouble: it's my library today, but it won't be +this time tomorrow. I'm on the way now to take her back the key and the +register." + +Young Harney's face grew grave, but without betraying the consciousness +of guilt she had looked for. + +"I don't understand," he said. "There must be some mistake. Why should I +say things against you to Miss Hatchard--or to anyone?" + +The apparent evasiveness of the reply caused Charity's indignation to +overflow. "I don't know why you should. I could understand Orma Fry's +doing it, because she's always wanted to get me out of here ever since +the first day. I can't see why, when she's got her own home, and her +father to work for her; nor Ida Targatt, neither, when she got a legacy +from her step-brother on'y last year. But anyway we all live in the +same place, and when it's a place like North Dormer it's enough to make +people hate each other just to have to walk down the same street every +day. But you don't live here, and you don't know anything about any of +us, so what did you have to meddle for? Do you suppose the other girls'd +have kept the books any better'n I did? Why, Orma Fry don't hardly know +a book from a flat-iron! And what if I don't always sit round here +doing nothing till it strikes five up at the church? Who cares if the +library's open or shut? Do you suppose anybody ever comes here for +books? What they'd like to come for is to meet the fellows they're going +with if I'd let 'em. But I wouldn't let Bill Sollas from over the hill +hang round here waiting for the youngest Targatt girl, because I know +him... that's all... even if I don't know about books all I ought to...." + +She stopped with a choking in her throat. Tremors of rage were running +through her, and she steadied herself against the edge of the desk lest +he should see her weakness. + +What he saw seemed to affect him deeply, for he grew red under his +sunburn, and stammered out: "But, Miss Royall, I assure you... I assure +you...." + +His distress inflamed her anger, and she regained her voice to fling +back: "If I was you I'd have the nerve to stick to what I said!" + +The taunt seemed to restore his presence of mind. "I hope I should if I +knew; but I don't. Apparently something disagreeable has happened, for +which you think I'm to blame. But I don't know what it is, because I've +been up on Eagle Ridge ever since the early morning." + +"I don't know where you've been this morning, but I know you were here +in this library yesterday; and it was you that went home and told your +cousin the books were in bad shape, and brought her round to see how I'd +neglected them." + +Young Harney looked sincerely concerned. "Was that what you were told? +I don't wonder you're angry. The books are in bad shape, and as some are +interesting it's a pity. I told Miss Hatchard they were suffering from +dampness and lack of air; and I brought her here to show her how easily +the place could be ventilated. I also told her you ought to have some +one to help you do the dusting and airing. If you were given a wrong +version of what I said I'm sorry; but I'm so fond of old books that +I'd rather see them made into a bonfire than left to moulder away like +these." + +Charity felt her sobs rising and tried to stifle them in words. "I don't +care what you say you told her. All I know is she thinks it's all my +fault, and I'm going to lose my job, and I wanted it more'n anyone in +the village, because I haven't got anybody belonging to me, the way +other folks have. All I wanted was to put aside money enough to get away +from here sometime. D'you suppose if it hadn't been for that I'd have +kept on sitting day after day in this old vault?" + +Of this appeal her hearer took up only the last question. "It is an +old vault; but need it be? That's the point. And it's my putting the +question to my cousin that seems to have been the cause of the trouble." +His glance explored the melancholy penumbra of the long narrow room, +resting on the blotched walls, the discoloured rows of books, and the +stern rosewood desk surmounted by the portrait of the young Honorius. +"Of course it's a bad job to do anything with a building jammed against +a hill like this ridiculous mausoleum: you couldn't get a good draught +through it without blowing a hole in the mountain. But it can be +ventilated after a fashion, and the sun can be let in: I'll show you +how if you like...." The architect's passion for improvement had +already made him lose sight of her grievance, and he lifted his stick +instructively toward the cornice. But her silence seemed to tell him +that she took no interest in the ventilation of the library, and turning +back to her abruptly he held out both hands. "Look here--you don't mean +what you said? You don't really think I'd do anything to hurt you?" + +A new note in his voice disarmed her: no one had ever spoken to her in +that tone. + +"Oh, what DID you do it for then?" she wailed. He had her hands in +his, and she was feeling the smooth touch that she had imagined the day +before on the hillside. + +He pressed her hands lightly and let them go. "Why, to make things +pleasanter for you here; and better for the books. I'm sorry if my +cousin twisted around what I said. She's excitable, and she lives on +trifles: I ought to have remembered that. Don't punish me by letting her +think you take her seriously." + +It was wonderful to hear him speak of Miss Hatchard as if she were a +querulous baby: in spite of his shyness he had the air of power that the +experience of cities probably gave. It was the fact of having lived +in Nettleton that made lawyer Royall, in spite of his infirmities, the +strongest man in North Dormer; and Charity was sure that this young man +had lived in bigger places than Nettleton. + +She felt that if she kept up her denunciatory tone he would secretly +class her with Miss Hatchard; and the thought made her suddenly simple. + +"It don't matter to Miss Hatchard how I take her. Mr. Royall says she's +going to get a trained librarian; and I'd sooner resign than have the +village say she sent me away." + +"Naturally you would. But I'm sure she doesn't mean to send you away. +At any rate, won't you give me the chance to find out first and let you +know? It will be time enough to resign if I'm mistaken." + +Her pride flamed into her cheeks at the suggestion of his intervening. +"I don't want anybody should coax her to keep me if I don't suit." + +He coloured too. "I give you my word I won't do that. Only wait till +tomorrow, will you?" He looked straight into her eyes with his shy grey +glance. "You can trust me, you know--you really can." + +All the old frozen woes seemed to melt in her, and she murmured +awkwardly, looking away from him: "Oh, I'll wait." + + + + +V + + +There had never been such a June in Eagle County. Usually it was a month +of moods, with abrupt alternations of belated frost and mid-summer heat; +this year, day followed day in a sequence of temperate beauty. Every +morning a breeze blew steadily from the hills. Toward noon it built up +great canopies of white cloud that threw a cool shadow over fields and +woods; then before sunset the clouds dissolved again, and the western +light rained its unobstructed brightness on the valley. + +On such an afternoon Charity Royall lay on a ridge above a sunlit +hollow, her face pressed to the earth and the warm currents of the grass +running through her. Directly in her line of vision a blackberry branch +laid its frail white flowers and blue-green leaves against the sky. Just +beyond, a tuft of sweet-fern uncurled between the beaded shoots of the +grass, and a small yellow butterfly vibrated over them like a fleck of +sunshine. This was all she saw; but she felt, above her and about her, +the strong growth of the beeches clothing the ridge, the rounding of +pale green cones on countless spruce-branches, the push of myriads of +sweet-fern fronds in the cracks of the stony slope below the wood, +and the crowding shoots of meadowsweet and yellow flags in the pasture +beyond. All this bubbling of sap and slipping of sheaths and bursting of +calyxes was carried to her on mingled currents of fragrance. Every leaf +and bud and blade seemed to contribute its exhalation to the pervading +sweetness in which the pungency of pine-sap prevailed over the spice +of thyme and the subtle perfume of fern, and all were merged in a moist +earth-smell that was like the breath of some huge sun-warmed animal. + +Charity had lain there a long time, passive and sun-warmed as the slope +on which she lay, when there came between her eyes and the dancing +butterfly the sight of a man's foot in a large worn boot covered with +red mud. + +"Oh, don't!" she exclaimed, raising herself on her elbow and stretching +out a warning hand. + +"Don't what?" a hoarse voice asked above her head. + +"Don't stamp on those bramble flowers, you dolt!" she retorted, +springing to her knees. The foot paused and then descended clumsily on +the frail branch, and raising her eyes she saw above her the bewildered +face of a slouching man with a thin sunburnt beard, and white arms +showing through his ragged shirt. + +"Don't you ever SEE anything, Liff Hyatt?" she assailed him, as he stood +before her with the look of a man who has stirred up a wasp's nest. + +He grinned. "I seen you! That's what I come down for." + +"Down from where?" she questioned, stooping to gather up the petals his +foot had scattered. + +He jerked his thumb toward the heights. "Been cutting down trees for Dan +Targatt." + +Charity sank back on her heels and looked at him musingly. She was +not in the least afraid of poor Liff Hyatt, though he "came from the +Mountain," and some of the girls ran when they saw him. Among the more +reasonable he passed for a harmless creature, a sort of link between the +mountain and civilized folk, who occasionally came down and did a little +wood cutting for a farmer when hands were short. Besides, she knew the +Mountain people would never hurt her: Liff himself had told her so +once when she was a little girl, and had met him one day at the edge +of lawyer Royall's pasture. "They won't any of 'em touch you up there, +f'ever you was to come up.... But I don't s'pose you will," he had added +philosophically, looking at her new shoes, and at the red ribbon that +Mrs. Royall had tied in her hair. + +Charity had, in truth, never felt any desire to visit her birthplace. +She did not care to have it known that she was of the Mountain, and was +shy of being seen in talk with Liff Hyatt. But today she was not sorry +to have him appear. A great many things had happened to her since the +day when young Lucius Harney had entered the doors of the Hatchard +Memorial, but none, perhaps, so unforeseen as the fact of her suddenly +finding it a convenience to be on good terms with Liff Hyatt. She +continued to look up curiously at his freckled weather-beaten face, +with feverish hollows below the cheekbones and the pale yellow eyes of +a harmless animal. "I wonder if he's related to me?" she thought, with a +shiver of disdain. + +"Is there any folks living in the brown house by the swamp, up under +Porcupine?" she presently asked in an indifferent tone. + +Liff Hyatt, for a while, considered her with surprise; then he scratched +his head and shifted his weight from one tattered sole to the other. + +"There's always the same folks in the brown house," he said with his +vague grin. + +"They're from up your way, ain't they?" + +"Their name's the same as mine," he rejoined uncertainly. + +Charity still held him with resolute eyes. "See here, I want to go there +some day and take a gentleman with me that's boarding with us. He's up +in these parts drawing pictures." + +She did not offer to explain this statement. It was too far beyond Liff +Hyatt's limitations for the attempt to be worth making. "He wants to see +the brown house, and go all over it," she pursued. + +Liff was still running his fingers perplexedly through his shock of +straw-colored hair. "Is it a fellow from the city?" he asked. + +"Yes. He draws pictures of things. He's down there now drawing the +Bonner house." She pointed to a chimney just visible over the dip of the +pasture below the wood. + +"The Bonner house?" Liff echoed incredulously. + +"Yes. You won't understand--and it don't matter. All I say is: he's +going to the Hyatts' in a day or two." + +Liff looked more and more perplexed. "Bash is ugly sometimes in the +afternoons." + +She threw her head back, her eyes full on Hyatt's. "I'm coming too: you +tell him." + +"They won't none of them trouble you, the Hyatts won't. What d'you want +a take a stranger with you though?" + +"I've told you, haven't I? You've got to tell Bash Hyatt." + +He looked away at the blue mountains on the horizon; then his gaze +dropped to the chimney-top below the pasture. + +"He's down there now?" + +"Yes." + +He shifted his weight again, crossed his arms, and continued to survey +the distant landscape. "Well, so long," he said at last, inconclusively; +and turning away he shambled up the hillside. From the ledge above +her, he paused to call down: "I wouldn't go there a Sunday"; then he +clambered on till the trees closed in on him. Presently, from high +overhead, Charity heard the ring of his axe. + +She lay on the warm ridge, thinking of many things that the woodsman's +appearance had stirred up in her. She knew nothing of her early life, +and had never felt any curiosity about it: only a sullen reluctance to +explore the corner of her memory where certain blurred images lingered. +But all that had happened to her within the last few weeks had stirred +her to the sleeping depths. She had become absorbingly interesting to +herself, and everything that had to do with her past was illuminated by +this sudden curiosity. + +She hated more than ever the fact of coming from the Mountain; but it +was no longer indifferent to her. Everything that in any way affected +her was alive and vivid: even the hateful things had grown interesting +because they were a part of herself. + +"I wonder if Liff Hyatt knows who my mother was?" she mused; and it +filled her with a tremor of surprise to think that some woman who was +once young and slight, with quick motions of the blood like hers, had +carried her in her breast, and watched her sleeping. She had always +thought of her mother as so long dead as to be no more than a nameless +pinch of earth; but now it occurred to her that the once-young woman +might be alive, and wrinkled and elf-locked like the woman she had +sometimes seen in the door of the brown house that Lucius Harney wanted +to draw. + +The thought brought him back to the central point in her mind, and +she strayed away from the conjectures roused by Liff Hyatt's presence. +Speculations concerning the past could not hold her long when the +present was so rich, the future so rosy, and when Lucius Harney, +a stone's throw away, was bending over his sketch-book, frowning, +calculating, measuring, and then throwing his head back with the sudden +smile that had shed its brightness over everything. + +She scrambled to her feet, but as she did so she saw him coming up the +pasture and dropped down on the grass to wait. When he was drawing and +measuring one of "his houses," as she called them, she often strayed +away by herself into the woods or up the hillside. It was partly from +shyness that she did so: from a sense of inadequacy that came to her +most painfully when her companion, absorbed in his job, forgot her +ignorance and her inability to follow his least allusion, and plunged +into a monologue on art and life. To avoid the awkwardness of listening +with a blank face, and also to escape the surprised stare of the +inhabitants of the houses before which he would abruptly pull up their +horse and open his sketch-book, she slipped away to some spot from +which, without being seen, she could watch him at work, or at least look +down on the house he was drawing. She had not been displeased, at first, +to have it known to North Dormer and the neighborhood that she was +driving Miss Hatchard's cousin about the country in the buggy he had +hired of lawyer Royall. She had always kept to herself, contemptuously +aloof from village love-making, without exactly knowing whether her +fierce pride was due to the sense of her tainted origin, or whether she +was reserving herself for a more brilliant fate. Sometimes she envied +the other girls their sentimental preoccupations, their long hours of +inarticulate philandering with one of the few youths who still lingered +in the village; but when she pictured herself curling her hair or +putting a new ribbon on her hat for Ben Fry or one of the Sollas boys +the fever dropped and she relapsed into indifference. + +Now she knew the meaning of her disdains and reluctances. She had +learned what she was worth when Lucius Harney, looking at her for the +first time, had lost the thread of his speech, and leaned reddening on +the edge of her desk. But another kind of shyness had been born in +her: a terror of exposing to vulgar perils the sacred treasure of her +happiness. She was not sorry to have the neighbors suspect her of "going +with" a young man from the city; but she did not want it known to all +the countryside how many hours of the long June days she spent with him. +What she most feared was that the inevitable comments should reach Mr. +Royall. Charity was instinctively aware that few things concerning her +escaped the eyes of the silent man under whose roof she lived; and in +spite of the latitude which North Dormer accorded to courting couples +she had always felt that, on the day when she showed too open a +preference, Mr. Royall might, as she phrased it, make her "pay for +it." How, she did not know; and her fear was the greater because it +was undefinable. If she had been accepting the attentions of one of the +village youths she would have been less apprehensive: Mr. Royall could +not prevent her marrying when she chose to. But everybody knew that +"going with a city fellow" was a different and less straightforward +affair: almost every village could show a victim of the perilous +venture. And her dread of Mr. Royall's intervention gave a sharpened +joy to the hours she spent with young Harney, and made her, at the same +time, shy of being too generally seen with him. + +As he approached she rose to her knees, stretching her arms above her +head with the indolent gesture that was her way of expressing a profound +well-being. + +"I'm going to take you to that house up under Porcupine," she announced. + +"What house? Oh, yes; that ramshackle place near the swamp, with the +gipsy-looking people hanging about. It's curious that a house with +traces of real architecture should have been built in such a place. But +the people were a sulky-looking lot--do you suppose they'll let us in?" + +"They'll do whatever I tell them," she said with assurance. + +He threw himself down beside her. "Will they?" he rejoined with a smile. +"Well, I should like to see what's left inside the house. And I should +like to have a talk with the people. Who was it who was telling me the +other day that they had come down from the Mountain?" + +Charity shot a sideward look at him. It was the first time he had spoken +of the Mountain except as a feature of the landscape. What else did he +know about it, and about her relation to it? Her heart began to beat +with the fierce impulse of resistance which she instinctively opposed to +every imagined slight. + +"The Mountain? I ain't afraid of the Mountain!" + +Her tone of defiance seemed to escape him. He lay breast-down on the +grass, breaking off sprigs of thyme and pressing them against his lips. +Far off, above the folds of the nearer hills, the Mountain thrust itself +up menacingly against a yellow sunset. + +"I must go up there some day: I want to see it," he continued. + +Her heart-beats slackened and she turned again to examine his profile. +It was innocent of all unfriendly intention. + +"What'd you want to go up the Mountain for?" + +"Why, it must be rather a curious place. There's a queer colony up +there, you know: sort of out-laws, a little independent kingdom. Of +course you've heard them spoken of; but I'm told they have nothing to +do with the people in the valleys--rather look down on them, in fact. +I suppose they're rough customers; but they must have a good deal of +character." + +She did not quite know what he meant by having a good deal of character; +but his tone was expressive of admiration, and deepened her dawning +curiosity. It struck her now as strange that she knew so little about +the Mountain. She had never asked, and no one had ever offered to +enlighten her. North Dormer took the Mountain for granted, and implied +its disparagement by an intonation rather than by explicit criticism. + +"It's queer, you know," he continued, "that, just over there, on top of +that hill, there should be a handful of people who don't give a damn for +anybody." + +The words thrilled her. They seemed the clue to her own revolts and +defiances, and she longed to have him tell her more. + +"I don't know much about them. Have they always been there?" + +"Nobody seems to know exactly how long. Down at Creston they told me +that the first colonists are supposed to have been men who worked on the +railway that was built forty or fifty years ago between Springfield +and Nettleton. Some of them took to drink, or got into trouble with the +police, and went off--disappeared into the woods. A year or two later +there was a report that they were living up on the Mountain. Then I +suppose others joined them--and children were born. Now they say there +are over a hundred people up there. They seem to be quite outside the +jurisdiction of the valleys. No school, no church--and no sheriff ever +goes up to see what they're about. But don't people ever talk of them at +North Dormer?" + +"I don't know. They say they're bad." + +He laughed. "Do they? We'll go and see, shall we?" + +She flushed at the suggestion, and turned her face to his. "You never +heard, I suppose--I come from there. They brought me down when I was +little." + +"You?" He raised himself on his elbow, looking at her with sudden +interest. "You're from the Mountain? How curious! I suppose that's why +you're so different...." + +Her happy blood bathed her to the forehead. He was praising her--and +praising her because she came from the Mountain! + +"Am I... different?" she triumphed, with affected wonder. + +"Oh, awfully!" He picked up her hand and laid a kiss on the sunburnt +knuckles. + +"Come," he said, "let's be off." He stood up and shook the grass from +his loose grey clothes. "What a good day! Where are you going to take me +tomorrow?" + + + + +VI + + +That evening after supper Charity sat alone in the kitchen and listened +to Mr. Royall and young Harney talking in the porch. + +She had remained indoors after the table had been cleared and old Verena +had hobbled up to bed. The kitchen window was open, and Charity seated +herself near it, her idle hands on her knee. The evening was cool and +still. Beyond the black hills an amber west passed into pale green, +and then to a deep blue in which a great star hung. The soft hoot of a +little owl came through the dusk, and between its calls the men's voices +rose and fell. + +Mr. Royall's was full of a sonorous satisfaction. It was a long time +since he had had anyone of Lucius Harney's quality to talk to: Charity +divined that the young man symbolized all his ruined and unforgotten +past. When Miss Hatchard had been called to Springfield by the illness +of a widowed sister, and young Harney, by that time seriously embarked +on his task of drawing and measuring all the old houses between +Nettleton and the New Hampshire border, had suggested the possibility of +boarding at the red house in his cousin's absence, Charity had trembled +lest Mr. Royall should refuse. There had been no question of lodging +the young man: there was no room for him. But it appeared that he could +still live at Miss Hatchard's if Mr. Royall would let him take his meals +at the red house; and after a day's deliberation Mr. Royall consented. + +Charity suspected him of being glad of the chance to make a little +money. He had the reputation of being an avaricious man; but she was +beginning to think he was probably poorer than people knew. His practice +had become little more than a vague legend, revived only at lengthening +intervals by a summons to Hepburn or Nettleton; and he appeared to +depend for his living mainly on the scant produce of his farm, and +on the commissions received from the few insurance agencies that he +represented in the neighbourhood. At any rate, he had been prompt in +accepting Harney's offer to hire the buggy at a dollar and a half a +day; and his satisfaction with the bargain had manifested itself, +unexpectedly enough, at the end of the first week, by his tossing a +ten-dollar bill into Charity's lap as she sat one day retrimming her old +hat. + +"Here--go get yourself a Sunday bonnet that'll make all the other girls +mad," he said, looking at her with a sheepish twinkle in his deep-set +eyes; and she immediately guessed that the unwonted present--the only +gift of money she had ever received from him--represented Harney's first +payment. + +But the young man's coming had brought Mr. Royall other than +pecuniary benefit. It gave him, for the first time in years, a man's +companionship. Charity had only a dim understanding of her guardian's +needs; but she knew he felt himself above the people among whom he +lived, and she saw that Lucius Harney thought him so. She was surprised +to find how well he seemed to talk now that he had a listener who +understood him; and she was equally struck by young Harney's friendly +deference. + +Their conversation was mostly about politics, and beyond her range; but +tonight it had a peculiar interest for her, for they had begun to speak +of the Mountain. She drew back a little, lest they should see she was in +hearing. + +"The Mountain? The Mountain?" she heard Mr. Royall say. "Why, the +Mountain's a blot--that's what it is, sir, a blot. That scum up there +ought to have been run in long ago--and would have, if the people down +here hadn't been clean scared of them. The Mountain belongs to this +township, and it's North Dormer's fault if there's a gang of thieves +and outlaws living over there, in sight of us, defying the laws of their +country. Why, there ain't a sheriff or a tax-collector or a coroner'd +durst go up there. When they hear of trouble on the Mountain the +selectmen look the other way, and pass an appropriation to beautify the +town pump. The only man that ever goes up is the minister, and he goes +because they send down and get him whenever there's any of them dies. +They think a lot of Christian burial on the Mountain--but I never heard +of their having the minister up to marry them. And they never trouble +the Justice of the Peace either. They just herd together like the +heathen." + +He went on, explaining in somewhat technical language how the little +colony of squatters had contrived to keep the law at bay, and Charity, +with burning eagerness, awaited young Harney's comment; but the young +man seemed more concerned to hear Mr. Royall's views than to express his +own. + +"I suppose you've never been up there yourself?" he presently asked. + +"Yes, I have," said Mr. Royall with a contemptuous laugh. "The wiseacres +down here told me I'd be done for before I got back; but nobody lifted a +finger to hurt me. And I'd just had one of their gang sent up for seven +years too." + +"You went up after that?" + +"Yes, sir: right after it. The fellow came down to Nettleton and ran +amuck, the way they sometimes do. After they've done a wood-cutting +job they come down and blow the money in; and this man ended up with +manslaughter. I got him convicted, though they were scared of the +Mountain even at Nettleton; and then a queer thing happened. The fellow +sent for me to go and see him in gaol. I went, and this is what he says: +'The fool that defended me is a chicken-livered son of a--and all +the rest of it,' he says. 'I've got a job to be done for me up on the +Mountain, and you're the only man I seen in court that looks as if he'd +do it.' He told me he had a child up there--or thought he had--a little +girl; and he wanted her brought down and reared like a Christian. I was +sorry for the fellow, so I went up and got the child." He paused, and +Charity listened with a throbbing heart. "That's the only time I ever +went up the Mountain," he concluded. + +There was a moment's silence; then Harney spoke. "And the child--had she +no mother?" + +"Oh, yes: there was a mother. But she was glad enough to have her go. +She'd have given her to anybody. They ain't half human up there. I guess +the mother's dead by now, with the life she was leading. Anyhow, I've +never heard of her from that day to this." + +"My God, how ghastly," Harney murmured; and Charity, choking with +humiliation, sprang to her feet and ran upstairs. She knew at last: knew +that she was the child of a drunken convict and of a mother who wasn't +"half human," and was glad to have her go; and she had heard this +history of her origin related to the one being in whose eyes she longed +to appear superior to the people about her! She had noticed that Mr. +Royall had not named her, had even avoided any allusion that might +identify her with the child he had brought down from the Mountain; and +she knew it was out of regard for her that he had kept silent. But +of what use was his discretion, since only that afternoon, misled by +Harney's interest in the out-law colony, she had boasted to him of +coming from the Mountain? Now every word that had been spoken showed her +how such an origin must widen the distance between them. + +During his ten days' sojourn at North Dormer Lucius Harney had not +spoken a word of love to her. He had intervened in her behalf with his +cousin, and had convinced Miss Hatchard of her merits as a librarian; +but that was a simple act of justice, since it was by his own fault that +those merits had been questioned. He had asked her to drive him about +the country when he hired lawyer Royall's buggy to go on his sketching +expeditions; but that too was natural enough, since he was unfamiliar +with the region. Lastly, when his cousin was called to Springfield, he +had begged Mr. Royall to receive him as a boarder; but where else in +North Dormer could he have boarded? Not with Carrick Fry, whose wife was +paralysed, and whose large family crowded his table to over-flowing; not +with the Targatts, who lived a mile up the road, nor with poor old Mrs. +Hawes, who, since her eldest daughter had deserted her, barely had the +strength to cook her own meals while Ally picked up her living as a +seamstress. Mr. Royall's was the only house where the young man +could have been offered a decent hospitality. There had been nothing, +therefore, in the outward course of events to raise in Charity's breast +the hopes with which it trembled. But beneath the visible incidents +resulting from Lucius Harney's arrival there ran an undercurrent as +mysterious and potent as the influence that makes the forest break into +leaf before the ice is off the pools. + +The business on which Harney had come was authentic; Charity had seen +the letter from a New York publisher commissioning him to make a study +of the eighteenth century houses in the less familiar districts of New +England. But incomprehensible as the whole affair was to her, and hard +as she found it to understand why he paused enchanted before certain +neglected and paintless houses, while others, refurbished and "improved" +by the local builder, did not arrest a glance, she could not but suspect +that Eagle County was less rich in architecture than he averred, and +that the duration of his stay (which he had fixed at a month) was not +unconnected with the look in his eyes when he had first paused before +her in the library. Everything that had followed seemed to have grown +out of that look: his way of speaking to her, his quickness in catching +her meaning, his evident eagerness to prolong their excursions and to +seize on every chance of being with her. + +The signs of his liking were manifest enough; but it was hard to guess +how much they meant, because his manner was so different from anything +North Dormer had ever shown her. He was at once simpler and more +deferential than any one she had known; and sometimes it was just when +he was simplest that she most felt the distance between them. Education +and opportunity had divided them by a width that no effort of hers could +bridge, and even when his youth and his admiration brought him nearest, +some chance word, some unconscious allusion, seemed to thrust her back +across the gulf. + +Never had it yawned so wide as when she fled up to her room carrying +with her the echo of Mr. Royall's tale. Her first confused thought +was the prayer that she might never see young Harney again. It was +too bitter to picture him as the detached impartial listener to such +a story. "I wish he'd go away: I wish he'd go tomorrow, and never come +back!" she moaned to her pillow; and far into the night she lay there, +in the disordered dress she had forgotten to take off, her whole soul +a tossing misery on which her hopes and dreams spun about like drowning +straws. + +Of all this tumult only a vague heart-soreness was left when she opened +her eyes the next morning. Her first thought was of the weather, for +Harney had asked her to take him to the brown house under Porcupine, +and then around by Hamblin; and as the trip was a long one they were to +start at nine. The sun rose without a cloud, and earlier than usual she +was in the kitchen, making cheese sandwiches, decanting buttermilk into +a bottle, wrapping up slices of apple pie, and accusing Verena of having +given away a basket she needed, which had always hung on a hook in the +passage. When she came out into the porch, in her pink calico, which had +run a little in the washing, but was still bright enough to set off +her dark tints, she had such a triumphant sense of being a part of the +sunlight and the morning that the last trace of her misery vanished. +What did it matter where she came from, or whose child she was, when +love was dancing in her veins, and down the road she saw young Harney +coming toward her? + +Mr. Royall was in the porch too. He had said nothing at breakfast, but +when she came out in her pink dress, the basket in her hand, he looked +at her with surprise. "Where you going to?" he asked. + +"Why--Mr. Harney's starting earlier than usual today," she answered. + +"Mr. Harney, Mr. Harney? Ain't Mr. Harney learned how to drive a horse +yet?" + +She made no answer, and he sat tilted back in his chair, drumming on the +rail of the porch. It was the first time he had ever spoken of the young +man in that tone, and Charity felt a faint chill of apprehension. After +a moment he stood up and walked away toward the bit of ground behind the +house, where the hired man was hoeing. + +The air was cool and clear, with the autumnal sparkle that a north wind +brings to the hills in early summer, and the night had been so still +that the dew hung on everything, not as a lingering moisture, but in +separate beads that glittered like diamonds on the ferns and grasses. It +was a long drive to the foot of Porcupine: first across the valley, with +blue hills bounding the open slopes; then down into the beech-woods, +following the course of the Creston, a brown brook leaping over velvet +ledges; then out again onto the farm-lands about Creston Lake, and +gradually up the ridges of the Eagle Range. At last they reached the +yoke of the hills, and before them opened another valley, green and +wild, and beyond it more blue heights eddying away to the sky like the +waves of a receding tide. + +Harney tied the horse to a tree-stump, and they unpacked their basket +under an aged walnut with a riven trunk out of which bumblebees darted. +The sun had grown hot, and behind them was the noonday murmur of +the forest. Summer insects danced on the air, and a flock of white +butterflies fanned the mobile tips of the crimson fireweed. In the +valley below not a house was visible; it seemed as if Charity Royall and +young Harney were the only living beings in the great hollow of earth +and sky. + +Charity's spirits flagged and disquieting thoughts stole back on her. +Young Harney had grown silent, and as he lay beside her, his arms under +his head, his eyes on the network of leaves above him, she wondered if +he were musing on what Mr. Royall had told him, and if it had really +debased her in his thoughts. She wished he had not asked her to take him +that day to the brown house; she did not want him to see the people she +came from while the story of her birth was fresh in his mind. More than +once she had been on the point of suggesting that they should follow the +ridge and drive straight to Hamblin, where there was a little deserted +house he wanted to see; but shyness and pride held her back. "He'd +better know what kind of folks I belong to," she said to herself, with +a somewhat forced defiance; for in reality it was shame that kept her +silent. + +Suddenly she lifted her hand and pointed to the sky. "There's a storm +coming up." + +He followed her glance and smiled. "Is it that scrap of cloud among the +pines that frightens you?" + +"It's over the Mountain; and a cloud over the Mountain always means +trouble." + +"Oh, I don't believe half the bad things you all say of the Mountain! +But anyhow, we'll get down to the brown house before the rain comes." + +He was not far wrong, for only a few isolated drops had fallen when they +turned into the road under the shaggy flank of Porcupine, and came +upon the brown house. It stood alone beside a swamp bordered with alder +thickets and tall bulrushes. Not another dwelling was in sight, and it +was hard to guess what motive could have actuated the early settler who +had made his home in so unfriendly a spot. + +Charity had picked up enough of her companion's erudition to understand +what had attracted him to the house. She noticed the fan-shaped tracery +of the broken light above the door, the flutings of the paintless +pilasters at the corners, and the round window set in the gable; and she +knew that, for reasons that still escaped her, these were things to +be admired and recorded. Still, they had seen other houses far more +"typical" (the word was Harney's); and as he threw the reins on the +horse's neck he said with a slight shiver of repugnance: "We won't stay +long." + +Against the restless alders turning their white lining to the storm the +house looked singularly desolate. The paint was almost gone from the +clap-boards, the window-panes were broken and patched with rags, and the +garden was a poisonous tangle of nettles, burdocks and tall swamp-weeds +over which big blue-bottles hummed. + +At the sound of wheels a child with a tow-head and pale eyes like Liff +Hyatt's peered over the fence and then slipped away behind an out-house. +Harney jumped down and helped Charity out; and as he did so the rain +broke on them. It came slant-wise, on a furious gale, laying shrubs and +young trees flat, tearing off their leaves like an autumn storm, turning +the road into a river, and making hissing pools of every hollow. Thunder +rolled incessantly through the roar of the rain, and a strange glitter +of light ran along the ground under the increasing blackness. + +"Lucky we're here after all," Harney laughed. He fastened the horse +under a half-roofless shed, and wrapping Charity in his coat ran with +her to the house. The boy had not reappeared, and as there was no +response to their knocks Harney turned the door-handle and they went in. + +There were three people in the kitchen to which the door admitted +them. An old woman with a handkerchief over her head was sitting by the +window. She held a sickly-looking kitten on her knees, and whenever +it jumped down and tried to limp away she stooped and lifted it back +without any change of her aged, unnoticing face. Another woman, the +unkempt creature that Charity had once noticed in driving by, stood +leaning against the window-frame and stared at them; and near the stove +an unshaved man in a tattered shirt sat on a barrel asleep. + +The place was bare and miserable and the air heavy with the smell of +dirt and stale tobacco. Charity's heart sank. Old derided tales of +the Mountain people came back to her, and the woman's stare was so +disconcerting, and the face of the sleeping man so sodden and bestial, +that her disgust was tinged with a vague dread. She was not afraid for +herself; she knew the Hyatts would not be likely to trouble her; but she +was not sure how they would treat a "city fellow." + +Lucius Harney would certainly have laughed at her fears. He glanced +about the room, uttered a general "How are you?" to which no one +responded, and then asked the younger woman if they might take shelter +till the storm was over. + +She turned her eyes away from him and looked at Charity. + +"You're the girl from Royall's, ain't you?" + +The colour rose in Charity's face. "I'm Charity Royall," she said, as +if asserting her right to the name in the very place where it might have +been most open to question. + +The woman did not seem to notice. "You kin stay," she merely said; +then she turned away and stooped over a dish in which she was stirring +something. + +Harney and Charity sat down on a bench made of a board resting on two +starch boxes. They faced a door hanging on a broken hinge, and through +the crack they saw the eyes of the tow-headed boy and of a pale little +girl with a scar across her cheek. Charity smiled, and signed to the +children to come in; but as soon as they saw they were discovered they +slipped away on bare feet. It occurred to her that they were afraid of +rousing the sleeping man; and probably the woman shared their fear, for +she moved about as noiselessly and avoided going near the stove. + +The rain continued to beat against the house, and in one or two places +it sent a stream through the patched panes and ran into pools on the +floor. Every now and then the kitten mewed and struggled down, and the +old woman stooped and caught it, holding it tight in her bony hands; and +once or twice the man on the barrel half woke, changed his position +and dozed again, his head falling forward on his hairy breast. As the +minutes passed, and the rain still streamed against the windows, a +loathing of the place and the people came over Charity. The sight of +the weak-minded old woman, of the cowed children, and the ragged man +sleeping off his liquor, made the setting of her own life seem a vision +of peace and plenty. She thought of the kitchen at Mr. Royall's, with +its scrubbed floor and dresser full of china, and the peculiar smell of +yeast and coffee and soft-soap that she had always hated, but that now +seemed the very symbol of household order. She saw Mr. Royall's room, +with the high-backed horsehair chair, the faded rag carpet, the row of +books on a shelf, the engraving of "The Surrender of Burgoyne" over +the stove, and the mat with a brown and white spaniel on a moss-green +border. And then her mind travelled to Miss Hatchard's house, where all +was freshness, purity and fragrance, and compared to which the red house +had always seemed so poor and plain. + +"This is where I belong--this is where I belong," she kept repeating to +herself; but the words had no meaning for her. Every instinct and habit +made her a stranger among these poor swamp-people living like vermin in +their lair. With all her soul she wished she had not yielded to Harney's +curiosity, and brought him there. + +The rain had drenched her, and she began to shiver under the thin folds +of her dress. The younger woman must have noticed it, for she went out +of the room and came back with a broken tea-cup which she offered to +Charity. It was half full of whiskey, and Charity shook her head; but +Harney took the cup and put his lips to it. When he had set it down +Charity saw him feel in his pocket and draw out a dollar; he hesitated +a moment, and then put it back, and she guessed that he did not wish her +to see him offering money to people she had spoken of as being her kin. + +The sleeping man stirred, lifted his head and opened his eyes. They +rested vacantly for a moment on Charity and Harney, and then closed +again, and his head drooped; but a look of anxiety came into the woman's +face. She glanced out of the window and then came up to Harney. "I guess +you better go along now," she said. The young man understood and got to +his feet. "Thank you," he said, holding out his hand. She seemed not to +notice the gesture, and turned away as they opened the door. + +The rain was still coming down, but they hardly noticed it: the pure air +was like balm in their faces. The clouds were rising and breaking, and +between their edges the light streamed down from remote blue hollows. +Harney untied the horse, and they drove off through the diminishing +rain, which was already beaded with sunlight. + +For a while Charity was silent, and her companion did not speak. She +looked timidly at his profile: it was graver than usual, as though he +too were oppressed by what they had seen. Then she broke out abruptly: +"Those people back there are the kind of folks I come from. They may be +my relations, for all I know." She did not want him to think that she +regretted having told him her story. + +"Poor creatures," he rejoined. "I wonder why they came down to that +fever-hole." + +She laughed ironically. "To better themselves! It's worse up on the +Mountain. Bash Hyatt married the daughter of the farmer that used to own +the brown house. That was him by the stove, I suppose." + +Harney seemed to find nothing to say and she went on: "I saw you take +out a dollar to give to that poor woman. Why did you put it back?" + +He reddened, and leaned forward to flick a swamp-fly from the horse's +neck. "I wasn't sure----" + +"Was it because you knew they were my folks, and thought I'd be ashamed +to see you give them money?" + +He turned to her with eyes full of reproach. "Oh, Charity----" It was +the first time he had ever called her by her name. Her misery welled +over. + +"I ain't--I ain't ashamed. They're my people, and I ain't ashamed of +them," she sobbed. + +"My dear..." he murmured, putting his arm about her; and she leaned +against him and wept out her pain. + +It was too late to go around to Hamblin, and all the stars were out in a +clear sky when they reached the North Dormer valley and drove up to the +red house. + + + + +VII + + +SINCE her reinstatement in Miss Hatchard's favour Charity had not dared +to curtail by a moment her hours of attendance at the library. She +even made a point of arriving before the time, and showed a laudable +indignation when the youngest Targatt girl, who had been engaged to help +in the cleaning and rearranging of the books, came trailing in late +and neglected her task to peer through the window at the Sollas boy. +Nevertheless, "library days" seemed more than ever irksome to Charity +after her vivid hours of liberty; and she would have found it hard to +set a good example to her subordinate if Lucius Harney had not been +commissioned, before Miss Hatchard's departure, to examine with the +local carpenter the best means of ventilating the "Memorial." + +He was careful to prosecute this inquiry on the days when the library +was open to the public; and Charity was therefore sure of spending part +of the afternoon in his company. The Targatt girl's presence, and the +risk of being interrupted by some passer-by suddenly smitten with a +thirst for letters, restricted their intercourse to the exchange of +commonplaces; but there was a fascination to Charity in the contrast +between these public civilities and their secret intimacy. + +The day after their drive to the brown house was "library day," and +she sat at her desk working at the revised catalogue, while the Targatt +girl, one eye on the window, chanted out the titles of a pile of books. +Charity's thoughts were far away, in the dismal house by the swamp, and +under the twilight sky during the long drive home, when Lucius Harney +had consoled her with endearing words. That day, for the first time +since he had been boarding with them, he had failed to appear as usual +at the midday meal. No message had come to explain his absence, and Mr. +Royall, who was more than usually taciturn, had betrayed no surprise, +and made no comment. In itself this indifference was not particularly +significant, for Mr. Royall, in common with most of his fellow-citizens, +had a way of accepting events passively, as if he had long since come +to the conclusion that no one who lived in North Dormer could hope to +modify them. But to Charity, in the reaction from her mood of passionate +exaltation, there was something disquieting in his silence. It was +almost as if Lucius Harney had never had a part in their lives: Mr. +Royall's imperturbable indifference seemed to relegate him to the domain +of unreality. + +As she sat at work, she tried to shake off her disappointment at +Harney's non-appearing. Some trifling incident had probably kept him +from joining them at midday; but she was sure he must be eager to see +her again, and that he would not want to wait till they met at supper, +between Mr. Royall and Verena. She was wondering what his first words +would be, and trying to devise a way of getting rid of the Targatt girl +before he came, when she heard steps outside, and he walked up the path +with Mr. Miles. + +The clergyman from Hepburn seldom came to North Dormer except when he +drove over to officiate at the old white church which, by an unusual +chance, happened to belong to the Episcopal communion. He was a brisk +affable man, eager to make the most of the fact that a little nucleus of +"church-people" had survived in the sectarian wilderness, and resolved +to undermine the influence of the ginger-bread-coloured Baptist chapel +at the other end of the village; but he was kept busy by parochial work +at Hepburn, where there were paper-mills and saloons, and it was not +often that he could spare time for North Dormer. + +Charity, who went to the white church (like all the best people in North +Dormer), admired Mr. Miles, and had even, during the memorable trip to +Nettleton, imagined herself married to a man who had such a straight +nose and such a beautiful way of speaking, and who lived in a +brown-stone rectory covered with Virginia creeper. It had been a shock +to discover that the privilege was already enjoyed by a lady with +crimped hair and a large baby; but the arrival of Lucius Harney had long +since banished Mr. Miles from Charity's dreams, and as he walked up the +path at Harney's side she saw him as he really was: a fat middle-aged +man with a baldness showing under his clerical hat, and spectacles on +his Grecian nose. She wondered what had called him to North Dormer on a +weekday, and felt a little hurt that Harney should have brought him to +the library. + +It presently appeared that his presence there was due to Miss Hatchard. +He had been spending a few days at Springfield, to fill a friend's +pulpit, and had been consulted by Miss Hatchard as to young Harney's +plan for ventilating the "Memorial." To lay hands on the Hatchard ark +was a grave matter, and Miss Hatchard, always full of scruples about her +scruples (it was Harney's phrase), wished to have Mr. Miles's opinion +before deciding. + +"I couldn't," Mr. Miles explained, "quite make out from your cousin what +changes you wanted to make, and as the other trustees did not understand +either I thought I had better drive over and take a look--though I'm +sure," he added, turning his friendly spectacles on the young man, "that +no one could be more competent--but of course this spot has its peculiar +sanctity!" + +"I hope a little fresh air won't desecrate it," Harney laughingly +rejoined; and they walked to the other end of the library while he set +forth his idea to the Rector. + +Mr. Miles had greeted the two girls with his usual friendliness, but +Charity saw that he was occupied with other things, and she presently +became aware, by the scraps of conversation drifting over to her, that +he was still under the charm of his visit to Springfield, which appeared +to have been full of agreeable incidents. + +"Ah, the Coopersons... yes, you know them, of course," she heard. "That's +a fine old house! And Ned Cooperson has collected some really remarkable +impressionist pictures...." The names he cited were unknown to Charity. +"Yes; yes; the Schaefer quartette played at Lyric Hall on Saturday +evening; and on Monday I had the privilege of hearing them again at the +Towers. Beautifully done... Bach and Beethoven... a lawn-party +first... I saw Miss Balch several times, by the way... looking extremely +handsome...." + +Charity dropped her pencil and forgot to listen to the Targatt girl's +sing-song. Why had Mr. Miles suddenly brought up Annabel Balch's name? + +"Oh, really?" she heard Harney rejoin; and, raising his stick, he +pursued: "You see, my plan is to move these shelves away, and open a +round window in this wall, on the axis of the one under the pediment." + +"I suppose she'll be coming up here later to stay with Miss Hatchard?" +Mr. Miles went on, following on his train of thought; then, spinning +about and tilting his head back: "Yes, yes, I see--I understand: that +will give a draught without materially altering the look of things. I +can see no objection." + +The discussion went on for some minutes, and gradually the two men moved +back toward the desk. Mr. Miles stopped again and looked thoughtfully at +Charity. "Aren't you a little pale, my dear? Not overworking? Mr. Harney +tells me you and Mamie are giving the library a thorough overhauling." +He was always careful to remember his parishioners' Christian names, +and at the right moment he bent his benignant spectacles on the Targatt +girl. + +Then he turned to Charity. "Don't take things hard, my dear; don't take +things hard. Come down and see Mrs. Miles and me some day at Hepburn," +he said, pressing her hand and waving a farewell to Mamie Targatt. He +went out of the library, and Harney followed him. + +Charity thought she detected a look of constraint in Harney's eyes. She +fancied he did not want to be alone with her; and with a sudden pang she +wondered if he repented the tender things he had said to her the night +before. His words had been more fraternal than lover-like; but she had +lost their exact sense in the caressing warmth of his voice. He had made +her feel that the fact of her being a waif from the Mountain was only +another reason for holding her close and soothing her with consolatory +murmurs; and when the drive was over, and she got out of the buggy, +tired, cold, and aching with emotion, she stepped as if the ground were +a sunlit wave and she the spray on its crest. + +Why, then, had his manner suddenly changed, and why did he leave the +library with Mr. Miles? Her restless imagination fastened on the name +of Annabel Balch: from the moment it had been mentioned she fancied +that Harney's expression had altered. Annabel Balch at a garden-party at +Springfield, looking "extremely handsome"... perhaps Mr. Miles had seen +her there at the very moment when Charity and Harney were sitting in the +Hyatts' hovel, between a drunkard and a half-witted old woman! Charity +did not know exactly what a garden-party was, but her glimpse of the +flower-edged lawns of Nettleton helped her to visualize the scene, and +envious recollections of the "old things" which Miss Balch avowedly +"wore out" when she came to North Dormer made it only too easy to +picture her in her splendour. Charity understood what associations the +name must have called up, and felt the uselessness of struggling against +the unseen influences in Harney's life. + +When she came down from her room for supper he was not there; and while +she waited in the porch she recalled the tone in which Mr. Royall had +commented the day before on their early start. Mr. Royall sat at her +side, his chair tilted back, his broad black boots with side-elastics +resting against the lower bar of the railings. His rumpled grey hair +stood up above his forehead like the crest of an angry bird, and the +leather-brown of his veined cheeks was blotched with red. Charity knew +that those red spots were the signs of a coming explosion. + +Suddenly he said: "Where's supper? Has Verena Marsh slipped up again on +her soda-biscuits?" + +Charity threw a startled glance at him. "I presume she's waiting for Mr. +Harney." + +"Mr. Harney, is she? She'd better dish up, then. He ain't coming." He +stood up, walked to the door, and called out, in the pitch necessary to +penetrate the old woman's tympanum: "Get along with the supper, Verena." + +Charity was trembling with apprehension. Something had happened--she was +sure of it now--and Mr. Royall knew what it was. But not for the world +would she have gratified him by showing her anxiety. She took her usual +place, and he seated himself opposite, and poured out a strong cup of +tea before passing her the tea-pot. Verena brought some scrambled eggs, +and he piled his plate with them. "Ain't you going to take any?" he +asked. Charity roused herself and began to eat. + +The tone with which Mr. Royall had said "He's not coming" seemed to her +full of an ominous satisfaction. She saw that he had suddenly begun to +hate Lucius Harney, and guessed herself to be the cause of this change +of feeling. But she had no means of finding out whether some act of +hostility on his part had made the young man stay away, or whether he +simply wished to avoid seeing her again after their drive back from the +brown house. She ate her supper with a studied show of indifference, but +she knew that Mr. Royall was watching her and that her agitation did not +escape him. + +After supper she went up to her room. She heard Mr. Royall cross the +passage, and presently the sounds below her window showed that he +had returned to the porch. She seated herself on her bed and began to +struggle against the desire to go down and ask him what had happened. +"I'd rather die than do it," she muttered to herself. With a word he +could have relieved her uncertainty: but never would she gratify him by +saying it. + +She rose and leaned out of the window. The twilight had deepened into +night, and she watched the frail curve of the young moon dropping to +the edge of the hills. Through the darkness she saw one or two figures +moving down the road; but the evening was too cold for loitering, and +presently the strollers disappeared. Lamps were beginning to show here +and there in the windows. A bar of light brought out the whiteness of a +clump of lilies in the Hawes's yard: and farther down the street Carrick +Fry's Rochester lamp cast its bold illumination on the rustic flower-tub +in the middle of his grass-plot. + +For a long time she continued to lean in the window. But a fever of +unrest consumed her, and finally she went downstairs, took her hat +from its hook, and swung out of the house. Mr. Royall sat in the porch, +Verena beside him, her old hands crossed on her patched skirt. As +Charity went down the steps Mr. Royall called after her: "Where you +going?" She could easily have answered: "To Orma's," or "Down to the +Targatts'"; and either answer might have been true, for she had no +purpose. But she swept on in silence, determined not to recognize his +right to question her. + +At the gate she paused and looked up and down the road. The darkness +drew her, and she thought of climbing the hill and plunging into +the depths of the larch-wood above the pasture. Then she glanced +irresolutely along the street, and as she did so a gleam appeared +through the spruces at Miss Hatchard's gate. Lucius Harney was there, +then--he had not gone down to Hepburn with Mr. Miles, as she had at +first imagined. But where had he taken his evening meal, and what had +caused him to stay away from Mr. Royall's? The light was positive proof +of his presence, for Miss Hatchard's servants were away on a holiday, +and her farmer's wife came only in the mornings, to make the young man's +bed and prepare his coffee. Beside that lamp he was doubtless sitting at +this moment. To know the truth Charity had only to walk half the length +of the village, and knock at the lighted window. She hesitated a minute +or two longer, and then turned toward Miss Hatchard's. + +She walked quickly, straining her eyes to detect anyone who might be +coming along the street; and before reaching the Frys' she crossed over +to avoid the light from their window. Whenever she was unhappy she +felt herself at bay against a pitiless world, and a kind of animal +secretiveness possessed her. But the street was empty, and she passed +unnoticed through the gate and up the path to the house. Its white front +glimmered indistinctly through the trees, showing only one oblong of +light on the lower floor. She had supposed that the lamp was in Miss +Hatchard's sitting-room; but she now saw that it shone through a window +at the farther corner of the house. She did not know the room to which +this window belonged, and she paused under the trees, checked by a sense +of strangeness. Then she moved on, treading softly on the short grass, +and keeping so close to the house that whoever was in the room, even if +roused by her approach, would not be able to see her. + +The window opened on a narrow verandah with a trellised arch. She leaned +close to the trellis, and parting the sprays of clematis that covered it +looked into a corner of the room. She saw the foot of a mahogany bed, +an engraving on the wall, a wash-stand on which a towel had been tossed, +and one end of the green-covered table which held the lamp. Half of +the lampshade projected into her field of vision, and just under it two +smooth sunburnt hands, one holding a pencil and the other a ruler, were +moving to and fro over a drawing-board. + +Her heart jumped and then stood still. He was there, a few feet away; +and while her soul was tossing on seas of woe he had been quietly +sitting at his drawing-board. The sight of those two hands, moving with +their usual skill and precision, woke her out of her dream. Her eyes +were opened to the disproportion between what she had felt and the cause +of her agitation; and she was turning away from the window when one hand +abruptly pushed aside the drawing-board and the other flung down the +pencil. + +Charity had often noticed Harney's loving care of his drawings, and the +neatness and method with which he carried on and concluded each task. +The impatient sweeping aside of the drawing-board seemed to reveal a new +mood. The gesture suggested sudden discouragement, or distaste for his +work and she wondered if he too were agitated by secret perplexities. +Her impulse of flight was checked; she stepped up on the verandah and +looked into the room. + +Harney had put his elbows on the table and was resting his chin on his +locked hands. He had taken off his coat and waistcoat, and unbuttoned +the low collar of his flannel shirt; she saw the vigorous lines of his +young throat, and the root of the muscles where they joined the +chest. He sat staring straight ahead of him, a look of weariness and +self-disgust on his face: it was almost as if he had been gazing at a +distorted reflection of his own features. For a moment Charity looked at +him with a kind of terror, as if he had been a stranger under familiar +lineaments; then she glanced past him and saw on the floor an open +portmanteau half full of clothes. She understood that he was preparing +to leave, and that he had probably decided to go without seeing her. She +saw that the decision, from whatever cause it was taken, had disturbed +him deeply; and she immediately concluded that his change of plan was +due to some surreptitious interference of Mr. Royall's. All her old +resentments and rebellions flamed up, confusedly mingled with the +yearning roused by Harney's nearness. Only a few hours earlier she +had felt secure in his comprehending pity; now she was flung back on +herself, doubly alone after that moment of communion. + +Harney was still unaware of her presence. He sat without moving, moodily +staring before him at the same spot in the wall-paper. He had not even +had the energy to finish his packing, and his clothes and papers lay on +the floor about the portmanteau. Presently he unlocked his clasped hands +and stood up; and Charity, drawing back hastily, sank down on the step +of the verandah. The night was so dark that there was not much chance +of his seeing her unless he opened the window and before that she would +have time to slip away and be lost in the shadow of the trees. He stood +for a minute or two looking around the room with the same expression of +self-disgust, as if he hated himself and everything about him; then +he sat down again at the table, drew a few more strokes, and threw +his pencil aside. Finally he walked across the floor, kicking the +portmanteau out of his way, and lay down on the bed, folding his arms +under his head, and staring up morosely at the ceiling. Just so, Charity +had seen him at her side on the grass or the pine-needles, his eyes +fixed on the sky, and pleasure flashing over his face like the flickers +of sun the branches shed on it. But now the face was so changed that she +hardly knew it; and grief at his grief gathered in her throat, rose to +her eyes and ran over. + +She continued to crouch on the steps, holding her breath and stiffening +herself into complete immobility. One motion of her hand, one tap on +the pane, and she could picture the sudden change in his face. In every +pulse of her rigid body she was aware of the welcome his eyes and lips +would give her; but something kept her from moving. It was not the +fear of any sanction, human or heavenly; she had never in her life been +afraid. It was simply that she had suddenly understood what would happen +if she went in. It was the thing that did happen between young men and +girls, and that North Dormer ignored in public and snickered over on the +sly. It was what Miss Hatchard was still ignorant of, but every girl +of Charity's class knew about before she left school. It was what had +happened to Ally Hawes's sister Julia, and had ended in her going to +Nettleton, and in people's never mentioning her name. + +It did not, of course, always end so sensationally; nor, perhaps, on the +whole, so untragically. Charity had always suspected that the shunned +Julia's fate might have its compensations. There were others, worse +endings that the village knew of, mean, miserable, unconfessed; other +lives that went on drearily, without visible change, in the same cramped +setting of hypocrisy. But these were not the reasons that held her +back. Since the day before, she had known exactly what she would feel +if Harney should take her in his arms: the melting of palm into palm and +mouth on mouth, and the long flame burning her from head to foot. But +mixed with this feeling was another: the wondering pride in his liking +for her, the startled softness that his sympathy had put into her heart. +Sometimes, when her youth flushed up in her, she had imagined yielding +like other girls to furtive caresses in the twilight; but she could not +so cheapen herself to Harney. She did not know why he was going; but +since he was going she felt she must do nothing to deface the image of +her that he carried away. If he wanted her he must seek her: he must not +be surprised into taking her as girls like Julia Hawes were taken.... + +No sound came from the sleeping village, and in the deep darkness of +the garden she heard now and then a secret rustle of branches, as though +some night-bird brushed them. Once a footfall passed the gate, and +she shrank back into her corner; but the steps died away and left a +profounder quiet. Her eyes were still on Harney's tormented face: she +felt she could not move till he moved. But she was beginning to grow +numb from her constrained position, and at times her thoughts were so +indistinct that she seemed to be held there only by a vague weight of +weariness. + +A long time passed in this strange vigil. Harney still lay on the bed, +motionless and with fixed eyes, as though following his vision to its +bitter end. At last he stirred and changed his attitude slightly, and +Charity's heart began to tremble. But he only flung out his arms and +sank back into his former position. With a deep sigh he tossed the hair +from his forehead; then his whole body relaxed, his head turned +sideways on the pillow, and she saw that he had fallen asleep. The sweet +expression came back to his lips, and the haggardness faded from his +face, leaving it as fresh as a boy's. + +She rose and crept away. + + + + +VIII + + +SHE had lost the sense of time, and did not know how late it was till +she came out into the street and saw that all the windows were dark +between Miss Hatchard's and the Royall house. + +As she passed from under the black pall of the Norway spruces she +fancied she saw two figures in the shade about the duck-pond. She drew +back and watched; but nothing moved, and she had stared so long into the +lamp-lit room that the darkness confused her, and she thought she must +have been mistaken. + +She walked on, wondering whether Mr. Royall was still in the porch. In +her exalted mood she did not greatly care whether he was waiting for her +or not: she seemed to be floating high over life, on a great cloud of +misery beneath which every-day realities had dwindled to mere specks in +space. But the porch was empty, Mr. Royall's hat hung on its peg in the +passage, and the kitchen lamp had been left to light her to bed. She +took it and went up. + +The morning hours of the next day dragged by without incident. Charity +had imagined that, in some way or other, she would learn whether Harney +had already left; but Verena's deafness prevented her being a source of +news, and no one came to the house who could bring enlightenment. + +Mr. Royall went out early, and did not return till Verena had set the +table for the midday meal. When he came in he went straight to the +kitchen and shouted to the old woman: "Ready for dinner----" then he +turned into the dining-room, where Charity was already seated. Harney's +plate was in its usual place, but Mr. Royall offered no explanation +of his absence, and Charity asked none. The feverish exaltation of the +night before had dropped, and she said to herself that he had gone away, +indifferently, almost callously, and that now her life would lapse again +into the narrow rut out of which he had lifted it. For a moment she was +inclined to sneer at herself for not having used the arts that might +have kept him. + +She sat at table till the meal was over, lest Mr. Royall should remark +on her leaving; but when he stood up she rose also, without waiting to +help Verena. She had her foot on the stairs when he called to her to +come back. + +"I've got a headache. I'm going up to lie down." + +"I want you should come in here first; I've got something to say to +you." + +She was sure from his tone that in a moment she would learn what every +nerve in her ached to know; but as she turned back she made a last +effort of indifference. + +Mr. Royall stood in the middle of the office, his thick eyebrows +beetling, his lower jaw trembling a little. At first she thought he had +been drinking; then she saw that he was sober, but stirred by a deep and +stern emotion totally unlike his usual transient angers. And suddenly +she understood that, until then, she had never really noticed him or +thought about him. Except on the occasion of his one offense he had been +to her merely the person who is always there, the unquestioned central +fact of life, as inevitable but as uninteresting as North Dormer itself, +or any of the other conditions fate had laid on her. Even then she had +regarded him only in relation to herself, and had never speculated as +to his own feelings, beyond instinctively concluding that he would not +trouble her again in the same way. But now she began to wonder what he +was really like. + +He had grasped the back of his chair with both hands, and stood looking +hard at her. At length he said: "Charity, for once let's you and me talk +together like friends." + +Instantly she felt that something had happened, and that he held her in +his hand. + +"Where is Mr. Harney? Why hasn't he come back? Have you sent him away?" +she broke out, without knowing what she was saying. + +The change in Mr. Royall frightened her. All the blood seemed to leave +his veins and against his swarthy pallor the deep lines in his face +looked black. + +"Didn't he have time to answer some of those questions last night? You +was with him long enough!" he said. + +Charity stood speechless. The taunt was so unrelated to what had been +happening in her soul that she hardly understood it. But the instinct of +self-defense awoke in her. + +"Who says I was with him last night?" + +"The whole place is saying it by now." + +"Then it was you that put the lie into their mouths.--Oh, how I've +always hated you!" she cried. + +She had expected a retort in kind, and it startled her to hear her +exclamation sounding on through silence. + +"Yes, I know," Mr. Royall said slowly. "But that ain't going to help us +much now." + +"It helps me not to care a straw what lies you tell about me!" + +"If they're lies, they're not my lies: my Bible oath on that, Charity. I +didn't know where you were: I wasn't out of this house last night." + +She made no answer and he went on: "Is it a lie that you were seen +coming out of Miss Hatchard's nigh onto midnight?" + +She straightened herself with a laugh, all her reckless insolence +recovered. "I didn't look to see what time it was." + +"You lost girl... you... you.... Oh, my God, why did you tell me?" he +broke out, dropping into his chair, his head bowed down like an old +man's. + +Charity's self-possession had returned with the sense of her danger. "Do +you suppose I'd take the trouble to lie to YOU? Who are you, anyhow, to +ask me where I go to when I go out at night?" + +Mr. Royall lifted his head and looked at her. His face had grown quiet +and almost gentle, as she remembered seeing it sometimes when she was a +little girl, before Mrs. Royall died. + +"Don't let's go on like this, Charity. It can't do any good to either of +us. You were seen going into that fellow's house... you were seen coming +out of it.... I've watched this thing coming, and I've tried to stop it. +As God sees me, I have...." + +"Ah, it WAS you, then? I knew it was you that sent him away!" + +He looked at her in surprise. "Didn't he tell you so? I thought he +understood." He spoke slowly, with difficult pauses, "I didn't name +you to him: I'd have cut my hand off sooner. I just told him I couldn't +spare the horse any longer; and that the cooking was getting too heavy +for Verena. I guess he's the kind that's heard the same thing before. +Anyhow, he took it quietly enough. He said his job here was about done, +anyhow; and there didn't another word pass between us.... If he told you +otherwise he told you an untruth." + +Charity listened in a cold trance of anger. It was nothing to her what +the village said... but all this fingering of her dreams! + +"I've told you he didn't tell me anything. I didn't speak with him last +night." + +"You didn't speak with him?" + +"No.... It's not that I care what any of you say... but you may as well +know. Things ain't between us the way you think... and the other people +in this place. He was kind to me; he was my friend; and all of a sudden +he stopped coming, and I knew it was you that done it--YOU!" All her +unreconciled memory of the past flamed out at him. "So I went there last +night to find out what you'd said to him: that's all." + +Mr. Royall drew a heavy breath. "But, then--if he wasn't there, what +were you doing there all that time?--Charity, for pity's sake, tell me. +I've got to know, to stop their talking." + +This pathetic abdication of all authority over her did not move her: she +could feel only the outrage of his interference. + +"Can't you see that I don't care what anybody says? It's true I went +there to see him; and he was in his room, and I stood outside for ever +so long and watched him; but I dursn't go in for fear he'd think I'd +come after him...." She felt her voice breaking, and gathered it up in a +last defiance. "As long as I live I'll never forgive you!" she cried. + +Mr. Royall made no answer. He sat and pondered with sunken head, his +veined hands clasped about the arms of his chair. Age seemed to have +come down on him as winter comes on the hills after a storm. At length +he looked up. + +"Charity, you say you don't care; but you're the proudest girl I know, +and the last to want people to talk against you. You know there's always +eyes watching you: you're handsomer and smarter than the rest, and +that's enough. But till lately you've never given them a chance. Now +they've got it, and they're going to use it. I believe what you say, but +they won't.... It was Mrs. Tom Fry seen you going in... and two or three +of them watched for you to come out again.... You've been with the fellow +all day long every day since he come here... and I'm a lawyer, and I know +how hard slander dies." He paused, but she stood motionless, without +giving him any sign of acquiescence or even of attention. "He's a +pleasant fellow to talk to--I liked having him here myself. The young +men up here ain't had his chances. But there's one thing as old as the +hills and as plain as daylight: if he'd wanted you the right way he'd +have said so." + +Charity did not speak. It seemed to her that nothing could exceed the +bitterness of hearing such words from such lips. + +Mr. Royall rose from his seat. "See here, Charity Royall: I had a +shameful thought once, and you've made me pay for it. Isn't that score +pretty near wiped out?... There's a streak in me I ain't always master +of; but I've always acted straight to you but that once. And you've +known I would--you've trusted me. For all your sneers and your mockery +you've always known I loved you the way a man loves a decent woman. I'm +a good many years older than you, but I'm head and shoulders above this +place and everybody in it, and you know that too. I slipped up once, but +that's no reason for not starting again. If you'll come with me I'll +do it. If you'll marry me we'll leave here and settle in some big town, +where there's men, and business, and things doing. It's not too late for +me to find an opening.... I can see it by the way folks treat me when I +go down to Hepburn or Nettleton...." + +Charity made no movement. Nothing in his appeal reached her heart, and +she thought only of words to wound and wither. But a growing lassitude +restrained her. What did anything matter that he was saying? She saw the +old life closing in on her, and hardly heeded his fanciful picture of +renewal. + +"Charity--Charity--say you'll do it," she heard him urge, all his lost +years and wasted passion in his voice. + +"Oh, what's the use of all this? When I leave here it won't be with +you." + +She moved toward the door as she spoke, and he stood up and placed +himself between her and the threshold. He seemed suddenly tall and +strong, as though the extremity of his humiliation had given him new +vigour. + +"That's all, is it? It's not much." He leaned against the door, so +towering and powerful that he seemed to fill the narrow room. "Well, +then look here.... You're right: I've no claim on you--why should you +look at a broken man like me? You want the other fellow... and I don't +blame you. You picked out the best when you seen it... well, that was +always my way." He fixed his stern eyes on her, and she had the sense +that the struggle within him was at its highest. "Do you want him to +marry you?" he asked. + +They stood and looked at each other for a long moment, eye to eye, with +the terrible equality of courage that sometimes made her feel as if she +had his blood in her veins. + +"Do you want him to--say? I'll have him here in an hour if you do. I +ain't been in the law thirty years for nothing. He's hired Carrick Fry's +team to take him to Hepburn, but he ain't going to start for another +hour. And I can put things to him so he won't be long deciding.... He's +soft: I could see that. I don't say you won't be sorry afterward--but, +by God, I'll give you the chance to be, if you say so." + +She heard him out in silence, too remote from all he was feeling and +saying for any sally of scorn to relieve her. As she listened, there +flitted through her mind the vision of Liff Hyatt's muddy boot coming +down on the white bramble-flowers. The same thing had happened now; +something transient and exquisite had flowered in her, and she had stood +by and seen it trampled to earth. While the thought passed through +her she was aware of Mr. Royall, still leaning against the door, but +crestfallen, diminished, as though her silence were the answer he most +dreaded. + +"I don't want any chance you can give me: I'm glad he's going away," she +said. + +He kept his place a moment longer, his hand on the door-knob. "Charity!" +he pleaded. She made no answer, and he turned the knob and went out. She +heard him fumble with the latch of the front door, and saw him walk +down the steps. He passed out of the gate, and his figure, stooping and +heavy, receded slowly up the street. + +For a while she remained where he had left her. She was still trembling +with the humiliation of his last words, which rang so loud in her ears +that it seemed as though they must echo through the village, proclaiming +her a creature to lend herself to such vile suggestions. Her shame +weighed on her like a physical oppression: the roof and walls seemed +to be closing in on her, and she was seized by the impulse to get away, +under the open sky, where there would be room to breathe. She went to +the front door, and as she did so Lucius Harney opened it. + +He looked graver and less confident than usual, and for a moment or two +neither of them spoke. Then he held out his hand. "Are you going out?" +he asked. "May I come in?" + +Her heart was beating so violently that she was afraid to speak, and +stood looking at him with tear-dilated eyes; then she became aware of +what her silence must betray, and said quickly: "Yes: come in." + +She led the way into the dining-room, and they sat down on opposite +sides of the table, the cruet-stand and japanned bread-basket between +them. Harney had laid his straw hat on the table, and as he sat there, +in his easy-looking summer clothes, a brown tie knotted under his +flannel collar, and his smooth brown hair brushed back from his +forehead, she pictured him, as she had seen him the night before, lying +on his bed, with the tossed locks falling into his eyes, and his bare +throat rising out of his unbuttoned shirt. He had never seemed so remote +as at the moment when that vision flashed through her mind. + +"I'm so sorry it's good-bye: I suppose you know I'm leaving," he began, +abruptly and awkwardly; she guessed that he was wondering how much she +knew of his reasons for going. + +"I presume you found your work was over quicker than what you expected," +she said. + +"Well, yes--that is, no: there are plenty of things I should have liked +to do. But my holiday's limited; and now that Mr. Royall needs the horse +for himself it's rather difficult to find means of getting about." + +"There ain't any too many teams for hire around here," she acquiesced; +and there was another silence. + +"These days here have been--awfully pleasant: I wanted to thank you for +making them so," he continued, his colour rising. + +She could not think of any reply, and he went on: "You've been +wonderfully kind to me, and I wanted to tell you.... I wish I could think +of you as happier, less lonely.... Things are sure to change for you by +and by...." + +"Things don't change at North Dormer: people just get used to them." + +The answer seemed to break up the order of his prearranged consolations, +and he sat looking at her uncertainly. Then he said, with his sweet +smile: "That's not true of you. It can't be." + +The smile was like a knife-thrust through her heart: everything in her +began to tremble and break loose. She felt her tears run over, and stood +up. + +"Well, good-bye," she said. + +She was aware of his taking her hand, and of feeling that his touch was +lifeless. + +"Good-bye." He turned away, and stopped on the threshold. "You'll say +good-bye for me to Verena?" + +She heard the closing of the outer door and the sound of his quick tread +along the path. The latch of the gate clicked after him. + +The next morning when she arose in the cold dawn and opened her shutters +she saw a freckled boy standing on the other side of the road and +looking up at her. He was a boy from a farm three or four miles down the +Creston road, and she wondered what he was doing there at that hour, and +why he looked so hard at her window. When he saw her he crossed over and +leaned against the gate unconcernedly. There was no one stirring in the +house, and she threw a shawl over her night-gown and ran down and let +herself out. By the time she reached the gate the boy was sauntering +down the road, whistling carelessly; but she saw that a letter had been +thrust between the slats and the crossbar of the gate. She took it out +and hastened back to her room. + +The envelope bore her name, and inside was a leaf torn from a +pocket-diary. + + +DEAR CHARITY: + +I can't go away like this. I am staying for a few days at Creston River. +Will you come down and meet me at Creston pool? I will wait for you till +evening. + + + + +IX + + +CHARITY sat before the mirror trying on a hat which Ally Hawes, with +much secrecy, had trimmed for her. It was of white straw, with a +drooping brim and cherry-coloured lining that made her face glow like +the inside of the shell on the parlour mantelpiece. + +She propped the square of looking-glass against Mr. Royall's black +leather Bible, steadying it in front with a white stone on which a view +of the Brooklyn Bridge was painted; and she sat before her reflection, +bending the brim this way and that, while Ally Hawes's pale face looked +over her shoulder like the ghost of wasted opportunities. + +"I look awful, don't I?" she said at last with a happy sigh. + +Ally smiled and took back the hat. "I'll stitch the roses on right here, +so's you can put it away at once." + +Charity laughed, and ran her fingers through her rough dark hair. +She knew that Harney liked to see its reddish edges ruffled about her +forehead and breaking into little rings at the nape. She sat down on her +bed and watched Ally stoop over the hat with a careful frown. + +"Don't you ever feel like going down to Nettleton for a day?" she asked. + +Ally shook her head without looking up. "No, I always remember that +awful time I went down with Julia--to that doctor's." + +"Oh, Ally----" + +"I can't help it. The house is on the corner of Wing Street and Lake +Avenue. The trolley from the station goes right by it, and the day the +minister took us down to see those pictures I recognized it right off, +and couldn't seem to see anything else. There's a big black sign with +gold letters all across the front--'Private Consultations.' She came as +near as anything to dying...." + +"Poor Julia!" Charity sighed from the height of her purity and her +security. She had a friend whom she trusted and who respected her. +She was going with him to spend the next day--the Fourth of July--at +Nettleton. Whose business was it but hers, and what was the harm? The +pity of it was that girls like Julia did not know how to choose, and to +keep bad fellows at a distance.... Charity slipped down from the bed, and +stretched out her hands. + +"Is it sewed? Let me try it on again." She put the hat on, and smiled at +her image. The thought of Julia had vanished.... + +The next morning she was up before dawn, and saw the yellow sunrise +broaden behind the hills, and the silvery luster preceding a hot day +tremble across the sleeping fields. + +Her plans had been made with great care. She had announced that she was +going down to the Band of Hope picnic at Hepburn, and as no one else +from North Dormer intended to venture so far it was not likely that her +absence from the festivity would be reported. Besides, if it were she +would not greatly care. She was determined to assert her independence, +and if she stooped to fib about the Hepburn picnic it was chiefly +from the secretive instinct that made her dread the profanation of her +happiness. Whenever she was with Lucius Harney she would have liked some +impenetrable mountain mist to hide her. + +It was arranged that she should walk to a point of the Creston road +where Harney was to pick her up and drive her across the hills to +Hepburn in time for the nine-thirty train to Nettleton. Harney at first +had been rather lukewarm about the trip. He declared himself ready to +take her to Nettleton, but urged her not to go on the Fourth of July, +on account of the crowds, the probable lateness of the trains, +the difficulty of her getting back before night; but her evident +disappointment caused him to give way, and even to affect a faint +enthusiasm for the adventure. She understood why he was not more eager: +he must have seen sights beside which even a Fourth of July at Nettleton +would seem tame. But she had never seen anything; and a great longing +possessed her to walk the streets of a big town on a holiday, clinging +to his arm and jostled by idle crowds in their best clothes. The only +cloud on the prospect was the fact that the shops would be closed; but +she hoped he would take her back another day, when they were open. + +She started out unnoticed in the early sunlight, slipping through the +kitchen while Verena bent above the stove. To avoid attracting notice, +she carried her new hat carefully wrapped up, and had thrown a long +grey veil of Mrs. Royall's over the new white muslin dress which Ally's +clever fingers had made for her. All of the ten dollars Mr. Royall had +given her, and a part of her own savings as well, had been spent on +renewing her wardrobe; and when Harney jumped out of the buggy to meet +her she read her reward in his eyes. + +The freckled boy who had brought her the note two weeks earlier was +to wait with the buggy at Hepburn till their return. He perched at +Charity's feet, his legs dangling between the wheels, and they could +not say much because of his presence. But it did not greatly matter, for +their past was now rich enough to have given them a private language; +and with the long day stretching before them like the blue distance +beyond the hills there was a delicate pleasure in postponement. + +When Charity, in response to Harney's message, had gone to meet him at +the Creston pool her heart had been so full of mortification and anger +that his first words might easily have estranged her. But it happened +that he had found the right word, which was one of simple friendship. +His tone had instantly justified her, and put her guardian in the +wrong. He had made no allusion to what had passed between Mr. Royall and +himself, but had simply let it appear that he had left because means of +conveyance were hard to find at North Dormer, and because Creston River +was a more convenient centre. He told her that he had hired by the week +the buggy of the freckled boy's father, who served as livery-stable +keeper to one or two melancholy summer boarding-houses on Creston Lake, +and had discovered, within driving distance, a number of houses worthy +of his pencil; and he said that he could not, while he was in the +neighbourhood, give up the pleasure of seeing her as often as possible. + +When they took leave of each other she promised to continue to be his +guide; and during the fortnight which followed they roamed the hills in +happy comradeship. In most of the village friendships between youths and +maidens lack of conversation was made up for by tentative fondling; but +Harney, except when he had tried to comfort her in her trouble on their +way back from the Hyatts', had never put his arm about her, or sought +to betray her into any sudden caress. It seemed to be enough for him to +breathe her nearness like a flower's; and since his pleasure at being +with her, and his sense of her youth and her grace, perpetually shone in +his eyes and softened the inflection of his voice, his reserve did not +suggest coldness, but the deference due to a girl of his own class. + +The buggy was drawn by an old trotter who whirled them along so briskly +that the pace created a little breeze; but when they reached Hepburn +the full heat of the airless morning descended on them. At the railway +station the platform was packed with a sweltering throng, and they took +refuge in the waiting-room, where there was another throng, already +dejected by the heat and the long waiting for retarded trains. Pale +mothers were struggling with fretful babies, or trying to keep their +older offspring from the fascination of the track; girls and their +"fellows" were giggling and shoving, and passing about candy in sticky +bags, and older men, collarless and perspiring, were shifting heavy +children from one arm to the other, and keeping a haggard eye on the +scattered members of their families. + +At last the train rumbled in, and engulfed the waiting multitude. Harney +swept Charity up on to the first car and they captured a bench for +two, and sat in happy isolation while the train swayed and roared along +through rich fields and languid tree-clumps. The haze of the morning +had become a sort of clear tremor over everything, like the colourless +vibration about a flame; and the opulent landscape seemed to droop under +it. But to Charity the heat was a stimulant: it enveloped the whole +world in the same glow that burned at her heart. Now and then a lurch of +the train flung her against Harney, and through her thin muslin she felt +the touch of his sleeve. She steadied herself, their eyes met, and the +flaming breath of the day seemed to enclose them. + +The train roared into the Nettleton station, the descending mob caught +them on its tide, and they were swept out into a vague dusty square +thronged with seedy "hacks" and long curtained omnibuses drawn by horses +with tasselled fly-nets over their withers, who stood swinging their +depressed heads drearily from side to side. + +A mob of 'bus and hack drivers were shouting "To the Eagle House," +"To the Washington House," "This way to the Lake," "Just starting for +Greytop;" and through their yells came the popping of fire-crackers, +the explosion of torpedoes, the banging of toy-guns, and the crash of +a firemen's band trying to play the Merry Widow while they were being +packed into a waggonette streaming with bunting. + +The ramshackle wooden hotels about the square were all hung with flags +and paper lanterns, and as Harney and Charity turned into the main +street, with its brick and granite business blocks crowding out the old +low-storied shops, and its towering poles strung with innumerable wires +that seemed to tremble and buzz in the heat, they saw the double line of +flags and lanterns tapering away gaily to the park at the other end of +the perspective. The noise and colour of this holiday vision seemed to +transform Nettleton into a metropolis. Charity could not believe +that Springfield or even Boston had anything grander to show, and +she wondered if, at this very moment, Annabel Balch, on the arm of +as brilliant a young man, were threading her way through scenes as +resplendent. + +"Where shall we go first?" Harney asked; but as she turned her happy +eyes on him he guessed the answer and said: "We'll take a look round, +shall we?" + +The street swarmed with their fellow-travellers, with other +excursionists arriving from other directions, with Nettleton's own +population, and with the mill-hands trooping in from the factories on +the Creston. The shops were closed, but one would scarcely have noticed +it, so numerous were the glass doors swinging open on saloons, on +restaurants, on drug-stores gushing from every soda-water tap, on fruit +and confectionery shops stacked with strawberry-cake, cocoanut drops, +trays of glistening molasses candy, boxes of caramels and chewing-gum, +baskets of sodden strawberries, and dangling branches of bananas. +Outside of some of the doors were trestles with banked-up oranges and +apples, spotted pears and dusty raspberries; and the air reeked with +the smell of fruit and stale coffee, beer and sarsaparilla and fried +potatoes. + +Even the shops that were closed offered, through wide expanses of +plate-glass, hints of hidden riches. In some, waves of silk and ribbon +broke over shores of imitation moss from which ravishing hats rose like +tropical orchids. In others, the pink throats of gramophones opened +their giant convolutions in a soundless chorus; or bicycles shining in +neat ranks seemed to await the signal of an invisible starter; or tiers +of fancy-goods in leatherette and paste and celluloid dangled their +insidious graces; and, in one vast bay that seemed to project them into +exciting contact with the public, wax ladies in daring dresses chatted +elegantly, or, with gestures intimate yet blameless, pointed to their +pink corsets and transparent hosiery. + +Presently Harney found that his watch had stopped, and turned in at a +small jeweller's shop which chanced to still be open. While the watch +was being examined Charity leaned over the glass counter where, on a +background of dark blue velvet, pins, rings, and brooches glittered +like the moon and stars. She had never seen jewellry so near by, and +she longed to lift the glass lid and plunge her hand among the shining +treasures. But already Harney's watch was repaired, and he laid his hand +on her arm and drew her from her dream. + +"Which do you like best?" he asked leaning over the counter at her side. + +"I don't know...." She pointed to a gold lily-of-the-valley with white +flowers. + +"Don't you think the blue pin's better?" he suggested, and immediately +she saw that the lily of the valley was mere trumpery compared to the +small round stone, blue as a mountain lake, with little sparks of light +all round it. She coloured at her want of discrimination. + +"It's so lovely I guess I was afraid to look at it," she said. + +He laughed, and they went out of the shop; but a few steps away he +exclaimed: "Oh, by Jove, I forgot something," and turned back and +left her in the crowd. She stood staring down a row of pink gramophone +throats till he rejoined her and slipped his arm through hers. + +"You mustn't be afraid of looking at the blue pin any longer, because it +belongs to you," he said; and she felt a little box being pressed into +her hand. Her heart gave a leap of joy, but it reached her lips only in +a shy stammer. She remembered other girls whom she had heard planning to +extract presents from their fellows, and was seized with a sudden dread +lest Harney should have imagined that she had leaned over the pretty +things in the glass case in the hope of having one given to her.... + +A little farther down the street they turned in at a glass doorway +opening on a shining hall with a mahogany staircase, and brass cages in +its corners. "We must have something to eat," Harney said; and the next +moment Charity found herself in a dressing-room all looking-glass and +lustrous surfaces, where a party of showy-looking girls were dabbing +on powder and straightening immense plumed hats. When they had gone she +took courage to bathe her hot face in one of the marble basins, and +to straighten her own hat-brim, which the parasols of the crowd had +indented. The dresses in the shops had so impressed her that she +scarcely dared look at her reflection; but when she did so, the glow +of her face under her cherry-coloured hat, and the curve of her young +shoulders through the transparent muslin, restored her courage; and when +she had taken the blue brooch from its box and pinned it on her bosom +she walked toward the restaurant with her head high, as if she had +always strolled through tessellated halls beside young men in flannels. + +Her spirit sank a little at the sight of the slim-waisted waitresses in +black, with bewitching mob-caps on their haughty heads, who were moving +disdainfully between the tables. "Not f'r another hour," one of them +dropped to Harney in passing; and he stood doubtfully glancing about +him. + +"Oh, well, we can't stay sweltering here," he decided; "let's try +somewhere else--" and with a sense of relief Charity followed him from +that scene of inhospitable splendour. + +That "somewhere else" turned out--after more hot tramping, and several +failures--to be, of all things, a little open-air place in a back street +that called itself a French restaurant, and consisted in two or three +rickety tables under a scarlet-runner, between a patch of zinnias +and petunias and a big elm bending over from the next yard. Here they +lunched on queerly flavoured things, while Harney, leaning back in a +crippled rocking-chair, smoked cigarettes between the courses and poured +into Charity's glass a pale yellow wine which he said was the very same +one drank in just such jolly places in France. + +Charity did not think the wine as good as sarsaparilla, but she sipped a +mouthful for the pleasure of doing what he did, and of fancying herself +alone with him in foreign countries. The illusion was increased by their +being served by a deep-bosomed woman with smooth hair and a pleasant +laugh, who talked to Harney in unintelligible words, and seemed amazed +and overjoyed at his answering her in kind. At the other tables other +people sat, mill-hands probably, homely but pleasant looking, who spoke +the same shrill jargon, and looked at Harney and Charity with friendly +eyes; and between the table-legs a poodle with bald patches and pink +eyes nosed about for scraps, and sat up on his hind legs absurdly. + +Harney showed no inclination to move, for hot as their corner was, it +was at least shaded and quiet; and, from the main thoroughfares came the +clanging of trolleys, the incessant popping of torpedoes, the jingle +of street-organs, the bawling of megaphone men and the loud murmur of +increasing crowds. He leaned back, smoking his cigar, patting the dog, +and stirring the coffee that steamed in their chipped cups. "It's the +real thing, you know," he explained; and Charity hastily revised her +previous conception of the beverage. + +They had made no plans for the rest of the day, and when Harney +asked her what she wanted to do next she was too bewildered by rich +possibilities to find an answer. Finally she confessed that she longed +to go to the Lake, where she had not been taken on her former visit, +and when he answered, "Oh, there's time for that--it will be pleasanter +later," she suggested seeing some pictures like the ones Mr. Miles had +taken her to. She thought Harney looked a little disconcerted; but +he passed his fine handkerchief over his warm brow, said gaily, "Come +along, then," and rose with a last pat for the pink-eyed dog. + +Mr. Miles's pictures had been shown in an austere Y.M.C.A. hall, +with white walls and an organ; but Harney led Charity to a glittering +place--everything she saw seemed to glitter--where they passed, between +immense pictures of yellow-haired beauties stabbing villains in evening +dress, into a velvet-curtained auditorium packed with spectators to +the last limit of compression. After that, for a while, everything +was merged in her brain in swimming circles of heat and blinding +alternations of light and darkness. All the world has to show seemed +to pass before her in a chaos of palms and minarets, charging cavalry +regiments, roaring lions, comic policemen and scowling murderers; and +the crowd around her, the hundreds of hot sallow candy-munching faces, +young, old, middle-aged, but all kindled with the same contagious +excitement, became part of the spectacle, and danced on the screen with +the rest. + +Presently the thought of the cool trolley-run to the Lake grew +irresistible, and they struggled out of the theatre. As they stood +on the pavement, Harney pale with the heat, and even Charity a little +confused by it, a young man drove by in an electric run-about with a +calico band bearing the words: "Ten dollars to take you round the Lake." +Before Charity knew what was happening, Harney had waved a hand, and +they were climbing in. "Say, for twenny-five I'll run you out to see the +ball-game and back," the driver proposed with an insinuating grin; but +Charity said quickly: "Oh, I'd rather go rowing on the Lake." The street +was so thronged that progress was slow; but the glory of sitting in the +little carriage while it wriggled its way between laden omnibuses and +trolleys made the moments seem too short. "Next turn is Lake Avenue," +the young man called out over his shoulder; and as they paused in the +wake of a big omnibus groaning with Knights of Pythias in cocked hats +and swords, Charity looked up and saw on the corner a brick house with +a conspicuous black and gold sign across its front. "Dr. Merkle; Private +Consultations at all hours. Lady Attendants," she read; and suddenly +she remembered Ally Hawes's words: "The house was at the corner of Wing +Street and Lake Avenue... there's a big black sign across the front...." +Through all the heat and the rapture a shiver of cold ran over her. + + + + +X + + +THE Lake at last--a sheet of shining metal brooded over by drooping +trees. Charity and Harney had secured a boat and, getting away from the +wharves and the refreshment-booths, they drifted idly along, hugging the +shadow of the shore. Where the sun struck the water its shafts flamed +back blindingly at the heat-veiled sky; and the least shade was black by +contrast. The Lake was so smooth that the reflection of the trees on +its edge seemed enamelled on a solid surface; but gradually, as the sun +declined, the water grew transparent, and Charity, leaning over, plunged +her fascinated gaze into depths so clear that she saw the inverted +tree-tops interwoven with the green growths of the bottom. + +They rounded a point at the farther end of the Lake, and entering an +inlet pushed their bow against a protruding tree-trunk. A green veil of +willows overhung them. Beyond the trees, wheat-fields sparkled in the +sun; and all along the horizon the clear hills throbbed with light. +Charity leaned back in the stern, and Harney unshipped the oars and lay +in the bottom of the boat without speaking. + +Ever since their meeting at the Creston pool he had been subject to +these brooding silences, which were as different as possible from the +pauses when they ceased to speak because words were needless. At such +times his face wore the expression she had seen on it when she had +looked in at him from the darkness and again there came over her a +sense of the mysterious distance between them; but usually his fits +of abstraction were followed by bursts of gaiety that chased away the +shadow before it chilled her. + +She was still thinking of the ten dollars he had handed to the driver +of the run-about. It had given them twenty minutes of pleasure, and it +seemed unimaginable that anyone should be able to buy amusement at that +rate. With ten dollars he might have bought her an engagement ring; she +knew that Mrs. Tom Fry's, which came from Springfield, and had a diamond +in it, had cost only eight seventy-five. But she did not know why the +thought had occurred to her. Harney would never buy her an engagement +ring: they were friends and comrades, but no more. He had been perfectly +fair to her: he had never said a word to mislead her. She wondered what +the girl was like whose hand was waiting for his ring.... + +Boats were beginning to thicken on the Lake and the clang of incessantly +arriving trolleys announced the return of the crowds from the +ball-field. The shadows lengthened across the pearl-grey water and two +white clouds near the sun were turning golden. On the opposite shore men +were hammering hastily at a wooden scaffolding in a field. Charity asked +what it was for. + +"Why, the fireworks. I suppose there'll be a big show." Harney looked at +her and a smile crept into his moody eyes. "Have you never seen any good +fireworks?" + +"Miss Hatchard always sends up lovely rockets on the Fourth," she +answered doubtfully. + +"Oh----" his contempt was unbounded. "I mean a big performance like +this, illuminated boats, and all the rest." + +She flushed at the picture. "Do they send them up from the Lake, too?" + +"Rather. Didn't you notice that big raft we passed? It's wonderful to +see the rockets completing their orbits down under one's feet." She said +nothing, and he put the oars into the rowlocks. "If we stay we'd better +go and pick up something to eat." + +"But how can we get back afterwards?" she ventured, feeling it would +break her heart if she missed it. + +He consulted a time-table, found a ten o'clock train and reassured her. +"The moon rises so late that it will be dark by eight, and we'll have +over an hour of it." + +Twilight fell, and lights began to show along the shore. The trolleys +roaring out from Nettleton became great luminous serpents coiling in and +out among the trees. The wooden eating-houses at the Lake's edge danced +with lanterns, and the dusk echoed with laughter and shouts and the +clumsy splashing of oars. + +Harney and Charity had found a table in the corner of a balcony built +over the Lake, and were patiently awaiting an unattainable chowder. +Close under them the water lapped the piles, agitated by the evolutions +of a little white steamboat trellised with coloured globes which was to +run passengers up and down the Lake. It was already black with them as +it sheered off on its first trip. + +Suddenly Charity heard a woman's laugh behind her. The sound was +familiar, and she turned to look. A band of showily dressed girls and +dapper young men wearing badges of secret societies, with new straw hats +tilted far back on their square-clipped hair, had invaded the balcony +and were loudly clamouring for a table. The girl in the lead was the +one who had laughed. She wore a large hat with a long white feather, +and from under its brim her painted eyes looked at Charity with amused +recognition. + +"Say! if this ain't like Old Home Week," she remarked to the girl at her +elbow; and giggles and glances passed between them. Charity knew at once +that the girl with the white feather was Julia Hawes. She had lost her +freshness, and the paint under her eyes made her face seem thinner; but +her lips had the same lovely curve, and the same cold mocking smile, as +if there were some secret absurdity in the person she was looking at, +and she had instantly detected it. + +Charity flushed to the forehead and looked away. She felt herself +humiliated by Julia's sneer, and vexed that the mockery of such a +creature should affect her. She trembled lest Harney should notice that +the noisy troop had recognized her; but they found no table free, and +passed on tumultuously. + +Presently there was a soft rush through the air and a shower of silver +fell from the blue evening sky. In another direction, pale Roman candles +shot up singly through the trees, and a fire-haired rocket swept the +horizon like a portent. Between these intermittent flashes the velvet +curtains of the darkness were descending, and in the intervals of +eclipse the voices of the crowds seemed to sink to smothered murmurs. + +Charity and Harney, dispossessed by newcomers, were at length obliged +to give up their table and struggle through the throng about the +boat-landings. For a while there seemed no escape from the tide of late +arrivals; but finally Harney secured the last two places on the stand +from which the more privileged were to see the fireworks. The seats were +at the end of a row, one above the other. Charity had taken off her hat +to have an uninterrupted view; and whenever she leaned back to follow +the curve of some dishevelled rocket she could feel Harney's knees +against her head. + +After a while the scattered fireworks ceased. A longer interval of +darkness followed, and then the whole night broke into flower. From +every point of the horizon, gold and silver arches sprang up and crossed +each other, sky-orchards broke into blossom, shed their flaming petals +and hung their branches with golden fruit; and all the while the air was +filled with a soft supernatural hum, as though great birds were building +their nests in those invisible tree-tops. + +Now and then there came a lull, and a wave of moonlight swept the Lake. +In a flash it revealed hundreds of boats, steel-dark against lustrous +ripples; then it withdrew as if with a furling of vast translucent +wings. Charity's heart throbbed with delight. It was as if all the +latent beauty of things had been unveiled to her. She could not imagine +that the world held anything more wonderful; but near her she heard +someone say, "You wait till you see the set piece," and instantly her +hopes took a fresh flight. At last, just as it was beginning to seem as +though the whole arch of the sky were one great lid pressed against her +dazzled eye-balls, and striking out of them continuous jets of +jewelled light, the velvet darkness settled down again, and a murmur of +expectation ran through the crowd. + +"Now--now!" the same voice said excitedly; and Charity, grasping the hat +on her knee, crushed it tight in the effort to restrain her rapture. + +For a moment the night seemed to grow more impenetrably black; then +a great picture stood out against it like a constellation. It was +surmounted by a golden scroll bearing the inscription, "Washington +crossing the Delaware," and across a flood of motionless golden ripples +the National Hero passed, erect, solemn and gigantic, standing with +folded arms in the stern of a slowly moving golden boat. + +A long "Oh-h-h" burst from the spectators: the stand creaked and shook +with their blissful trepidations. "Oh-h-h," Charity gasped: she had +forgotten where she was, had at last forgotten even Harney's nearness. +She seemed to have been caught up into the stars.... + +The picture vanished and darkness came down. In the obscurity she felt +her head clasped by two hands: her face was drawn backward, and Harney's +lips were pressed on hers. With sudden vehemence he wound his arms about +her, holding her head against his breast while she gave him back his +kisses. An unknown Harney had revealed himself, a Harney who dominated +her and yet over whom she felt herself possessed of a new mysterious +power. + +But the crowd was beginning to move, and he had to release her. "Come," +he said in a confused voice. He scrambled over the side of the stand, +and holding up his arm caught her as she sprang to the ground. He passed +his arm about her waist, steadying her against the descending rush +of people; and she clung to him, speechless, exultant, as if all the +crowding and confusion about them were a mere vain stirring of the air. + +"Come," he repeated, "we must try to make the trolley." He drew her +along, and she followed, still in her dream. They walked as if they were +one, so isolated in ecstasy that the people jostling them on every side +seemed impalpable. But when they reached the terminus the illuminated +trolley was already clanging on its way, its platforms black with +passengers. The cars waiting behind it were as thickly packed; and +the throng about the terminus was so dense that it seemed hopeless to +struggle for a place. + +"Last trip up the Lake," a megaphone bellowed from the wharf; and the +lights of the little steam-boat came dancing out of the darkness. + +"No use waiting here; shall we run up the Lake?" Harney suggested. + +They pushed their way back to the edge of the water just as the +gang-plank lowered from the white side of the boat. The electric light +at the end of the wharf flashed full on the descending passengers, and +among them Charity caught sight of Julia Hawes, her white feather askew, +and the face under it flushed with coarse laughter. As she stepped from +the gang-plank she stopped short, her dark-ringed eyes darting malice. + +"Hullo, Charity Royall!" she called out; and then, looking back over +her shoulder: "Didn't I tell you it was a family party? Here's grandpa's +little daughter come to take him home!" + +A snigger ran through the group; and then, towering above them, and +steadying himself by the hand-rail in a desperate effort at erectness, +Mr. Royall stepped stiffly ashore. Like the young men of the party, he +wore a secret society emblem in the buttonhole of his black frock-coat. +His head was covered by a new Panama hat, and his narrow black tie, +half undone, dangled down on his rumpled shirt-front. His face, a livid +brown, with red blotches of anger and lips sunken in like an old man's, +was a lamentable ruin in the searching glare. + +He was just behind Julia Hawes, and had one hand on her arm; but as he +left the gang-plank he freed himself, and moved a step or two away +from his companions. He had seen Charity at once, and his glance passed +slowly from her to Harney, whose arm was still about her. He stood +staring at them, and trying to master the senile quiver of his lips; +then he drew himself up with the tremulous majesty of drunkenness, and +stretched out his arm. + +"You whore--you damn--bare-headed whore, you!" he enunciated slowly. + +There was a scream of tipsy laughter from the party, and Charity +involuntarily put her hands to her head. She remembered that her hat had +fallen from her lap when she jumped up to leave the stand; and suddenly +she had a vision of herself, hatless, dishevelled, with a man's arm +about her, confronting that drunken crew, headed by her guardian's +pitiable figure. The picture filled her with shame. She had known since +childhood about Mr. Royall's "habits": had seen him, as she went up to +bed, sitting morosely in his office, a bottle at his elbow; or coming +home, heavy and quarrelsome, from his business expeditions to Hepburn +or Springfield; but the idea of his associating himself publicly with a +band of disreputable girls and bar-room loafers was new and dreadful to +her. + +"Oh----" she said in a gasp of misery; and releasing herself from +Harney's arm she went straight up to Mr. Royall. + +"You come home with me--you come right home with me," she said in a +low stern voice, as if she had not heard his apostrophe; and one of the +girls called out: "Say, how many fellers does she want?" + +There was another laugh, followed by a pause of curiosity, during which +Mr. Royall continued to glare at Charity. At length his twitching +lips parted. "I said, 'You--damn--whore!'" he repeated with precision, +steadying himself on Julia's shoulder. + +Laughs and jeers were beginning to spring up from the circle of people +beyond their group; and a voice called out from the gangway: "Now, +then, step lively there--all ABOARD!" The pressure of approaching and +departing passengers forced the actors in the rapid scene apart, and +pushed them back into the throng. Charity found herself clinging to +Harney's arm and sobbing desperately. Mr. Royall had disappeared, and in +the distance she heard the receding sound of Julia's laugh. + +The boat, laden to the taffrail, was puffing away on her last trip. + + + + +XI + + +AT two o'clock in the morning the freckled boy from Creston stopped his +sleepy horse at the door of the red house, and Charity got out. Harney +had taken leave of her at Creston River, charging the boy to drive her +home. Her mind was still in a fog of misery, and she did not remember +very clearly what had happened, or what they said to each other, during +the interminable interval since their departure from Nettleton; but the +secretive instinct of the animal in pain was so strong in her that she +had a sense of relief when Harney got out and she drove on alone. + +The full moon hung over North Dormer, whitening the mist that filled the +hollows between the hills and floated transparently above the fields. +Charity stood a moment at the gate, looking out into the waning night. +She watched the boy drive off, his horse's head wagging heavily to and +fro; then she went around to the kitchen door and felt under the mat for +the key. She found it, unlocked the door and went in. The kitchen +was dark, but she discovered a box of matches, lit a candle and went +upstairs. Mr. Royall's door, opposite hers, stood open on his unlit +room; evidently he had not come back. She went into her room, bolted her +door and began slowly to untie the ribbon about her waist, and to take +off her dress. Under the bed she saw the paper bag in which she had +hidden her new hat from inquisitive eyes.... + +She lay for a long time sleepless on her bed, staring up at the +moonlight on the low ceiling; dawn was in the sky when she fell asleep, +and when she woke the sun was on her face. + +She dressed and went down to the kitchen. Verena was there alone: she +glanced at Charity tranquilly, with her old deaf-looking eyes. There was +no sign of Mr. Royall about the house and the hours passed without his +reappearing. Charity had gone up to her room, and sat there listlessly, +her hands on her lap. Puffs of sultry air fanned her dimity window +curtains and flies buzzed stiflingly against the bluish panes. + +At one o'clock Verena hobbled up to see if she were not coming down to +dinner; but she shook her head, and the old woman went away, saying: +"I'll cover up, then." + +The sun turned and left her room, and Charity seated herself in the +window, gazing down the village street through the half-opened shutters. +Not a thought was in her mind; it was just a dark whirlpool of crowding +images; and she watched the people passing along the street, Dan +Targatt's team hauling a load of pine-trunks down to Hepburn, the +sexton's old white horse grazing on the bank across the way, as if she +looked at these familiar sights from the other side of the grave. + +She was roused from her apathy by seeing Ally Hawes come out of the +Frys' gate and walk slowly toward the red house with her uneven limping +step. At the sight Charity recovered her severed contact with reality. +She divined that Ally was coming to hear about her day: no one else +was in the secret of the trip to Nettleton, and it had flattered Ally +profoundly to be allowed to know of it. + +At the thought of having to see her, of having to meet her eyes and +answer or evade her questions, the whole horror of the previous night's +adventure rushed back upon Charity. What had been a feverish nightmare +became a cold and unescapable fact. Poor Ally, at that moment, +represented North Dormer, with all its mean curiosities, its furtive +malice, its sham unconsciousness of evil. Charity knew that, although +all relations with Julia were supposed to be severed, the tender-hearted +Ally still secretly communicated with her; and no doubt Julia would +exult in the chance of retailing the scandal of the wharf. The story, +exaggerated and distorted, was probably already on its way to North +Dormer. + +Ally's dragging pace had not carried her far from the Frys' gate when +she was stopped by old Mrs. Sollas, who was a great talker, and spoke +very slowly because she had never been able to get used to her new teeth +from Hepburn. Still, even this respite would not last long; in another +ten minutes Ally would be at the door, and Charity would hear her +greeting Verena in the kitchen, and then calling up from the foot of the +stairs. + +Suddenly it became clear that flight, and instant flight, was the only +thing conceivable. The longing to escape, to get away from familiar +faces, from places where she was known, had always been strong in her in +moments of distress. She had a childish belief in the miraculous power +of strange scenes and new faces to transform her life and wipe out +bitter memories. But such impulses were mere fleeting whims compared to +the cold resolve which now possessed her. She felt she could not remain +an hour longer under the roof of the man who had publicly dishonoured +her, and face to face with the people who would presently be gloating +over all the details of her humiliation. + +Her passing pity for Mr. Royall had been swallowed up in loathing: +everything in her recoiled from the disgraceful spectacle of the drunken +old man apostrophizing her in the presence of a band of loafers and +street-walkers. Suddenly, vividly, she relived again the horrible moment +when he had tried to force himself into her room, and what she had +before supposed to be a mad aberration now appeared to her as a vulgar +incident in a debauched and degraded life. + +While these thoughts were hurrying through her she had dragged out +her old canvas school-bag, and was thrusting into it a few articles of +clothing and the little packet of letters she had received from Harney. +From under her pincushion she took the library key, and laid it in full +view; then she felt at the back of a drawer for the blue brooch that +Harney had given her. She would not have dared to wear it openly at +North Dormer, but now she fastened it on her bosom as if it were a +talisman to protect her in her flight. These preparations had taken but +a few minutes, and when they were finished Ally Hawes was still at the +Frys' corner talking to old Mrs. Sollas.... + +She had said to herself, as she always said in moments of revolt: "I'll +go to the Mountain--I'll go back to my own folks." She had never really +meant it before; but now, as she considered her case, no other course +seemed open. She had never learned any trade that would have given her +independence in a strange place, and she knew no one in the big towns of +the valley, where she might have hoped to find employment. Miss Hatchard +was still away; but even had she been at North Dormer she was the last +person to whom Charity would have turned, since one of the motives +urging her to flight was the wish not to see Lucius Harney. Travelling +back from Nettleton, in the crowded brightly-lit train, all exchange of +confidence between them had been impossible; but during their drive +from Hepburn to Creston River she had gathered from Harney's snatches of +consolatory talk--again hampered by the freckled boy's presence--that +he intended to see her the next day. At the moment she had found a vague +comfort in the assurance; but in the desolate lucidity of the hours that +followed she had come to see the impossibility of meeting him again. +Her dream of comradeship was over; and the scene on the wharf--vile and +disgraceful as it had been--had after all shed the light of truth on her +minute of madness. It was as if her guardian's words had stripped her +bare in the face of the grinning crowd and proclaimed to the world the +secret admonitions of her conscience. + +She did not think these things out clearly; she simply followed the +blind propulsion of her wretchedness. She did not want, ever again, to +see anyone she had known; above all, she did not want to see Harney.... + +She climbed the hill-path behind the house and struck through the woods +by a short-cut leading to the Creston road. A lead-coloured sky hung +heavily over the fields, and in the forest the motionless air was +stifling; but she pushed on, impatient to reach the road which was the +shortest way to the Mountain. + +To do so, she had to follow the Creston road for a mile or two, and go +within half a mile of the village; and she walked quickly, fearing to +meet Harney. But there was no sign of him, and she had almost reached +the branch road when she saw the flanks of a large white tent projecting +through the trees by the roadside. She supposed that it sheltered a +travelling circus which had come there for the Fourth; but as she drew +nearer she saw, over the folded-back flap, a large sign bearing the +inscription, "Gospel Tent." The interior seemed to be empty; but a young +man in a black alpaca coat, his lank hair parted over a round white +face, stepped from under the flap and advanced toward her with a smile. + +"Sister, your Saviour knows everything. Won't you come in and lay your +guilt before Him?" he asked insinuatingly, putting his hand on her arm. + +Charity started back and flushed. For a moment she thought the +evangelist must have heard a report of the scene at Nettleton; then she +saw the absurdity of the supposition. + +"I on'y wish't I had any to lay!" she retorted, with one of her fierce +flashes of self-derision; and the young man murmured, aghast: "Oh, +Sister, don't speak blasphemy...." + +But she had jerked her arm out of his hold, and was running up the +branch road, trembling with the fear of meeting a familiar face. +Presently she was out of sight of the village, and climbing into the +heart of the forest. She could not hope to do the fifteen miles to the +Mountain that afternoon; but she knew of a place half-way to Hamblin +where she could sleep, and where no one would think of looking for her. +It was a little deserted house on a slope in one of the lonely rifts of +the hills. She had seen it once, years before, when she had gone on a +nutting expedition to the grove of walnuts below it. The party had taken +refuge in the house from a sudden mountain storm, and she remembered +that Ben Sollas, who liked frightening girls, had told them that it was +said to be haunted. + +She was growing faint and tired, for she had eaten nothing since +morning, and was not used to walking so far. Her head felt light and she +sat down for a moment by the roadside. As she sat there she heard the +click of a bicycle-bell, and started up to plunge back into the forest; +but before she could move the bicycle had swept around the curve of the +road, and Harney, jumping off, was approaching her with outstretched +arms. + +"Charity! What on earth are you doing here?" + +She stared as if he were a vision, so startled by the unexpectedness of +his being there that no words came to her. + +"Where were you going? Had you forgotten that I was coming?" he +continued, trying to draw her to him; but she shrank from his embrace. + +"I was going away--I don't want to see you--I want you should leave me +alone," she broke out wildly. + +He looked at her and his face grew grave, as though the shadow of a +premonition brushed it. + +"Going away--from me, Charity?" + +"From everybody. I want you should leave me." + +He stood glancing doubtfully up and down the lonely forest road that +stretched away into sun-flecked distances. + +"Where were you going?' + +"Home." + +"Home--this way?" + +She threw her head back defiantly. "To my home--up yonder: to the +Mountain." + +As she spoke she became aware of a change in his face. He was no longer +listening to her, he was only looking at her, with the passionate +absorbed expression she had seen in his eyes after they had kissed on +the stand at Nettleton. He was the new Harney again, the Harney abruptly +revealed in that embrace, who seemed so penetrated with the joy of +her presence that he was utterly careless of what she was thinking or +feeling. + +He caught her hands with a laugh. "How do you suppose I found you?" he +said gaily. He drew out the little packet of his letters and flourished +them before her bewildered eyes. + +"You dropped them, you imprudent young person--dropped them in the +middle of the road, not far from here; and the young man who is running +the Gospel tent picked them up just as I was riding by." He drew back, +holding her at arm's length, and scrutinizing her troubled face with the +minute searching gaze of his short-sighted eyes. + +"Did you really think you could run away from me? You see you weren't +meant to," he said; and before she could answer he had kissed her again, +not vehemently, but tenderly, almost fraternally, as if he had guessed +her confused pain, and wanted her to know he understood it. He wound his +fingers through hers. + +"Come let's walk a little. I want to talk to you. There's so much to +say." + +He spoke with a boy's gaiety, carelessly and confidently, as if nothing +had happened that could shame or embarrass them; and for a moment, in +the sudden relief of her release from lonely pain, she felt herself +yielding to his mood. But he had turned, and was drawing her back along +the road by which she had come. She stiffened herself and stopped short. + +"I won't go back," she said. + +They looked at each other a moment in silence; then he answered gently: +"Very well: let's go the other way, then." + +She remained motionless, gazing silently at the ground, and he went on: +"Isn't there a house up here somewhere--a little abandoned house--you +meant to show me some day?" Still she made no answer, and he continued, +in the same tone of tender reassurance: "Let us go there now and sit +down and talk quietly." He took one of the hands that hung by her side +and pressed his lips to the palm. "Do you suppose I'm going to let you +send me away? Do you suppose I don't understand?" + +The little old house--its wooden walls sun-bleached to a ghostly +gray--stood in an orchard above the road. The garden palings had fallen, +but the broken gate dangled between its posts, and the path to the house +was marked by rose-bushes run wild and hanging their small pale blossoms +above the crowding grasses. Slender pilasters and an intricate fan-light +framed the opening where the door had hung; and the door itself lay +rotting in the grass, with an old apple-tree fallen across it. + +Inside, also, wind and weather had blanched everything to the same +wan silvery tint; the house was as dry and pure as the interior of a +long-empty shell. But it must have been exceptionally well built, for +the little rooms had kept something of their human aspect: the wooden +mantels with their neat classic ornaments were in place, and the corners +of one ceiling retained a light film of plaster tracery. + +Harney had found an old bench at the back door and dragged it into the +house. Charity sat on it, leaning her head against the wall in a state +of drowsy lassitude. He had guessed that she was hungry and thirsty, +and had brought her some tablets of chocolate from his bicycle-bag, and +filled his drinking-cup from a spring in the orchard; and now he sat at +her feet, smoking a cigarette, and looking up at her without speaking. +Outside, the afternoon shadows were lengthening across the grass, and +through the empty window-frame that faced her she saw the Mountain +thrusting its dark mass against a sultry sunset. It was time to go. + +She stood up, and he sprang to his feet also, and passed his arm through +hers with an air of authority. "Now, Charity, you're coming back with +me." + +She looked at him and shook her head. "I ain't ever going back. You +don't know." + +"What don't I know?" She was silent, and he continued: "What happened on +the wharf was horrible--it's natural you should feel as you do. But it +doesn't make any real difference: you can't be hurt by such things. +You must try to forget. And you must try to understand that men... men +sometimes..." + +"I know about men. That's why." + +He coloured a little at the retort, as though it had touched him in a +way she did not suspect. + +"Well, then... you must know one has to make allowances.... He'd been +drinking...." + +"I know all that, too. I've seen him so before. But he wouldn't have +dared speak to me that way if he hadn't..." + +"Hadn't what? What do you mean?" + +"Hadn't wanted me to be like those other girls...." She lowered her +voice and looked away from him. "So's 't he wouldn't have to go out...." + +Harney stared at her. For a moment he did not seem to seize her meaning; +then his face grew dark. "The damned hound! The villainous low +hound!" His wrath blazed up, crimsoning him to the temples. "I never +dreamed--good God, it's too vile," he broke off, as if his thoughts +recoiled from the discovery. + +"I won't never go back there," she repeated doggedly. + +"No----" he assented. + +There was a long interval of silence, during which she imagined that he +was searching her face for more light on what she had revealed to him; +and a flush of shame swept over her. + +"I know the way you must feel about me," she broke out, "...telling you +such things...." + +But once more, as she spoke, she became aware that he was no longer +listening. He came close and caught her to him as if he were snatching +her from some imminent peril: his impetuous eyes were in hers, and she +could feel the hard beat of his heart as he held her against it. + +"Kiss me again--like last night," he said, pushing her hair back as if +to draw her whole face up into his kiss. + + + + + +XII + + +ONE afternoon toward the end of August a group of girls sat in a room at +Miss Hatchard's in a gay confusion of flags, turkey-red, blue and white +paper muslin, harvest sheaves and illuminated scrolls. + +North Dormer was preparing for its Old Home Week. That form of +sentimental decentralization was still in its early stages, and, +precedents being few, and the desire to set an example contagious, the +matter had become a subject of prolonged and passionate discussion under +Miss Hatchard's roof. The incentive to the celebration had come rather +from those who had left North Dormer than from those who had been +obliged to stay there, and there was some difficulty in rousing the +village to the proper state of enthusiasm. But Miss Hatchard's pale prim +drawing-room was the centre of constant comings and goings from Hepburn, +Nettleton, Springfield and even more distant cities; and whenever a +visitor arrived he was led across the hall, and treated to a glimpse of +the group of girls deep in their pretty preparations. + +"All the old names... all the old names...." Miss Hatchard would be +heard, tapping across the hall on her crutches. "Targatt... Sollas... +Fry: this is Miss Orma Fry sewing the stars on the drapery for the +organ-loft. Don't move, girls... and this is Miss Ally Hawes, our +cleverest needle-woman... and Miss Charity Royall making our garlands of +evergreen.... I like the idea of its all being homemade, don't you? We +haven't had to call in any foreign talent: my young cousin Lucius +Harney, the architect--you know he's up here preparing a book on +Colonial houses--he's taken the whole thing in hand so cleverly; but you +must come and see his sketch for the stage we're going to put up in the +Town Hall." + +One of the first results of the Old Home Week agitation had, in fact, +been the reappearance of Lucius Harney in the village street. He had +been vaguely spoken of as being not far off, but for some weeks past no +one had seen him at North Dormer, and there was a recent report of his +having left Creston River, where he was said to have been staying, and +gone away from the neighbourhood for good. Soon after Miss Hatchard's +return, however, he came back to his old quarters in her house, and +began to take a leading part in the planning of the festivities. He +threw himself into the idea with extraordinary good-humour, and was so +prodigal of sketches, and so inexhaustible in devices, that he gave an +immediate impetus to the rather languid movement, and infected the whole +village with his enthusiasm. + +"Lucius has such a feeling for the past that he has roused us all to a +sense of our privileges," Miss Hatchard would say, lingering on the last +word, which was a favourite one. And before leading her visitor back +to the drawing-room she would repeat, for the hundredth time, that she +supposed he thought it very bold of little North Dormer to start up and +have a Home Week of its own, when so many bigger places hadn't thought +of it yet; but that, after all, Associations counted more than the size +of the population, didn't they? And of course North Dormer was so full +of Associations... historic, literary (here a filial sigh for Honorius) +and ecclesiastical... he knew about the old pewter communion service +imported from England in 1769, she supposed? And it was so important, in +a wealthy materialistic age, to set the example of reverting to the old +ideals, the family and the homestead, and so on. This peroration usually +carried her half-way back across the hall, leaving the girls to return +to their interrupted activities. + +The day on which Charity Royall was weaving hemlock garlands for the +procession was the last before the celebration. When Miss Hatchard +called upon the North Dormer maidenhood to collaborate in the festal +preparations Charity had at first held aloof; but it had been made +clear to her that her non-appearance might excite conjecture, and, +reluctantly, she had joined the other workers. The girls, at first shy +and embarrassed, and puzzled as to the exact nature of the projected +commemoration, had soon become interested in the amusing details of +their task, and excited by the notice they received. They would not for +the world have missed their afternoons at Miss Hatchard's, and, while +they cut out and sewed and draped and pasted, their tongues kept up such +an accompaniment to the sewing-machine that Charity's silence sheltered +itself unperceived under their chatter. + +In spirit she was still almost unconscious of the pleasant stir about +her. Since her return to the red house, on the evening of the day when +Harney had overtaken her on her way to the Mountain, she had lived at +North Dormer as if she were suspended in the void. She had come back +there because Harney, after appearing to agree to the impossibility of +her doing so, had ended by persuading her that any other course would +be madness. She had nothing further to fear from Mr. Royall. Of this +she had declared herself sure, though she had failed to add, in his +exoneration, that he had twice offered to make her his wife. Her hatred +of him made it impossible, at the moment, for her to say anything that +might partly excuse him in Harney's eyes. + +Harney, however, once satisfied of her security, had found plenty of +reasons for urging her to return. The first, and the most unanswerable, +was that she had nowhere else to go. But the one on which he laid the +greatest stress was that flight would be equivalent to avowal. If--as +was almost inevitable--rumours of the scandalous scene at Nettleton +should reach North Dormer, how else would her disappearance be +interpreted? Her guardian had publicly taken away her character, and she +immediately vanished from his house. Seekers after motives could hardly +fail to draw an unkind conclusion. But if she came back at once, and +was seen leading her usual life, the incident was reduced to its true +proportions, as the outbreak of a drunken old man furious at being +surprised in disreputable company. People would say that Mr. Royall had +insulted his ward to justify himself, and the sordid tale would fall +into its place in the chronicle of his obscure debaucheries. + +Charity saw the force of the argument; but if she acquiesced it was +not so much because of that as because it was Harney's wish. Since that +evening in the deserted house she could imagine no reason for doing or +not doing anything except the fact that Harney wished or did not wish +it. All her tossing contradictory impulses were merged in a fatalistic +acceptance of his will. It was not that she felt in him any ascendancy +of character--there were moments already when she knew she was the +stronger--but that all the rest of life had become a mere cloudy rim +about the central glory of their passion. Whenever she stopped thinking +about that for a moment she felt as she sometimes did after lying on the +grass and staring up too long at the sky; her eyes were so full of light +that everything about her was a blur. + +Each time that Miss Hatchard, in the course of her periodical incursions +into the work-room, dropped an allusion to her young cousin, the +architect, the effect was the same on Charity. The hemlock garland she +was wearing fell to her knees and she sat in a kind of trance. It was +so manifestly absurd that Miss Hatchard should talk of Harney in +that familiar possessive way, as if she had any claim on him, or knew +anything about him. She, Charity Royall, was the only being on earth +who really knew him, knew him from the soles of his feet to the rumpled +crest of his hair, knew the shifting lights in his eyes, and the +inflexions of his voice, and the things he liked and disliked, +and everything there was to know about him, as minutely and yet +unconsciously as a child knows the walls of the room it wakes up in +every morning. It was this fact, which nobody about her guessed, +or would have understood, that made her life something apart and +inviolable, as if nothing had any power to hurt or disturb her as long +as her secret was safe. + +The room in which the girls sat was the one which had been Harney's +bedroom. He had been sent upstairs, to make room for the Home Week +workers; but the furniture had not been moved, and as Charity sat there +she had perpetually before her the vision she had looked in on from the +midnight garden. The table at which Harney had sat was the one about +which the girls were gathered; and her own seat was near the bed on +which she had seen him lying. Sometimes, when the others were not +looking, she bent over as if to pick up something, and laid her cheek +for a moment against the pillow. + +Toward sunset the girls disbanded. Their work was done, and the next +morning at daylight the draperies and garlands were to be nailed up, and +the illuminated scrolls put in place in the Town Hall. The first guests +were to drive over from Hepburn in time for the midday banquet under +a tent in Miss Hatchard's field; and after that the ceremonies were +to begin. Miss Hatchard, pale with fatigue and excitement, thanked her +young assistants, and stood in the porch, leaning on her crutches and +waving a farewell as she watched them troop away down the street. + +Charity had slipped off among the first; but at the gate she heard Ally +Hawes calling after her, and reluctantly turned. + +"Will you come over now and try on your dress?" Ally asked, looking at +her with wistful admiration. "I want to be sure the sleeves don't ruck +up the same as they did yesterday." + +Charity gazed at her with dazzled eyes. "Oh, it's lovely," she said, and +hastened away without listening to Ally's protest. She wanted her dress +to be as pretty as the other girls'--wanted it, in fact, to outshine the +rest, since she was to take part in the "exercises"--but she had no time +just then to fix her mind on such matters.... + +She sped up the street to the library, of which she had the key about +her neck. From the passage at the back she dragged forth a bicycle, and +guided it to the edge of the street. She looked about to see if any of +the girls were approaching; but they had drifted away together toward +the Town Hall, and she sprang into the saddle and turned toward the +Creston road. There was an almost continual descent to Creston, and with +her feet against the pedals she floated through the still evening +air like one of the hawks she had often watched slanting downward on +motionless wings. Twenty minutes from the time when she had left Miss +Hatchard's door she was turning up the wood-road on which Harney had +overtaken her on the day of her flight; and a few minutes afterward she +had jumped from her bicycle at the gate of the deserted house. + +In the gold-powdered sunset it looked more than ever like some frail +shell dried and washed by many seasons; but at the back, whither Charity +advanced, drawing her bicycle after her, there were signs of recent +habitation. A rough door made of boards hung in the kitchen doorway, +and pushing it open she entered a room furnished in primitive camping +fashion. In the window was a table, also made of boards, with an +earthenware jar holding a big bunch of wild asters, two canvas chairs +stood near by, and in one corner was a mattress with a Mexican blanket +over it. + +The room was empty, and leaning her bicycle against the house Charity +clambered up the slope and sat down on a rock under an old apple-tree. +The air was perfectly still, and from where she sat she would be able to +hear the tinkle of a bicycle-bell a long way down the road.... + +She was always glad when she got to the little house before Harney. She +liked to have time to take in every detail of its secret sweetness--the +shadows of the apple-trees swaying on the grass, the old walnuts +rounding their domes below the road, the meadows sloping westward in the +afternoon light--before his first kiss blotted it all out. Everything +unrelated to the hours spent in that tranquil place was as faint as the +remembrance of a dream. The only reality was the wondrous unfolding +of her new self, the reaching out to the light of all her contracted +tendrils. She had lived all her life among people whose sensibilities +seemed to have withered for lack of use; and more wonderful, at first, +than Harney's endearments were the words that were a part of them. She +had always thought of love as something confused and furtive, and he +made it as bright and open as the summer air. + +On the morrow of the day when she had shown him the way to the deserted +house he had packed up and left Creston River for Boston; but at the +first station he had jumped on the train with a hand-bag and scrambled +up into the hills. For two golden rainless August weeks he had camped in +the house, getting eggs and milk from the solitary farm in the valley, +where no one knew him, and doing his cooking over a spirit-lamp. He got +up every day with the sun, took a plunge in a brown pool he knew of, and +spent long hours lying in the scented hemlock-woods above the house, or +wandering along the yoke of the Eagle Ridge, far above the misty blue +valleys that swept away east and west between the endless hills. And in +the afternoon Charity came to him. + +With part of what was left of her savings she had hired a bicycle for +a month, and every day after dinner, as soon as her guardian started to +his office, she hurried to the library, got out her bicycle, and flew +down the Creston road. She knew that Mr. Royall, like everyone else in +North Dormer, was perfectly aware of her acquisition: possibly he, as +well as the rest of the village, knew what use she made of it. She did +not care: she felt him to be so powerless that if he had questioned her +she would probably have told him the truth. But they had never spoken to +each other since the night on the wharf at Nettleton. He had returned to +North Dormer only on the third day after that encounter, arriving just +as Charity and Verena were sitting down to supper. He had drawn up his +chair, taken his napkin from the side-board drawer, pulled it out of its +ring, and seated himself as unconcernedly as if he had come in from +his usual afternoon session at Carrick Fry's; and the long habit of the +household made it seem almost natural that Charity should not so much as +raise her eyes when he entered. She had simply let him understand that +her silence was not accidental by leaving the table while he was still +eating, and going up without a word to shut herself into her room. +After that he formed the habit of talking loudly and genially to Verena +whenever Charity was in the room; but otherwise there was no apparent +change in their relations. + +She did not think connectedly of these things while she sat waiting for +Harney, but they remained in her mind as a sullen background against +which her short hours with him flamed out like forest fires. Nothing +else mattered, neither the good nor the bad, or what might have seemed +so before she knew him. He had caught her up and carried her away into +a new world, from which, at stated hours, the ghost of her came back to +perform certain customary acts, but all so thinly and insubstantially +that she sometimes wondered that the people she went about among could +see her.... + +Behind the swarthy Mountain the sun had gone down in waveless gold. From +a pasture up the slope a tinkle of cow-bells sounded; a puff of smoke +hung over the farm in the valley, trailed on the pure air and was gone. +For a few minutes, in the clear light that is all shadow, fields and +woods were outlined with an unreal precision; then the twilight blotted +them out, and the little house turned gray and spectral under its +wizened apple-branches. + +Charity's heart contracted. The first fall of night after a day of +radiance often gave her a sense of hidden menace: it was like looking +out over the world as it would be when love had gone from it. She +wondered if some day she would sit in that same place and watch in vain +for her lover.... + +His bicycle-bell sounded down the lane, and in a minute she was at the +gate and his eyes were laughing in hers. They walked back through the +long grass, and pushed open the door behind the house. The room at +first seemed quite dark and they had to grope their way in hand in hand. +Through the window-frame the sky looked light by contrast, and above the +black mass of asters in the earthen jar one white star glimmered like a +moth. + +"There was such a lot to do at the last minute," Harney was explaining, +"and I had to drive down to Creston to meet someone who has come to stay +with my cousin for the show." + +He had his arms about her, and his kisses were in her hair and on her +lips. Under his touch things deep down in her struggled to the light and +sprang up like flowers in sunshine. She twisted her fingers into his, +and they sat down side by side on the improvised couch. She hardly heard +his excuses for being late: in his absence a thousand doubts tormented +her, but as soon as he appeared she ceased to wonder where he had come +from, what had delayed him, who had kept him from her. It seemed as if +the places he had been in, and the people he had been with, must cease +to exist when he left them, just as her own life was suspended in his +absence. + +He continued, now, to talk to her volubly and gaily, deploring his +lateness, grumbling at the demands on his time, and good-humouredly +mimicking Miss Hatchard's benevolent agitation. "She hurried off Miles +to ask Mr. Royall to speak at the Town Hall tomorrow: I didn't know till +it was done." Charity was silent, and he added: "After all, perhaps it's +just as well. No one else could have done it." + +Charity made no answer: She did not care what part her guardian played +in the morrow's ceremonies. Like all the other figures peopling her +meagre world he had grown non-existent to her. She had even put off +hating him. + +"Tomorrow I shall only see you from far off," Harney continued. "But in +the evening there'll be the dance in the Town Hall. Do you want me to +promise not to dance with any other girl?" + +Any other girl? Were there any others? She had forgotten even that +peril, so enclosed did he and she seem in their secret world. Her heart +gave a frightened jerk. + +"Yes, promise." + +He laughed and took her in his arms. "You goose--not even if they're +hideous?" + +He pushed the hair from her forehead, bending her face back, as his way +was, and leaning over so that his head loomed black between her eyes and +the paleness of the sky, in which the white star floated... + +Side by side they sped back along the dark wood-road to the village. A +late moon was rising, full orbed and fiery, turning the mountain ranges +from fluid gray to a massive blackness, and making the upper sky so +light that the stars looked as faint as their own reflections in water. +At the edge of the wood, half a mile from North Dormer, Harney jumped +from his bicycle, took Charity in his arms for a last kiss, and then +waited while she went on alone. + +They were later than usual, and instead of taking the bicycle to the +library she propped it against the back of the wood-shed and entered the +kitchen of the red house. Verena sat there alone; when Charity came in +she looked at her with mild impenetrable eyes and then took a plate +and a glass of milk from the shelf and set them silently on the table. +Charity nodded her thanks, and sitting down, fell hungrily upon her +piece of pie and emptied the glass. Her face burned with her quick +flight through the night, and her eyes were dazzled by the twinkle of +the kitchen lamp. She felt like a night-bird suddenly caught and caged. + +"He ain't come back since supper," Verena said. "He's down to the Hall." + +Charity took no notice. Her soul was still winging through the forest. +She washed her plate and tumbler, and then felt her way up the dark +stairs. When she opened her door a wonder arrested her. Before going +out she had closed her shutters against the afternoon heat, but they had +swung partly open, and a bar of moonlight, crossing the room, rested +on her bed and showed a dress of China silk laid out on it in virgin +whiteness. Charity had spent more than she could afford on the dress, +which was to surpass those of all the other girls; she had wanted to let +North Dormer see that she was worthy of Harney's admiration. Above the +dress, folded on the pillow, was the white veil which the young women +who took part in the exercises were to wear under a wreath of asters; +and beside the veil a pair of slim white satin shoes that Ally had +produced from an old trunk in which she stored mysterious treasures. + +Charity stood gazing at all the outspread whiteness. It recalled a +vision that had come to her in the night after her first meeting with +Harney. She no longer had such visions... warmer splendours had displaced +them... but it was stupid of Ally to have paraded all those white things +on her bed, exactly as Hattie Targatt's wedding dress from Springfield +had been spread out for the neighbours to see when she married Tom +Fry.... + +Charity took up the satin shoes and looked at them curiously. By day, no +doubt, they would appear a little worn, but in the moonlight they seemed +carved of ivory. She sat down on the floor to try them on, and they +fitted her perfectly, though when she stood up she lurched a little on +the high heels. She looked down at her feet, which the graceful mould +of the slippers had marvellously arched and narrowed. She had never +seen such shoes before, even in the shop-windows at Nettleton... never, +except... yes, once, she had noticed a pair of the same shape on Annabel +Balch. + +A blush of mortification swept over her. Ally sometimes sewed for Miss +Balch when that brilliant being descended on North Dormer, and no +doubt she picked up presents of cast-off clothing: the treasures in the +mysterious trunk all came from the people she worked for; there could be +no doubt that the white slippers were Annabel Balch's.... + +As she stood there, staring down moodily at her feet, she heard the +triple click-click-click of a bicycle-bell under her window. It was +Harney's secret signal as he passed on his way home. She stumbled to +the window on her high heels, flung open the shutters and leaned out. He +waved to her and sped by, his black shadow dancing merrily ahead of him +down the empty moonlit road; and she leaned there watching him till he +vanished under the Hatchard spruces. + + + + +XIII + + +THE Town Hall was crowded and exceedingly hot. As Charity marched into +it third in the white muslin file headed by Orma Fry, she was conscious +mainly of the brilliant effect of the wreathed columns framing the +green-carpeted stage toward which she was moving; and of the unfamiliar +faces turning from the front rows to watch the advance of the +procession. + +But it was all a bewildering blur of eyes and colours till she found +herself standing at the back of the stage, her great bunch of asters and +goldenrod held well in front of her, and answering the nervous glance +of Lambert Sollas, the organist from Mr. Miles's church, who had come up +from Nettleton to play the harmonium and sat behind it, his conductor's +eye running over the fluttered girls. + +A moment later Mr. Miles, pink and twinkling, emerged from the +background, as if buoyed up on his broad white gown, and briskly +dominated the bowed heads in the front rows. He prayed energetically and +briefly and then retired, and a fierce nod from Lambert Sollas warned +the girls that they were to follow at once with "Home, Sweet Home." It +was a joy to Charity to sing: it seemed as though, for the first time, +her secret rapture might burst from her and flash its defiance at the +world. All the glow in her blood, the breath of the summer earth, +the rustle of the forest, the fresh call of birds at sunrise, and the +brooding midday languors, seemed to pass into her untrained voice, +lifted and led by the sustaining chorus. + +And then suddenly the song was over, and after an uncertain pause, +during which Miss Hatchard's pearl-grey gloves started a furtive +signalling down the hall, Mr. Royall, emerging in turn, ascended the +steps of the stage and appeared behind the flower-wreathed desk. He +passed close to Charity, and she noticed that his gravely set face wore +the look of majesty that used to awe and fascinate her childhood. His +frock-coat had been carefully brushed and ironed, and the ends of his +narrow black tie were so nearly even that the tying must have cost him +a protracted struggle. His appearance struck her all the more because it +was the first time she had looked him full in the face since the night +at Nettleton, and nothing in his grave and impressive demeanour revealed +a trace of the lamentable figure on the wharf. + +He stood a moment behind the desk, resting his finger-tips against it, +and bending slightly toward his audience; then he straightened himself +and began. + +At first she paid no heed to what he was saying: only fragments of +sentences, sonorous quotations, allusions to illustrious men, +including the obligatory tribute to Honorius Hatchard, drifted past her +inattentive ears. She was trying to discover Harney among the notable +people in the front row; but he was nowhere near Miss Hatchard, who, +crowned by a pearl-grey hat that matched her gloves, sat just below the +desk, supported by Mrs. Miles and an important-looking unknown lady. +Charity was near one end of the stage, and from where she sat the other +end of the first row of seats was cut off by the screen of foliage +masking the harmonium. The effort to see Harney around the corner of the +screen, or through its interstices, made her unconscious of everything +else; but the effort was unsuccessful, and gradually she found her +attention arrested by her guardian's discourse. + +She had never heard him speak in public before, but she was familiar +with the rolling music of his voice when he read aloud, or held forth +to the selectmen about the stove at Carrick Fry's. Today his inflections +were richer and graver than she had ever known them: he spoke slowly, +with pauses that seemed to invite his hearers to silent participation in +his thought; and Charity perceived a light of response in their faces. + +He was nearing the end of his address... "Most of you," he said, "most of +you who have returned here today, to take contact with this little place +for a brief hour, have come only on a pious pilgrimage, and will go back +presently to busy cities and lives full of larger duties. But that is +not the only way of coming back to North Dormer. Some of us, who went +out from here in our youth... went out, like you, to busy cities and +larger duties... have come back in another way--come back for good. I am +one of those, as many of you know...." He paused, and there was a sense +of suspense in the listening hall. "My history is without interest, but +it has its lesson: not so much for those of you who have already +made your lives in other places, as for the young men who are perhaps +planning even now to leave these quiet hills and go down into the +struggle. Things they cannot foresee may send some of those young men +back some day to the little township and the old homestead: they may +come back for good...." He looked about him, and repeated gravely: "For +GOOD. There's the point I want to make... North Dormer is a poor little +place, almost lost in a mighty landscape: perhaps, by this time, it +might have been a bigger place, and more in scale with the landscape, +if those who had to come back had come with that feeling in their +minds--that they wanted to come back for GOOD... and not for bad... or +just for indifference.... + +"Gentlemen, let us look at things as they are. Some of us have come back +to our native town because we'd failed to get on elsewhere. One way or +other, things had gone wrong with us... what we'd dreamed of hadn't come +true. But the fact that we had failed elsewhere is no reason why we +should fail here. Our very experiments in larger places, even if they +were unsuccessful, ought to have helped us to make North Dormer a larger +place... and you young men who are preparing even now to follow the call +of ambition, and turn your back on the old homes--well, let me say this +to you, that if ever you do come back to them it's worth while to come +back to them for their good.... And to do that, you must keep on loving +them while you're away from them; and even if you come back against your +will--and thinking it's all a bitter mistake of Fate or Providence--you +must try to make the best of it, and to make the best of your old town; +and after a while--well, ladies and gentlemen, I give you my recipe for +what it's worth; after a while, I believe you'll be able to say, as I +can say today: 'I'm glad I'm here.' Believe me, all of you, the best way +to help the places we live in is to be glad we live there." + +He stopped, and a murmur of emotion and surprise ran through the +audience. It was not in the least what they had expected, but it moved +them more than what they had expected would have moved them. "Hear, +hear!" a voice cried out in the middle of the hall. An outburst of +cheers caught up the cry, and as they subsided Charity heard Mr. Miles +saying to someone near him: "That was a MAN talking----" He wiped his +spectacles. + +Mr. Royall had stepped back from the desk, and taken his seat in the row +of chairs in front of the harmonium. A dapper white-haired gentleman--a +distant Hatchard--succeeded him behind the goldenrod, and began to +say beautiful things about the old oaken bucket, patient white-haired +mothers, and where the boys used to go nutting... and Charity began again +to search for Harney.... + +Suddenly Mr. Royall pushed back his seat, and one of the maple branches +in front of the harmonium collapsed with a crash. It uncovered the end +of the first row and in one of the seats Charity saw Harney, and in the +next a lady whose face was turned toward him, and almost hidden by the +brim of her drooping hat. Charity did not need to see the face. She knew +at a glance the slim figure, the fair hair heaped up under the hat-brim, +the long pale wrinkled gloves with bracelets slipping over them. At the +fall of the branch Miss Balch turned her head toward the stage, and in +her pretty thin-lipped smile there lingered the reflection of something +her neighbour had been whispering to her.... + +Someone came forward to replace the fallen branch, and Miss Balch and +Harney were once more hidden. But to Charity the vision of their two +faces had blotted out everything. In a flash they had shown her the +bare reality of her situation. Behind the frail screen of her lover's +caresses was the whole inscrutable mystery of his life: his relations +with other people--with other women--his opinions, his prejudices, his +principles, the net of influences and interests and ambitions in which +every man's life is entangled. Of all these she knew nothing, except +what he had told her of his architectural aspirations. She had always +dimly guessed him to be in touch with important people, involved in +complicated relations--but she felt it all to be so far beyond her +understanding that the whole subject hung like a luminous mist on the +farthest verge of her thoughts. In the foreground, hiding all else, +there was the glow of his presence, the light and shadow of his face, +the way his short-sighted eyes, at her approach, widened and deepened +as if to draw her down into them; and, above all, the flush of youth and +tenderness in which his words enclosed her. + +Now she saw him detached from her, drawn back into the unknown, and +whispering to another girl things that provoked the same smile of +mischievous complicity he had so often called to her own lips. The +feeling possessing her was not one of jealousy: she was too sure of +his love. It was rather a terror of the unknown, of all the mysterious +attractions that must even now be dragging him away from her, and of her +own powerlessness to contend with them. + +She had given him all she had--but what was it compared to the other +gifts life held for him? She understood now the case of girls like +herself to whom this kind of thing happened. They gave all they had, but +their all was not enough: it could not buy more than a few moments.... + +The heat had grown suffocating--she felt it descend on her in smothering +waves, and the faces in the crowded hall began to dance like the +pictures flashed on the screen at Nettleton. For an instant Mr. Royall's +countenance detached itself from the general blur. He had resumed his +place in front of the harmonium, and sat close to her, his eyes on her +face; and his look seemed to pierce to the very centre of her confused +sensations.... A feeling of physical sickness rushed over her--and then +deadly apprehension. The light of the fiery hours in the little house +swept back on her in a glare of fear.... + +She forced herself to look away from her guardian, and became aware that +the oratory of the Hatchard cousin had ceased, and that Mr. Miles was +again flapping his wings. Fragments of his peroration floated through +her bewildered brain.... "A rich harvest of hallowed memories.... A +sanctified hour to which, in moments of trial, your thoughts will +prayerfully return.... And now, O Lord, let us humbly and fervently give +thanks for this blessed day of reunion, here in the old home to which we +have come back from so far. Preserve it to us, O Lord, in times to come, +in all its homely sweetness--in the kindliness and wisdom of its old +people, in the courage and industry of its young men, in the piety and +purity of this group of innocent girls----" He flapped a white wing in +their direction, and at the same moment Lambert Sollas, with his fierce +nod, struck the opening bars of "Auld Lang Syne." ...Charity stared +straight ahead of her and then, dropping her flowers, fell face downward +at Mr. Royall's feet. + + + + +XIV + + +NORTH DORMER'S celebration naturally included the villages attached to +its township, and the festivities were to radiate over the whole group, +from Dormer and the two Crestons to Hamblin, the lonely hamlet on the +north slope of the Mountain where the first snow always fell. On the +third day there were speeches and ceremonies at Creston and Creston +River; on the fourth the principal performers were to be driven in +buck-boards to Dormer and Hamblin. + +It was on the fourth day that Charity returned for the first time to the +little house. She had not seen Harney alone since they had parted at the +wood's edge the night before the celebrations began. In the interval she +had passed through many moods, but for the moment the terror which had +seized her in the Town Hall had faded to the edge of consciousness. +She had fainted because the hall was stiflingly hot, and because the +speakers had gone on and on.... Several other people had been affected by +the heat, and had had to leave before the exercises were over. There had +been thunder in the air all the afternoon, and everyone said afterward +that something ought to have been done to ventilate the hall.... + +At the dance that evening--where she had gone reluctantly, and only +because she feared to stay away, she had sprung back into instant +reassurance. As soon as she entered she had seen Harney waiting for her, +and he had come up with kind gay eyes, and swept her off in a waltz. Her +feet were full of music, and though her only training had been with the +village youths she had no difficulty in tuning her steps to his. As they +circled about the floor all her vain fears dropped from her, and she +even forgot that she was probably dancing in Annabel Balch's slippers. + +When the waltz was over Harney, with a last hand-clasp, left her to +meet Miss Hatchard and Miss Balch, who were just entering. Charity had +a moment of anguish as Miss Balch appeared; but it did not last. The +triumphant fact of her own greater beauty, and of Harney's sense of +it, swept her apprehensions aside. Miss Balch, in an unbecoming dress, +looked sallow and pinched, and Charity fancied there was a worried +expression in her pale-lashed eyes. She took a seat near Miss Hatchard +and it was presently apparent that she did not mean to dance. Charity +did not dance often either. Harney explained to her that Miss Hatchard +had begged him to give each of the other girls a turn; but he went +through the form of asking Charity's permission each time he led one +out, and that gave her a sense of secret triumph even completer than +when she was whirling about the room with him. + +She was thinking of all this as she waited for him in the deserted +house. The late afternoon was sultry, and she had tossed aside her hat +and stretched herself at full length on the Mexican blanket because it +was cooler indoors than under the trees. She lay with her arms folded +beneath her head, gazing out at the shaggy shoulder of the Mountain. The +sky behind it was full of the splintered glories of the descending sun, +and before long she expected to hear Harney's bicycle-bell in the lane. +He had bicycled to Hamblin, instead of driving there with his cousin +and her friends, so that he might be able to make his escape earlier +and stop on the way back at the deserted house, which was on the road +to Hamblin. They had smiled together at the joke of hearing the crowded +buck-boards roll by on the return, while they lay close in their +hiding above the road. Such childish triumphs still gave her a sense of +reckless security. + +Nevertheless she had not wholly forgotten the vision of fear that had +opened before her in the Town Hall. The sense of lastingness was gone +from her and every moment with Harney would now be ringed with doubt. + +The Mountain was turning purple against a fiery sunset from which it +seemed to be divided by a knife-edge of quivering light; and above +this wall of flame the whole sky was a pure pale green, like some cold +mountain lake in shadow. Charity lay gazing up at it, and watching for +the first white star.... + +Her eyes were still fixed on the upper reaches of the sky when she +became aware that a shadow had flitted across the glory-flooded room: it +must have been Harney passing the window against the sunset.... She half +raised herself, and then dropped back on her folded arms. The combs had +slipped from her hair, and it trailed in a rough dark rope across her +breast. She lay quite still, a sleepy smile on her lips, her indolent +lids half shut. There was a fumbling at the padlock and she called out: +"Have you slipped the chain?" The door opened, and Mr. Royall walked +into the room. + +She started up, sitting back against the cushions, and they looked at +each other without speaking. Then Mr. Royall closed the door-latch and +advanced a few steps. + +Charity jumped to her feet. "What have you come for?" she stammered. + +The last glare of the sunset was on her guardian's face, which looked +ash-coloured in the yellow radiance. + +"Because I knew you were here," he answered simply. + +She had become conscious of the hair hanging loose across her breast, +and it seemed as though she could not speak to him till she had set +herself in order. She groped for her comb, and tried to fasten up the +coil. Mr. Royall silently watched her. + +"Charity," he said, "he'll be here in a minute. Let me talk to you +first." + +"You've got no right to talk to me. I can do what I please." + +"Yes. What is it you mean to do?" + +"I needn't answer that, or anything else." + +He had glanced away, and stood looking curiously about the illuminated +room. Purple asters and red maple-leaves filled the jar on the table; on +a shelf against the wall stood a lamp, the kettle, a little pile of cups +and saucers. The canvas chairs were grouped about the table. + +"So this is where you meet," he said. + +His tone was quiet and controlled, and the fact disconcerted her. +She had been ready to give him violence for violence, but this calm +acceptance of things as they were left her without a weapon. + +"See here, Charity--you're always telling me I've got no rights over +you. There might be two ways of looking at that--but I ain't going +to argue it. All I know is I raised you as good as I could, and meant +fairly by you always except once, for a bad half-hour. There's no +justice in weighing that half-hour against the rest, and you know it. If +you hadn't, you wouldn't have gone on living under my roof. Seems to me +the fact of your doing that gives me some sort of a right; the right +to try and keep you out of trouble. I'm not asking you to consider any +other." + +She listened in silence, and then gave a slight laugh. "Better wait till +I'm in trouble," she said. He paused a moment, as if weighing her words. +"Is that all your answer?" + +"Yes, that's all." + +"Well--I'll wait." + +He turned away slowly, but as he did so the thing she had been waiting +for happened; the door opened again and Harney entered. + +He stopped short with a face of astonishment, and then, quickly +controlling himself, went up to Mr. Royall with a frank look. + +"Have you come to see me, sir?" he said coolly, throwing his cap on the +table with an air of proprietorship. + +Mr. Royall again looked slowly about the room; then his eyes turned to +the young man. + +"Is this your house?" he inquired. + +Harney laughed: "Well--as much as it's anybody's. I come here to sketch +occasionally." + +"And to receive Miss Royall's visits?" + +"When she does me the honour----" + +"Is this the home you propose to bring her to when you get married?" + +There was an immense and oppressive silence. Charity, quivering with +anger, started forward, and then stood silent, too humbled for speech. +Harney's eyes had dropped under the old man's gaze; but he raised them +presently, and looking steadily at Mr. Royall, said: "Miss Royall is not +a child. Isn't it rather absurd to talk of her as if she were? I believe +she considers herself free to come and go as she pleases, without any +questions from anyone." He paused and added: "I'm ready to answer any +she wishes to ask me." + +Mr. Royall turned to her. "Ask him when he's going to marry you, +then----" There was another silence, and he laughed in his turn--a +broken laugh, with a scraping sound in it. "You darsn't!" he shouted out +with sudden passion. He went close up to Charity, his right arm lifted, +not in menace but in tragic exhortation. + +"You darsn't, and you know it--and you know why!" He swung back again +upon the young man. "And you know why you ain't asked her to marry you, +and why you don't mean to. It's because you hadn't need to; nor any +other man either. I'm the only one that was fool enough not to know +that; and I guess nobody'll repeat my mistake--not in Eagle County, +anyhow. They all know what she is, and what she came from. They all know +her mother was a woman of the town from Nettleton, that followed one of +those Mountain fellows up to his place and lived there with him like a +heathen. I saw her there sixteen years ago, when I went to bring this +child down. I went to save her from the kind of life her mother was +leading--but I'd better have left her in the kennel she came from...." +He paused and stared darkly at the two young people, and out beyond +them, at the menacing Mountain with its rim of fire; then he sat down +beside the table on which they had so often spread their rustic supper, +and covered his face with his hands. Harney leaned in the window, a +frown on his face: he was twirling between his fingers a small package +that dangled from a loop of string.... Charity heard Mr. Royall draw a +hard breath or two, and his shoulders shook a little. Presently he +stood up and walked across the room. He did not look again at the young +people: they saw him feel his way to the door and fumble for the latch; +and then he went out into the darkness. + +After he had gone there was a long silence. Charity waited for Harney to +speak; but he seemed at first not to find anything to say. At length he +broke out irrelevantly: "I wonder how he found out?" + +She made no answer and he tossed down the package he had been holding, +and went up to her. + +"I'm so sorry, dear... that this should have happened...." + +She threw her head back proudly. "I ain't ever been sorry--not a +minute!" + +"No." + +She waited to be caught into his arms, but he turned away from +her irresolutely. The last glow was gone from behind the Mountain. +Everything in the room had turned grey and indistinct, and an autumnal +dampness crept up from the hollow below the orchard, laying its cold +touch on their flushed faces. Harney walked the length of the room, and +then turned back and sat down at the table. + +"Come," he said imperiously. + +She sat down beside him, and he untied the string about the package and +spread out a pile of sandwiches. + +"I stole them from the love-feast at Hamblin," he said with a laugh, +pushing them over to her. She laughed too, and took one, and began to +eat. + +"Didn't you make the tea?" + +"No," she said. "I forgot----" + +"Oh, well--it's too late to boil the water now." He said nothing more, +and sitting opposite to each other they went on silently eating the +sandwiches. Darkness had descended in the little room, and Harney's face +was a dim blur to Charity. Suddenly he leaned across the table and laid +his hand on hers. + +"I shall have to go off for a while--a month or two, perhaps--to arrange +some things; and then I'll come back... and we'll get married." + +His voice seemed like a stranger's: nothing was left in it of the +vibrations she knew. Her hand lay inertly under his, and she left it +there, and raised her head, trying to answer him. But the words died +in her throat. They sat motionless, in their attitude of confident +endearment, as if some strange death had surprised them. At length +Harney sprang to his feet with a slight shiver. "God! it's damp--we +couldn't have come here much longer." He went to the shelf, took down a +tin candle-stick and lit the candle; then he propped an unhinged shutter +against the empty window-frame and put the candle on the table. It threw +a queer shadow on his frowning forehead, and made the smile on his lips +a grimace. + +"But it's been good, though, hasn't it, Charity?... What's the +matter--why do you stand there staring at me? Haven't the days here been +good?" He went up to her and caught her to his breast. "And there'll be +others--lots of others... jollier... even jollier... won't there, +darling?" + +He turned her head back, feeling for the curve of her throat below the +ear, and kissing here there, and on the hair and eyes and lips. She +clung to him desperately, and as he drew her to his knees on the couch +she felt as if they were being sucked down together into some bottomless +abyss. + + + + +XV + + +That night, as usual, they said good-bye at the wood's edge. + +Harney was to leave the next morning early. He asked Charity to say +nothing of their plans till his return, and, strangely even to herself, +she was glad of the postponement. A leaden weight of shame hung on her, +benumbing every other sensation, and she bade him good-bye with hardly +a sign of emotion. His reiterated promises to return seemed almost +wounding. She had no doubt that he intended to come back; her doubts +were far deeper and less definable. + +Since the fanciful vision of the future that had flitted through her +imagination at their first meeting she had hardly ever thought of his +marrying her. She had not had to put the thought from her mind; it had +not been there. If ever she looked ahead she felt instinctively that the +gulf between them was too deep, and that the bridge their passion had +flung across it was as insubstantial as a rainbow. But she seldom +looked ahead; each day was so rich that it absorbed her.... Now her first +feeling was that everything would be different, and that she herself +would be a different being to Harney. Instead of remaining separate and +absolute, she would be compared with other people, and unknown things +would be expected of her. She was too proud to be afraid, but the +freedom of her spirit drooped.... + +Harney had not fixed any date for his return; he had said he would have +to look about first, and settle things. He had promised to write as soon +as there was anything definite to say, and had left her his address, and +asked her to write also. But the address frightened her. It was in New +York, at a club with a long name in Fifth Avenue: it seemed to raise an +insurmountable barrier between them. Once or twice, in the first days, +she got out a sheet of paper, and sat looking at it, and trying to think +what to say; but she had the feeling that her letter would never reach +its destination. She had never written to anyone farther away than +Hepburn. + +Harney's first letter came after he had been gone about ten days. It was +tender but grave, and bore no resemblance to the gay little notes he had +sent her by the freckled boy from Creston River. He spoke positively of +his intention of coming back, but named no date, and reminded Charity of +their agreement that their plans should not be divulged till he had had +time to "settle things." When that would be he could not yet foresee; +but she could count on his returning as soon as the way was clear. + +She read the letter with a strange sense of its coming from immeasurable +distances and having lost most of its meaning on the way; and in reply +she sent him a coloured postcard of Creston Falls, on which she wrote: +"With love from Charity." She felt the pitiful inadequacy of this, and +understood, with a sense of despair, that in her inability to express +herself she must give him an impression of coldness and reluctance; but +she could not help it. She could not forget that he had never spoken +to her of marriage till Mr. Royall had forced the word from his lips; +though she had not had the strength to shake off the spell that bound +her to him she had lost all spontaneity of feeling, and seemed to +herself to be passively awaiting a fate she could not avert. + +She had not seen Mr. Royall on her return to the red house. The morning +after her parting from Harney, when she came down from her room, Verena +told her that her guardian had gone off to Worcester and Portland. It +was the time of year when he usually reported to the insurance agencies +he represented, and there was nothing unusual in his departure except +its suddenness. She thought little about him, except to be glad he was +not there.... + +She kept to herself for the first days, while North Dormer was +recovering from its brief plunge into publicity, and the subsiding +agitation left her unnoticed. But the faithful Ally could not be long +avoided. For the first few days after the close of the Old Home Week +festivities Charity escaped her by roaming the hills all day when she +was not at her post in the library; but after that a period of rain set +in, and one pouring afternoon, Ally, sure that she would find her friend +indoors, came around to the red house with her sewing. + +The two girls sat upstairs in Charity's room. Charity, her idle hands in +her lap, was sunk in a kind of leaden dream, through which she was only +half-conscious of Ally, who sat opposite her in a low rush-bottomed +chair, her work pinned to her knee, and her thin lips pursed up as she +bent above it. + +"It was my idea running a ribbon through the gauging," she said proudly, +drawing back to contemplate the blouse she was trimming. "It's for Miss +Balch: she was awfully pleased." She paused and then added, with a queer +tremor in her piping voice: "I darsn't have told her I got the idea from +one I saw on Julia." + +Charity raised her eyes listlessly. "Do you still see Julia sometimes?" + +Ally reddened, as if the allusion had escaped her unintentionally. "Oh, +it was a long time ago I seen her with those gaugings...." + +Silence fell again, and Ally presently continued: "Miss Balch left me a +whole lot of things to do over this time." + +"Why--has she gone?" Charity inquired with an inner start of +apprehension. + +"Didn't you know? She went off the morning after they had the +celebration at Hamblin. I seen her drive by early with Mr. Harney." + +There was another silence, measured by the steady tick of the rain +against the window, and, at intervals, by the snipping sound of Ally's +scissors. + +Ally gave a meditative laugh. "Do you know what she told me before she +went away? She told me she was going to send for me to come over to +Springfield and make some things for her wedding." + +Charity again lifted her heavy lids and stared at Ally's pale pointed +face, which moved to and fro above her moving fingers. + +"Is she going to get married?" + +Ally let the blouse sink to her knee, and sat gazing at it. Her lips +seemed suddenly dry, and she moistened them a little with her tongue. + +"Why, I presume so... from what she said.... Didn't you know?" + +"Why should I know?" + +Ally did not answer. She bent above the blouse, and began picking out a +basting thread with the point of the scissors. + +"Why should I know?" Charity repeated harshly. + +"I didn't know but what... folks here say she's engaged to Mr. Harney." + +Charity stood up with a laugh, and stretched her arms lazily above her +head. + +"If all the people got married that folks say are going to you'd have +your time full making wedding-dresses," she said ironically. + +"Why--don't you believe it?" Ally ventured. + +"It would not make it true if I did--nor prevent it if I didn't." + +"That's so.... I only know I seen her crying the night of the party +because her dress didn't set right. That was why she wouldn't dance +any...." + +Charity stood absently gazing down at the lacy garment on Ally's knee. +Abruptly she stooped and snatched it up. + +"Well, I guess she won't dance in this either," she said with sudden +violence; and grasping the blouse in her strong young hands she tore it +in two and flung the tattered bits to the floor. + +"Oh, Charity----" Ally cried, springing up. For a long interval the two +girls faced each other across the ruined garment. Ally burst into tears. + +"Oh, what'll I say to her? What'll I do? It was real lace!" she wailed +between her piping sobs. + +Charity glared at her unrelentingly. "You'd oughtn't to have brought it +here," she said, breathing quickly. "I hate other people's clothes--it's +just as if they was there themselves." The two stared at each other +again over this avowal, till Charity brought out, in a gasp of anguish: +"Oh, go--go--go--or I'll hate you too...." + +When Ally left her, she fell sobbing across her bed. + +The long storm was followed by a north-west gale, and when it was over, +the hills took on their first umber tints, the sky grew more densely +blue, and the big white clouds lay against the hills like snow-banks. +The first crisp maple-leaves began to spin across Miss Hatchard's lawn, +and the Virginia creeper on the Memorial splashed the white porch with +scarlet. It was a golden triumphant September. Day by day the flame of +the Virginia creeper spread to the hillsides in wider waves of carmine +and crimson, the larches glowed like the thin yellow halo about a fire, +the maples blazed and smouldered, and the black hemlocks turned to +indigo against the incandescence of the forest. + +The nights were cold, with a dry glitter of stars so high up that they +seemed smaller and more vivid. Sometimes, as Charity lay sleepless on +her bed through the long hours, she felt as though she were bound to +those wheeling fires and swinging with them around the great black +vault. At night she planned many things... it was then she wrote to +Harney. But the letters were never put on paper, for she did not know +how to express what she wanted to tell him. So she waited. Since her +talk with Ally she had felt sure that Harney was engaged to Annabel +Balch, and that the process of "settling things" would involve the +breaking of this tie. Her first rage of jealousy over, she felt no fear +on this score. She was still sure that Harney would come back, and she +was equally sure that, for the moment at least, it was she whom he loved +and not Miss Balch. Yet the girl, no less, remained a rival, since she +represented all the things that Charity felt herself most incapable of +understanding or achieving. Annabel Balch was, if not the girl Harney +ought to marry, at least the kind of girl it would be natural for him to +marry. Charity had never been able to picture herself as his wife; had +never been able to arrest the vision and follow it out in its daily +consequences; but she could perfectly imagine Annabel Balch in that +relation to him. + +The more she thought of these things the more the sense of fatality +weighed on her: she felt the uselessness of struggling against the +circumstances. She had never known how to adapt herself; she could only +break and tear and destroy. The scene with Ally had left her stricken +with shame at her own childish savagery. What would Harney have thought +if he had witnessed it? But when she turned the incident over in her +puzzled mind she could not imagine what a civilized person would have +done in her place. She felt herself too unequally pitted against unknown +forces.... + +At length this feeling moved her to sudden action. She took a sheet of +letter paper from Mr. Royall's office, and sitting by the kitchen +lamp, one night after Verena had gone to bed, began her first letter to +Harney. It was very short: + + +I want you should marry Annabel Balch if you promised to. I think maybe +you were afraid I'd feel too bad about it. I feel I'd rather you acted +right. Your loving CHARITY. + + +She posted the letter early the next morning, and for a few days her +heart felt strangely light. Then she began to wonder why she received no +answer. + +One day as she sat alone in the library pondering these things the walls +of books began to spin around her, and the rosewood desk to rock under +her elbows. The dizziness was followed by a wave of nausea like that she +had felt on the day of the exercises in the Town Hall. But the Town Hall +had been crowded and stiflingly hot, and the library was empty, and so +chilly that she had kept on her jacket. Five minutes before she had felt +perfectly well; and now it seemed as if she were going to die. The bit +of lace at which she still languidly worked dropped from her fingers, +and the steel crochet hook clattered to the floor. She pressed her +temples hard between her damp hands, steadying herself against the desk +while the wave of sickness swept over her. Little by little it subsided, +and after a few minutes she stood up, shaken and terrified, groped for +her hat, and stumbled out into the air. But the whole sunlit autumn +whirled, reeled and roared around her as she dragged herself along the +interminable length of the road home. + +As she approached the red house she saw a buggy standing at the door, +and her heart gave a leap. But it was only Mr. Royall who got out, his +travelling-bag in hand. He saw her coming, and waited in the porch. +She was conscious that he was looking at her intently, as if there was +something strange in her appearance, and she threw back her head with a +desperate effort at ease. Their eyes met, and she said: "You back?" as +if nothing had happened, and he answered: "Yes, I'm back," and walked +in ahead of her, pushing open the door of his office. She climbed to +her room, every step of the stairs holding her fast as if her feet were +lined with glue. + +Two days later, she descended from the train at Nettleton, and walked +out of the station into the dusty square. The brief interval of cold +weather was over, and the day was as soft, and almost as hot, as when +she and Harney had emerged on the same scene on the Fourth of July. In +the square the same broken-down hacks and carry-alls stood drawn up in +a despondent line, and the lank horses with fly-nets over their withers +swayed their heads drearily to and fro. She recognized the staring signs +over the eating-houses and billiard saloons, and the long lines of wires +on lofty poles tapering down the main street to the park at its other +end. Taking the way the wires pointed, she went on hastily, with bent +head, till she reached a wide transverse street with a brick building +at the corner. She crossed this street and glanced furtively up at +the front of the brick building; then she returned, and entered a door +opening on a flight of steep brass-rimmed stairs. On the second landing +she rang a bell, and a mulatto girl with a bushy head and a frilled +apron let her into a hall where a stuffed fox on his hind legs proffered +a brass card-tray to visitors. At the back of the hall was a glazed door +marked: "Office." After waiting a few minutes in a handsomely furnished +room, with plush sofas surmounted by large gold-framed photographs of +showy young women, Charity was shown into the office.... + +When she came out of the glazed door Dr. Merkle followed, and led her +into another room, smaller, and still more crowded with plush and gold +frames. Dr. Merkle was a plump woman with small bright eyes, an immense +mass of black hair coming down low on her forehead, and unnaturally +white and even teeth. She wore a rich black dress, with gold chains +and charms hanging from her bosom. Her hands were large and smooth, and +quick in all their movements; and she smelt of musk and carbolic acid. + +She smiled on Charity with all her faultless teeth. "Sit down, my +dear. Wouldn't you like a little drop of something to pick you +up?... No.... Well, just lay back a minute then.... There's nothing to +be done just yet; but in about a month, if you'll step round again... I +could take you right into my own house for two or three days, and there +wouldn't be a mite of trouble. Mercy me! The next time you'll know +better'n to fret like this...." + +Charity gazed at her with widening eyes. This woman with the false hair, +the false teeth, the false murderous smile--what was she offering her +but immunity from some unthinkable crime? Charity, till then, had +been conscious only of a vague self-disgust and a frightening physical +distress; now, of a sudden, there came to her the grave surprise of +motherhood. She had come to this dreadful place because she knew of no +other way of making sure that she was not mistaken about her state; +and the woman had taken her for a miserable creature like Julia.... The +thought was so horrible that she sprang up, white and shaking, one of +her great rushes of anger sweeping over her. + +Dr. Merkle, still smiling, also rose. "Why do you run off in such a +hurry? You can stretch out right here on my sofa...." She paused, and +her smile grew more motherly. "Afterwards--if there's been any talk at +home, and you want to get away for a while... I have a lady friend in +Boston who's looking for a companion... you're the very one to suit her, +my dear...." + +Charity had reached the door. "I don't want to stay. I don't want to +come back here," she stammered, her hand on the knob; but with a swift +movement, Dr. Merkle edged her from the threshold. + +"Oh, very well. Five dollars, please." + +Charity looked helplessly at the doctor's tight lips and rigid face. +Her last savings had gone in repaying Ally for the cost of Miss Balch's +ruined blouse, and she had had to borrow four dollars from her friend +to pay for her railway ticket and cover the doctor's fee. It had never +occurred to her that medical advice could cost more than two dollars. + +"I didn't know... I haven't got that much..." she faltered, bursting into +tears. + +Dr. Merkle gave a short laugh which did not show her teeth, and inquired +with concision if Charity supposed she ran the establishment for her own +amusement? She leaned her firm shoulders against the door as she spoke, +like a grim gaoler making terms with her captive. + +"You say you'll come round and settle later? I've heard that pretty +often too. Give me your address, and if you can't pay me I'll send the +bill to your folks.... What? I can't understand what you say.... That +don't suit you either? My, you're pretty particular for a girl that +ain't got enough to settle her own bills...." She paused, and fixed +her eyes on the brooch with a blue stone that Charity had pinned to her +blouse. + +"Ain't you ashamed to talk that way to a lady that's got to earn her +living, when you go about with jewellery like that on you?... It ain't +in my line, and I do it only as a favour... but if you're a mind to leave +that brooch as a pledge, I don't say no.... Yes, of course, you can get +it back when you bring me my money...." + +On the way home, she felt an immense and unexpected quietude. It had +been horrible to have to leave Harney's gift in the woman's hands, but +even at that price the news she brought away had not been too dearly +bought. She sat with half-closed eyes as the train rushed through the +familiar landscape; and now the memories of her former journey, instead +of flying before her like dead leaves, seemed to be ripening in her +blood like sleeping grain. She would never again know what it was to +feel herself alone. Everything seemed to have grown suddenly clear +and simple. She no longer had any difficulty in picturing herself as +Harney's wife now that she was the mother of his child; and compared to +her sovereign right Annabel Balch's claim seemed no more than a girl's +sentimental fancy. + +That evening, at the gate of the red house, she found Ally waiting in +the dusk. "I was down at the post-office just as they were closing up, +and Will Targatt said there was a letter for you, so I brought it." + +Ally held out the letter, looking at Charity with piercing sympathy. +Since the scene of the torn blouse there had been a new and fearful +admiration in the eyes she bent on her friend. + +Charity snatched the letter with a laugh. "Oh, thank you--good-night," +she called out over her shoulder as she ran up the path. If she had +lingered a moment she knew she would have had Ally at her heels. + +She hurried upstairs and felt her way into her dark room. Her hands +trembled as she groped for the matches and lit her candle, and the flap +of the envelope was so closely stuck that she had to find her scissors +and slit it open. At length she read: + + +DEAR CHARITY: + +I have your letter, and it touches me more than I can say. Won't you +trust me, in return, to do my best? There are things it is hard to +explain, much less to justify; but your generosity makes everything +easier. All I can do now is to thank you from my soul for understanding. +Your telling me that you wanted me to do right has helped me beyond +expression. If ever there is a hope of realizing what we dreamed of you +will see me back on the instant; and I haven't yet lost that hope. + + +She read the letter with a rush; then she went over and over it, each +time more slowly and painstakingly. It was so beautifully expressed +that she found it almost as difficult to understand as the gentleman's +explanation of the Bible pictures at Nettleton; but gradually she became +aware that the gist of its meaning lay in the last few words. "If ever +there is a hope of realizing what we dreamed of..." + +But then he wasn't even sure of that? She understood now that every word +and every reticence was an avowal of Annabel Balch's prior claim. It was +true that he was engaged to her, and that he had not yet found a way of +breaking his engagement. + +As she read the letter over Charity understood what it must have cost +him to write it. He was not trying to evade an importunate claim; he was +honestly and contritely struggling between opposing duties. She did not +even reproach him in her thoughts for having concealed from her that +he was not free: she could not see anything more reprehensible in his +conduct than in her own. From the first she had needed him more than he +had wanted her, and the power that had swept them together had been +as far beyond resistance as a great gale loosening the leaves of the +forest.... Only, there stood between them, fixed and upright in the +general upheaval, the indestructible figure of Annabel Balch.... + +Face to face with his admission of the fact, she sat staring at the +letter. A cold tremor ran over her, and the hard sobs struggled up into +her throat and shook her from head to foot. For a while she was caught +and tossed on great waves of anguish that left her hardly conscious of +anything but the blind struggle against their assaults. Then, little by +little, she began to relive, with a dreadful poignancy, each separate +stage of her poor romance. Foolish things she had said came back to her, +gay answers Harney had made, his first kiss in the darkness between +the fireworks, their choosing the blue brooch together, the way he had +teased her about the letters she had dropped in her flight from the +evangelist. All these memories, and a thousand others, hummed through +her brain till his nearness grew so vivid that she felt his fingers in +her hair, and his warm breath on her cheek as he bent her head back like +a flower. These things were hers; they had passed into her blood, and +become a part of her, they were building the child in her womb; it was +impossible to tear asunder strands of life so interwoven. + +The conviction gradually strengthened her, and she began to form in her +mind the first words of the letter she meant to write to Harney. She +wanted to write it at once, and with feverish hands she began to rummage +in her drawer for a sheet of letter paper. But there was none left; she +must go downstairs to get it. She had a superstitious feeling that the +letter must be written on the instant, that setting down her secret in +words would bring her reassurance and safety; and taking up her candle +she went down to Mr. Royall's office. + +At that hour she was not likely to find him there: he had probably had +his supper and walked over to Carrick Fry's. She pushed open the door of +the unlit room, and the light of her lifted candle fell on his figure, +seated in the darkness in his high-backed chair. His arms lay along +the arms of the chair, and his head was bent a little; but he lifted +it quickly as Charity entered. She started back as their eyes met, +remembering that her own were red with weeping, and that her face was +livid with the fatigue and emotion of her journey. But it was too late +to escape, and she stood and looked at him in silence. + +He had risen from his chair, and came toward her with outstretched +hands. The gesture was so unexpected that she let him take her hands in +his and they stood thus, without speaking, till Mr. Royall said gravely: +"Charity--was you looking for me?" + +She freed herself abruptly and fell back. "Me? No----" She set down the +candle on his desk. "I wanted some letter-paper, that's all." His face +contracted, and the bushy brows jutted forward over his eyes. Without +answering he opened the drawer of the desk, took out a sheet of paper +and an envelope, and pushed them toward her. "Do you want a stamp too?" +he asked. + +She nodded, and he gave her the stamp. As he did so she felt that he was +looking at her intently, and she knew that the candle light flickering +up on her white face must be distorting her swollen features and +exaggerating the dark rings about her eyes. She snatched up the paper, +her reassurance dissolving under his pitiless gaze, in which she seemed +to read the grim perception of her state, and the ironic recollection +of the day when, in that very room, he had offered to compel Harney to +marry her. His look seemed to say that he knew she had taken the paper +to write to her lover, who had left her as he had warned her she would +be left. She remembered the scorn with which she had turned from him +that day, and knew, if he guessed the truth, what a list of old scores +it must settle. She turned and fled upstairs; but when she got back to +her room all the words that had been waiting had vanished.... + +If she could have gone to Harney it would have been different; she would +only have had to show herself to let his memories speak for her. But +she had no money left, and there was no one from whom she could have +borrowed enough for such a journey. There was nothing to do but to +write, and await his reply. For a long time she sat bent above the blank +page; but she found nothing to say that really expressed what she was +feeling.... + +Harney had written that she had made it easier for him, and she was glad +it was so; she did not want to make things hard. She knew she had it in +her power to do that; she held his fate in her hands. All she had to +do was to tell him the truth; but that was the very fact that held her +back.... Her five minutes face to face with Mr. Royall had stripped her +of her last illusion, and brought her back to North Dormer's point of +view. Distinctly and pitilessly there rose before her the fate of the +girl who was married "to make things right." She had seen too many +village love-stories end in that way. Poor Rose Coles's miserable +marriage was of the number; and what good had come of it for her or +for Halston Skeff? They had hated each other from the day the minister +married them; and whenever old Mrs. Skeff had a fancy to humiliate her +daughter-in-law she had only to say: "Who'd ever think the baby's only +two? And for a seven months' child--ain't it a wonder what a size he +is?" North Dormer had treasures of indulgence for brands in the burning, +but only derision for those who succeeded in getting snatched from +it; and Charity had always understood Julia Hawes's refusal to be +snatched.... + +Only--was there no alternative but Julia's? Her soul recoiled from the +vision of the white-faced woman among the plush sofas and gilt frames. +In the established order of things as she knew them she saw no place for +her individual adventure.... + +She sat in her chair without undressing till faint grey streaks began +to divide the black slats of the shutters. Then she stood up and pushed +them open, letting in the light. The coming of a new day brought a +sharper consciousness of ineluctable reality, and with it a sense of the +need of action. She looked at herself in the glass, and saw her face, +white in the autumn dawn, with pinched cheeks and dark-ringed eyes, and +all the marks of her state that she herself would never have noticed, +but that Dr. Merkle's diagnosis had made plain to her. She could not +hope that those signs would escape the watchful village; even before her +figure lost its shape she knew her face would betray her. + +Leaning from her window she looked out on the dark and empty scene; the +ashen houses with shuttered windows, the grey road climbing the slope to +the hemlock belt above the cemetery, and the heavy mass of the Mountain +black against a rainy sky. To the east a space of light was broadening +above the forest; but over that also the clouds hung. Slowly her gaze +travelled across the fields to the rugged curve of the hills. She had +looked out so often on that lifeless circle, and wondered if anything +could ever happen to anyone who was enclosed in it.... + +Almost without conscious thought her decision had been reached; as her +eyes had followed the circle of the hills her mind had also travelled +the old round. She supposed it was something in her blood that made the +Mountain the only answer to her questioning, the inevitable escape +from all that hemmed her in and beset her. At any rate it began to loom +against the rainy dawn; and the longer she looked at it the more clearly +she understood that now at last she was really going there. + + + + +XVI + + +THE rain held off, and an hour later, when she started, wild gleams of +sunlight were blowing across the fields. + +After Harney's departure she had returned her bicycle to its owner at +Creston, and she was not sure of being able to walk all the way to the +Mountain. The deserted house was on the road; but the idea of spending +the night there was unendurable, and she meant to try to push on to +Hamblin, where she could sleep under a wood-shed if her strength should +fail her. Her preparations had been made with quiet forethought. Before +starting she had forced herself to swallow a glass of milk and eat a +piece of bread; and she had put in her canvas satchel a little packet of +the chocolate that Harney always carried in his bicycle bag. She wanted +above all to keep up her strength, and reach her destination without +attracting notice.... + +Mile by mile she retraced the road over which she had so often flown to +her lover. When she reached the turn where the wood-road branched off +from the Creston highway she remembered the Gospel tent--long since +folded up and transplanted--and her start of involuntary terror when +the fat evangelist had said: "Your Saviour knows everything. Come and +confess your guilt." There was no sense of guilt in her now, but only +a desperate desire to defend her secret from irreverent eyes, and +begin life again among people to whom the harsh code of the village was +unknown. The impulse did not shape itself in thought: she only knew +she must save her baby, and hide herself with it somewhere where no one +would ever come to trouble them. + +She walked on and on, growing more heavy-footed as the day advanced. It +seemed a cruel chance that compelled her to retrace every step of the +way to the deserted house; and when she came in sight of the orchard, +and the silver-gray roof slanting crookedly through the laden branches, +her strength failed her and she sat down by the road-side. She sat there +a long time, trying to gather the courage to start again, and walk past +the broken gate and the untrimmed rose-bushes strung with scarlet hips. +A few drops of rain were falling, and she thought of the warm evenings +when she and Harney had sat embraced in the shadowy room, and the noise +of summer showers on the roof had rustled through their kisses. At +length she understood that if she stayed any longer the rain might +compel her to take shelter in the house overnight, and she got up and +walked on, averting her eyes as she came abreast of the white gate and +the tangled garden. + +The hours wore on, and she walked more and more slowly, pausing now and +then to rest, and to eat a little bread and an apple picked up from the +roadside. Her body seemed to grow heavier with every yard of the way, +and she wondered how she would be able to carry her child later, if +already he laid such a burden on her.... A fresh wind had sprung up, +scattering the rain and blowing down keenly from the mountain. Presently +the clouds lowered again, and a few white darts struck her in the face: +it was the first snow falling over Hamblin. The roofs of the lonely +village were only half a mile ahead, and she was resolved to push beyond +it, and try to reach the Mountain that night. She had no clear plan of +action, except that, once in the settlement, she meant to look for Liff +Hyatt, and get him to take her to her mother. She herself had been +born as her own baby was going to be born; and whatever her mother's +subsequent life had been, she could hardly help remembering the past, +and receiving a daughter who was facing the trouble she had known. + +Suddenly the deadly faintness came over her once more and she sat down +on the bank and leaned her head against a tree-trunk. The long road and +the cloudy landscape vanished from her eyes, and for a time she seemed +to be circling about in some terrible wheeling darkness. Then that too +faded. + +She opened her eyes, and saw a buggy drawn up beside her, and a man +who had jumped down from it and was gazing at her with a puzzled face. +Slowly consciousness came back, and she saw that the man was Liff Hyatt. + +She was dimly aware that he was asking her something, and she looked at +him in silence, trying to find strength to speak. At length her voice +stirred in her throat, and she said in a whisper: "I'm going up the +Mountain." + +"Up the Mountain?" he repeated, drawing aside a little; and as he +moved she saw behind him, in the buggy, a heavily coated figure with a +familiar pink face and gold spectacles on the bridge of a Grecian nose. + +"Charity! What on earth are you doing here?" Mr. Miles exclaimed, +throwing the reins on the horse's back and scrambling down from the +buggy. + +She lifted her heavy eyes to his. "I'm going to see my mother." + +The two men glanced at each other, and for a moment neither of them +spoke. + +Then Mr. Miles said: "You look ill, my dear, and it's a long way. Do you +think it's wise?" + +Charity stood up. "I've got to go to her." + +A vague mirthless grin contracted Liff Hyatt's face, and Mr. Miles again +spoke uncertainly. "You know, then--you'd been told?" + +She stared at him. "I don't know what you mean. I want to go to her." + +Mr. Miles was examining her thoughtfully. She fancied she saw a change +in his expression, and the blood rushed to her forehead. "I just want to +go to her," she repeated. + +He laid his hand on her arm. "My child, your mother is dying. Liff Hyatt +came down to fetch me.... Get in and come with us." + +He helped her up to the seat at his side, Liff Hyatt clambered in at +the back, and they drove off toward Hamblin. At first Charity had +hardly grasped what Mr. Miles was saying; the physical relief of finding +herself seated in the buggy, and securely on her road to the Mountain, +effaced the impression of his words. But as her head cleared she +began to understand. She knew the Mountain had but the most infrequent +intercourse with the valleys; she had often enough heard it said that no +one ever went up there except the minister, when someone was dying. And +now it was her mother who was dying... and she would find herself as +much alone on the Mountain as anywhere else in the world. The sense of +unescapable isolation was all she could feel for the moment; then +she began to wonder at the strangeness of its being Mr. Miles who had +undertaken to perform this grim errand. He did not seem in the least +like the kind of man who would care to go up the Mountain. But here he +was at her side, guiding the horse with a firm hand, and bending on her +the kindly gleam of his spectacles, as if there were nothing unusual in +their being together in such circumstances. + +For a while she found it impossible to speak, and he seemed to +understand this, and made no attempt to question her. But presently she +felt her tears rise and flow down over her drawn cheeks; and he must +have seen them too, for he laid his hand on hers, and said in a low +voice: "Won't you tell me what is troubling you?" + +She shook her head, and he did not insist: but after a while he said, in +the same low tone, so that they should not be overheard: "Charity, what +do you know of your childhood, before you came down to North Dormer?" + +She controlled herself, and answered: "Nothing only what I heard Mr. +Royall say one day. He said he brought me down because my father went to +prison." + +"And you've never been up there since?" + +"Never." + +Mr. Miles was silent again, then he said: "I'm glad you're coming with +me now. Perhaps we may find your mother alive, and she may know that you +have come." + +They had reached Hamblin, where the snow-flurry had left white patches +in the rough grass on the roadside, and in the angles of the roofs +facing north. It was a poor bleak village under the granite flank of the +Mountain, and as soon as they left it they began to climb. The road was +steep and full of ruts, and the horse settled down to a walk while they +mounted and mounted, the world dropping away below them in great mottled +stretches of forest and field, and stormy dark blue distances. + +Charity had often had visions of this ascent of the Mountain but she +had not known it would reveal so wide a country, and the sight of +those strange lands reaching away on every side gave her a new sense of +Harney's remoteness. She knew he must be miles and miles beyond the last +range of hills that seemed to be the outmost verge of things, and she +wondered how she had ever dreamed of going to New York to find him.... + +As the road mounted the country grew bleaker, and they drove across +fields of faded mountain grass bleached by long months beneath the snow. +In the hollows a few white birches trembled, or a mountain ash lit its +scarlet clusters; but only a scant growth of pines darkened the granite +ledges. The wind was blowing fiercely across the open slopes; the horse +faced it with bent head and straining flanks, and now and then the buggy +swayed so that Charity had to clutch its side. + +Mr. Miles had not spoken again; he seemed to understand that she wanted +to be left alone. After a while the track they were following forked, +and he pulled up the horse, as if uncertain of the way. Liff Hyatt +craned his head around from the back, and shouted against the wind: +"Left----" and they turned into a stunted pine-wood and began to drive +down the other side of the Mountain. + +A mile or two farther on they came out on a clearing where two or three +low houses lay in stony fields, crouching among the rocks as if to brace +themselves against the wind. They were hardly more than sheds, built of +logs and rough boards, with tin stove-pipes sticking out of their roofs. +The sun was setting, and dusk had already fallen on the lower world, +but a yellow glare still lay on the lonely hillside and the crouching +houses. The next moment it faded and left the landscape in dark autumn +twilight. + +"Over there," Liff called out, stretching his long arm over Mr. Miles's +shoulder. The clergyman turned to the left, across a bit of bare ground +overgrown with docks and nettles, and stopped before the most ruinous of +the sheds. A stove-pipe reached its crooked arm out of one window, and +the broken panes of the other were stuffed with rags and paper. + +In contrast to such a dwelling the brown house in the swamp might have +stood for the home of plenty. + +As the buggy drew up two or three mongrel dogs jumped out of the +twilight with a great barking, and a young man slouched to the door and +stood there staring. In the twilight Charity saw that his face had the +same sodden look as Bash Hyatt's, the day she had seen him sleeping +by the stove. He made no effort to silence the dogs, but leaned in the +door, as if roused from a drunken lethargy, while Mr. Miles got out of +the buggy. + +"Is it here?" the clergyman asked Liff in a low voice; and Liff nodded. + +Mr. Miles turned to Charity. "Just hold the horse a minute, my dear: +I'll go in first," he said, putting the reins in her hands. She took +them passively, and sat staring straight ahead of her at the darkening +scene while Mr. Miles and Liff Hyatt went up to the house. They stood +a few minutes talking with the man in the door, and then Mr. Miles came +back. As he came close, Charity saw that his smooth pink face wore a +frightened solemn look. + +"Your mother is dead, Charity; you'd better come with me," he said. + +She got down and followed him while Liff led the horse away. As +she approached the door she said to herself: "This is where I was +born... this is where I belong...." She had said it to herself often +enough as she looked across the sunlit valleys at the Mountain; but it +had meant nothing then, and now it had become a reality. Mr. Miles took +her gently by the arm, and they entered what appeared to be the only +room in the house. It was so dark that she could just discern a group +of a dozen people sitting or sprawling about a table made of boards laid +across two barrels. They looked up listlessly as Mr. Miles and Charity +came in, and a woman's thick voice said: "Here's the preacher." But no +one moved. + +Mr. Miles paused and looked about him; then he turned to the young man +who had met them at the door. + +"Is the body here?" he asked. + +The young man, instead of answering, turned his head toward the group. +"Where's the candle? I tole yer to bring a candle," he said with sudden +harshness to a girl who was lolling against the table. She did not +answer, but another man got up and took from some corner a candle stuck +into a bottle. + +"How'll I light it? The stove's out," the girl grumbled. + +Mr. Miles fumbled under his heavy wrappings and drew out a match-box. +He held a match to the candle, and in a moment or two a faint circle of +light fell on the pale aguish heads that started out of the shadow like +the heads of nocturnal animals. + +"Mary's over there," someone said; and Mr. Miles, taking the bottle in +his hand, passed behind the table. Charity followed him, and they stood +before a mattress on the floor in a corner of the room. A woman lay on +it, but she did not look like a dead woman; she seemed to have fallen +across her squalid bed in a drunken sleep, and to have been left lying +where she fell, in her ragged disordered clothes. One arm was flung +above her head, one leg drawn up under a torn skirt that left the other +bare to the knee: a swollen glistening leg with a ragged stocking rolled +down about the ankle. The woman lay on her back, her eyes staring up +unblinkingly at the candle that trembled in Mr. Miles's hand. + +"She jus' dropped off," a woman said, over the shoulder of the others; +and the young man added: "I jus' come in and found her." + +An elderly man with lank hair and a feeble grin pushed between them. "It +was like this: I says to her on'y the night before: if you don't take +and quit, I says to her..." + +Someone pulled him back and sent him reeling against a bench along the +wall, where he dropped down muttering his unheeded narrative. + +There was a silence; then the young woman who had been lolling against +the table suddenly parted the group, and stood in front of Charity. +She was healthier and robuster looking than the others, and her +weather-beaten face had a certain sullen beauty. + +"Who's the girl? Who brought her here?" she said, fixing her eyes +mistrustfully on the young man who had rebuked her for not having a +candle ready. + +Mr. Miles spoke. "I brought her; she is Mary Hyatt's daughter." + +"What? Her too?" the girl sneered; and the young man turned on her with +an oath. "Shut your mouth, damn you, or get out of here," he said; +then he relapsed into his former apathy, and dropped down on the bench, +leaning his head against the wall. + +Mr. Miles had set the candle on the floor and taken off his heavy coat. +He turned to Charity. "Come and help me," he said. + +He knelt down by the mattress, and pressed the lids over the dead +woman's eyes. Charity, trembling and sick, knelt beside him, and tried +to compose her mother's body. She drew the stocking over the dreadful +glistening leg, and pulled the skirt down to the battered upturned +boots. As she did so, she looked at her mother's face, thin yet swollen, +with lips parted in a frozen gasp above the broken teeth. There was no +sign in it of anything human: she lay there like a dead dog in a ditch. +Charity's hands grew cold as they touched her. + +Mr. Miles drew the woman's arms across her breast and laid his coat +over her. Then he covered her face with his handkerchief, and placed the +bottle with the candle in it at her head. Having done this he stood up. + +"Is there no coffin?" he asked, turning to the group behind him. + +There was a moment of bewildered silence; then the fierce girl spoke up. +"You'd oughter brought it with you. Where'd we get one here, I'd like +ter know?" + +Mr. Miles, looking at the others, repeated: "Is it possible you have no +coffin ready?" + +"That's what I say: them that has it sleeps better," an old woman +murmured. "But then she never had no bed...." + +"And the stove warn't hers," said the lank-haired man, on the defensive. + +Mr. Miles turned away from them and moved a few steps apart. He had +drawn a book from his pocket, and after a pause he opened it and began +to read, holding the book at arm's length and low down, so that the +pages caught the feeble light. Charity had remained on her knees by the +mattress: now that her mother's face was covered it was easier to stay +near her, and avoid the sight of the living faces which too horribly +showed by what stages hers had lapsed into death. + +"I am the Resurrection and the Life," Mr. Miles began; "he that +believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.... Though after +my skin worms destroy my body, yet in my flesh shall I see God...." + +IN MY FLESH SHALL I SEE GOD! Charity thought of the gaping mouth and +stony eyes under the handkerchief, and of the glistening leg over which +she had drawn the stocking.... + +"We brought nothing into this world and we shall take nothing out of +it----" + +There was a sudden muttering and a scuffle at the back of the group. "I +brought the stove," said the elderly man with lank hair, pushing his +way between the others. "I wen' down to Creston'n bought it... n' I got a +right to take it outer here... n' I'll lick any feller says I ain't...." + +"Sit down, damn you!" shouted the tall youth who had been drowsing on +the bench against the wall. + +"For man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain; he +heapeth up riches and cannot tell who shall gather them...." + +"Well, it ARE his," a woman in the background interjected in a +frightened whine. + +The tall youth staggered to his feet. "If you don't hold your mouths +I'll turn you all out o' here, the whole lot of you," he cried with many +oaths. "G'wan, minister... don't let 'em faze you...." + +"Now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first-fruits of them +that slept.... Behold, I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but +we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at +the last trump.... For this corruptible must put on incorruption and this +mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruption shall have put +on incorruption, and when this mortal shall have put on immortality, +then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is +swallowed up in Victory...." + +One by one the mighty words fell on Charity's bowed head, soothing +the horror, subduing the tumult, mastering her as they mastered the +drink-dazed creatures at her back. Mr. Miles read to the last word, and +then closed the book. + +"Is the grave ready?" he asked. + +Liff Hyatt, who had come in while he was reading, nodded a "Yes," and +pushed forward to the side of the mattress. The young man on the bench +who seemed to assert some sort of right of kinship with the dead woman, +got to his feet again, and the proprietor of the stove joined him. +Between them they raised up the mattress; but their movements were +unsteady, and the coat slipped to the floor, revealing the poor body in +its helpless misery. Charity, picking up the coat, covered her mother +once more. Liff had brought a lantern, and the old woman who had already +spoken took it up, and opened the door to let the little procession +pass out. The wind had dropped, and the night was very dark and bitterly +cold. The old woman walked ahead, the lantern shaking in her hand and +spreading out before her a pale patch of dead grass and coarse-leaved +weeds enclosed in an immensity of blackness. + +Mr. Miles took Charity by the arm, and side by side they walked behind +the mattress. At length the old woman with the lantern stopped, and +Charity saw the light fall on the stooping shoulders of the bearers and +on a ridge of upheaved earth over which they were bending. Mr. Miles +released her arm and approached the hollow on the other side of the +ridge; and while the men stooped down, lowering the mattress into the +grave, he began to speak again. + +"Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full +of misery.... He cometh up and is cut down... he fleeth as it were a +shadow.... Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and +merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal +death...." + +"Easy there... is she down?" piped the claimant to the stove; and the +young man called over his shoulder: "Lift the light there, can't you?" + +There was a pause, during which the light floated uncertainly over the +open grave. Someone bent over and pulled out Mr. Miles's coat----("No, +no--leave the handkerchief," he interposed)--and then Liff Hyatt, coming +forward with a spade, began to shovel in the earth. + +"Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to take +unto Himself the soul of our dear sister here departed, we therefore +commit her body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to +dust..." Liff's gaunt shoulders rose and bent in the lantern light as he +dashed the clods of earth into the grave. "God--it's froze a'ready," +he muttered, spitting into his palm and passing his ragged shirt-sleeve +across his perspiring face. + +"Through our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body that it +may be like unto His glorious body, according to the mighty working, +whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Himself..." The last +spadeful of earth fell on the vile body of Mary Hyatt, and Liff rested +on his spade, his shoulder blades still heaving with the effort. + +"Lord, have mercy upon us, Christ have mercy upon us, Lord have mercy +upon us..." + +Mr. Miles took the lantern from the old woman's hand and swept its light +across the circle of bleared faces. "Now kneel down, all of you," he +commanded, in a voice of authority that Charity had never heard. +She knelt down at the edge of the grave, and the others, stiffly and +hesitatingly, got to their knees beside her. Mr. Miles knelt, too. "And +now pray with me--you know this prayer," he said, and he began: "Our +Father which art in Heaven..." One or two of the women falteringly took +the words up, and when he ended, the lank-haired man flung himself on +the neck of the tall youth. "It was this way," he said. "I tole her the +night before, I says to her..." The reminiscence ended in a sob. + +Mr. Miles had been getting into his coat again. He came up to Charity, +who had remained passively kneeling by the rough mound of earth. + +"My child, you must come. It's very late." + +She lifted her eyes to his face: he seemed to speak out of another +world. + +"I ain't coming: I'm going to stay here." + +"Here? Where? What do you mean?" + +"These are my folks. I'm going to stay with them." + +Mr. Miles lowered his voice. "But it's not possible--you don't know what +you are doing. You can't stay among these people: you must come with +me." + +She shook her head and rose from her knees. The group about the grave +had scattered in the darkness, but the old woman with the lantern stood +waiting. Her mournful withered face was not unkind, and Charity went up +to her. + +"Have you got a place where I can lie down for the night?" she asked. +Liff came up, leading the buggy out of the night. He looked from one +to the other with his feeble smile. "She's my mother. She'll take you +home," he said; and he added, raising his voice to speak to the +old woman: "It's the girl from lawyer Royall's--Mary's girl... you +remember...." + +The woman nodded and raised her sad old eyes to Charity's. When Mr. +Miles and Liff clambered into the buggy she went ahead with the lantern +to show them the track they were to follow; then she turned back, and in +silence she and Charity walked away together through the night. + + + + +XVII + + +CHARITY lay on the floor on a mattress, as her dead mother's body had +lain. The room in which she lay was cold and dark and low-ceilinged, and +even poorer and barer than the scene of Mary Hyatt's earthly pilgrimage. +On the other side of the fireless stove Liff Hyatt's mother slept on +a blanket, with two children--her grandchildren, she said--rolled up +against her like sleeping puppies. They had their thin clothes spread +over them, having given the only other blanket to their guest. + +Through the small square of glass in the opposite wall Charity saw a +deep funnel of sky, so black, so remote, so palpitating with frosty +stars that her very soul seemed to be sucked into it. Up there +somewhere, she supposed, the God whom Mr. Miles had invoked was waiting +for Mary Hyatt to appear. What a long flight it was! And what would she +have to say when she reached Him? + +Charity's bewildered brain laboured with the attempt to picture her +mother's past, and to relate it in any way to the designs of a just but +merciful God; but it was impossible to imagine any link between them. +She herself felt as remote from the poor creature she had seen lowered +into her hastily dug grave as if the height of the heavens divided them. +She had seen poverty and misfortune in her life; but in a community +where poor thrifty Mrs. Hawes and the industrious Ally represented the +nearest approach to destitution there was nothing to suggest the savage +misery of the Mountain farmers. + +As she lay there, half-stunned by her tragic initiation, Charity vainly +tried to think herself into the life about her. But she could not even +make out what relationship these people bore to each other, or to her +dead mother; they seemed to be herded together in a sort of passive +promiscuity in which their common misery was the strongest link. She +tried to picture to herself what her life would have been if she had +grown up on the Mountain, running wild in rags, sleeping on the floor +curled up against her mother, like the pale-faced children huddled +against old Mrs. Hyatt, and turning into a fierce bewildered creature +like the girl who had apostrophized her in such strange words. She was +frightened by the secret affinity she had felt with this girl, and by +the light it threw on her own beginnings. Then she remembered what Mr. +Royall had said in telling her story to Lucius Harney: "Yes, there was +a mother; but she was glad to have the child go. She'd have given her to +anybody...." + +Well! after all, was her mother so much to blame? Charity, since that +day, had always thought of her as destitute of all human feeling; now +she seemed merely pitiful. What mother would not want to save her child +from such a life? Charity thought of the future of her own child, and +tears welled into her aching eyes, and ran down over her face. If she +had been less exhausted, less burdened with his weight, she would have +sprung up then and there and fled away.... + +The grim hours of the night dragged themselves slowly by, and at last +the sky paled and dawn threw a cold blue beam into the room. She lay +in her corner staring at the dirty floor, the clothes-line hung with +decaying rags, the old woman huddled against the cold stove, and the +light gradually spreading across the wintry world, and bringing with it +a new day in which she would have to live, to choose, to act, to make +herself a place among these people--or to go back to the life she had +left. A mortal lassitude weighed on her. There were moments when she +felt that all she asked was to go on lying there unnoticed; then her +mind revolted at the thought of becoming one of the miserable herd from +which she sprang, and it seemed as though, to save her child from such +a fate, she would find strength to travel any distance, and bear any +burden life might put on her. + +Vague thoughts of Nettleton flitted through her mind. She said to +herself that she would find some quiet place where she could bear her +child, and give it to decent people to keep; and then she would go out +like Julia Hawes and earn its living and hers. She knew that girls of +that kind sometimes made enough to have their children nicely cared for; +and every other consideration disappeared in the vision of her baby, +cleaned and combed and rosy, and hidden away somewhere where she could +run in and kiss it, and bring it pretty things to wear. Anything, +anything was better than to add another life to the nest of misery on +the Mountain.... + +The old woman and the children were still sleeping when Charity rose +from her mattress. Her body was stiff with cold and fatigue, and she +moved slowly lest her heavy steps should rouse them. She was faint with +hunger, and had nothing left in her satchel; but on the table she saw +the half of a stale loaf. No doubt it was to serve as the breakfast of +old Mrs. Hyatt and the children; but Charity did not care; she had her +own baby to think of. She broke off a piece of the bread and ate +it greedily; then her glance fell on the thin faces of the sleeping +children, and filled with compunction she rummaged in her satchel for +something with which to pay for what she had taken. She found one of +the pretty chemises that Ally had made for her, with a blue ribbon run +through its edging. It was one of the dainty things on which she had +squandered her savings, and as she looked at it the blood rushed to her +forehead. She laid the chemise on the table, and stealing across the +floor lifted the latch and went out.... + +The morning was icy cold and a pale sun was just rising above the +eastern shoulder of the Mountain. The houses scattered on the hillside +lay cold and smokeless under the sun-flecked clouds, and not a human +being was in sight. Charity paused on the threshold and tried to +discover the road by which she had come the night before. Across the +field surrounding Mrs. Hyatt's shanty she saw the tumble-down house in +which she supposed the funeral service had taken place. The trail +ran across the ground between the two houses and disappeared in the +pine-wood on the flank of the Mountain; and a little way to the right, +under a wind-beaten thorn, a mound of fresh earth made a dark spot +on the fawn-coloured stubble. Charity walked across the field to the +ground. As she approached it she heard a bird's note in the still air, +and looking up she saw a brown song-sparrow perched in an upper branch +of the thorn above the grave. She stood a minute listening to his small +solitary song; then she rejoined the trail and began to mount the hill +to the pine-wood. + +Thus far she had been impelled by the blind instinct of flight; but each +step seemed to bring her nearer to the realities of which her feverish +vigil had given only a shadowy image. Now that she walked again in a +daylight world, on the way back to familiar things, her imagination +moved more soberly. On one point she was still decided: she could not +remain at North Dormer, and the sooner she got away from it the better. +But everything beyond was darkness. + +As she continued to climb the air grew keener, and when she passed from +the shelter of the pines to the open grassy roof of the Mountain the +cold wind of the night before sprang out on her. She bent her shoulders +and struggled on against it for a while; but presently her breath +failed, and she sat down under a ledge of rock overhung by shivering +birches. From where she sat she saw the trail wandering across the +bleached grass in the direction of Hamblin, and the granite wall of the +Mountain falling away to infinite distances. On that side of the ridge +the valleys still lay in wintry shadow; but in the plain beyond the sun +was touching village roofs and steeples, and gilding the haze of smoke +over far-off invisible towns. + +Charity felt herself a mere speck in the lonely circle of the sky. The +events of the last two days seemed to have divided her forever from +her short dream of bliss. Even Harney's image had been blurred by that +crushing experience: she thought of him as so remote from her that he +seemed hardly more than a memory. In her fagged and floating mind only +one sensation had the weight of reality; it was the bodily burden of +her child. But for it she would have felt as rootless as the whiffs of +thistledown the wind blew past her. Her child was like a load that held +her down, and yet like a hand that pulled her to her feet. She said to +herself that she must get up and struggle on.... + +Her eyes turned back to the trail across the top of the Mountain, and +in the distance she saw a buggy against the sky. She knew its antique +outline, and the gaunt build of the old horse pressing forward with +lowered head; and after a moment she recognized the heavy bulk of the +man who held the reins. The buggy was following the trail and making +straight for the pine-wood through which she had climbed; and she knew +at once that the driver was in search of her. Her first impulse was +to crouch down under the ledge till he had passed; but the instinct of +concealment was overruled by the relief of feeling that someone was near +her in the awful emptiness. She stood up and walked toward the buggy. + +Mr. Royall saw her, and touched the horse with the whip. A minute or two +later he was abreast of Charity; their eyes met, and without speaking he +leaned over and helped her up into the buggy. + +She tried to speak, to stammer out some explanation, but no words came +to her; and as he drew the cover over her knees he simply said: "The +minister told me he'd left you up here, so I come up for you." + +He turned the horse's head, and they began to jog back toward Hamblin. +Charity sat speechless, staring straight ahead of her, and Mr. Royall +occasionally uttered a word of encouragement to the horse: "Get along +there, Dan.... I gave him a rest at Hamblin; but I brought him along +pretty quick, and it's a stiff pull up here against the wind." + +As he spoke it occurred to her for the first time that to reach the top +of the Mountain so early he must have left North Dormer at the coldest +hour of the night, and have travelled steadily but for the halt at +Hamblin; and she felt a softness at her heart which no act of his had +ever produced since he had brought her the Crimson Rambler because she +had given up boarding-school to stay with him. + +After an interval he began again: "It was a day just like this, only +spitting snow, when I come up here for you the first time." Then, as if +fearing that she might take his remark as a reminder of past benefits, +he added quickly: "I dunno's you think it was such a good job, either." + +"Yes, I do," she murmured, looking straight ahead of her. + +"Well," he said, "I tried----" + +He did not finish the sentence, and she could think of nothing more to +say. + +"Ho, there, Dan, step out," he muttered, jerking the bridle. "We ain't +home yet.--You cold?" he asked abruptly. + +She shook her head, but he drew the cover higher up, and stooped to tuck +it in about the ankles. She continued to look straight ahead. Tears of +weariness and weakness were dimming her eyes and beginning to run over, +but she dared not wipe them away lest he should observe the gesture. + +They drove in silence, following the long loops of the descent upon +Hamblin, and Mr. Royall did not speak again till they reached the +outskirts of the village. Then he let the reins droop on the dashboard +and drew out his watch. + +"Charity," he said, "you look fair done up, and North Dormer's a goodish +way off. I've figured out that we'd do better to stop here long enough +for you to get a mouthful of breakfast and then drive down to Creston +and take the train." + +She roused herself from her apathetic musing. "The train--what train?" + +Mr. Royall, without answering, let the horse jog on till they reached +the door of the first house in the village. "This is old Mrs. Hobart's +place," he said. "She'll give us something hot to drink." + +Charity, half unconsciously, found herself getting out of the buggy and +following him in at the open door. They entered a decent kitchen with a +fire crackling in the stove. An old woman with a kindly face was setting +out cups and saucers on the table. She looked up and nodded as they +came in, and Mr. Royall advanced to the stove, clapping his numb hands +together. + +"Well, Mrs. Hobart, you got any breakfast for this young lady? You can +see she's cold and hungry." + +Mrs. Hobart smiled on Charity and took a tin coffee-pot from the fire. +"My, you do look pretty mean," she said compassionately. + +Charity reddened, and sat down at the table. A feeling of complete +passiveness had once more come over her, and she was conscious only of +the pleasant animal sensations of warmth and rest. + +Mrs. Hobart put bread and milk on the table, and then went out of the +house: Charity saw her leading the horse away to the barn across the +yard. She did not come back, and Mr. Royall and Charity sat alone at the +table with the smoking coffee between them. He poured out a cup for her, +and put a piece of bread in the saucer, and she began to eat. + +As the warmth of the coffee flowed through her veins her thoughts +cleared and she began to feel like a living being again; but the return +to life was so painful that the food choked in her throat and she sat +staring down at the table in silent anguish. + +After a while Mr. Royall pushed back his chair. "Now, then," he said, +"if you're a mind to go along----" She did not move, and he continued: +"We can pick up the noon train for Nettleton if you say so." + +The words sent the blood rushing to her face, and she raised her +startled eyes to his. He was standing on the other side of the table +looking at her kindly and gravely; and suddenly she understood what he +was going to say. She continued to sit motionless, a leaden weight upon +her lips. + +"You and me have spoke some hard things to each other in our time, +Charity; and there's no good that I can see in any more talking now. But +I'll never feel any way but one about you; and if you say so we'll drive +down in time to catch that train, and go straight to the minister's +house; and when you come back home you'll come as Mrs. Royall." + +His voice had the grave persuasive accent that had moved his hearers at +the Home Week festival; she had a sense of depths of mournful tolerance +under that easy tone. Her whole body began to tremble with the dread of +her own weakness. + +"Oh, I can't----" she burst out desperately. + +"Can't what?" + +She herself did not know: she was not sure if she was rejecting what he +offered, or already struggling against the temptation of taking what +she no longer had a right to. She stood up, shaking and bewildered, and +began to speak: + +"I know I ain't been fair to you always; but I want to be now.... I want +you to know... I want..." Her voice failed her and she stopped. + +Mr. Royall leaned against the wall. He was paler than usual, but his +face was composed and kindly and her agitation did not appear to perturb +him. + +"What's all this about wanting?" he said as she paused. "Do you know +what you really want? I'll tell you. You want to be took home and took +care of. And I guess that's all there is to say." + +"No... it's not all...." + +"Ain't it?" He looked at his watch. "Well, I'll tell you another thing. +All I want is to know if you'll marry me. If there was anything else, +I'd tell you so; but there ain't. Come to my age, a man knows the things +that matter and the things that don't; that's about the only good turn +life does us." + +His tone was so strong and resolute that it was like a supporting arm +about her. She felt her resistance melting, her strength slipping away +from her as he spoke. + +"Don't cry, Charity," he exclaimed in a shaken voice. She looked up, +startled at his emotion, and their eyes met. + +"See here," he said gently, "old Dan's come a long distance, and we've +got to let him take it easy the rest of the way...." + +He picked up the cloak that had slipped to her chair and laid it about +her shoulders. She followed him out of the house, and then walked across +the yard to the shed, where the horse was tied. Mr. Royall unblanketed +him and led him out into the road. Charity got into the buggy and he +drew the cover about her and shook out the reins with a cluck. When +they reached the end of the village he turned the horse's head toward +Creston. + + + + +XVIII + + +They began to jog down the winding road to the valley at old Dan's +languid pace. Charity felt herself sinking into deeper depths of +weariness, and as they descended through the bare woods there were +moments when she lost the exact sense of things, and seemed to be +sitting beside her lover with the leafy arch of summer bending over +them. But this illusion was faint and transitory. For the most part she +had only a confused sensation of slipping down a smooth irresistible +current; and she abandoned herself to the feeling as a refuge from the +torment of thought. + +Mr. Royall seldom spoke, but his silent presence gave her, for the first +time, a sense of peace and security. She knew that where he was there +would be warmth, rest, silence; and for the moment they were all she +wanted. She shut her eyes, and even these things grew dim to her.... + +In the train, during the short run from Creston to Nettleton, the warmth +aroused her, and the consciousness of being under strange eyes gave her +a momentary energy. She sat upright, facing Mr. Royall, and stared out +of the window at the denuded country. Forty-eight hours earlier, when +she had last traversed it, many of the trees still held their leaves; +but the high wind of the last two nights had stripped them, and the +lines of the landscape' were as finely pencilled as in December. A +few days of autumn cold had wiped out all trace of the rich fields and +languid groves through which she had passed on the Fourth of July; and +with the fading of the landscape those fervid hours had faded, too. She +could no longer believe that she was the being who had lived them; she +was someone to whom something irreparable and overwhelming had happened, +but the traces of the steps leading up to it had almost vanished. + +When the train reached Nettleton and she walked out into the square at +Mr. Royall's side the sense of unreality grew more overpowering. The +physical strain of the night and day had left no room in her mind for +new sensations and she followed Mr. Royall as passively as a tired +child. As in a confused dream she presently found herself sitting with +him in a pleasant room, at a table with a red and white table-cloth +on which hot food and tea were placed. He filled her cup and plate and +whenever she lifted her eyes from them she found his resting on her with +the same steady tranquil gaze that had reassured and strengthened +her when they had faced each other in old Mrs. Hobart's kitchen. As +everything else in her consciousness grew more and more confused +and immaterial, became more and more like the universal shimmer that +dissolves the world to failing eyes, Mr. Royall's presence began to +detach itself with rocky firmness from this elusive background. She had +always thought of him--when she thought of him at all--as of someone +hateful and obstructive, but whom she could outwit and dominate when +she chose to make the effort. Only once, on the day of the Old Home Week +celebration, while the stray fragments of his address drifted across +her troubled mind, had she caught a glimpse of another being, a being so +different from the dull-witted enemy with whom she had supposed herself +to be living that even through the burning mist of her own dreams he +had stood out with startling distinctness. For a moment, then, what he +said--and something in his way of saying it--had made her see why he had +always struck her as such a lonely man. But the mist of her dreams had +hidden him again, and she had forgotten that fugitive impression. + +It came back to her now, as they sat at the table, and gave her, through +her own immeasurable desolation, a sudden sense of their nearness to +each other. But all these feelings were only brief streaks of light in +the grey blur of her physical weakness. Through it she was aware that +Mr. Royall presently left her sitting by the table in the warm room, and +came back after an interval with a carriage from the station--a closed +"hack" with sun-burnt blue silk blinds--in which they drove together +to a house covered with creepers and standing next to a church with a +carpet of turf before it. They got out at this house, and the carriage +waited while they walked up the path and entered a wainscoted hall and +then a room full of books. In this room a clergyman whom Charity had +never seen received them pleasantly, and asked them to be seated for a +few minutes while witnesses were being summoned. + +Charity sat down obediently, and Mr. Royall, his hands behind his back, +paced slowly up and down the room. As he turned and faced Charity, she +noticed that his lips were twitching a little; but the look in his eyes +was grave and calm. Once he paused before her and said timidly: "Your +hair's got kinder loose with the wind," and she lifted her hands and +tried to smooth back the locks that had escaped from her braid. There +was a looking-glass in a carved frame on the wall, but she was ashamed +to look at herself in it, and she sat with her hands folded on her knee +till the clergyman returned. Then they went out again, along a sort of +arcaded passage, and into a low vaulted room with a cross on an altar, +and rows of benches. The clergyman, who had left them at the door, +presently reappeared before the altar in a surplice, and a lady who was +probably his wife, and a man in a blue shirt who had been raking dead +leaves on the lawn, came in and sat on one of the benches. + +The clergyman opened a book and signed to Charity and Mr. Royall to +approach. Mr. Royall advanced a few steps, and Charity followed him as +she had followed him to the buggy when they went out of Mrs. Hobart's +kitchen; she had the feeling that if she ceased to keep close to him, +and do what he told her to do, the world would slip away from beneath +her feet. + +The clergyman began to read, and on her dazed mind there rose the memory +of Mr. Miles, standing the night before in the desolate house of the +Mountain, and reading out of the same book words that had the same dread +sound of finality: + +"I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day +of judgment when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if +either of you know any impediment whereby ye may not be lawfully joined +together..." + +Charity raised her eyes and met Mr. Royall's. They were still looking +at her kindly and steadily. "I will!" she heard him say a moment later, +after another interval of words that she had failed to catch. She was so +busy trying to understand the gestures that the clergyman was signalling +to her to make that she no longer heard what was being said. After +another interval the lady on the bench stood up, and taking her hand put +it in Mr. Royall's. It lay enclosed in his strong palm and she felt +a ring that was too big for her being slipped on her thin finger. She +understood then that she was married.... + +Late that afternoon Charity sat alone in a bedroom of the fashionable +hotel where she and Harney had vainly sought a table on the Fourth of +July. She had never before been in so handsomely furnished a room. The +mirror above the dressing-table reflected the high head-board and fluted +pillow-slips of the double bed, and a bedspread so spotlessly white that +she had hesitated to lay her hat and jacket on it. The humming radiator +diffused an atmosphere of drowsy warmth, and through a half-open door +she saw the glitter of the nickel taps above twin marble basins. + +For a while the long turmoil of the night and day had slipped away from +her and she sat with closed eyes, surrendering herself to the spell of +warmth and silence. But presently this merciful apathy was succeeded by +the sudden acuteness of vision with which sick people sometimes wake out +of a heavy sleep. As she opened her eyes they rested on the picture +that hung above the bed. It was a large engraving with a dazzling white +margin enclosed in a wide frame of bird's-eye maple with an inner scroll +of gold. The engraving represented a young man in a boat on a lake +over-hung with trees. He was leaning over to gather water-lilies for the +girl in a light dress who lay among the cushions in the stern. The scene +was full of a drowsy midsummer radiance, and Charity averted her eyes +from it and, rising from her chair, began to wander restlessly about the +room. + +It was on the fifth floor, and its broad window of plate glass looked +over the roofs of the town. Beyond them stretched a wooded landscape in +which the last fires of sunset were picking out a steely gleam. Charity +gazed at the gleam with startled eyes. Even through the gathering +twilight she recognized the contour of the soft hills encircling it, and +the way the meadows sloped to its edge. It was Nettleton Lake that she +was looking at. + +She stood a long time in the window staring out at the fading water. The +sight of it had roused her for the first time to a realization of what +she had done. Even the feeling of the ring on her hand had not brought +her this sharp sense of the irretrievable. For an instant the old +impulse of flight swept through her; but it was only the lift of a +broken wing. She heard the door open behind her, and Mr. Royall came in. + +He had gone to the barber's to be shaved, and his shaggy grey hair had +been trimmed and smoothed. He moved strongly and quickly, squaring his +shoulders and carrying his head high, as if he did not want to pass +unnoticed. + +"What are you doing in the dark?" he called out in a cheerful voice. +Charity made no answer. He went up to the window to draw the blind, and +putting his finger on the wall flooded the room with a blaze of light +from the central chandelier. In this unfamiliar illumination husband +and wife faced each other awkwardly for a moment; then Mr. Royall said: +"We'll step down and have some supper, if you say so." + +The thought of food filled her with repugnance; but not daring to +confess it she smoothed her hair and followed him to the lift. + +An hour later, coming out of the glare of the dining-room, she waited in +the marble-panelled hall while Mr. Royall, before the brass lattice +of one of the corner counters, selected a cigar and bought an +evening paper. Men were lounging in rocking chairs under the blazing +chandeliers, travellers coming and going, bells ringing, porters +shuffling by with luggage. Over Mr. Royall's shoulder, as he leaned +against the counter, a girl with her hair puffed high smirked and nodded +at a dapper drummer who was getting his key at the desk across the hall. + +Charity stood among these cross-currents of life as motionless and inert +as if she had been one of the tables screwed to the marble floor. All +her soul was gathered up into one sick sense of coming doom, and she +watched Mr. Royall in fascinated terror while he pinched the cigars in +successive boxes and unfolded his evening paper with a steady hand. + +Presently he turned and joined her. "You go right along up to bed--I'm +going to sit down here and have my smoke," he said. He spoke as easily +and naturally as if they had been an old couple, long used to each +other's ways, and her contracted heart gave a flutter of relief. She +followed him to the lift, and he put her in and enjoined the buttoned +and braided boy to show her to her room. + +She groped her way in through the darkness, forgetting where the +electric button was, and not knowing how to manipulate it. But a white +autumn moon had risen, and the illuminated sky put a pale light in the +room. By it she undressed, and after folding up the ruffled pillow-slips +crept timidly under the spotless counterpane. She had never felt such +smooth sheets or such light warm blankets; but the softness of the bed +did not soothe her. She lay there trembling with a fear that ran through +her veins like ice. "What have I done? Oh, what have I done?" she +whispered, shuddering to her pillow; and pressing her face against it +to shut out the pale landscape beyond the window she lay in the darkness +straining her ears, and shaking at every footstep that approached.... + +Suddenly she sat up and pressed her hands against her frightened heart. +A faint sound had told her that someone was in the room; but she must +have slept in the interval, for she had heard no one enter. The moon was +setting beyond the opposite roofs, and in the darkness outlined +against the grey square of the window, she saw a figure seated in the +rocking-chair. The figure did not move: it was sunk deep in the chair, +with bowed head and folded arms, and she saw that it was Mr. Royall who +sat there. He had not undressed, but had taken the blanket from the +foot of the bed and laid it across his knees. Trembling and holding her +breath she watched him, fearing that he had been roused by her movement; +but he did not stir, and she concluded that he wished her to think he +was asleep. + +As she continued to watch him ineffable relief stole slowly over her, +relaxing her strained nerves and exhausted body. He knew, then... he +knew... it was because he knew that he had married her, and that he +sat there in the darkness to show her she was safe with him. A stir +of something deeper than she had ever felt in thinking of him flitted +through her tired brain, and cautiously, noiselessly, she let her head +sink on the pillow.... + +When she woke the room was full of morning light, and her first glance +showed her that she was alone in it. She got up and dressed, and as +she was fastening her dress the door opened, and Mr. Royall came in. He +looked old and tired in the bright daylight, but his face wore the same +expression of grave friendliness that had reassured her on the Mountain. +It was as if all the dark spirits had gone out of him. + +They went downstairs to the dining-room for breakfast, and after +breakfast he told her he had some insurance business to attend to. "I +guess while I'm doing it you'd better step out and buy yourself whatever +you need." He smiled, and added with an embarrassed laugh: "You know I +always wanted you to beat all the other girls." He drew something from +his pocket, and pushed it across the table to her; and she saw that he +had given her two twenty-dollar bills. "If it ain't enough there's more +where that come from--I want you to beat 'em all hollow," he repeated. + +She flushed and tried to stammer out her thanks, but he had pushed back +his chair and was leading the way out of the dining-room. In the hall he +paused a minute to say that if it suited her they would take the three +o'clock train back to North Dormer; then he took his hat and coat from +the rack and went out. + +A few minutes later Charity went out, too. She had watched to see in +what direction he was going, and she took the opposite way and walked +quickly down the main street to the brick building on the corner of +Lake Avenue. There she paused to look cautiously up and down the +thoroughfare, and then climbed the brass-bound stairs to Dr. Merkle's +door. The same bushy-headed mulatto girl admitted her, and after the +same interval of waiting in the red plush parlor she was once more +summoned to Dr. Merkle's office. The doctor received her without +surprise, and led her into the inner plush sanctuary. + +"I thought you'd be back, but you've come a mite too soon: I told you +to be patient and not fret," she observed, after a pause of penetrating +scrutiny. + +Charity drew the money from her breast. "I've come to get my blue +brooch," she said, flushing. + +"Your brooch?" Dr. Merkle appeared not to remember. "My, yes--I get so +many things of that kind. Well, my dear, you'll have to wait while I get +it out of the safe. I don't leave valuables like that laying round like +the noospaper." + +She disappeared for a moment, and returned with a bit of twisted-up +tissue paper from which she unwrapped the brooch. + +Charity, as she looked at it, felt a stir of warmth at her heart. She +held out an eager hand. + +"Have you got the change?" she asked a little breathlessly, laying one +of the twenty-dollar bills on the table. + +"Change? What'd I want to have change for? I only see two twenties +there," Dr. Merkle answered brightly. + +Charity paused, disconcerted. "I thought... you said it was five dollars +a visit...." + +"For YOU, as a favour--I did. But how about the responsibility and the +insurance? I don't s'pose you ever thought of that? This pin's worth a +hundred dollars easy. If it had got lost or stole, where'd I been when +you come to claim it?" + +Charity remained silent, puzzled and half-convinced by the argument, +and Dr. Merkle promptly followed up her advantage. "I didn't ask you for +your brooch, my dear. I'd a good deal ruther folks paid me my regular +charge than have 'em put me to all this trouble." + +She paused, and Charity, seized with a desperate longing to escape, rose +to her feet and held out one of the bills. + +"Will you take that?" she asked. + +"No, I won't take that, my dear; but I'll take it with its mate, and +hand you over a signed receipt if you don't trust me." + +"Oh, but I can't--it's all I've got," Charity exclaimed. + +Dr. Merkle looked up at her pleasantly from the plush sofa. "It seems +you got married yesterday, up to the 'Piscopal church; I heard all about +the wedding from the minister's chore-man. It would be a pity, wouldn't +it, to let Mr. Royall know you had an account running here? I just put +it to you as your own mother might." + +Anger flamed up in Charity, and for an instant she thought of abandoning +the brooch and letting Dr. Merkle do her worst. But how could she leave +her only treasure with that evil woman? She wanted it for her baby: she +meant it, in some mysterious way, to be a link between Harney's child +and its unknown father. Trembling and hating herself while she did it, +she laid Mr. Royall's money on the table, and catching up the brooch +fled out of the room and the house.... + +In the street she stood still, dazed by this last adventure. But the +brooch lay in her bosom like a talisman, and she felt a secret lightness +of heart. It gave her strength, after a moment, to walk on slowly in the +direction of the post office, and go in through the swinging doors. At +one of the windows she bought a sheet of letter-paper, an envelope and a +stamp; then she sat down at a table and dipped the rusty post office pen +in ink. She had come there possessed with a fear which had haunted her +ever since she had felt Mr. Royall's ring on her finger: the fear that +Harney might, after all, free himself and come back to her. It was a +possibility which had never occurred to her during the dreadful hours +after she had received his letter; only when the decisive step she had +taken made longing turn to apprehension did such a contingency seem +conceivable. She addressed the envelope, and on the sheet of paper she +wrote: + + +I'm married to Mr. Royall. I'll always remember you. CHARITY. + + +The last words were not in the least what she had meant to write; they +had flowed from her pen irresistibly. She had not had the strength to +complete her sacrifice; but, after all, what did it matter? Now that +there was no chance of ever seeing Harney again, why should she not tell +him the truth? + +When she had put the letter in the box she went out into the busy sunlit +street and began to walk to the hotel. Behind the plateglass windows of +the department stores she noticed the tempting display of dresses and +dress-materials that had fired her imagination on the day when she and +Harney had looked in at them together. They reminded her of Mr. Royall's +injunction to go out and buy all she needed. She looked down at her +shabby dress, and wondered what she should say when he saw her coming +back empty-handed. As she drew near the hotel she saw him waiting on the +doorstep, and her heart began to beat with apprehension. + +He nodded and waved his hand at her approach, and they walked through +the hall and went upstairs to collect their possessions, so that Mr. +Royall might give up the key of the room when they went down again for +their midday dinner. In the bedroom, while she was thrusting back into +the satchel the few things she had brought away with her, she suddenly +felt that his eyes were on her and that he was going to speak. She stood +still, her half-folded night-gown in her hand, while the blood rushed up +to her drawn cheeks. + +"Well, did you rig yourself out handsomely? I haven't seen any bundles +round," he said jocosely. + +"Oh, I'd rather let Ally Hawes make the few things I want," she +answered. + +"That so?" He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment and his eye-brows +projected in a scowl. Then his face grew friendly again. "Well, I wanted +you to go back looking stylisher than any of them; but I guess you're +right. You're a good girl, Charity." + +Their eyes met, and something rose in his that she had never seen there: +a look that made her feel ashamed and yet secure. + +"I guess you're good, too," she said, shyly and quickly. He smiled +without answering, and they went out of the room together and dropped +down to the hall in the glittering lift. + +Late that evening, in the cold autumn moonlight, they drove up to the +door of the red house. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Summer, by Edith Wharton + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUMMER *** + +***** This file should be named 166.txt or 166.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/166/ + +Produced by Meredith Ricker, John Hamm and David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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