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      Summer, by Edith Wharton
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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Summer, by Edith Wharton

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almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
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with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org


Title: Summer

Author: Edith Wharton

Release Date: March 12, 2006 [EBook #166]
Last Updated: March 8, 2018

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUMMER ***




Produced by Meredith Ricker, John Hamm and David Widger





</pre>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <h1>
      SUMMER
    </h1>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <h2>
      by Edith Wharton
    </h2>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <h3>
      1917
    </h3>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <blockquote>
      <p class="toc">
        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
      </p>
      <p>
        <br />
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> I </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> II </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> III </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> IV </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> V </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> VI </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VII </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VIII </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> IX </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> X </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> XI </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> XII </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XIII </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XIV </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> XV </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> XVI </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> XVII </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> XVIII </a>
      </p>
    </blockquote>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <h2>
      I
    </h2>
    <p>
      A girl came out of lawyer Royall's house, at the end of the one street of
      North Dormer, and stood on the doorstep.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;How I hate everything!&rdquo; she murmured.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;when the roads were not ploughed
      up by hauling&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 &ldquo;business
      block&rdquo;; 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: &ldquo;My child, you must never cease to remember that it was Mr.
      Royall who brought you down from the Mountain.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She had been &ldquo;brought down from the Mountain&rdquo;; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;How I hate everything!&rdquo; she said again.
    </p>
    <p>
      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: &ldquo;The Honorius Hatchard Memorial Library, 1832.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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 &ldquo;The Recluse of Eagle Range,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 &ldquo;The Lamplighter.&rdquo;
       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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Have you a card-catalogue?&rdquo; he asked in a pleasant abrupt voice; and the
      oddness of the question caused her to drop her work.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;A WHAT?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Why, you know&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No, I don't suppose you do know,&rdquo; he corrected himself. &ldquo;In fact, it
      would be almost a pity&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She thought she detected a slight condescension in his tone, and asked
      sharply: &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Because it's so much pleasanter, in a small library like this, to poke
      about by one's self&mdash;with the help of the librarian.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He added the last phrase so respectfully that she was mollified, and
      rejoined with a sigh: &ldquo;I'm afraid I can't help you much.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; he questioned in his turn; and she replied that there weren't many
      books anyhow, and that she'd hardly read any of them. &ldquo;The worms are
      getting at them,&rdquo; she added gloomily.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Are they? That's a pity, for I see there are some good ones.&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh, I say!&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;It's not my fault if they're dirty.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He turned around and looked at her with reviving interest. &ldquo;Ah&mdash;then
      you're not the librarian?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No, I suppose not.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;I saw you going into her house just now, didn't
      I?&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Miss Hatchard's house? Yes&mdash;she's my cousin and I'm staying there,&rdquo;
       the young man answered; adding, as if to disarm a visible distrust: &ldquo;My
      name is Harney&mdash;Lucius Harney. She may have spoken of me.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No, she hasn't,&rdquo; said Charity, wishing she could have said: &ldquo;Yes, she
      has.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh, well&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;You don't seem strong on
      architecture.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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 &ldquo;explained&rdquo; the pictures at Nettleton, and the weight of
      her ignorance settled down on her again like a pall.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;it must
      have been more of a place once.&rdquo; He stopped short, with the blush of a shy
      man who overhears himself, and fears he has been voluble. &ldquo;I'm an
      architect, you see, and I'm hunting up old houses in these parts.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She stared. &ldquo;Old houses? Everything's old in North Dormer, isn't it? The
      folks are, anyhow.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He laughed, and wandered away again.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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,&rdquo; he
      presently said from the farther end of the room.
    </p>
    <p>
      She pressed her crochet hook against her lip and pondered. There was such
      a work, she knew: &ldquo;North Dormer and the Early Townships of Eagle County.&rdquo;
       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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I guess it's somewhere,&rdquo; she said, to prove her zeal; but she spoke
      without conviction, and felt that her words conveyed none.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh, well&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; he said again. She knew he was going, and wished
      more than ever to find the book.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It will be for next time,&rdquo; he added; and picking up the volume he had
      laid on the desk he handed it to her. &ldquo;By the way, a little air and sun
      would do this good; it's rather valuable.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He gave her a nod and smile, and passed out.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      II
    </h2>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 &ldquo;jography,&rdquo; and of books relating to trade and
      bookkeeping; but no one else asked for anything except, at intervals,
      &ldquo;Uncle Tom's Cabin,&rdquo; or &ldquo;Opening of a Chestnut Burr,&rdquo; 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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;humblest of the humble even in North
      Dormer, where to come from the Mountain was the worst disgrace&mdash;yet
      in her narrow world she had always ruled. It was partly, of course, owing
      to the fact that lawyer Royall was &ldquo;the biggest man in North Dormer&rdquo;; so
      much too big for it, in fact, that outsiders, who didn't know, always
      wondered how it held him. In spite of everything&mdash;and in spite even
      of Miss Hatchard&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 &ldquo;yard&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 &ldquo;bringing her down,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      When she asked him how soon she was to start he answered shortly, &ldquo;You
      ain't going,&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;under
      the circumstances&rdquo; she was afraid she could not make room just then for
      another pupil.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 &ldquo;lonesome&rdquo; man; she had made that out
      because she was so &ldquo;lonesome&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;make the
      necessary arrangements,&rdquo; Charity cut her short with the announcement that
      she had decided not to leave North Dormer.
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Hatchard reasoned with her kindly, but to no purpose; she simply
      repeated: &ldquo;I guess Mr. Royall's too lonesome.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The feeling does you credit, my dear.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The fact is, it's not only&mdash;not only because of the advantages.
      There are other reasons. You're too young to understand&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh, no, I ain't,&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;Of course I shall always do what I can for you; and in
      case... in case... you know you can always come to me....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is it settled?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes, it's settled. I ain't going.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Not to the Nettleton school?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Not anywhere.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He cleared his throat and asked sternly: &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I'd rather not,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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
      &ldquo;rousing welcome&rdquo; his old friends had given him. He wound up
      confidentially: &ldquo;I was a damn fool ever to leave Nettleton. It was Mrs.
      Royall that made me do it.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You go right back from here,&rdquo; she said, in a shrill voice that startled
      her; &ldquo;you ain't going to have that key tonight.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Charity, let me in. I don't want the key. I'm a lonesome man,&rdquo; he began,
      in the deep voice that sometimes moved her.
    </p>
    <p>
      Her heart gave a startled plunge, but she continued to hold him back
      contemptuously. &ldquo;Well, I guess you made a mistake, then. This ain't your
      wife's room any longer.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Why, I don't know, my dear. Aren't you rather too young?&rdquo; she hesitated.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I want to earn some money,&rdquo; Charity merely answered.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Doesn't Mr. Royall give you all you require? No one is rich in North
      Dormer.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I want to earn money enough to get away.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;To get away?&rdquo; Miss Hatchard's puzzled wrinkles deepened, and there was a
      distressful pause. &ldquo;You want to leave Mr. Royall?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes: or I want another woman in the house with me,&rdquo; said Charity
      resolutely.
    </p>
    <p>
      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: &ldquo;The... the housework's too hard for you, I
      suppose?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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. &ldquo;She's got to be talked to like a baby,&rdquo; she thought, with a feeling
      of compassion for Miss Hatchard's long immaturity. &ldquo;Yes, that's it,&rdquo; she
      said aloud. &ldquo;The housework's too hard for me: I've been coughing a good
      deal this fall.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
      &ldquo;If you'd only gone to school!&rdquo; she sighed. She followed Charity to the
      door, and there, in the security of the threshold, said with a glance of
      evasive appeal: &ldquo;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.&rdquo; Charity went home and
      opened the door of Mr. Royall's &ldquo;office.&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What do you want to earn money for?&rdquo; he asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;So's to get away when I want to.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Why do you want to get away?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Her contempt flashed out. &ldquo;Do you suppose anybody'd stay at North Dormer
      if they could help it? You wouldn't, folks say!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      With lowered head he asked: &ldquo;Where'd you go to?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
       She paused on this threat, and saw that it had taken effect. &ldquo;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,&rdquo; she repeated.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;See here,&rdquo; he said at length as though utterance were difficult, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The girl still stared at him without moving. &ldquo;I want you to marry me,&rdquo; he
      repeated, clearing his throat. &ldquo;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.&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Marry you? Me?&rdquo; she burst out with a scornful laugh. &ldquo;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?&rdquo; She straightened
      herself, insolently conscious of her youth and strength. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That'll do&mdash;that'll about do,&rdquo; he said. He turned to the door and
      took his hat from the hat-peg. On the threshold he paused. &ldquo;People ain't
      been fair to me&mdash;from the first they ain't been fair to me,&rdquo; he said.
      Then he went out.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      III
    </h2>
    <p>
      It was not in the room known at the red house as Mr. Royall's &ldquo;office&rdquo;
       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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;usually an empty ceremony&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Never had her ignorance of life and literature so weighed on her as in
      reliving the short scene of her discomfiture. &ldquo;It's no use trying to be
      anything in this place,&rdquo; 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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I want to speak to you a minute,&rdquo; he said; and she followed him across
      the passage, wondering.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;See here,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;why ain't you at the library the days you're
      supposed to be there?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The question, breaking in on her mood of blissful abstraction, deprived
      her of speech, and she stared at him for a moment without answering.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Who says I ain't?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;There's been some complaints made, it appears. Miss Hatchard sent for me
      this morning&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Charity's smouldering resentment broke into a blaze. &ldquo;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&mdash;I always knew they'd try to have me
      out! As if anybody ever came to the library, anyhow!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Somebody did yesterday, and you weren't there.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yesterday?&rdquo; she laughed at her happy recollection. &ldquo;At what time wasn't I
      there yesterday, I'd like to know?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Round about four o'clock.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Who came at four o'clock?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Miss Hatchard did.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Of all Mr. Royall had said she had retained only the phrase: &ldquo;He told Miss
      Hatchard the books were in bad shape.&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well, I'll go,&rdquo; she said suddenly. &ldquo;I'll go right off.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Go where?&rdquo; She heard the startled note in Mr. Royall's voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Charity&mdash;Charity Royall, you listen&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; he began, getting
      heavily out of his chair; but she waved him aside, and walked out of the
      room.
    </p>
    <p>
      Upstairs she took the library key from the place where she always hid it
      under her pincushion&mdash;who said she wasn't careful?&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      She reached the brick temple, unlocked the door and entered into the
      glacial twilight. &ldquo;I'm glad I'll never have to sit in this old vault again
      when other folks are out in the sun!&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What have I ever done to it, that it should hurt me so?&rdquo; she groaned, and
      pressed her fists against her lids, which were beginning to swell with
      weeping.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I won't&mdash;I won't go there looking like a horror!&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
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    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      IV
    </h2>
    <p>
      He stopped and lifted his hat with a shy smile. &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; he
      said. &ldquo;I thought there was no one here.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Charity stood before him, barring his way. &ldquo;You can't come in. The library
      ain't open to the public Wednesdays.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I know it's not; but my cousin gave me her key.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The young man looked profoundly surprised.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Why, I know it is; I'm so sorry if you mind my coming.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Young Harney's face grew grave, but without betraying the consciousness of
      guilt she had looked for.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I don't understand,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There must be some mistake. Why should I
      say things against you to Miss Hatchard&mdash;or to anyone?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The apparent evasiveness of the reply caused Charity's indignation to
      overflow. &ldquo;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....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      What he saw seemed to affect him deeply, for he grew red under his
      sunburn, and stammered out: &ldquo;But, Miss Royall, I assure you... I assure
      you....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      His distress inflamed her anger, and she regained her voice to fling back:
      &ldquo;If I was you I'd have the nerve to stick to what I said!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The taunt seemed to restore his presence of mind. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Young Harney looked sincerely concerned. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Charity felt her sobs rising and tried to stifle them in words. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Of this appeal her hearer took up only the last question. &ldquo;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.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;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....&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Look here&mdash;you don't mean what you said? You don't
      really think I'd do anything to hurt you?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      A new note in his voice disarmed her: no one had ever spoken to her in
      that tone.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh, what DID you do it for then?&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      He pressed her hands lightly and let them go. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Her pride flamed into her cheeks at the suggestion of his intervening. &ldquo;I
      don't want anybody should coax her to keep me if I don't suit.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He coloured too. &ldquo;I give you my word I won't do that. Only wait till
      tomorrow, will you?&rdquo; He looked straight into her eyes with his shy grey
      glance. &ldquo;You can trust me, you know&mdash;you really can.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      All the old frozen woes seemed to melt in her, and she murmured awkwardly,
      looking away from him: &ldquo;Oh, I'll wait.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      V
    </h2>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh, don't!&rdquo; she exclaimed, raising herself on her elbow and stretching
      out a warning hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Don't what?&rdquo; a hoarse voice asked above her head.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Don't stamp on those bramble flowers, you dolt!&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Don't you ever SEE anything, Liff Hyatt?&rdquo; she assailed him, as he stood
      before her with the look of a man who has stirred up a wasp's nest.
    </p>
    <p>
      He grinned. &ldquo;I seen you! That's what I come down for.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Down from where?&rdquo; she questioned, stooping to gather up the petals his
      foot had scattered.
    </p>
    <p>
      He jerked his thumb toward the heights. &ldquo;Been cutting down trees for Dan
      Targatt.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Charity sank back on her heels and looked at him musingly. She was not in
      the least afraid of poor Liff Hyatt, though he &ldquo;came from the Mountain,&rdquo;
       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. &ldquo;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,&rdquo; he had added philosophically, looking
      at her new shoes, and at the red ribbon that Mrs. Royall had tied in her
      hair.
    </p>
    <p>
      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. &ldquo;I wonder if
      he's related to me?&rdquo; she thought, with a shiver of disdain.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Is there any folks living in the brown house by the swamp, up under
      Porcupine?&rdquo; she presently asked in an indifferent tone.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;There's always the same folks in the brown house,&rdquo; he said with his vague
      grin.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They're from up your way, ain't they?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Their name's the same as mine,&rdquo; he rejoined uncertainly.
    </p>
    <p>
      Charity still held him with resolute eyes. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She did not offer to explain this statement. It was too far beyond Liff
      Hyatt's limitations for the attempt to be worth making. &ldquo;He wants to see
      the brown house, and go all over it,&rdquo; she pursued.
    </p>
    <p>
      Liff was still running his fingers perplexedly through his shock of
      straw-colored hair. &ldquo;Is it a fellow from the city?&rdquo; he asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes. He draws pictures of things. He's down there now drawing the Bonner
      house.&rdquo; She pointed to a chimney just visible over the dip of the pasture
      below the wood.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The Bonner house?&rdquo; Liff echoed incredulously.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes. You won't understand&mdash;and it don't matter. All I say is: he's
      going to the Hyatts' in a day or two.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Liff looked more and more perplexed. &ldquo;Bash is ugly sometimes in the
      afternoons.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She threw her head back, her eyes full on Hyatt's. &ldquo;I'm coming too: you
      tell him.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They won't none of them trouble you, the Hyatts won't. What d'you want a
      take a stranger with you though?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I've told you, haven't I? You've got to tell Bash Hyatt.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He looked away at the blue mountains on the horizon; then his gaze dropped
      to the chimney-top below the pasture.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;He's down there now?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He shifted his weight again, crossed his arms, and continued to survey the
      distant landscape. &ldquo;Well, so long,&rdquo; he said at last, inconclusively; and
      turning away he shambled up the hillside. From the ledge above her, he
      paused to call down: &ldquo;I wouldn't go there a Sunday&rdquo;; then he clambered on
      till the trees closed in on him. Presently, from high overhead, Charity
      heard the ring of his axe.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I wonder if Liff Hyatt knows who my mother was?&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 &ldquo;his houses,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 &ldquo;going with&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;pay for it.&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;going with a city fellow&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I'm going to take you to that house up under Porcupine,&rdquo; she announced.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;do you suppose they'll let us in?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They'll do whatever I tell them,&rdquo; she said with assurance.
    </p>
    <p>
      He threw himself down beside her. &ldquo;Will they?&rdquo; he rejoined with a smile.
      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The Mountain? I ain't afraid of the Mountain!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I must go up there some day: I want to see it,&rdquo; he continued.
    </p>
    <p>
      Her heart-beats slackened and she turned again to examine his profile. It
      was innocent of all unfriendly intention.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What'd you want to go up the Mountain for?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;rather look down on them, in fact. I suppose they're
      rough customers; but they must have a good deal of character.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It's queer, you know,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;that, just over there, on top of
      that hill, there should be a handful of people who don't give a damn for
      anybody.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The words thrilled her. They seemed the clue to her own revolts and
      defiances, and she longed to have him tell her more.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I don't know much about them. Have they always been there?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;and no sheriff
      ever goes up to see what they're about. But don't people ever talk of them
      at North Dormer?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I don't know. They say they're bad.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He laughed. &ldquo;Do they? We'll go and see, shall we?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She flushed at the suggestion, and turned her face to his. &ldquo;You never
      heard, I suppose&mdash;I come from there. They brought me down when I was
      little.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You?&rdquo; He raised himself on his elbow, looking at her with sudden
      interest. &ldquo;You're from the Mountain? How curious! I suppose that's why
      you're so different....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Her happy blood bathed her to the forehead. He was praising her&mdash;and
      praising her because she came from the Mountain!
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Am I... different?&rdquo; she triumphed, with affected wonder.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh, awfully!&rdquo; He picked up her hand and laid a kiss on the sunburnt
      knuckles.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;let's be off.&rdquo; He stood up and shook the grass from his
      loose grey clothes. &ldquo;What a good day! Where are you going to take me
      tomorrow?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      VI
    </h2>
    <p>
      That evening after supper Charity sat alone in the kitchen and listened to
      Mr. Royall and young Harney talking in the porch.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Here&mdash;go get yourself a Sunday bonnet that'll make all the other
      girls mad,&rdquo; he said, looking at her with a sheepish twinkle in his
      deep-set eyes; and she immediately guessed that the unwonted present&mdash;the
      only gift of money she had ever received from him&mdash;represented
      Harney's first payment.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The Mountain? The Mountain?&rdquo; she heard Mr. Royall say. &ldquo;Why, the
      Mountain's a blot&mdash;that's what it is, sir, a blot. That scum up there
      ought to have been run in long ago&mdash;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I suppose you've never been up there yourself?&rdquo; he presently asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes, I have,&rdquo; said Mr. Royall with a contemptuous laugh. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You went up after that?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;or thought he had&mdash;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.&rdquo; He paused, and Charity
      listened with a throbbing heart. &ldquo;That's the only time I ever went up the
      Mountain,&rdquo; he concluded.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was a moment's silence; then Harney spoke. &ldquo;And the child&mdash;had
      she no mother?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;My God, how ghastly,&rdquo; 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
      &ldquo;half human,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 &ldquo;improved&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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. &ldquo;I wish
      he'd go away: I wish he'd go tomorrow, and never come back!&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      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. &ldquo;Where you going to?&rdquo; he asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Why&mdash;Mr. Harney's starting earlier than usual today,&rdquo; she answered.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Mr. Harney, Mr. Harney? Ain't Mr. Harney learned how to drive a horse
      yet?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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. &ldquo;He'd better know what
      kind of folks I belong to,&rdquo; she said to herself, with a somewhat forced
      defiance; for in reality it was shame that kept her silent.
    </p>
    <p>
      Suddenly she lifted her hand and pointed to the sky. &ldquo;There's a storm
      coming up.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He followed her glance and smiled. &ldquo;Is it that scrap of cloud among the
      pines that frightens you?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It's over the Mountain; and a cloud over the Mountain always means
      trouble.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 &ldquo;typical&rdquo; (the word
      was Harney's); and as he threw the reins on the horse's neck he said with
      a slight shiver of repugnance: &ldquo;We won't stay long.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Lucky we're here after all,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 &ldquo;city fellow.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Lucius Harney would certainly have laughed at her fears. He glanced about
      the room, uttered a general &ldquo;How are you?&rdquo; to which no one responded, and
      then asked the younger woman if they might take shelter till the storm was
      over.
    </p>
    <p>
      She turned her eyes away from him and looked at Charity.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You're the girl from Royall's, ain't you?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The colour rose in Charity's face. &ldquo;I'm Charity Royall,&rdquo; she said, as if
      asserting her right to the name in the very place where it might have been
      most open to question.
    </p>
    <p>
      The woman did not seem to notice. &ldquo;You kin stay,&rdquo; she merely said; then
      she turned away and stooped over a dish in which she was stirring
      something.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 &ldquo;The Surrender of Burgoyne&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;This is where I belong&mdash;this is where I belong,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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. &ldquo;I guess you better
      go along now,&rdquo; she said. The young man understood and got to his feet.
      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; he said, holding out his hand. She seemed not to notice the
      gesture, and turned away as they opened the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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: &ldquo;Those
      people back there are the kind of folks I come from. They may be my
      relations, for all I know.&rdquo; She did not want him to think that she
      regretted having told him her story.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Poor creatures,&rdquo; he rejoined. &ldquo;I wonder why they came down to that
      fever-hole.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She laughed ironically. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Harney seemed to find nothing to say and she went on: &ldquo;I saw you take out
      a dollar to give to that poor woman. Why did you put it back?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He reddened, and leaned forward to flick a swamp-fly from the horse's
      neck. &ldquo;I wasn't sure&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Was it because you knew they were my folks, and thought I'd be ashamed to
      see you give them money?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He turned to her with eyes full of reproach. &ldquo;Oh, Charity&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
       It was the first time he had ever called her by her name. Her misery
      welled over.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I ain't&mdash;I ain't ashamed. They're my people, and I ain't ashamed of
      them,&rdquo; she sobbed.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;My dear...&rdquo; he murmured, putting his arm about her; and she leaned
      against him and wept out her pain.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      VII
    </h2>
    <p>
      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,
      &ldquo;library days&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;Memorial.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The day after their drive to the brown house was &ldquo;library day,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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
      &ldquo;church-people&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 &ldquo;Memorial.&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I couldn't,&rdquo; Mr. Miles explained, &ldquo;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&mdash;though I'm
      sure,&rdquo; he added, turning his friendly spectacles on the young man, &ldquo;that
      no one could be more competent&mdash;but of course this spot has its
      peculiar sanctity!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I hope a little fresh air won't desecrate it,&rdquo; Harney laughingly
      rejoined; and they walked to the other end of the library while he set
      forth his idea to the Rector.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Ah, the Coopersons... yes, you know them, of course,&rdquo; she heard. &ldquo;That's
      a fine old house! And Ned Cooperson has collected some really remarkable
      impressionist pictures....&rdquo; The names he cited were unknown to Charity.
      &ldquo;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....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh, really?&rdquo; she heard Harney rejoin; and, raising his stick, he pursued:
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I suppose she'll be coming up here later to stay with Miss Hatchard?&rdquo; Mr.
      Miles went on, following on his train of thought; then, spinning about and
      tilting his head back: &ldquo;Yes, yes, I see&mdash;I understand: that will give
      a draught without materially altering the look of things. I can see no
      objection.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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. &ldquo;Aren't you a little pale, my dear? Not overworking? Mr. Harney
      tells me you and Mamie are giving the library a thorough overhauling.&rdquo; He
      was always careful to remember his parishioners' Christian names, and at
      the right moment he bent his benignant spectacles on the Targatt girl.
    </p>
    <p>
      Then he turned to Charity. &ldquo;Don't take things hard, my dear; don't take
      things hard. Come down and see Mrs. Miles and me some day at Hepburn,&rdquo; he
      said, pressing her hand and waving a farewell to Mamie Targatt. He went
      out of the library, and Harney followed him.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 &ldquo;extremely handsome&rdquo;... 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 &ldquo;old things&rdquo; which Miss Balch avowedly &ldquo;wore
      out&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Suddenly he said: &ldquo;Where's supper? Has Verena Marsh slipped up again on
      her soda-biscuits?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Charity threw a startled glance at him. &ldquo;I presume she's waiting for Mr.
      Harney.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Mr. Harney, is she? She'd better dish up, then. He ain't coming.&rdquo; He
      stood up, walked to the door, and called out, in the pitch necessary to
      penetrate the old woman's tympanum: &ldquo;Get along with the supper, Verena.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Charity was trembling with apprehension. Something had happened&mdash;she
      was sure of it now&mdash;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. &ldquo;Ain't you going to take any?&rdquo; he asked.
      Charity roused herself and began to eat.
    </p>
    <p>
      The tone with which Mr. Royall had said &ldquo;He's not coming&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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. &ldquo;I'd rather
      die than do it,&rdquo; she muttered to herself. With a word he could have
      relieved her uncertainty: but never would she gratify him by saying it.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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: &ldquo;Where you going?&rdquo; She could easily
      have answered: &ldquo;To Orma's,&rdquo; or &ldquo;Down to the Targatts'&rdquo;; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      She rose and crept away.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      VIII
    </h2>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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: &ldquo;Ready for dinner&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I've got a headache. I'm going up to lie down.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I want you should come in here first; I've got something to say to you.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      He had grasped the back of his chair with both hands, and stood looking
      hard at her. At length he said: &ldquo;Charity, for once let's you and me talk
      together like friends.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Instantly she felt that something had happened, and that he held her in
      his hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Where is Mr. Harney? Why hasn't he come back? Have you sent him away?&rdquo;
       she broke out, without knowing what she was saying.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Didn't he have time to answer some of those questions last night? You was
      with him long enough!&rdquo; he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Who says I was with him last night?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The whole place is saying it by now.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Then it was you that put the lie into their mouths.&mdash;Oh, how I've
      always hated you!&rdquo; she cried.
    </p>
    <p>
      She had expected a retort in kind, and it startled her to hear her
      exclamation sounding on through silence.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes, I know,&rdquo; Mr. Royall said slowly. &ldquo;But that ain't going to help us
      much now.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It helps me not to care a straw what lies you tell about me!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She made no answer and he went on: &ldquo;Is it a lie that you were seen coming
      out of Miss Hatchard's nigh onto midnight?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She straightened herself with a laugh, all her reckless insolence
      recovered. &ldquo;I didn't look to see what time it was.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You lost girl... you... you.... Oh, my God, why did you tell me?&rdquo; he
      broke out, dropping into his chair, his head bowed down like an old man's.
    </p>
    <p>
      Charity's self-possession had returned with the sense of her danger. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Ah, it WAS you, then? I knew it was you that sent him away!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He looked at her in surprise. &ldquo;Didn't he tell you so? I thought he
      understood.&rdquo; He spoke slowly, with difficult pauses, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Charity listened in a cold trance of anger. It was nothing to her what the
      village said... but all this fingering of her dreams!
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I've told you he didn't tell me anything. I didn't speak with him last
      night.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You didn't speak with him?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;YOU!&rdquo; All her
      unreconciled memory of the past flamed out at him. &ldquo;So I went there last
      night to find out what you'd said to him: that's all.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Royall drew a heavy breath. &ldquo;But, then&mdash;if he wasn't there, what
      were you doing there all that time?&mdash;Charity, for pity's sake, tell
      me. I've got to know, to stop their talking.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      This pathetic abdication of all authority over her did not move her: she
      could feel only the outrage of his interference.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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....&rdquo; She felt her voice breaking, and gathered it up in a last
      defiance. &ldquo;As long as I live I'll never forgive you!&rdquo; she cried.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo; He paused, but she stood motionless, without giving
      him any sign of acquiescence or even of attention. &ldquo;He's a pleasant fellow
      to talk to&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Charity did not speak. It seemed to her that nothing could exceed the
      bitterness of hearing such words from such lips.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Royall rose from his seat. &ldquo;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&mdash;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....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Charity&mdash;Charity&mdash;say you'll do it,&rdquo; she heard him urge, all
      his lost years and wasted passion in his voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh, what's the use of all this? When I leave here it won't be with you.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That's all, is it? It's not much.&rdquo; He leaned against the door, so
      towering and powerful that he seemed to fill the narrow room. &ldquo;Well, then
      look here.... You're right: I've no claim on you&mdash;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.&rdquo; He fixed his stern eyes on her, and she had the sense that the
      struggle within him was at its highest. &ldquo;Do you want him to marry you?&rdquo; he
      asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Do you want him to&mdash;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&mdash;but, by
      God, I'll give you the chance to be, if you say so.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I don't want any chance you can give me: I'm glad he's going away,&rdquo; she
      said.
    </p>
    <p>
      He kept his place a moment longer, his hand on the door-knob. &ldquo;Charity!&rdquo;
       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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      He looked graver and less confident than usual, and for a moment or two
      neither of them spoke. Then he held out his hand. &ldquo;Are you going out?&rdquo; he
      asked. &ldquo;May I come in?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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: &ldquo;Yes: come in.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I'm so sorry it's good-bye: I suppose you know I'm leaving,&rdquo; he began,
      abruptly and awkwardly; she guessed that he was wondering how much she
      knew of his reasons for going.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I presume you found your work was over quicker than what you expected,&rdquo;
       she said.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well, yes&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;There ain't any too many teams for hire around here,&rdquo; she acquiesced; and
      there was another silence.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;These days here have been&mdash;awfully pleasant: I wanted to thank you
      for making them so,&rdquo; he continued, his colour rising.
    </p>
    <p>
      She could not think of any reply, and he went on: &ldquo;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....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Things don't change at North Dormer: people just get used to them.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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:
      &ldquo;That's not true of you. It can't be.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well, good-bye,&rdquo; she said.
    </p>
    <p>
      She was aware of his taking her hand, and of feeling that his touch was
      lifeless.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Good-bye.&rdquo; He turned away, and stopped on the threshold. &ldquo;You'll say
      good-bye for me to Verena?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The envelope bore her name, and inside was a leaf torn from a
      pocket-diary.
    </p>
    <p>
      DEAR CHARITY:
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      IX
    </h2>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I look awful, don't I?&rdquo; she said at last with a happy sigh.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ally smiled and took back the hat. &ldquo;I'll stitch the roses on right here,
      so's you can put it away at once.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Don't you ever feel like going down to Nettleton for a day?&rdquo; she asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ally shook her head without looking up. &ldquo;No, I always remember that awful
      time I went down with Julia&mdash;to that doctor's.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh, Ally&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;'Private Consultations.' She came as
      near as anything to dying....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Poor Julia!&rdquo; 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&mdash;the Fourth of July&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Is it sewed? Let me try it on again.&rdquo; She put the hat on, and smiled at
      her image. The thought of Julia had vanished....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 &ldquo;fellows&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 &ldquo;hacks&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      A mob of 'bus and hack drivers were shouting &ldquo;To the Eagle House,&rdquo; &ldquo;To the
      Washington House,&rdquo; &ldquo;This way to the Lake,&rdquo; &ldquo;Just starting for Greytop;&rdquo;
       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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Where shall we go first?&rdquo; Harney asked; but as she turned her happy eyes
      on him he guessed the answer and said: &ldquo;We'll take a look round, shall
      we?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Which do you like best?&rdquo; he asked leaning over the counter at her side.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I don't know....&rdquo; She pointed to a gold lily-of-the-valley with white
      flowers.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Don't you think the blue pin's better?&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It's so lovely I guess I was afraid to look at it,&rdquo; she said.
    </p>
    <p>
      He laughed, and they went out of the shop; but a few steps away he
      exclaimed: &ldquo;Oh, by Jove, I forgot something,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You mustn't be afraid of looking at the blue pin any longer, because it
      belongs to you,&rdquo; 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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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. &ldquo;We must have something to eat,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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. &ldquo;Not f'r another hour,&rdquo; one of them
      dropped to Harney in passing; and he stood doubtfully glancing about him.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh, well, we can't stay sweltering here,&rdquo; he decided; &ldquo;let's try
      somewhere else&mdash;&rdquo; and with a sense of relief Charity followed him
      from that scene of inhospitable splendour.
    </p>
    <p>
      That &ldquo;somewhere else&rdquo; turned out&mdash;after more hot tramping, and
      several failures&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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. &ldquo;It's the real
      thing, you know,&rdquo; he explained; and Charity hastily revised her previous
      conception of the beverage.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,
      &ldquo;Oh, there's time for that&mdash;it will be pleasanter later,&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;Come along, then,&rdquo; and rose
      with a last pat for the pink-eyed dog.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;everything
      she saw seemed to glitter&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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: &ldquo;Ten dollars to take you round the Lake.&rdquo; Before
      Charity knew what was happening, Harney had waved a hand, and they were
      climbing in. &ldquo;Say, for twenny-five I'll run you out to see the ball-game
      and back,&rdquo; the driver proposed with an insinuating grin; but Charity said
      quickly: &ldquo;Oh, I'd rather go rowing on the Lake.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Next turn is Lake Avenue,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Dr. Merkle; Private Consultations
      at all hours. Lady Attendants,&rdquo; she read; and suddenly she remembered Ally
      Hawes's words: &ldquo;The house was at the corner of Wing Street and Lake
      Avenue... there's a big black sign across the front....&rdquo; Through all the
      heat and the rapture a shiver of cold ran over her.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      X
    </h2>
    <p>
      THE Lake at last&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Why, the fireworks. I suppose there'll be a big show.&rdquo; Harney looked at
      her and a smile crept into his moody eyes. &ldquo;Have you never seen any good
      fireworks?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Miss Hatchard always sends up lovely rockets on the Fourth,&rdquo; she answered
      doubtfully.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; his contempt was unbounded. &ldquo;I mean a big performance
      like this, illuminated boats, and all the rest.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She flushed at the picture. &ldquo;Do they send them up from the Lake, too?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo; She said
      nothing, and he put the oars into the rowlocks. &ldquo;If we stay we'd better go
      and pick up something to eat.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But how can we get back afterwards?&rdquo; she ventured, feeling it would break
      her heart if she missed it.
    </p>
    <p>
      He consulted a time-table, found a ten o'clock train and reassured her.
      &ldquo;The moon rises so late that it will be dark by eight, and we'll have over
      an hour of it.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Say! if this ain't like Old Home Week,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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, &ldquo;You
      wait till you see the set piece,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Now&mdash;now!&rdquo; the same voice said excitedly; and Charity, grasping the
      hat on her knee, crushed it tight in the effort to restrain her rapture.
    </p>
    <p>
      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, &ldquo;Washington crossing the
      Delaware,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      A long &ldquo;Oh-h-h&rdquo; burst from the spectators: the stand creaked and shook
      with their blissful trepidations. &ldquo;Oh-h-h,&rdquo; 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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      But the crowd was beginning to move, and he had to release her. &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he repeated, &ldquo;we must try to make the trolley.&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Last trip up the Lake,&rdquo; a megaphone bellowed from the wharf; and the
      lights of the little steam-boat came dancing out of the darkness.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No use waiting here; shall we run up the Lake?&rdquo; Harney suggested.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Hullo, Charity Royall!&rdquo; she called out; and then, looking back over her
      shoulder: &ldquo;Didn't I tell you it was a family party? Here's grandpa's
      little daughter come to take him home!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You whore&mdash;you damn&mdash;bare-headed whore, you!&rdquo; he enunciated
      slowly.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 &ldquo;habits&rdquo;: 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; she said in a gasp of misery; and releasing herself
      from Harney's arm she went straight up to Mr. Royall.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You come home with me&mdash;you come right home with me,&rdquo; she said in a
      low stern voice, as if she had not heard his apostrophe; and one of the
      girls called out: &ldquo;Say, how many fellers does she want?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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. &ldquo;I said, 'You&mdash;damn&mdash;whore!'&rdquo; he repeated with
      precision, steadying himself on Julia's shoulder.
    </p>
    <p>
      Laughs and jeers were beginning to spring up from the circle of people
      beyond their group; and a voice called out from the gangway: &ldquo;Now, then,
      step lively there&mdash;all ABOARD!&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The boat, laden to the taffrail, was puffing away on her last trip.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      XI
    </h2>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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: &ldquo;I'll
      cover up, then.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      She had said to herself, as she always said in moments of revolt: &ldquo;I'll go
      to the Mountain&mdash;I'll go back to my own folks.&rdquo; 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&mdash;again
      hampered by the freckled boy's presence&mdash;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&mdash;vile and
      disgraceful as it had been&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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, &ldquo;Gospel Tent.&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Sister, your Saviour knows everything. Won't you come in and lay your
      guilt before Him?&rdquo; he asked insinuatingly, putting his hand on her arm.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I on'y wish't I had any to lay!&rdquo; she retorted, with one of her fierce
      flashes of self-derision; and the young man murmured, aghast: &ldquo;Oh, Sister,
      don't speak blasphemy....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Charity! What on earth are you doing here?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She stared as if he were a vision, so startled by the unexpectedness of
      his being there that no words came to her.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Where were you going? Had you forgotten that I was coming?&rdquo; he continued,
      trying to draw her to him; but she shrank from his embrace.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I was going away&mdash;I don't want to see you&mdash;I want you should
      leave me alone,&rdquo; she broke out wildly.
    </p>
    <p>
      He looked at her and his face grew grave, as though the shadow of a
      premonition brushed it.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Going away&mdash;from me, Charity?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;From everybody. I want you should leave me.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He stood glancing doubtfully up and down the lonely forest road that
      stretched away into sun-flecked distances.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Where were you going?'
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Home.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Home&mdash;this way?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She threw her head back defiantly. &ldquo;To my home&mdash;up yonder: to the
      Mountain.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      He caught her hands with a laugh. &ldquo;How do you suppose I found you?&rdquo; he
      said gaily. He drew out the little packet of his letters and flourished
      them before her bewildered eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You dropped them, you imprudent young person&mdash;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.&rdquo; He drew back,
      holding her at arm's length, and scrutinizing her troubled face with the
      minute searching gaze of his short-sighted eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Did you really think you could run away from me? You see you weren't
      meant to,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Come let's walk a little. I want to talk to you. There's so much to say.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I won't go back,&rdquo; she said.
    </p>
    <p>
      They looked at each other a moment in silence; then he answered gently:
      &ldquo;Very well: let's go the other way, then.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She remained motionless, gazing silently at the ground, and he went on:
      &ldquo;Isn't there a house up here somewhere&mdash;a little abandoned house&mdash;you
      meant to show me some day?&rdquo; Still she made no answer, and he continued, in
      the same tone of tender reassurance: &ldquo;Let us go there now and sit down and
      talk quietly.&rdquo; He took one of the hands that hung by her side and pressed
      his lips to the palm. &ldquo;Do you suppose I'm going to let you send me away?
      Do you suppose I don't understand?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The little old house&mdash;its wooden walls sun-bleached to a ghostly gray&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      She stood up, and he sprang to his feet also, and passed his arm through
      hers with an air of authority. &ldquo;Now, Charity, you're coming back with me.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She looked at him and shook her head. &ldquo;I ain't ever going back. You don't
      know.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What don't I know?&rdquo; She was silent, and he continued: &ldquo;What happened on
      the wharf was horrible&mdash;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...&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I know about men. That's why.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He coloured a little at the retort, as though it had touched him in a way
      she did not suspect.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well, then... you must know one has to make allowances.... He'd been
      drinking....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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...&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Hadn't what? What do you mean?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Hadn't wanted me to be like those other girls....&rdquo; She lowered her voice
      and looked away from him. &ldquo;So's 't he wouldn't have to go out....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Harney stared at her. For a moment he did not seem to seize her meaning;
      then his face grew dark. &ldquo;The damned hound! The villainous low hound!&rdquo; His
      wrath blazed up, crimsoning him to the temples. &ldquo;I never dreamed&mdash;good
      God, it's too vile,&rdquo; he broke off, as if his thoughts recoiled from the
      discovery.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I won't never go back there,&rdquo; she repeated doggedly.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; he assented.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I know the way you must feel about me,&rdquo; she broke out, &ldquo;...telling you
      such things....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Kiss me again&mdash;like last night,&rdquo; he said, pushing her hair back as
      if to draw her whole face up into his kiss.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      XII
    </h2>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;All the old names... all the old names....&rdquo; Miss Hatchard would be heard,
      tapping across the hall on her crutches. &ldquo;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&mdash;you
      know he's up here preparing a book on Colonial houses&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Lucius has such a feeling for the past that he has roused us all to a
      sense of our privileges,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;as
      was almost inevitable&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;there
      were moments already when she knew she was the stronger&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Charity had slipped off among the first; but at the gate she heard Ally
      Hawes calling after her, and reluctantly turned.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Will you come over now and try on your dress?&rdquo; Ally asked, looking at her
      with wistful admiration. &ldquo;I want to be sure the sleeves don't ruck up the
      same as they did yesterday.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Charity gazed at her with dazzled eyes. &ldquo;Oh, it's lovely,&rdquo; she said, and
      hastened away without listening to Ally's protest. She wanted her dress to
      be as pretty as the other girls'&mdash;wanted it, in fact, to outshine the
      rest, since she was to take part in the &ldquo;exercises&rdquo;&mdash;but she had no
      time just then to fix her mind on such matters....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;There was such a lot to do at the last minute,&rdquo; Harney was explaining,
      &ldquo;and I had to drive down to Creston to meet someone who has come to stay
      with my cousin for the show.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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. &ldquo;She hurried off Miles to
      ask Mr. Royall to speak at the Town Hall tomorrow: I didn't know till it
      was done.&rdquo; Charity was silent, and he added: &ldquo;After all, perhaps it's just
      as well. No one else could have done it.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Tomorrow I shall only see you from far off,&rdquo; Harney continued. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes, promise.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He laughed and took her in his arms. &ldquo;You goose&mdash;not even if they're
      hideous?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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...
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;He ain't come back since supper,&rdquo; Verena said. &ldquo;He's down to the Hall.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      XIII
    </h2>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 &ldquo;Home, Sweet Home.&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was nearing the end of his address... &ldquo;Most of you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;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&mdash;come back for good. I am one
      of those, as many of you know....&rdquo; He paused, and there was a sense of
      suspense in the listening hall. &ldquo;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....&rdquo; He
      looked about him, and repeated gravely: &ldquo;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&mdash;that they wanted to come
      back for GOOD... and not for bad... or just for indifference....
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;and thinking it's all a bitter mistake of Fate or
      Providence&mdash;you must try to make the best of it, and to make the best
      of your old town; and after a while&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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. &ldquo;Hear, hear!&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;That was a MAN talking&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; He wiped his spectacles.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;a
      distant Hatchard&mdash;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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;with
      other women&mdash;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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      She had given him all she had&mdash;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....
    </p>
    <p>
      The heat had grown suffocating&mdash;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&mdash;and
      then deadly apprehension. The light of the fiery hours in the little house
      swept back on her in a glare of fear....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.... &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; He flapped a white wing in their
      direction, and at the same moment Lambert Sollas, with his fierce nod,
      struck the opening bars of &ldquo;Auld Lang Syne.&rdquo;... Charity stared straight
      ahead of her and then, dropping her flowers, fell face downward at Mr.
      Royall's feet.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      XIV
    </h2>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      At the dance that evening&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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: &ldquo;Have you slipped
      the chain?&rdquo; The door opened, and Mr. Royall walked into the room.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Charity jumped to her feet. &ldquo;What have you come for?&rdquo; she stammered.
    </p>
    <p>
      The last glare of the sunset was on her guardian's face, which looked
      ash-coloured in the yellow radiance.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Because I knew you were here,&rdquo; he answered simply.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Charity,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;he'll be here in a minute. Let me talk to you first.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You've got no right to talk to me. I can do what I please.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes. What is it you mean to do?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I needn't answer that, or anything else.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;So this is where you meet,&rdquo; he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;See here, Charity&mdash;you're always telling me I've got no rights over
      you. There might be two ways of looking at that&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She listened in silence, and then gave a slight laugh. &ldquo;Better wait till
      I'm in trouble,&rdquo; she said. He paused a moment, as if weighing her words.
      &ldquo;Is that all your answer?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes, that's all.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well&mdash;I'll wait.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He turned away slowly, but as he did so the thing she had been waiting for
      happened; the door opened again and Harney entered.
    </p>
    <p>
      He stopped short with a face of astonishment, and then, quickly
      controlling himself, went up to Mr. Royall with a frank look.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Have you come to see me, sir?&rdquo; he said coolly, throwing his cap on the
      table with an air of proprietorship.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Royall again looked slowly about the room; then his eyes turned to the
      young man.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Is this your house?&rdquo; he inquired.
    </p>
    <p>
      Harney laughed: &ldquo;Well&mdash;as much as it's anybody's. I come here to
      sketch occasionally.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And to receive Miss Royall's visits?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;When she does me the honour&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Is this the home you propose to bring her to when you get married?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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: &ldquo;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.&rdquo; He paused and added: &ldquo;I'm ready to answer any she
      wishes to ask me.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Royall turned to her. &ldquo;Ask him when he's going to marry you, then&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
       There was another silence, and he laughed in his turn&mdash;a broken
      laugh, with a scraping sound in it. &ldquo;You darsn't!&rdquo; he shouted out with
      sudden passion. He went close up to Charity, his right arm lifted, not in
      menace but in tragic exhortation.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You darsn't, and you know it&mdash;and you know why!&rdquo; He swung back again
      upon the young man. &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;but I'd better
      have left her in the kennel she came from....&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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: &ldquo;I wonder how he found out?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She made no answer and he tossed down the package he had been holding, and
      went up to her.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I'm so sorry, dear... that this should have happened....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She threw her head back proudly. &ldquo;I ain't ever been sorry&mdash;not a
      minute!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he said imperiously.
    </p>
    <p>
      She sat down beside him, and he untied the string about the package and
      spread out a pile of sandwiches.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I stole them from the love-feast at Hamblin,&rdquo; he said with a laugh,
      pushing them over to her. She laughed too, and took one, and began to eat.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Didn't you make the tea?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I forgot&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh, well&mdash;it's too late to boil the water now.&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I shall have to go off for a while&mdash;a month or two, perhaps&mdash;to
      arrange some things; and then I'll come back... and we'll get married.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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. &ldquo;God! it's damp&mdash;we couldn't
      have come here much longer.&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But it's been good, though, hasn't it, Charity?... What's the matter&mdash;why
      do you stand there staring at me? Haven't the days here been good?&rdquo; He
      went up to her and caught her to his breast. &ldquo;And there'll be others&mdash;lots
      of others... jollier... even jollier... won't there, darling?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      XV
    </h2>
    <p>
      That night, as usual, they said good-bye at the wood's edge.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 &ldquo;settle things.&rdquo; When that would be he could not yet foresee; but
      she could count on his returning as soon as the way was clear.
    </p>
    <p>
      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: &ldquo;With
      love from Charity.&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It was my idea running a ribbon through the gauging,&rdquo; she said proudly,
      drawing back to contemplate the blouse she was trimming. &ldquo;It's for Miss
      Balch: she was awfully pleased.&rdquo; She paused and then added, with a queer
      tremor in her piping voice: &ldquo;I darsn't have told her I got the idea from
      one I saw on Julia.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Charity raised her eyes listlessly. &ldquo;Do you still see Julia sometimes?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Ally reddened, as if the allusion had escaped her unintentionally. &ldquo;Oh, it
      was a long time ago I seen her with those gaugings....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Silence fell again, and Ally presently continued: &ldquo;Miss Balch left me a
      whole lot of things to do over this time.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Why&mdash;has she gone?&rdquo; Charity inquired with an inner start of
      apprehension.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ally gave a meditative laugh. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Charity again lifted her heavy lids and stared at Ally's pale pointed
      face, which moved to and fro above her moving fingers.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Is she going to get married?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Why, I presume so... from what she said.... Didn't you know?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Why should I know?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Ally did not answer. She bent above the blouse, and began picking out a
      basting thread with the point of the scissors.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Why should I know?&rdquo; Charity repeated harshly.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I didn't know but what... folks here say she's engaged to Mr. Harney.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Charity stood up with a laugh, and stretched her arms lazily above her
      head.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;If all the people got married that folks say are going to you'd have your
      time full making wedding-dresses,&rdquo; she said ironically.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Why&mdash;don't you believe it?&rdquo; Ally ventured.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It would not make it true if I did&mdash;nor prevent it if I didn't.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Charity stood absently gazing down at the lacy garment on Ally's knee.
      Abruptly she stooped and snatched it up.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well, I guess she won't dance in this either,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh, Charity&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; Ally cried, springing up. For a long interval
      the two girls faced each other across the ruined garment. Ally burst into
      tears.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh, what'll I say to her? What'll I do? It was real lace!&rdquo; she wailed
      between her piping sobs.
    </p>
    <p>
      Charity glared at her unrelentingly. &ldquo;You'd oughtn't to have brought it
      here,&rdquo; she said, breathing quickly. &ldquo;I hate other people's clothes&mdash;it's
      just as if they was there themselves.&rdquo; The two stared at each other again
      over this avowal, till Charity brought out, in a gasp of anguish: &ldquo;Oh, go&mdash;go&mdash;go&mdash;or
      I'll hate you too....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      When Ally left her, she fell sobbing across her bed.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 &ldquo;settling things&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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: &ldquo;You back?&rdquo; as if
      nothing had happened, and he answered: &ldquo;Yes, I'm back,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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: &ldquo;Office.&rdquo;
       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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      She smiled on Charity with all her faultless teeth. &ldquo;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....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Charity gazed at her with widening eyes. This woman with the false hair,
      the false teeth, the false murderous smile&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Dr. Merkle, still smiling, also rose. &ldquo;Why do you run off in such a hurry?
      You can stretch out right here on my sofa....&rdquo; She paused, and her smile
      grew more motherly. &ldquo;Afterwards&mdash;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....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Charity had reached the door. &ldquo;I don't want to stay. I don't want to come
      back here,&rdquo; she stammered, her hand on the knob; but with a swift
      movement, Dr. Merkle edged her from the threshold.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh, very well. Five dollars, please.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I didn't know... I haven't got that much...&rdquo; she faltered, bursting into
      tears.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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....&rdquo; She paused, and fixed her eyes on the brooch
      with a blue stone that Charity had pinned to her blouse.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      That evening, at the gate of the red house, she found Ally waiting in the
      dusk. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Charity snatched the letter with a laugh. &ldquo;Oh, thank you&mdash;good-night,&rdquo;
       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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      “DEAR CHARITY:
    </p>
    <p>
      “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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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. &ldquo;If ever there is a
      hope of realizing what we dreamed of...&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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: &ldquo;Charity&mdash;was
      you looking for me?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She freed herself abruptly and fell back. &ldquo;Me? No&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; She set
      down the candle on his desk. &ldquo;I wanted some letter-paper, that's all.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Do you want a stamp too?&rdquo; he
      asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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 &ldquo;to make things right.&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;Who'd ever think the baby's only two? And for a seven
      months' child&mdash;ain't it a wonder what a size he is?&rdquo; 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....
    </p>
    <p>
      Only&mdash;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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      XVI
    </h2>
    <p>
      THE rain held off, and an hour later, when she started, wild gleams of
      sunlight were blowing across the fields.
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;long since folded
      up and transplanted&mdash;and her start of involuntary terror when the fat
      evangelist had said: &ldquo;Your Saviour knows everything. Come and confess your
      guilt.&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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: &ldquo;I'm going up the
      Mountain.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Up the Mountain?&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Charity! What on earth are you doing here?&rdquo; Mr. Miles exclaimed, throwing
      the reins on the horse's back and scrambling down from the buggy.
    </p>
    <p>
      She lifted her heavy eyes to his. &ldquo;I'm going to see my mother.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The two men glanced at each other, and for a moment neither of them spoke.
    </p>
    <p>
      Then Mr. Miles said: &ldquo;You look ill, my dear, and it's a long way. Do you
      think it's wise?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Charity stood up. &ldquo;I've got to go to her.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      A vague mirthless grin contracted Liff Hyatt's face, and Mr. Miles again
      spoke uncertainly. &ldquo;You know, then&mdash;you'd been told?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She stared at him. &ldquo;I don't know what you mean. I want to go to her.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Miles was examining her thoughtfully. She fancied she saw a change in
      his expression, and the blood rushed to her forehead. &ldquo;I just want to go
      to her,&rdquo; she repeated.
    </p>
    <p>
      He laid his hand on her arm. &ldquo;My child, your mother is dying. Liff Hyatt
      came down to fetch me.... Get in and come with us.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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: &ldquo;Won't you
      tell me what is troubling you?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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: &ldquo;Charity, what do
      you know of your childhood, before you came down to North Dormer?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She controlled herself, and answered: &ldquo;Nothing only what I heard Mr.
      Royall say one day. He said he brought me down because my father went to
      prison.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And you've never been up there since?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Never.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Miles was silent again, then he said: &ldquo;I'm glad you're coming with me
      now. Perhaps we may find your mother alive, and she may know that you have
      come.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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: &ldquo;Left&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
       and they turned into a stunted pine-wood and began to drive down the other
      side of the Mountain.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Over there,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      In contrast to such a dwelling the brown house in the swamp might have
      stood for the home of plenty.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Is it here?&rdquo; the clergyman asked Liff in a low voice; and Liff nodded.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Miles turned to Charity. &ldquo;Just hold the horse a minute, my dear: I'll
      go in first,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Your mother is dead, Charity; you'd better come with me,&rdquo; he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      She got down and followed him while Liff led the horse away. As she
      approached the door she said to herself: &ldquo;This is where I was born... this
      is where I belong....&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;Here's the preacher.&rdquo; But no one moved.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Miles paused and looked about him; then he turned to the young man who
      had met them at the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Is the body here?&rdquo; he asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      The young man, instead of answering, turned his head toward the group.
      &ldquo;Where's the candle? I tole yer to bring a candle,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;How'll I light it? The stove's out,&rdquo; the girl grumbled.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Mary's over there,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;She jus' dropped off,&rdquo; a woman said, over the shoulder of the others; and
      the young man added: &ldquo;I jus' come in and found her.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      An elderly man with lank hair and a feeble grin pushed between them. &ldquo;It
      was like this: I says to her on'y the night before: if you don't take and
      quit, I says to her...&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Someone pulled him back and sent him reeling against a bench along the
      wall, where he dropped down muttering his unheeded narrative.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Who's the girl? Who brought her here?&rdquo; she said, fixing her eyes
      mistrustfully on the young man who had rebuked her for not having a candle
      ready.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Miles spoke. &ldquo;I brought her; she is Mary Hyatt's daughter.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What? Her too?&rdquo; the girl sneered; and the young man turned on her with an
      oath. &ldquo;Shut your mouth, damn you, or get out of here,&rdquo; he said; then he
      relapsed into his former apathy, and dropped down on the bench, leaning
      his head against the wall.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Miles had set the candle on the floor and taken off his heavy coat. He
      turned to Charity. &ldquo;Come and help me,&rdquo; he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Is there no coffin?&rdquo; he asked, turning to the group behind him.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was a moment of bewildered silence; then the fierce girl spoke up.
      &ldquo;You'd oughter brought it with you. Where'd we get one here, I'd like ter
      know?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Miles, looking at the others, repeated: &ldquo;Is it possible you have no
      coffin ready?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That's what I say: them that has it sleeps better,&rdquo; an old woman
      murmured. &ldquo;But then she never had no bed....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And the stove warn't hers,&rdquo; said the lank-haired man, on the defensive.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I am the Resurrection and the Life,&rdquo; Mr. Miles began; &ldquo;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....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;We brought nothing into this world and we shall take nothing out of it&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      There was a sudden muttering and a scuffle at the back of the group. &ldquo;I
      brought the stove,&rdquo; said the elderly man with lank hair, pushing his way
      between the others. &ldquo;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....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Sit down, damn you!&rdquo; shouted the tall youth who had been drowsing on the
      bench against the wall.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;For man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain; he
      heapeth up riches and cannot tell who shall gather them....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well, it ARE his,&rdquo; a woman in the background interjected in a frightened
      whine.
    </p>
    <p>
      The tall youth staggered to his feet. &ldquo;If you don't hold your mouths I'll
      turn you all out o' here, the whole lot of you,&rdquo; he cried with many oaths.
      &ldquo;G'wan, minister... don't let 'em faze you....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Is the grave ready?&rdquo; he asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      Liff Hyatt, who had come in while he was reading, nodded a &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Easy there... is she down?&rdquo; piped the claimant to the stove; and the
      young man called over his shoulder: &ldquo;Lift the light there, can't you?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      There was a pause, during which the light floated uncertainly over the
      open grave. Someone bent over and pulled out Mr. Miles's coat&mdash;&mdash;(&ldquo;No,
      no&mdash;leave the handkerchief,&rdquo; he interposed)&mdash;and then Liff
      Hyatt, coming forward with a spade, began to shovel in the earth.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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...&rdquo;
       Liff's gaunt shoulders rose and bent in the lantern light as he dashed the
      clods of earth into the grave. &ldquo;God&mdash;it's froze a'ready,&rdquo; he
      muttered, spitting into his palm and passing his ragged shirt-sleeve
      across his perspiring face.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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...&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Lord, have mercy upon us, Christ have mercy upon us, Lord have mercy upon
      us...&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Miles took the lantern from the old woman's hand and swept its light
      across the circle of bleared faces. &ldquo;Now kneel down, all of you,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;And now pray with me&mdash;you
      know this prayer,&rdquo; he said, and he began: &ldquo;Our Father which art in
      Heaven...&rdquo; 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.
      &ldquo;It was this way,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I tole her the night before, I says to
      her...&rdquo; The reminiscence ended in a sob.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;My child, you must come. It's very late.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She lifted her eyes to his face: he seemed to speak out of another world.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I ain't coming: I'm going to stay here.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Here? Where? What do you mean?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;These are my folks. I'm going to stay with them.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Miles lowered his voice. &ldquo;But it's not possible&mdash;you don't know
      what you are doing. You can't stay among these people: you must come with
      me.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Have you got a place where I can lie down for the night?&rdquo; she asked. Liff
      came up, leading the buggy out of the night. He looked from one to the
      other with his feeble smile. &ldquo;She's my mother. She'll take you home,&rdquo; he
      said; and he added, raising his voice to speak to the old woman: &ldquo;It's the
      girl from lawyer Royall's&mdash;Mary's girl... you remember....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      XVII
    </h2>
    <p>
      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&mdash;her grandchildren, she said&mdash;rolled
      up against her like sleeping puppies. They had their thin clothes spread
      over them, having given the only other blanket to their guest.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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: &ldquo;Yes, there was a mother; but she was glad to have
      the child go. She'd have given her to anybody....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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: &ldquo;The minister
      told me he'd left you up here, so I come up for you.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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: &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      After an interval he began again: &ldquo;It was a day just like this, only
      spitting snow, when I come up here for you the first time.&rdquo; Then, as if
      fearing that she might take his remark as a reminder of past benefits, he
      added quickly: &ldquo;I dunno's you think it was such a good job, either.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes, I do,&rdquo; she murmured, looking straight ahead of her.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I tried&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He did not finish the sentence, and she could think of nothing more to
      say.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Ho, there, Dan, step out,&rdquo; he muttered, jerking the bridle. &ldquo;We ain't
      home yet.&mdash;You cold?&rdquo; he asked abruptly.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Charity,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She roused herself from her apathetic musing. &ldquo;The train&mdash;what
      train?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Royall, without answering, let the horse jog on till they reached the
      door of the first house in the village. &ldquo;This is old Mrs. Hobart's place,&rdquo;
       he said. &ldquo;She'll give us something hot to drink.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well, Mrs. Hobart, you got any breakfast for this young lady? You can see
      she's cold and hungry.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Hobart smiled on Charity and took a tin coffee-pot from the fire.
      &ldquo;My, you do look pretty mean,&rdquo; she said compassionately.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      After a while Mr. Royall pushed back his chair. &ldquo;Now, then,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;if
      you're a mind to go along&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; She did not move, and he
      continued: &ldquo;We can pick up the noon train for Nettleton if you say so.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh, I can't&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; she burst out desperately.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Can't what?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I know I ain't been fair to you always; but I want to be now.... I want
      you to know... I want...&rdquo; Her voice failed her and she stopped.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What's all this about wanting?&rdquo; he said as she paused. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No... it's not all....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Ain't it?&rdquo; He looked at his watch. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Don't cry, Charity,&rdquo; he exclaimed in a shaken voice. She looked up,
      startled at his emotion, and their eyes met.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;See here,&rdquo; he said gently, &ldquo;old Dan's come a long distance, and we've got
      to let him take it easy the rest of the way....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      XVIII
    </h2>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;when she thought
      of him at all&mdash;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&mdash;and something in his way of saying it&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;a closed &ldquo;hack&rdquo;
       with sun-burnt blue silk blinds&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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: &ldquo;Your
      hair's got kinder loose with the wind,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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...&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Charity raised her eyes and met Mr. Royall's. They were still looking at
      her kindly and steadily. &ldquo;I will!&rdquo; 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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What are you doing in the dark?&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;We'll step
      down and have some supper, if you say so.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The thought of food filled her with repugnance; but not daring to confess
      it she smoothed her hair and followed him to the lift.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Presently he turned and joined her. &ldquo;You go right along up to bed&mdash;I'm
      going to sit down here and have my smoke,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
      &ldquo;What have I done? Oh, what have I done?&rdquo; 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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      They went downstairs to the dining-room for breakfast, and after breakfast
      he told her he had some insurance business to attend to. &ldquo;I guess while
      I'm doing it you'd better step out and buy yourself whatever you need.&rdquo; He
      smiled, and added with an embarrassed laugh: &ldquo;You know I always wanted you
      to beat all the other girls.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;If it ain't enough there's more where that come from&mdash;I
      want you to beat 'em all hollow,&rdquo; he repeated.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I thought you'd be back, but you've come a mite too soon: I told you to
      be patient and not fret,&rdquo; she observed, after a pause of penetrating
      scrutiny.
    </p>
    <p>
      Charity drew the money from her breast. &ldquo;I've come to get my blue brooch,&rdquo;
       she said, flushing.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Your brooch?&rdquo; Dr. Merkle appeared not to remember. &ldquo;My, yes&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She disappeared for a moment, and returned with a bit of twisted-up tissue
      paper from which she unwrapped the brooch.
    </p>
    <p>
      Charity, as she looked at it, felt a stir of warmth at her heart. She held
      out an eager hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Have you got the change?&rdquo; she asked a little breathlessly, laying one of
      the twenty-dollar bills on the table.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Change? What'd I want to have change for? I only see two twenties there,&rdquo;
       Dr. Merkle answered brightly.
    </p>
    <p>
      Charity paused, disconcerted. &ldquo;I thought... you said it was five dollars a
      visit....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;For YOU, as a favour&mdash;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?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Charity remained silent, puzzled and half-convinced by the argument, and
      Dr. Merkle promptly followed up her advantage. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She paused, and Charity, seized with a desperate longing to escape, rose
      to her feet and held out one of the bills.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Will you take that?&rdquo; she asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh, but I can't&mdash;it's all I've got,&rdquo; Charity exclaimed.
    </p>
    <p>
      Dr. Merkle looked up at her pleasantly from the plush sofa. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      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....
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      I'm married to Mr. Royall. I'll always remember you. CHARITY.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well, did you rig yourself out handsomely? I haven't seen any bundles
      round,&rdquo; he said jocosely.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh, I'd rather let Ally Hawes make the few things I want,&rdquo; she answered.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That so?&rdquo; He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment and his eye-brows
      projected in a scowl. Then his face grew friendly again. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Their eyes met, and something rose in his that she had never seen there: a
      look that made her feel ashamed and yet secure.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I guess you're good, too,&rdquo; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Late that evening, in the cold autumn moonlight, they drove up to the door
      of the red house.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">





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