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Summer, by Edith Wharton

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SUMMER

by Edith Wharton
1917


I


A girl came out of lawyer Royall's house, at the end of
the one street of North Dormer, and stood on the
doorstep.

It was the beginning of a June afternoon.  The
springlike transparent sky shed a rain of silver
sunshine on the roofs of the village, and on the
pastures and larchwoods surrounding it.  A little wind
moved among the round white clouds on the shoulders of
the hills, driving their shadows across the fields and
down the grassy road that takes the name of street when
it passes through North Dormer.  The place lies high
and in the open, and lacks the lavish shade of the more
protected New England villages.  The clump of weeping-
willows about the duck pond, and the Norway spruces in
front of the Hatchard gate, cast almost the only
roadside shadow between lawyer Royall's house and the
point where, at the other end of the village, the road
rises above the church and skirts the black hemlock
wall enclosing the cemetery.

The little June wind, frisking down the street, shook
the doleful fringes of the Hatchard spruces, caught the 
straw hat of a young man just passing under them, and 
spun it clean across the road into the duck-pond.

As he ran to fish it out the girl on lawyer Royall's 
doorstep noticed that he was a stranger, that he wore 
city clothes, and that he was laughing with all his 
teeth, as the young and careless laugh at such mishaps.

Her heart contracted a little, and the shrinking that 
sometimes came over her when she saw people with 
holiday faces made her draw back into the house and
pretend to look for the key that she knew she had 
already put into her pocket.  A narrow greenish mirror
with a gilt eagle over it hung on the passage wall, and 
she looked critically at her reflection, wished for the 
thousandth time that she had blue eyes like Annabel 
Balch, the girl who sometimes came from Springfield to 
spend a week with old Miss Hatchard, straightened the 
sunburnt hat over her small swarthy face, and turned 
out again into the sunshine.

"How I hate everything!" she murmured.

The young man had passed through the Hatchard gate, and 
she had the street to herself.  North Dormer is at all 
times an empty place, and at three o'clock on a June 
afternoon its few able-bodied men are off in the fields 
or woods, and the women indoors, engaged in languid
household drudgery.

The girl walked along, swinging her key on a finger, 
and looking about her with the heightened attention
produced by the presence of a stranger in a familiar 
place.  What, she wondered, did North Dormer look like 
to people from other parts of the world?  She herself 
had lived there since the age of five, and had long 
supposed it to be a place of some importance.  But 
about a year before, Mr. Miles, the new Episcopal
clergyman at Hepburn, who drove over every other 
Sunday--when the roads were not ploughed up by hauling--
to hold a service in the North Dormer church, had 
proposed, in a fit of missionary zeal, to take the 
young people down to Nettleton to hear an illustrated 
lecture on the Holy Land; and the dozen girls and boys 
who represented the future of North Dormer had been 
piled into a farm-waggon, driven over the hills to 
Hepburn, put into a way-train and carried to Nettleton.

In the course of that incredible day Charity Royall 
had, for the first and only time, experienced railway-
travel, looked into shops with plate-glass fronts, 
tasted cocoanut pie, sat in a theatre, and listened to 
a gentleman saying unintelligible things before
pictures that she would have enjoyed looking at if his 
explanations had not prevented her from understanding 
them.  This initiation had shown her that North Dormer 
was a small place, and developed in her a thirst for 
information that her position as custodian of the 
village library had previously failed to excite.  For a 
month or two she dipped feverishly and disconnectedly 
into the dusty volumes of the Hatchard Memorial 
Library; then the impression of Nettleton began to 
fade, and she found it easier to take North Dormer as 
the norm of the universe than to go on reading.

The sight of the stranger once more revived memories of 
Nettleton, and North Dormer shrank to its real size.  As 
she looked up and down it, from lawyer Royall's faded 
red house at one end to the white church at the other, 
she pitilessly took its measure.  There it lay, a 
weather-beaten sunburnt village of the hills, abandoned 
of men, left apart by railway, trolley, telegraph, and 
all the forces that link life to life in modern 
communities.  It had no shops, no theatres, no
lectures, no "business block"; only a church that was 
opened every other Sunday if the state of the roads 
permitted, and a library for which no new books had 
been bought for twenty years, and where the old ones 
mouldered undisturbed on the damp shelves.  Yet Charity 
Royall had always been told that she ought to consider 
it a privilege that her lot had been cast in North 
Dormer.  She knew that, compared to the place she had 
come from, North Dormer represented all the blessings 
of the most refined civilization.  Everyone in the
village had told her so ever since she had been brought
there as a child.  Even old Miss Hatchard had said to
her, on a terrible occasion in her life:  "My child, you
must never cease to remember that it was Mr. Royall who 
brought you down from the Mountain."

She had been "brought down from the Mountain"; from the 
scarred cliff that lifted its sullen wall above the 
lesser slopes of Eagle Range, making a perpetual 
background of gloom to the lonely valley.  The Mountain 
was a good fifteen miles away, but it rose so abruptly
from the lower hills that it seemed almost to cast its 
shadow over North Dormer.  And it was like a great 
magnet drawing the clouds and scattering them in storm 
across the valley.  If ever, in the purest summer sky, 
there trailed a thread of vapour over North Dormer, it 
drifted to the Mountain as a ship drifts to a 
whirlpool, and was caught among the rocks, torn up and 
multiplied, to sweep back over the village in rain and 
darkness.

Charity was not very clear about the Mountain; but she 
knew it was a bad place, and a shame to have come from, 
and that, whatever befell her in North Dormer, she 
ought, as Miss Hatchard had once reminded her, to 
remember that she had been brought down from there, and 
hold her tongue and be thankful.  She looked up at the 
Mountain, thinking of these things, and tried as usual 
to be thankful.  But the sight of the young man turning 
in at Miss Hatchard's gate had brought back the vision 
of the glittering streets of Nettleton, and she felt 
ashamed of her old sun-hat, and sick of North Dormer,
and jealously aware of Annabel Balch of Springfield, 
opening her blue eyes somewhere far off on glories 
greater than the glories of Nettleton.

"How I hate everything!" she said again.

Half way down the street she stopped at a weak-hinged 
gate.  Passing through it, she walked down a brick path 
to a queer little brick temple with white wooden 
columns supporting a pediment on which was inscribed in
tarnished gold letters:  "The Honorius Hatchard Memorial 
Library, 1832."

Honorius Hatchard had been old Miss Hatchard's great-
uncle; though she would undoubtedly have reversed the 
phrase, and put forward, as her only claim to 
distinction, the fact that she was his great-niece.  
For Honorius Hatchard, in the early years of the 
nineteenth century, had enjoyed a modest celebrity.  As 
the marble tablet in the interior of the library 
informed its infrequent visitors, he had possessed
marked literary gifts, written a series of papers 
called "The Recluse of Eagle Range," enjoyed the 
acquaintance of Washington Irving and Fitz-Greene 
Halleck, and been cut off in his flower by a fever 
contracted in Italy.  Such had been the sole link 
between North Dormer and literature, a link piously 
commemorated by the erection of the monument where 
Charity Royall, every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, 
sat at her desk under a freckled steel engraving of the 
deceased author, and wondered if he felt any deader in
his grave than she did in his library.

Entering her prison-house with a listless step she took 
off her hat, hung it on a plaster bust of Minerva, 
opened the shutters, leaned out to see if there were 
any eggs in the swallow's nest above one of the 
windows, and finally, seating herself behind the desk, 
drew out a roll of cotton lace and a steel crochet 
hook.  She was not an expert workwoman, and it had taken 
her many weeks to make the half-yard of narrow lace 
which she kept wound about the buckram back of a
disintegrated copy of "The Lamplighter."  But there was 
no other way of getting any lace to trim her summer 
blouse, and since Ally Hawes, the poorest girl in the 
village, had shown herself in church with enviable 
transparencies about the shoulders, Charity's hook had 
travelled faster.  She unrolled the lace, dug the hook 
into a loop, and bent to the task with furrowed brows.

Suddenly the door opened, and before she had raised her 
eyes she knew that the young man she had seen going in
at the Hatchard gate had entered the library.

Without taking any notice of her he began to move 
slowly about the long vault-like room, his hands behind 
his back, his short-sighted eyes peering up and down 
the rows of rusty bindings.  At length he reached the 
desk and stood before her.

"Have you a card-catalogue?" he asked in a pleasant 
abrupt voice; and the oddness of the question caused 
her to drop her work.

"A WHAT?"

"Why, you know----" He broke off, and she became 
conscious that he was looking at her for the first 
time, having apparently, on his entrance, included her 
in his general short-sighted survey as part of the 
furniture of the library.

The fact that, in discovering her, he lost the thread 
of his remark, did not escape her attention, and she 
looked down and smiled.  He smiled also.

"No, I don't suppose you do know," he corrected 
himself.  "In fact, it would be almost a pity----"

She thought she detected a slight condescension in his 
tone, and asked sharply:  "Why?"

"Because it's so much pleasanter, in a small library 
like this, to poke about by one's self--with the help
of the librarian."

He added the last phrase so respectfully that she was 
mollified, and rejoined with a sigh:  "I'm afraid I 
can't help you much."

"Why?" he questioned in his turn; and she replied that 
there weren't many books anyhow, and that she'd hardly 
read any of them.  "The worms are getting at them," she 
added gloomily.

"Are they?  That's a pity, for I see there are some good 
ones."  He seemed to have lost interest in their 
conversation, and strolled away again, apparently 
forgetting her.  His indifference nettled her, and she 
picked up her work, resolved not to offer him the least 
assistance.  Apparently he did not need it, for he 
spent a long time with his back to her, lifting down, 
one after another, the tall cob-webby volumes from a 
distant shelf.

"Oh, I say!" he exclaimed; and looking up she saw that 
he had drawn out his handkerchief and was carefully 
wiping the edges of the book in his hand.  The action 
struck her as an unwarranted criticism on her care of 
the books, and she said irritably:  "It's not my fault 
if they're dirty."

He turned around and looked at her with reviving 
interest.  "Ah--then you're not the librarian?" 

"Of course I am; but I can't dust all these books.  
Besides, nobody ever looks at them, now Miss Hatchard's 
too lame to come round."

"No, I suppose not."  He laid down the book he had been 
wiping, and stood considering her in silence.  She 
wondered if Miss Hatchard had sent him round to pry 
into the way the library was looked after, and the 
suspicion increased her resentment.  "I saw you going 
into her house just now, didn't I?" she asked, with the 
New England avoidance of the proper name.  She was
determined to find out why he was poking about among 
her books.

"Miss Hatchard's house?  Yes--she's my cousin and I'm 
staying there," the young man answered; adding, as if 
to disarm a visible distrust:  "My name is Harney--
Lucius Harney.  She may have spoken of me."

"No, she hasn't," said Charity, wishing she could have 
said:  "Yes, she has."

"Oh, well----" said Miss Hatchard's cousin with a 
laugh; and after another pause, during which it 
occurred to Charity that her answer had not been 
encouraging, he remarked:  "You don't seem strong on 
architecture."

Her bewilderment was complete:  the more she wished to 
appear to understand him the more unintelligible his 
remarks became.  He reminded her of the gentleman who 
had "explained" the pictures at Nettleton, and the
weight of her ignorance settled down on her again like 
a pall.

"I mean, I can't see that you have any books on the old 
houses about here.  I suppose, for that matter, this 
part of the country hasn't been much explored.  They 
all go on doing Plymouth and Salem.  So stupid.  My 
cousin's house, now, is remarkable.  This place must 
have had a past--it must have been more of a place 
once."  He stopped short, with the blush of a shy man 
who overhears himself, and fears he has been voluble.  
"I'm an architect, you see, and I'm hunting up old 
houses in these parts."

She stared.  "Old houses?  Everything's old in North 
Dormer, isn't it?  The folks are, anyhow."

He laughed, and wandered away again.

"Haven't you any kind of a history of the place?
I think there was one written about 1840:  a book or
pamphlet about its first settlement," he presently said 
from the farther end of the room.

She pressed her crochet hook against her lip and
pondered.  There was such a work, she knew:  "North
Dormer and the Early Townships of Eagle County."  She
had a special grudge against it because it was a limp 
weakly book that was always either falling off the 
shelf or slipping back and disappearing if one squeezed 
it in between sustaining volumes.  She remembered, the 
last time she had picked it up, wondering how anyone 
could have taken the trouble to write a book about 
North Dormer and its neighbours:  Dormer, Hamblin, 
Creston and Creston River.  She knew them all, mere lost 
clusters of houses in the folds of the desolate ridges:  
Dormer, where North Dormer went for its apples; Creston 
River, where there used to be a paper-mill, and its 
grey walls stood decaying by the stream; and Hamblin, 
where the first snow always fell.  Such were their 
titles to fame.

She got up and began to move about vaguely before the 
shelves.  But she had no idea where she had last put 
the book, and something told her that it was going to 
play her its usual trick and remain invisible.  It was 
not one of her lucky days.

"I guess it's somewhere," she said, to prove her zeal; 
but she spoke without conviction, and felt that her 
words conveyed none.

"Oh, well----" he said again.  She knew he was going, 
and wished more than ever to find the book.

"It will be for next time," he added; and picking up 
the volume he had laid on the desk he handed it to her.  
"By the way, a little air and sun would do this good; 
it's rather valuable."

He gave her a nod and smile, and passed out.



II


The hours of the Hatchard Memorial librarian were from 
three to five; and Charity Royall's sense of duty 
usually kept her at her desk until nearly half-past 
four.

But she had never perceived that any practical 
advantage thereby accrued either to North Dormer or to 
herself; and she had no scruple in decreeing, when it 
suited her, that the library should close an hour 
earlier.  A few minutes after Mr. Harney's departure 
she formed this decision, put away her lace, fastened 
the shutters, and turned the key in the door of the 
temple of knowledge.

The street upon which she emerged was still empty:  and 
after glancing up and down it she began to walk toward 
her house.  But instead of entering she passed on,
turned into a field-path and mounted to a pasture on 
the hillside.  She let down the bars of the gate, 
followed a trail along the crumbling wall of the 
pasture, and walked on till she reached a knoll where a 
clump of larches shook out their fresh tassels to the 
wind.  There she lay down on the slope, tossed off her 
hat and hid her face in the grass.

She was blind and insensible to many things, and dimly 
knew it; but to all that was light and air, perfume and 
colour, every drop of blood in her responded.  She 
loved the roughness of the dry mountain grass under her 
palms, the smell of the thyme into which she crushed 
her face, the fingering of the wind in her hair and 
through her cotton blouse, and the creak of the larches 
as they swayed to it.

She often climbed up the hill and lay there alone for 
the mere pleasure of feeling the wind and of rubbing 
her cheeks in the grass.  Generally at such times she 
did not think of anything, but lay immersed in an
inarticulate well-being.  Today the sense of well-being 
was intensified by her joy at escaping from the 
library.  She liked well enough to have a friend drop in 
and talk to her when she was on duty, but she hated to 
be bothered about books.  How could she remember where 
they were, when they were so seldom asked for?  Orma Fry 
occasionally took out a novel, and her brother Ben was 
fond of what he called "jography," and of books 
relating to trade and bookkeeping; but no one else 
asked for anything except, at intervals, "Uncle Tom's 
Cabin," or "Opening of a Chestnut Burr," or Longfellow.  
She had these under her hand, and could have found them 
in the dark; but unexpected demands came so rarely that 
they exasperated her like an injustice....

She had liked the young man's looks, and his short-
sighted eyes, and his odd way of speaking, that was 
abrupt yet soft, just as his hands were sun-burnt and 
sinewy, yet with smooth nails like a woman's.  His hair 
was sunburnt-looking too, or rather the colour of 
bracken after frost; his eyes grey, with the appealing
look of the shortsighted, his smile shy yet confident, 
as if he knew lots of things she had never dreamed of, 
and yet wouldn't for the world have had her feel his 
superiority.  But she did feel it, and liked the 
feeling; for it was new to her.  Poor and ignorant as 
she was, and knew herself to be--humblest of the humble 
even in North Dormer, where to come from the Mountain 
was the worst disgrace--yet in her narrow world she had 
always ruled.  It was partly, of course, owing to the 
fact that lawyer Royall was "the biggest man in North 
Dormer"; so much too big for it, in fact, that 
outsiders, who didn't know, always wondered how it held 
him.  In spite of everything--and in spite even of Miss 
Hatchard--lawyer Royall ruled in North Dormer; and 
Charity ruled in lawyer Royall's house.  She had never 
put it to herself in those terms; but she knew her 
power, knew what it was made of, and hated it.  
Confusedly, the young man in the library had made her 
feel for the first time what might be the sweetness of 
dependence.

She sat up, brushed the bits of grass from her hair, 
and looked down on the house where she held sway.  It 
stood just below her, cheerless and untended, its faded 
red front divided from the road by a "yard" with a path 
bordered by gooseberry bushes, a stone well overgrown 
with traveller's joy, and a sickly Crimson Rambler tied 
to a fan-shaped support, which Mr. Royall had once 
brought up from Hepburn to please her.  Behind the 
house a bit of uneven ground with clothes-lines strung 
across it stretched up to a dry wall, and beyond the 
wall a patch of corn and a few rows of potatoes strayed 
vaguely into the adjoining wilderness of rock and fern.

Charity could not recall her first sight of the house.  
She had been told that she was ill of a fever when she 
was brought down from the Mountain; and she could only 
remember waking one day in a cot at the foot of Mrs. 
Royall's bed, and opening her eyes on the cold neatness 
of the room that was afterward to be hers.

Mrs. Royall died seven or eight years later; and by
that time Charity had taken the measure of most things 
about her.  She knew that Mrs. Royall was sad and timid 
and weak; she knew that lawyer Royall was harsh and 
violent, and still weaker.  She knew that she had been 
christened Charity (in the white church at the other 
end of the village) to commemorate Mr. Royall's 
disinterestedness in "bringing her down," and to keep 
alive in her a becoming sense of her dependence; she 
knew that Mr. Royall was her guardian, but that he had 
not legally adopted her, though everybody spoke of her 
as Charity Royall; and she knew why he had come back to 
live at North Dormer, instead of practising at 
Nettleton, where he had begun his legal career.

After Mrs. Royall's death there was some talk of 
sending her to a boarding-school.  Miss Hatchard 
suggested it, and had a long conference with Mr. 
Royall, who, in pursuance of her plan, departed one day 
for Starkfield to visit the institution she 
recommended.  He came back the next night with a black 
face; worse, Charity observed, than she had ever seen
him; and by that time she had had some experience.

When she asked him how soon she was to start he
answered shortly, "You ain't going," and shut himself
up in the room he called his office; and the next day
the lady who kept the school at Starkfield wrote that
"under the circumstances" she was afraid she could not
make room just then for another pupil.

Charity was disappointed; but she understood.  It
wasn't the temptations of Starkfield that had been Mr.
Royall's undoing; it was the thought of losing her.  He 
was a dreadfully "lonesome" man; she had made that out 
because she was so "lonesome" herself.  He and she, 
face to face in that sad house, had sounded the depths 
of isolation; and though she felt no particular 
affection for him, and not the slightest gratitude, she 
pitied him because she was conscious that he was 
superior to the people about him, and that she was the 
only being between him and solitude.  Therefore, when 
Miss Hatchard sent for her a day or two later, to talk
of a school at Nettleton, and to say that this time a 
friend of hers would "make the necessary arrangements," 
Charity cut her short with the announcement that she 
had decided not to leave North Dormer.

Miss Hatchard reasoned with her kindly, but to no 
purpose; she simply repeated:  "I guess Mr. Royall's too 
lonesome."

Miss Hatchard blinked perplexedly behind her eye-
glasses.  Her long frail face was full of puzzled 
wrinkles, and she leant forward, resting her hands on 
the arms of her mahogany armchair, with the evident 
desire to say something that ought to be said.

"The feeling does you credit, my dear."

She looked about the pale walls of her sitting-room, 
seeking counsel of ancestral daguerreotypes and 
didactic samplers; but they seemed to make utterance 
more difficult.

"The fact is, it's not only--not only because of the 
advantages.  There are other reasons.  You're too young 
to understand----"

"Oh, no, I ain't," said Charity harshly; and Miss 
Hatchard blushed to the roots of her blonde cap.  But 
she must have felt a vague relief at having her 
explanation cut short, for she concluded, again 
invoking the daguerreotypes:  "Of course I shall always 
do what I can for you; and in case....in case....you 
know you can always come to me...."

Lawyer Royall was waiting for Charity in the porch when 
she returned from this visit.  He had shaved, and 
brushed his black coat, and looked a magnificent 
monument of a man; at such moments she really admired 
him.

"Well," he said, "is it settled?"

"Yes, it's settled.  I ain't going."

"Not to the Nettleton school?"

"Not anywhere."

He cleared his throat and asked sternly:  "Why?"

"I'd rather not," she said, swinging past him on her 
way to her room.  It was the following week that he 
brought her up the Crimson Rambler and its fan from 
Hepburn.  He had never given her anything before.

The next outstanding incident of her life had happened 
two years later, when she was seventeen.  Lawyer 
Royall, who hated to go to Nettleton, had been called 
there in connection with a case.  He still exercised 
his profession, though litigation languished in North 
Dormer and its outlying hamlets; and for once he had 
had an opportunity that he could not afford to refuse.  
He spent three days in Nettleton, won his case, and
came back in high good-humour.  It was a rare mood with 
him, and manifested itself on this occasion by his 
talking impressively at the supper-table of the 
"rousing welcome" his old friends had given him.  He 
wound up confidentially:  "I was a damn fool ever to 
leave Nettleton.  It was Mrs. Royall that made me do 
it."

Charity immediately perceived that something bitter had 
happened to him, and that he was trying to talk down 
the recollection.  She went up to bed early, leaving 
him seated in moody thought, his elbows propped on the 
worn oilcloth of the supper table.  On the way up she 
had extracted from his overcoat pocket the key of the 
cupboard where the bottle of whiskey was kept.

She was awakened by a rattling at her door and jumped 
out of bed.  She heard Mr. Royall's voice, low and 
peremptory, and opened the door, fearing an accident.  
No other thought had occurred to her; but when she saw 
him in the doorway, a ray from the autumn moon falling
on his discomposed face, she understood.

For a moment they looked at each other in silence; 
then, as he put his foot across the threshold, she 
stretched out her arm and stopped him.

"You go right back from here," she said, in a shrill 
voice that startled her; "you ain't going to have that 
key tonight."

"Charity, let me in.  I don't want the key.  I'm a 
lonesome man," he began, in the deep voice that 
sometimes moved her.

Her heart gave a startled plunge, but she continued to 
hold him back contemptuously.  "Well, I guess you made 
a mistake, then.  This ain't your wife's room any 
longer."

She was not frightened, she simply felt a deep disgust; 
and perhaps he divined it or read it in her face, for
after staring at her a moment he drew back and turned 
slowly away from the door.  With her ear to her keyhole 
she heard him feel his way down the dark stairs, and 
toward the kitchen; and she listened for the crash of 
the cupboard panel, but instead she heard him, after an 
interval, unlock the door of the house, and his heavy 
steps came to her through the silence as he walked down 
the path.  She crept to the window and saw his bent 
figure striding up the road in the moonlight.  Then a 
belated sense of fear came to her with the 
consciousness of victory, and she slipped into bed, 
cold to the bone.


A day or two later poor Eudora Skeff, who for twenty 
years had been the custodian of the Hatchard library, 
died suddenly of pneumonia; and the day after the 
funeral Charity went to see Miss Hatchard, and asked to 
be appointed librarian.  The request seemed to surprise 
Miss Hatchard:  she evidently questioned the new 
candidate's qualifications.

"Why, I don't know, my dear.  Aren't you rather too 
young?" she hesitated.

"I want to earn some money," Charity merely answered.

"Doesn't Mr. Royall give you all you require?  No one is 
rich in North Dormer."

"I want to earn money enough to get away."

"To get away?" Miss Hatchard's puzzled wrinkles 
deepened, and there was a distressful pause.  "You want 
to leave Mr. Royall?"

"Yes:  or I want another woman in the house with me," 
said Charity resolutely.

Miss Hatchard clasped her nervous hands about the arms 
of her chair.  Her eyes invoked the faded countenances 
on the wall, and after a faint cough of indecision she
brought out:  "The...the housework's too hard for you, I 
suppose?"

Charity's heart grew cold.  She understood that Miss 
Hatchard had no help to give her and that she would 
have to fight her way out of her difficulty alone.  A 
deeper sense of isolation overcame her; she felt 
incalculably old.  "She's got to be talked to like a 
baby," she thought, with a feeling of compassion for 
Miss Hatchard's long immaturity.  "Yes, that's it," she 
said aloud.  "The housework's too hard for me:  I've 
been coughing a good deal this fall."

She noted the immediate effect of this suggestion.  Miss 
Hatchard paled at the memory of poor Eudora's taking-
off, and promised to do what she could.  But of course
there were people she must consult:  the clergyman, the 
selectmen of North Dormer, and a distant Hatchard 
relative at Springfield.  "If you'd only gone to 
school!" she sighed.  She followed Charity to the door, 
and there, in the security of the threshold, said with
a glance of evasive appeal:  "I know Mr. Royall 
is...trying at times; but his wife bore with him; and 
you must always remember, Charity, that it was Mr. 
Royall who brought you down from the Mountain."  Charity 
went home and opened the door of Mr. Royall's "office."  
He was sitting there by the stove reading Daniel 
Webster's speeches.  They had met at meals during the 
five days that had elapsed since he had come to her 
door, and she had walked at his side at Eudora's 
funeral; but they had not spoken a word to each other.

He glanced up in surprise as she entered, and she 
noticed that he was unshaved, and that he looked 
unusually old; but as she had always thought of him as 
an old man the change in his appearance did not move 
her.  She told him she had been to see Miss Hatchard, 
and with what object.  She saw that he was astonished; 
but he made no comment.

"I told her the housework was too hard for me, and I 
wanted to earn the money to pay for a hired girl.  But
I ain't going to pay for her:  you've got to.  I want to 
have some money of my own."

Mr. Royall's bushy black eyebrows were drawn together 
in a frown, and he sat drumming with ink-stained nails 
on the edge of his desk.

"What do you want to earn money for?" he asked.

"So's to get away when I want to."

"Why do you want to get away?"

Her contempt flashed out.  "Do you suppose anybody'd 
stay at North Dormer if they could help it?  You 
wouldn't, folks say!"

With lowered head he asked:  "Where'd you go to?"

"Anywhere where I can earn my living.  I'll try here 
first, and if I can't do it here I'll go somewhere
else.  I'll go up the Mountain if I have to."  She 
paused on this threat, and saw that it had taken 
effect.  "I want you should get Miss Hatchard and the 
selectmen to take me at the library:  and I want a woman 
here in the house with me," she repeated.

Mr. Royall had grown exceedingly pale.  When she ended 
he stood up ponderously, leaning against the desk; and 
for a second or two they looked at each other.

"See here," he said at length as though utterance were 
difficult, "there's something I've been wanting to say 
to you; I'd ought to have said it before.  I want you 
to marry me."

The girl still stared at him without moving.  "I want 
you to marry me," he repeated, clearing his throat.  
"The minister'll be up here next Sunday and we can fix 
it up then.  Or I'll drive you down to Hepburn to the 
Justice, and get it done there.  I'll do whatever you 
say."  His eyes fell under the merciless stare she
continued to fix on him, and he shifted his weight
uneasily from one foot to the other.  As he stood there
before her, unwieldy, shabby, disordered, the purple
veins distorting the hands he pressed against the desk,
and his long orator's jaw trembling with the effort of
his avowal, he seemed like a hideous parody of the
fatherly old man she had always known.

"Marry you?  Me?" she burst out with a scornful laugh.
"Was that what you came to ask me the other night?
What's come over you, I wonder?  How long is it since
you've looked at yourself in the glass?"  She
straightened herself, insolently conscious of her youth 
and strength.  "I suppose you think it would be cheaper 
to marry me than to keep a hired girl.  Everybody knows 
you're the closest man in Eagle County; but I guess 
you're not going to get your mending done for you that 
way twice."

Mr. Royall did not move while she spoke.  His face was 
ash-coloured and his black eyebrows quivered as though
the blaze of her scorn had blinded him.  When she 
ceased he held up his hand.

"That'll do--that'll about do," he said.  He turned to 
the door and took his hat from the hat-peg.  On the 
threshold he paused.  "People ain't been fair to me--
from the first they ain't been fair to me," he said.  
Then he went out.

A few days later North Dormer learned with surprise 
that Charity had been appointed librarian of the 
Hatchard Memorial at a salary of eight dollars a month,
and that old Verena Marsh, from the Creston Almshouse, 
was coming to live at lawyer Royall's and do the 
cooking.



III


It was not in the room known at the red house as Mr. 
Royall's "office" that he received his infrequent 
clients.  Professional dignity and masculine 
independence made it necessary that he should have a 
real office, under a different roof; and his standing 
as the only lawyer of North Dormer required that the 
roof should be the same as that which sheltered the 
Town Hall and the post-office.

It was his habit to walk to this office twice a day, 
morning and afternoon.  It was on the ground floor of 
the building, with a separate entrance, and a weathered
name-plate on the door.  Before going in he stepped in 
to the post-office for his mail--usually an empty 
ceremony--said a word or two to the town-clerk, who sat 
across the passage in idle state, and then went over to 
the store on the opposite corner, where Carrick Fry, 
the storekeeper, always kept a chair for him, and where 
he was sure to find one or two selectmen leaning on the 
long counter, in an atmosphere of rope, leather, tar 
and coffee-beans.  Mr. Royall, though monosyllabic at 
home, was not averse, in certain moods, to imparting 
his views to his fellow-townsmen; perhaps, also, he was 
unwilling that his rare clients should surprise him 
sitting, clerkless and unoccupied, in his dusty office.  
At any rate, his hours there were not much longer or 
more regular than Charity's at the library; the rest of 
the time he spent either at the store or in driving 
about the country on business connected with the 
insurance companies that he represented, or in sitting 
at home reading Bancroft's History of the United States 
and the speeches of Daniel Webster.

Since the day when Charity had told him that she wished 
to succeed to Eudora Skeff's post their relations had 
undefinably but definitely changed.  Lawyer Royall had 
kept his word.  He had obtained the place for her at 
the cost of considerable maneuvering, as she guessed 
from the number of rival candidates, and from the 
acerbity with which two of them, Orma Fry and the 
eldest Targatt girl, treated her for nearly a year 
afterward.  And he had engaged Verena Marsh to come up 
from Creston and do the cooking.  Verena was a poor old 
widow, doddering and shiftless:  Charity suspected that 
she came for her keep.  Mr. Royall was too close a man 
to give a dollar a day to a smart girl when he could 
get a deaf pauper for nothing.  But at any rate, Verena 
was there, in the attic just over Charity, and the fact 
that she was deaf did not greatly trouble the young 
girl.

Charity knew that what had happened on that hateful 
night would not happen again.  She understood that, 
profoundly as she had despised Mr. Royall ever since,
he despised himself still more profoundly.  If she had 
asked for a woman in the house it was far less for her 
own defense than for his humiliation.  She needed no 
one to defend her:  his humbled pride was her surest 
protection.  He had never spoken a word of excuse or 
extenuation; the incident was as if it had never been.  
Yet its consequences were latent in every word that he 
and she exchanged, in every glance they instinctively 
turned from each other.  Nothing now would ever shake 
her rule in the red house.

On the night of her meeting with Miss Hatchard's cousin 
Charity lay in bed, her bare arms clasped under her 
rough head, and continued to think of him.  She 
supposed that he meant to spend some time in North 
Dormer.  He had said he was looking up the old houses in 
the neighbourhood; and though she was not very clear as 
to his purpose, or as to why anyone should look for old 
houses, when they lay in wait for one on every 
roadside, she understood that he needed the help of 
books, and resolved to hunt up the next day the volume
she had failed to find, and any others that seemed
related to the subject.

Never had her ignorance of life and literature so 
weighed on her as in reliving the short scene of her 
discomfiture.  "It's no use trying to be anything in 
this place," she muttered to her pillow; and she 
shrivelled at the vision of vague metropolises, shining 
super-Nettletons, where girls in better clothes than 
Belle Balch's talked fluently of architecture to young 
men with hands like Lucius Harney's.  Then she
remembered his sudden pause when he had come close to 
the desk and had his first look at her.  The sight had 
made him forget what he was going to say; she recalled 
the change in his face, and jumping up she ran over the 
bare boards to her washstand, found the matches, lit a 
candle, and lifted it to the square of looking-glass on 
the white-washed wall.  Her small face, usually so 
darkly pale, glowed like a rose in the faint orb of 
light, and under her rumpled hair her eyes seemed 
deeper and larger than by day.  Perhaps after all it
was a mistake to wish they were blue.  A clumsy band 
and button fastened her unbleached night-gown about the 
throat.  She undid it, freed her thin shoulders, and saw 
herself a bride in low-necked satin, walking down an 
aisle with Lucius Harney.  He would kiss her as they 
left the church....She put down the candle and covered 
her face with her hands as if to imprison the kiss.  At 
that moment she heard Mr. Royall's step as he came up 
the stairs to bed, and a fierce revulsion of feeling 
swept over her.  Until then she had merely despised 
him; now deep hatred of him filled her heart.  He became 
to her a horrible old man....


The next day, when Mr. Royall came back to dinner, they 
faced each other in silence as usual.  Verena's 
presence at the table was an excuse for their not 
talking, though her deafness would have permitted the 
freest interchange of confidences.  But when the meal 
was over, and Mr. Royall rose from the table, he looked 
back at Charity, who had stayed to help the old woman
clear away the dishes.

"I want to speak to you a minute," he said; and she 
followed him across the passage, wondering.

He seated himself in his black horse-hair armchair, and 
she leaned against the window, indifferently.  She was 
impatient to be gone to the library, to hunt for the 
book on North Dormer.

"See here," he said, "why ain't you at the library the 
days you're supposed to be there?"

The question, breaking in on her mood of blissful 
abstraction, deprived her of speech, and she stared at 
him for a moment without answering.

"Who says I ain't?"

"There's been some complaints made, it appears.  Miss 
Hatchard sent for me this morning----"

Charity's smouldering resentment broke into a blaze.  "I 
know! Orma Fry, and that toad of a Targatt girl and Ben 
Fry, like as not.  He's going round with her.  The low-
down sneaks--I always knew they'd try to have me out! 
As if anybody ever came to the library, anyhow!"

"Somebody did yesterday, and you weren't there."

"Yesterday?" she laughed at her happy recollection.  "At 
what time wasn't I there yesterday, I'd like to know?"

"Round about four o'clock."

Charity was silent.  She had been so steeped in the 
dreamy remembrance of young Harney's visit that she had 
forgotten having deserted her post as soon as he had 
left the library.

"Who came at four o'clock?"

"Miss Hatchard did."

"Miss Hatchard?  Why, she ain't ever been near the place 
since she's been lame.  She couldn't get up the steps 
if she tried."

"She can be helped up, I guess.  She was yesterday, 
anyhow, by the young fellow that's staying with her.  He 
found you there, I understand, earlier in the 
afternoon; and he went back and told Miss Hatchard the 
books were in bad shape and needed attending to.  She 
got excited, and had herself wheeled straight round; 
and when she got there the place was locked.  So she 
sent for me, and told me about that, and about the 
other complaints.  She claims you've neglected things, 
and that she's going to get a trained librarian."

Charity had not moved while he spoke.  She stood with 
her head thrown back against the window-frame, her arms 
hanging against her sides, and her hands so tightly 
clenched that she felt, without knowing what hurt her,
the sharp edge of her nails against her palms.

Of all Mr. Royall had said she had retained only the 
phrase:  "He told Miss Hatchard the books were in bad 
shape."  What did she care for the other charges against 
her?  Malice or truth, she despised them as she despised 
her detractors.  But that the stranger to whom she had 
felt herself so mysteriously drawn should have betrayed 
her! That at the very moment when she had fled up the 
hillside to think of him more deliciously he should 
have been hastening home to denounce her short-comings! 
She remembered how, in the darkness of her room, she 
had covered her face to press his imagined kiss closer; 
and her heart raged against him for the liberty he had 
not taken.

"Well, I'll go," she said suddenly.  "I'll go right 
off."

"Go where?" She heard the startled note in Mr. Royall's 
voice.

"Why, out of their old library:  straight out, and never 
set foot in it again.  They needn't think I'm going to 
wait round and let them say they've discharged me!"

"Charity--Charity Royall, you listen----" he began, 
getting heavily out of his chair; but she waved him 
aside, and walked out of the room.

Upstairs she took the library key from the place where 
she always hid it under her pincushion--who said she 
wasn't careful?--put on her hat, and swept down again 
and out into the street.  If Mr. Royall heard her go he 
made no motion to detain her:  his sudden rages probably 
made him understand the uselessness of reasoning with 
hers.

She reached the brick temple, unlocked the door and 
entered into the glacial twilight.  "I'm glad I'll 
never have to sit in this old vault again when other 
folks are out in the sun!" she said aloud as the
familiar chill took her.  She looked with abhorrence at 
the long dingy rows of books, the sheep-nosed Minerva 
on her black pedestal, and the mild-faced young man in 
a high stock whose effigy pined above her desk.  She 
meant to take out of the drawer her roll of lace and 
the library register, and go straight to Miss Hatchard 
to announce her resignation.  But suddenly a great 
desolation overcame her, and she sat down and laid her 
face against the desk.  Her heart was ravaged by life's 
cruelest discovery:  the first creature who had come 
toward her out of the wilderness had brought her 
anguish instead of joy.  She did not cry; tears came 
hard to her, and the storms of her heart spent 
themselves inwardly.  But as she sat there in her dumb 
woe she felt her life to be too desolate, too ugly and 
intolerable.

"What have I ever done to it, that it should hurt me 
so?" she groaned, and pressed her fists against her 
lids, which were beginning to swell with weeping.

"I won't--I won't go there looking like a horror!" she 
muttered, springing up and pushing back her hair as if 
it stifled her.  She opened the drawer, dragged out the 
register, and turned toward the door.  As she did so it 
opened, and the young man from Miss Hatchard's came in 
whistling.



IV


He stopped and lifted his hat with a shy smile.  "I beg 
your pardon," he said.  "I thought there was no one 
here."

Charity stood before him, barring his way.  "You can't 
come in.  The library ain't open to the public 
Wednesdays."

"I know it's not; but my cousin gave me her key."

"Miss Hatchard's got no right to give her key to other 
folks, any more'n I have.  I'm the librarian and I know 
the by-laws.  This is my library."

The young man looked profoundly surprised.

"Why, I know it is; I'm so sorry if you mind my 
coming."

"I suppose you came to see what more you could say to 
set her against me?  But you needn't trouble:  it's my 
library today, but it won't be this time tomorrow.  I'm 
on the way now to take her back the key and the 
register."

Young Harney's face grew grave, but without betraying 
the consciousness of guilt she had looked for.

"I don't understand," he said.  "There must be some 
mistake.  Why should I say things against you to Miss
Hatchard--or to anyone?"

The apparent evasiveness of the reply caused Charity's 
indignation to overflow.  "I don't know why you should.  
I could understand Orma Fry's doing it, because she's 
always wanted to get me out of here ever since the 
first day.  I can't see why, when she's got her own 
home, and her father to work for her; nor Ida Targatt, 
neither, when she got a legacy from her step-brother 
on'y last year.  But anyway we all live in the same 
place, and when it's a place like North Dormer it's 
enough to make people hate each other just to have to 
walk down the same street every day.  But you don't 
live here, and you don't know anything about any of us, 
so what did you have to meddle for?  Do you suppose the 
other girls'd have kept the books any better'n I did?  
Why, Orma Fry don't hardly know a book from a flat-
iron! And what if I don't always sit round here doing 
nothing till it strikes five up at the church?  Who 
cares if the library's open or shut?  Do you suppose 
anybody ever comes here for books?  What they'd like to
come for is to meet the fellows they're going with if 
I'd let 'em.  But I wouldn't let Bill Sollas from over 
the hill hang round here waiting for the youngest 
Targatt girl, because I know him...that's all...even if 
I don't know about books all I ought to...."

She stopped with a choking in her throat.  Tremors of 
rage were running through her, and she steadied herself 
against the edge of the desk lest he should see her 
weakness.

What he saw seemed to affect him deeply, for he grew 
red under his sunburn, and stammered out:  "But, Miss 
Royall, I assure you...I assure you..."

His distress inflamed her anger, and she regained her 
voice to fling back:  "If I was you I'd have the nerve 
to stick to what I said!"

The taunt seemed to restore his presence of mind.  "I 
hope I should if I knew; but I don't.  Apparently
something disagreeable has happened, for which you 
think I'm to blame.  But I don't know what it is, 
because I've been up on Eagle Ridge ever since the 
early morning."

"I don't know where you've been this morning, but I 
know you were here in this library yesterday; and it 
was you that went home and told your cousin the books 
were in bad shape, and brought her round to see how I'd 
neglected them."

Young Harney looked sincerely concerned.  "Was that 
what you were told?  I don't wonder you're angry.  The 
books are in bad shape, and as some are interesting 
it's a pity.  I told Miss Hatchard they were suffering 
from dampness and lack of air; and I brought her here 
to show her how easily the place could be ventilated.  I 
also told her you ought to have some one to help you do 
the dusting and airing.  If you were given a wrong 
version of what I said I'm sorry; but I'm so fond of 
old books that I'd rather see them made into a bonfire
than left to moulder away like these."

Charity felt her sobs rising and tried to stifle them 
in words.  "I don't care what you say you told her.  All 
I know is she thinks it's all my fault, and I'm going 
to lose my job, and I wanted it more'n anyone in the 
village, because I haven't got anybody belonging to me, 
the way other folks have.  All I wanted was to put 
aside money enough to get away from here sometime.  
D'you suppose if it hadn't been for that I'd have kept 
on sitting day after day in this old vault?"

Of this appeal her hearer took up only the last 
question.  "It is an old vault; but need it be?  That's 
the point.  And it's my putting the question to my 
cousin that seems to have been the cause of the 
trouble."  His glance explored the melancholy penumbra 
of the long narrow room, resting on the blotched walls, 
the discoloured rows of books, and the stern rosewood 
desk surmounted by the portrait of the young Honorius.  
"Of course it's a bad job to do anything with a
building jammed against a hill like this ridiculous 
mausoleum:  you couldn't get a good draught through it 
without blowing a hole in the mountain.  But it can be 
ventilated after a fashion, and the sun can be let in:  
I'll show you how if you like...."  The architect's 
passion for improvement had already made him lose sight 
of her grievance, and he lifted his stick instructively 
toward the cornice.  But her silence seemed to tell him 
that she took no interest in the ventilation of the 
library, and turning back to her abruptly he held out 
both hands.  "Look here--you don't mean what you said?  
You don't really think I'd do anything to hurt you?"

A new note in his voice disarmed her:  no one had ever 
spoken to her in that tone.

"Oh, what DID you do it for then?" she wailed.  He 
had her hands in his, and she was feeling the smooth 
touch that she had imagined the day before on the 
hillside.

He pressed her hands lightly and let them go.  "Why, to 
make things pleasanter for you here; and better for the 
books.  I'm sorry if my cousin twisted around what I 
said.  She's excitable, and she lives on trifles:  I 
ought to have remembered that.  Don't punish me by 
letting her think you take her seriously."

It was wonderful to hear him speak of Miss Hatchard as 
if she were a querulous baby:  in spite of his shyness 
he had the air of power that the experience of cities 
probably gave.  It was the fact of having lived in 
Nettleton that made lawyer Royall, in spite of his 
infirmities, the strongest man in North Dormer; and 
Charity was sure that this young man had lived in 
bigger places than Nettleton.

She felt that if she kept up her denunciatory tone he 
would secretly class her with Miss Hatchard; and the 
thought made her suddenly simple.

"It don't matter to Miss Hatchard how I take her.  Mr.
Royall says she's going to get a trained librarian; and 
I'd sooner resign than have the village say she sent me 
away."

"Naturally you would.  But I'm sure she doesn't mean to 
send you away.  At any rate, won't you give me the 
chance to find out first and let you know?  It will be 
time enough to resign if I'm mistaken."

Her pride flamed into her cheeks at the suggestion of 
his intervening.  "I don't want anybody should coax her 
to keep me if I don't suit."

He coloured too.  "I give you my word I won't do that.  
Only wait till tomorrow, will you?" He looked straight 
into her eyes with his shy grey glance.  "You can trust 
me, you know--you really can."

All the old frozen woes seemed to melt in her, and she 
murmured awkwardly, looking away from him:  "Oh, I'll 
wait."



V


There had never been such a June in Eagle County.  
Usually it was a month of moods, with abrupt 
alternations of belated frost and mid-summer heat; this 
year, day followed day in a sequence of temperate 
beauty.  Every morning a breeze blew steadily from the 
hills.  Toward noon it built up great canopies of
white cloud that threw a cool shadow over fields and 
woods; then before sunset the clouds dissolved again, 
and the western light rained its unobstructed 
brightness on the valley.

On such an afternoon Charity Royall lay on a ridge 
above a sunlit hollow, her face pressed to the earth 
and the warm currents of the grass running through her.  
Directly in her line of vision a blackberry branch laid
its frail white flowers and blue-green leaves against 
the sky.  Just beyond, a tuft of sweet-fern uncurled 
between the beaded shoots of the grass, and a small 
yellow butterfly vibrated over them like a fleck of 
sunshine.  This was all she saw; but she felt, above 
her and about her, the strong growth of the beeches 
clothing the ridge, the rounding of pale green cones on
countless spruce-branches, the push of myriads of 
sweet-fern fronds in the cracks of the stony slope 
below the wood, and the crowding shoots of meadowsweet 
and yellow flags in the pasture beyond.  All this 
bubbling of sap and slipping of sheaths and bursting of 
calyxes was carried to her on mingled currents of 
fragrance.  Every leaf and bud and blade seemed to 
contribute its exhalation to the pervading sweetness in 
which the pungency of pine-sap prevailed over the spice 
of thyme and the subtle perfume of fern, and all were 
merged in a moist earth-smell that was like the breath 
of some huge sun-warmed animal.

Charity had lain there a long time, passive and sun-
warmed as the slope on which she lay, when there came 
between her eyes and the dancing butterfly the sight of 
a man's foot in a large worn boot covered with red mud.

"Oh, don't!" she exclaimed, raising herself on her 
elbow and stretching out a warning hand.

"Don't what?" a hoarse voice asked above her head.

"Don't stamp on those bramble flowers, you dolt!" she 
retorted, springing to her knees.  The foot paused and 
then descended clumsily on the frail branch, and 
raising her eyes she saw above her the bewildered face 
of a slouching man with a thin sunburnt beard, and 
white arms showing through his ragged shirt.

"Don't you ever SEE anything, Liff Hyatt?" she 
assailed him, as he stood before her with the look of a 
man who has stirred up a wasp's nest.

He grinned.  "I seen you! That's what I come down for."

"Down from where?" she questioned, stooping to gather 
up the petals his foot had scattered.

He jerked his thumb toward the heights.  "Been cutting 
down trees for Dan Targatt."

Charity sank back on her heels and looked at him 
musingly.  She was not in the least afraid of poor Liff 
Hyatt, though he "came from the Mountain," and some of 
the girls ran when they saw him.  Among the more 
reasonable he passed for a harmless creature, a sort of 
link between the mountain and civilized folk, who 
occasionally came down and did a little wood cutting 
for a farmer when hands were short.  Besides, she knew 
the Mountain people would never hurt her:  Liff himself 
had told her so once when she was a little girl, and 
had met him one day at the edge of lawyer Royall's 
pasture.  "They won't any of 'em touch you up there, 
f'ever you was to come up....But I don't s'pose you 
will," he had added philosophically, looking at her new
shoes, and at the red ribbon that Mrs. Royall had tied 
in her hair.

Charity had, in truth, never felt any desire to visit 
her birthplace.  She did not care to have it known that 
she was of the Mountain, and was shy of being seen in 
talk with Liff Hyatt.  But today she was not sorry to 
have him appear.  A great many things had happened to 
her since the day when young Lucius Harney had entered 
the doors of the Hatchard Memorial, but none, perhaps, 
so unforeseen as the fact of her suddenly finding it a 
convenience to be on good terms with Liff Hyatt.  She 
continued to look up curiously at his freckled weather-
beaten face, with feverish hollows below the cheekbones 
and the pale yellow eyes of a harmless animal.  "I 
wonder if he's related to me?" she thought, with a 
shiver of disdain.

"Is there any folks living in the brown house by the 
swamp, up under Porcupine?" she presently asked in an 
indifferent tone.

Liff Hyatt, for a while, considered her with surprise; 
then he scratched his head and shifted his weight from 
one tattered sole to the other.

"There's always the same folks in the brown house," he 
said with his vague grin.

"They're from up your way, ain't they?"

"Their name's the same as mine," he rejoined 
uncertainly.

Charity still held him with resolute eyes.  "See here, 
I want to go there some day and take a gentleman with 
me that's boarding with us.  He's up in these parts 
drawing pictures."

She did not offer to explain this statement.  It was 
too far beyond Liff Hyatt's limitations for the attempt 
to be worth making.  "He wants to see the brown house,
and go all over it," she pursued.

Liff was still running his fingers perplexedly through 
his shock of straw-colored hair.  "Is it a fellow from 
the city?" he asked.

"Yes.  He draws pictures of things.  He's down there 
now drawing the Bonner house."  She pointed to a chimney 
just visible over the dip of the pasture below the 
wood.

"The Bonner house?" Liff echoed incredulously.

"Yes.  You won't understand--and it don't matter.  All 
I say is:  he's going to the Hyatts' in a day or two."

Liff looked more and more perplexed.  "Bash is ugly 
sometimes in the afternoons."

She threw her head back, her eyes full on Hyatt's.  "I'm 
coming too:  you tell him."

"They won't none of them trouble you, the Hyatts won't.  
What d'you want a take a stranger with you though?"

I've told you, haven't I?  You've got to tell Bash 
Hyatt."

He looked away at the blue mountains on the horizon; 
then his gaze dropped to the chimney-top below the 
pasture.

"He's down there now?"

"Yes."

He shifted his weight again, crossed his arms, and 
continued to survey the distant landscape.  "Well, so 
long," he said at last, inconclusively; and turning 
away he shambled up the hillside.  From the ledge above 
her, he paused to call down:  "I wouldn't go there a 
Sunday"; then he clambered on till the trees closed in
on him.  Presently, from high overhead, Charity heard 
the ring of his axe.

She lay on the warm ridge, thinking of many things that 
the woodsman's appearance had stirred up in her.  She 
knew nothing of her early life, and had never felt any 
curiosity about it:  only a sullen reluctance to explore 
the corner of her memory where certain blurred images 
lingered.  But all that had happened to her within the 
last few weeks had stirred her to the sleeping depths.  
She had become absorbingly interesting to herself, and 
everything that had to do with her past was illuminated 
by this sudden curiosity.

She hated more than ever the fact of coming from the 
Mountain; but it was no longer indifferent to her.  
Everything that in any way affected her was alive and 
vivid:  even the hateful things had grown interesting 
because they were a part of herself.

"I wonder if Liff Hyatt knows who my mother was?" she
mused; and it filled her with a tremor of surprise to 
think that some woman who was once young and slight, 
with quick motions of the blood like hers, had carried 
her in her breast, and watched her sleeping.  She had 
always thought of her mother as so long dead as to be 
no more than a nameless pinch of earth; but now it 
occurred to her that the once-young woman might be 
alive, and wrinkled and elf-locked like the woman she 
had sometimes seen in the door of the brown house that 
Lucius Harney wanted to draw.

The thought brought him back to the central point in 
her mind, and she strayed away from the conjectures 
roused by Liff Hyatt's presence.  Speculations 
concerning the past could not hold her long when the 
present was so rich, the future so rosy, and when 
Lucius Harney, a stone's throw away, was bending over 
his sketch-book, frowning, calculating, measuring, and 
then throwing his head back with the sudden smile that 
had shed its brightness over everything.

She scrambled to her feet, but as she did so she saw 
him coming up the pasture and dropped down on the grass 
to wait.  When he was drawing and measuring one of "his 
houses," as she called them, she often strayed away by 
herself into the woods or up the hillside.  It was 
partly from shyness that she did so:  from a sense of 
inadequacy that came to her most painfully when her 
companion, absorbed in his job, forgot her ignorance 
and her inability to follow his least allusion, and 
plunged into a monologue on art and life.  To avoid the 
awkwardness of listening with a blank face, and also to 
escape the surprised stare of the inhabitants of the 
houses before which he would abruptly pull up their 
horse and open his sketch-book, she slipped away to 
some spot from which, without being seen, she could 
watch him at work, or at least look down on the house 
he was drawing.  She had not been displeased, at first, 
to have it known to North Dormer and the neighborhood 
that she was driving Miss Hatchard's cousin about the 
country in the buggy he had hired of lawyer Royall.  
She had always kept to herself, contemptuously aloof
from village love-making, without exactly knowing 
whether her fierce pride was due to the sense of her 
tainted origin, or whether she was reserving herself 
for a more brilliant fate.  Sometimes she envied the 
other girls their sentimental preoccupations, their 
long hours of inarticulate philandering with one of the 
few youths who still lingered in the village; but when 
she pictured herself curling her hair or putting a new 
ribbon on her hat for Ben Fry or one of the Sollas boys 
the fever dropped and she relapsed into indifference.

Now she knew the meaning of her disdains and 
reluctances.  She had learned what she was worth when 
Lucius Harney, looking at her for the first time, had 
lost the thread of his speech, and leaned reddening on 
the edge of her desk.  But another kind of shyness had 
been born in her:  a terror of exposing to vulgar perils 
the sacred treasure of her happiness.  She was not 
sorry to have the neighbors suspect her of "going with" 
a young man from the city; but she did not want it 
known to all the countryside how many hours of the long
June days she spent with him.  What she most feared was 
that the inevitable comments should reach Mr. Royall.  
Charity was instinctively aware that few things 
concerning her escaped the eyes of the silent man under 
whose roof she lived; and in spite of the latitude 
which North Dormer accorded to courting couples she had 
always felt that, on the day when she showed too open a 
preference, Mr. Royall might, as she phrased it, make 
her "pay for it."  How, she did not know; and her fear 
was the greater because it was undefinable.  If she had 
been accepting the attentions of one of the village 
youths she would have been less apprehensive:  Mr. 
Royall could not prevent her marrying when she chose 
to.  But everybody knew that "going with a city fellow" 
was a different and less straightforward affair:  almost 
every village could show a victim of the perilous
venture.  And her dread of Mr. Royall's intervention 
gave a sharpened joy to the hours she spent with young 
Harney, and made her, at the same time, shy of being 
too generally seen with him.

As he approached she rose to her knees, stretching her 
arms above her head with the indolent gesture that was 
her way of expressing a profound well-being.

"I'm going to take you to that house up under 
Porcupine," she announced.

"What house?  Oh, yes; that ramshackle place near the 
swamp, with the gipsy-looking people hanging about.  
It's curious that a house with traces of real 
architecture should have been built in such a place.  
But the people were a sulky-looking lot--do you suppose 
they'll let us in?"

"They'll do whatever I tell them," she said with 
assurance.

He threw himself down beside her.  "Will they?" he 
rejoined with a smile.  "Well, I should like to see 
what's left inside the house.  And I should like to 
have a talk with the people.  Who was it who was
telling me the other day that they had come down from 
the Mountain?"

Charity shot a sideward look at him.  It was the first 
time he had spoken of the Mountain except as a feature 
of the landscape.  What else did he know about it, and 
about her relation to it?  Her heart began to beat with 
the fierce impulse of resistance which she 
instinctively opposed to every imagined slight.

"The Mountain?  I ain't afraid of the Mountain!"

Her tone of defiance seemed to escape him.  He lay 
breast-down on the grass, breaking off sprigs of thyme 
and pressing them against his lips.  Far off, above the 
folds of the nearer hills, the Mountain thrust itself 
up menacingly against a yellow sunset.

"I must go up there some day:  I want to see it," he 
continued.

Her heart-beats slackened and she turned again to 
examine his profile.  It was innocent of all unfriendly 
intention.

"What'd you want to go up the Mountain for?" 

"Why, it must be rather a curious place.  There's a 
queer colony up there, you know:  sort of out-laws, a 
little independent kingdom.  Of course you've heard 
them spoken of; but I'm told they have nothing to do 
with the people in the valleys--rather look down on 
them, in fact.  I suppose they're rough customers; but 
they must have a good deal of character."

She did not quite know what he meant by having a good 
deal of character; but his tone was expressive of 
admiration, and deepened her dawning curiosity.  It 
struck her now as strange that she knew so little about 
the Mountain.  She had never asked, and no one had ever 
offered to enlighten her.  North Dormer took the 
Mountain for granted, and implied its disparagement by
an intonation rather than by explicit criticism.

"It's queer, you know," he continued, "that, just over 
there, on top of that hill, there should be a handful 
of people who don't give a damn for anybody."

The words thrilled her.  They seemed the clue to her 
own revolts and defiances, and she longed to have him 
tell her more.

"I don't know much about them.  Have they always been 
there?"

"Nobody seems to know exactly how long.  Down at 
Creston they told me that the first colonists are 
supposed to have been men who worked on the railway 
that was built forty or fifty years ago between 
Springfield and Nettleton.  Some of them took to drink, 
or got into trouble with the police, and went off--
disappeared into the woods.  A year or two later there 
was a report that they were living up on the Mountain.
Then I suppose others joined them--and children were 
born.  Now they say there are over a hundred people up 
there.  They seem to be quite outside the jurisdiction 
of the valleys.  No school, no church--and no sheriff 
ever goes up to see what they're about.  But don't 
people ever talk of them at North Dormer?"

"I don't know.  They say they're bad."

He laughed.  "Do they?  We'll go and see, shall we?"

She flushed at the suggestion, and turned her face to 
his.  "You never heard, I suppose--I come from there.  
They brought me down when I was little."

"You?" He raised himself on his elbow, looking at her 
with sudden interest.  "You're from the Mountain?  How 
curious! I suppose that's why you're so different...."

Her happy blood bathed her to the forehead.  He was 
praising her--and praising her because she came from
the Mountain!

"Am I...different?" she triumphed, with affected 
wonder.

"Oh, awfully!" He picked up her hand and laid a kiss on 
the sunburnt knuckles.

"Come," he said, "let's be off."  He stood up and shook 
the grass from his loose grey clothes.  "What a good 
day! Where are you going to take me tomorrow?"



VI


That evening after supper Charity sat alone in the 
kitchen and listened to Mr. Royall and young Harney 
talking in the porch.

She had remained indoors after the table had been 
cleared and old Verena had hobbled up to bed.  The 
kitchen window was open, and Charity seated herself 
near it, her idle hands on her knee.  The evening was 
cool and still.  Beyond the black hills an amber west 
passed into pale green, and then to a deep blue in 
which a great star hung.  The soft hoot of a little owl 
came through the dusk, and between its calls the men's 
voices rose and fell.

Mr. Royall's was full of a sonorous satisfaction.  It 
was a long time since he had had anyone of Lucius 
Harney's quality to talk to:  Charity divined that the 
young man symbolized all his ruined and unforgotten 
past.  When Miss Hatchard had been called to 
Springfield by the illness of a widowed sister, and 
young Harney, by that time seriously embarked on his 
task of drawing and measuring all the old houses 
between Nettleton and the New Hampshire border, had 
suggested the possibility of boarding at the red house 
in his cousin's absence, Charity had trembled lest Mr.
Royall should refuse.  There had been no question of 
lodging the young man:  there was no room for him.  But 
it appeared that he could still live at Miss Hatchard's 
if Mr. Royall would let him take his meals at the red 
house; and after a day's deliberation Mr. Royall 
consented.

Charity suspected him of being glad of the chance to 
make a little money.  He had the reputation of being an 
avaricious man; but she was beginning to think he was 
probably poorer than people knew.  His practice had 
become little more than a vague legend, revived only at 
lengthening intervals by a summons to Hepburn or 
Nettleton; and he appeared to depend for his living 
mainly on the scant produce of his farm, and on the 
commissions received from the few insurance agencies 
that he represented in the neighbourhood.  At any rate, 
he had been prompt in accepting Harney's offer to hire 
the buggy at a dollar and a half a day; and his 
satisfaction with the bargain had manifested itself, 
unexpectedly enough, at the end of the first week, by
his tossing a ten-dollar bill into Charity's lap as she 
sat one day retrimming her old hat.

"Here--go get yourself a Sunday bonnet that'll make all 
the other girls mad," he said, looking at her with a 
sheepish twinkle in his deep-set eyes; and she 
immediately guessed that the unwonted present--the only 
gift of money she had ever received from him--
represented Harney's first payment.

But the young man's coming had brought Mr. Royall other 
than pecuniary benefit.  It gave him, for the first 
time in years, a man's companionship.  Charity had only 
a dim understanding of her guardian's needs; but she 
knew he felt himself above the people among whom he 
lived, and she saw that Lucius Harney thought him so.  
She was surprised to find how well he seemed to talk 
now that he had a listener who understood him; and she 
was equally struck by young Harney's friendly 
deference.

Their conversation was mostly about politics, and
beyond her range; but tonight it had a peculiar
interest for her, for they had begun to speak of the
Mountain.  She drew back a little, lest they should see
she was in hearing.

"The Mountain?  The Mountain?" she heard Mr. Royall say.
"Why, the Mountain's a blot--that's what it is, sir, a 
blot.  That scum up there ought to have been run in 
long ago--and would have, if the people down here 
hadn't been clean scared of them.  The Mountain belongs 
to this township, and it's North Dormer's fault if 
there's a gang of thieves and outlaws living over 
there, in sight of us, defying the laws of their 
country.  Why, there ain't a sheriff or a tax-collector 
or a coroner'd durst go up there.  When they hear of 
trouble on the Mountain the selectmen look the other 
way, and pass an appropriation to beautify the town 
pump.  The only man that ever goes up is the minister, 
and he goes because they send down and get him whenever 
there's any of them dies.  They think a lot of
Christian burial on the Mountain--but I never heard of 
their having the minister up to marry them.  And they 
never trouble the Justice of the Peace either.  They 
just herd together like the heathen."

He went on, explaining in somewhat technical language 
how the little colony of squatters had contrived to
keep the law at bay, and Charity, with burning 
eagerness, awaited young Harney's comment; but the 
young man seemed more concerned to hear Mr. Royall's 
views than to express his own.

"I suppose you've never been up there yourself?" he 
presently asked.

"Yes, I have," said Mr. Royall with a contemptuous 
laugh.  "The wiseacres down here told me I'd be done 
for before I got back; but nobody lifted a finger to 
hurt me.  And I'd just had one of their gang sent up 
for seven years too."

"You went up after that?"

"Yes, sir:  right after it.  The fellow came down to 
Nettleton and ran amuck, the way they sometimes do.  
After they've done a wood-cutting job they come down 
and blow the money in; and this man ended up with 
manslaughter.  I got him convicted, though they were
scared of the Mountain even at Nettleton; and then a 
queer thing happened.  The fellow sent for me to go and 
see him in gaol.  I went, and this is what he says:  
'The fool that defended me is a chicken-livered son of 
a--and all the rest of it,' he says.  'I've got a job 
to be done for me up on the Mountain, and you're the 
only man I seen in court that looks as if he'd do it.' 
He told me he had a child up there--or thought he had--
a little girl; and he wanted her brought down and 
reared like a Christian.  I was sorry for the fellow, 
so I went up and got the child."  He paused, and Charity 
listened with a throbbing heart.  "That's the only time 
I ever went up the Mountain," he concluded.

There was a moment's silence; then Harney spoke.  "And 
the child--had she no mother?"

"Oh, yes:  there was a mother.  But she was glad enough 
to have her go.  She'd have given her to anybody.  They 
ain't half human up there.  I guess the mother's dead 
by now, with the life she was leading.  Anyhow, I've
never heard of her from that day to this."

"My God, how ghastly," Harney murmured; and Charity, 
choking with humiliation, sprang to her feet and ran 
upstairs.  She knew at last:  knew that she was the 
child of a drunken convict and of a mother who wasn't 
"half human," and was glad to have her go; and she had 
heard this history of her origin related to the one 
being in whose eyes she longed to appear superior to 
the people about her! She had noticed that Mr. Royall 
had not named her, had even avoided any allusion that 
might identify her with the child he had brought down 
from the Mountain; and she knew it was out of regard 
for her that he had kept silent.  But of what use was 
his discretion, since only that afternoon, misled by 
Harney's interest in the out-law colony, she had 
boasted to him of coming from the Mountain?  Now every 
word that had been spoken showed her how such an origin 
must widen the distance between them.

During his ten days' sojourn at North Dormer Lucius
Harney had not spoken a word of love to her.  He had 
intervened in her behalf with his cousin, and had 
convinced Miss Hatchard of her merits as a librarian; 
but that was a simple act of justice, since it was by 
his own fault that those merits had been questioned.  He 
had asked her to drive him about the country when he
hired lawyer Royall's buggy to go on his sketching 
expeditions; but that too was natural enough, since he 
was unfamiliar with the region.  Lastly, when his 
cousin was called to Springfield, he had begged Mr. 
Royall to receive him as a boarder; but where else in 
North Dormer could he have boarded?  Not with Carrick 
Fry, whose wife was paralysed, and whose large family 
crowded his table to over-flowing; not with the 
Targatts, who lived a mile up the road, nor with poor 
old Mrs. Hawes, who, since her eldest daughter had
deserted her, barely had the strength to cook her own 
meals while Ally picked up her living as a seamstress.  
Mr. Royall's was the only house where the young man 
could have been offered a decent hospitality.  There 
had been nothing, therefore, in the outward course of
events to raise in Charity's breast the hopes with 
which it trembled.  But beneath the visible incidents 
resulting from Lucius Harney's arrival there ran an 
undercurrent as mysterious and potent as the influence 
that makes the forest break into leaf before the ice is 
off the pools.

The business on which Harney had come was authentic; 
Charity had seen the letter from a New York publisher 
commissioning him to make a study of the eighteenth 
century houses in the less familiar districts of New 
England.  But incomprehensible as the whole affair was 
to her, and hard as she found it to understand why he 
paused enchanted before certain neglected and paintless 
houses, while others, refurbished and "improved" by the 
local builder, did not arrest a glance, she could not 
but suspect that Eagle County was less rich in 
architecture than he averred, and that the duration of 
his stay (which he had fixed at a month) was not 
unconnected with the look in his eyes when he had first 
paused before her in the library.  Everything that had
followed seemed to have grown out of that look:  his way 
of speaking to her, his quickness in catching her 
meaning, his evident eagerness to prolong their 
excursions and to seize on every chance of being with 
her.

The signs of his liking were manifest enough; but it 
was hard to guess how much they meant, because his 
manner was so different from anything North Dormer had 
ever shown her.  He was at once simpler and more 
deferential than any one she had known; and sometimes 
it was just when he was simplest that she most felt the 
distance between them.  Education and opportunity had 
divided them by a width that no effort of hers could 
bridge, and even when his youth and his admiration 
brought him nearest, some chance word, some unconscious 
allusion, seemed to thrust her back across the gulf.

Never had it yawned so wide as when she fled up to her 
room carrying with her the echo of Mr. Royall's tale.  
Her first confused thought was the prayer that she
might never see young Harney again.  It was too 
bitter to picture him as the detached impartial 
listener to such a story.  "I wish he'd go away:  I 
wish he'd go tomorrow, and never come back!" she moaned 
to her pillow; and far into the night she lay there, in 
the disordered dress she had forgotten to take off, her 
whole soul a tossing misery on which her hopes and 
dreams spun about like drowning straws.



Of all this tumult only a vague heart-soreness was left 
when she opened her eyes the next morning.  Her first 
thought was of the weather, for Harney had asked her to 
take him to the brown house under Porcupine, and then 
around by Hamblin; and as the trip was a long one they 
were to start at nine.  The sun rose without a cloud, 
and earlier than usual she was in the kitchen, making 
cheese sandwiches, decanting buttermilk into a bottle, 
wrapping up slices of apple pie, and accusing Verena of 
having given away a basket she needed, which had always
hung on a hook in the passage.  When she came out into 
the porch, in her pink calico, which had run a little 
in the washing, but was still bright enough to set off 
her dark tints, she had such a triumphant sense of 
being a part of the sunlight and the morning that 
the last trace of her misery vanished.  What did it 
matter where she came from, or whose child she was, 
when love was dancing in her veins, and down the road 
she saw young Harney coming toward her?

Mr. Royall was in the porch too.  He had said nothing 
at breakfast, but when she came out in her pink dress, 
the basket in her hand, he looked at her with surprise.  
"Where you going to?" he asked.

"Why--Mr. Harney's starting earlier than usual today," 
she answered.

"Mr. Harney, Mr. Harney?  Ain't Mr. Harney learned how 
to drive a horse yet?"

She made no answer, and he sat tilted back in his 
chair, drumming on the rail of the porch.  It was the 
first time he had ever spoken of the young man in that 
tone, and Charity felt a faint chill of apprehension.  
After a moment he stood up and walked away toward the 
bit of ground behind the house, where the hired man was 
hoeing.

The air was cool and clear, with the autumnal sparkle 
that a north wind brings to the hills in early summer, 
and the night had been so still that the dew hung on 
everything, not as a lingering moisture, but in 
separate beads that glittered like diamonds on the 
ferns and grasses.  It was a long drive to the foot of 
Porcupine:  first across the valley, with blue hills 
bounding the open slopes; then down into the beech-
woods, following the course of the Creston, a brown 
brook leaping over velvet ledges; then out again onto 
the farm-lands about Creston Lake, and gradually up the 
ridges of the Eagle Range.  At last they reached the 
yoke of the hills, and before them opened another
valley, green and wild, and beyond it more blue heights 
eddying away to the sky like the waves of a receding 
tide.

Harney tied the horse to a tree-stump, and they 
unpacked their basket under an aged walnut with a riven 
trunk out of which bumblebees darted.  The sun had 
grown hot, and behind them was the noonday murmur of 
the forest.  Summer insects danced on the air, and a 
flock of white butterflies fanned the mobile tips of 
the crimson fireweed.  In the valley below not a house 
was visible; it seemed as if Charity Royall and young 
Harney were the only living beings in the great hollow 
of earth and sky.

Charity's spirits flagged and disquieting thoughts 
stole back on her.  Young Harney had grown silent, 
and as he lay beside her, his arms under his head, his 
eyes on the network of leaves above him, she wondered 
if he were musing on what Mr. Royall had told him, and 
if it had really debased her in his thoughts.  She 
wished he had not asked her to take him that day to the 
brown house; she did not want him to see the people she 
came from while the story of her birth was fresh in his 
mind.  More than once she had been on the point of 
suggesting that they should follow the ridge and drive 
straight to Hamblin, where there was a little deserted 
house he wanted to see; but shyness and pride held her 
back.  "He'd better know what kind of folks I belong 
to," she said to herself, with a somewhat forced 
defiance; for in reality it was shame that kept her 
silent.

Suddenly she lifted her hand and pointed to the sky.  
"There's a storm coming up."

He followed her glance and smiled.  "Is it that scrap 
of cloud among the pines that frightens you?"

"It's over the Mountain; and a cloud over the Mountain 
always means trouble."

"Oh, I don't believe half the bad things you all 
say of the Mountain! But anyhow, we'll get down to 
the brown house before the rain comes."

He was not far wrong, for only a few isolated drops had 
fallen when they turned into the road under the shaggy 
flank of Porcupine, and came upon the brown house.  It 
stood alone beside a swamp bordered with alder thickets 
and tall bulrushes.  Not another dwelling was in sight, 
and it was hard to guess what motive could have 
actuated the early settler who had made his home in so 
unfriendly a spot.

Charity had picked up enough of her companion's 
erudition to understand what had attracted him to the 
house.  She noticed the fan-shaped tracery of the 
broken light above the door, the flutings of the 
paintless pilasters at the corners, and the round 
window set in the gable; and she knew that, for reasons 
that still escaped her, these were things to be admired 
and recorded.  Still, they had seen other houses far 
more "typical" (the word was Harney's); and as he threw 
the reins on the horse's neck he said with a slight 
shiver of repugnance:  "We won't stay long."

Against the restless alders turning their white lining 
to the storm the house looked singularly desolate.  
The paint was almost gone from the clap-boards, the 
window-panes were broken and patched with rags, and the 
garden was a poisonous tangle of nettles, burdocks and 
tall swamp-weeds over which big blue-bottles hummed.

At the sound of wheels a child with a tow-head and pale 
eyes like Liff Hyatt's peered over the fence and then 
slipped away behind an out-house.  Harney jumped down 
and helped Charity out; and as he did so the rain broke 
on them.  It came slant-wise, on a furious gale, laying 
shrubs and young trees flat, tearing off their leaves 
like an autumn storm, turning the road into a river, 
and making hissing pools of every hollow.  Thunder 
rolled incessantly through the roar of the rain, and a 
strange glitter of light ran along the ground under the 
increasing blackness.

"Lucky we're here after all," Harney laughed.  He 
fastened the horse under a half-roofless shed, and 
wrapping Charity in his coat ran with her to the house.  
The boy had not reappeared, and as there was no 
response to their knocks Harney turned the door-handle 
and they went in.

There were three people in the kitchen to which the 
door admitted them.  An old woman with a 
handkerchief over her head was sitting by the 
window.  She held a sickly-looking kitten on her knees, 
and whenever it jumped down and tried to limp away she 
stooped and lifted it back without any change of her 
aged, unnoticing face.  Another woman, the unkempt 
creature that Charity had once noticed in driving by, 
stood leaning against the window-frame and stared at 
them; and near the stove an unshaved man in a tattered 
shirt sat on a barrel asleep.

The place was bare and miserable and the air heavy with 
the smell of dirt and stale tobacco.  Charity's heart 
sank.  Old derided tales of the Mountain people came 
back to her, and the woman's stare was so 
disconcerting, and the face of the sleeping man so 
sodden and bestial, that her disgust was tinged with a 
vague dread.  She was not afraid for herself; she knew 
the Hyatts would not be likely to trouble her; but she 
was not sure how they would treat a "city fellow."

Lucius Harney would certainly have laughed at her 
fears.  He glanced about the room, uttered a general 
"How are you?" to which no one responded, and then 
asked the younger woman if they might take shelter till 
the storm was over.

She turned her eyes away from him and looked at 
Charity.

"You're the girl from Royall's, ain't you?"

The colour rose in Charity's face.  "I'm Charity 
Royall," she said, as if asserting her right to the 
name in the very place where it might have been most 
open to question.

The woman did not seem to notice.  "You kin stay," she 
merely said; then she turned away and stooped over a 
dish in which she was stirring something.

Harney and Charity sat down on a bench made of a board 
resting on two starch boxes.  They faced a door hanging 
on a broken hinge, and through the crack they saw the 
eyes of the tow-headed boy and of a pale little girl 
with a scar across her cheek.  Charity smiled, and 
signed to the children to come in; but as soon as they 
saw they were discovered they slipped away on bare 
feet.  It occurred to her that they were afraid of 
rousing the sleeping man; and probably the woman shared 
their fear, for she moved about as noiselessly and 
avoided going near the stove.

The rain continued to beat against the house, and in 
one or two places it sent a stream through the 
patched panes and ran into pools on the floor.  
Every now and then the kitten mewed and struggled down, 
and the old woman stooped and caught it, holding it 
tight in her bony hands; and once or twice the man on 
the barrel half woke, changed his position and dozed 
again, his head falling forward on his hairy breast.  As 
the minutes passed, and the rain still streamed against 
the windows, a loathing of the place and the people 
came over Charity.  The sight of the weak-minded old 
woman, of the cowed children, and the ragged man 
sleeping off his liquor, made the setting of her own 
life seem a vision of peace and plenty.  She thought of 
the kitchen at Mr. Royall's, with its scrubbed floor 
and dresser full of china, and the peculiar smell of 
yeast and coffee and soft-soap that she had always 
hated, but that now seemed the very symbol of household 
order.  She saw Mr. Royall's room, with the high-backed 
horsehair chair, the faded rag carpet, the row of books 
on a shelf, the engraving of "The Surrender of 
Burgoyne" over the stove, and the mat with a brown and 
white spaniel on a moss-green border.  And then her 
mind travelled to Miss Hatchard's house, where all was 
freshness, purity and fragrance, and compared to which 
the red house had always seemed so poor and plain.  

"This is where I belong--this is where I belong," she 
kept repeating to herself; but the words had no meaning 
for her.  Every instinct and habit made her a stranger 
among these poor swamp-people living like vermin in 
their lair.  With all her soul she wished she had not 
yielded to Harney's curiosity, and brought him there.

The rain had drenched her, and she began to shiver 
under the thin folds of her dress.  The younger woman 
must have noticed it, for she went out of the room and 
came back with a broken tea-cup which she offered to 
Charity.  It was half full of whiskey, and Charity 
shook her head; but Harney took the cup and put his 
lips to it.  When he had set it down Charity saw him 
feel in his pocket and draw out a dollar; he hesitated 
a moment, and then put it back, and she guessed that he 
did not wish her to see him offering money to people 
she had spoken of as being her kin.

The sleeping man stirred, lifted his head and opened 
his eyes.  They rested vacantly for a moment on Charity 
and Harney, and then closed again, and his head 
drooped; but a look of anxiety came into the woman's 
face.  She glanced out of the window and then came 
up to Harney.  "I guess you better go along now," she 
said.  The young man understood and got to his feet.  
"Thank you," he said, holding out his hand.  She seemed 
not to notice the gesture, and turned away as they 
opened the door.

The rain was still coming down, but they hardly noticed 
it:  the pure air was like balm in their faces.  The 
clouds were rising and breaking, and between their 
edges the light streamed down from remote blue hollows.  
Harney untied the horse, and they drove off through the 
diminishing rain, which was already beaded with 
sunlight.

For a while Charity was silent, and her companion did 
not speak.  She looked timidly at his profile:  it was 
graver than usual, as though he too were oppressed by 
what they had seen.  Then she broke out abruptly:  
"Those people back there are the kind of folks I come 
from.  They may be my relations, for all I know."  She 
did not want him to think that she regretted having 
told him her story.

"Poor creatures," he rejoined.  "I wonder why they came 
down to that fever-hole."

She laughed ironically.  "To better themselves! It's 
worse up on the Mountain.  Bash Hyatt married the 
daughter of the farmer that used to own the brown 
house.  That was him by the stove, I suppose."

Harney seemed to find nothing to say and she went on:  
"I saw you take out a dollar to give to that poor 
woman.  Why did you put it back?"

He reddened, and leaned forward to flick a swamp-fly 
from the horse's neck.  "I wasn't sure----"

"Was it because you knew they were my folks, and 
thought I'd be ashamed to see you give them money?"

He turned to her with eyes full of reproach.  "Oh, 
Charity----" It was the first time he had ever called 
her by her name.  Her misery welled over.

"I ain't--I ain't ashamed.  They're my people, and I 
ain't ashamed of them," she sobbed.

"My dear..."  he murmured, putting his arm about her; 
and she leaned against him and wept out her pain.

It was too late to go around to Hamblin, and all the 
stars were out in a clear sky when they reached the 
North Dormer valley and drove up to the red house.



VII


SINCE her reinstatement in Miss Hatchard's favour 
Charity had not dared to curtail by a moment her hours 
of attendance at the library.  She even made a point of 
arriving before the time, and showed a laudable 
indignation when the youngest Targatt girl, who had 
been engaged to help in the cleaning and rearranging of 
the books, came trailing in late and neglected her task 
to peer through the window at the Sollas boy.  
Nevertheless, "library days" seemed more than ever 
irksome to Charity after her vivid hours of liberty; 
and she would have found it hard to set a good example 
to her subordinate if Lucius Harney had not been 
commissioned, before Miss Hatchard's departure, to 
examine with the local carpenter the best means of 
ventilating the "Memorial."

He was careful to prosecute this inquiry on the days 
when the library was open to the public; and Charity 
was therefore sure of spending part of the afternoon in 
his company.  The Targatt girl's presence, and the 
risk of being interrupted by some passer-by suddenly 
smitten with a thirst for letters, restricted their 
intercourse to the exchange of commonplaces; but there 
was a fascination to Charity in the contrast between 
these public civilities and their secret intimacy.

The day after their drive to the brown house was 
"library day," and she sat at her desk working at the 
revised catalogue, while the Targatt girl, one eye on 
the window, chanted out the titles of a pile of books.  
Charity's thoughts were far away, in the dismal house 
by the swamp, and under the twilight sky during the 
long drive home, when Lucius Harney had consoled her 
with endearing words.  That day, for the first time 
since he had been boarding with them, he had failed to 
appear as usual at the midday meal.  No message had 
come to explain his absence, and Mr. Royall, who was 
more than usually taciturn, had betrayed no surprise, 
and made no comment.  In itself this indifference was 
not particularly significant, for Mr. Royall, in common 
with most of his fellow-citizens, had a way of 
accepting events passively, as if he had long since 
come to the conclusion that no one who lived in North 
Dormer could hope to modify them.  But to Charity, 
in the reaction from her mood of passionate exaltation, 
there was something disquieting in his silence.  It was 
almost as if Lucius Harney had never had a part in 
their lives:  Mr. Royall's imperturbable indifference 
seemed to relegate him to the domain of unreality.

As she sat at work, she tried to shake off her 
disappointment at Harney's non-appearing.  Some 
trifling incident had probably kept him from joining 
them at midday; but she was sure he must be eager to 
see her again, and that he would not want to wait till 
they met at supper, between Mr. Royall and Verena.  She 
was wondering what his first words would be, and trying 
to devise a way of getting rid of the Targatt girl 
before he came, when she heard steps outside, and he 
walked up the path with Mr. Miles.

The clergyman from Hepburn seldom came to North Dormer 
except when he drove over to officiate at the old white 
church which, by an unusual chance, happened to belong 
to the Episcopal communion.  He was a brisk affable 
man, eager to make the most of the fact that a little 
nucleus of "church-people" had survived in the 
sectarian wilderness, and resolved to undermine the 
influence of the ginger-bread-coloured Baptist 
chapel at the other end of the village; but he was kept 
busy by parochial work at Hepburn, where there were 
paper-mills and saloons, and it was not often that he 
could spare time for North Dormer.

Charity, who went to the white church (like all the 
best people in North Dormer), admired Mr. Miles, and 
had even, during the memorable trip to Nettleton, 
imagined herself married to a man who had such a 
straight nose and such a beautiful way of speaking, and 
who lived in a brown-stone rectory covered with 
Virginia creeper.  It had been a shock to discover that 
the privilege was already enjoyed by a lady with 
crimped hair and a large baby; but the arrival of 
Lucius Harney had long since banished Mr. Miles from 
Charity's dreams, and as he walked up the path at 
Harney's side she saw him as he really was:  a fat 
middle-aged man with a baldness showing under his 
clerical hat, and spectacles on his Grecian nose.  She 
wondered what had called him to North Dormer on a 
weekday, and felt a little hurt that Harney should have 
brought him to the library.

It presently appeared that his presence there was due 
to Miss Hatchard.  He had been spending a few days 
at Springfield, to fill a friend's pulpit, and had been 
consulted by Miss Hatchard as to young Harney's plan 
for ventilating the "Memorial."  To lay hands on the 
Hatchard ark was a grave matter, and Miss Hatchard, 
always full of scruples about her scruples (it was 
Harney's phrase), wished to have Mr. Miles's opinion 
before deciding.

"I couldn't," Mr. Miles explained, "quite make out from 
your cousin what changes you wanted to make, and as the 
other trustees did not understand either I thought I 
had better drive over and take a look--though I'm 
sure," he added, turning his friendly spectacles on the 
young man, "that no one could be more competent--but of 
course this spot has its peculiar sanctity!"

"I hope a little fresh air won't desecrate it," Harney 
laughingly rejoined; and they walked to the other end 
of the library while he set forth his idea to the 
Rector.

Mr. Miles had greeted the two girls with his usual 
friendliness, but Charity saw that he was occupied with 
other things, and she presently became aware, by the 
scraps of conversation drifting over to her, that he 
was still under the charm of his visit to 
Springfield, which appeared to have been full of 
agreeable incidents.

"Ah, the Coopersons...yes, you know them, of course," 
she heard.  "That's a fine old house! And Ned Cooperson 
has collected some really remarkable impressionist 
pictures...."  The names he cited were unknown to 
Charity.  "Yes; yes; the Schaefer quartette played at 
Lyric Hall on Saturday evening; and on Monday I had the 
privilege of hearing them again at the Towers.  
Beautifully done...Bach and Beethoven...a lawn-party 
first...I saw Miss Balch several times, by the 
way...looking extremely handsome...."

Charity dropped her pencil and forgot to listen to the 
Targatt girl's sing-song.  Why had Mr. Miles suddenly 
brought up Annabel Balch's name?

"Oh, really?" she heard Harney rejoin; and, raising his 
stick, he pursued:  "You see, my plan is to move these 
shelves away, and open a round window in this wall, on 
the axis of the one under the pediment."

"I suppose she'll be coming up here later to stay with 
Miss Hatchard?" Mr. Miles went on, following on his 
train of thought; then, spinning about and tilting his 
head back:  "Yes, yes, I see--I understand:  that 
will give a draught without materially altering the 
look of things.  I can see no objection."

The discussion went on for some minutes, and gradually 
the two men moved back toward the desk.  Mr. Miles 
stopped again and looked thoughtfully at Charity.  
"Aren't you a little pale, my dear?  Not overworking?  
Mr. Harney tells me you and Mamie are giving the 
library a thorough overhauling."  He was always careful 
to remember his parishioners' Christian names, and at 
the right moment he bent his benignant spectacles on 
the Targatt girl.

Then he turned to Charity.  "Don't take things hard, my 
dear; don't take things hard.  Come down and see Mrs. 
Miles and me some day at Hepburn," he said, pressing 
her hand and waving a farewell to Mamie Targatt.  He 
went out of the library, and Harney followed him.

Charity thought she detected a look of constraint in 
Harney's eyes.  She fancied he did not want to be alone 
with her; and with a sudden pang she wondered if he 
repented the tender things he had said to her the night 
before.  His words had been more fraternal than lover-
like; but she had lost their exact sense in the 
caressing warmth of his voice.  He had made her feel 
that the fact of her being a waif from the Mountain was 
only another reason for holding her close and soothing 
her with consolatory murmurs; and when the drive was 
over, and she got out of the buggy, tired, cold, and 
aching with emotion, she stepped as if the ground were 
a sunlit wave and she the spray on its crest.

Why, then, had his manner suddenly changed, and why did 
he leave the library with Mr. Miles?  Her restless 
imagination fastened on the name of Annabel Balch:  from 
the moment it had been mentioned she fancied that 
Harney's expression had altered.  Annabel Balch at a 
garden-party at Springfield, looking "extremely 
handsome"...perhaps Mr. Miles had seen her there at the 
very moment when Charity and Harney were sitting in the 
Hyatts' hovel, between a drunkard and a half-witted old 
woman! Charity did not know exactly what a garden-party 
was, but her glimpse of the flower-edged lawns of 
Nettleton helped her to visualize the scene, and 
envious recollections of the "old things" which Miss 
Balch avowedly "wore out" when she came to North Dormer 
made it only too easy to picture her in her splendour.  
Charity understood what associations the name must 
have called up, and felt the uselessness of struggling 
against the unseen influences in Harney's life.

When she came down from her room for supper he was not 
there; and while she waited in the porch she recalled 
the tone in which Mr. Royall had commented the day 
before on their early start.  Mr. Royall sat at her 
side, his chair tilted back, his broad black boots with 
side-elastics resting against the lower bar of the 
railings.  His rumpled grey hair stood up above his 
forehead like the crest of an angry bird, and the 
leather-brown of his veined cheeks was blotched with 
red.  Charity knew that those red spots were the signs 
of a coming explosion.

Suddenly he said:  "Where's supper?  Has Verena Marsh 
slipped up again on her soda-biscuits?"

Charity threw a startled glance at him.  "I presume 
she's waiting for Mr. Harney."

"Mr. Harney, is she?  She'd better dish up, then.  He 
ain't coming."  He stood up, walked to the door, and 
called out, in the pitch necessary to penetrate the old 
woman's tympanum:  "Get along with the supper, Verena."

Charity was trembling with apprehension.  Something 
had happened--she was sure of it now--and Mr. Royall 
knew what it was.  But not for the world would she have 
gratified him by showing her anxiety.  She took her 
usual place, and he seated himself opposite, and poured 
out a strong cup of tea before passing her the tea-pot.  
Verena brought some scrambled eggs, and he piled his 
plate with them.  "Ain't you going to take any?" he 
asked.  Charity roused herself and began to eat.

The tone with which Mr. Royall had said "He's not 
coming" seemed to her full of an ominous satisfaction.  
She saw that he had suddenly begun to hate Lucius 
Harney, and guessed herself to be the cause of this 
change of feeling.  But she had no means of finding out 
whether some act of hostility on his part had made the 
young man stay away, or whether he simply wished to 
avoid seeing her again after their drive back from the 
brown house.  She ate her supper with a studied show of 
indifference, but she knew that Mr. Royall was watching 
her and that her agitation did not escape him.

After supper she went up to her room.  She heard Mr. 
Royall cross the passage, and presently the sounds 
below her window showed that he had returned to the 
porch.  She seated herself on her bed and began to 
struggle against the desire to go down and ask him what 
had happened.  "I'd rather die than do it," she 
muttered to herself.  With a word he could have 
relieved her uncertainty:  but never would she gratify 
him by saying it.

She rose and leaned out of the window.  The twilight 
had deepened into night, and she watched the frail 
curve of the young moon dropping to the edge of the 
hills.  Through the darkness she saw one or two figures 
moving down the road; but the evening was too cold for 
loitering, and presently the strollers disappeared.  
Lamps were beginning to show here and there in the 
windows.  A bar of light brought out the whiteness of a 
clump of lilies in the Hawes's yard:  and farther down 
the street Carrick Fry's Rochester lamp cast its bold 
illumination on the rustic flower-tub in the middle of 
his grass-plot.

For a long time she continued to lean in the window.  
But a fever of unrest consumed her, and finally she 
went downstairs, took her hat from its hook, and swung 
out of the house.  Mr. Royall sat in the porch, Verena 
beside him, her old hands crossed on her patched skirt.  
As Charity went down the steps Mr. Royall called after 
her:  "Where you going?" She could easily have 
answered:  "To Orma's," or "Down to the Targatts'"; and 
either answer might have been true, for she had no 
purpose.  But she swept on in silence, determined not 
to recognize his right to question her.

At the gate she paused and looked up and down the road.  
The darkness drew her, and she thought of climbing the 
hill and plunging into the depths of the larch-wood 
above the pasture.  Then she glanced irresolutely along 
the street, and as she did so a gleam appeared through 
the spruces at Miss Hatchard's gate.  Lucius Harney was 
there, then--he had not gone down to Hepburn with Mr. 
Miles, as she had at first imagined.  But where had he 
taken his evening meal, and what had caused him to stay 
away from Mr. Royall's?  The light was positive proof of 
his presence, for Miss Hatchard's servants were away on 
a holiday, and her farmer's wife came only in the 
mornings, to make the young man's bed and prepare his 
coffee.  Beside that lamp he was doubtless sitting at 
this moment.  To know the truth Charity had only to 
walk half the length of the village, and knock at the 
lighted window.  She hesitated a minute or two longer, 
and then turned toward Miss Hatchard's.

She walked quickly, straining her eyes to detect 
anyone who might be coming along the street; and before 
reaching the Frys' she crossed over to avoid the light 
from their window.  Whenever she was unhappy she felt 
herself at bay against a pitiless world, and a kind of 
animal secretiveness possessed her.  But the street was 
empty, and she passed unnoticed through the gate and up 
the path to the house.  Its white front glimmered 
indistinctly through the trees, showing only one oblong 
of light on the lower floor.  She had supposed that the 
lamp was in Miss Hatchard's sitting-room; but she now 
saw that it shone through a window at the farther 
corner of the house.  She did not know the room to 
which this window belonged, and she paused under the 
trees, checked by a sense of strangeness.  Then she 
moved on, treading softly on the short grass, and 
keeping so close to the house that whoever was in the 
room, even if roused by her approach, would not be able 
to see her.

The window opened on a narrow verandah with a trellised 
arch.  She leaned close to the trellis, and parting the 
sprays of clematis that covered it looked into a corner 
of the room.  She saw the foot of a mahogany bed, an 
engraving on the wall, a wash-stand on which a 
towel had been tossed, and one end of the green-covered 
table which held the lamp.  Half of the lampshade 
projected into her field of vision, and just under it 
two smooth sunburnt hands, one holding a pencil and the 
other a ruler, were moving to and fro over a drawing-
board.

Her heart jumped and then stood still.  He was there, a 
few feet away; and while her soul was tossing on seas 
of woe he had been quietly sitting at his drawing-
board.  The sight of those two hands, moving with their 
usual skill and precision, woke her out of her dream.  
Her eyes were opened to the disproportion between what 
she had felt and the cause of her agitation; and she 
was turning away from the window when one hand abruptly 
pushed aside the drawing-board and the other flung down 
the pencil.

Charity had often noticed Harney's loving care of his 
drawings, and the neatness and method with which he 
carried on and concluded each task.  The impatient 
sweeping aside of the drawing-board seemed to reveal a 
new mood.  The gesture suggested sudden discouragement, 
or distaste for his work and she wondered if he too 
were agitated by secret perplexities.  Her impulse of 
flight was checked; she stepped up on the verandah 
and looked into the room.

Harney had put his elbows on the table and was resting 
his chin on his locked hands.  He had taken off his 
coat and waistcoat, and unbuttoned the low collar of 
his flannel shirt; she saw the vigorous lines of his 
young throat, and the root of the muscles where they 
joined the chest.  He sat staring straight ahead of 
him, a look of weariness and self-disgust on his face:  
it was almost as if he had been gazing at a distorted 
reflection of his own features.  For a moment Charity 
looked at him with a kind of terror, as if he had been 
a stranger under familiar lineaments; then she glanced 
past him and saw on the floor an open portmanteau half 
full of clothes.  She understood that he was preparing 
to leave, and that he had probably decided to go 
without seeing her.  She saw that the decision, from 
whatever cause it was taken, had disturbed him deeply; 
and she immediately concluded that his change of plan 
was due to some surreptitious interference of Mr. 
Royall's.  All her old resentments and rebellions flamed 
up, confusedly mingled with the yearning roused by 
Harney's nearness.  Only a few hours earlier she had 
felt secure in his comprehending pity; now she was 
flung back on herself, doubly alone after that moment 
of communion.

Harney was still unaware of her presence.  He sat 
without moving, moodily staring before him at the same 
spot in the wall-paper.  He had not even had the energy 
to finish his packing, and his clothes and papers lay 
on the floor about the portmanteau.  Presently he 
unlocked his clasped hands and stood up; and Charity, 
drawing back hastily, sank down on the step of the 
verandah.  The night was so dark that there was not 
much chance of his seeing her unless he opened the 
window and before that she would have time to slip away 
and be lost in the shadow of the trees.  He stood for a 
minute or two looking around the room with the same 
expression of self-disgust, as if he hated himself and 
everything about him; then he sat down again at the 
table, drew a few more strokes, and threw his pencil 
aside.  Finally he walked across the floor, kicking the 
portmanteau out of his way, and lay down on the bed, 
folding his arms under his head, and staring up 
morosely at the ceiling.  Just so, Charity had seen him 
at her side on the grass or the pine-needles, his eyes 
fixed on the sky, and pleasure flashing over his face 
like the flickers of sun the branches shed on it.  
But now the face was so changed that she hardly knew 
it; and grief at his grief gathered in her throat, rose 
to her eyes and ran over.

She continued to crouch on the steps, holding her 
breath and stiffening herself into complete immobility.  
One motion of her hand, one tap on the pane, and she 
could picture the sudden change in his face.  In every 
pulse of her rigid body she was aware of the welcome 
his eyes and lips would give her; but something kept 
her from moving.  It was not the fear of any sanction, 
human or heavenly; she had never in her life been 
afraid.  It was simply that she had suddenly understood 
what would happen if she went in.  It was the thing 
that did happen between young men and girls, and that 
North Dormer ignored in public and snickered over on 
the sly.  It was what Miss Hatchard was still ignorant 
of, but every girl of Charity's class knew about before 
she left school.  It was what had happened to Ally 
Hawes's sister Julia, and had ended in her going to 
Nettleton, and in people's never mentioning her name.

It did not, of course, always end so sensationally; 
nor, perhaps, on the whole, so untragically.  Charity 
had always suspected that the shunned Julia's fate 
might have its compensations.  There were others, worse 
endings that the village knew of, mean, miserable, 
unconfessed; other lives that went on drearily, without 
visible change, in the same cramped setting of 
hypocrisy.  But these were not the reasons that held 
her back.  Since the day before, she had known exactly 
what she would feel if Harney should take her in his 
arms:  the melting of palm into palm and mouth on mouth, 
and the long flame burning her from head to foot.  But 
mixed with this feeling was another:  the wondering 
pride in his liking for her, the startled softness that 
his sympathy had put into her heart.  Sometimes, when 
her youth flushed up in her, she had imagined yielding 
like other girls to furtive caresses in the twilight; 
but she could not so cheapen herself to Harney.  She 
did not know why he was going; but since he was going 
she felt she must do nothing to deface the image of her 
that he carried away.  If he wanted her he must seek 
her:  he must not be surprised into taking her as girls 
like Julia Hawes were taken....

No sound came from the sleeping village, and in the 
deep darkness of the garden she heard now and then 
a secret rustle of branches, as though some night-bird 
brushed them.  Once a footfall passed the gate, and she 
shrank back into her corner; but the steps died away 
and left a profounder quiet.  Her eyes were still on 
Harney's tormented face:  she felt she could not move 
till he moved.  But she was beginning to grow numb from 
her constrained position, and at times her thoughts 
were so indistinct that she seemed to be held there 
only by a vague weight of weariness.

A long time passed in this strange vigil.  Harney still 
lay on the bed, motionless and with fixed eyes, as 
though following his vision to its bitter end.  At last 
he stirred and changed his attitude slightly, and 
Charity's heart began to tremble.  But he only flung 
out his arms and sank back into his former position.  
With a deep sigh he tossed the hair from his forehead; 
then his whole body relaxed, his head turned sideways 
on the pillow, and she saw that he had fallen asleep.  
The sweet expression came back to his lips, and the 
haggardness faded from his face, leaving it as fresh as 
a boy's.

She rose and crept away.



VIII


SHE had lost the sense of time, and did not know how 
late it was till she came out into the street and saw 
that all the windows were dark between Miss Hatchard's 
and the Royall house.

As she passed from under the black pall of the Norway 
spruces she fancied she saw two figures in the shade 
about the duck-pond.  She drew back and watched; but 
nothing moved, and she had stared so long into the 
lamp-lit room that the darkness confused her, and she 
thought she must have been mistaken.

She walked on, wondering whether Mr. Royall was still 
in the porch.  In her exalted mood she did not greatly 
care whether he was waiting for her or not:  she seemed 
to be floating high over life, on a great cloud of 
misery beneath which every-day realities had dwindled 
to mere specks in space.  But the porch was empty, Mr. 
Royall's hat hung on its peg in the passage, and the 
kitchen lamp had been left to light her to bed.  She 
took it and went up.

The morning hours of the next day dragged by 
without incident.  Charity had imagined that, in some 
way or other, she would learn whether Harney had 
already left; but Verena's deafness prevented her being 
a source of news, and no one came to the house who 
could bring enlightenment.

Mr. Royall went out early, and did not return till 
Verena had set the table for the midday meal.  When he 
came in he went straight to the kitchen and shouted to 
the old woman:  "Ready for dinner----" then he turned 
into the dining-room, where Charity was already seated.  
Harney's plate was in its usual place, but Mr. Royall 
offered no explanation of his absence, and Charity 
asked none.  The feverish exaltation of the night 
before had dropped, and she said to herself that he had 
gone away, indifferently, almost callously, and that 
now her life would lapse again into the narrow rut out 
of which he had lifted it.  For a moment she was 
inclined to sneer at herself for not having used the 
arts that might have kept him.

She sat at table till the meal was over, lest Mr. 
Royall should remark on her leaving; but when he stood 
up she rose also, without waiting to help Verena.  
She had her foot on the stairs when he called to her to 
come back.

"I've got a headache.  I'm going up to lie down."

"I want you should come in here first; I've got 
something to say to you."

She was sure from his tone that in a moment she would 
learn what every nerve in her ached to know; but as she 
turned back she made a last effort of indifference.

Mr. Royall stood in the middle of the office, his thick 
eyebrows beetling, his lower jaw trembling a little.  
At first she thought he had been drinking; then she saw 
that he was sober, but stirred by a deep and stern 
emotion totally unlike his usual transient angers.  And 
suddenly she understood that, until then, she had never 
really noticed him or thought about him.  Except on the 
occasion of his one offense he had been to her merely 
the person who is always there, the unquestioned 
central fact of life, as inevitable but as 
uninteresting as North Dormer itself, or any of the 
other conditions fate had laid on her.  Even then she 
had regarded him only in relation to herself, and had 
never speculated as to his own feelings, beyond 
instinctively concluding that he would not trouble 
her again in the same way.  But now she began to wonder 
what he was really like.

He had grasped the back of his chair with both hands, 
and stood looking hard at her.  At length he said:  
"Charity, for once let's you and me talk together like 
friends."

Instantly she felt that something had happened, and 
that he held her in his hand.

"Where is Mr. Harney?  Why hasn't he come back?  Have you 
sent him away?" she broke out, without knowing what she 
was saying.

The change in Mr. Royall frightened her.  All the blood 
seemed to leave his veins and against his swarthy 
pallor the deep lines in his face looked black.

"Didn't he have time to answer some of those questions 
last night?  You was with him long enough!" he said.

Charity stood speechless.  The taunt was so unrelated 
to what had been happening in her soul that she hardly 
understood it.  But the instinct of self-defense awoke 
in her.

"Who says I was with him last night?"

"The whole place is saying it by now."

"Then it was you that put the lie into their 
mouths.--Oh, how I've always hated you!" she cried.

She had expected a retort in kind, and it startled her 
to hear her exclamation sounding on through silence.

"Yes, I know," Mr. Royall said slowly.  "But that ain't 
going to help us much now."

"It helps me not to care a straw what lies you tell 
about me!"

"If they're lies, they're not my lies:  my Bible oath on 
that, Charity.  I didn't know where you were:  I wasn't 
out of this house last night."

She made no answer and he went on:  "Is it a lie that 
you were seen coming out of Miss Hatchard's nigh onto 
midnight?"

She straightened herself with a laugh, all her reckless 
insolence recovered.  "I didn't look to see what time 
it was."

"You lost girl...you...you...Oh, my God, why did you 
tell me?" he broke out, dropping into his chair, his 
head bowed down like an old man's.

Charity's self-possession had returned with the sense 
of her danger.  "Do you suppose I'd take the 
trouble to lie to YOU?  Who are you, anyhow, to 
ask me where I go to when I go out at night?"

Mr. Royall lifted his head and looked at her.  His face 
had grown quiet and almost gentle, as she remembered 
seeing it sometimes when she was a little girl, before 
Mrs. Royall died.

"Don't let's go on like this, Charity.  It can't do any 
good to either of us.  You were seen going into that 
fellow's house...you were seen coming out of it....I've 
watched this thing coming, and I've tried to stop it.  
As God sees me, I have...."

"Ah, it WAS you, then?  I knew it was you that sent 
him away!"

He looked at her in surprise.  "Didn't he tell you so?  
I thought he understood."  He spoke slowly, with 
difficult pauses, "I didn't name you to him:  I'd have 
cut my hand off sooner.  I just told him I couldn't 
spare the horse any longer; and that the cooking was 
getting too heavy for Verena.  I guess he's the kind 
that's heard the same thing before.  Anyhow, he took it 
quietly enough.  He said his job here was about done, 
anyhow; and there didn't another word pass between 
us....If he told you otherwise he told you an untruth."

Charity listened in a cold trance of anger.  It 
was nothing to her what the village said...but all this 
fingering of her dreams!

"I've told you he didn't tell me anything.  I didn't 
speak with him last night."

"You didn't speak with him?"

"No....It's not that I care what any of you say...but 
you may as well know.  Things ain't between us the way 
you think...and the other people in this place.  He was 
kind to me; he was my friend; and all of a sudden he 
stopped coming, and I knew it was you that done it--
YOU!" All her unreconciled memory of the past flamed 
out at him.  "So I went there last night to find out 
what you'd said to him:  that's all."

Mr. Royall drew a heavy breath.  "But, then--if he 
wasn't there, what were you doing there all that time?--
Charity, for pity's sake, tell me.  I've got to know, 
to stop their talking."

This pathetic abdication of all authority over her did 
not move her:  she could feel only the outrage of his 
interference.

"Can't you see that I don't care what anybody says?  
It's true I went there to see him; and he was in his 
room, and I stood outside for ever so long and watched 
him; but I dursn't go in for fear he'd think I'd 
come after him...."  She felt her voice breaking, and 
gathered it up in a last defiance.  "As long as I live 
I'll never forgive you!" she cried.

Mr. Royall made no answer.  He sat and pondered with 
sunken head, his veined hands clasped about the arms of 
his chair.  Age seemed to have come down on him as 
winter comes on the hills after a storm.  At length he 
looked up.

"Charity, you say you don't care; but you're the 
proudest girl I know, and the last to want people to 
talk against you.  You know there's always eyes 
watching you:  you're handsomer and smarter than the 
rest, and that's enough.  But till lately you've never 
given them a chance.  Now they've got it, and they're 
going to use it.  I believe what you say, but they 
won't....It was Mrs. Tom Fry seen you going in...and 
two or three of them watched for you to come out 
again....You've been with the fellow all day long every 
day since he come here...and I'm a lawyer, and I know 
how hard slander dies."  He paused, but she stood 
motionless, without giving him any sign of acquiescence 
or even of attention.  "He's a pleasant fellow to talk 
to--I liked having him here myself.  The young men up 
here ain't had his chances.  But there's one thing 
as old as the hills and as plain as daylight:  if he'd 
wanted you the right way he'd have said so."

Charity did not speak.  It seemed to her that nothing 
could exceed the bitterness of hearing such words from 
such lips.

Mr. Royall rose from his seat.  "See here, Charity 
Royall:  I had a shameful thought once, and you've made 
me pay for it.  Isn't that score pretty near wiped 
out?...There's a streak in me I ain't always master of; 
but I've always acted straight to you but that once.  
And you've known I would--you've trusted me.  For all 
your sneers and your mockery you've always known I 
loved you the way a man loves a decent woman.  I'm a 
good many years older than you, but I'm head and 
shoulders above this place and everybody in it, and you 
know that too.  I slipped up once, but that's no reason 
for not starting again.  If you'll come with me I'll do 
it.  If you'll marry me we'll leave here and settle in 
some big town, where there's men, and business, and 
things doing.  It's not too late for me to find an 
opening....I can see it by the way folks treat me when 
I go down to Hepburn or Nettleton...."

Charity made no movement.  Nothing in his appeal 
reached her heart, and she thought only of words to 
wound and wither.  But a growing lassitude restrained 
her.  What did anything matter that he was saying?  She 
saw the old life closing in on her, and hardly heeded 
his fanciful picture of renewal.

"Charity--Charity--say you'll do it," she heard him 
urge, all his lost years and wasted passion in his 
voice.

"Oh, what's the use of all this?  When I leave here it 
won't be with you."

She moved toward the door as she spoke, and he stood up 
and placed himself between her and the threshold.  He 
seemed suddenly tall and strong, as though the 
extremity of his humiliation had given him new vigour.

"That's all, is it?  It's not much."  He leaned against 
the door, so towering and powerful that he seemed to 
fill the narrow room.  "Well, then look here....You're 
right:  I've no claim on you--why should you look at a 
broken man like me?  You want the other fellow...and I 
don't blame you.  You picked out the best when you seen 
it...well, that was always my way."  He fixed his stern 
eyes on her, and she had the sense that the 
struggle within him was at its highest.  "Do you want 
him to marry you?" he asked.

They stood and looked at each other for a long moment, 
eye to eye, with the terrible equality of courage that 
sometimes made her feel as if she had his blood in her 
veins.

"Do you want him to--say?  I'll have him here in an hour 
if you do.  I ain't been in the law thirty years for 
nothing.  He's hired Carrick Fry's team to take him to 
Hepburn, but he ain't going to start for another hour.  
And I can put things to him so he won't be long 
deciding....He's soft:  I could see that.  I don't say 
you won't be sorry afterward--but, by God, I'll give 
you the chance to be, if you say so."

She heard him out in silence, too remote from all he 
was feeling and saying for any sally of scorn to 
relieve her.  As she listened, there flitted through 
her mind the vision of Liff Hyatt's muddy boot coming 
down on the white bramble-flowers.  The same thing had 
happened now; something transient and exquisite had 
flowered in her, and she had stood by and seen it 
trampled to earth.  While the thought passed through 
her she was aware of Mr. Royall, still leaning 
against the door, but crestfallen, diminished, as 
though her silence were the answer he most dreaded.

"I don't want any chance you can give me:  I'm glad he's 
going away," she said.

He kept his place a moment longer, his hand on the 
door-knob.  "Charity!" he pleaded.  She made no answer, 
and he turned the knob and went out.  She heard him 
fumble with the latch of the front door, and saw him 
walk down the steps.  He passed out of the gate, and 
his figure, stooping and heavy, receded slowly up the 
street.

For a while she remained where he had left her.  She 
was still trembling with the humiliation of his last 
words, which rang so loud in her ears that it seemed as 
though they must echo through the village, proclaiming 
her a creature to lend herself to such vile 
suggestions.  Her shame weighed on her like a physical 
oppression:  the roof and walls seemed to be closing in 
on her, and she was seized by the impulse to get away, 
under the open sky, where there would be room to 
breathe.  She went to the front door, and as she did so 
Lucius Harney opened it.

He looked graver and less confident than usual, 
and for a moment or two neither of them spoke.  
Then he held out his hand.  "Are you going out?" he 
asked.  "May I come in?"

Her heart was beating so violently that she was afraid 
to speak, and stood looking at him with tear-dilated 
eyes; then she became aware of what her silence must 
betray, and said quickly:  "Yes:  come in."

She led the way into the dining-room, and they sat down 
on opposite sides of the table, the cruet-stand and 
japanned bread-basket between them.  Harney had laid 
his straw hat on the table, and as he sat there, in his 
easy-looking summer clothes, a brown tie knotted under 
his flannel collar, and his smooth brown hair brushed 
back from his forehead, she pictured him, as she had 
seen him the night before, lying on his bed, with the 
tossed locks falling into his eyes, and his bare throat 
rising out of his unbuttoned shirt.  He had never 
seemed so remote as at the moment when that vision 
flashed through her mind.

"I'm so sorry it's good-bye:  I suppose you know I'm 
leaving," he began, abruptly and awkwardly; she guessed 
that he was wondering how much she knew of his reasons 
for going.

"I presume you found your work was over quicker 
than what you expected," she said.

"Well, yes--that is, no:  there are plenty of things I 
should have liked to do.  But my holiday's limited; and 
now that Mr. Royall needs the horse for himself it's 
rather difficult to find means of getting about."

"There ain't any too many teams for hire around here," 
she acquiesced; and there was another silence.

"These days here have been--awfully pleasant:  I wanted 
to thank you for making them so," he continued, his 
colour rising.

She could not think of any reply, and he went on:  
"You've been wonderfully kind to me, and I wanted to 
tell you....I wish I could think of you as happier, 
less lonely....Things are sure to change for you by and 
by...."

"Things don't change at North Dormer:  people just get 
used to them."

The answer seemed to break up the order of his 
prearranged consolations, and he sat looking at her 
uncertainly.  Then he said, with his sweet smile:  
"That's not true of you.  It can't be."

The smile was like a knife-thrust through her 
heart:  everything in her began to tremble and 
break loose.  She felt her tears run over, and stood 
up.

"Well, good-bye," she said.

She was aware of his taking her hand, and of feeling 
that his touch was lifeless.

"Good-bye."  He turned away, and stopped on the 
threshold.  "You'll say good-bye for me to Verena?"

She heard the closing of the outer door and the sound 
of his quick tread along the path.  The latch of the 
gate clicked after him.

The next morning when she arose in the cold dawn and 
opened her shutters she saw a freckled boy standing on 
the other side of the road and looking up at her.  He 
was a boy from a farm three or four miles down the 
Creston road, and she wondered what he was doing there 
at that hour, and why he looked so hard at her window.  
When he saw her he crossed over and leaned against the 
gate unconcernedly.  There was no one stirring in the 
house, and she threw a shawl over her night-gown and 
ran down and let herself out.  By the time she reached 
the gate the boy was sauntering down the road, 
whistling carelessly; but she saw that a letter had 
been thrust between the slats and the crossbar of 
the gate.  She took it out and hastened back to her 
room.

The envelope bore her name, and inside was a leaf torn 
from a pocket-diary.


DEAR CHARITY:

I can't go away like this.  I am staying for a few days 
at Creston River.  Will you come down and meet me at 
Creston pool?  I will wait for you till evening.



IX


CHARITY sat before the mirror trying on a hat which 
Ally Hawes, with much secrecy, had trimmed for her.  It 
was of white straw, with a drooping brim and cherry-
coloured lining that made her face glow like the inside 
of the shell on the parlour mantelpiece.

She propped the square of looking-glass against Mr. 
Royall's black leather Bible, steadying it in front 
with a white stone on which a view of the Brooklyn 
Bridge was painted; and she sat before her reflection, 
bending the brim this way and that, while Ally Hawes's 
pale face looked over her shoulder like the ghost of 
wasted opportunities.

"I look awful, don't I?" she said at last with a happy 
sigh.

Ally smiled and took back the hat.  "I'll stitch the 
roses on right here, so's you can put it away at once."

Charity laughed, and ran her fingers through her rough 
dark hair.  She knew that Harney liked to see its 
reddish edges ruffled about her forehead and breaking 
into little rings at the nape.  She sat down on her bed 
and watched Ally stoop over the hat with a careful 
frown.

"Don't you ever feel like going down to Nettleton for a 
day?" she asked.

Ally shook her head without looking up.  "No, I always 
remember that awful time I went down with Julia--to 
that doctor's."

"Oh, Ally----"

"I can't help it.  The house is on the corner of Wing 
Street and Lake Avenue.  The trolley from the station 
goes right by it, and the day the minister took us down 
to see those pictures I recognized it right off, and 
couldn't seem to see anything else.  There's a big 
black sign with gold letters all across the front--
'Private Consultations.' She came as near as anything 
to dying...."

"Poor Julia!" Charity sighed from the height of her 
purity and her security.  She had a friend whom she 
trusted and who respected her.  She was going with him 
to spend the next day--the Fourth of July--at 
Nettleton.  Whose business was it but hers, and what 
was the harm?  The pity of it was that girls like Julia 
did not know how to choose, and to keep bad 
fellows at a distance....Charity slipped down from the 
bed, and stretched out her hands.

"Is it sewed?  Let me try it on again."  She put the hat 
on, and smiled at her image.  The thought of Julia had 
vanished....



The next morning she was up before dawn, and saw the 
yellow sunrise broaden behind the hills, and the 
silvery luster preceding a hot day tremble across the 
sleeping fields.

Her plans had been made with great care.  She had 
announced that she was going down to the Band of Hope 
picnic at Hepburn, and as no one else from North Dormer 
intended to venture so far it was not likely that her 
absence from the festivity would be reported.  Besides, 
if it were she would not greatly care.  She was 
determined to assert her independence, and if she 
stooped to fib about the Hepburn picnic it was chiefly 
from the secretive instinct that made her dread the 
profanation of her happiness.  Whenever she was with 
Lucius Harney she would have liked some impenetrable 
mountain mist to hide her.

It was arranged that she should walk to a point of 
the Creston road where Harney was to pick her up and 
drive her across the hills to Hepburn in time for the 
nine-thirty train to Nettleton.  Harney at first had 
been rather lukewarm about the trip.  He declared 
himself ready to take her to Nettleton, but urged her 
not to go on the Fourth of July, on account of the 
crowds, the probable lateness of the trains, the 
difficulty of her getting back before night; but her 
evident disappointment caused him to give way, and even 
to affect a faint enthusiasm for the adventure.  She 
understood why he was not more eager:  he must have seen 
sights beside which even a Fourth of July at Nettleton 
would seem tame.  But she had never seen anything; and 
a great longing possessed her to walk the streets of a 
big town on a holiday, clinging to his arm and jostled 
by idle crowds in their best clothes.  The only cloud 
on the prospect was the fact that the shops would be 
closed; but she hoped he would take her back another 
day, when they were open.

She started out unnoticed in the early sunlight, 
slipping through the kitchen while Verena bent above 
the stove.  To avoid attracting notice, she carried her 
new hat carefully wrapped up, and had thrown a long 
grey veil of Mrs. Royall's over the new white 
muslin dress which Ally's clever fingers had made for 
her.  All of the ten dollars Mr. Royall had given her, 
and a part of her own savings as well, had been spent 
on renewing her wardrobe; and when Harney jumped out of 
the buggy to meet her she read her reward in his eyes.

The freckled boy who had brought her the note two weeks 
earlier was to wait with the buggy at Hepburn till 
their return.  He perched at Charity's feet, his legs 
dangling between the wheels, and they could not say 
much because of his presence.  But it did not greatly 
matter, for their past was now rich enough to have 
given them a private language; and with the long day 
stretching before them like the blue distance beyond 
the hills there was a delicate pleasure in 
postponement.

When Charity, in response to Harney's message, had gone 
to meet him at the Creston pool her heart had been so 
full of mortification and anger that his first words 
might easily have estranged her.  But it happened that 
he had found the right word, which was one of simple 
friendship.  His tone had instantly justified her, and 
put her guardian in the wrong.  He had made no allusion 
to what had passed between Mr. Royall and himself, but 
had simply let it appear that he had left because 
means of conveyance were hard to find at North Dormer, 
and because Creston River was a more convenient centre.  
He told her that he had hired by the week the buggy of 
the freckled boy's father, who served as livery-stable 
keeper to one or two melancholy summer boarding-houses 
on Creston Lake, and had discovered, within driving 
distance, a number of houses worthy of his pencil; and 
he said that he could not, while he was in the 
neighbourhood, give up the pleasure of seeing her as 
often as possible.

When they took leave of each other she promised to 
continue to be his guide; and during the fortnight 
which followed they roamed the hills in happy 
comradeship.  In most of the village friendships 
between youths and maidens lack of conversation was 
made up for by tentative fondling; but Harney, except 
when he had tried to comfort her in her trouble on 
their way back from the Hyatts', had never put his arm 
about her, or sought to betray her into any sudden 
caress.  It seemed to be enough for him to breathe her 
nearness like a flower's; and since his pleasure at 
being with her, and his sense of her youth and her 
grace, perpetually shone in his eyes and softened 
the inflection of his voice, his reserve did not 
suggest coldness, but the deference due to a girl of 
his own class.

The buggy was drawn by an old trotter who whirled them 
along so briskly that the pace created a little breeze; 
but when they reached Hepburn the full heat of the 
airless morning descended on them.  At the railway 
station the platform was packed with a sweltering 
throng, and they took refuge in the waiting-room, where 
there was another throng, already dejected by the heat 
and the long waiting for retarded trains.  Pale mothers 
were struggling with fretful babies, or trying to keep 
their older offspring from the fascination of the 
track; girls and their "fellows" were giggling and 
shoving, and passing about candy in sticky bags, and 
older men, collarless and perspiring, were shifting 
heavy children from one arm to the other, and keeping a 
haggard eye on the scattered members of their families.

At last the train rumbled in, and engulfed the waiting 
multitude.  Harney swept Charity up on to the first car 
and they captured a bench for two, and sat in happy 
isolation while the train swayed and roared along 
through rich fields and languid tree-clumps.  The 
haze of the morning had become a sort of clear tremor 
over everything, like the colourless vibration about a 
flame; and the opulent landscape seemed to droop under 
it.  But to Charity the heat was a stimulant:  it 
enveloped the whole world in the same glow that burned 
at her heart.  Now and then a lurch of the train flung 
her against Harney, and through her thin muslin she 
felt the touch of his sleeve.  She steadied herself, 
their eyes met, and the flaming breath of the day 
seemed to enclose them.

The train roared into the Nettleton station, the 
descending mob caught them on its tide, and they were 
swept out into a vague dusty square thronged with seedy 
"hacks" and long curtained omnibuses drawn by horses 
with tasselled fly-nets over their withers, who stood 
swinging their depressed heads drearily from side to 
side.

A mob of 'bus and hack drivers were shouting "To the 
Eagle House," "To the Washington House," "This way to 
the Lake," "Just starting for Greytop;" and through 
their yells came the popping of fire-crackers, the 
explosion of torpedoes, the banging of toy-guns, and 
the crash of a firemen's band trying to play the Merry 
Widow while they were being packed into a 
waggonette streaming with bunting.

The ramshackle wooden hotels about the square were all 
hung with flags and paper lanterns, and as Harney and 
Charity turned into the main street, with its brick and 
granite business blocks crowding out the old low-
storied shops, and its towering poles strung with 
innumerable wires that seemed to tremble and buzz in 
the heat, they saw the double line of flags and 
lanterns tapering away gaily to the park at the other 
end of the perspective.  The noise and colour of this 
holiday vision seemed to transform Nettleton into a 
metropolis.  Charity could not believe that Springfield 
or even Boston had anything grander to show, and she 
wondered if, at this very moment, Annabel Balch, on the 
arm of as brilliant a young man, were threading her way 
through scenes as resplendent.

"Where shall we go first?" Harney asked; but as she 
turned her happy eyes on him he guessed the answer and 
said:  "We'll take a look round, shall we?"

The street swarmed with their fellow-travellers, with 
other excursionists arriving from other directions, 
with Nettleton's own population, and with the 
mill-hands trooping in from the factories on the 
Creston.  The shops were closed, but one would scarcely 
have noticed it, so numerous were the glass doors 
swinging open on saloons, on restaurants, on drug-
stores gushing from every soda-water tap, on fruit and 
confectionery shops stacked with strawberry-cake, 
cocoanut drops, trays of glistening molasses candy, 
boxes of caramels and chewing-gum, baskets of sodden 
strawberries, and dangling branches of bananas.  Outside 
of some of the doors were trestles with banked-up 
oranges and apples, spotted pears and dusty 
raspberries; and the air reeked with the smell of fruit 
and stale coffee, beer and sarsaparilla and fried 
potatoes.

Even the shops that were closed offered, through wide 
expanses of plate-glass, hints of hidden riches.  In 
some, waves of silk and ribbon broke over shores of 
imitation moss from which ravishing hats rose like 
tropical orchids.  In others, the pink throats of 
gramophones opened their giant convolutions in a 
soundless chorus; or bicycles shining in neat ranks 
seemed to await the signal of an invisible starter; or 
tiers of fancy-goods in leatherette and paste and 
celluloid dangled their insidious graces; and, in one 
vast bay that seemed to project them into exciting 
contact with the public, wax ladies in daring 
dresses chatted elegantly, or, with gestures intimate 
yet blameless, pointed to their pink corsets and 
transparent hosiery.

Presently Harney found that his watch had stopped, and 
turned in at a small jeweller's shop which chanced to 
still be open.  While the watch was being examined 
Charity leaned over the glass counter where, on a 
background of dark blue velvet, pins, rings, and 
brooches glittered like the moon and stars.  She had 
never seen jewellry so near by, and she longed to lift 
the glass lid and plunge her hand among the shining 
treasures.  But already Harney's watch was repaired, 
and he laid his hand on her arm and drew her from her 
dream.

"Which do you like best?" he asked leaning over the 
counter at her side.

"I don't know...."  She pointed to a gold lily-of-the-
valley with white flowers.

"Don't you think the blue pin's better?" he suggested, 
and immediately she saw that the lily of the valley was 
mere trumpery compared to the small round stone, blue 
as a mountain lake, with little sparks of light all 
round it.  She coloured at her want of discrimination.

"It's so lovely I guess I was afraid to look at 
it," she said.

He laughed, and they went out of the shop; but a few 
steps away he exclaimed:  "Oh, by Jove, I forgot 
something," and turned back and left her in the crowd.  
She stood staring down a row of pink gramophone throats 
till he rejoined her and slipped his arm through hers.

"You mustn't be afraid of looking at the blue pin any 
longer, because it belongs to you," he said; and she 
felt a little box being pressed into her hand.  Her 
heart gave a leap of joy, but it reached her lips only 
in a shy stammer.  She remembered other girls whom she 
had heard planning to extract presents from their 
fellows, and was seized with a sudden dread lest Harney 
should have imagined that she had leaned over the 
pretty things in the glass case in the hope of having 
one given to her....

A little farther down the street they turned in at a 
glass doorway opening on a shining hall with a mahogany 
staircase, and brass cages in its corners.  "We must 
have something to eat," Harney said; and the next 
moment Charity found herself in a dressing-room all 
looking-glass and lustrous surfaces, where a party of 
showy-looking girls were dabbing on powder and 
straightening immense plumed hats.  When they had gone 
she took courage to bathe her hot face in one of the 
marble basins, and to straighten her own hat-brim, 
which the parasols of the crowd had indented.  The 
dresses in the shops had so impressed her that she 
scarcely dared look at her reflection; but when she did 
so, the glow of her face under her cherry-coloured hat, 
and the curve of her young shoulders through the 
transparent muslin, restored her courage; and when she 
had taken the blue brooch from its box and pinned it on 
her bosom she walked toward the restaurant with her 
head high, as if she had always strolled through 
tessellated halls beside young men in flannels.

Her spirit sank a little at the sight of the slim-
waisted waitresses in black, with bewitching mob-caps 
on their haughty heads, who were moving disdainfully 
between the tables.  "Not f'r another hour," one of them 
dropped to Harney in passing; and he stood doubtfully 
glancing about him.

"Oh, well, we can't stay sweltering here," he decided; 
"let's try somewhere else--" and with a sense of relief 
Charity followed him from that scene of inhospitable 
splendour.

That "somewhere else" turned out--after more hot 
tramping, and several failures--to be, of all things, a 
little open-air place in a back street that called 
itself a French restaurant, and consisted in two or 
three rickety tables under a scarlet-runner, between a 
patch of zinnias and petunias and a big elm bending 
over from the next yard.  Here they lunched on queerly 
flavoured things, while Harney, leaning back in a 
crippled rocking-chair, smoked cigarettes between the 
courses and poured into Charity's glass a pale yellow 
wine which he said was the very same one drank in just 
such jolly places in France.

Charity did not think the wine as good as sarsaparilla, 
but she sipped a mouthful for the pleasure of doing 
what he did, and of fancying herself alone with him in 
foreign countries.  The illusion was increased by their 
being served by a deep-bosomed woman with smooth hair 
and a pleasant laugh, who talked to Harney in 
unintelligible words, and seemed amazed and overjoyed 
at his answering her in kind.  At the other tables 
other people sat, mill-hands probably, homely but 
pleasant looking, who spoke the same shrill jargon, and 
looked at Harney and Charity with friendly eyes; and 
between the table-legs a poodle with bald patches 
and pink eyes nosed about for scraps, and sat up on his 
hind legs absurdly.

Harney showed no inclination to move, for hot as their 
corner was, it was at least shaded and quiet; and, from 
the main thoroughfares came the clanging of trolleys, 
the incessant popping of torpedoes, the jingle of 
street-organs, the bawling of megaphone men and the 
loud murmur of increasing crowds.  He leaned back, 
smoking his cigar, patting the dog, and stirring the 
coffee that steamed in their chipped cups.  "It's the 
real thing, you know," he explained; and Charity 
hastily revised her previous conception of the 
beverage.

They had made no plans for the rest of the day, and 
when Harney asked her what she wanted to do next she 
was too bewildered by rich possibilities to find an 
answer.  Finally she confessed that she longed to go to 
the Lake, where she had not been taken on her former 
visit, and when he answered, "Oh, there's time for 
that--it will be pleasanter later," she suggested 
seeing some pictures like the ones Mr. Miles had taken 
her to.  She thought Harney looked a little 
disconcerted; but he passed his fine handkerchief over 
his warm brow, said gaily, "Come along, then," and 
rose with a last pat for the pink-eyed dog.

Mr. Miles's pictures had been shown in an austere 
Y.M.C.A.  hall, with white walls and an organ; but 
Harney led Charity to a glittering place--everything 
she saw seemed to glitter--where they passed, between 
immense pictures of yellow-haired beauties stabbing 
villains in evening dress, into a velvet-curtained 
auditorium packed with spectators to the last limit of 
compression.  After that, for a while, everything was 
merged in her brain in swimming circles of heat and 
blinding alternations of light and darkness.  All the 
world has to show seemed to pass before her in a chaos 
of palms and minarets, charging cavalry regiments, 
roaring lions, comic policemen and scowling murderers; 
and the crowd around her, the hundreds of hot sallow 
candy-munching faces, young, old, middle-aged, but all 
kindled with the same contagious excitement, became 
part of the spectacle, and danced on the screen with 
the rest.

Presently the thought of the cool trolley-run to the 
Lake grew irresistible, and they struggled out of the 
theatre.  As they stood on the pavement, Harney pale 
with the heat, and even Charity a little confused 
by it, a young man drove by in an electric run-about 
with a calico band bearing the words:  "Ten dollars to 
take you round the Lake."  Before Charity knew what was 
happening, Harney had waved a hand, and they were 
climbing in.  "Say, for twenny-five I'll run you out to 
see the ball-game and back," the driver proposed with 
an insinuating grin; but Charity said quickly:  "Oh, I'd
rather go rowing on the Lake."  The street was so 
thronged that progress was slow; but the glory of 
sitting in the little carriage while it wriggled its 
way between laden omnibuses and trolleys made the 
moments seem too short.  "Next turn is Lake Avenue," 
the young man called out over his shoulder; and as they 
paused in the wake of a big omnibus groaning with 
Knights of Pythias in cocked hats and swords, Charity 
looked up and saw on the corner a brick house with a 
conspicuous black and gold sign across its front.  "Dr.
Merkle; Private Consultations at all hours.  Lady 
Attendants," she read; and suddenly she remembered Ally 
Hawes's words:  "The house was at the corner of Wing 
Street and Lake Avenue...there's a big black sign 
across the front...."  Through all the heat and the 
rapture a shiver of cold ran over her.



X


THE Lake at last--a sheet of shining metal brooded over 
by drooping trees.  Charity and Harney had secured a 
boat and, getting away from the wharves and the 
refreshment-booths, they drifted idly along, hugging 
the shadow of the shore.  Where the sun struck the 
water its shafts flamed back blindingly at the heat-
veiled sky; and the least shade was black by contrast.
The Lake was so smooth that the reflection of the trees 
on its edge seemed enamelled on a solid surface; but 
gradually, as the sun declined, the water grew 
transparent, and Charity, leaning over, plunged her 
fascinated gaze into depths so clear that she saw the 
inverted tree-tops interwoven with the green growths of 
the bottom.

They rounded a point at the farther end of the Lake, 
and entering an inlet pushed their bow against a 
protruding tree-trunk.  A green veil of willows 
overhung them.  Beyond the trees, wheat-fields sparkled 
in the sun; and all along the horizon the clear 
hills throbbed with light.  Charity leaned back in the 
stern, and Harney unshipped the oars and lay in the 
bottom of the boat without speaking.

Ever since their meeting at the Creston pool he had 
been subject to these brooding silences, which were as 
different as possible from the pauses when they ceased 
to speak because words were needless.  At such times 
his face wore the expression she had seen on it when 
she had looked in at him from the darkness and again 
there came over her a sense of the mysterious distance 
between them; but usually his fits of abstraction were 
followed by bursts of gaiety that chased away the 
shadow before it chilled her.

She was still thinking of the ten dollars he had handed 
to the driver of the run-about.  It had given them 
twenty minutes of pleasure, and it seemed unimaginable 
that anyone should be able to buy amusement at that 
rate.  With ten dollars he might have bought her an 
engagement ring; she knew that Mrs. Tom Fry's, which 
came from Springfield, and had a diamond in it, had 
cost only eight seventy-five.  But she did not know why 
the thought had occurred to her.  Harney would never 
buy her an engagement ring:  they were friends and 
comrades, but no more.  He had been perfectly fair to 
her:  he had never said a word to mislead her.  She 
wondered what the girl was like whose hand was waiting 
for his ring....

Boats were beginning to thicken on the Lake and the 
clang of incessantly arriving trolleys announced the 
return of the crowds from the ball-field.  The shadows 
lengthened across the pearl-grey water and two white 
clouds near the sun were turning golden.  On the 
opposite shore men were hammering hastily at a wooden 
scaffolding in a field.  Charity asked what it was for.

"Why, the fireworks.  I suppose there'll be a big 
show."  Harney looked at her and a smile crept into his 
moody eyes.  "Have you never seen any good fireworks?"

"Miss Hatchard always sends up lovely rockets on the 
Fourth," she answered doubtfully.

"Oh----" his contempt was unbounded.  "I mean a big 
performance like this, illuminated boats, and all the 
rest."

She flushed at the picture.  "Do they send them up from 
the Lake, too?"

"Rather.  Didn't you notice that big raft we 
passed?  It's wonderful to see the rockets 
completing their orbits down under one's feet."  She 
said nothing, and he put the oars into the rowlocks.  
"If we stay we'd better go and pick up something to 
eat."

"But how can we get back afterwards?" she ventured, 
feeling it would break her heart if she missed it.

He consulted a time-table, found a ten o'clock train 
and reassured her.  "The moon rises so late that it 
will be dark by eight, and we'll have over an hour of 
it."

Twilight fell, and lights began to show along the 
shore.  The trolleys roaring out from Nettleton became 
great luminous serpents coiling in and out among the 
trees.  The wooden eating-houses at the Lake's edge 
danced with lanterns, and the dusk echoed with laughter 
and shouts and the clumsy splashing of oars.

Harney and Charity had found a table in the corner of a 
balcony built over the Lake, and were patiently 
awaiting an unattainable chowder.  Close under them the 
water lapped the piles, agitated by the evolutions of a 
little white steamboat trellised with coloured globes 
which was to run passengers up and down the Lake.  
It was already black with them as it sheered off on its 
first trip.

Suddenly Charity heard a woman's laugh behind her.  The 
sound was familiar, and she turned to look.  A band of 
showily dressed girls and dapper young men wearing 
badges of secret societies, with new straw hats tilted 
far back on their square-clipped hair, had invaded the 
balcony and were loudly clamouring for a table.  The 
girl in the lead was the one who had laughed.  She wore 
a large hat with a long white feather, and from under 
its brim her painted eyes looked at Charity with amused 
recognition.

"Say! if this ain't like Old Home Week," she remarked 
to the girl at her elbow; and giggles and glances 
passed between them.  Charity knew at once that the 
girl with the white feather was Julia Hawes.  She had 
lost her freshness, and the paint under her eyes made 
her face seem thinner; but her lips had the same lovely 
curve, and the same cold mocking smile, as if there 
were some secret absurdity in the person she was 
looking at, and she had instantly detected it.

Charity flushed to the forehead and looked away.  
She felt herself humiliated by Julia's sneer, and 
vexed that the mockery of such a creature should affect 
her.  She trembled lest Harney should notice that the 
noisy troop had recognized her; but they found no table 
free, and passed on tumultuously.

Presently there was a soft rush through the air and a 
shower of silver fell from the blue evening sky.  In 
another direction, pale Roman candles shot up singly 
through the trees, and a fire-haired rocket swept the 
horizon like a portent.  Between these intermittent 
flashes the velvet curtains of the darkness were 
descending, and in the intervals of eclipse the voices 
of the crowds seemed to sink to smothered murmurs.

Charity and Harney, dispossessed by newcomers, were at 
length obliged to give up their table and struggle 
through the throng about the boat-landings.  For a 
while there seemed no escape from the tide of late 
arrivals; but finally Harney secured the last two 
places on the stand from which the more privileged were 
to see the fireworks.  The seats were at the end of a 
row, one above the other.  Charity had taken off her 
hat to have an uninterrupted view; and whenever she 
leaned back to follow the curve of some 
dishevelled rocket she could feel Harney's knees 
against her head.

After a while the scattered fireworks ceased.  A longer 
interval of darkness followed, and then the whole night 
broke into flower.  From every point of the horizon, 
gold and silver arches sprang up and crossed each 
other, sky-orchards broke into blossom, shed their 
flaming petals and hung their branches with golden 
fruit; and all the while the air was filled with a soft 
supernatural hum, as though great birds were building 
their nests in those invisible tree-tops.

Now and then there came a lull, and a wave of moonlight 
swept the Lake.  In a flash it revealed hundreds of 
boats, steel-dark against lustrous ripples; then it 
withdrew as if with a furling of vast translucent 
wings.  Charity's heart throbbed with delight.  It was 
as if all the latent beauty of things had been unveiled 
to her.  She could not imagine that the world held 
anything more wonderful; but near her she heard someone 
say, "You wait till you see the set piece," and 
instantly her hopes took a fresh flight.  At last, just 
as it was beginning to seem as though the whole arch of 
the sky were one great lid pressed against her dazzled 
eye-balls, and striking out of them continuous 
jets of jewelled light, the velvet darkness settled 
down again, and a murmur of expectation ran through the 
crowd.

"Now--now!" the same voice said excitedly; and Charity, 
grasping the hat on her knee, crushed it tight in the 
effort to restrain her rapture.

For a moment the night seemed to grow more impenetrably 
black; then a great picture stood out against it like a 
constellation.  It was surmounted by a golden scroll 
bearing the inscription, "Washington crossing the 
Delaware," and across a flood of motionless golden 
ripples the National Hero passed, erect, solemn and 
gigantic, standing with folded arms in the stern of a 
slowly moving golden boat.

A long "Oh-h-h" burst from the spectators:  the stand 
creaked and shook with their blissful trepidations.  
"Oh-h-h," Charity gasped:  she had forgotten where she 
was, had at last forgotten even Harney's nearness.  She 
seemed to have been caught up into the stars....

The picture vanished and darkness came down.  In the 
obscurity she felt her head clasped by two hands:  her 
face was drawn backward, and Harney's lips were 
pressed on hers.  With sudden vehemence he wound his 
arms about her, holding her head against his breast 
while she gave him back his kisses.  An unknown Harney 
had revealed himself, a Harney who dominated her and 
yet over whom she felt herself possessed of a new 
mysterious power.

But the crowd was beginning to move, and he had to 
release her.  "Come," he said in a confused voice.  He 
scrambled over the side of the stand, and holding up 
his arm caught her as she sprang to the ground.  He 
passed his arm about her waist, steadying her against 
the descending rush of people; and she clung to him, 
speechless, exultant, as if all the crowding and 
confusion about them were a mere vain stirring of the 
air.

"Come," he repeated, "we must try to make the trolley."  
He drew her along, and she followed, still in her 
dream.  They walked as if they were one, so isolated in 
ecstasy that the people jostling them on every side 
seemed impalpable.  But when they reached the terminus 
the illuminated trolley was already clanging on its 
way, its platforms black with passengers.  The cars 
waiting behind it were as thickly packed; and the 
throng about the terminus was so dense that it 
seemed hopeless to struggle for a place.

"Last trip up the Lake," a megaphone bellowed from the 
wharf; and the lights of the little steam-boat came 
dancing out of the darkness.

"No use waiting here; shall we run up the Lake?" Harney 
suggested.

They pushed their way back to the edge of the water 
just as the gang-plank lowered from the white side of 
the boat.  The electric light at the end of the wharf 
flashed full on the descending passengers, and among 
them Charity caught sight of Julia Hawes, her white 
feather askew, and the face under it flushed with 
coarse laughter.  As she stepped from the gang-plank 
she stopped short, her dark-ringed eyes darting malice.

"Hullo, Charity Royall!" she called out; and then, 
looking back over her shoulder:  "Didn't I tell you it 
was a family party?  Here's grandpa's little daughter 
come to take him home!"

A snigger ran through the group; and then, towering 
above them, and steadying himself by the hand-rail in a 
desperate effort at erectness, Mr. Royall stepped 
stiffly ashore.  Like the young men of the party, he 
wore a secret society emblem in the buttonhole of 
his black frock-coat.  His head was covered by a new 
Panama hat, and his narrow black tie, half undone, 
dangled down on his rumpled shirt-front.  His face, a 
livid brown, with red blotches of anger and lips sunken 
in like an old man's, was a lamentable ruin in the 
searching glare.

He was just behind Julia Hawes, and had one hand on her 
arm; but as he left the gang-plank he freed himself, 
and moved a step or two away from his companions.  He 
had seen Charity at once, and his glance passed slowly 
from her to Harney, whose arm was still about her.  He 
stood staring at them, and trying to master the senile 
quiver of his lips; then he drew himself up with the 
tremulous majesty of drunkenness, and stretched out his 
arm.

"You whore--you damn--bare-headed whore, you!" he 
enunciated slowly.

There was a scream of tipsy laughter from the party, 
and Charity involuntarily put her hands to her head.  
She remembered that her hat had fallen from her lap 
when she jumped up to leave the stand; and suddenly she 
had a vision of herself, hatless, dishevelled, with a 
man's arm about her, confronting that drunken 
crew, headed by her guardian's pitiable figure.  The 
picture filled her with shame.  She had known since 
childhood about Mr. Royall's "habits":  had seen him, as 
she went up to bed, sitting morosely in his office, a 
bottle at his elbow; or coming home, heavy and 
quarrelsome, from his business expeditions to Hepburn 
or Springfield; but the idea of his associating himself 
publicly with a band of disreputable girls and bar-room 
loafers was new and dreadful to her.

"Oh----" she said in a gasp of misery; and releasing 
herself from Harney's arm she went straight up to Mr. 
Royall.

"You come home with me--you come right home with me," 
she said in a low stern voice, as if she had not heard 
his apostrophe; and one of the girls called out:  "Say, 
how many fellers does she want?"

There was another laugh, followed by a pause of 
curiosity, during which Mr. Royall continued to glare 
at Charity.  At length his twitching lips parted.  "I 
said, 'You--damn--whore!'" he repeated with precision, 
steadying himself on Julia's shoulder.

Laughs and jeers were beginning to spring up from the 
circle of people beyond their group; and a voice called 
out from the gangway:  "Now, then, step lively 
there--all ABOARD!" The pressure of approaching and 
departing passengers forced the actors in the rapid 
scene apart, and pushed them back into the throng.  
Charity found herself clinging to Harney's arm and 
sobbing desperately.  Mr. Royall had disappeared, and 
in the distance she heard the receding sound of Julia's 
laugh.

The boat, laden to the taffrail, was puffing away on 
her last trip.



XI


AT two o'clock in the morning the freckled boy from 
Creston stopped his sleepy horse at the door of the red 
house, and Charity got out.  Harney had taken leave of 
her at Creston River, charging the boy to drive her 
home.  Her mind was still in a fog of misery, and she 
did not remember very clearly what had happened, or 
what they said to each other, during the interminable 
interval since their departure from Nettleton; but the 
secretive instinct of the animal in pain was so strong 
in her that she had a sense of relief when Harney got 
out and she drove on alone.

The full moon hung over North Dormer, whitening the 
mist that filled the hollows between the hills and 
floated transparently above the fields.  Charity stood 
a moment at the gate, looking out into the waning 
night.  She watched the boy drive off, his horse's head 
wagging heavily to and fro; then she went around to the 
kitchen door and felt under the mat for the key.  She 
found it, unlocked the door and went in.  The 
kitchen was dark, but she discovered a box of matches, 
lit a candle and went upstairs.  Mr. Royall's door, 
opposite hers, stood open on his unlit room; evidently 
he had not come back.  She went into her room, bolted 
her door and began slowly to untie the ribbon about her 
waist, and to take off her dress.  Under the bed she 
saw the paper bag in which she had hidden her new hat 
from inquisitive eyes....



She lay for a long time sleepless on her bed, staring 
up at the moonlight on the low ceiling; dawn was in the 
sky when she fell asleep, and when she woke the sun was 
on her face.

She dressed and went down to the kitchen.  Verena was 
there alone:  she glanced at Charity tranquilly, with 
her old deaf-looking eyes.  There was no sign of Mr. 
Royall about the house and the hours passed without his 
reappearing.  Charity had gone up to her room, and sat 
there listlessly, her hands on her lap.  Puffs of 
sultry air fanned her dimity window curtains and flies 
buzzed stiflingly against the bluish panes.

At one o'clock Verena hobbled up to see if she were not 
coming down to dinner; but she shook her head, and 
the old woman went away, saying:  "I'll cover up, then."

The sun turned and left her room, and Charity seated 
herself in the window, gazing down the village street 
through the half-opened shutters.  Not a thought was in 
her mind; it was just a dark whirlpool of crowding 
images; and she watched the people passing along the 
street, Dan Targatt's team hauling a load of pine-
trunks down to Hepburn, the sexton's old white horse 
grazing on the bank across the way, as if she looked at 
these familiar sights from the other side of the grave.

She was roused from her apathy by seeing Ally Hawes 
come out of the Frys' gate and walk slowly toward the 
red house with her uneven limping step.  At the sight 
Charity recovered her severed contact with reality.  She 
divined that Ally was coming to hear about her day:  no 
one else was in the secret of the trip to Nettleton, 
and it had flattered Ally profoundly to be allowed to 
know of it.

At the thought of having to see her, of having to meet 
her eyes and answer or evade her questions, the whole 
horror of the previous night's adventure rushed back 
upon Charity.  What had been a feverish nightmare 
became a cold and unescapable fact.  Poor Ally, at that 
moment, represented North Dormer, with all its mean 
curiosities, its furtive malice, its sham 
unconsciousness of evil.  Charity knew that, although 
all relations with Julia were supposed to be severed, 
the tender-hearted Ally still secretly communicated 
with her; and no doubt Julia would exult in the chance 
of retailing the scandal of the wharf.  The story, 
exaggerated and distorted, was probably already on its 
way to North Dormer.

Ally's dragging pace had not carried her far from the 
Frys' gate when she was stopped by old Mrs. Sollas, who 
was a great talker, and spoke very slowly because she 
had never been able to get used to her new teeth from 
Hepburn.  Still, even this respite would not last long; 
in another ten minutes Ally would be at the door, and 
Charity would hear her greeting Verena in the kitchen, 
and then calling up from the foot of the stairs.

Suddenly it became clear that flight, and instant 
flight, was the only thing conceivable.  The longing to 
escape, to get away from familiar faces, from places 
where she was known, had always been strong in her in 
moments of distress.  She had a childish belief in 
the miraculous power of strange scenes and new faces to 
transform her life and wipe out bitter memories.  But 
such impulses were mere fleeting whims compared to the 
cold resolve which now possessed her.  She felt she 
could not remain an hour longer under the roof of the 
man who had publicly dishonoured her, and face to face 
with the people who would presently be gloating over 
all the details of her humiliation.

Her passing pity for Mr. Royall had been swallowed up 
in loathing:  everything in her recoiled from the 
disgraceful spectacle of the drunken old man 
apostrophizing her in the presence of a band of loafers 
and street-walkers.  Suddenly, vividly, she relived 
again the horrible moment when he had tried to force 
himself into her room, and what she had before supposed 
to be a mad aberration now appeared to her as a vulgar 
incident in a debauched and degraded life.

While these thoughts were hurrying through her she had 
dragged out her old canvas school-bag, and was 
thrusting into it a few articles of clothing and the 
little packet of letters she had received from Harney.  
From under her pincushion she took the library key, and 
laid it in full view; then she felt at the back of 
a drawer for the blue brooch that Harney had given her.  
She would not have dared to wear it openly at North 
Dormer, but now she fastened it on her bosom as if it 
were a talisman to protect her in her flight.  These 
preparations had taken but a few minutes, and when they 
were finished Ally Hawes was still at the Frys' corner 
talking to old Mrs. Sollas....



She had said to herself, as she always said in moments 
of revolt:  "I'll go to the Mountain--I'll go back to my 
own folks."  She had never really meant it before; but 
now, as she considered her case, no other course seemed 
open.  She had never learned any trade that would have 
given her independence in a strange place, and she knew 
no one in the big towns of the valley, where she might 
have hoped to find employment.  Miss Hatchard was still 
away; but even had she been at North Dormer she was the 
last person to whom Charity would have turned, since 
one of the motives urging her to flight was the wish 
not to see Lucius Harney.  Travelling back from 
Nettleton, in the crowded brightly-lit train, all 
exchange of confidence between them had been 
impossible; but during their drive from Hepburn to 
Creston River she had gathered from Harney's snatches 
of consolatory talk--again hampered by the freckled 
boy's presence--that he intended to see her the next 
day.  At the moment she had found a vague comfort in 
the assurance; but in the desolate lucidity of the 
hours that followed she had come to see the 
impossibility of meeting him again.  Her dream of 
comradeship was over; and the scene on the wharf--vile 
and disgraceful as it had been--had after all shed the 
light of truth on her minute of madness.  It was as if 
her guardian's words had stripped her bare in the face 
of the grinning crowd and proclaimed to the world the 
secret admonitions of her conscience.

She did not think these things out clearly; she simply 
followed the blind propulsion of her wretchedness.  She 
did not want, ever again, to see anyone she had known; 
above all, she did not want to see Harney....

She climbed the hill-path behind the house and struck 
through the woods by a short-cut leading to the Creston 
road.  A lead-coloured sky hung heavily over the 
fields, and in the forest the motionless air was 
stifling; but she pushed on, impatient to reach 
the road which was the shortest way to the Mountain.

To do so, she had to follow the Creston road for a mile 
or two, and go within half a mile of the village; and 
she walked quickly, fearing to meet Harney.  But there 
was no sign of him, and she had almost reached the 
branch road when she saw the flanks of a large white 
tent projecting through the trees by the roadside.  She 
supposed that it sheltered a travelling circus which 
had come there for the Fourth; but as she drew nearer 
she saw, over the folded-back flap, a large sign 
bearing the inscription, "Gospel Tent."  The interior 
seemed to be empty; but a young man in a black alpaca 
coat, his lank hair parted over a round white face, 
stepped from under the flap and advanced toward her 
with a smile.

"Sister, your Saviour knows everything.  Won't you come 
in and lay your guilt before Him?" he asked 
insinuatingly, putting his hand on her arm.

Charity started back and flushed.  For a moment she 
thought the evangelist must have heard a report of the 
scene at Nettleton; then she saw the absurdity of the 
supposition.

"I on'y wish't I had any to lay!" she retorted, 
with one of her fierce flashes of self-derision; 
and the young man murmured, aghast:  "Oh, Sister, don't 
speak blasphemy...."

But she had jerked her arm out of his hold, and was 
running up the branch road, trembling with the fear of 
meeting a familiar face.  Presently she was out of 
sight of the village, and climbing into the heart of 
the forest.  She could not hope to do the fifteen miles 
to the Mountain that afternoon; but she knew of a place 
half-way to Hamblin where she could sleep, and where no 
one would think of looking for her.  It was a little 
deserted house on a slope in one of the lonely rifts of 
the hills.  She had seen it once, years before, when 
she had gone on a nutting expedition to the grove of 
walnuts below it.  The party had taken refuge in the 
house from a sudden mountain storm, and she remembered 
that Ben Sollas, who liked frightening girls, had told 
them that it was said to be haunted.

She was growing faint and tired, for she had eaten 
nothing since morning, and was not used to walking so 
far.  Her head felt light and she sat down for a moment 
by the roadside.  As she sat there she heard the click 
of a bicycle-bell, and started up to plunge back into 
the forest; but before she could move the bicycle 
had swept around the curve of the road, and Harney, 
jumping off, was approaching her with outstretched 
arms.

"Charity! What on earth are you doing here?"

She stared as if he were a vision, so startled by the 
unexpectedness of his being there that no words came to 
her.

"Where were you going?  Had you forgotten that I was 
coming?" he continued, trying to draw her to him; but 
she shrank from his embrace.

"I was going away--I don't want to see you--I want you 
should leave me alone," she broke out wildly.

He looked at her and his face grew grave, as though the 
shadow of a premonition brushed it.

"Going away--from me, Charity?"

"From everybody.  I want you should leave me."

He stood glancing doubtfully up and down the lonely 
forest road that stretched away into sun-flecked 
distances.

"Where were you going?'

"Home."

"Home--this way?"

She threw her head back defiantly.  "To my home--up 
yonder:  to the Mountain."

As she spoke she became aware of a change in his 
face.  He was no longer listening to her, he was only 
looking at her, with the passionate absorbed expression 
she had seen in his eyes after they had kissed on the 
stand at Nettleton.  He was the new Harney again, the 
Harney abruptly revealed in that embrace, who seemed so 
penetrated with the joy of her presence that he was 
utterly careless of what she was thinking or feeling.

He caught her hands with a laugh.  "How do you suppose 
I found you?" he said gaily.  He drew out the little 
packet of his letters and flourished them before her 
bewildered eyes.

"You dropped them, you imprudent young person--dropped 
them in the middle of the road, not far from here; and 
the young man who is running the Gospel tent picked 
them up just as I was riding by."  He drew back, holding 
her at arm's length, and scrutinizing her troubled face 
with the minute searching gaze of his short-sighted 
eyes.

"Did you really think you could run away from me?  You 
see you weren't meant to," he said; and before she 
could answer he had kissed her again, not vehemently, 
but tenderly, almost fraternally, as if he had 
guessed her confused pain, and wanted her to know he 
understood it.  He wound his fingers through hers.

"Come let's walk a little.  I want to talk to you.  
There's so much to say."

He spoke with a boy's gaiety, carelessly and 
confidently, as if nothing had happened that could 
shame or embarrass them; and for a moment, in the 
sudden relief of her release from lonely pain, she felt 
herself yielding to his mood.  But he had turned, and 
was drawing her back along the road by which she had 
come.  She stiffened herself and stopped short.

"I won't go back," she said.

They looked at each other a moment in silence; then he 
answered gently:  "Very well:  let's go the other way, 
then."

She remained motionless, gazing silently at the ground, 
and he went on:  "Isn't there a house up here somewhere--
a little abandoned house--you meant to show me some 
day?" Still she made no answer, and he continued, in 
the same tone of tender reassurance:  "Let us go there 
now and sit down and talk quietly."  He took one of the 
hands that hung by her side and pressed his lips to the 
palm.  "Do you suppose I'm going to let you send 
me away?  Do you suppose I don't understand?"



The little old house--its wooden walls sun-bleached to 
a ghostly gray--stood in an orchard above the road.  
The garden palings had fallen, but the broken gate 
dangled between its posts, and the path to the house 
was marked by rose-bushes run wild and hanging their 
small pale blossoms above the crowding grasses.  
Slender pilasters and an intricate fan-light framed the 
opening where the door had hung; and the door itself 
lay rotting in the grass, with an old apple-tree fallen 
across it.

Inside, also, wind and weather had blanched everything 
to the same wan silvery tint; the house was as dry and 
pure as the interior of a long-empty shell.  But it 
must have been exceptionally well built, for the little 
rooms had kept something of their human aspect:  the 
wooden mantels with their neat classic ornaments were 
in place, and the corners of one ceiling retained a 
light film of plaster tracery.

Harney had found an old bench at the back door and 
dragged it into the house.  Charity sat on it, 
leaning her head against the wall in a state of 
drowsy lassitude.  He had guessed that she was hungry 
and thirsty, and had brought her some tablets of 
chocolate from his bicycle-bag, and filled his 
drinking-cup from a spring in the orchard; and now he 
sat at her feet, smoking a cigarette, and looking up at 
her without speaking.  Outside, the afternoon shadows 
were lengthening across the grass, and through the 
empty window-frame that faced her she saw the Mountain 
thrusting its dark mass against a sultry sunset.  It 
was time to go.

She stood up, and he sprang to his feet also, and 
passed his arm through hers with an air of authority.  
"Now, Charity, you're coming back with me."

She looked at him and shook her head.  "I ain't ever 
going back.  You don't know."

"What don't I know?" She was silent, and he continued:  
"What happened on the wharf was horrible--it's natural 
you should feel as you do.  But it doesn't make any 
real difference:  you can't be hurt by such things.  You 
must try to forget.  And you must try to understand 
that men...men sometimes..."

"I know about men.  That's why."

He coloured a little at the retort, as though it 
had touched him in a way she did not suspect.

"Well, then...you must know one has to make 
allowances....He'd been drinking...."

"I know all that, too.  I've seen him so before.  But 
he wouldn't have dared speak to me that way if he 
hadn't..."

"Hadn't what?  What do you mean?"

"Hadn't wanted me to be like those other girls...."  She 
lowered her voice and looked away from him.  "So's 't 
he wouldn't have to go out...."

Harney stared at her.  For a moment he did not seem to 
seize her meaning; then his face grew dark.  "The 
damned hound! The villainous low hound!" His wrath 
blazed up, crimsoning him to the temples.  "I never 
dreamed--good God, it's too vile," he broke off, as if 
his thoughts recoiled from the discovery.

"I won't never go back there," she repeated doggedly.

"No----" he assented.

There was a long interval of silence, during which she 
imagined that he was searching her face for more 
light on what she had revealed to him; and a flush of 
shame swept over her.

"I know the way you must feel about me," she broke out, 
"...telling you such things...."

But once more, as she spoke, she became aware that he 
was no longer listening.  He came close and caught her 
to him as if he were snatching her from some imminent 
peril:  his impetuous eyes were in hers, and she could 
feel the hard beat of his heart as he held her against 
it.

"Kiss me again--like last night," he said, pushing her 
hair back as if to draw her whole face up into his 
kiss.




XII



ONE afternoon toward the end of August a group of girls 
sat in a room at Miss Hatchard's in a gay confusion of 
flags, turkey-red, blue and white paper muslin, harvest 
sheaves and illuminated scrolls.

North Dormer was preparing for its Old Home Week.  That 
form of sentimental decentralization was still in its 
early stages, and, precedents being few, and the desire 
to set an example contagious, the matter had become a 
subject of prolonged and passionate discussion under 
Miss Hatchard's roof.  The incentive to the celebration 
had come rather from those who had left North Dormer 
than from those who had been obliged to stay there, and 
there was some difficulty in rousing the village to the 
proper state of enthusiasm.  But Miss Hatchard's pale 
prim drawing-room was the centre of constant comings 
and goings from Hepburn, Nettleton, Springfield and 
even more distant cities; and whenever a visitor 
arrived he was led across the hall, and treated to 
a glimpse of the group of girls deep in their pretty 
preparations.

"All the old names...all the old names...."  Miss 
Hatchard would be heard, tapping across the hall on her 
crutches.  "Targatt...Sollas...Fry:  this is Miss Orma 
Fry sewing the stars on the drapery for the organ-loft.  
Don't move, girls....and this is Miss Ally Hawes, our 
cleverest needle-woman...and Miss Charity Royall making 
our garlands of evergreen....I like the idea of its all 
being homemade, don't you?  We haven't had to call in 
any foreign talent:  my young cousin Lucius Harney, the 
architect--you know he's up here preparing a book on 
Colonial houses--he's taken the whole thing in hand so 
cleverly; but you must come and see his sketch for the 
stage we're going to put up in the Town Hall."

One of the first results of the Old Home Week agitation 
had, in fact, been the reappearance of Lucius Harney in 
the village street.  He had been vaguely spoken of as 
being not far off, but for some weeks past no one had 
seen him at North Dormer, and there was a recent report 
of his having left Creston River, where he was said to 
have been staying, and gone away from the neighbourhood 
for good.  Soon after Miss Hatchard's return, 
however, he came back to his old quarters in her house, 
and began to take a leading part in the planning of the 
festivities.  He threw himself into the idea with 
extraordinary good-humour, and was so prodigal of 
sketches, and so inexhaustible in devices, that he gave 
an immediate impetus to the rather languid movement, 
and infected the whole village with his enthusiasm.

"Lucius has such a feeling for the past that he has 
roused us all to a sense of our privileges," Miss 
Hatchard would say, lingering on the last word, which 
was a favourite one.  And before leading her visitor 
back to the drawing-room she would repeat, for the 
hundredth time, that she supposed he thought it very 
bold of little North Dormer to start up and have a Home 
Week of its own, when so many bigger places hadn't 
thought of it yet; but that, after all, Associations 
counted more than the size of the population, didn't 
they?  And of course North Dormer was so full of 
Associations...historic, literary (here a filial sigh 
for Honorius) and ecclesiastical...he knew about the 
old pewter communion service imported from England in 
1769, she supposed?  And it was so important, in a 
wealthy materialistic age, to set the example of 
reverting to the old ideals, the family and the 
homestead, and so on.  This peroration usually carried 
her half-way back across the hall, leaving the girls to 
return to their interrupted activities.

The day on which Charity Royall was weaving hemlock 
garlands for the procession was the last before the 
celebration.  When Miss Hatchard called upon the North 
Dormer maidenhood to collaborate in the festal 
preparations Charity had at first held aloof; but it 
had been made clear to her that her non-appearance 
might excite conjecture, and, reluctantly, she had 
joined the other workers.  The girls, at first shy and 
embarrassed, and puzzled as to the exact nature of the 
projected commemoration, had soon become interested in 
the amusing details of their task, and excited by the 
notice they received.  They would not for the world 
have missed their afternoons at Miss Hatchard's, and, 
while they cut out and sewed and draped and pasted, 
their tongues kept up such an accompaniment to the 
sewing-machine that Charity's silence sheltered itself 
unperceived under their chatter.

In spirit she was still almost unconscious of the 
pleasant stir about her.  Since her return to the 
red house, on the evening of the day when Harney had 
overtaken her on her way to the Mountain, she had lived 
at North Dormer as if she were suspended in the void.  
She had come back there because Harney, after appearing 
to agree to the impossibility of her doing so, had 
ended by persuading her that any other course would be 
madness.  She had nothing further to fear from Mr. 
Royall.  Of this she had declared herself sure, though 
she had failed to add, in his exoneration, that he had 
twice offered to make her his wife.  Her hatred of him 
made it impossible, at the moment, for her to say 
anything that might partly excuse him in Harney's eyes.

Harney, however, once satisfied of her security, had 
found plenty of reasons for urging her to return.  The 
first, and the most unanswerable, was that she had 
nowhere else to go.  But the one on which he laid the 
greatest stress was that flight would be equivalent to 
avowal.  If--as was almost inevitable--rumours of the 
scandalous scene at Nettleton should reach North 
Dormer, how else would her disappearance be 
interpreted?  Her guardian had publicly taken away her 
character, and she immediately vanished from his 
house.  Seekers after motives could hardly fail to 
draw an unkind conclusion.  But if she came back at 
once, and was seen leading her usual life, the incident 
was reduced to its true proportions, as the outbreak of 
a drunken old man furious at being surprised in 
disreputable company.  People would say that Mr. Royall 
had insulted his ward to justify himself, and the 
sordid tale would fall into its place in the chronicle 
of his obscure debaucheries.

Charity saw the force of the argument; but if she 
acquiesced it was not so much because of that as 
because it was Harney's wish.  Since that evening in 
the deserted house she could imagine no reason for 
doing or not doing anything except the fact that Harney 
wished or did not wish it.  All her tossing 
contradictory impulses were merged in a fatalistic 
acceptance of his will.  It was not that she felt in 
him any ascendancy of character--there were moments 
already when she knew she was the stronger--but that 
all the rest of life had become a mere cloudy rim about 
the central glory of their passion.  Whenever she 
stopped thinking about that for a moment she felt as 
she sometimes did after lying on the grass and staring 
up too long at the sky; her eyes were so full of 
light that everything about her was a blur.

Each time that Miss Hatchard, in the course of her 
periodical incursions into the work-room, dropped an 
allusion to her young cousin, the architect, the effect 
was the same on Charity.  The hemlock garland she was 
wearing fell to her knees and she sat in a kind of 
trance.  It was so manifestly absurd that Miss Hatchard 
should talk of Harney in that familiar possessive way, 
as if she had any claim on him, or knew anything about 
him.  She, Charity Royall, was the only being on earth 
who really knew him, knew him from the soles of his 
feet to the rumpled crest of his hair, knew the 
shifting lights in his eyes, and the inflexions of his 
voice, and the things he liked and disliked, and 
everything there was to know about him, as minutely and 
yet unconsciously as a child knows the walls of the 
room it wakes up in every morning.  It was this fact, 
which nobody about her guessed, or would have 
understood, that made her life something apart and 
inviolable, as if nothing had any power to hurt or 
disturb her as long as her secret was safe.

The room in which the girls sat was the one which had 
been Harney's bedroom.  He had been sent upstairs, 
to make room for the Home Week workers; but the 
furniture had not been moved, and as Charity sat there 
she had perpetually before her the vision she had 
looked in on from the midnight garden.  The table at 
which Harney had sat was the one about which the girls 
were gathered; and her own seat was near the bed on 
which she had seen him lying.  Sometimes, when the 
others were not looking, she bent over as if to pick up 
something, and laid her cheek for a moment against the 
pillow.

Toward sunset the girls disbanded.  Their work was 
done, and the next morning at daylight the draperies 
and garlands were to be nailed up, and the illuminated 
scrolls put in place in the Town Hall.  The first 
guests were to drive over from Hepburn in time for the 
midday banquet under a tent in Miss Hatchard's field; 
and after that the ceremonies were to begin.  Miss 
Hatchard, pale with fatigue and excitement, thanked her 
young assistants, and stood in the porch, leaning on 
her crutches and waving a farewell as she watched them 
troop away down the street.

Charity had slipped off among the first; but at the 
gate she heard Ally Hawes calling after her, and 
reluctantly turned.

"Will you come over now and try on your dress?" 
Ally asked, looking at her with wistful admiration.  "I 
want to be sure the sleeves don't ruck up the same as 
they did yesterday."

Charity gazed at her with dazzled eyes.  "Oh, it's 
lovely," she said, and hastened away without listening 
to Ally's protest.  She wanted her dress to be as 
pretty as the other girls'--wanted it, in fact, to 
outshine the rest, since she was to take part in the 
"exercises"--but she had no time just then to fix her 
mind on such matters....

She sped up the street to the library, of which she had 
the key about her neck.  From the passage at the back 
she dragged forth a bicycle, and guided it to the edge 
of the street.  She looked about to see if any of the 
girls were approaching; but they had drifted away 
together toward the Town Hall, and she sprang into the 
saddle and turned toward the Creston road.  There was 
an almost continual descent to Creston, and with her 
feet against the pedals she floated through the still 
evening air like one of the hawks she had often watched 
slanting downward on motionless wings.  Twenty minutes 
from the time when she had left Miss Hatchard's door 
she was turning up the wood-road on which Harney 
had overtaken her on the day of her flight; and a few 
minutes afterward she had jumped from her bicycle at 
the gate of the deserted house.

In the gold-powdered sunset it looked more than ever 
like some frail shell dried and washed by many seasons; 
but at the back, whither Charity advanced, drawing her 
bicycle after her, there were signs of recent 
habitation.  A rough door made of boards hung in the 
kitchen doorway, and pushing it open she entered a room 
furnished in primitive camping fashion.  In the window 
was a table, also made of boards, with an earthenware 
jar holding a big bunch of wild asters, two canvas 
chairs stood near by, and in one corner was a mattress 
with a Mexican blanket over it.

The room was empty, and leaning her bicycle against the 
house Charity clambered up the slope and sat down on a 
rock under an old apple-tree.  The air was perfectly 
still, and from where she sat she would be able to hear 
the tinkle of a bicycle-bell a long way down the 
road....

She was always glad when she got to the little house 
before Harney.  She liked to have time to take in every 
detail of its secret sweetness--the shadows of the 
apple-trees swaying on the grass, the old walnuts 
rounding their domes below the road, the meadows 
sloping westward in the afternoon light--before his 
first kiss blotted it all out.  Everything unrelated to 
the hours spent in that tranquil place was as faint as 
the remembrance of a dream.  The only reality was the 
wondrous unfolding of her new self, the reaching out to 
the light of all her contracted tendrils.  She had 
lived all her life among people whose sensibilities 
seemed to have withered for lack of use; and more 
wonderful, at first, than Harney's endearments were the 
words that were a part of them.  She had always thought 
of love as something confused and furtive, and he made 
it as bright and open as the summer air.

On the morrow of the day when she had shown him the way 
to the deserted house he had packed up and left Creston 
River for Boston; but at the first station he had 
jumped on the train with a hand-bag and scrambled up 
into the hills.  For two golden rainless August weeks 
he had camped in the house, getting eggs and milk from 
the solitary farm in the valley, where no one knew him, 
and doing his cooking over a spirit-lamp.  He got up 
every day with the sun, took a plunge in a brown pool 
he knew of, and spent long hours lying in the 
scented hemlock-woods above the house, or wandering 
along the yoke of the Eagle Ridge, far above the misty 
blue valleys that swept away east and west between the 
endless hills.  And in the afternoon Charity came to 
him.

With part of what was left of her savings she had hired 
a bicycle for a month, and every day after dinner, as 
soon as her guardian started to his office, she hurried 
to the library, got out her bicycle, and flew down the 
Creston road.  She knew that Mr. Royall, like everyone 
else in North Dormer, was perfectly aware of her 
acquisition:  possibly he, as well as the rest of the 
village, knew what use she made of it.  She did not 
care:  she felt him to be so powerless that if he had 
questioned her she would probably have told him the 
truth.  But they had never spoken to each other since 
the night on the wharf at Nettleton.  He had returned 
to North Dormer only on the third day after that 
encounter, arriving just as Charity and Verena were 
sitting down to supper.  He had drawn up his chair, 
taken his napkin from the side-board drawer, pulled it 
out of its ring, and seated himself as unconcernedly as 
if he had come in from his usual afternoon session 
at Carrick Fry's; and the long habit of the household 
made it seem almost natural that Charity should not so 
much as raise her eyes when he entered.  She had simply 
let him understand that her silence was not accidental 
by leaving the table while he was still eating, and 
going up without a word to shut herself into her room.  
After that he formed the habit of talking loudly and 
genially to Verena whenever Charity was in the room; 
but otherwise there was no apparent change in their 
relations.

She did not think connectedly of these things while she 
sat waiting for Harney, but they remained in her mind 
as a sullen background against which her short hours 
with him flamed out like forest fires.  Nothing else 
mattered, neither the good nor the bad, or what might 
have seemed so before she knew him.  He had caught her 
up and carried her away into a new world, from which, 
at stated hours, the ghost of her came back to perform 
certain customary acts, but all so thinly and 
insubstantially that she sometimes wondered that the 
people she went about among could see her....

Behind the swarthy Mountain the sun had gone down in 
waveless gold.  From a pasture up the slope a 
tinkle of cow-bells sounded; a puff of smoke hung over 
the farm in the valley, trailed on the pure air and was 
gone.  For a few minutes, in the clear light that is 
all shadow, fields and woods were outlined with an 
unreal precision; then the twilight blotted them out, 
and the little house turned gray and spectral under its 
wizened apple-branches.

Charity's heart contracted.  The first fall of night 
after a day of radiance often gave her a sense of 
hidden menace:  it was like looking out over the world 
as it would be when love had gone from it.  She 
wondered if some day she would sit in that same place 
and watch in vain for her lover....

His bicycle-bell sounded down the lane, and in a minute 
she was at the gate and his eyes were laughing in hers.  
They walked back through the long grass, and pushed 
open the door behind the house.  The room at first 
seemed quite dark and they had to grope their way in 
hand in hand.  Through the window-frame the sky looked 
light by contrast, and above the black mass of asters 
in the earthen jar one white star glimmered like a 
moth.

"There was such a lot to do at the last minute," Harney 
was explaining, "and I had to drive down to 
Creston to meet someone who has come to stay with my 
cousin for the show."

He had his arms about her, and his kisses were in her 
hair and on her lips.  Under his touch things deep down 
in her struggled to the light and sprang up like 
flowers in sunshine.  She twisted her fingers into his, 
and they sat down side by side on the improvised couch.  
She hardly heard his excuses for being late:  in his 
absence a thousand doubts tormented her, but as soon as 
he appeared she ceased to wonder where he had come 
from, what had delayed him, who had kept him from her.  
It seemed as if the places he had been in, and the 
people he had been with, must cease to exist when he 
left them, just as her own life was suspended in his 
absence.

He continued, now, to talk to her volubly and gaily, 
deploring his lateness, grumbling at the demands on his 
time, and good-humouredly mimicking Miss Hatchard's 
benevolent agitation.  "She hurried off Miles to ask 
Mr. Royall to speak at the Town Hall tomorrow:  I didn't 
know till it was done."  Charity was silent, and he 
added:  "After all, perhaps it's just as well.  No one 
else could have done it."

Charity made no answer:  She did not care what part 
her guardian played in the morrow's ceremonies.  Like 
all the other figures peopling her meagre world he had 
grown non-existent to her.  She had even put off hating 
him.

"Tomorrow I shall only see you from far off," Harney 
continued.  "But in the evening there'll be the dance 
in the Town Hall.  Do you want me to promise not to 
dance with any other girl?"

Any other girl?  Were there any others?  She had 
forgotten even that peril, so enclosed did he and she 
seem in their secret world.  Her heart gave a 
frightened jerk.

"Yes, promise."

He laughed and took her in his arms.  "You goose--not 
even if they're hideous?"

He pushed the hair from her forehead, bending her face 
back, as his way was, and leaning over so that his head 
loomed black between her eyes and the paleness of the 
sky, in which the white star floated...



Side by side they sped back along the dark wood-road to 
the village.  A late moon was rising, full orbed and 
fiery, turning the mountain ranges from fluid gray 
to a massive blackness, and making the upper sky so 
light that the stars looked as faint as their own 
reflections in water.  At the edge of the wood, half a 
mile from North Dormer, Harney jumped from his bicycle, 
took Charity in his arms for a last kiss, and then 
waited while she went on alone.

They were later than usual, and instead of taking the 
bicycle to the library she propped it against the back 
of the wood-shed and entered the kitchen of the red 
house.  Verena sat there alone; when Charity came in 
she looked at her with mild impenetrable eyes and then 
took a plate and a glass of milk from the shelf and set 
them silently on the table.  Charity nodded her thanks, 
and sitting down, fell hungrily upon her piece of pie 
and emptied the glass.  Her face burned with her quick 
flight through the night, and her eyes were dazzled by 
the twinkle of the kitchen lamp.  She felt like a 
night-bird suddenly caught and caged.

"He ain't come back since supper," Verena said.  "He's 
down to the Hall."

Charity took no notice.  Her soul was still winging 
through the forest.  She washed her plate and tumbler, 
and then felt her way up the dark stairs.  When she 
opened her door a wonder arrested her.  Before going 
out she had closed her shutters against the afternoon 
heat, but they had swung partly open, and a bar of 
moonlight, crossing the room, rested on her bed and 
showed a dress of China silk laid out on it in virgin 
whiteness.  Charity had spent more than she could 
afford on the dress, which was to surpass those of all 
the other girls; she had wanted to let North Dormer see 
that she was worthy of Harney's admiration.  Above the 
dress, folded on the pillow, was the white veil which 
the young women who took part in the exercises were to 
wear under a wreath of asters; and beside the veil a 
pair of slim white satin shoes that Ally had produced 
from an old trunk in which she stored mysterious 
treasures.

Charity stood gazing at all the outspread whiteness.  It 
recalled a vision that had come to her in the night 
after her first meeting with Harney.  She no longer had 
such visions...warmer splendours had displaced 
them...but it was stupid of Ally to have paraded all 
those white things on her bed, exactly as Hattie 
Targatt's wedding dress from Springfield had been 
spread out for the neighbours to see when she married 
Tom Fry....

Charity took up the satin shoes and looked at them 
curiously.  By day, no doubt, they would appear a 
little worn, but in the moonlight they seemed carved of 
ivory.  She sat down on the floor to try them on, and 
they fitted her perfectly, though when she stood up she 
lurched a little on the high heels.  She looked down at 
her feet, which the graceful mould of the slippers had 
marvellously arched and narrowed.  She had never seen 
such shoes before, even in the shop-windows at 
Nettleton...never, except...yes, once, she had noticed 
a pair of the same shape on Annabel Balch.

A blush of mortification swept over her.  Ally 
sometimes sewed for Miss Balch when that brilliant 
being descended on North Dormer, and no doubt she 
picked up presents of cast-off clothing:  the treasures 
in the mysterious trunk all came from the people she 
worked for; there could be no doubt that the white 
slippers were Annabel Balch's....

As she stood there, staring down moodily at her feet, 
she heard the triple click-click-click of a bicycle-
bell under her window.  It was Harney's secret signal 
as he passed on his way home.  She stumbled to the 
window on her high heels, flung open the shutters and 
leaned out.  He waved to her and sped by, his 
black shadow dancing merrily ahead of him down the 
empty moonlit road; and she leaned there watching him 
till he vanished under the Hatchard spruces.



XIII


THE Town Hall was crowded and exceedingly hot.  As 
Charity marched into it third in the white muslin file 
headed by Orma Fry, she was conscious mainly of the 
brilliant effect of the wreathed columns framing the 
green-carpeted stage toward which she was moving; and 
of the unfamiliar faces turning from the front rows to 
watch the advance of the procession.

But it was all a bewildering blur of eyes and colours 
till she found herself standing at the back of the 
stage, her great bunch of asters and goldenrod held 
well in front of her, and answering the nervous glance 
of Lambert Sollas, the organist from Mr. Miles's 
church, who had come up from Nettleton to play the 
harmonium and sat behind it, his conductor's eye 
running over the fluttered girls.

A moment later Mr. Miles, pink and twinkling, emerged 
from the background, as if buoyed up on his broad white 
gown, and briskly dominated the bowed heads in the 
front rows.  He prayed energetically and briefly 
and then retired, and a fierce nod from Lambert Sollas 
warned the girls that they were to follow at once with 
"Home, Sweet Home."  It was a joy to Charity to sing:  it 
seemed as though, for the first time, her secret 
rapture might burst from her and flash its defiance at 
the world.  All the glow in her blood, the breath of 
the summer earth, the rustle of the forest, the fresh 
call of birds at sunrise, and the brooding midday 
languors, seemed to pass into her untrained voice, 
lifted and led by the sustaining chorus.

And then suddenly the song was over, and after an 
uncertain pause, during which Miss Hatchard's pearl-
grey gloves started a furtive signalling down the hall, 
Mr. Royall, emerging in turn, ascended the steps of the 
stage and appeared behind the flower-wreathed desk.  He 
passed close to Charity, and she noticed that his 
gravely set face wore the look of majesty that used to 
awe and fascinate her childhood.  His frock-coat had 
been carefully brushed and ironed, and the ends of his 
narrow black tie were so nearly even that the tying 
must have cost him a protracted struggle.  His 
appearance struck her all the more because it was the 
first time she had looked him full in the face since 
the night at Nettleton, and nothing in his grave 
and impressive demeanour revealed a trace of the 
lamentable figure on the wharf.

He stood a moment behind the desk, resting his finger-
tips against it, and bending slightly toward his 
audience; then he straightened himself and began.

At first she paid no heed to what he was saying:  only 
fragments of sentences, sonorous quotations, allusions 
to illustrious men, including the obligatory tribute to 
Honorius Hatchard, drifted past her inattentive ears.  
She was trying to discover Harney among the notable 
people in the front row; but he was nowhere near Miss 
Hatchard, who, crowned by a pearl-grey hat that matched 
her gloves, sat just below the desk, supported by Mrs. 
Miles and an important-looking unknown lady.  Charity 
was near one end of the stage, and from where she sat 
the other end of the first row of seats was cut off by 
the screen of foliage masking the harmonium.  The 
effort to see Harney around the corner of the screen, 
or through its interstices, made her unconscious of 
everything else; but the effort was unsuccessful, and 
gradually she found her attention arrested by her 
guardian's discourse.

She had never heard him speak in public before, 
but she was familiar with the rolling music of his 
voice when he read aloud, or held forth to the 
selectmen about the stove at Carrick Fry's.  Today his 
inflections were richer and graver than she had ever 
known them:  he spoke slowly, with pauses that seemed to 
invite his hearers to silent participation in his 
thought; and Charity perceived a light of response in 
their faces.

He was nearing the end of his address..."Most of you," 
he said, "most of you who have returned here today, to 
take contact with this little place for a brief hour, 
have come only on a pious pilgrimage, and will go back 
presently to busy cities and lives full of larger 
duties.  But that is not the only way of coming back to 
North Dormer.  Some of us, who went out from here in 
our youth...went out, like you, to busy cities and 
larger duties...have come back in another way--come 
back for good.  I am one of those, as many of you 
know...."  He paused, and there was a sense of suspense 
in the listening hall.  "My history is without 
interest, but it has its lesson:  not so much for those 
of you who have already made your lives in other 
places, as for the young men who are perhaps 
planning even now to leave these quiet hills and go 
down into the struggle.  Things they cannot foresee may 
send some of those young men back some day to the 
little township and the old homestead:  they may come 
back for good...."  He looked about him, and repeated 
gravely:  "For GOOD.  There's the point I want to 
make...North Dormer is a poor little place, almost lost 
in a mighty landscape:  perhaps, by this time, it might 
have been a bigger place, and more in scale with the 
landscape, if those who had to come back had come with 
that feeling in their minds--that they wanted to come 
back for GOOD...and not for bad...or just for 
indifference....

"Gentlemen, let us look at things as they are.  Some of 
us have come back to our native town because we'd 
failed to get on elsewhere.  One way or other, things 
had gone wrong with us...what we'd dreamed of hadn't 
come true.  But the fact that we had failed elsewhere 
is no reason why we should fail here.  Our very 
experiments in larger places, even if they were 
unsuccessful, ought to have helped us to make North 
Dormer a larger place...and you young men who are 
preparing even now to follow the call of ambition, and 
turn your back on the old homes--well, let me say 
this to you, that if ever you do come back to them it's 
worth while to come back to them for their good....And 
to do that, you must keep on loving them while you're 
away from them; and even if you come back against your 
will--and thinking it's all a bitter mistake of Fate or 
Providence--you must try to make the best of it, and to 
make the best of your old town; and after a while--
well, ladies and gentlemen, I give you my recipe for 
what it's worth; after a while, I believe you'll be 
able to say, as I can say today:  'I'm glad I'm here.'  
Believe me, all of you, the best way to help the places 
we live in is to be glad we live there."

He stopped, and a murmur of emotion and surprise ran 
through the audience.  It was not in the least what 
they had expected, but it moved them more than what 
they had expected would have moved them.  "Hear, hear!" 
a voice cried out in the middle of the hall.  An 
outburst of cheers caught up the cry, and as they 
subsided Charity heard Mr. Miles saying to someone near 
him:  "That was a MAN talking----" He wiped his 
spectacles.

Mr. Royall had stepped back from the desk, and 
taken his seat in the row of chairs in front of 
the harmonium.  A dapper white-haired gentleman--a 
distant Hatchard--succeeded him behind the goldenrod, 
and began to say beautiful things about the old oaken 
bucket, patient white-haired mothers, and where the 
boys used to go nutting...and Charity began again to 
search for Harney....

Suddenly Mr. Royall pushed back his seat, and one of 
the maple branches in front of the harmonium collapsed 
with a crash.  It uncovered the end of the first row 
and in one of the seats Charity saw Harney, and in the 
next a lady whose face was turned toward him, and 
almost hidden by the brim of her drooping hat.  Charity 
did not need to see the face.  She knew at a glance the 
slim figure, the fair hair heaped up under the hat-
brim, the long pale wrinkled gloves with bracelets 
slipping over them.  At the fall of the branch Miss 
Balch turned her head toward the stage, and in her 
pretty thin-lipped smile there lingered the reflection 
of something her neighbour had been whispering to 
her....

Someone came forward to replace the fallen branch, and 
Miss Balch and Harney were once more hidden.  But to 
Charity the vision of their two faces had blotted 
out everything.  In a flash they had shown her the bare 
reality of her situation.  Behind the frail screen of 
her lover's caresses was the whole inscrutable mystery 
of his life:  his relations with other people--with 
other women--his opinions, his prejudices, his 
principles, the net of influences and interests and 
ambitions in which every man's life is entangled.  Of 
all these she knew nothing, except what he had told her 
of his architectural aspirations.  She had always dimly 
guessed him to be in touch with important people, 
involved in complicated relations--but she felt it all 
to be so far beyond her understanding that the whole 
subject hung like a luminous mist on the farthest verge 
of her thoughts.  In the foreground, hiding all else, 
there was the glow of his presence, the light and 
shadow of his face, the way his short-sighted eyes, at 
her approach, widened and deepened as if to draw her 
down into them; and, above all, the flush of youth and 
tenderness in which his words enclosed her.

Now she saw him detached from her, drawn back into the 
unknown, and whispering to another girl things that 
provoked the same smile of mischievous complicity he 
had so often called to her own lips.  The feeling 
possessing her was not one of jealousy:  she was too 
sure of his love.  It was rather a terror of the 
unknown, of all the mysterious attractions that must 
even now be dragging him away from her, and of her own 
powerlessness to contend with them.

She had given him all she had--but what was it compared 
to the other gifts life held for him?  She understood 
now the case of girls like herself to whom this kind of 
thing happened.  They gave all they had, but their all 
was not enough:  it could not buy more than a few 
moments....

The heat had grown suffocating--she felt it descend on 
her in smothering waves, and the faces in the crowded 
hall began to dance like the pictures flashed on the 
screen at Nettleton.  For an instant Mr. Royall's 
countenance detached itself from the general blur.  He 
had resumed his place in front of the harmonium, and 
sat close to her, his eyes on her face; and his look 
seemed to pierce to the very centre of her confused 
sensations....A feeling of physical sickness rushed 
over her--and then deadly apprehension.  The light of 
the fiery hours in the little house swept back on her 
in a glare of fear....

She forced herself to look away from her guardian, 
and became aware that the oratory of the Hatchard 
cousin had ceased, and that Mr. Miles was again 
flapping his wings.  Fragments of his peroration 
floated through her bewildered brain...."A rich harvest 
of hallowed memories....A sanctified hour to which, in 
moments of trial, your thoughts will prayerfully 
return....And now, O Lord, let us humbly and fervently 
give thanks for this blessed day of reunion, here in 
the old home to which we have come back from so far.  
Preserve it to us, O Lord, in times to come, in all its 
homely sweetness--in the kindliness and wisdom of its 
old people, in the courage and industry of its young 
men, in the piety and purity of this group of innocent 
girls----" He flapped a white wing in their direction, 
and at the same moment Lambert Sollas, with his fierce 
nod, struck the opening bars of "Auld Lang 
Syne."...Charity stared straight ahead of her and then, 
dropping her flowers, fell face downward at Mr. 
Royall's feet.



XIV


NORTH DORMER'S celebration naturally included the 
villages attached to its township, and the festivities 
were to radiate over the whole group, from Dormer and 
the two Crestons to Hamblin, the lonely hamlet on the 
north slope of the Mountain where the first snow always 
fell.  On the third day there were speeches and 
ceremonies at Creston and Creston River; on the fourth 
the principal performers were to be driven in buck-
boards to Dormer and Hamblin.

It was on the fourth day that Charity returned for the 
first time to the little house.  She had not seen 
Harney alone since they had parted at the wood's edge 
the night before the celebrations began.  In the 
interval she had passed through many moods, but for the 
moment the terror which had seized her in the Town Hall 
had faded to the edge of consciousness.  She had 
fainted because the hall was stiflingly hot, and 
because the speakers had gone on and on....Several 
other people had been affected by the heat, and 
had had to leave before the exercises were over.  There 
had been thunder in the air all the afternoon, and 
everyone said afterward that something ought to have 
been done to ventilate the hall....

At the dance that evening--where she had gone 
reluctantly, and only because she feared to stay away, 
she had sprung back into instant reassurance.  As soon 
as she entered she had seen Harney waiting for her, and 
he had come up with kind gay eyes, and swept her off in 
a waltz.  Her feet were full of music, and though her 
only training had been with the village youths she had 
no difficulty in tuning her steps to his.  As they 
circled about the floor all her vain fears dropped from 
her, and she even forgot that she was probably dancing 
in Annabel Balch's slippers.

When the waltz was over Harney, with a last hand-clasp, 
left her to meet Miss Hatchard and Miss Balch, who were 
just entering.  Charity had a moment of anguish as Miss 
Balch appeared; but it did not last.  The triumphant 
fact of her own greater beauty, and of Harney's sense 
of it, swept her apprehensions aside.  Miss Balch, in 
an unbecoming dress, looked sallow and pinched, and 
Charity fancied there was a worried expression in 
her pale-lashed eyes.  She took a seat near Miss 
Hatchard and it was presently apparent that she did not 
mean to dance.  Charity did not dance often either.  
Harney explained to her that Miss Hatchard had begged 
him to give each of the other girls a turn; but he went 
through the form of asking Charity's permission each 
time he led one out, and that gave her a sense of 
secret triumph even completer than when she was 
whirling about the room with him.

She was thinking of all this as she waited for him in 
the deserted house.  The late afternoon was sultry, and 
she had tossed aside her hat and stretched herself at 
full length on the Mexican blanket because it was 
cooler indoors than under the trees.  She lay with her 
arms folded beneath her head, gazing out at the shaggy 
shoulder of the Mountain.  The sky behind it was full 
of the splintered glories of the descending sun, and 
before long she expected to hear Harney's bicycle-bell 
in the lane.  He had bicycled to Hamblin, instead of 
driving there with his cousin and her friends, so that 
he might be able to make his escape earlier and stop on 
the way back at the deserted house, which was on 
the road to Hamblin.  They had smiled together at the 
joke of hearing the crowded buck-boards roll by on the 
return, while they lay close in their hiding above the 
road.  Such childish triumphs still gave her a sense of 
reckless security.

Nevertheless she had not wholly forgotten the vision of 
fear that had opened before her in the Town Hall.  The 
sense of lastingness was gone from her and every moment 
with Harney would now be ringed with doubt.

The Mountain was turning purple against a fiery sunset 
from which it seemed to be divided by a knife-edge of 
quivering light; and above this wall of flame the whole 
sky was a pure pale green, like some cold mountain lake 
in shadow.  Charity lay gazing up at it, and watching 
for the first white star....

Her eyes were still fixed on the upper reaches of the 
sky when she became aware that a shadow had flitted 
across the glory-flooded room:  it must have been Harney 
passing the window against the sunset....She half 
raised herself, and then dropped back on her folded 
arms.  The combs had slipped from her hair, and it 
trailed in a rough dark rope across her breast.  She 
lay quite still, a sleepy smile on her lips, her 
indolent lids half shut.  There was a fumbling at the 
padlock and she called out:  "Have you slipped the 
chain?" The door opened, and Mr. Royall walked into the 
room.

She started up, sitting back against the cushions, and 
they looked at each other without speaking.  Then Mr. 
Royall closed the door-latch and advanced a few steps.

Charity jumped to her feet.  "What have you come for?" 
she stammered.

The last glare of the sunset was on her guardian's 
face, which looked ash-coloured in the yellow radiance.

"Because I knew you were here," he answered simply.

She had become conscious of the hair hanging loose 
across her breast, and it seemed as though she could 
not speak to him till she had set herself in order.  She 
groped for her comb, and tried to fasten up the coil.  
Mr. Royall silently watched her.

"Charity," he said, "he'll be here in a minute.  Let me 
talk to you first."

"You've got no right to talk to me.  I can do what I 
please."

"Yes.  What is it you mean to do?"

"I needn't answer that, or anything else."

He had glanced away, and stood looking curiously about 
the illuminated room.  Purple asters and red maple-
leaves filled the jar on the table; on a shelf against 
the wall stood a lamp, the kettle, a little pile of 
cups and saucers.  The canvas chairs were grouped 
about the table.

"So this is where you meet," he said.

His tone was quiet and controlled, and the fact 
disconcerted her.  She had been ready to give him 
violence for violence, but this calm acceptance of 
things as they were left her without a weapon.

"See here, Charity--you're always telling me I've got 
no rights over you.  There might be two ways of looking 
at that--but I ain't going to argue it.  All I know is 
I raised you as good as I could, and meant fairly by 
you always except once, for a bad half-hour.  There's 
no justice in weighing that half-hour against the rest, 
and you know it.  If you hadn't, you wouldn't have gone 
on living under my roof.  Seems to me the fact of your 
doing that gives me some sort of a right; the right to 
try and keep you out of trouble.  I'm not asking you to 
consider any other."

She listened in silence, and then gave a slight 
laugh.  "Better wait till I'm in trouble," she 
said.  He paused a moment, as if weighing her words.  
"Is that all your answer?"

"Yes, that's all."

"Well--I'll wait."

He turned away slowly, but as he did so the thing she 
had been waiting for happened; the door opened again 
and Harney entered.

He stopped short with a face of astonishment, and then, 
quickly controlling himself, went up to Mr. Royall with 
a frank look.

"Have you come to see me, sir?" he said coolly, 
throwing his cap on the table with an air of 
proprietorship.

Mr. Royall again looked slowly about the room; then his 
eyes turned to the young man.

"Is this your house?" he inquired.

Harney laughed:  "Well--as much as it's anybody's.  I 
come here to sketch occasionally."

"And to receive Miss Royall's visits?"

"When she does me the honour----"

"Is this the home you propose to bring her to when you 
get married?"

There was an immense and oppressive silence.  Charity, 
quivering with anger, started forward, and then 
stood silent, too humbled for speech.  Harney's eyes 
had dropped under the old man's gaze; but he raised 
them presently, and looking steadily at Mr. Royall, 
said:  "Miss Royall is not a child.  Isn't it rather 
absurd to talk of her as if she were?  I believe she 
considers herself free to come and go as she pleases, 
without any questions from anyone."  He paused and 
added:  "I'm ready to answer any she wishes to ask me."

Mr. Royall turned to her.  "Ask him when he's going to 
marry you, then----" There was another silence, and he 
laughed in his turn--a broken laugh, with a scraping 
sound in it.  "You darsn't!" he shouted out with sudden 
passion.  He went close up to Charity, his right arm 
lifted, not in menace but in tragic exhortation.

"You darsn't, and you know it--and you know why!" He 
swung back again upon the young man.  "And you know why 
you ain't asked her to marry you, and why you don't 
mean to.  It's because you hadn't need to; nor any 
other man either.  I'm the only one that was fool 
enough not to know that; and I guess nobody'll repeat 
my mistake--not in Eagle County, anyhow.  They all know 
what she is, and what she came from.  They all know her 
mother was a woman of the town from Nettleton, 
that followed one of those Mountain fellows up to his 
place and lived there with him like a heathen.  I saw 
her there sixteen years ago, when I went to bring this 
child down.  I went to save her from the kind of life 
her mother was leading--but I'd better have left her in 
the kennel she came from...."  He paused and stared 
darkly at the two young people, and out beyond them, at 
the menacing Mountain with its rim of fire; then he sat 
down beside the table on which they had so often spread 
their rustic supper, and covered his face with his 
hands.  Harney leaned in the window, a frown on his 
face:  he was twirling between his fingers a small 
package that dangled from a loop of string....Charity 
heard Mr. Royall draw a hard breath or two, and his 
shoulders shook a little.  Presently he stood up and 
walked across the room.  He did not look again at the 
young people:  they saw him feel his way to the door and 
fumble for the latch; and then he went out into the 
darkness.

After he had gone there was a long silence.  Charity 
waited for Harney to speak; but he seemed at first not 
to find anything to say.  At length he broke out 
irrelevantly:  "I wonder how he found out?"

She made no answer and he tossed down the package he 
had been holding, and went up to her.

"I'm so sorry, dear...that this should have 
happened...."

She threw her head back proudly.  "I ain't ever been 
sorry--not a minute!"

"No."

She waited to be caught into his arms, but he turned 
away from her irresolutely.  The last glow was gone 
from behind the Mountain.  Everything in the room had 
turned grey and indistinct, and an autumnal dampness 
crept up from the hollow below the orchard, laying its 
cold touch on their flushed faces.  Harney walked the 
length of the room, and then turned back and sat down 
at the table.

"Come," he said imperiously.

She sat down beside him, and he untied the string about 
the package and spread out a pile of sandwiches.

"I stole them from the love-feast at Hamblin," he said 
with a laugh, pushing them over to her.  She laughed 
too, and took one, and began to eat

"Didn't you make the tea?"

"No," she said.  "I forgot----"

"Oh, well--it's too late to boil the water now."  He 
said nothing more, and sitting opposite to each other 
they went on silently eating the sandwiches.  Darkness 
had descended in the little room, and Harney's face was 
a dim blur to Charity.  Suddenly he leaned across the 
table and laid his hand on hers.

"I shall have to go off for a while--a month or two, 
perhaps--to arrange some things; and then I'll come 
back...and we'll get married."

His voice seemed like a stranger's:  nothing was left in 
it of the vibrations she knew.  Her hand lay inertly 
under his, and she left it there, and raised her head, 
trying to answer him.  But the words died in her 
throat.  They sat motionless, in their attitude of 
confident endearment, as if some strange death had 
surprised them.  At length Harney sprang to his feet 
with a slight shiver.  "God! it's damp--we couldn't 
have come here much longer."  He went to the shelf, took 
down a tin candle-stick and lit the candle; then he 
propped an unhinged shutter against the empty window-
frame and put the candle on the table.  It threw a 
queer shadow on his frowning forehead, and made the 
smile on his lips a grimace.

"But it's been good, though, hasn't it, 
Charity?...What's the matter--why do you stand there 
staring at me?  Haven't the days here been good?" He 
went up to her and caught her to his breast.  "And 
there'll be others--lots of others...jollier...even 
jollier...won't there, darling?"

He turned her head back, feeling for the curve of her 
throat below the ear, and kissing here there, and on 
the hair and eyes and lips.  She clung to him 
desperately, and as he drew her to his knees on the 
couch she felt as if they were being sucked down 
together into some bottomless abyss.



XV


That night, as usual, they said good-bye at the wood's 
edge.

Harney was to leave the next morning early.  He asked 
Charity to say nothing of their plans till his return, 
and, strangely even to herself, she was glad of the 
postponement.  A leaden weight of shame hung on her, 
benumbing every other sensation, and she bade him good-
bye with hardly a sign of emotion.  His reiterated 
promises to return seemed almost wounding.  She had no 
doubt that he intended to come back; her doubts were 
far deeper and less definable.

Since the fanciful vision of the future that had 
flitted through her imagination at their first meeting 
she had hardly ever thought of his marrying her.  She 
had not had to put the thought from her mind; it had 
not been there.  If ever she looked ahead she felt 
instinctively that the gulf between them was too deep, 
and that the bridge their passion had flung across it 
was as insubstantial as a rainbow.  But she seldom 
looked ahead; each day was so rich that it absorbed 
her....Now her first feeling was that everything would 
be different, and that she herself would be a different 
being to Harney.  Instead of remaining separate and 
absolute, she would be compared with other people, and 
unknown things would be expected of her.  She was too 
proud to be afraid, but the freedom of her spirit 
drooped....

Harney had not fixed any date for his return; he had 
said he would have to look about first, and settle 
things.  He had promised to write as soon as there was 
anything definite to say, and had left her his address, 
and asked her to write also.  But the address 
frightened her.  It was in New York, at a club with a 
long name in Fifth Avenue:  it seemed to raise an 
insurmountable barrier between them.  Once or twice, in 
the first days, she got out a sheet of paper, and sat 
looking at it, and trying to think what to say; but she 
had the feeling that her letter would never reach its 
destination.  She had never written to anyone farther 
away than Hepburn.

Harney's first letter came after he had been gone about 
ten days.  It was tender but grave, and bore no 
resemblance to the gay little notes he had sent her by 
the freckled boy from Creston River.  He spoke 
positively of his intention of coming back, but named 
no date, and reminded Charity of their agreement that 
their plans should not be divulged till he had had time 
to "settle things."  When that would be he could not yet 
foresee; but she could count on his returning as soon 
as the way was clear.

She read the letter with a strange sense of its coming 
from immeasurable distances and having lost most of its 
meaning on the way; and in reply she sent him a 
coloured postcard of Creston Falls, on which she wrote:  
"With love from Charity."  She felt the pitiful 
inadequacy of this, and understood, with a sense of 
despair, that in her inability to express herself she 
must give him an impression of coldness and reluctance; 
but she could not help it.  She could not forget that 
he had never spoken to her of marriage till Mr. Royall 
had forced the word from his lips; though she had not 
had the strength to shake off the spell that bound her 
to him she had lost all spontaneity of feeling, and 
seemed to herself to be passively awaiting a fate she 
could not avert.

She had not seen Mr. Royall on her return to the 
red house.  The morning after her parting from Harney, 
when she came down from her room, Verena told her that 
her guardian had gone off to Worcester and Portland.  
It was the time of year when he usually reported to the 
insurance agencies he represented, and there was 
nothing unusual in his departure except its suddenness.  
She thought little about him, except to be glad he was 
not there....

She kept to herself for the first days, while North 
Dormer was recovering from its brief plunge into 
publicity, and the subsiding agitation left her 
unnoticed.  But the faithful Ally could not be long 
avoided.  For the first few days after the close of the 
Old Home Week festivities Charity escaped her by 
roaming the hills all day when she was not at her post 
in the library; but after that a period of rain set in, 
and one pouring afternoon, Ally, sure that she would 
find her friend indoors, came around to the red house 
with her sewing.

The two girls sat upstairs in Charity's room.  Charity, 
her idle hands in her lap, was sunk in a kind of leaden 
dream, through which she was only half-conscious of 
Ally, who sat opposite her in a low rush-bottomed 
chair, her work pinned to her knee, and her thin lips 
pursed up as she bent above it.

"It was my idea running a ribbon through the gauging," 
she said proudly, drawing back to contemplate the 
blouse she was trimming.  "It's for Miss Balch:  she was 
awfully pleased."  She paused and then added, with a 
queer tremor in her piping voice:  "I darsn't have told 
her I got the idea from one I saw on Julia."

Charity raised her eyes listlessly.  "Do you still see 
Julia sometimes?"

Ally reddened, as if the allusion had escaped her 
unintentionally.  "Oh, it was a long time ago I seen 
her with those gaugings...."

Silence fell again, and Ally presently continued:  "Miss 
Balch left me a whole lot of things to do over this 
time."

"Why--has she gone?" Charity inquired with an inner 
start of apprehension.

"Didn't you know?  She went off the morning after they 
had the celebration at Hamblin.  I seen her drive by 
early with Mr. Harney."

There was another silence, measured by the steady tick 
of the rain against the window, and, at intervals, by 
the snipping sound of Ally's scissors.

Ally gave a meditative laugh.  "Do you know what 
she told me before she went away?  She told me she was 
going to send for me to come over to Springfield and 
make some things for her wedding."

Charity again lifted her heavy lids and stared at 
Ally's pale pointed face, which moved to and fro above 
her moving fingers.

"Is she going to get married?"

Ally let the blouse sink to her knee, and sat gazing at 
it.  Her lips seemed suddenly dry, and she moistened 
them a little with her tongue.

"Why, I presume so...from what she said....Didn't you 
know?"

"Why should I know?"

Ally did not answer.  She bent above the blouse, and 
began picking out a basting thread with the point of 
the scissors.

"Why should I know?" Charity repeated harshly.

"I didn't know but what...folks here say she's engaged 
to Mr. Harney."

Charity stood up with a laugh, and stretched her arms 
lazily above her head.

"If all the people got married that folks say are 
going to you'd have your time full making wedding-
dresses," she said ironically.

"Why--don't you believe it?" Ally ventured.

"It would not make it true if I did--nor prevent it if 
I didn't."

"That's so....I only know I seen her crying the night 
of the party because her dress didn't set right.  That 
was why she wouldn't dance any...."

Charity stood absently gazing down at the lacy garment 
on Ally's knee.  Abruptly she stooped and snatched it 
up.

"Well, I guess she won't dance in this either," she 
said with sudden violence; and grasping the blouse in 
her strong young hands she tore it in two and flung the 
tattered bits to the floor.

"Oh, Charity----" Ally cried, springing up.  For a long 
interval the two girls faced each other across the 
ruined garment.  Ally burst into tears.

"Oh, what'll I say to her?  What'll I do?  It was real 
lace!" she wailed between her piping sobs.

Charity glared at her unrelentingly.  "You'd oughtn't 
to have brought it here," she said, breathing quickly.  
"I hate other people's clothes--it's just as if they 
was there themselves."  The two stared at each other 
again over this avowal, till Charity brought out, 
in a gasp of anguish:  "Oh, go--go--go--or I'll hate you 
too...."

When Ally left her, she fell sobbing across her bed.

The long storm was followed by a north-west gale, and 
when it was over, the hills took on their first umber 
tints, the sky grew more densely blue, and the big 
white clouds lay against the hills like snow-banks.  The 
first crisp maple-leaves began to spin across Miss 
Hatchard's lawn, and the Virginia creeper on the 
Memorial splashed the white porch with scarlet.  It was 
a golden triumphant September.  Day by day the flame of 
the Virginia creeper spread to the hillsides in wider 
waves of carmine and crimson, the larches glowed like 
the thin yellow halo about a fire, the maples blazed 
and smouldered, and the black hemlocks turned to indigo 
against the incandescence of the forest.

The nights were cold, with a dry glitter of stars so 
high up that they seemed smaller and more vivid.  
Sometimes, as Charity lay sleepless on her bed through 
the long hours, she felt as though she were bound to 
those wheeling fires and swinging with them around the 
great black vault.  At night she planned many 
things...it was then she wrote to Harney.  But the 
letters were never put on paper, for she did not know 
how to express what she wanted to tell him.  So she 
waited.  Since her talk with Ally she had felt sure 
that Harney was engaged to Annabel Balch, and that the 
process of "settling things" would involve the breaking 
of this tie.  Her first rage of jealousy over, she felt 
no fear on this score.  She was still sure that Harney 
would come back, and she was equally sure that, for the 
moment at least, it was she whom he loved and not Miss 
Balch.  Yet the girl, no less, remained a rival, since 
she represented all the things that Charity felt 
herself most incapable of understanding or achieving.  
Annabel Balch was, if not the girl Harney ought to 
marry, at least the kind of girl it would be natural 
for him to marry.  Charity had never been able to 
picture herself as his wife; had never been able to 
arrest the vision and follow it out in its daily 
consequences; but she could perfectly imagine Annabel 
Balch in that relation to him.

The more she thought of these things the more the sense 
of fatality weighed on her:  she felt the uselessness of 
struggling against the circumstances.  She had never 
known how to adapt herself; she could only break 
and tear and destroy.  The scene with Ally had left her 
stricken with shame at her own childish savagery.  What 
would Harney have thought if he had witnessed it?  But 
when she turned the incident over in her puzzled mind 
she could not imagine what a civilized person would 
have done in her place.  She felt herself too unequally 
pitted against unknown forces....

At length this feeling moved her to sudden action.  She 
took a sheet of letter paper from Mr. Royall's office, 
and sitting by the kitchen lamp, one night after Verena 
had gone to bed, began her first letter to Harney.  It 
was very short:


I want you should marry Annabel Balch if you promised 
to.  I think maybe you were afraid I'd feel too bad 
about it.  I feel I'd rather you acted right.  
                   Your loving
                               CHARITY.


She posted the letter early the next morning, and for a 
few days her heart felt strangely light.  Then she 
began to wonder why she received no answer.

One day as she sat alone in the library pondering these 
things the walls of books began to spin around her, and 
the rosewood desk to rock under her elbows.  The 
dizziness was followed by a wave of nausea like that 
she had felt on the day of the exercises in the Town 
Hall.  But the Town Hall had been crowded and 
stiflingly hot, and the library was empty, and so 
chilly that she had kept on her jacket.  Five minutes 
before she had felt perfectly well; and now it seemed 
as if she were going to die.  The bit of lace at which 
she still languidly worked dropped from her fingers, 
and the steel crochet hook clattered to the floor.  She 
pressed her temples hard between her damp hands, 
steadying herself against the desk while the wave of 
sickness swept over her.  Little by little it subsided, 
and after a few minutes she stood up, shaken and 
terrified, groped for her hat, and stumbled out into 
the air.  But the whole sunlit autumn whirled, reeled 
and roared around her as she dragged herself along the 
interminable length of the road home.

As she approached the red house she saw a buggy 
standing at the door, and her heart gave a leap.  But 
it was only Mr. Royall who got out, his travelling-bag 
in hand.  He saw her coming, and waited in the porch.  
She was conscious that he was looking at her intently, 
as if there was something strange in her appearance, 
and she threw back her head with a desperate 
effort at ease.  Their eyes met, and she said:  "You 
back?" as if nothing had happened, and he answered:  
"Yes, I'm back," and walked in ahead of her, pushing 
open the door of his office.  She climbed to her room, 
every step of the stairs holding her fast as if her 
feet were lined with glue.

Two days later, she descended from the train at 
Nettleton, and walked out of the station into the dusty 
square.  The brief interval of cold weather was over, 
and the day was as soft, and almost as hot, as when she 
and Harney had emerged on the same scene on the Fourth 
of July.  In the square the same broken-down hacks and 
carry-alls stood drawn up in a despondent line, and the 
lank horses with fly-nets over their withers swayed 
their heads drearily to and fro.  She recognized the 
staring signs over the eating-houses and billiard 
saloons, and the long lines of wires on lofty poles 
tapering down the main street to the park at its other 
end.  Taking the way the wires pointed, she went on 
hastily, with bent head, till she reached a wide 
transverse street with a brick building at the corner.  
She crossed this street and glanced furtively up at the 
front of the brick building; then she returned, 
and entered a door opening on a flight of steep 
brass-rimmed stairs.  On the second landing she rang a 
bell, and a mulatto girl with a bushy head and a 
frilled apron let her into a hall where a stuffed fox 
on his hind legs proffered a brass card-tray to 
visitors.  At the back of the hall was a glazed door 
marked:  "Office."  After waiting a few minutes in a 
handsomely furnished room, with plush sofas surmounted 
by large gold-framed photographs of showy young women, 
Charity was shown into the office....



When she came out of the glazed door Dr. Merkle 
followed, and led her into another room, smaller, and 
still more crowded with plush and gold frames.  Dr. 
Merkle was a plump woman with small bright eyes, an 
immense mass of black hair coming down low on her 
forehead, and unnaturally white and even teeth.  She 
wore a rich black dress, with gold chains and charms 
hanging from her bosom.  Her hands were large and 
smooth, and quick in all their movements; and she smelt 
of musk and carbolic acid.

She smiled on Charity with all her faultless teeth.  
"Sit down, my dear.  Wouldn't you like a little 
drop of something to pick you up?...No....Well, 
just lay back a minute then....There's nothing to be 
done just yet; but in about a month, if you'll step 
round again...I could take you right into my own house 
for two or three days, and there wouldn't be a mite of 
trouble.  Mercy me! The next time you'll know better'n 
to fret like this...."

Charity gazed at her with widening eyes.  This woman 
with the false hair, the false teeth, the false 
murderous smile--what was she offering her but immunity 
from some unthinkable crime?  Charity, till then, had 
been conscious only of a vague self-disgust and a 
frightening physical distress; now, of a sudden, there 
came to her the grave surprise of motherhood.  She had 
come to this dreadful place because she knew of no 
other way of making sure that she was not mistaken 
about her state; and the woman had taken her for a 
miserable creature like Julia....The thought was so 
horrible that she sprang up, white and shaking, one of 
her great rushes of anger sweeping over her.

Dr. Merkle, still smiling, also rose.  "Why do you run 
off in such a hurry?  You can stretch out right here on 
my sofa...."  She paused, and her smile grew more 
motherly.  "Afterwards--if there's been any talk at 
home, and you want to get away for a while...I have a 
lady friend in Boston who's looking for a 
companion...you're the very one to suit her, my 
dear...."

Charity had reached the door.  "I don't want to stay.  I 
don't want to come back here," she stammered, her hand 
on the knob; but with a swift movement, Dr. Merkle 
edged her from the threshold.

"Oh, very well.  Five dollars, please."

Charity looked helplessly at the doctor's tight lips 
and rigid face.  Her last savings had gone in repaying 
Ally for the cost of Miss Balch's ruined blouse, and 
she had had to borrow four dollars from her friend to 
pay for her railway ticket and cover the doctor's fee.  
It had never occurred to her that medical advice could 
cost more than two dollars.

"I didn't know...I haven't got that much..."  she 
faltered, bursting into tears.

Dr. Merkle gave a short laugh which did not show her 
teeth, and inquired with concision if Charity supposed 
she ran the establishment for her own amusement?  She 
leaned her firm shoulders against the door as she 
spoke, like a grim gaoler making terms with her 
captive.

"You say you'll come round and settle later?  I've heard 
that pretty often too.  Give me your address, and if 
you can't pay me I'll send the bill to your 
folks....What?  I can't understand what you say....That 
don't suit you either?  My, you're pretty particular for 
a girl that ain't got enough to settle her own 
bills...."  She paused, and fixed her eyes on the brooch 
with a blue stone that Charity had pinned to her 
blouse.

"Ain't you ashamed to talk that way to a lady that's 
got to earn her living, when you go about with 
jewellery like that on you?...It ain't in my line, and 
I do it only as a favour...but if you're a mind to 
leave that brooch as a pledge, I don't say no....Yes, 
of course, you can get it back when you bring me my 
money...."



On the way home, she felt an immense and unexpected 
quietude.  It had been horrible to have to leave 
Harney's gift in the woman's hands, but even at that 
price the news she brought away had not been too dearly 
bought.  She sat with half-closed eyes as the train 
rushed through the familiar landscape; and now the 
memories of her former journey, instead of flying 
before her like dead leaves, seemed to be ripening in 
her blood like sleeping grain.  She would never again 
know what it was to feel herself alone.  Everything 
seemed to have grown suddenly clear and simple.  She no 
longer had any difficulty in picturing herself as 
Harney's wife now that she was the mother of his child; 
and compared to her sovereign right Annabel Balch's 
claim seemed no more than a girl's sentimental fancy.



That evening, at the gate of the red house, she found 
Ally waiting in the dusk.  "I was down at the post-
office just as they were closing up, and Will Targatt 
said there was a letter for you, so I brought it."

Ally held out the letter, looking at Charity with 
piercing sympathy.  Since the scene of the torn blouse 
there had been a new and fearful admiration in the eyes 
she bent on her friend.

Charity snatched the letter with a laugh.  "Oh, thank 
you--good-night," she called out over her shoulder as 
she ran up the path.  If she had lingered a moment she 
knew she would have had Ally at her heels.

She hurried upstairs and felt her way into her 
dark room.  Her hands trembled as she groped for the 
matches and lit her candle, and the flap of the 
envelope was so closely stuck that she had to find her 
scissors and slit it open.  At length she read:


DEAR CHARITY:

I have your letter, and it touches me more than I can 
say.  Won't you trust me, in return, to do my best?  
There are things it is hard to explain, much less to 
justify; but your generosity makes everything easier.  
All I can do now is to thank you from my soul for 
understanding.  Your telling me that you wanted me to 
do right has helped me beyond expression.  If ever 
there is a hope of realizing what we dreamed of you 
will see me back on the instant; and I haven't yet lost 
that hope.


She read the letter with a rush; then she went over and 
over it, each time more slowly and painstakingly.  It 
was so beautifully expressed that she found it almost 
as difficult to understand as the gentleman's 
explanation of the Bible pictures at Nettleton; but 
gradually she became aware that the gist of its meaning 
lay in the last few words.  "If ever there is a hope of 
realizing what we dreamed of..."

But then he wasn't even sure of that?  She 
understood now that every word and every reticence was 
an avowal of Annabel Balch's prior claim.  It was true 
that he was engaged to her, and that he had not yet 
found a way of breaking his engagement.

As she read the letter over Charity understood what it 
must have cost him to write it.  He was not trying to 
evade an importunate claim; he was honestly and 
contritely struggling between opposing duties.  She did 
not even reproach him in her thoughts for having 
concealed from her that he was not free:  she could not 
see anything more reprehensible in his conduct than in 
her own.  From the first she had needed him more than 
he had wanted her, and the power that had swept them 
together had been as far beyond resistance as a great 
gale loosening the leaves of the forest....Only, there 
stood between them, fixed and upright in the general 
upheaval, the indestructible figure of Annabel 
Balch....

Face to face with his admission of the fact, she sat 
staring at the letter.  A cold tremor ran over her, and 
the hard sobs struggled up into her throat and shook 
her from head to foot.  For a while she was caught 
and tossed on great waves of anguish that left her 
hardly conscious of anything but the blind struggle 
against their assaults.  Then, little by little, she 
began to relive, with a dreadful poignancy, each 
separate stage of her poor romance.  Foolish things she 
had said came back to her, gay answers Harney had made, 
his first kiss in the darkness between the fireworks, 
their choosing the blue brooch together, the way he had 
teased her about the letters she had dropped in her 
flight from the evangelist.  All these memories, and a 
thousand others, hummed through her brain till his 
nearness grew so vivid that she felt his fingers in her 
hair, and his warm breath on her cheek as he bent her 
head back like a flower.  These things were hers; they 
had passed into her blood, and become a part of her, 
they were building the child in her womb; it was 
impossible to tear asunder strands of life so 
interwoven.

The conviction gradually strengthened her, and she 
began to form in her mind the first words of the letter 
she meant to write to Harney.  She wanted to write it 
at once, and with feverish hands she began to rummage 
in her drawer for a sheet of letter paper.  But there 
was none left; she must go downstairs to get it.  
She had a superstitious feeling that the letter must be 
written on the instant, that setting down her secret in 
words would bring her reassurance and safety; and 
taking up her candle she went down to Mr. Royall's 
office.

At that hour she was not likely to find him there:  he 
had probably had his supper and walked over to Carrick 
Fry's.  She pushed open the door of the unlit room, and 
the light of her lifted candle fell on his figure, 
seated in the darkness in his high-backed chair.  His 
arms lay along the arms of the chair, and his head was 
bent a little; but he lifted it quickly as Charity 
entered.  She started back as their eyes met, 
remembering that her own were red with weeping, and 
that her face was livid with the fatigue and emotion of 
her journey.  But it was too late to escape, and she 
stood and looked at him in silence.

He had risen from his chair, and came toward her with 
outstretched hands.  The gesture was so unexpected that 
she let him take her hands in his and they stood thus, 
without speaking, till Mr. Royall said gravely:  
"Charity--was you looking for me?"

She freed herself abruptly and fell back.  "Me?  No----" 
She set down the candle on his desk.  "I wanted 
some letter-paper, that's all."  His face contracted, 
and the bushy brows jutted forward over his eyes.  
Without answering he opened the drawer of the desk, 
took out a sheet of paper and an envelope, and pushed 
them toward her.  "Do you want a stamp too?" he asked.

She nodded, and he gave her the stamp.  As he did so 
she felt that he was looking at her intently, and she 
knew that the candle light flickering up on her white 
face must be distorting her swollen features and 
exaggerating the dark rings about her eyes.  She 
snatched up the paper, her reassurance dissolving under 
his pitiless gaze, in which she seemed to read the grim 
perception of her state, and the ironic recollection of 
the day when, in that very room, he had offered to 
compel Harney to marry her.  His look seemed to say 
that he knew she had taken the paper to write to her 
lover, who had left her as he had warned her she would 
be left.  She remembered the scorn with which she had 
turned from him that day, and knew, if he guessed the 
truth, what a list of old scores it must settle.  She 
turned and fled upstairs; but when she got back to her 
room all the words that had been waiting had 
vanished....

If she could have gone to Harney it would have 
been different; she would only have had to show herself 
to let his memories speak for her.  But she had no 
money left, and there was no one from whom she could 
have borrowed enough for such a journey.  There was 
nothing to do but to write, and await his reply.  For a 
long time she sat bent above the blank page; but she 
found nothing to say that really expressed what she was 
feeling....

Harney had written that she had made it easier for him, 
and she was glad it was so; she did not want to make 
things hard.  She knew she had it in her power to do 
that; she held his fate in her hands.  All she had to 
do was to tell him the truth; but that was the very 
fact that held her back....Her five minutes face to 
face with Mr. Royall had stripped her of her last 
illusion, and brought her back to North Dormer's point 
of view.  Distinctly and pitilessly there rose before 
her the fate of the girl who was married "to make 
things right."  She had seen too many village love-
stories end in that way.  Poor Rose Coles's miserable 
marriage was of the number; and what good had come of 
it for her or for Halston Skeff?  They had hated each 
other from the day the minister married them; and 
whenever old Mrs. Skeff had a fancy to humiliate her 
daughter-in-law she had only to say:  "Who'd ever think 
the baby's only two?  And for a seven months' child--
ain't it a wonder what a size he is?" North Dormer had 
treasures of indulgence for brands in the burning, but 
only derision for those who succeeded in getting 
snatched from it; and Charity had always understood 
Julia Hawes's refusal to be snatched....

Only--was there no alternative but Julia's?  Her soul 
recoiled from the vision of the white-faced woman among 
the plush sofas and gilt frames.  In the established 
order of things as she knew them she saw no place for 
her individual adventure....

She sat in her chair without undressing till faint grey 
streaks began to divide the black slats of the 
shutters.  Then she stood up and pushed them open, 
letting in the light.  The coming of a new day brought 
a sharper consciousness of ineluctable reality, and 
with it a sense of the need of action.  She looked at 
herself in the glass, and saw her face, white in the 
autumn dawn, with pinched cheeks and dark-ringed eyes, 
and all the marks of her state that she herself would 
never have noticed, but that Dr. Merkle's diagnosis had 
made plain to her.  She could not hope that those 
signs would escape the watchful village; even before 
her figure lost its shape she knew her face would 
betray her.

Leaning from her window she looked out on the dark and 
empty scene; the ashen houses with shuttered windows, 
the grey road climbing the slope to the hemlock belt 
above the cemetery, and the heavy mass of the Mountain 
black against a rainy sky.  To the east a space of 
light was broadening above the forest; but over that 
also the clouds hung.  Slowly her gaze travelled across 
the fields to the rugged curve of the hills.  She had 
looked out so often on that lifeless circle, and 
wondered if anything could ever happen to anyone who 
was enclosed in it....

Almost without conscious thought her decision had been 
reached; as her eyes had followed the circle of the 
hills her mind had also travelled the old round.  She 
supposed it was something in her blood that made the 
Mountain the only answer to her questioning, the 
inevitable escape from all that hemmed her in and beset 
her.  At any rate it began to loom against the rainy 
dawn; and the longer she looked at it the more clearly 
she understood that now at last she was really going 
there.



XVI


THE rain held off, and an hour later, when she started, 
wild gleams of sunlight were blowing across the fields.

After Harney's departure she had returned her bicycle 
to its owner at Creston, and she was not sure of being 
able to walk all the way to the Mountain.  The deserted 
house was on the road; but the idea of spending the 
night there was unendurable, and she meant to try to 
push on to Hamblin, where she could sleep under a wood-
shed if her strength should fail her.  Her preparations 
had been made with quiet forethought.  Before starting 
she had forced herself to swallow a glass of milk and 
eat a piece of bread; and she had put in her canvas 
satchel a little packet of the chocolate that Harney 
always carried in his bicycle bag.  She wanted above 
all to keep up her strength, and reach her destination 
without attracting notice....

Mile by mile she retraced the road over which she had 
so often flown to her lover.  When she reached the
turn where the wood-road branched off from the Creston 
highway she remembered the Gospel tent--long since 
folded up and transplanted--and her start of 
involuntary terror when the fat evangelist had said:  
"Your Saviour knows everything.  Come and confess your 
guilt."  There was no sense of guilt in her now, but 
only a desperate desire to defend her secret from 
irreverent eyes, and begin life again among people to 
whom the harsh code of the village was unknown.  The 
impulse did not shape itself in thought:  she only knew
she must save her baby, and hide herself with it 
somewhere where no one would ever come to trouble them.

She walked on and on, growing more heavy-footed as the 
day advanced.  It seemed a cruel chance that compelled 
her to retrace every step of the way to the deserted 
house; and when she came in sight of the orchard, and 
the silver-gray roof slanting crookedly through the 
laden branches, her strength failed her and she sat 
down by the road-side.  She sat there a long time, 
trying to gather the courage to start again, and walk 
past the broken gate and the untrimmed rose-bushes 
strung with scarlet hips.  A few drops of rain were 
falling, and she thought of the warm evenings when 
she and Harney had sat embraced in the shadowy room, 
and the noise of summer showers on the roof had rustled 
through their kisses.  At length she understood that if 
she stayed any longer the rain might compel her to take 
shelter in the house overnight, and she got up and 
walked on, averting her eyes as she came abreast of the 
white gate and the tangled garden.

The hours wore on, and she walked more and more slowly, 
pausing now and then to rest, and to eat a little bread 
and an apple picked up from the roadside.  Her body 
seemed to grow heavier with every yard of the way, and 
she wondered how she would be able to carry her child 
later, if already he laid such a burden on her....A 
fresh wind had sprung up, scattering the rain and 
blowing down keenly from the mountain.  Presently the 
clouds lowered again, and a few white darts struck her 
in the face:  it was the first snow falling over 
Hamblin.  The roofs of the lonely village were only 
half a mile ahead, and she was resolved to push beyond 
it, and try to reach the Mountain that night.  She had 
no clear plan of action, except that, once in the 
settlement, she meant to look for Liff Hyatt, and get 
him to take her to her mother.  She herself had 
been born as her own baby was going to be born; and 
whatever her mother's subsequent life had been, she 
could hardly help remembering the past, and receiving a 
daughter who was facing the trouble she had known.

Suddenly the deadly faintness came over her once more 
and she sat down on the bank and leaned her head 
against a tree-trunk.  The long road and the cloudy 
landscape vanished from her eyes, and for a time she 
seemed to be circling about in some terrible wheeling 
darkness.  Then that too faded.

She opened her eyes, and saw a buggy drawn up beside 
her, and a man who had jumped down from it and was 
gazing at her with a puzzled face.  Slowly 
consciousness came back, and she saw that the man was 
Liff Hyatt.

She was dimly aware that he was asking her something, 
and she looked at him in silence, trying to find 
strength to speak.  At length her voice stirred in her 
throat, and she said in a whisper:  "I'm going up the 
Mountain."

"Up the Mountain?" he repeated, drawing aside a little; 
and as he moved she saw behind him, in the buggy, a 
heavily coated figure with a familiar pink face 
and gold spectacles on the bridge of a Grecian nose.

"Charity! What on earth are you doing here?" Mr. Miles 
exclaimed, throwing the reins on the horse's back and 
scrambling down from the buggy.

She lifted her heavy eyes to his.  "I'm going to see my 
mother."

The two men glanced at each other, and for a moment 
neither of them spoke.

Then Mr. Miles said:  "You look ill, my dear, and it's a 
long way.  Do you think it's wise?"

Charity stood up.  "I've got to go to her."

A vague mirthless grin contracted Liff Hyatt's face, 
and Mr. Miles again spoke uncertainly.  "You know, 
then--you'd been told?"

She stared at him.  "I don't know what you mean.  I 
want to go to her."

Mr. Miles was examining her thoughtfully.  She fancied 
she saw a change in his expression, and the blood 
rushed to her forehead.  "I just want to go to her," 
she repeated.

He laid his hand on her arm.  "My child, your mother is 
dying.  Liff Hyatt came down to fetch me....Get in and 
come with us."

He helped her up to the seat at his side, Liff 
Hyatt clambered in at the back, and they drove off 
toward Hamblin.  At first Charity had hardly grasped 
what Mr. Miles was saying; the physical relief of 
finding herself seated in the buggy, and securely on 
her road to the Mountain, effaced the impression of his 
words.  But as her head cleared she began to 
understand.  She knew the Mountain had but the most 
infrequent intercourse with the valleys; she had often 
enough heard it said that no one ever went up there 
except the minister, when someone was dying.  And now 
it was her mother who was dying...and she would find 
herself as much alone on the Mountain as anywhere else 
in the world.  The sense of unescapable isolation was 
all she could feel for the moment; then she began to 
wonder at the strangeness of its being Mr. Miles who 
had undertaken to perform this grim errand.  He did not 
seem in the least like the kind of man who would care 
to go up the Mountain.  But here he was at her side, 
guiding the horse with a firm hand, and bending on her 
the kindly gleam of his spectacles, as if there were 
nothing unusual in their being together in such 
circumstances.

For a while she found it impossible to speak, and he 
seemed to understand this, and made no attempt to 
question her.  But presently she felt her tears rise 
and flow down over her drawn cheeks; and he must have 
seen them too, for he laid his hand on hers, and said 
in a low voice:  "Won't you tell me what is troubling 
you?"

She shook her head, and he did not insist:  but after a 
while he said, in the same low tone, so that they 
should not be overheard:  "Charity, what do you know of 
your childhood, before you came down to North Dormer?"

She controlled herself, and answered:  "Nothing only 
what I heard Mr. Royall say one day.  He said he 
brought me down because my father went to prison."

"And you've never been up there since?"

"Never."

Mr. Miles was silent again, then he said:  "I'm glad 
you're coming with me now.  Perhaps we may find your 
mother alive, and she may know that you have come."

They had reached Hamblin, where the snow-flurry had 
left white patches in the rough grass on the roadside, 
and in the angles of the roofs facing north.  It was a 
poor bleak village under the granite flank of the 
Mountain, and as soon as they left it they began 
to climb.  The road was steep and full of ruts, and 
the horse settled down to a walk while they mounted and 
mounted, the world dropping away below them in great 
mottled stretches of forest and field, and stormy dark 
blue distances.

Charity had often had visions of this ascent of the 
Mountain but she had not known it would reveal so wide 
a country, and the sight of those strange lands 
reaching away on every side gave her a new sense of 
Harney's remoteness.  She knew he must be miles and 
miles beyond the last range of hills that seemed to be 
the outmost verge of things, and she wondered how she 
had ever dreamed of going to New York to find him....

As the road mounted the country grew bleaker, and they 
drove across fields of faded mountain grass bleached by 
long months beneath the snow.  In the hollows a few 
white birches trembled, or a mountain ash lit its 
scarlet clusters; but only a scant growth of pines 
darkened the granite ledges.  The wind was blowing 
fiercely across the open slopes; the horse faced it 
with bent head and straining flanks, and now and then 
the buggy swayed so that Charity had to clutch its 
side.

Mr. Miles had not spoken again; he seemed to 
understand that she wanted to be left alone.  
After a while the track they were following forked, and 
he pulled up the horse, as if uncertain of the way.  
Liff Hyatt craned his head around from the back, and 
shouted against the wind:  "Left----" and they turned 
into a stunted pine-wood and began to drive down the 
other side of the Mountain.

A mile or two farther on they came out on a clearing 
where two or three low houses lay in stony fields, 
crouching among the rocks as if to brace themselves 
against the wind.  They were hardly more than sheds, 
built of logs and rough boards, with tin stove-pipes 
sticking out of their roofs.  The sun was setting, and 
dusk had already fallen on the lower world, but a 
yellow glare still lay on the lonely hillside and the 
crouching houses.  The next moment it faded and left 
the landscape in dark autumn twilight.

"Over there," Liff called out, stretching his long arm 
over Mr. Miles's shoulder.  The clergyman turned to the 
left, across a bit of bare ground overgrown with docks 
and nettles, and stopped before the most ruinous of the 
sheds.  A stove-pipe reached its crooked arm out of one 
window, and the broken panes of the other were stuffed 
with rags and paper.  

In contrast to such a dwelling the brown house in 
the swamp might have stood for the home of plenty.

As the buggy drew up two or three mongrel dogs jumped 
out of the twilight with a great barking, and a young 
man slouched to the door and stood there staring.  In 
the twilight Charity saw that his face had the same 
sodden look as Bash Hyatt's, the day she had seen him 
sleeping by the stove.  He made no effort to silence 
the dogs, but leaned in the door, as if roused from a 
drunken lethargy, while Mr. Miles got out of the buggy.

"Is it here?" the clergyman asked Liff in a low voice; 
and Liff nodded.

Mr. Miles turned to Charity.  "Just hold the horse a 
minute, my dear:  I'll go in first," he said, putting 
the reins in her hands.  She took them passively, and 
sat staring straight ahead of her at the darkening 
scene while Mr. Miles and Liff Hyatt went up to the 
house.  They stood a few minutes talking with the man 
in the door, and then Mr. Miles came back.  As he came 
close, Charity saw that his smooth pink face wore a 
frightened solemn look.

"Your mother is dead, Charity; you'd better come with 
me," he said.

She got down and followed him while Liff led the 
horse away.  As she approached the door she said 
to herself:  "This is where I was born...this is where I 
belong...."  She had said it to herself often enough as 
she looked across the sunlit valleys at the Mountain; 
but it had meant nothing then, and now it had become a 
reality.  Mr. Miles took her gently by the arm, and 
they entered what appeared to be the only room in the 
house.  It was so dark that she could just discern a 
group of a dozen people sitting or sprawling about a 
table made of boards laid across two barrels.  They 
looked up listlessly as Mr. Miles and Charity came in, 
and a woman's thick voice said:  "Here's the preacher."  
But no one moved.

Mr. Miles paused and looked about him; then he turned 
to the young man who had met them at the door.

"Is the body here?" he asked.

The young man, instead of answering, turned his head 
toward the group.  "Where's the candle?  I tole yer to 
bring a candle," he said with sudden harshness to a 
girl who was lolling against the table.  She did not 
answer, but another man got up and took from some 
corner a candle stuck into a bottle.

"How'll I light it?  The stove's out," the girl 
grumbled.

Mr. Miles fumbled under his heavy wrappings and drew 
out a match-box.  He held a match to the candle, and in 
a moment or two a faint circle of light fell on the 
pale aguish heads that started out of the shadow like 
the heads of nocturnal animals.

"Mary's over there," someone said; and Mr. Miles, 
taking the bottle in his hand, passed behind the table.  
Charity followed him, and they stood before a mattress 
on the floor in a corner of the room.  A woman lay on 
it, but she did not look like a dead woman; she seemed 
to have fallen across her squalid bed in a drunken 
sleep, and to have been left lying where she fell, in 
her ragged disordered clothes.  One arm was flung above 
her head, one leg drawn up under a torn skirt that left 
the other bare to the knee:  a swollen glistening leg 
with a ragged stocking rolled down about the ankle.  The 
woman lay on her back, her eyes staring up unblinkingly 
at the candle that trembled in Mr. Miles's hand.

"She jus' dropped off," a woman said, over the shoulder 
of the others; and the young man added:  "I jus' come in 
and found her."

An elderly man with lank hair and a feeble grin 
pushed between them.  "It was like this:  I says to her 
on'y the night before:  if you don't take and quit, I 
says to her..."

Someone pulled him back and sent him reeling against a 
bench along the wall, where he dropped down muttering 
his unheeded narrative.

There was a silence; then the young woman who had been 
lolling against the table suddenly parted the group, 
and stood in front of Charity.  She was healthier and 
robuster looking than the others, and her weather-
beaten face had a certain sullen beauty.

"Who's the girl?  Who brought her here?" she said, 
fixing her eyes mistrustfully on the young man who had 
rebuked her for not having a candle ready.

Mr. Miles spoke.  "I brought her; she is Mary Hyatt's 
daughter."

"What?  Her too?" the girl sneered; and the young man 
turned on her with an oath.  "Shut your mouth, damn 
you, or get out of here," he said; then he relapsed 
into his former apathy, and dropped down on the bench, 
leaning his head against the wall.

Mr. Miles had set the candle on the floor and taken off 
his heavy coat.  He turned to Charity.  "Come and help 
me," he said.

He knelt down by the mattress, and pressed the 
lids over the dead woman's eyes.  Charity, trembling 
and sick, knelt beside him, and tried to compose her 
mother's body.  She drew the stocking over the dreadful 
glistening leg, and pulled the skirt down to the 
battered upturned boots.  As she did so, she looked at 
her mother's face, thin yet swollen, with lips parted 
in a frozen gasp above the broken teeth.  There was no 
sign in it of anything human:  she lay there like a 
dead dog in a ditch Charity's hands grew cold as they 
touched her.

Mr. Miles drew the woman's arms across her breast and 
laid his coat over her.  Then he covered her face with 
his handkerchief, and placed the bottle with the candle 
in it at her head.  Having done this he stood up.

"Is there no coffin?" he asked, turning to the group 
behind him.

There was a moment of bewildered silence; then the 
fierce girl spoke up.  "You'd oughter brought it with 
you.  Where'd we get one here, I'd like ter know?"

Mr. Miles, looking at the others, repeated:  "Is it 
possible you have no coffin ready?"

"That's what I say:  them that has it sleeps 
better," an old woman murmured.  "But then she 
never had no bed...."

"And the stove warn't hers," said the lank-haired man, 
on the defensive.

Mr. Miles turned away from them and moved a few steps 
apart.  He had drawn a book from his pocket, and after 
a pause he opened it and began to read, holding the 
book at arm's length and low down, so that the pages 
caught the feeble light.  Charity had remained on her 
knees by the mattress:  now that her mother's face was 
covered it was easier to stay near her, and avoid the 
sight of the living faces which too horribly showed by 
what stages hers had lapsed into death.

"I am the Resurrection and the Life," Mr. Miles began; 
"he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet 
shall he live....Though after my skin worms destroy my 
body, yet in my flesh shall I see God...."

IN MY FLESH SHALL I SEE GOD! Charity thought of the 
gaping mouth and stony eyes under the handkerchief, and 
of the glistening leg over which she had drawn the 
stocking....

"We brought nothing into this world and we shall take 
nothing out of it----"

There was a sudden muttering and a scuffle at the 
back of the group.  "I brought the stove," said the 
elderly man with lank hair, pushing his way between the 
others.  "I wen' down to Creston'n bought it...n' I got 
a right to take it outer here...n' I'll lick any feller 
says I ain't...."

"Sit down, damn you!" shouted the tall youth who had 
been drowsing on the bench against the wall.

"For man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth 
himself in vain; he heapeth up riches and cannot tell 
who shall gather them...."

"Well, it ARE his," a woman in the background 
interjected in a frightened whine.

The tall youth staggered to his feet.  "If you don't 
hold your mouths I'll turn you all out o' here, the 
whole lot of you," he cried with many oaths.  "G'wan, 
minister...don't let 'em faze you...."

"Now is Christ risen from the dead and become the 
first-fruits of them that slept....Behold, I show you a 
mystery.  We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be 
changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at 
the last trump....For this corruptible must put on 
incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality.  
So when this corruption shall have put on 
incorruption, and when this mortal shall have put on 
immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying 
that is written, Death is swallowed up in Victory...."

One by one the mighty words fell on Charity's bowed 
head, soothing the horror, subduing the tumult, 
mastering her as they mastered the drink-dazed 
creatures at her back.  Mr. Miles read to the last 
word, and then closed the book.

"Is the grave ready?" he asked.

Liff Hyatt, who had come in while he was reading, 
nodded a "Yes," and pushed forward to the side of the 
mattress.  The young man on the bench who seemed to 
assert some sort of right of kinship with the dead 
woman, got to his feet again, and the proprietor of the 
stove joined him.  Between them they raised up the 
mattress; but their movements were unsteady, and the 
coat slipped to the floor, revealing the poor body in 
its helpless misery.  Charity, picking up the coat, 
covered her mother once more.  Liff had brought a 
lantern, and the old woman who had already spoken took 
it up, and opened the door to let the little procession 
pass out.  The wind had dropped, and the night was very 
dark and bitterly cold.  The old woman walked 
ahead, the lantern shaking in her hand and 
spreading out before her a pale patch of dead grass and 
coarse-leaved weeds enclosed in an immensity of 
blackness.

Mr. Miles took Charity by the arm, and side by side 
they walked behind the mattress.  At length the old 
woman with the lantern stopped, and Charity saw the 
light fall on the stooping shoulders of the bearers and 
on a ridge of upheaved earth over which they were 
bending.  Mr. Miles released her arm and approached the 
hollow on the other side of the ridge; and while the 
men stooped down, lowering the mattress into the grave, 
he began to speak again.

"Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to 
live and is full of misery....He cometh up and is cut 
down...he fleeth as it were a shadow....Yet, O Lord God 
most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and merciful 
Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains of 
eternal death...."

"Easy there...is she down?" piped the claimant to the 
stove; and the young man called over his shoulder:  
"Lift the light there, can't you?"

There was a pause, during which the light floated 
uncertainly over the open grave.  Someone bent 
over and pulled out Mr. Miles's coat----("No, no--
leave the handkerchief," he interposed)--and then Liff 
Hyatt, coming forward with a spade, began to shovel in 
the earth.

"Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great 
mercy to take unto Himself the soul of our dear sister 
here departed, we therefore commit her body to the 
ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to 
dust..."  Liff's gaunt shoulders rose and bent in the 
lantern light as he dashed the clods of earth into the 
grave.  "God--it's froze a'ready," he muttered, 
spitting into his palm and passing his ragged shirt-
sleeve across his perspiring face.

"Through our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our 
vile body that it may be like unto His glorious body, 
according to the mighty working, whereby He is able to 
subdue all things unto Himself..."  The last spadeful of 
earth fell on the vile body of Mary Hyatt, and Liff 
rested on his spade, his shoulder blades still heaving 
with the effort.

"Lord, have mercy upon us, Christ have mercy upon us, 
Lord have mercy upon us..."

Mr. Miles took the lantern from the old woman's 
hand and swept its light across the circle of 
bleared faces.  "Now kneel down, all of you," he 
commanded, in a voice of authority that Charity had 
never heard.  She knelt down at the edge of the grave, 
and the others, stiffly and hesitatingly, got to their 
knees beside her.  Mr. Miles knelt, too.  "And now pray 
with me--you know this prayer," he said, and he began:  
"Our Father which art in Heaven..."  One or two of the 
women falteringly took the words up, and when he ended, 
the lank-haired man flung himself on the neck of the 
tall youth.  "It was this way," he said.  "I tole her 
the night before, I says to her..."  The reminiscence 
ended in a sob.

Mr. Miles had been getting into his coat again.  He 
came up to Charity, who had remained passively kneeling 
by the rough mound of earth.

"My child, you must come.  It's very late."

She lifted her eyes to his face:  he seemed to speak out 
of another world.

"I ain't coming:  I'm going to stay here."

"Here?  Where?  What do you mean?"

"These are my folks.  I'm going to stay with them."

Mr. Miles lowered his voice.  "But it's not 
possible--you don't know what you are doing.  You 
can't stay among these people:  you must come with me."

She shook her head and rose from her knees.  The group 
about the grave had scattered in the darkness, but the 
old woman with the lantern stood waiting.  Her mournful 
withered face was not unkind, and Charity went up to 
her.

"Have you got a place where I can lie down for the 
night?" she asked.  Liff came up, leading the buggy out 
of the night.  He looked from one to the other with his 
feeble smile.  "She's my mother.  She'll take you 
home," he said; and he added, raising his voice to 
speak to the old woman:  "It's the girl from lawyer 
Royall's--Mary's girl...you remember...."

The woman nodded and raised her sad old eyes to 
Charity's.  When Mr. Miles and Liff clambered into the 
buggy she went ahead with the lantern to show them the 
track they were to follow; then she turned back, and in 
silence she and Charity walked away together through 
the night.



XVII


CHARITY lay on the floor on a mattress, as her dead 
mother's body had lain.  The room in which she lay was 
cold and dark and low-ceilinged, and even poorer and 
barer than the scene of Mary Hyatt's earthly 
pilgrimage.  On the other side of the fireless stove 
Liff Hyatt's mother slept on a blanket, with two 
children--her grandchildren, she said--rolled up 
against her like sleeping puppies.  They had their thin 
clothes spread over them, having given the only other 
blanket to their guest.

Through the small square of glass in the opposite wall 
Charity saw a deep funnel of sky, so black, so remote, 
so palpitating with frosty stars that her very soul 
seemed to be sucked into it.  Up there somewhere, she 
supposed, the God whom Mr. Miles had invoked was 
waiting for Mary Hyatt to appear.  What a long flight 
it was! And what would she have to say when she reached 
Him?

Charity's bewildered brain laboured with the attempt to 
picture her mother's past, and to relate it in any 
way to the designs of a just but merciful God; but it 
was impossible to imagine any link between them.  She 
herself felt as remote from the poor creature she had 
seen lowered into her hastily dug grave as if the 
height of the heavens divided them.  She had seen 
poverty and misfortune in her life; but in a community 
where poor thrifty Mrs. Hawes and the industrious Ally 
represented the nearest approach to destitution there 
was nothing to suggest the savage misery of the 
Mountain farmers.

As she lay there, half-stunned by her tragic 
initiation, Charity vainly tried to think herself into 
the life about her.  But she could not even make out 
what relationship these people bore to each other, or 
to her dead mother; they seemed to be herded together 
in a sort of passive promiscuity in which their common 
misery was the strongest link.  She tried to picture to 
herself what her life would have been if she had grown 
up on the Mountain, running wild in rags, sleeping on 
the floor curled up against her mother, like the pale-
faced children huddled against old Mrs. Hyatt, and 
turning into a fierce bewildered creature like the girl 
who had apostrophized her in such strange words.  She 
was frightened by the secret affinity she had felt 
with this girl, and by the light it threw on her own 
beginnings.  Then she remembered what Mr. Royall had 
said in telling her story to Lucius Harney:  "Yes, there 
was a mother; but she was glad to have the child go.  
She'd have given her to anybody...."

Well! after all, was her mother so much to blame?  
Charity, since that day, had always thought of her as 
destitute of all human feeling; now she seemed merely 
pitiful.  What mother would not want to save her child 
from such a life?  Charity thought of the future of her 
own child, and tears welled into her aching eyes, and 
ran down over her face.  If she had been less 
exhausted, less burdened with his weight, she would 
have sprung up then and there and fled away....

The grim hours of the night dragged themselves slowly 
by, and at last the sky paled and dawn threw a cold 
blue beam into the room.  She lay in her corner staring 
at the dirty floor, the clothes-line hung with decaying 
rags, the old woman huddled against the cold stove, and 
the light gradually spreading across the wintry world, 
and bringing with it a new day in which she would have 
to live, to choose, to act, to make herself a 
place among these people--or to go back to the life she 
had left.  A mortal lassitude weighed on her.  There 
were moments when she felt that all she asked was to go 
on lying there unnoticed; then her mind revolted at the 
thought of becoming one of the miserable herd from 
which she sprang, and it seemed as though, to save her 
child from such a fate, she would find strength to 
travel any distance, and bear any burden life might put 
on her.

Vague thoughts of Nettleton flitted through her mind.  
She said to herself that she would find some quiet 
place where she could bear her child, and give it to 
decent people to keep; and then she would go out like 
Julia Hawes and earn its living and hers.  She knew 
that girls of that kind sometimes made enough to have 
their children nicely cared for; and every other 
consideration disappeared in the vision of her baby, 
cleaned and combed and rosy, and hidden away somewhere 
where she could run in and kiss it, and bring it pretty 
things to wear.  Anything, anything was better than to 
add another life to the nest of misery on the 
Mountain....

The old woman and the children were still sleeping 
when Charity rose from her mattress.  Her body was 
stiff with cold and fatigue, and she moved slowly lest 
her heavy steps should rouse them.  She was faint with 
hunger, and had nothing left in her satchel; but on the 
table she saw the half of a stale loaf.  No doubt it 
was to serve as the breakfast of old Mrs. Hyatt and the 
children; but Charity did not care; she had her own 
baby to think of.  She broke off a piece of the bread 
and ate it greedily; then her glance fell on the thin 
faces of the sleeping children, and filled with 
compunction she rummaged in her satchel for something 
with which to pay for what she had taken.  She found 
one of the pretty chemises that Ally had made for her, 
with a blue ribbon run through its edging.  It was one 
of the dainty things on which she had squandered her 
savings, and as she looked at it the blood rushed to 
her forehead.  She laid the chemise on the table, and 
stealing across the floor lifted the latch and went 
out....

The morning was icy cold and a pale sun was just rising 
above the eastern shoulder of the Mountain.  The houses 
scattered on the hillside lay cold and smokeless under 
the sun-flecked clouds, and not a human being was in 
sight.  Charity paused on the threshold and tried 
to discover the road by which she had come the night 
before.  Across the field surrounding Mrs. Hyatt's 
shanty she saw the tumble-down house in which she 
supposed the funeral service had taken place.  The 
trail ran across the ground between the two houses and 
disappeared in the pine-wood on the flank of the 
Mountain; and a little way to the right, under a wind-
beaten thorn, a mound of fresh earth made a dark spot 
on the fawn-coloured stubble.  Charity walked across 
the field to the ground.  As she approached it she 
heard a bird's note in the still air, and looking up 
she saw a brown song-sparrow perched in an upper branch 
of the thorn above the grave.  She stood a minute 
listening to his small solitary song; then she rejoined 
the trail and began to mount the hill to the pine-wood.

Thus far she had been impelled by the blind instinct of 
flight; but each step seemed to bring her nearer to the 
realities of which her feverish vigil had given only a 
shadowy image.  Now that she walked again in a daylight 
world, on the way back to familiar things, her 
imagination moved more soberly.  On one point she was 
still decided:  she could not remain at North Dormer, 
and the sooner she got away from it the better.  
But everything beyond was darkness.

As she continued to climb the air grew keener, and when 
she passed from the shelter of the pines to the open 
grassy roof of the Mountain the cold wind of the night 
before sprang out on her.  She bent her shoulders and 
struggled on against it for a while; but presently her 
breath failed, and she sat down under a ledge of rock 
overhung by shivering birches.  From where she sat she 
saw the trail wandering across the bleached grass in 
the direction of Hamblin, and the granite wall of the 
Mountain falling away to infinite distances.  On that 
side of the ridge the valleys still lay in wintry 
shadow; but in the plain beyond the sun was touching 
village roofs and steeples, and gilding the haze of 
smoke over far-off invisible towns.

Charity felt herself a mere speck in the lonely circle 
of the sky.  The events of the last two days seemed to 
have divided her forever from her short dream of bliss.  
Even Harney's image had been blurred by that crushing 
experience:  she thought of him as so remote from her 
that he seemed hardly more than a memory.  In her 
fagged and floating mind only one sensation had the 
weight of reality; it was the bodily burden of her 
child.  But for it she would have felt as rootless as 
the whiffs of thistledown the wind blew past her.  Her 
child was like a load that held her down, and yet like 
a hand that pulled her to her feet.  She said to 
herself that she must get up and struggle on....

Her eyes turned back to the trail across the top of the 
Mountain, and in the distance she saw a buggy against 
the sky.  She knew its antique outline, and the gaunt 
build of the old horse pressing forward with lowered 
head; and after a moment she recognized the heavy bulk 
of the man who held the reins.  The buggy was following 
the trail and making straight for the pine-wood through 
which she had climbed; and she knew at once that the 
driver was in search of her.  Her first impulse was to 
crouch down under the ledge till he had passed; but the 
instinct of concealment was overruled by the relief of 
feeling that someone was near her in the awful 
emptiness.  She stood up and walked toward the buggy.

Mr. Royall saw her, and touched the horse with the 
whip.  A minute or two later he was abreast of Charity; 
their eyes met, and without speaking he leaned over and 
helped her up into the buggy.  

She tried to speak, to stammer out some 
explanation, but no words came to her; and as he drew 
the cover over her knees he simply said:  "The minister 
told me he'd left you up here, so I come up for you."

He turned the horse's head, and they began to jog back 
toward Hamblin.  Charity sat speechless, staring 
straight ahead of her, and Mr. Royall occasionally 
uttered a word of encouragement to the horse:  "Get 
along there, Dan....I gave him a rest at Hamblin; but I 
brought him along pretty quick, and it's a stiff pull 
up here against the wind."

As he spoke it occurred to her for the first time that 
to reach the top of the Mountain so early he must have 
left North Dormer at the coldest hour of the night, and 
have travelled steadily but for the halt at Hamblin; 
and she felt a softness at her heart which no act of 
his had ever produced since he had brought her the 
Crimson Rambler because she had given up boarding-
school to stay with him.

After an interval he began again:  "It was a day just 
like this, only spitting snow, when I come up here for 
you the first time."  Then, as if fearing that she 
might take his remark as a reminder of past benefits, 
he added quickly:  "I dunno's you think it was such a 
good job, either."

"Yes, I do," she murmured, looking straight ahead of 
her.

"Well," he said, "I tried----"

He did not finish the sentence, and she could think of 
nothing more to say.

"Ho, there, Dan, step out," he muttered, jerking the 
bridle.  "We ain't home yet.--You cold?" he asked 
abruptly.

She shook her head, but he drew the cover higher up, 
and stooped to tuck it in about the ankles.  She 
continued to look straight ahead.  Tears of weariness 
and weakness were dimming her eyes and beginning to run 
over, but she dared not wipe them away lest he should 
observe the gesture.

They drove in silence, following the long loops of the 
descent upon Hamblin, and Mr. Royall did not speak 
again till they reached the outskirts of the village.  
Then he let the reins droop on the dashboard and drew 
out his watch.

"Charity," he said, "you look fair done up, and North 
Dormer's a goodish way off.  I've figured out that we'd 
do better to stop here long enough for you to get 
a mouthful of breakfast and then drive down to Creston 
and take the train."

She roused herself from her apathetic musing.  "The 
train--what train?"

Mr. Royall, without answering, let the horse jog on 
till they reached the door of the first house in the 
village.  "This is old Mrs. Hobart's place," he said.  
"She'll give us something hot to drink."

Charity, half unconsciously, found herself getting out 
of the buggy and following him in at the open door.  
They entered a decent kitchen with a fire crackling in 
the stove.  An old woman with a kindly face was setting 
out cups and saucers on the table.  She looked up and 
nodded as they came in, and Mr. Royall advanced to the 
stove, clapping his numb hands together.

"Well, Mrs. Hobart, you got any breakfast for this 
young lady?  You can see she's cold and hungry."

Mrs. Hobart smiled on Charity and took a tin coffee-pot 
from the fire.  "My, you do look pretty mean," she said 
compassionately.

Charity reddened, and sat down at the table.  A feeling 
of complete passiveness had once more come over 
her, and she was conscious only of the pleasant animal 
sensations of warmth and rest.

Mrs. Hobart put bread and milk on the table, and then 
went out of the house:  Charity saw her leading the 
horse away to the barn across the yard.  She did not 
come back, and Mr. Royall and Charity sat alone at the 
table with the smoking coffee between them.  He poured 
out a cup for her, and put a piece of bread in the 
saucer, and she began to eat.

As the warmth of the coffee flowed through her veins 
her thoughts cleared and she began to feel like a 
living being again; but the return to life was so 
painful that the food choked in her throat and she sat 
staring down at the table in silent anguish.

After a while Mr. Royall pushed back his chair.  "Now, 
then," he said, "if you're a mind to go along----" She 
did not move, and he continued:  "We can pick up the 
noon train for Nettleton if you say so."

The words sent the blood rushing to her face, and she 
raised her startled eyes to his.  He was standing on 
the other side of the table looking at her kindly and 
gravely; and suddenly she understood what he was 
going to say.  She continued to sit motionless, a 
leaden weight upon her lips.

"You and me have spoke some hard things to each other 
in our time, Charity; and there's no good that I can 
see in any more talking now.  But I'll never feel any 
way but one about you; and if you say so we'll drive 
down in time to catch that train, and go straight to 
the minister's house; and when you come back home 
you'll come as Mrs. Royall."

His voice had the grave persuasive accent that had 
moved his hearers at the Home Week festival; she had a 
sense of depths of mournful tolerance under that easy 
tone.  Her whole body began to tremble with the dread 
of her own weakness.

"Oh, I can't----" she burst out desperately.

"Can't what?"

She herself did not know:  she was not sure if she was 
rejecting what he offered, or already struggling 
against the temptation of taking what she no longer had 
a right to.  She stood up, shaking and bewildered, and 
began to speak:

"I know I ain't been fair to you always; but I want to 
be now....I want you to know...I want..."  Her voice 
failed her and she stopped.

Mr. Royall leaned against the wall.  He was paler 
than usual, but his face was composed and kindly 
and her agitation did not appear to perturb him.

"What's all this about wanting?" he said as she paused.  
"Do you know what you really want?  I'll tell you.  You 
want to be took home and took care of.  And I guess 
that's all there is to say."

"No...it's not all...."

"Ain't it?" He looked at his watch.  "Well, I'll tell 
you another thing.  All I want is to know if you'll 
marry me.  If there was anything else, I'd tell you so; 
but there ain't.  Come to my age, a man knows the 
things that matter and the things that don't; that's 
about the only good turn life does us."

His tone was so strong and resolute that it was like a 
supporting arm about her.  She felt her resistance 
melting, her strength slipping away from her as he 
spoke.

"Don't cry, Charity," he exclaimed in a shaken voice.  
She looked up, startled at his emotion, and their eyes 
met.

"See here," he said gently, "old Dan's come a long 
distance, and we've got to let him take it easy the 
rest of the way...."

He picked up the cloak that had slipped to her 
chair and laid it about her shoulders.  She 
followed him out of the house, and then walked across 
the yard to the shed, where the horse was tied.  Mr. 
Royall unblanketed him and led him out into the road.  
Charity got into the buggy and he drew the cover about 
her and shook out the reins with a cluck.  When they 
reached the end of the village he turned the horse's 
head toward Creston.



XVIII


They began to jog down the winding road to the valley 
at old Dan's languid pace.  Charity felt herself 
sinking into deeper depths of weariness, and as they 
descended through the bare woods there were moments 
when she lost the exact sense of things, and seemed to 
be sitting beside her lover with the leafy arch of 
summer bending over them.  But this illusion was faint 
and transitory.  For the most part she had only a 
confused sensation of slipping down a smooth 
irresistible current; and she abandoned herself to the 
feeling as a refuge from the torment of thought.

Mr. Royall seldom spoke, but his silent presence gave 
her, for the first time, a sense of peace and security.  
She knew that where he was there would be warmth, rest, 
silence; and for the moment they were all she wanted.  
She shut her eyes, and even these things grew dim to 
her....

In the train, during the short run from Creston to 
Nettleton, the warmth aroused her, and the 
consciousness of being under strange eyes gave her 
a momentary energy.  She sat upright, facing Mr. 
Royall, and stared out of the window at the denuded 
country.  Forty-eight hours earlier, when she had last 
traversed it, many of the trees still held their 
leaves; but the high wind of the last two nights had 
stripped them, and the lines of the landscape' were as 
finely pencilled as in December.  A few days of autumn 
cold had wiped out all trace of the rich fields and 
languid groves through which she had passed on the 
Fourth of July; and with the fading of the landscape 
those fervid hours had faded, too.  She could no longer 
believe that she was the being who had lived them; she 
was someone to whom something irreparable and 
overwhelming had happened, but the traces of the steps 
leading up to it had almost vanished.

When the train reached Nettleton and she walked out 
into the square at Mr. Royall's side the sense of 
unreality grew more overpowering.  The physical strain 
of the night and day had left no room in her mind for 
new sensations and she followed Mr. Royall as passively 
as a tired child.  As in a confused dream she presently 
found herself sitting with him in a pleasant room, at a 
table with a red and white table-cloth on which 
hot food and tea were placed.  He filled her cup and 
plate and whenever she lifted her eyes from them she 
found his resting on her with the same steady tranquil 
gaze that had reassured and strengthened her when they 
had faced each other in old Mrs. Hobart's kitchen.  As 
everything else in her consciousness grew more and more 
confused and immaterial, became more and more like the 
universal shimmer that dissolves the world to failing 
eyes, Mr. Royall's presence began to detach itself with 
rocky firmness from this elusive background.  She had 
always thought of him--when she thought of him at all--
as of someone hateful and obstructive, but whom she 
could outwit and dominate when she chose to make the 
effort.  Only once, on the day of the Old Home Week 
celebration, while the stray fragments of his address 
drifted across her troubled mind, had she caught a 
glimpse of another being, a being so different from the 
dull-witted enemy with whom she had supposed herself to 
be living that even through the burning mist of her own 
dreams he had stood out with startling distinctness.  
For a moment, then, what he said--and something in his 
way of saying it--had made her see why he had always 
struck her as such a lonely man.  But the mist of 
her dreams had hidden him again, and she had forgotten 
that fugitive impression.

It came back to her now, as they sat at the table, and 
gave her, through her own immeasurable desolation, a 
sudden sense of their nearness to each other.  But all 
these feelings were only brief streaks of light in the 
grey blur of her physical weakness.  Through it she was 
aware that Mr. Royall presently left her sitting by the 
table in the warm room, and came back after an interval 
with a carriage from the station--a closed "hack" with 
sun-burnt blue silk blinds--in which they drove 
together to a house covered with creepers and standing 
next to a church with a carpet of turf before it.  They 
got out at this house, and the carriage waited while 
they walked up the path and entered a wainscoted hall 
and then a room full of books.  In this room a 
clergyman whom Charity had never seen received them 
pleasantly, and asked them to be seated for a few 
minutes while witnesses were being summoned.

Charity sat down obediently, and Mr. Royall, his hands 
behind his back, paced slowly up and down the room.  As 
he turned and faced Charity, she noticed that his 
lips were twitching a little; but the look in his eyes 
was grave and calm.  Once he paused before her and said 
timidly:  "Your hair's got kinder loose with the wind," 
and she lifted her hands and tried to smooth back the 
locks that had escaped from her braid.  There was a 
looking-glass in a carved frame on the wall, but she 
was ashamed to look at herself in it, and she sat with 
her hands folded on her knee till the clergyman 
returned.  Then they went out again, along a sort of 
arcaded passage, and into a low vaulted room with a 
cross on an altar, and rows of benches.  The clergyman, 
who had left them at the door, presently reappeared 
before the altar in a surplice, and a lady who was 
probably his wife, and a man in a blue shirt who had 
been raking dead leaves on the lawn, came in and sat on 
one of the benches.

The clergyman opened a book and signed to Charity and 
Mr. Royall to approach.  Mr. Royall advanced a few 
steps, and Charity followed him as she had followed him 
to the buggy when they went out of Mrs. Hobart's 
kitchen; she had the feeling that if she ceased to keep 
close to him, and do what he told her to do, the world 
would slip away from beneath her feet.

The clergyman began to read, and on her dazed mind 
there rose the memory of Mr. Miles, standing the night 
before in the desolate house of the Mountain, and 
reading out of the same book words that had the same 
dread sound of finality:

"I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at 
the dreadful day of judgment when the secrets of all 
hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know 
any impediment whereby ye may not be lawfully joined 
together..."

Charity raised her eyes and met Mr. Royall's.  They 
were still looking at her kindly and steadily.  "I 
will!" she heard him say a moment later, after another 
interval of words that she had failed to catch.  She 
was so busy trying to understand the gestures that the 
clergyman was signalling to her to make that she no 
longer heard what was being said.  After another 
interval the lady on the bench stood up, and taking her 
hand put it in Mr. Royall's.  It lay enclosed in his 
strong palm and she felt a ring that was too big for 
her being slipped on her thin finger.  She understood 
then that she was married....

Late that afternoon Charity sat alone in a bedroom of 
the fashionable hotel where she and Harney had 
vainly sought a table on the Fourth of July.  She had 
never before been in so handsomely furnished a room.  
The mirror above the dressing-table reflected the high 
head-board and fluted pillow-slips of the double bed, 
and a bedspread so spotlessly white that she had 
hesitated to lay her hat and jacket on it.  The humming 
radiator diffused an atmosphere of drowsy warmth, and 
through a half-open door she saw the glitter of the 
nickel taps above twin marble basins.

For a while the long turmoil of the night and day had 
slipped away from her and she sat with closed eyes, 
surrendering herself to the spell of warmth and 
silence.  But presently this merciful apathy was 
succeeded by the sudden acuteness of vision with which 
sick people sometimes wake out of a heavy sleep.  As 
she opened her eyes they rested on the picture that 
hung above the bed.  It was a large engraving with a 
dazzling white margin enclosed in a wide frame of 
bird's-eye maple with an inner scroll of gold.  The 
engraving represented a young man in a boat on a lake 
over-hung with trees.  He was leaning over to gather 
water-lilies for the girl in a light dress who lay 
among the cushions in the stern.  The scene was 
full of a drowsy midsummer radiance, and Charity 
averted her eyes from it and, rising from her chair, 
began to wander restlessly about the room.

It was on the fifth floor, and its broad window of 
plate glass looked over the roofs of the town.  Beyond 
them stretched a wooded landscape in which the last 
fires of sunset were picking out a steely gleam.  
Charity gazed at the gleam with startled eyes.  Even 
through the gathering twilight she recognized the 
contour of the soft hills encircling it, and the way 
the meadows sloped to its edge.  It was Nettleton Lake 
that she was looking at.

She stood a long time in the window staring out at the 
fading water.  The sight of it had roused her for the 
first time to a realization of what she had done.  Even 
the feeling of the ring on her hand had not brought her 
this sharp sense of the irretrievable.  For an instant 
the old impulse of flight swept through her; but it was 
only the lift of a broken wing.  She heard the door 
open behind her, and Mr. Royall came in.

He had gone to the barber's to be shaved, and his 
shaggy grey hair had been trimmed and smoothed.  He 
moved strongly and quickly, squaring his shoulders 
and carrying his head high, as if he did not want to 
pass unnoticed.

"What are you doing in the dark?" he called out in a 
cheerful voice.  Charity made no answer.  He went up to 
the window to draw the blind, and putting his finger on 
the wall flooded the room with a blaze of light from 
the central chandelier.  In this unfamiliar 
illumination husband and wife faced each other 
awkwardly for a moment; then Mr. Royall said:  "We'll 
step down and have some supper, if you say so."

The thought of food filled her with repugnance; but not 
daring to confess it she smoothed her hair and followed 
him to the lift.



An hour later, coming out of the glare of the dining-
room, she waited in the marble-panelled hall while Mr. 
Royall, before the brass lattice of one of the corner 
counters, selected a cigar and bought an evening paper.  
Men were lounging in rocking chairs under the blazing 
chandeliers, travellers coming and going, bells 
ringing, porters shuffling by with luggage.  Over Mr. 
Royall's shoulder, as he leaned against the counter, a 
girl with her hair puffed high smirked and nodded at a 
dapper drummer who was getting his key at the desk 
across the hall.  

Charity stood among these cross-currents of life as 
motionless and inert as if she had been one of the 
tables screwed to the marble floor.  All her soul was 
gathered up into one sick sense of coming doom, and she 
watched Mr. Royall in fascinated terror while he 
pinched the cigars in successive boxes and unfolded his 
evening paper with a steady hand.

Presently he turned and joined her.  "You go right 
along up to bed--I'm going to sit down here and have my 
smoke," he said.  He spoke as easily and naturally as 
if they had been an old couple, long used to each 
other's ways, and her contracted heart gave a flutter 
of relief.  She followed him to the lift, and he put 
her in and enjoined the buttoned and braided boy to 
show her to her room.

She groped her way in through the darkness, forgetting 
where the electric button was, and not knowing how to 
manipulate it.  But a white autumn moon had risen, and 
the illuminated sky put a pale light in the room.  By 
it she undressed, and after folding up the ruffled 
pillow-slips crept timidly under the spotless 
counterpane.  She had never felt such smooth sheets or 
such light warm blankets; but the softness of the bed 
did not soothe her.  She lay there trembling with a 
fear that ran through her veins like ice.  "What have I 
done?  Oh, what have I done?" she whispered, shuddering 
to her pillow; and pressing her face against it to shut 
out the pale landscape beyond the window she lay in the 
darkness straining her ears, and shaking at every 
footstep that approached....

Suddenly she sat up and pressed her hands against her 
frightened heart.  A faint sound had told her that 
someone was in the room; but she must have slept in the 
interval, for she had heard no one enter.  The moon was 
setting beyond the opposite roofs, and in the darkness 
outlined against the grey square of the window, she saw 
a figure seated in the rocking-chair.  The figure did 
not move:  it was sunk deep in the chair, with bowed 
head and folded arms, and she saw that it was Mr. 
Royall who sat there.  He had not undressed, but had 
taken the blanket from the foot of the bed and laid it 
across his knees.  Trembling and holding her breath she 
watched him, fearing that he had been roused by her 
movement; but he did not stir, and she concluded 
that he wished her to think he was asleep.

As she continued to watch him ineffable relief stole 
slowly over her, relaxing her strained nerves and 
exhausted body.  He knew, then...he knew...it was 
because he knew that he had married her, and that he 
sat there in the darkness to show her she was safe with 
him.  A stir of something deeper than she had ever 
felt in thinking of him flitted through her tired 
brain, and cautiously, noiselessly, she let her head 
sink on the pillow....

When she woke the room was full of morning light, and 
her first glance showed her that she was alone in it.  
She got up and dressed, and as she was fastening her 
dress the door opened, and Mr. Royall came in.  He 
looked old and tired in the bright daylight, but his 
face wore the same expression of grave friendliness 
that had reassured her on the Mountain.  It was as if 
all the dark spirits had gone out of him.

They went downstairs to the dining-room for breakfast, 
and after breakfast he told her he had some insurance 
business to attend to.  "I guess while I'm doing it 
you'd better step out and buy yourself whatever you 
need."  He smiled, and added with an embarrassed 
laugh:  "You know I always wanted you to beat all the 
other girls."  He drew something from his pocket, and 
pushed it across the table to her; and she saw that he 
had given her two twenty-dollar bills.  "If it ain't 
enough there's more where that come from--I want you to 
beat 'em all hollow," he repeated.

She flushed and tried to stammer out her thanks, but he 
had pushed back his chair and was leading the way out 
of the dining-room.  In the hall he paused a minute to 
say that if it suited her they would take the three 
o'clock train back to North Dormer; then he took his 
hat and coat from the rack and went out.

A few minutes later Charity went out, too.  She had 
watched to see in what direction he was going, and she 
took the opposite way and walked quickly down the main 
street to the brick building on the corner of Lake 
Avenue.  There she paused to look cautiously up and 
down the thoroughfare, and then climbed the brass-bound 
stairs to Dr. Merkle's door.  The same bushy-headed 
mulatto girl admitted her, and after the same interval 
of waiting in the red plush parlor she was once more 
summoned to Dr. Merkle's office.  The doctor 
received her without surprise, and led her into the 
inner plush sanctuary.

"I thought you'd be back, but you've come a mite too 
soon:  I told you to be patient and not fret," she 
observed, after a pause of penetrating scrutiny.

Charity drew the money from her breast.  "I've come to 
get my blue brooch," she said, flushing.

"Your brooch?" Dr. Merkle appeared not to remember.  
"My, yes--I get so many things of that kind.  Well, my 
dear, you'll have to wait while I get it out of the 
safe.  I don't leave valuables like that laying round 
like the noospaper."

She disappeared for a moment, and returned with a bit 
of twisted-up tissue paper from which she unwrapped the 
brooch.

Charity, as she looked at it, felt a stir of warmth at 
her heart.  She held out an eager hand.

"Have you got the change?" she asked a little 
breathlessly, laying one of the twenty-dollar bills on 
the table.

"Change?  What'd I want to have change for?  I only see 
two twenties there," Dr. Merkle answered brightly.

Charity paused, disconcerted.  "I thought...you said it 
was five dollars a visit...."

"For YOU, as a favour--I did.  But how about 
the responsibility and the insurance?  I don't s'pose 
you ever thought of that?  This pin's worth a hundred 
dollars easy.  If it had got lost or stole, where'd I 
been when you come to claim it?"

Charity remained silent, puzzled and half-convinced by 
the argument, and Dr. Merkle promptly followed up her 
advantage.  "I didn't ask you for your brooch, my dear.  
I'd a good deal ruther folks paid me my regular charge 
than have 'em put me to all this trouble."

She paused, and Charity, seized with a desperate 
longing to escape, rose to her feet and held out one of 
the bills.

"Will you take that?" she asked.

"No, I won't take that, my dear; but I'll take it with 
its mate, and hand you over a signed receipt if you 
don't trust me."

"Oh, but I can't--it's all I've got," Charity 
exclaimed.

Dr. Merkle looked up at her pleasantly from the plush 
sofa.  "It seems you got married yesterday, up to the 
'Piscopal church; I heard all about the wedding from 
the minister's chore-man.  It would be a pity, wouldn't 
it, to let Mr. Royall know you had an account 
running here?  I just put it to you as your own mother 
might."

Anger flamed up in Charity, and for an instant she 
thought of abandoning the brooch and letting Dr. Merkle 
do her worst.  But how could she leave her only 
treasure with that evil woman?  She wanted it for her 
baby:  she meant it, in some mysterious way, to be a 
link between Harney's child and its unknown father.  
Trembling and hating herself while she did it, she laid 
Mr. Royall's money on the table, and catching up the 
brooch fled out of the room and the house....

In the street she stood still, dazed by this last 
adventure.  But the brooch lay in her bosom like a 
talisman, and she felt a secret lightness of heart.  It 
gave her strength, after a moment, to walk on slowly in 
the direction of the post office, and go in through the 
swinging doors.  At one of the windows she bought a 
sheet of letter-paper, an envelope and a stamp; then 
she sat down at a table and dipped the rusty post 
office pen in ink.  She had come there possessed with a 
fear which had haunted her ever since she had felt Mr. 
Royall's ring on her finger:  the fear that Harney 
might, after all, free himself and come back to her.  It 
was a possibility which had never occurred to her 
during the dreadful hours after she had received his 
letter; only when the decisive step she had taken made 
longing turn to apprehension did such a contingency 
seem conceivable.  She addressed the envelope, and on 
the sheet of paper she wrote:


I'm married to Mr. Royall.  I'll always remember you.
                                    CHARITY.


The last words were not in the least what she had meant 
to write; they had flowed from her pen irresistibly.  
She had not had the strength to complete her sacrifice; 
but, after all, what did it matter?  Now that there was 
no chance of ever seeing Harney again, why should she 
not tell him the truth?

When she had put the letter in the box she went out 
into the busy sunlit street and began to walk to the 
hotel.  Behind the plateglass windows of the department 
stores she noticed the tempting display of dresses and 
dress-materials that had fired her imagination on the 
day when she and Harney had looked in at them together.  
They reminded her of Mr. Royall's injunction to go out 
and buy all she needed.  She looked down at her shabby 
dress, and wondered what she should say when he 
saw her coming back empty-handed.  As she drew near 
the hotel she saw him waiting on the doorstep, and her 
heart began to beat with apprehension.

He nodded and waved his hand at her approach, and they 
walked through the hall and went upstairs to collect 
their possessions, so that Mr. Royall might give up the 
key of the room when they went down again for their 
midday dinner.  In the bedroom, while she was thrusting 
back into the satchel the few things she had brought 
away with her, she suddenly felt that his eyes were on 
her and that he was going to speak.  She stood still, 
her half-folded night-gown in her hand, while the blood 
rushed up to her drawn cheeks.

"Well, did you rig yourself out handsomely?  I haven't 
seen any bundles round," he said jocosely.

"Oh, I'd rather let Ally Hawes make the few things I 
want," she answered.

"That so?" He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment 
and his eye-brows projected in a scowl.  Then his face 
grew friendly again.  "Well, I wanted you to go back 
looking stylisher than any of them; but I guess you're 
right.  You're a good girl, Charity."

Their eyes met, and something rose in his that she 
had never seen there:  a look that made her feel ashamed 
and yet secure.

"I guess you're good, too," she said, shyly and 
quickly.  He smiled without answering, and they went 
out of the room together and dropped down to the hall 
in the glittering lift.

Late that evening, in the cold autumn moonlight, they 
drove up to the door of the red house.



The End of Project Gutenberg etext of Summer by Edith Wharton