SUMMER

by Edith Wharton

1917

I

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

It was the beginning of a June afternoon. The springlike transparent skyshed a rain of silver sunshine on the roofs of the village, and on thepastures and larchwoods surrounding it. A little wind moved among theround white clouds on the shoulders of the hills, driving their shadowsacross the fields and down the grassy road that takes the name of streetwhen it passes through North Dormer. The place lies high and in theopen, and lacks the lavish shade of the more protected New Englandvillages. The clump of weeping-willows about the duck pond, and theNorway spruces in front of the Hatchard gate, cast almost the onlyroadside shadow between lawyer Royall's house and the point where, atthe other end of the village, the road rises above the church and skirtsthe black hemlock wall enclosing the cemetery. 

The little June wind, frisking down the street, shook the dolefulfringes of the Hatchard spruces, caught the straw hat of a young manjust passing under them, and spun it clean across the road into theduck-pond. 

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

Her heart contracted a little, and the shrinking that sometimes cameover her when she saw people with holiday faces made her draw back intothe house and pretend to look for the key that she knew she had alreadyput into her pocket. A narrow greenish mirror with a gilt eagle over ithung on the passage wall, and she looked critically at her reflection, wished for the thousandth time that she had blue eyes like AnnabelBalch, the girl who sometimes came from Springfield to spend a week withold Miss Hatchard, straightened the sunburnt hat over her small swarthyface, 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 thestreet to herself. North Dormer is at all times an empty place, and atthree o'clock on a June afternoon its few able-bodied men are off inthe fields or woods, and the women indoors, engaged in languid householddrudgery. 

The girl walked along, swinging her key on a finger, and looking abouther with the heightened attention produced by the presence of a strangerin a familiar place. What, she wondered, did North Dormer look like topeople from other parts of the world? She herself had lived theresince the age of five, and had long supposed it to be a place of someimportance. But about a year before, Mr. Miles, the new Episcopalclergyman at Hepburn, who drove over every other Sunday--when the roadswere not ploughed up by hauling--to hold a service in the North Dormerchurch, had proposed, in a fit of missionary zeal, to take the youngpeople down to Nettleton to hear an illustrated lecture on the HolyLand; and the dozen girls and boys who represented the future of NorthDormer had been piled into a farm-waggon, driven over the hills toHepburn, put into a way-train and carried to Nettleton. 

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

The sight of the stranger once more revived memories of Nettleton, andNorth Dormer shrank to its real size. As she looked up and down it, fromlawyer Royall's faded red house at one end to the white church at theother, she pitilessly took its measure. There it lay, a weather-beatensunburnt village of the hills, abandoned of men, left apart by railway, trolley, telegraph, and all the forces that link life to life in moderncommunities. It had no shops, no theatres, no lectures, no "businessblock"; only a church that was opened every other Sunday if the stateof the roads permitted, and a library for which no new books had beenbought for twenty years, and where the old ones mouldered undisturbed onthe damp shelves. Yet Charity Royall had always been told that she oughtto 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 Dormerrepresented all the blessings of the most refined civilization. Everyonein the village had told her so ever since she had been brought there asa child. Even old Miss Hatchard had said to her, on a terrible occasionin 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 cliffthat lifted its sullen wall above the lesser slopes of Eagle Range, making a perpetual background of gloom to the lonely valley. TheMountain was a good fifteen miles away, but it rose so abruptly from thelower hills that it seemed almost to cast its shadow over North Dormer. And it was like a great magnet drawing the clouds and scattering themin storm across the valley. If ever, in the purest summer sky, theretrailed a thread of vapour over North Dormer, it drifted to the Mountainas a ship drifts to a whirlpool, and was caught among the rocks, torn upand 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 badplace, and a shame to have come from, and that, whatever befell herin North Dormer, she ought, as Miss Hatchard had once reminded her, toremember that she had been brought down from there, and hold her tongueand be thankful. She looked up at the Mountain, thinking of thesethings, and tried as usual to be thankful. But the sight of the youngman turning in at Miss Hatchard's gate had brought back the vision ofthe glittering streets of Nettleton, and she felt ashamed of her oldsun-hat, and sick of North Dormer, and jealously aware of Annabel Balchof Springfield, opening her blue eyes somewhere far off on gloriesgreater than the glories of Nettleton. 

"How I hate everything!" she said again. 

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

Honorius Hatchard had been old Miss Hatchard's great-uncle; though shewould undoubtedly have reversed the phrase, and put forward, as heronly claim to distinction, the fact that she was his great-niece. ForHonorius Hatchard, in the early years of the nineteenth century, hadenjoyed a modest celebrity. As the marble tablet in the interior ofthe library informed its infrequent visitors, he had possessed markedliterary gifts, written a series of papers called "The Recluse of EagleRange, " enjoyed the acquaintance of Washington Irving and Fitz-GreeneHalleck, and been cut off in his flower by a fever contracted in Italy. Such had been the sole link between North Dormer and literature, alink piously commemorated by the erection of the monument where CharityRoyall, every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, sat at her desk under afreckled steel engraving of the deceased author, and wondered if he feltany 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 outto see if there were any eggs in the swallow's nest above one of thewindows, and finally, seating herself behind the desk, drew out aroll of cotton lace and a steel crochet hook. She was not an expertworkwoman, and it had taken her many weeks to make the half-yardof narrow lace which she kept wound about the buckram back of adisintegrated copy of "The Lamplighter. " But there was no other way ofgetting any lace to trim her summer blouse, and since Ally Hawes, thepoorest girl in the village, had shown herself in church with enviabletransparencies about the shoulders, Charity's hook had travelled faster. She unrolled the lace, dug the hook into a loop, and bent to the taskwith furrowed brows. 

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

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

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

"A WHAT?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Why?" he questioned in his turn; and she replied that there weren'tmany books anyhow, and that she'd hardly read any of them. "The wormsare getting at them, " she added gloomily. 

"Are they? That's a pity, for I see there are some good ones. " He seemedto have lost interest in their conversation, and strolled away again, apparently forgetting her. His indifference nettled her, and she pickedup her work, resolved not to offer him the least assistance. Apparentlyhe 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 adistant shelf. 

"Oh, I say!" he exclaimed; and looking up she saw that he had drawn outhis handkerchief and was carefully wiping the edges of the book in hishand. The action struck her as an unwarranted criticism on her care ofthe 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--thenyou're not the librarian?"

"Of course I am; but I can't dust all these books. Besides, nobody everlooks 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 stoodconsidering her in silence. She wondered if Miss Hatchard had senthim round to pry into the way the library was looked after, and thesuspicion increased her resentment. "I saw you going into her house justnow, didn't I?" she asked, with the New England avoidance of the propername. She was determined to find out why he was poking about among herbooks. 

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

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

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

Her bewilderment was complete: the more she wished to appear tounderstand him the more unintelligible his remarks became. He remindedher of the gentleman who had "explained" the pictures at Nettleton, andthe 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 abouthere. I suppose, for that matter, this part of the country hasn't beenmuch explored. They all go on doing Plymouth and Salem. So stupid. Mycousin's house, now, is remarkable. This place must have had a past--itmust have been more of a place once. " He stopped short, with the blushof a shy man who overhears himself, and fears he has been voluble. "I'man 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? Thefolks are, anyhow. "

He laughed, and wandered away again. 

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

She pressed her crochet hook against her lip and pondered. There wassuch a work, she knew: "North Dormer and the Early Townships of EagleCounty. " She had a special grudge against it because it was a limpweakly book that was always either falling off the shelf or slippingback and disappearing if one squeezed it in between sustaining volumes. She remembered, the last time she had picked it up, wondering how anyonecould have taken the trouble to write a book about North Dormer and itsneighbours: Dormer, Hamblin, Creston and Creston River. She knew themall, mere lost clusters of houses in the folds of the desolate ridges:Dormer, where North Dormer went for its apples; Creston River, wherethere used to be a paper-mill, and its grey walls stood decaying by thestream; and Hamblin, where the first snow always fell. Such were theirtitles to fame. 

She got up and began to move about vaguely before the shelves. But shehad no idea where she had last put the book, and something told her thatit was going to play her its usual trick and remain invisible. It wasnot one of her lucky days. 

"I guess it's somewhere, " she said, to prove her zeal; but she spokewithout conviction, and felt that her words conveyed none. 

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

"It will be for next time, " he added; and picking up the volume he hadlaid on the desk he handed it to her. "By the way, a little air and sunwould 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 untilnearly half-past four. 

But she had never perceived that any practical advantage therebyaccrued either to North Dormer or to herself; and she had no scruplein decreeing, when it suited her, that the library should close an hourearlier. A few minutes after Mr. Harney's departure she formed thisdecision, put away her lace, fastened the shutters, and turned the keyin the door of the temple of knowledge. 

The street upon which she emerged was still empty: and after glancing upand down it she began to walk toward her house. But instead of enteringshe passed on, turned into a field-path and mounted to a pasture on thehillside. She let down the bars of the gate, followed a trail along thecrumbling wall of the pasture, and walked on till she reached a knollwhere 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 inthe grass. 

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

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

She had liked the young man's looks, and his short-sighted eyes, and hisodd way of speaking, that was abrupt yet soft, just as his hands weresun-burnt and sinewy, yet with smooth nails like a woman's. His hair wassunburnt-looking too, or rather the colour of bracken after frost; hiseyes grey, with the appealing look of the shortsighted, his smile shyyet 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. Butshe did feel it, and liked the feeling; for it was new to her. Poor andignorant as she was, and knew herself to be--humblest of the humbleeven in North Dormer, where to come from the Mountain was the worstdisgrace--yet in her narrow world she had always ruled. It was partly, of course, owing to the fact that lawyer Royall was "the biggest manin North Dormer"; so much too big for it, in fact, that outsiders, who didn't know, always wondered how it held him. In spite ofeverything--and in spite even of Miss Hatchard--lawyer Royall ruled inNorth Dormer; and Charity ruled in lawyer Royall's house. She had neverput it to herself in those terms; but she knew her power, knew what itwas made of, and hated it. Confusedly, the young man in the libraryhad made her feel for the first time what might be the sweetness ofdependence. 

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

Charity could not recall her first sight of the house. She had been toldthat 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 thatwas afterward to be hers. 

Mrs. Royall died seven or eight years later; and by that time Charityhad 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 harshand violent, and still weaker. She knew that she had been christenedCharity (in the white church at the other end of the village) tocommemorate Mr. Royall's disinterestedness in "bringing her down, " andto keep alive in her a becoming sense of her dependence; she knew thatMr. 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 hadcome 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 aboarding-school. Miss Hatchard suggested it, and had a long conferencewith Mr. Royall, who, in pursuance of her plan, departed one day forStarkfield to visit the institution she recommended. He came back thenext night with a black face; worse, Charity observed, than she had everseen him; and by that time she had had some experience. 

When she asked him how soon she was to start he answered shortly, "Youain'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 justthen for another pupil. 

Charity was disappointed; but she understood. It wasn't the temptationsof Starkfield that had been Mr. Royall's undoing; it was the thought oflosing her. He was a dreadfully "lonesome" man; she had made that outbecause she was so "lonesome" herself. He and she, face to face in thatsad house, had sounded the depths of isolation; and though she feltno particular affection for him, and not the slightest gratitude, shepitied him because she was conscious that he was superior to the peopleabout 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 talkof a school at Nettleton, and to say that this time a friend of herswould "make the necessary arrangements, " Charity cut her short with theannouncement that she had decided not to leave North Dormer. 

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

Miss Hatchard blinked perplexedly behind her eye-glasses. Her long frailface was full of puzzled wrinkles, and she leant forward, resting herhands on the arms of her mahogany armchair, with the evident desire tosay 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 ofancestral daguerreotypes and didactic samplers; but they seemed to makeutterance more difficult. 

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

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

Lawyer Royall was waiting for Charity in the porch when she returnedfrom this visit. He had shaved, and brushed his black coat, and looked amagnificent 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 andits 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 exercisedhis profession, though litigation languished in North Dormer and itsoutlying hamlets; and for once he had had an opportunity that he couldnot 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, andmanifested itself on this occasion by his talking impressively at thesupper-table of the "rousing welcome" his old friends had given him. Hewound up confidentially: "I was a damn fool ever to leave Nettleton. Itwas 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 bedearly, leaving him seated in moody thought, his elbows propped on theworn oilcloth of the supper table. On the way up she had extracted fromhis overcoat pocket the key of the cupboard where the bottle of whiskeywas kept. 

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

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

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

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

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

She was not frightened, she simply felt a deep disgust; and perhaps hedivined it or read it in her face, for after staring at her a momenthe drew back and turned slowly away from the door. With her ear to herkeyhole she heard him feel his way down the dark stairs, and towardthe kitchen; and she listened for the crash of the cupboard panel, butinstead 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 downthe path. She crept to the window and saw his bent figure striding upthe road in the moonlight. Then a belated sense of fear came to herwith the consciousness of victory, and she slipped into bed, cold to thebone. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Miss Hatchard clasped her nervous hands about the arms of her chair. Hereyes invoked the faded countenances on the wall, and after a faint coughof 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 nohelp to give her and that she would have to fight her way out of herdifficulty alone. A deeper sense of isolation overcame her; she feltincalculably 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 beencoughing a good deal this fall. "

She noted the immediate effect of this suggestion. Miss Hatchard paledat the memory of poor Eudora's taking-off, and promised to do what shecould. But of course there were people she must consult: the clergyman, the selectmen of North Dormer, and a distant Hatchard relative atSpringfield. "If you'd only gone to school!" she sighed. She followedCharity to the door, and there, in the security of the threshold, saidwith a glance of evasive appeal: "I know Mr. Royall is... Trying attimes; 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 wassitting there by the stove reading Daniel Webster's speeches. They hadmet at meals during the five days that had elapsed since he had come toher door, and she had walked at his side at Eudora's funeral; but theyhad not spoken a word to each other. 

He glanced up in surprise as she entered, and she noticed that hewas unshaved, and that he looked unusually old; but as she had alwaysthought of him as an old man the change in his appearance did not moveher. She told him she had been to see Miss Hatchard, and with whatobject. 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 themoney to pay for a hired girl. But I ain't going to pay for her: you'vegot to. I want to have some money of my own. "

Mr. Royall's bushy black eyebrows were drawn together in a frown, and hesat 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 Dormerif 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 Ican't do it here I'll go somewhere else. I'll go up the Mountain if Ihave 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 thelibrary: and I want a woman here in the house with me, " she repeated. 

Mr. Royall had grown exceedingly pale. When she ended he stood upponderously, leaning against the desk; and for a second or two theylooked 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 havesaid 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 nextSunday and we can fix it up then. Or I'll drive you down to Hepburn tothe Justice, and get it done there. I'll do whatever you say. " Hiseyes fell under the merciless stare she continued to fix on him, andhe shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other. As hestood there before her, unwieldy, shabby, disordered, the purple veinsdistorting the hands he pressed against the desk, and his long orator'sjaw trembling with the effort of his avowal, he seemed like a hideousparody of the fatherly old man she had always known. 

"Marry you? Me?" she burst out with a scornful laugh. "Was that what youcame to ask me the other night? What's come over you, I wonder? How longis it since you've looked at yourself in the glass?" She straightenedherself, insolently conscious of her youth and strength. "I supposeyou 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 guessyou'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 andhis black eyebrows quivered as though the blaze of her scorn had blindedhim. When she ceased he held up his hand. 

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

A few days later North Dormer learned with surprise that Charity hadbeen appointed librarian of the Hatchard Memorial at a salary of eightdollars 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 andmasculine independence made it necessary that he should have a realoffice, under a different roof; and his standing as the only lawyer ofNorth Dormer required that the roof should be the same as that whichsheltered the Town Hall and the post-office. 

It was his habit to walk to this office twice a day, morning andafternoon. It was on the ground floor of the building, with a separateentrance, and a weathered name-plate on the door. Before going inhe stepped in to the post-office for his mail--usually an emptyceremony--said a word or two to the town-clerk, who sat across thepassage in idle state, and then went over to the store on the oppositecorner, 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 longcounter, 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 wasunwilling that his rare clients should surprise him sitting, clerklessand unoccupied, in his dusty office. At any rate, his hours there werenot much longer or more regular than Charity's at the library; the restof the time he spent either at the store or in driving about the countryon business connected with the insurance companies that he represented, or in sitting at home reading Bancroft's History of the United Statesand the speeches of Daniel Webster. 

Since the day when Charity had told him that she wished to succeedto Eudora Skeff's post their relations had undefinably but definitelychanged. Lawyer Royall had kept his word. He had obtained the place forher at the cost of considerable maneuvering, as she guessed from thenumber of rival candidates, and from the acerbity with which two ofthem, Orma Fry and the eldest Targatt girl, treated her for nearly ayear afterward. And he had engaged Verena Marsh to come up fromCreston and do the cooking. Verena was a poor old widow, doddering andshiftless: Charity suspected that she came for her keep. Mr. Royall wastoo close a man to give a dollar a day to a smart girl when he couldget a deaf pauper for nothing. But at any rate, Verena was there, in theattic just over Charity, and the fact that she was deaf did not greatlytrouble the young girl. 

Charity knew that what had happened on that hateful night would nothappen again. She understood that, profoundly as she had despised Mr. Royall ever since, he despised himself still more profoundly. If she hadasked for a woman in the house it was far less for her own defense thanfor his humiliation. She needed no one to defend her: his humbled pridewas her surest protection. He had never spoken a word of excuseor extenuation; the incident was as if it had never been. Yet itsconsequences were latent in every word that he and she exchanged, inevery glance they instinctively turned from each other. Nothing nowwould ever shake her rule in the red house. 

On the night of her meeting with Miss Hatchard's cousin Charity lay inbed, her bare arms clasped under her rough head, and continued to thinkof 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; andthough she was not very clear as to his purpose, or as to why anyoneshould look for old houses, when they lay in wait for one on everyroadside, she understood that he needed the help of books, and resolvedto hunt up the next day the volume she had failed to find, and anyothers that seemed related to the subject. 

Never had her ignorance of life and literature so weighed on her as inreliving the short scene of her discomfiture. "It's no use trying to beanything in this place, " she muttered to her pillow; and she shrivelledat the vision of vague metropolises, shining super-Nettletons, where girls in better clothes than Belle Balch's talked fluently ofarchitecture to young men with hands like Lucius Harney's. Then sheremembered his sudden pause when he had come close to the desk and hadhis first look at her. The sight had made him forget what he was goingto say; she recalled the change in his face, and jumping up she ran overthe bare boards to her washstand, found the matches, lit a candle, andlifted it to the square of looking-glass on the white-washed wall. Hersmall face, usually so darkly pale, glowed like a rose in the faint orbof light, and under her rumpled hair her eyes seemed deeper and largerthan 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 thethroat. She undid it, freed her thin shoulders, and saw herself a bridein low-necked satin, walking down an aisle with Lucius Harney. He wouldkiss her as they left the church.... She put down the candle and coveredher face with her hands as if to imprison the kiss. At that moment sheheard Mr. Royall's step as he came up the stairs to bed, and a fiercerevulsion of feeling swept over her. Until then she had merely despisedhim; now deep hatred of him filled her heart. He became to her ahorrible old man.... 

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

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

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

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

The question, breaking in on her mood of blissful abstraction, deprivedher 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 forme 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 goinground with her. The low-down sneaks--I always knew they'd try to have meout! 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'tI there yesterday, I'd like to know?"

"Round about four o'clock. "

Charity was silent. She had been so steeped in the dreamy remembrance ofyoung Harney's visit that she had forgotten having deserted her post assoon 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 beenlame. She couldn't get up the steps if she tried. "

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

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

Of all Mr. Royall had said she had retained only the phrase: "He toldMiss Hatchard the books were in bad shape. " What did she care for theother charges against her? Malice or truth, she despised them as shedespised her detractors. But that the stranger to whom she had feltherself so mysteriously drawn should have betrayed her! That at thevery moment when she had fled up the hillside to think of him moredeliciously he should have been hastening home to denounce hershort-comings! She remembered how, in the darkness of her room, she hadcovered her face to press his imagined kiss closer; and her heart ragedagainst 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 init again. They needn't think I'm going to wait round and let them saythey've discharged me!"

"Charity--Charity Royall, you listen----" he began, getting heavily outof 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 itunder her pincushion--who said she wasn't careful?--put on her hat, andswept down again and out into the street. If Mr. Royall heard her gohe made no motion to detain her: his sudden rages probably made himunderstand the uselessness of reasoning with hers. 

She reached the brick temple, unlocked the door and entered into theglacial twilight. "I'm glad I'll never have to sit in this old vaultagain when other folks are out in the sun!" she said aloud as thefamiliar chill took her. She looked with abhorrence at the long dingyrows of books, the sheep-nosed Minerva on her black pedestal, and themild-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 libraryregister, and go straight to Miss Hatchard to announce her resignation. But suddenly a great desolation overcame her, and she sat down and laidher face against the desk. Her heart was ravaged by life's cruelestdiscovery: the first creature who had come toward her out of thewilderness had brought her anguish instead of joy. She did not cry;tears came hard to her, and the storms of her heart spent themselvesinwardly. But as she sat there in her dumb woe she felt her life to betoo 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 swellwith 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 openedthe drawer, dragged out the register, and turned toward the door. Asshe did so it opened, and the young man from Miss Hatchard's came inwhistling. 

IV

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

Charity stood before him, barring his way. "You can't come in. Thelibrary 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'nI 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 againstme? But you needn't trouble: it's my library today, but it won't bethis time tomorrow. I'm on the way now to take her back the key and theregister. "

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

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

The apparent evasiveness of the reply caused Charity's indignation tooverflow. "I don't know why you should. I could understand Orma Fry'sdoing it, because she's always wanted to get me out of here ever sincethe first day. I can't see why, when she's got her own home, and herfather to work for her; nor Ida Targatt, neither, when she got a legacyfrom her step-brother on'y last year. But anyway we all live in thesame place, and when it's a place like North Dormer it's enough to makepeople hate each other just to have to walk down the same street everyday. But you don't live here, and you don't know anything about any ofus, so what did you have to meddle for? Do you suppose the other girls'dhave kept the books any better'n I did? Why, Orma Fry don't hardly knowa book from a flat-iron! And what if I don't always sit round heredoing nothing till it strikes five up at the church? Who cares if thelibrary's open or shut? Do you suppose anybody ever comes here forbooks? What they'd like to come for is to meet the fellows they're goingwith if I'd let 'em. But I wouldn't let Bill Sollas from over the hillhang round here waiting for the youngest Targatt girl, because I knowhim... 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 runningthrough her, and she steadied herself against the edge of the desk lesthe should see her weakness. 

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

His distress inflamed her anger, and she regained her voice to flingback: "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 Iknew; but I don't. Apparently something disagreeable has happened, forwhich you think I'm to blame. But I don't know what it is, because I'vebeen up on Eagle Ridge ever since the early morning. "

"I don't know where you've been this morning, but I know you were herein this library yesterday; and it was you that went home and told yourcousin the books were in bad shape, and brought her round to see how I'dneglected 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 areinteresting it's a pity. I told Miss Hatchard they were suffering fromdampness and lack of air; and I brought her here to show her how easilythe place could be ventilated. I also told her you ought to have someone to help you do the dusting and airing. If you were given a wrongversion of what I said I'm sorry; but I'm so fond of old books thatI'd rather see them made into a bonfire than left to moulder away likethese. "

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

Of this appeal her hearer took up only the last question. "It is anold vault; but need it be? That's the point. And it's my putting thequestion 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 thestern rosewood desk surmounted by the portrait of the young Honorius. "Of course it's a bad job to do anything with a building jammed againsta hill like this ridiculous mausoleum: you couldn't get a good draughtthrough it without blowing a hole in the mountain. But it can beventilated after a fashion, and the sun can be let in: I'll show youhow if you like.... " The architect's passion for improvement hadalready made him lose sight of her grievance, and he lifted his stickinstructively toward the cornice. But her silence seemed to tell himthat she took no interest in the ventilation of the library, and turningback to her abruptly he held out both hands. "Look here--you don't meanwhat 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 inthat tone. 

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

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

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

She felt that if she kept up her denunciatory tone he would secretlyclass 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'sgoing to get a trained librarian; and I'd sooner resign than have thevillage 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 youknow? 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 tilltomorrow, will you?" He looked straight into her eyes with his shy greyglance. "You can trust me, you know--you really can. "

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

V

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

On such an afternoon Charity Royall lay on a ridge above a sunlithollow, her face pressed to the earth and the warm currents of the grassrunning through her. Directly in her line of vision a blackberry branchlaid its frail white flowers and blue-green leaves against the sky. Justbeyond, a tuft of sweet-fern uncurled between the beaded shoots of thegrass, and a small yellow butterfly vibrated over them like a fleck ofsunshine. This was all she saw; but she felt, above her and about her, the strong growth of the beeches clothing the ridge, the rounding ofpale green cones on countless spruce-branches, the push of myriads ofsweet-fern fronds in the cracks of the stony slope below the wood, and the crowding shoots of meadowsweet and yellow flags in the pasturebeyond. All this bubbling of sap and slipping of sheaths and bursting ofcalyxes was carried to her on mingled currents of fragrance. Every leafand bud and blade seemed to contribute its exhalation to the pervadingsweetness in which the pungency of pine-sap prevailed over the spiceof thyme and the subtle perfume of fern, and all were merged in a moistearth-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 slopeon which she lay, when there came between her eyes and the dancingbutterfly the sight of a man's foot in a large worn boot covered withred mud. 

"Oh, don't!" she exclaimed, raising herself on her elbow and stretchingout 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 onthe frail branch, and raising her eyes she saw above her the bewilderedface of a slouching man with a thin sunburnt beard, and white armsshowing through his ragged shirt. 

"Don't you ever SEE anything, Liff Hyatt?" she assailed him, as he stoodbefore 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 hisfoot had scattered. 

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

Charity sank back on her heels and looked at him musingly. She wasnot in the least afraid of poor Liff Hyatt, though he "came from theMountain, " and some of the girls ran when they saw him. Among the morereasonable he passed for a harmless creature, a sort of link between themountain and civilized folk, who occasionally came down and did a littlewood cutting for a farmer when hands were short. Besides, she knew theMountain people would never hurt her: Liff himself had told her soonce when she was a little girl, and had met him one day at the edgeof 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 addedphilosophically, looking at her new shoes, and at the red ribbon thatMrs. 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 wasshy of being seen in talk with Liff Hyatt. But today she was not sorryto have him appear. A great many things had happened to her since theday when young Lucius Harney had entered the doors of the HatchardMemorial, but none, perhaps, so unforeseen as the fact of her suddenlyfinding it a convenience to be on good terms with Liff Hyatt. Shecontinued to look up curiously at his freckled weather-beaten face, with feverish hollows below the cheekbones and the pale yellow eyes ofa harmless animal. "I wonder if he's related to me?" she thought, with ashiver of disdain. 

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

Liff Hyatt, for a while, considered her with surprise; then he scratchedhis 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 hisvague 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 theresome day and take a gentleman with me that's boarding with us. He's upin these parts drawing pictures. "

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

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

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

"The Bonner house?" Liff echoed incredulously. 

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

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

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

"They won't none of them trouble you, the Hyatts won't. What d'you wanta 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 gazedropped to the chimney-top below the pasture. 

"He's down there now?"

"Yes. "

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

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

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

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

The thought brought him back to the central point in her mind, andshe strayed away from the conjectures roused by Liff Hyatt's presence. Speculations concerning the past could not hold her long when thepresent 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 suddensmile that had shed its brightness over everything. 

She scrambled to her feet, but as she did so she saw him coming up thepasture and dropped down on the grass to wait. When he was drawing andmeasuring one of "his houses, " as she called them, she often strayedaway by herself into the woods or up the hillside. It was partly fromshyness that she did so: from a sense of inadequacy that came to hermost painfully when her companion, absorbed in his job, forgot herignorance and her inability to follow his least allusion, and plungedinto a monologue on art and life. To avoid the awkwardness of listeningwith a blank face, and also to escape the surprised stare of theinhabitants of the houses before which he would abruptly pull up theirhorse and open his sketch-book, she slipped away to some spot fromwhich, without being seen, she could watch him at work, or at least lookdown 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 wasdriving Miss Hatchard's cousin about the country in the buggy he hadhired of lawyer Royall. She had always kept to herself, contemptuouslyaloof from village love-making, without exactly knowing whether herfierce pride was due to the sense of her tainted origin, or whether shewas reserving herself for a more brilliant fate. Sometimes she enviedthe other girls their sentimental preoccupations, their long hours ofinarticulate philandering with one of the few youths who still lingeredin the village; but when she pictured herself curling her hair orputting a new ribbon on her hat for Ben Fry or one of the Sollas boysthe fever dropped and she relapsed into indifference. 

Now she knew the meaning of her disdains and reluctances. She hadlearned what she was worth when Lucius Harney, looking at her for thefirst time, had lost the thread of his speech, and leaned reddening onthe edge of her desk. But another kind of shyness had been born inher: a terror of exposing to vulgar perils the sacred treasure of herhappiness. She was not sorry to have the neighbors suspect her of "goingwith" a young man from the city; but she did not want it known to allthe 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 herescaped the eyes of the silent man under whose roof she lived; and inspite of the latitude which North Dormer accorded to courting couplesshe had always felt that, on the day when she showed too open apreference, Mr. Royall might, as she phrased it, make her "pay forit. " How, she did not know; and her fear was the greater because itwas undefinable. If she had been accepting the attentions of one of thevillage youths she would have been less apprehensive: Mr. Royall couldnot prevent her marrying when she chose to. But everybody knew that"going with a city fellow" was a different and less straightforwardaffair: almost every village could show a victim of the perilousventure. And her dread of Mr. Royall's intervention gave a sharpenedjoy to the hours she spent with young Harney, and made her, at the sametime, shy of being too generally seen with him. 

As he approached she rose to her knees, stretching her arms above herhead with the indolent gesture that was her way of expressing a profoundwell-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 thegipsy-looking people hanging about. It's curious that a house withtraces of real architecture should have been built in such a place. Butthe 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 shouldlike to have a talk with the people. Who was it who was telling me theother day that they had come down from the Mountain?"

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

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

Her tone of defiance seemed to escape him. He lay breast-down on thegrass, breaking off sprigs of thyme and pressing them against his lips. Far off, above the folds of the nearer hills, the Mountain thrust itselfup 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 upthere, you know: sort of out-laws, a little independent kingdom. Ofcourse you've heard them spoken of; but I'm told they have nothing todo 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 ofcharacter. "

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 dawningcuriosity. It struck her now as strange that she knew so little aboutthe Mountain. She had never asked, and no one had ever offered toenlighten her. North Dormer took the Mountain for granted, and impliedits disparagement by an intonation rather than by explicit criticism. 

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

The words thrilled her. They seemed the clue to her own revolts anddefiances, 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 methat the first colonists are supposed to have been men who worked on therailway that was built forty or fifty years ago between Springfieldand Nettleton. Some of them took to drink, or got into trouble with thepolice, and went off--disappeared into the woods. A year or two laterthere was a report that they were living up on the Mountain. Then Isuppose others joined them--and children were born. Now they say thereare over a hundred people up there. They seem to be quite outside thejurisdiction of the valleys. No school, no church--and no sheriff evergoes up to see what they're about. But don't people ever talk of them atNorth 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 neverheard, I suppose--I come from there. They brought me down when I waslittle. "

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

Her happy blood bathed her to the forehead. He was praising her--andpraising 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 sunburntknuckles. 

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

VI

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

She had remained indoors after the table had been cleared and old Verenahad hobbled up to bed. The kitchen window was open, and Charity seatedherself near it, her idle hands on her knee. The evening was cool andstill. 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 alittle owl came through the dusk, and between its calls the men's voicesrose and fell. 

Mr. Royall's was full of a sonorous satisfaction. It was a long timesince he had had anyone of Lucius Harney's quality to talk to: Charitydivined that the young man symbolized all his ruined and unforgottenpast. When Miss Hatchard had been called to Springfield by the illnessof a widowed sister, and young Harney, by that time seriously embarkedon his task of drawing and measuring all the old houses betweenNettleton and the New Hampshire border, had suggested the possibility ofboarding at the red house in his cousin's absence, Charity had trembledlest Mr. Royall should refuse. There had been no question of lodgingthe young man: there was no room for him. But it appeared that he couldstill live at Miss Hatchard's if Mr. Royall would let him take his mealsat the red house; and after a day's deliberation Mr. Royall consented. 

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

"Here--go get yourself a Sunday bonnet that'll make all the other girlsmad, " he said, looking at her with a sheepish twinkle in his deep-seteyes; and she immediately guessed that the unwonted present--the onlygift of money she had ever received from him--represented Harney's firstpayment. 

But the young man's coming had brought Mr. Royall other thanpecuniary benefit. It gave him, for the first time in years, a man'scompanionship. Charity had only a dim understanding of her guardian'sneeds; but she knew he felt himself above the people among whom helived, and she saw that Lucius Harney thought him so. She was surprisedto find how well he seemed to talk now that he had a listener whounderstood him; and she was equally struck by young Harney's friendlydeference. 

Their conversation was mostly about politics, and beyond her range; buttonight it had a peculiar interest for her, for they had begun to speakof the Mountain. She drew back a little, lest they should see she was inhearing. 

"The Mountain? The Mountain?" she heard Mr. Royall say. "Why, theMountain's a blot--that's what it is, sir, a blot. That scum up thereought to have been run in long ago--and would have, if the people downhere hadn't been clean scared of them. The Mountain belongs to thistownship, and it's North Dormer's fault if there's a gang of thievesand outlaws living over there, in sight of us, defying the laws of theircountry. Why, there ain't a sheriff or a tax-collector or a coroner'ddurst go up there. When they hear of trouble on the Mountain theselectmen look the other way, and pass an appropriation to beautify thetown pump. The only man that ever goes up is the minister, and he goesbecause 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 heardof their having the minister up to marry them. And they never troublethe Justice of the Peace either. They just herd together like theheathen. "

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

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

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

"You went up after that?"

"Yes, sir: right after it. The fellow came down to Nettleton and ranamuck, the way they sometimes do. After they've done a wood-cuttingjob they come down and blow the money in; and this man ended up withmanslaughter. I got him convicted, though they were scared of theMountain even at Nettleton; and then a queer thing happened. The fellowsent 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 allthe rest of it, ' he says. 'I've got a job to be done for me up on theMountain, and you're the only man I seen in court that looks as if he'ddo it. ' He told me he had a child up there--or thought he had--a littlegirl; and he wanted her brought down and reared like a Christian. I wassorry for the fellow, so I went up and got the child. " He paused, andCharity listened with a throbbing heart. "That's the only time I everwent up the Mountain, " he concluded. 

There was a moment's silence; then Harney spoke. "And the child--had sheno 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 guessthe mother's dead by now, with the life she was leading. Anyhow, I'venever heard of her from that day to this. "

"My God, how ghastly, " Harney murmured; and Charity, choking withhumiliation, sprang to her feet and ran upstairs. She knew at last: knewthat 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 thishistory of her origin related to the one being in whose eyes she longedto appear superior to the people about her! She had noticed that Mr. Royall had not named her, had even avoided any allusion that mightidentify her with the child he had brought down from the Mountain; andshe knew it was out of regard for her that he had kept silent. Butof what use was his discretion, since only that afternoon, misled byHarney's interest in the out-law colony, she had boasted to him ofcoming from the Mountain? Now every word that had been spoken showed herhow such an origin must widen the distance between them. 

During his ten days' sojourn at North Dormer Lucius Harney had notspoken a word of love to her. He had intervened in her behalf with hiscousin, 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 thatthose merits had been questioned. He had asked her to drive him aboutthe country when he hired lawyer Royall's buggy to go on his sketchingexpeditions; but that too was natural enough, since he was unfamiliarwith the region. Lastly, when his cousin was called to Springfield, hehad begged Mr. Royall to receive him as a boarder; but where else inNorth Dormer could he have boarded? Not with Carrick Fry, whose wife wasparalysed, and whose large family crowded his table to over-flowing; notwith 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 thestrength to cook her own meals while Ally picked up her living as aseamstress. Mr. Royall's was the only house where the young mancould have been offered a decent hospitality. There had been nothing, therefore, in the outward course of events to raise in Charity's breastthe hopes with which it trembled. But beneath the visible incidentsresulting from Lucius Harney's arrival there ran an undercurrent asmysterious and potent as the influence that makes the forest break intoleaf before the ice is off the pools. 

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

The signs of his liking were manifest enough; but it was hard to guesshow much they meant, because his manner was so different from anythingNorth Dormer had ever shown her. He was at once simpler and moredeferential than any one she had known; and sometimes it was just whenhe was simplest that she most felt the distance between them. Educationand opportunity had divided them by a width that no effort of hers couldbridge, and even when his youth and his admiration brought him nearest, some chance word, some unconscious allusion, seemed to thrust her backacross the gulf. 

Never had it yawned so wide as when she fled up to her room carryingwith her the echo of Mr. Royall's tale. Her first confused thoughtwas the prayer that she might never see young Harney again. It wastoo bitter to picture him as the detached impartial listener to sucha story. "I wish he'd go away: I wish he'd go tomorrow, and never comeback!" 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 soula tossing misery on which her hopes and dreams spun about like drowningstraws. 

Of all this tumult only a vague heart-soreness was left when she openedher eyes the next morning. Her first thought was of the weather, forHarney 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 tostart at nine. The sun rose without a cloud, and earlier than usual shewas in the kitchen, making cheese sandwiches, decanting buttermilk intoa bottle, wrapping up slices of apple pie, and accusing Verena of havinggiven away a basket she needed, which had always hung on a hook in thepassage. When she came out into the porch, in her pink calico, which hadrun a little in the washing, but was still bright enough to set offher dark tints, she had such a triumphant sense of being a part of thesunlight and the morning that the last trace of her misery vanished. What did it matter where she came from, or whose child she was, whenlove was dancing in her veins, and down the road she saw young Harneycoming toward her?

Mr. Royall was in the porch too. He had said nothing at breakfast, butwhen she came out in her pink dress, the basket in her hand, he lookedat 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 horseyet?"

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

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

Harney tied the horse to a tree-stump, and they unpacked their basketunder an aged walnut with a riven trunk out of which bumblebees darted. The sun had grown hot, and behind them was the noonday murmur ofthe forest. Summer insects danced on the air, and a flock of whitebutterflies fanned the mobile tips of the crimson fireweed. In thevalley below not a house was visible; it seemed as if Charity Royall andyoung Harney were the only living beings in the great hollow of earthand 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 underhis head, his eyes on the network of leaves above him, she wondered ifhe were musing on what Mr. Royall had told him, and if it had reallydebased her in his thoughts. She wished he had not asked her to take himthat day to the brown house; she did not want him to see the people shecame from while the story of her birth was fresh in his mind. More thanonce she had been on the point of suggesting that they should follow theridge and drive straight to Hamblin, where there was a little desertedhouse he wanted to see; but shyness and pride held her back. "He'dbetter know what kind of folks I belong to, " she said to herself, witha somewhat forced defiance; for in reality it was shame that kept hersilent. 

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

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

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

"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 theyturned into the road under the shaggy flank of Porcupine, and cameupon the brown house. It stood alone beside a swamp bordered with alderthickets and tall bulrushes. Not another dwelling was in sight, and itwas hard to guess what motive could have actuated the early settler whohad made his home in so unfriendly a spot. 

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

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

At the sound of wheels a child with a tow-head and pale eyes like LiffHyatt'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 rainbroke on them. It came slant-wise, on a furious gale, laying shrubs andyoung trees flat, tearing off their leaves like an autumn storm, turningthe road into a river, and making hissing pools of every hollow. Thunderrolled incessantly through the roar of the rain, and a strange glitterof light ran along the ground under the increasing blackness. 

"Lucky we're here after all, " Harney laughed. He fastened the horseunder a half-roofless shed, and wrapping Charity in his coat ran withher to the house. The boy had not reappeared, and as there was noresponse to their knocks Harney turned the door-handle and they went in. 

There were three people in the kitchen to which the door admittedthem. An old woman with a handkerchief over her head was sitting by thewindow. She held a sickly-looking kitten on her knees, and wheneverit jumped down and tried to limp away she stooped and lifted it backwithout any change of her aged, unnoticing face. Another woman, theunkempt creature that Charity had once noticed in driving by, stoodleaning against the window-frame and stared at them; and near the stovean unshaved man in a tattered shirt sat on a barrel asleep. 

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

Lucius Harney would certainly have laughed at her fears. He glancedabout the room, uttered a general "How are you?" to which no oneresponded, and then asked the younger woman if they might take sheltertill 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, asif asserting her right to the name in the very place where it might havebeen 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 stirringsomething. 

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

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

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

The rain had drenched her, and she began to shiver under the thin foldsof her dress. The younger woman must have noticed it, for she went outof the room and came back with a broken tea-cup which she offered toCharity. It was half full of whiskey, and Charity shook her head; butHarney took the cup and put his lips to it. When he had set it downCharity saw him feel in his pocket and draw out a dollar; he hesitateda moment, and then put it back, and she guessed that he did not wish herto 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. Theyrested vacantly for a moment on Charity and Harney, and then closedagain, and his head drooped; but a look of anxiety came into the woman'sface. She glanced out of the window and then came up to Harney. "I guessyou better go along now, " she said. The young man understood and got tohis feet. "Thank you, " he said, holding out his hand. She seemed not tonotice the gesture, and turned away as they opened the door. 

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

For a while Charity was silent, and her companion did not speak. Shelooked timidly at his profile: it was graver than usual, as though hetoo 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 bemy relations, for all I know. " She did not want him to think that sheregretted having told him her story. 

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

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

Harney seemed to find nothing to say and she went on: "I saw you takeout 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'sneck. "I wasn't sure----"

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

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

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

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

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

VII

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

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

The day after their drive to the brown house was "library day, " andshe sat at her desk working at the revised catalogue, while the Targattgirl, 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, andunder the twilight sky during the long drive home, when Lucius Harneyhad consoled her with endearing words. That day, for the first timesince he had been boarding with them, he had failed to appear as usualat 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 particularlysignificant, for Mr. Royall, in common with most of his fellow-citizens, had a way of accepting events passively, as if he had long since cometo the conclusion that no one who lived in North Dormer could hope tomodify them. But to Charity, in the reaction from her mood of passionateexaltation, there was something disquieting in his silence. It wasalmost as if Lucius Harney had never had a part in their lives: Mr. Royall's imperturbable indifference seemed to relegate him to the domainof unreality. 

As she sat at work, she tried to shake off her disappointment atHarney's non-appearing. Some trifling incident had probably kept himfrom joining them at midday; but she was sure he must be eager to seeher 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 wordswould be, and trying to devise a way of getting rid of the Targatt girlbefore he came, when she heard steps outside, and he walked up the pathwith Mr. Miles. 

The clergyman from Hepburn seldom came to North Dormer except when hedrove over to officiate at the old white church which, by an unusualchance, happened to belong to the Episcopal communion. He was a briskaffable man, eager to make the most of the fact that a little nucleus of"church-people" had survived in the sectarian wilderness, and resolvedto undermine the influence of the ginger-bread-coloured Baptist chapelat the other end of the village; but he was kept busy by parochial workat Hepburn, where there were paper-mills and saloons, and it was notoften that he could spare time for North Dormer. 

Charity, who went to the white church (like all the best people in NorthDormer), admired Mr. Miles, and had even, during the memorable trip toNettleton, imagined herself married to a man who had such a straightnose and such a beautiful way of speaking, and who lived in abrown-stone rectory covered with Virginia creeper. It had been a shockto discover that the privilege was already enjoyed by a lady withcrimped hair and a large baby; but the arrival of Lucius Harney had longsince banished Mr. Miles from Charity's dreams, and as he walked up thepath at Harney's side she saw him as he really was: a fat middle-agedman with a baldness showing under his clerical hat, and spectacles onhis Grecian nose. She wondered what had called him to North Dormer on aweekday, and felt a little hurt that Harney should have brought him tothe 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'spulpit, and had been consulted by Miss Hatchard as to young Harney'splan for ventilating the "Memorial. " To lay hands on the Hatchard arkwas a grave matter, and Miss Hatchard, always full of scruples about herscruples (it was Harney's phrase), wished to have Mr. Miles's opinionbefore deciding. 

"I couldn't, " Mr. Miles explained, "quite make out from your cousin whatchanges you wanted to make, and as the other trustees did not understandeither I thought I had better drive over and take a look--though I'msure, " he added, turning his friendly spectacles on the young man, "thatno one could be more competent--but of course this spot has its peculiarsanctity!"

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

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

"Ah, the Coopersons... Yes, you know them, of course, " she heard. "That'sa fine old house! And Ned Cooperson has collected some really remarkableimpressionist pictures.... " The names he cited were unknown to Charity. "Yes; yes; the Schaefer quartette played at Lyric Hall on Saturdayevening; and on Monday I had the privilege of hearing them again at theTowers. Beautifully done... Bach and Beethoven... A lawn-partyfirst... I saw Miss Balch several times, by the way... Looking extremelyhandsome.... "

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

"Oh, really?" she heard Harney rejoin; and, raising his stick, hepursued: "You see, my plan is to move these shelves away, and open around 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, spinningabout and tilting his head back: "Yes, yes, I see--I understand: thatwill give a draught without materially altering the look of things. Ican see no objection. "

The discussion went on for some minutes, and gradually the two men movedback toward the desk. Mr. Miles stopped again and looked thoughtfully atCharity. "Aren't you a little pale, my dear? Not overworking? Mr. Harneytells 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 Targattgirl. 

Then he turned to Charity. "Don't take things hard, my dear; don't takethings 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. Hewent out of the library, and Harney followed him. 

Charity thought she detected a look of constraint in Harney's eyes. Shefancied he did not want to be alone with her; and with a sudden pang shewondered if he repented the tender things he had said to her the nightbefore. His words had been more fraternal than lover-like; but she hadlost their exact sense in the caressing warmth of his voice. He had madeher feel that the fact of her being a waif from the Mountain was onlyanother reason for holding her close and soothing her with consolatorymurmurs; 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 werea sunlit wave and she the spray on its crest. 

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

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

Suddenly he said: "Where's supper? Has Verena Marsh slipped up again onher 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. " Hestood up, walked to the door, and called out, in the pitch necessary topenetrate the old woman's tympanum: "Get along with the supper, Verena. "

Charity was trembling with apprehension. Something had happened--she wassure of it now--and Mr. Royall knew what it was. But not for the worldwould she have gratified him by showing her anxiety. She took her usualplace, and he seated himself opposite, and poured out a strong cup oftea 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?" heasked. Charity roused herself and began to eat. 

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

After supper she went up to her room. She heard Mr. Royall cross thepassage, and presently the sounds below her window showed that hehad returned to the porch. She seated herself on her bed and began tostruggle 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 hecould have relieved her uncertainty: but never would she gratify him bysaying it. 

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

For a long time she continued to lean in the window. But a fever ofunrest consumed her, and finally she went downstairs, took her hatfrom 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. AsCharity went down the steps Mr. Royall called after her: "Where yougoing?" She could easily have answered: "To Orma's, " or "Down to theTargatts'"; and either answer might have been true, for she had nopurpose. But she swept on in silence, determined not to recognize hisright to question her. 

At the gate she paused and looked up and down the road. The darknessdrew her, and she thought of climbing the hill and plunging intothe depths of the larch-wood above the pasture. Then she glancedirresolutely along the street, and as she did so a gleam appearedthrough 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 atfirst imagined. But where had he taken his evening meal, and what hadcaused him to stay away from Mr. Royall's? The light was positive proofof 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'sbed and prepare his coffee. Beside that lamp he was doubtless sitting atthis moment. To know the truth Charity had only to walk half the lengthof the village, and knock at the lighted window. She hesitated a minuteor two longer, and then turned toward Miss Hatchard's. 

She walked quickly, straining her eyes to detect anyone who might becoming along the street; and before reaching the Frys' she crossed overto avoid the light from their window. Whenever she was unhappy shefelt herself at bay against a pitiless world, and a kind of animalsecretiveness possessed her. But the street was empty, and she passedunnoticed through the gate and up the path to the house. Its white frontglimmered indistinctly through the trees, showing only one oblong oflight on the lower floor. She had supposed that the lamp was in MissHatchard's sitting-room; but she now saw that it shone through a windowat the farther corner of the house. She did not know the room to whichthis window belonged, and she paused under the trees, checked by a senseof 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 ifroused by her approach, would not be able to see her. 

The window opened on a narrow verandah with a trellised arch. She leanedclose to the trellis, and parting the sprays of clematis that covered itlooked 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 ofthe lampshade projected into her field of vision, and just under it twosmooth sunburnt hands, one holding a pencil and the other a ruler, weremoving 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 quietlysitting at his drawing-board. The sight of those two hands, moving withtheir usual skill and precision, woke her out of her dream. Her eyeswere opened to the disproportion between what she had felt and the causeof her agitation; and she was turning away from the window when one handabruptly pushed aside the drawing-board and the other flung down thepencil. 

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

Harney had put his elbows on the table and was resting his chin on hislocked hands. He had taken off his coat and waistcoat, and unbuttonedthe low collar of his flannel shirt; she saw the vigorous lines of hisyoung throat, and the root of the muscles where they joined thechest. He sat staring straight ahead of him, a look of weariness andself-disgust on his face: it was almost as if he had been gazing at adistorted reflection of his own features. For a moment Charity looked athim with a kind of terror, as if he had been a stranger under familiarlineaments; then she glanced past him and saw on the floor an openportmanteau half full of clothes. She understood that he was preparingto leave, and that he had probably decided to go without seeing her. Shesaw that the decision, from whatever cause it was taken, had disturbedhim deeply; and she immediately concluded that his change of plan wasdue to some surreptitious interference of Mr. Royall's. All her oldresentments and rebellions flamed up, confusedly mingled with theyearning roused by Harney's nearness. Only a few hours earlier shehad felt secure in his comprehending pity; now she was flung back onherself, doubly alone after that moment of communion. 

Harney was still unaware of her presence. He sat without moving, moodilystaring before him at the same spot in the wall-paper. He had not evenhad the energy to finish his packing, and his clothes and papers lay onthe floor about the portmanteau. Presently he unlocked his clasped handsand stood up; and Charity, drawing back hastily, sank down on the stepof the verandah. The night was so dark that there was not much chanceof his seeing her unless he opened the window and before that she wouldhave time to slip away and be lost in the shadow of the trees. He stoodfor a minute or two looking around the room with the same expression ofself-disgust, as if he hated himself and everything about him; thenhe sat down again at the table, drew a few more strokes, and threwhis pencil aside. Finally he walked across the floor, kicking theportmanteau out of his way, and lay down on the bed, folding his armsunder his head, and staring up morosely at the ceiling. Just so, Charityhad seen him at her side on the grass or the pine-needles, his eyesfixed on the sky, and pleasure flashing over his face like the flickersof sun the branches shed on it. But now the face was so changed that shehardly knew it; and grief at his grief gathered in her throat, rose toher eyes and ran over. 

She continued to crouch on the steps, holding her breath and stiffeningherself into complete immobility. One motion of her hand, one tap onthe pane, and she could picture the sudden change in his face. In everypulse of her rigid body she was aware of the welcome his eyes and lipswould give her; but something kept her from moving. It was not thefear of any sanction, human or heavenly; she had never in her life beenafraid. It was simply that she had suddenly understood what would happenif she went in. It was the thing that did happen between young men andgirls, and that North Dormer ignored in public and snickered over on thesly. It was what Miss Hatchard was still ignorant of, but every girlof Charity's class knew about before she left school. It was what hadhappened to Ally Hawes's sister Julia, and had ended in her going toNettleton, and in people's never mentioning her name. 

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

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

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 itsbitter end. At last he stirred and changed his attitude slightly, andCharity's heart began to tremble. But he only flung out his arms andsank back into his former position. With a deep sigh he tossed the hairfrom his forehead; then his whole body relaxed, his head turnedsideways on the pillow, and she saw that he had fallen asleep. The sweetexpression came back to his lips, and the haggardness faded from hisface, 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 tillshe came out into the street and saw that all the windows were darkbetween Miss Hatchard's and the Royall house. 

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

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

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

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

She sat at table till the meal was over, lest Mr. Royall should remarkon her leaving; but when he stood up she rose also, without waiting tohelp Verena. She had her foot on the stairs when he called to her tocome 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 toyou. "

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

Mr. Royall stood in the middle of the office, his thick eyebrowsbeetling, his lower jaw trembling a little. At first she thought he hadbeen drinking; then she saw that he was sober, but stirred by a deep andstern emotion totally unlike his usual transient angers. And suddenlyshe understood that, until then, she had never really noticed him orthought about him. Except on the occasion of his one offense he had beento her merely the person who is always there, the unquestioned centralfact 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 hadregarded him only in relation to herself, and had never speculated asto his own feelings, beyond instinctively concluding that he would nottrouble her again in the same way. But now she began to wonder what hewas really like. 

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

Instantly she felt that something had happened, and that he held her inhis 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 leavehis veins and against his swarthy pallor the deep lines in his facelooked black. 

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

Charity stood speechless. The taunt was so unrelated to what had beenhappening in her soul that she hardly understood it. But the instinct ofself-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'vealways hated you!" she cried. 

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

"Yes, I know, " Mr. Royall said slowly. "But that ain't going to help usmuch 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. Ididn'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 seencoming out of Miss Hatchard's nigh onto midnight?"

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

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

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

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

"Don't let's go on like this, Charity. It can't do any good to either ofus. You were seen going into that fellow's house... You were seen comingout 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 heunderstood. " He spoke slowly, with difficult pauses, "I didn't nameyou to him: I'd have cut my hand off sooner. I just told him I couldn'tspare the horse any longer; and that the cooking was getting too heavyfor 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 youotherwise he told you an untruth. "

Charity listened in a cold trance of anger. It was nothing to her whatthe 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 lastnight. "

"You didn't speak with him?"

"No.... It's not that I care what any of you say... But you may as wellknow. Things ain't between us the way you think... And the other peoplein this place. He was kind to me; he was my friend; and all of a suddenhe stopped coming, and I knew it was you that done it--YOU!" All herunreconciled memory of the past flamed out at him. "So I went there lastnight 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, whatwere 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: shecould feel only the outrage of his interference. 

"Can't you see that I don't care what anybody says? It's true I wentthere to see him; and he was in his room, and I stood outside for everso long and watched him; but I dursn't go in for fear he'd think I'dcome after him.... " She felt her voice breaking, and gathered it up in alast 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, hisveined hands clasped about the arms of his chair. Age seemed to havecome down on him as winter comes on the hills after a storm. At lengthhe 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 alwayseyes watching you: you're handsomer and smarter than the rest, andthat's enough. But till lately you've never given them a chance. Nowthey've got it, and they're going to use it. I believe what you say, butthey won't.... It was Mrs. Tom Fry seen you going in... And two or threeof them watched for you to come out again.... You've been with the fellowall day long every day since he come here... And I'm a lawyer, and I knowhow hard slander dies. " He paused, but she stood motionless, withoutgiving him any sign of acquiescence or even of attention. "He's apleasant fellow to talk to--I liked having him here myself. The youngmen up here ain't had his chances. But there's one thing as old as thehills and as plain as daylight: if he'd wanted you the right way he'dhave said so. "

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

Mr. Royall rose from his seat. "See here, Charity Royall: I had ashameful thought once, and you've made me pay for it. Isn't that scorepretty near wiped out?... There's a streak in me I ain't always masterof; but I've always acted straight to you but that once. And you'veknown I would--you've trusted me. For all your sneers and your mockeryyou've always known I loved you the way a man loves a decent woman. I'ma good many years older than you, but I'm head and shoulders above thisplace and everybody in it, and you know that too. I slipped up once, butthat's no reason for not starting again. If you'll come with me I'lldo 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 forme to find an opening.... I can see it by the way folks treat me when Igo down to Hepburn or Nettleton.... "

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

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

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

She moved toward the door as she spoke, and he stood up and placedhimself between her and the threshold. He seemed suddenly tall andstrong, as though the extremity of his humiliation had given him newvigour. 

"That's all, is it? It's not much. " He leaned against the door, sotowering 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 youlook at a broken man like me? You want the other fellow... And I don'tblame you. You picked out the best when you seen it... Well, that wasalways my way. " He fixed his stern eyes on her, and she had the sensethat the struggle within him was at its highest. "Do you want him tomarry you?" he asked. 

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

"Do you want him to--say? I'll have him here in an hour if you do. Iain't been in the law thirty years for nothing. He's hired Carrick Fry'steam to take him to Hepburn, but he ain't going to start for anotherhour. And I can put things to him so he won't be long deciding.... He'ssoft: 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 andsaying for any sally of scorn to relieve her. As she listened, thereflitted through her mind the vision of Liff Hyatt's muddy boot comingdown on the white bramble-flowers. The same thing had happened now;something transient and exquisite had flowered in her, and she had stoodby and seen it trampled to earth. While the thought passed throughher she was aware of Mr. Royall, still leaning against the door, butcrestfallen, diminished, as though her silence were the answer he mostdreaded. 

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

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. Sheheard him fumble with the latch of the front door, and saw him walkdown the steps. He passed out of the gate, and his figure, stooping andheavy, receded slowly up the street. 

For a while she remained where he had left her. She was still tremblingwith the humiliation of his last words, which rang so loud in her earsthat it seemed as though they must echo through the village, proclaimingher a creature to lend herself to such vile suggestions. Her shameweighed on her like a physical oppression: the roof and walls seemedto 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 tothe front door, and as she did so Lucius Harney opened it. 

He looked graver and less confident than usual, and for a moment or twoneither 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, andstood looking at him with tear-dilated eyes; then she became aware ofwhat her silence must betray, and said quickly: "Yes: come in. "

She led the way into the dining-room, and they sat down on oppositesides of the table, the cruet-stand and japanned bread-basket betweenthem. 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 hisflannel collar, and his smooth brown hair brushed back from hisforehead, she pictured him, as she had seen him the night before, lyingon his bed, with the tossed locks falling into his eyes, and his barethroat rising out of his unbuttoned shirt. He had never seemed so remoteas 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 sheknew 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 likedto do. But my holiday's limited; and now that Mr. Royall needs the horsefor 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 formaking them so, " he continued, his colour rising. 

She could not think of any reply, and he went on: "You've beenwonderfully kind to me, and I wanted to tell you.... I wish I could thinkof you as happier, less lonely.... Things are sure to change for you byand 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 sweetsmile: "That's not true of you. It can't be. "

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

"Well, good-bye, " she said. 

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

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

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

The next morning when she arose in the cold dawn and opened her shuttersshe saw a freckled boy standing on the other side of the road andlooking up at her. He was a boy from a farm three or four miles down theCreston road, and she wondered what he was doing there at that hour, andwhy he looked so hard at her window. When he saw her he crossed over andleaned against the gate unconcernedly. There was no one stirring in thehouse, and she threw a shawl over her night-gown and ran down and letherself out. By the time she reached the gate the boy was saunteringdown the road, whistling carelessly; but she saw that a letter had beenthrust between the slats and the crossbar of the gate. She took it outand hastened back to her room. 

The envelope bore her name, and inside was a leaf torn from apocket-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 tillevening. 

IX

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

She propped the square of looking-glass against Mr. Royall's blackleather Bible, steadying it in front with a white stone on which a viewof the Brooklyn Bridge was painted; and she sat before her reflection, bending the brim this way and that, while Ally Hawes's pale face lookedover 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 herforehead and breaking into little rings at the nape. She sat down on herbed 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 thatawful 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 LakeAvenue. The trolley from the station goes right by it, and the day theminister 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 withgold letters all across the front--'Private Consultations. ' She came asnear as anything to dying.... "

"Poor Julia!" Charity sighed from the height of her purity and hersecurity. 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--atNettleton. Whose business was it but hers, and what was the harm? Thepity of it was that girls like Julia did not know how to choose, and tokeep bad fellows at a distance.... Charity slipped down from the bed, andstretched out her hands. 

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

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

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

It was arranged that she should walk to a point of the Creston roadwhere Harney was to pick her up and drive her across the hills toHepburn in time for the nine-thirty train to Nettleton. Harney at firsthad been rather lukewarm about the trip. He declared himself ready totake 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 evidentdisappointment caused him to give way, and even to affect a faintenthusiasm for the adventure. She understood why he was not more eager:he must have seen sights beside which even a Fourth of July at Nettletonwould seem tame. But she had never seen anything; and a great longingpossessed her to walk the streets of a big town on a holiday, clingingto his arm and jostled by idle crowds in their best clothes. The onlycloud on the prospect was the fact that the shops would be closed; butshe hoped he would take her back another day, when they were open. 

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

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

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

When they took leave of each other she promised to continue to be hisguide; and during the fortnight which followed they roamed the hills inhappy comradeship. In most of the village friendships between youths andmaidens lack of conversation was made up for by tentative fondling; butHarney, except when he had tried to comfort her in her trouble on theirway back from the Hyatts', had never put his arm about her, or soughtto betray her into any sudden caress. It seemed to be enough for him tobreathe her nearness like a flower's; and since his pleasure at beingwith her, and his sense of her youth and her grace, perpetually shone inhis eyes and softened the inflection of his voice, his reserve did notsuggest 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 brisklythat the pace created a little breeze; but when they reached Hepburnthe full heat of the airless morning descended on them. At the railwaystation the platform was packed with a sweltering throng, and they tookrefuge in the waiting-room, where there was another throng, alreadydejected by the heat and the long waiting for retarded trains. Palemothers were struggling with fretful babies, or trying to keep theirolder offspring from the fascination of the track; girls and their"fellows" were giggling and shoving, and passing about candy in stickybags, and older men, collarless and perspiring, were shifting heavychildren from one arm to the other, and keeping a haggard eye on thescattered members of their families. 

At last the train rumbled in, and engulfed the waiting multitude. Harneyswept Charity up on to the first car and they captured a bench fortwo, and sat in happy isolation while the train swayed and roared alongthrough rich fields and languid tree-clumps. The haze of the morninghad become a sort of clear tremor over everything, like the colourlessvibration about a flame; and the opulent landscape seemed to droop underit. But to Charity the heat was a stimulant: it enveloped the wholeworld in the same glow that burned at her heart. Now and then a lurch ofthe train flung her against Harney, and through her thin muslin she feltthe touch of his sleeve. She steadied herself, their eyes met, and theflaming breath of the day seemed to enclose them. 

The train roared into the Nettleton station, the descending mob caughtthem on its tide, and they were swept out into a vague dusty squarethronged with seedy "hacks" and long curtained omnibuses drawn by horseswith tasselled fly-nets over their withers, who stood swinging theirdepressed 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 forGreytop;" and through their yells came the popping of fire-crackers, the explosion of torpedoes, the banging of toy-guns, and the crash ofa firemen's band trying to play the Merry Widow while they were beingpacked into a waggonette streaming with bunting. 

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

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

The street swarmed with their fellow-travellers, with otherexcursionists arriving from other directions, with Nettleton's ownpopulation, and with the mill-hands trooping in from the factories onthe Creston. The shops were closed, but one would scarcely have noticedit, so numerous were the glass doors swinging open on saloons, onrestaurants, on drug-stores gushing from every soda-water tap, on fruitand 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 andapples, spotted pears and dusty raspberries; and the air reeked withthe smell of fruit and stale coffee, beer and sarsaparilla and friedpotatoes. 

Even the shops that were closed offered, through wide expanses ofplate-glass, hints of hidden riches. In some, waves of silk and ribbonbroke over shores of imitation moss from which ravishing hats rose liketropical orchids. In others, the pink throats of gramophones openedtheir giant convolutions in a soundless chorus; or bicycles shining inneat ranks seemed to await the signal of an invisible starter; or tiersof fancy-goods in leatherette and paste and celluloid dangled theirinsidious graces; and, in one vast bay that seemed to project them intoexciting contact with the public, wax ladies in daring dresses chattedelegantly, or, with gestures intimate yet blameless, pointed to theirpink corsets and transparent hosiery. 

Presently Harney found that his watch had stopped, and turned in at asmall jeweller's shop which chanced to still be open. While the watchwas being examined Charity leaned over the glass counter where, on abackground of dark blue velvet, pins, rings, and brooches glitteredlike the moon and stars. She had never seen jewellry so near by, andshe longed to lift the glass lid and plunge her hand among the shiningtreasures. But already Harney's watch was repaired, and he laid his handon 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 whiteflowers. 

"Don't you think the blue pin's better?" he suggested, and immediatelyshe saw that the lily of the valley was mere trumpery compared to thesmall round stone, blue as a mountain lake, with little sparks of lightall 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 heexclaimed: "Oh, by Jove, I forgot something, " and turned back andleft her in the crowd. She stood staring down a row of pink gramophonethroats till he rejoined her and slipped his arm through hers. 

"You mustn't be afraid of looking at the blue pin any longer, because itbelongs to you, " he said; and she felt a little box being pressed intoher hand. Her heart gave a leap of joy, but it reached her lips only ina shy stammer. She remembered other girls whom she had heard planning toextract presents from their fellows, and was seized with a sudden dreadlest Harney should have imagined that she had leaned over the prettythings 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 doorwayopening on a shining hall with a mahogany staircase, and brass cages inits corners. "We must have something to eat, " Harney said; and the nextmoment Charity found herself in a dressing-room all looking-glass andlustrous surfaces, where a party of showy-looking girls were dabbingon powder and straightening immense plumed hats. When they had gone shetook courage to bathe her hot face in one of the marble basins, andto straighten her own hat-brim, which the parasols of the crowd hadindented. The dresses in the shops had so impressed her that shescarcely dared look at her reflection; but when she did so, the glowof her face under her cherry-coloured hat, and the curve of her youngshoulders through the transparent muslin, restored her courage; and whenshe had taken the blue brooch from its box and pinned it on her bosomshe walked toward the restaurant with her head high, as if she hadalways strolled through tessellated halls beside young men in flannels. 

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

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

That "somewhere else" turned out--after more hot tramping, and severalfailures--to be, of all things, a little open-air place in a back streetthat called itself a French restaurant, and consisted in two or threerickety tables under a scarlet-runner, between a patch of zinniasand petunias and a big elm bending over from the next yard. Here theylunched on queerly flavoured things, while Harney, leaning back in acrippled rocking-chair, smoked cigarettes between the courses and pouredinto Charity's glass a pale yellow wine which he said was the very sameone drank in just such jolly places in France. 

Charity did not think the wine as good as sarsaparilla, but she sipped amouthful for the pleasure of doing what he did, and of fancying herselfalone with him in foreign countries. The illusion was increased by theirbeing served by a deep-bosomed woman with smooth hair and a pleasantlaugh, who talked to Harney in unintelligible words, and seemed amazedand overjoyed at his answering her in kind. At the other tables otherpeople sat, mill-hands probably, homely but pleasant looking, who spokethe same shrill jargon, and looked at Harney and Charity with friendlyeyes; and between the table-legs a poodle with bald patches and pinkeyes nosed about for scraps, and sat up on his hind legs absurdly. 

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

They had made no plans for the rest of the day, and when Harneyasked her what she wanted to do next she was too bewildered by richpossibilities to find an answer. Finally she confessed that she longedto 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 pleasanterlater, " she suggested seeing some pictures like the ones Mr. Miles hadtaken her to. She thought Harney looked a little disconcerted; buthe passed his fine handkerchief over his warm brow, said gaily, "Comealong, 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 glitteringplace--everything she saw seemed to glitter--where they passed, betweenimmense pictures of yellow-haired beauties stabbing villains in eveningdress, into a velvet-curtained auditorium packed with spectators tothe last limit of compression. After that, for a while, everythingwas merged in her brain in swimming circles of heat and blindingalternations of light and darkness. All the world has to show seemedto pass before her in a chaos of palms and minarets, charging cavalryregiments, roaring lions, comic policemen and scowling murderers; andthe crowd around her, the hundreds of hot sallow candy-munching faces, young, old, middle-aged, but all kindled with the same contagiousexcitement, became part of the spectacle, and danced on the screen withthe rest. 

Presently the thought of the cool trolley-run to the Lake grewirresistible, and they struggled out of the theatre. As they stoodon the pavement, Harney pale with the heat, and even Charity a littleconfused by it, a young man drove by in an electric run-about with acalico band bearing the words: "Ten dollars to take you round the Lake. "Before Charity knew what was happening, Harney had waved a hand, andthey were climbing in. "Say, for twenny-five I'll run you out to see theball-game and back, " the driver proposed with an insinuating grin; butCharity said quickly: "Oh, I'd rather go rowing on the Lake. " The streetwas so thronged that progress was slow; but the glory of sitting in thelittle carriage while it wriggled its way between laden omnibuses andtrolleys made the moments seem too short. "Next turn is Lake Avenue, "the young man called out over his shoulder; and as they paused in thewake of a big omnibus groaning with Knights of Pythias in cocked hatsand swords, Charity looked up and saw on the corner a brick house witha conspicuous black and gold sign across its front. "Dr. Merkle; PrivateConsultations at all hours. Lady Attendants, " she read; and suddenlyshe remembered Ally Hawes's words: "The house was at the corner of WingStreet 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 droopingtrees. Charity and Harney had secured a boat and, getting away from thewharves and the refreshment-booths, they drifted idly along, hugging theshadow of the shore. Where the sun struck the water its shafts flamedback blindingly at the heat-veiled sky; and the least shade was black bycontrast. The Lake was so smooth that the reflection of the trees onits edge seemed enamelled on a solid surface; but gradually, as the sundeclined, the water grew transparent, and Charity, leaning over, plungedher fascinated gaze into depths so clear that she saw the invertedtree-tops interwoven with the green growths of the bottom. 

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

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

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

Boats were beginning to thicken on the Lake and the clang of incessantlyarriving trolleys announced the return of the crowds from theball-field. The shadows lengthened across the pearl-grey water and twowhite clouds near the sun were turning golden. On the opposite shore menwere hammering hastily at a wooden scaffolding in a field. Charity askedwhat it was for. 

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

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

"Oh----" his contempt was unbounded. "I mean a big performance likethis, 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 tosee the rockets completing their orbits down under one's feet. " She saidnothing, and he put the oars into the rowlocks. "If we stay we'd bettergo and pick up something to eat. "

"But how can we get back afterwards?" she ventured, feeling it wouldbreak 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 haveover an hour of it. "

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

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

Suddenly Charity heard a woman's laugh behind her. The sound wasfamiliar, and she turned to look. A band of showily dressed girls anddapper young men wearing badges of secret societies, with new straw hatstilted far back on their square-clipped hair, had invaded the balconyand were loudly clamouring for a table. The girl in the lead was theone 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 amusedrecognition. 

"Say! if this ain't like Old Home Week, " she remarked to the girl at herelbow; and giggles and glances passed between them. Charity knew at oncethat the girl with the white feather was Julia Hawes. She had lost herfreshness, and the paint under her eyes made her face seem thinner; buther lips had the same lovely curve, and the same cold mocking smile, asif 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 herselfhumiliated by Julia's sneer, and vexed that the mockery of such acreature should affect her. She trembled lest Harney should notice thatthe noisy troop had recognized her; but they found no table free, andpassed on tumultuously. 

Presently there was a soft rush through the air and a shower of silverfell from the blue evening sky. In another direction, pale Roman candlesshot up singly through the trees, and a fire-haired rocket swept thehorizon like a portent. Between these intermittent flashes the velvetcurtains of the darkness were descending, and in the intervals ofeclipse the voices of the crowds seemed to sink to smothered murmurs. 

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

After a while the scattered fireworks ceased. A longer interval ofdarkness followed, and then the whole night broke into flower. Fromevery point of the horizon, gold and silver arches sprang up and crossedeach other, sky-orchards broke into blossom, shed their flaming petalsand hung their branches with golden fruit; and all the while the air wasfilled with a soft supernatural hum, as though great birds were buildingtheir 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 lustrousripples; then it withdrew as if with a furling of vast translucentwings. Charity's heart throbbed with delight. It was as if all thelatent beauty of things had been unveiled to her. She could not imaginethat the world held anything more wonderful; but near her she heardsomeone say, "You wait till you see the set piece, " and instantly herhopes took a fresh flight. At last, just as it was beginning to seem asthough the whole arch of the sky were one great lid pressed against herdazzled eye-balls, and striking out of them continuous jets ofjewelled light, the velvet darkness settled down again, and a murmur ofexpectation ran through the crowd. 

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

For a moment the night seemed to grow more impenetrably black; thena great picture stood out against it like a constellation. It wassurmounted by a golden scroll bearing the inscription, "Washingtoncrossing the Delaware, " and across a flood of motionless golden ripplesthe National Hero passed, erect, solemn and gigantic, standing withfolded arms in the stern of a slowly moving golden boat. 

A long "Oh-h-h" burst from the spectators: the stand creaked and shookwith their blissful trepidations. "Oh-h-h, " Charity gasped: she hadforgotten 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 felther head clasped by two hands: her face was drawn backward, and Harney'slips were pressed on hers. With sudden vehemence he wound his arms abouther, holding her head against his breast while she gave him back hiskisses. An unknown Harney had revealed himself, a Harney who dominatedher and yet over whom she felt herself possessed of a new mysteriouspower. 

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 passedhis arm about her waist, steadying her against the descending rushof people; and she clung to him, speechless, exultant, as if all thecrowding and confusion about them were a mere vain stirring of the air. 

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

"Last trip up the Lake, " a megaphone bellowed from the wharf; and thelights 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 thegang-plank lowered from the white side of the boat. The electric lightat the end of the wharf flashed full on the descending passengers, andamong them Charity caught sight of Julia Hawes, her white feather askew, and the face under it flushed with coarse laughter. As she stepped fromthe gang-plank she stopped short, her dark-ringed eyes darting malice. 

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

A snigger ran through the group; and then, towering above them, andsteadying himself by the hand-rail in a desperate effort at erectness, Mr. Royall stepped stiffly ashore. Like the young men of the party, hewore 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 lividbrown, 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 heleft the gang-plank he freed himself, and moved a step or two awayfrom his companions. He had seen Charity at once, and his glance passedslowly from her to Harney, whose arm was still about her. He stoodstaring at them, and trying to master the senile quiver of his lips;then he drew himself up with the tremulous majesty of drunkenness, andstretched 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 Charityinvoluntarily put her hands to her head. She remembered that her hat hadfallen from her lap when she jumped up to leave the stand; and suddenlyshe had a vision of herself, hatless, dishevelled, with a man's armabout her, confronting that drunken crew, headed by her guardian'spitiable figure. The picture filled her with shame. She had known sincechildhood about Mr. Royall's "habits": had seen him, as she went up tobed, sitting morosely in his office, a bottle at his elbow; or cominghome, heavy and quarrelsome, from his business expeditions to Hepburnor Springfield; but the idea of his associating himself publicly with aband of disreputable girls and bar-room loafers was new and dreadful toher. 

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

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

There was another laugh, followed by a pause of curiosity, during whichMr. Royall continued to glare at Charity. At length his twitchinglips 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 peoplebeyond their group; and a voice called out from the gangway: "Now, then, step lively there--all ABOARD!" The pressure of approaching anddeparting passengers forced the actors in the rapid scene apart, andpushed them back into the throng. Charity found herself clinging toHarney's arm and sobbing desperately. Mr. Royall had disappeared, and inthe 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 hissleepy horse at the door of the red house, and Charity got out. Harneyhad taken leave of her at Creston River, charging the boy to drive herhome. Her mind was still in a fog of misery, and she did not remembervery clearly what had happened, or what they said to each other, duringthe interminable interval since their departure from Nettleton; but thesecretive instinct of the animal in pain was so strong in her that shehad 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 thehollows 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 andfro; then she went around to the kitchen door and felt under the mat forthe key. She found it, unlocked the door and went in. The kitchenwas dark, but she discovered a box of matches, lit a candle and wentupstairs. Mr. Royall's door, opposite hers, stood open on his unlitroom; evidently he had not come back. She went into her room, bolted herdoor and began slowly to untie the ribbon about her waist, and to takeoff her dress. Under the bed she saw the paper bag in which she hadhidden her new hat from inquisitive eyes.... 

She lay for a long time sleepless on her bed, staring up at themoonlight 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: sheglanced at Charity tranquilly, with her old deaf-looking eyes. There wasno sign of Mr. Royall about the house and the hours passed without hisreappearing. Charity had gone up to her room, and sat there listlessly, her hands on her lap. Puffs of sultry air fanned her dimity windowcurtains and flies buzzed stiflingly against the bluish panes. 

At one o'clock Verena hobbled up to see if she were not coming down todinner; 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 thewindow, gazing down the village street through the half-opened shutters. Not a thought was in her mind; it was just a dark whirlpool of crowdingimages; and she watched the people passing along the street, DanTargatt's team hauling a load of pine-trunks down to Hepburn, thesexton's old white horse grazing on the bank across the way, as if shelooked at these familiar sights from the other side of the grave. 

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

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

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

Suddenly it became clear that flight, and instant flight, was the onlything conceivable. The longing to escape, to get away from familiarfaces, from places where she was known, had always been strong in her inmoments of distress. She had a childish belief in the miraculous powerof strange scenes and new faces to transform her life and wipe outbitter memories. But such impulses were mere fleeting whims compared tothe cold resolve which now possessed her. She felt she could not remainan hour longer under the roof of the man who had publicly dishonouredher, and face to face with the people who would presently be gloatingover 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 drunkenold man apostrophizing her in the presence of a band of loafers andstreet-walkers. Suddenly, vividly, she relived again the horrible momentwhen he had tried to force himself into her room, and what she hadbefore supposed to be a mad aberration now appeared to her as a vulgarincident in a debauched and degraded life. 

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

She had said to herself, as she always said in moments of revolt: "I'llgo to the Mountain--I'll go back to my own folks. " She had never reallymeant it before; but now, as she considered her case, no other courseseemed open. She had never learned any trade that would have given herindependence in a strange place, and she knew no one in the big towns ofthe valley, where she might have hoped to find employment. Miss Hatchardwas still away; but even had she been at North Dormer she was the lastperson to whom Charity would have turned, since one of the motivesurging her to flight was the wish not to see Lucius Harney. Travellingback from Nettleton, in the crowded brightly-lit train, all exchange ofconfidence between them had been impossible; but during their drivefrom Hepburn to Creston River she had gathered from Harney's snatches ofconsolatory talk--again hampered by the freckled boy's presence--thathe intended to see her the next day. At the moment she had found a vaguecomfort in the assurance; but in the desolate lucidity of the hours thatfollowed she had come to see the impossibility of meeting him again. Her dream of comradeship was over; and the scene on the wharf--vile anddisgraceful as it had been--had after all shed the light of truth on herminute of madness. It was as if her guardian's words had stripped herbare in the face of the grinning crowd and proclaimed to the world thesecret admonitions of her conscience. 

She did not think these things out clearly; she simply followed theblind propulsion of her wretchedness. She did not want, ever again, tosee 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 woodsby a short-cut leading to the Creston road. A lead-coloured sky hungheavily over the fields, and in the forest the motionless air wasstifling; but she pushed on, impatient to reach the road which was theshortest way to the Mountain. 

To do so, she had to follow the Creston road for a mile or two, and gowithin half a mile of the village; and she walked quickly, fearing tomeet Harney. But there was no sign of him, and she had almost reachedthe branch road when she saw the flanks of a large white tent projectingthrough the trees by the roadside. She supposed that it sheltered atravelling circus which had come there for the Fourth; but as she drewnearer she saw, over the folded-back flap, a large sign bearing theinscription, "Gospel Tent. " The interior seemed to be empty; but a youngman in a black alpaca coat, his lank hair parted over a round whiteface, stepped from under the flap and advanced toward her with a smile. 

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

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

"I on'y wish't I had any to lay!" she retorted, with one of her fierceflashes 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 thebranch road, trembling with the fear of meeting a familiar face. Presently she was out of sight of the village, and climbing into theheart of the forest. She could not hope to do the fifteen miles to theMountain that afternoon; but she knew of a place half-way to Hamblinwhere 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 ofthe hills. She had seen it once, years before, when she had gone on anutting expedition to the grove of walnuts below it. The party had takenrefuge in the house from a sudden mountain storm, and she rememberedthat Ben Sollas, who liked frightening girls, had told them that it wassaid to be haunted. 

She was growing faint and tired, for she had eaten nothing sincemorning, and was not used to walking so far. Her head felt light and shesat down for a moment by the roadside. As she sat there she heard theclick 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 theroad, and Harney, jumping off, was approaching her with outstretchedarms. 

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

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

"Where were you going? Had you forgotten that I was coming?" hecontinued, 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 mealone, " she broke out wildly. 

He looked at her and his face grew grave, as though the shadow of apremonition 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 thatstretched 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 theMountain. "

As she spoke she became aware of a change in his face. He was no longerlistening to her, he was only looking at her, with the passionateabsorbed expression she had seen in his eyes after they had kissed onthe stand at Nettleton. He was the new Harney again, the Harney abruptlyrevealed in that embrace, who seemed so penetrated with the joy ofher presence that he was utterly careless of what she was thinking orfeeling. 

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

"You dropped them, you imprudent young person--dropped them in themiddle of the road, not far from here; and the young man who is runningthe 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 theminute searching gaze of his short-sighted eyes. 

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

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

He spoke with a boy's gaiety, carelessly and confidently, as if nothinghad happened that could shame or embarrass them; and for a moment, inthe sudden relief of her release from lonely pain, she felt herselfyielding to his mood. But he had turned, and was drawing her back alongthe 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--youmeant 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 sitdown and talk quietly. " He took one of the hands that hung by her sideand pressed his lips to the palm. "Do you suppose I'm going to let yousend me away? Do you suppose I don't understand?"

The little old house--its wooden walls sun-bleached to a ghostlygray--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 housewas marked by rose-bushes run wild and hanging their small pale blossomsabove the crowding grasses. Slender pilasters and an intricate fan-lightframed the opening where the door had hung; and the door itself layrotting in the grass, with an old apple-tree fallen across it. 

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

Harney had found an old bench at the back door and dragged it into thehouse. Charity sat on it, leaning her head against the wall in a stateof drowsy lassitude. He had guessed that she was hungry and thirsty, and had brought her some tablets of chocolate from his bicycle-bag, andfilled his drinking-cup from a spring in the orchard; and now he sat ather feet, smoking a cigarette, and looking up at her without speaking. Outside, the afternoon shadows were lengthening across the grass, andthrough the empty window-frame that faced her she saw the Mountainthrusting 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 throughhers with an air of authority. "Now, Charity, you're coming back withme. "

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

"What don't I know?" She was silent, and he continued: "What happened onthe wharf was horrible--it's natural you should feel as you do. But itdoesn'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... Mensometimes... "

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

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

"Well, then... You must know one has to make allowances.... He'd beendrinking.... "

"I know all that, too. I've seen him so before. But he wouldn't havedared 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 hervoice 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 lowhound!" His wrath blazed up, crimsoning him to the temples. "I neverdreamed--good God, it's too vile, " he broke off, as if his thoughtsrecoiled 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 hewas 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 yousuch things.... "

But once more, as she spoke, she became aware that he was no longerlistening. He came close and caught her to him as if he were snatchingher from some imminent peril: his impetuous eyes were in hers, and shecould 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 ifto draw her whole face up into his kiss. 

XII

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

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

"All the old names... All the old names.... " Miss Hatchard would beheard, tapping across the hall on her crutches. "Targatt... Sollas... Fry: this is Miss Orma Fry sewing the stars on the drapery for theorgan-loft. Don't move, girls... And this is Miss Ally Hawes, ourcleverest needle-woman... And Miss Charity Royall making our garlands ofevergreen.... I like the idea of its all being homemade, don't you? Wehaven't had to call in any foreign talent: my young cousin LuciusHarney, the architect--you know he's up here preparing a book onColonial houses--he's taken the whole thing in hand so cleverly; but youmust come and see his sketch for the stage we're going to put up in theTown 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 hadbeen vaguely spoken of as being not far off, but for some weeks past noone had seen him at North Dormer, and there was a recent report of hishaving left Creston River, where he was said to have been staying, andgone away from the neighbourhood for good. Soon after Miss Hatchard'sreturn, however, he came back to his old quarters in her house, andbegan to take a leading part in the planning of the festivities. Hethrew himself into the idea with extraordinary good-humour, and was soprodigal of sketches, and so inexhaustible in devices, that he gave animmediate impetus to the rather languid movement, and infected the wholevillage with his enthusiasm. 

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

The day on which Charity Royall was weaving hemlock garlands for theprocession was the last before the celebration. When Miss Hatchardcalled upon the North Dormer maidenhood to collaborate in the festalpreparations Charity had at first held aloof; but it had been madeclear to her that her non-appearance might excite conjecture, and, reluctantly, she had joined the other workers. The girls, at first shyand embarrassed, and puzzled as to the exact nature of the projectedcommemoration, had soon become interested in the amusing details oftheir task, and excited by the notice they received. They would not forthe world have missed their afternoons at Miss Hatchard's, and, whilethey cut out and sewed and draped and pasted, their tongues kept up suchan accompaniment to the sewing-machine that Charity's silence sheltereditself unperceived under their chatter. 

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

Harney, however, once satisfied of her security, had found plenty ofreasons 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 thegreatest stress was that flight would be equivalent to avowal. If--aswas almost inevitable--rumours of the scandalous scene at Nettletonshould reach North Dormer, how else would her disappearance beinterpreted? Her guardian had publicly taken away her character, and sheimmediately vanished from his house. Seekers after motives could hardlyfail to draw an unkind conclusion. But if she came back at once, andwas seen leading her usual life, the incident was reduced to its trueproportions, as the outbreak of a drunken old man furious at beingsurprised in disreputable company. People would say that Mr. Royall hadinsulted his ward to justify himself, and the sordid tale would fallinto its place in the chronicle of his obscure debaucheries. 

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

Each time that Miss Hatchard, in the course of her periodical incursionsinto the work-room, dropped an allusion to her young cousin, thearchitect, the effect was the same on Charity. The hemlock garland shewas wearing fell to her knees and she sat in a kind of trance. It wasso manifestly absurd that Miss Hatchard should talk of Harney inthat familiar possessive way, as if she had any claim on him, or knewanything about him. She, Charity Royall, was the only being on earthwho really knew him, knew him from the soles of his feet to the rumpledcrest of his hair, knew the shifting lights in his eyes, and theinflexions of his voice, and the things he liked and disliked, and everything there was to know about him, as minutely and yetunconsciously as a child knows the walls of the room it wakes up inevery morning. It was this fact, which nobody about her guessed, or would have understood, that made her life something apart andinviolable, as if nothing had any power to hurt or disturb her as longas her secret was safe. 

The room in which the girls sat was the one which had been Harney'sbedroom. He had been sent upstairs, to make room for the Home Weekworkers; but the furniture had not been moved, and as Charity sat thereshe had perpetually before her the vision she had looked in on from themidnight garden. The table at which Harney had sat was the one aboutwhich the girls were gathered; and her own seat was near the bed onwhich she had seen him lying. Sometimes, when the others were notlooking, she bent over as if to pick up something, and laid her cheekfor a moment against the pillow. 

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

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

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

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

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

In the gold-powdered sunset it looked more than ever like some frailshell dried and washed by many seasons; but at the back, whither Charityadvanced, drawing her bicycle after her, there were signs of recenthabitation. A rough door made of boards hung in the kitchen doorway, and pushing it open she entered a room furnished in primitive campingfashion. In the window was a table, also made of boards, with anearthenware jar holding a big bunch of wild asters, two canvas chairsstood near by, and in one corner was a mattress with a Mexican blanketover it. 

The room was empty, and leaning her bicycle against the house Charityclambered 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 tohear 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. Sheliked to have time to take in every detail of its secret sweetness--theshadows of the apple-trees swaying on the grass, the old walnutsrounding their domes below the road, the meadows sloping westward in theafternoon light--before his first kiss blotted it all out. Everythingunrelated to the hours spent in that tranquil place was as faint as theremembrance of a dream. The only reality was the wondrous unfoldingof her new self, the reaching out to the light of all her contractedtendrils. She had lived all her life among people whose sensibilitiesseemed 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. Shehad always thought of love as something confused and furtive, and hemade it as bright and open as the summer air. 

On the morrow of the day when she had shown him the way to the desertedhouse he had packed up and left Creston River for Boston; but at thefirst station he had jumped on the train with a hand-bag and scrambledup into the hills. For two golden rainless August weeks he had camped inthe 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 gotup every day with the sun, took a plunge in a brown pool he knew of, andspent long hours lying in the scented hemlock-woods above the house, orwandering along the yoke of the Eagle Ridge, far above the misty bluevalleys that swept away east and west between the endless hills. And inthe afternoon Charity came to him. 

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

She did not think connectedly of these things while she sat waiting forHarney, but they remained in her mind as a sullen background againstwhich her short hours with him flamed out like forest fires. Nothingelse mattered, neither the good nor the bad, or what might have seemedso before she knew him. He had caught her up and carried her away intoa new world, from which, at stated hours, the ghost of her came back toperform certain customary acts, but all so thinly and insubstantiallythat she sometimes wondered that the people she went about among couldsee her.... 

Behind the swarthy Mountain the sun had gone down in waveless gold. Froma pasture up the slope a tinkle of cow-bells sounded; a puff of smokehung 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 andwoods were outlined with an unreal precision; then the twilight blottedthem out, and the little house turned gray and spectral under itswizened apple-branches. 

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

His bicycle-bell sounded down the lane, and in a minute she was at thegate and his eyes were laughing in hers. They walked back through thelong grass, and pushed open the door behind the house. The room atfirst 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 theblack mass of asters in the earthen jar one white star glimmered like amoth. 

"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 staywith my cousin for the show. "

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, promise. "

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

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

Side by side they sped back along the dark wood-road to the village. Alate moon was rising, full orbed and fiery, turning the mountain rangesfrom fluid gray to a massive blackness, and making the upper sky solight 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 jumpedfrom his bicycle, took Charity in his arms for a last kiss, and thenwaited while she went on alone. 

They were later than usual, and instead of taking the bicycle to thelibrary she propped it against the back of the wood-shed and entered thekitchen of the red house. Verena sat there alone; when Charity came inshe looked at her with mild impenetrable eyes and then took a plateand a glass of milk from the shelf and set them silently on the table. Charity nodded her thanks, and sitting down, fell hungrily upon herpiece of pie and emptied the glass. Her face burned with her quickflight through the night, and her eyes were dazzled by the twinkle ofthe 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 darkstairs. When she opened her door a wonder arrested her. Before goingout she had closed her shutters against the afternoon heat, but they hadswung partly open, and a bar of moonlight, crossing the room, restedon her bed and showed a dress of China silk laid out on it in virginwhiteness. 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 letNorth Dormer see that she was worthy of Harney's admiration. Above thedress, folded on the pillow, was the white veil which the young womenwho 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 hadproduced from an old trunk in which she stored mysterious treasures. 

Charity stood gazing at all the outspread whiteness. It recalled avision that had come to her in the night after her first meeting withHarney. She no longer had such visions... Warmer splendours had displacedthem... But it was stupid of Ally to have paraded all those white thingson her bed, exactly as Hattie Targatt's wedding dress from Springfieldhad been spread out for the neighbours to see when she married TomFry.... 

Charity took up the satin shoes and looked at them curiously. By day, nodoubt, they would appear a little worn, but in the moonlight they seemedcarved of ivory. She sat down on the floor to try them on, and theyfitted her perfectly, though when she stood up she lurched a little onthe high heels. She looked down at her feet, which the graceful mouldof the slippers had marvellously arched and narrowed. She had neverseen such shoes before, even in the shop-windows at Nettleton... Never, except... Yes, once, she had noticed a pair of the same shape on AnnabelBalch. 

A blush of mortification swept over her. Ally sometimes sewed for MissBalch when that brilliant being descended on North Dormer, and nodoubt she picked up presents of cast-off clothing: the treasures in themysterious trunk all came from the people she worked for; there could beno doubt that the white slippers were Annabel Balch's.... 

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

XIII

THE Town Hall was crowded and exceedingly hot. As Charity marched intoit third in the white muslin file headed by Orma Fry, she was consciousmainly of the brilliant effect of the wreathed columns framing thegreen-carpeted stage toward which she was moving; and of the unfamiliarfaces turning from the front rows to watch the advance of theprocession. 

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

A moment later Mr. Miles, pink and twinkling, emerged from thebackground, as if buoyed up on his broad white gown, and brisklydominated the bowed heads in the front rows. He prayed energetically andbriefly and then retired, and a fierce nod from Lambert Sollas warnedthe girls that they were to follow at once with "Home, Sweet Home. " Itwas 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 theworld. 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 thebrooding 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 furtivesignalling down the hall, Mr. Royall, emerging in turn, ascended thesteps of the stage and appeared behind the flower-wreathed desk. Hepassed close to Charity, and she noticed that his gravely set face worethe look of majesty that used to awe and fascinate her childhood. Hisfrock-coat had been carefully brushed and ironed, and the ends of hisnarrow black tie were so nearly even that the tying must have cost hima protracted struggle. His appearance struck her all the more because itwas the first time she had looked him full in the face since the nightat Nettleton, and nothing in his grave and impressive demeanour revealeda 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 himselfand began. 

At first she paid no heed to what he was saying: only fragments ofsentences, sonorous quotations, allusions to illustrious men, including the obligatory tribute to Honorius Hatchard, drifted past herinattentive ears. She was trying to discover Harney among the notablepeople 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 thedesk, supported by Mrs. Miles and an important-looking unknown lady. Charity was near one end of the stage, and from where she sat the otherend of the first row of seats was cut off by the screen of foliagemasking the harmonium. The effort to see Harney around the corner of thescreen, or through its interstices, made her unconscious of everythingelse; but the effort was unsuccessful, and gradually she found herattention arrested by her guardian's discourse. 

She had never heard him speak in public before, but she was familiarwith the rolling music of his voice when he read aloud, or held forthto the selectmen about the stove at Carrick Fry's. Today his inflectionswere richer and graver than she had ever known them: he spoke slowly, with pauses that seemed to invite his hearers to silent participation inhis 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 ofyou who have returned here today, to take contact with this little placefor a brief hour, have come only on a pious pilgrimage, and will go backpresently to busy cities and lives full of larger duties. But that isnot the only way of coming back to North Dormer. Some of us, who wentout from here in our youth... Went out, like you, to busy cities andlarger duties... Have come back in another way--come back for good. I amone of those, as many of you know.... " He paused, and there was a senseof suspense in the listening hall. "My history is without interest, butit has its lesson: not so much for those of you who have alreadymade your lives in other places, as for the young men who are perhapsplanning even now to leave these quiet hills and go down into thestruggle. Things they cannot foresee may send some of those young menback some day to the little township and the old homestead: they maycome back for good.... " He looked about him, and repeated gravely: "ForGOOD. There's the point I want to make... North Dormer is a poor littleplace, almost lost in a mighty landscape: perhaps, by this time, itmight 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 theirminds--that they wanted to come back for GOOD... And not for bad... Orjust for indifference.... 

"Gentlemen, let us look at things as they are. Some of us have come backto our native town because we'd failed to get on elsewhere. One way orother, things had gone wrong with us... What we'd dreamed of hadn't cometrue. But the fact that we had failed elsewhere is no reason why weshould fail here. Our very experiments in larger places, even if theywere unsuccessful, ought to have helped us to make North Dormer a largerplace... And you young men who are preparing even now to follow the callof ambition, and turn your back on the old homes--well, let me say thisto you, that if ever you do come back to them it's worth while to comeback to them for their good.... And to do that, you must keep on lovingthem while you're away from them; and even if you come back against yourwill--and thinking it's all a bitter mistake of Fate or Providence--youmust 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 forwhat it's worth; after a while, I believe you'll be able to say, as Ican say today: 'I'm glad I'm here. ' Believe me, all of you, the best wayto help the places we live in is to be glad we live there. "

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

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

Suddenly Mr. Royall pushed back his seat, and one of the maple branchesin front of the harmonium collapsed with a crash. It uncovered the endof the first row and in one of the seats Charity saw Harney, and in thenext a lady whose face was turned toward him, and almost hidden by thebrim of her drooping hat. Charity did not need to see the face. She knewat 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 thefall of the branch Miss Balch turned her head toward the stage, and inher pretty thin-lipped smile there lingered the reflection of somethingher neighbour had been whispering to her.... 

Someone came forward to replace the fallen branch, and Miss Balch andHarney were once more hidden. But to Charity the vision of their twofaces had blotted out everything. In a flash they had shown her thebare reality of her situation. Behind the frail screen of her lover'scaresses was the whole inscrutable mystery of his life: his relationswith other people--with other women--his opinions, his prejudices, hisprinciples, the net of influences and interests and ambitions in whichevery man's life is entangled. Of all these she knew nothing, exceptwhat he had told her of his architectural aspirations. She had alwaysdimly guessed him to be in touch with important people, involved incomplicated relations--but she felt it all to be so far beyond herunderstanding that the whole subject hung like a luminous mist on thefarthest 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 deepenedas if to draw her down into them; and, above all, the flush of youth andtenderness in which his words enclosed her. 

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

She had given him all she had--but what was it compared to the othergifts life held for him? She understood now the case of girls likeherself to whom this kind of thing happened. They gave all they had, buttheir 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 smotheringwaves, and the faces in the crowded hall began to dance like thepictures flashed on the screen at Nettleton. For an instant Mr. Royall'scountenance detached itself from the general blur. He had resumed hisplace in front of the harmonium, and sat close to her, his eyes on herface; and his look seemed to pierce to the very centre of her confusedsensations.... A feeling of physical sickness rushed over her--and thendeadly apprehension. The light of the fiery hours in the little houseswept back on her in a glare of fear.... 

She forced herself to look away from her guardian, and became aware thatthe oratory of the Hatchard cousin had ceased, and that Mr. Miles wasagain flapping his wings. Fragments of his peroration floated throughher bewildered brain.... "A rich harvest of hallowed memories.... Asanctified hour to which, in moments of trial, your thoughts willprayerfully return.... And now, O Lord, let us humbly and fervently givethanks for this blessed day of reunion, here in the old home to which wehave 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 oldpeople, in the courage and industry of its young men, in the piety andpurity of this group of innocent girls----" He flapped a white wing intheir direction, and at the same moment Lambert Sollas, with his fiercenod, struck the opening bars of "Auld Lang Syne. " ... Charity staredstraight ahead of her and then, dropping her flowers, fell face downwardat Mr. Royall's feet. 

XIV

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

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

At the dance that evening--where she had gone reluctantly, and onlybecause she feared to stay away, she had sprung back into instantreassurance. 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. Herfeet were full of music, and though her only training had been with thevillage youths she had no difficulty in tuning her steps to his. As theycircled about the floor all her vain fears dropped from her, and sheeven forgot that she was probably dancing in Annabel Balch's slippers. 

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

She was thinking of all this as she waited for him in the desertedhouse. The late afternoon was sultry, and she had tossed aside her hatand stretched herself at full length on the Mexican blanket because itwas cooler indoors than under the trees. She lay with her arms foldedbeneath her head, gazing out at the shaggy shoulder of the Mountain. Thesky 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 cousinand her friends, so that he might be able to make his escape earlierand stop on the way back at the deserted house, which was on the roadto Hamblin. They had smiled together at the joke of hearing the crowdedbuck-boards roll by on the return, while they lay close in theirhiding above the road. Such childish triumphs still gave her a sense ofreckless security. 

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

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

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

She started up, sitting back against the cushions, and they looked ateach other without speaking. Then Mr. Royall closed the door-latch andadvanced 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 lookedash-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 setherself in order. She groped for her comb, and tried to fasten up thecoil. Mr. Royall silently watched her. 

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

"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 illuminatedroom. Purple asters and red maple-leaves filled the jar on the table; ona shelf against the wall stood a lamp, the kettle, a little pile of cupsand 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 calmacceptance of things as they were left her without a weapon. 

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

She listened in silence, and then gave a slight laugh. "Better wait tillI'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 waitingfor happened; the door opened again and Harney entered. 

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

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

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

"Is this your house?" he inquired. 

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

"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 withanger, started forward, and then stood silent, too humbled for speech. Harney's eyes had dropped under the old man's gaze; but he raised thempresently, and looking steadily at Mr. Royall, said: "Miss Royall is nota child. Isn't it rather absurd to talk of her as if she were? I believeshe considers herself free to come and go as she pleases, without anyquestions from anyone. " He paused and added: "I'm ready to answer anyshe 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--abroken laugh, with a scraping sound in it. "You darsn't!" he shouted outwith 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 againupon 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 anyother man either. I'm the only one that was fool enough not to knowthat; 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 knowher mother was a woman of the town from Nettleton, that followed one ofthose Mountain fellows up to his place and lived there with him like aheathen. I saw her there sixteen years ago, when I went to bring thischild down. I went to save her from the kind of life her mother wasleading--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 beyondthem, at the menacing Mountain with its rim of fire; then he sat downbeside the table on which they had so often spread their rustic supper, and covered his face with his hands. Harney leaned in the window, afrown on his face: he was twirling between his fingers a small packagethat dangled from a loop of string.... Charity heard Mr. Royall draw ahard breath or two, and his shoulders shook a little. Presently hestood up and walked across the room. He did not look again at the youngpeople: 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 tospeak; but he seemed at first not to find anything to say. At length hebroke 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 aminute!"

"No. "

She waited to be caught into his arms, but he turned away fromher irresolutely. The last glow was gone from behind the Mountain. Everything in the room had turned grey and indistinct, and an autumnaldampness crept up from the hollow below the orchard, laying its coldtouch on their flushed faces. Harney walked the length of the room, andthen 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 andspread 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 toeat. 

"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 thesandwiches. Darkness had descended in the little room, and Harney's facewas a dim blur to Charity. Suddenly he leaned across the table and laidhis hand on hers. 

"I shall have to go off for a while--a month or two, perhaps--to arrangesome 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 thevibrations she knew. Her hand lay inertly under his, and she left itthere, and raised her head, trying to answer him. But the words diedin her throat. They sat motionless, in their attitude of confidentendearment, as if some strange death had surprised them. At lengthHarney sprang to his feet with a slight shiver. "God! it's damp--wecouldn't have come here much longer. " He went to the shelf, took down atin candle-stick and lit the candle; then he propped an unhinged shutteragainst the empty window-frame and put the candle on the table. It threwa queer shadow on his frowning forehead, and made the smile on his lipsa grimace. 

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

He turned her head back, feeling for the curve of her throat below theear, and kissing here there, and on the hair and eyes and lips. Sheclung to him desperately, and as he drew her to his knees on the couchshe felt as if they were being sucked down together into some bottomlessabyss. 

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 saynothing 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 hardlya sign of emotion. His reiterated promises to return seemed almostwounding. She had no doubt that he intended to come back; her doubtswere far deeper and less definable. 

Since the fanciful vision of the future that had flitted through herimagination at their first meeting she had hardly ever thought of hismarrying her. She had not had to put the thought from her mind; it hadnot been there. If ever she looked ahead she felt instinctively that thegulf between them was too deep, and that the bridge their passion hadflung across it was as insubstantial as a rainbow. But she seldomlooked ahead; each day was so rich that it absorbed her.... Now her firstfeeling was that everything would be different, and that she herselfwould be a different being to Harney. Instead of remaining separate andabsolute, she would be compared with other people, and unknown thingswould be expected of her. She was too proud to be afraid, but thefreedom of her spirit drooped.... 

Harney had not fixed any date for his return; he had said he would haveto look about first, and settle things. He had promised to write as soonas there was anything definite to say, and had left her his address, andasked her to write also. But the address frightened her. It was in NewYork, at a club with a long name in Fifth Avenue: it seemed to raise aninsurmountable 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 thinkwhat to say; but she had the feeling that her letter would never reachits destination. She had never written to anyone farther away thanHepburn. 

Harney's first letter came after he had been gone about ten days. It wastender but grave, and bore no resemblance to the gay little notes he hadsent her by the freckled boy from Creston River. He spoke positively ofhis intention of coming back, but named no date, and reminded Charity oftheir agreement that their plans should not be divulged till he had hadtime 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 immeasurabledistances and having lost most of its meaning on the way; and in replyshe sent him a coloured postcard of Creston Falls, on which she wrote:"With love from Charity. " She felt the pitiful inadequacy of this, andunderstood, with a sense of despair, that in her inability to expressherself she must give him an impression of coldness and reluctance; butshe could not help it. She could not forget that he had never spokento 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 boundher to him she had lost all spontaneity of feeling, and seemed toherself to be passively awaiting a fate she could not avert. 

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

She kept to herself for the first days, while North Dormer wasrecovering from its brief plunge into publicity, and the subsidingagitation left her unnoticed. But the faithful Ally could not be longavoided. For the first few days after the close of the Old Home Weekfestivities Charity escaped her by roaming the hills all day when shewas not at her post in the library; but after that a period of rain setin, and one pouring afternoon, Ally, sure that she would find her friendindoors, came around to the red house with her sewing. 

The two girls sat upstairs in Charity's room. Charity, her idle hands inher lap, was sunk in a kind of leaden dream, through which she was onlyhalf-conscious of Ally, who sat opposite her in a low rush-bottomedchair, her work pinned to her knee, and her thin lips pursed up as shebent 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 MissBalch: she was awfully pleased. " She paused and then added, with a queertremor in her piping voice: "I darsn't have told her I got the idea fromone 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 awhole lot of things to do over this time. "

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

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

There was another silence, measured by the steady tick of the rainagainst the window, and, at intervals, by the snipping sound of Ally'sscissors. 

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

Charity again lifted her heavy lids and stared at Ally's pale pointedface, 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 lipsseemed 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 abasting 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 herhead. 

"If all the people got married that folks say are going to you'd haveyour 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 partybecause her dress didn't set right. That was why she wouldn't danceany.... "

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 suddenviolence; and grasping the blouse in her strong young hands she tore itin two and flung the tattered bits to the floor. 

"Oh, Charity----" Ally cried, springing up. For a long interval the twogirls 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 wailedbetween her piping sobs. 

Charity glared at her unrelentingly. "You'd oughtn't to have brought ithere, " she said, breathing quickly. "I hate other people's clothes--it'sjust as if they was there themselves. " The two stared at each otheragain 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 denselyblue, 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 withscarlet. It was a golden triumphant September. Day by day the flame ofthe Virginia creeper spread to the hillsides in wider waves of carmineand crimson, the larches glowed like the thin yellow halo about a fire, the maples blazed and smouldered, and the black hemlocks turned toindigo against the incandescence of the forest. 

The nights were cold, with a dry glitter of stars so high up that theyseemed smaller and more vivid. Sometimes, as Charity lay sleepless onher bed through the long hours, she felt as though she were bound tothose wheeling fires and swinging with them around the great blackvault. At night she planned many things... It was then she wrote toHarney. But the letters were never put on paper, for she did not knowhow to express what she wanted to tell him. So she waited. Since hertalk with Ally she had felt sure that Harney was engaged to AnnabelBalch, and that the process of "settling things" would involve thebreaking of this tie. Her first rage of jealousy over, she felt no fearon this score. She was still sure that Harney would come back, and shewas equally sure that, for the moment at least, it was she whom he lovedand not Miss Balch. Yet the girl, no less, remained a rival, since sherepresented all the things that Charity felt herself most incapable ofunderstanding or achieving. Annabel Balch was, if not the girl Harneyought to marry, at least the kind of girl it would be natural for him tomarry. Charity had never been able to picture herself as his wife; hadnever been able to arrest the vision and follow it out in its dailyconsequences; but she could perfectly imagine Annabel Balch in thatrelation to him. 

The more she thought of these things the more the sense of fatalityweighed on her: she felt the uselessness of struggling against thecircumstances. She had never known how to adapt herself; she could onlybreak and tear and destroy. The scene with Ally had left her strickenwith shame at her own childish savagery. What would Harney have thoughtif he had witnessed it? But when she turned the incident over in herpuzzled mind she could not imagine what a civilized person would havedone in her place. She felt herself too unequally pitted against unknownforces.... 

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

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

She posted the letter early the next morning, and for a few days herheart felt strangely light. Then she began to wonder why she received noanswer. 

One day as she sat alone in the library pondering these things the wallsof books began to spin around her, and the rosewood desk to rock underher elbows. The dizziness was followed by a wave of nausea like that shehad felt on the day of the exercises in the Town Hall. But the Town Hallhad been crowded and stiflingly hot, and the library was empty, and sochilly that she had kept on her jacket. Five minutes before she had feltperfectly well; and now it seemed as if she were going to die. The bitof lace at which she still languidly worked dropped from her fingers, and the steel crochet hook clattered to the floor. She pressed hertemples hard between her damp hands, steadying herself against the deskwhile the wave of sickness swept over her. Little by little it subsided, and after a few minutes she stood up, shaken and terrified, groped forher hat, and stumbled out into the air. But the whole sunlit autumnwhirled, reeled and roared around her as she dragged herself along theinterminable 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, histravelling-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 wassomething strange in her appearance, and she threw back her head with adesperate effort at ease. Their eyes met, and she said: "You back?" asif nothing had happened, and he answered: "Yes, I'm back, " and walkedin ahead of her, pushing open the door of his office. She climbed toher room, every step of the stairs holding her fast as if her feet werelined with glue. 

Two days later, she descended from the train at Nettleton, and walkedout of the station into the dusty square. The brief interval of coldweather was over, and the day was as soft, and almost as hot, as whenshe and Harney had emerged on the same scene on the Fourth of July. Inthe square the same broken-down hacks and carry-alls stood drawn up ina despondent line, and the lank horses with fly-nets over their withersswayed their heads drearily to and fro. She recognized the staring signsover the eating-houses and billiard saloons, and the long lines of wireson lofty poles tapering down the main street to the park at its otherend. Taking the way the wires pointed, she went on hastily, with benthead, till she reached a wide transverse street with a brick buildingat the corner. She crossed this street and glanced furtively up atthe front of the brick building; then she returned, and entered a dooropening on a flight of steep brass-rimmed stairs. On the second landingshe rang a bell, and a mulatto girl with a bushy head and a frilledapron let her into a hall where a stuffed fox on his hind legs proffereda brass card-tray to visitors. At the back of the hall was a glazed doormarked: "Office. " After waiting a few minutes in a handsomely furnishedroom, with plush sofas surmounted by large gold-framed photographs ofshowy young women, Charity was shown into the office.... 

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

She smiled on Charity with all her faultless teeth. "Sit down, mydear. Wouldn't you like a little drop of something to pick youup?... No.... Well, just lay back a minute then.... There's nothing tobe done just yet; but in about a month, if you'll step round again... Icould take you right into my own house for two or three days, and therewouldn't be a mite of trouble. Mercy me! The next time you'll knowbetter'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 herbut immunity from some unthinkable crime? Charity, till then, hadbeen conscious only of a vague self-disgust and a frightening physicaldistress; now, of a sudden, there came to her the grave surprise ofmotherhood. She had come to this dreadful place because she knew of noother way of making sure that she was not mistaken about her state;and the woman had taken her for a miserable creature like Julia.... Thethought was so horrible that she sprang up, white and shaking, one ofher great rushes of anger sweeping over her. 

Dr. Merkle, still smiling, also rose. "Why do you run off in such ahurry? You can stretch out right here on my sofa.... " She paused, andher smile grew more motherly. "Afterwards--if there's been any talk athome, and you want to get away for a while... I have a lady friend inBoston 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 tocome back here, " she stammered, her hand on the knob; but with a swiftmovement, 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'sruined blouse, and she had had to borrow four dollars from her friendto pay for her railway ticket and cover the doctor's fee. It had neveroccurred to her that medical advice could cost more than two dollars. 

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

Dr. Merkle gave a short laugh which did not show her teeth, and inquiredwith concision if Charity supposed she ran the establishment for her ownamusement? 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 prettyoften too. Give me your address, and if you can't pay me I'll send thebill to your folks.... What? I can't understand what you say.... Thatdon't suit you either? My, you're pretty particular for a girl thatain't got enough to settle her own bills.... " She paused, and fixedher eyes on the brooch with a blue stone that Charity had pinned to herblouse. 

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

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

That evening, at the gate of the red house, she found Ally waiting inthe 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 fearfuladmiration 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 hadlingered a moment she knew she would have had Ally at her heels. 

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

DEAR CHARITY:

I have your letter, and it touches me more than I can say. Won't youtrust me, in return, to do my best? There are things it is hard toexplain, much less to justify; but your generosity makes everythingeasier. 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 beyondexpression. If ever there is a hope of realizing what we dreamed of youwill 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, eachtime more slowly and painstakingly. It was so beautifully expressedthat she found it almost as difficult to understand as the gentleman'sexplanation of the Bible pictures at Nettleton; but gradually she becameaware that the gist of its meaning lay in the last few words. "If everthere is a hope of realizing what we dreamed of... "

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

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

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

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

At that hour she was not likely to find him there: he had probably hadhis supper and walked over to Carrick Fry's. She pushed open the door ofthe 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 alongthe arms of the chair, and his head was bent a little; but he liftedit quickly as Charity entered. She started back as their eyes met, remembering that her own were red with weeping, and that her face waslivid with the fatigue and emotion of her journey. But it was too lateto escape, and she stood and looked at him in silence. 

He had risen from his chair, and came toward her with outstretchedhands. The gesture was so unexpected that she let him take her hands inhis 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 thecandle on his desk. "I wanted some letter-paper, that's all. " His facecontracted, and the bushy brows jutted forward over his eyes. Withoutanswering he opened the drawer of the desk, took out a sheet of paperand 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 waslooking at her intently, and she knew that the candle light flickeringup on her white face must be distorting her swollen features andexaggerating the dark rings about her eyes. She snatched up the paper, her reassurance dissolving under his pitiless gaze, in which she seemedto read the grim perception of her state, and the ironic recollectionof the day when, in that very room, he had offered to compel Harney tomarry her. His look seemed to say that he knew she had taken the paperto write to her lover, who had left her as he had warned her she wouldbe left. She remembered the scorn with which she had turned from himthat day, and knew, if he guessed the truth, what a list of old scoresit must settle. She turned and fled upstairs; but when she got back toher room all the words that had been waiting had vanished.... 

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

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

Only--was there no alternative but Julia's? Her soul recoiled from thevision 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 forher individual adventure.... 

She sat in her chair without undressing till faint grey streaks beganto divide the black slats of the shutters. Then she stood up and pushedthem open, letting in the light. The coming of a new day brought asharper consciousness of ineluctable reality, and with it a sense of theneed 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, andall 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 nothope that those signs would escape the watchful village; even before herfigure lost its shape she knew her face would betray her. 

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

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

XVI

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

After Harney's departure she had returned her bicycle to its owner atCreston, and she was not sure of being able to walk all the way to theMountain. The deserted house was on the road; but the idea of spendingthe night there was unendurable, and she meant to try to push on toHamblin, where she could sleep under a wood-shed if her strength shouldfail her. Her preparations had been made with quiet forethought. Beforestarting she had forced herself to swallow a glass of milk and eat apiece of bread; and she had put in her canvas satchel a little packet ofthe chocolate that Harney always carried in his bicycle bag. She wantedabove all to keep up her strength, and reach her destination withoutattracting notice.... 

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

She walked on and on, growing more heavy-footed as the day advanced. Itseemed a cruel chance that compelled her to retrace every step of theway 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 therea long time, trying to gather the courage to start again, and walk pastthe broken gate and the untrimmed rose-bushes strung with scarlet hips. A few drops of rain were falling, and she thought of the warm eveningswhen she and Harney had sat embraced in the shadowy room, and the noiseof summer showers on the roof had rustled through their kisses. Atlength she understood that if she stayed any longer the rain mightcompel her to take shelter in the house overnight, and she got up andwalked on, averting her eyes as she came abreast of the white gate andthe tangled garden. 

The hours wore on, and she walked more and more slowly, pausing now andthen to rest, and to eat a little bread and an apple picked up from theroadside. 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, ifalready he laid such a burden on her.... A fresh wind had sprung up, scattering the rain and blowing down keenly from the mountain. Presentlythe 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 lonelyvillage were only half a mile ahead, and she was resolved to push beyondit, and try to reach the Mountain that night. She had no clear plan ofaction, except that, once in the settlement, she meant to look for LiffHyatt, and get him to take her to her mother. She herself had beenborn as her own baby was going to be born; and whatever her mother'ssubsequent 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 downon the bank and leaned her head against a tree-trunk. The long road andthe cloudy landscape vanished from her eyes, and for a time she seemedto be circling about in some terrible wheeling darkness. Then that toofaded. 

She opened her eyes, and saw a buggy drawn up beside her, and a manwho 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 athim in silence, trying to find strength to speak. At length her voicestirred in her throat, and she said in a whisper: "I'm going up theMountain. "

"Up the Mountain?" he repeated, drawing aside a little; and as hemoved she saw behind him, in the buggy, a heavily coated figure with afamiliar 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 thebuggy. 

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 themspoke. 

Then Mr. Miles said: "You look ill, my dear, and it's a long way. Do youthink 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 againspoke 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 changein his expression, and the blood rushed to her forehead. "I just want togo to her, " she repeated. 

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

He helped her up to the seat at his side, Liff Hyatt clambered in atthe back, and they drove off toward Hamblin. At first Charity hadhardly grasped what Mr. Miles was saying; the physical relief of findingherself seated in the buggy, and securely on her road to the Mountain, effaced the impression of his words. But as her head cleared shebegan to understand. She knew the Mountain had but the most infrequentintercourse with the valleys; she had often enough heard it said that noone ever went up there except the minister, when someone was dying. Andnow it was her mother who was dying... And she would find herself asmuch alone on the Mountain as anywhere else in the world. The sense ofunescapable isolation was all she could feel for the moment; thenshe began to wonder at the strangeness of its being Mr. Miles who hadundertaken to perform this grim errand. He did not seem in the leastlike the kind of man who would care to go up the Mountain. But here hewas at her side, guiding the horse with a firm hand, and bending on herthe kindly gleam of his spectacles, as if there were nothing unusual intheir being together in such circumstances. 

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

She shook her head, and he did not insist: but after a while he said, inthe same low tone, so that they should not be overheard: "Charity, whatdo 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 toprison. "

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

"Never. "

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

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

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

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

Mr. Miles had not spoken again; he seemed to understand that she wantedto 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 Hyattcraned his head around from the back, and shouted against the wind:"Left----" and they turned into a stunted pine-wood and began to drivedown the other side of the Mountain. 

A mile or two farther on they came out on a clearing where two or threelow houses lay in stony fields, crouching among the rocks as if to bracethemselves against the wind. They were hardly more than sheds, built oflogs 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 crouchinghouses. The next moment it faded and left the landscape in dark autumntwilight. 

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

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

As the buggy drew up two or three mongrel dogs jumped out of thetwilight with a great barking, and a young man slouched to the door andstood there staring. In the twilight Charity saw that his face had thesame sodden look as Bash Hyatt's, the day she had seen him sleepingby the stove. He made no effort to silence the dogs, but leaned in thedoor, as if roused from a drunken lethargy, while Mr. Miles got out ofthe 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 tookthem passively, and sat staring straight ahead of her at the darkeningscene while Mr. Miles and Liff Hyatt went up to the house. They stooda few minutes talking with the man in the door, and then Mr. Miles cameback. As he came close, Charity saw that his smooth pink face wore afrightened 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. Asshe approached the door she said to herself: "This is where I wasborn... This is where I belong.... " She had said it to herself oftenenough as she looked across the sunlit valleys at the Mountain; but ithad meant nothing then, and now it had become a reality. Mr. Miles tookher gently by the arm, and they entered what appeared to be the onlyroom in the house. It was so dark that she could just discern a groupof a dozen people sitting or sprawling about a table made of boards laidacross two barrels. They looked up listlessly as Mr. Miles and Charitycame in, and a woman's thick voice said: "Here's the preacher. " But noone moved. 

Mr. Miles paused and looked about him; then he turned to the young manwho 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 suddenharshness to a girl who was lolling against the table. She did notanswer, but another man got up and took from some corner a candle stuckinto 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 oflight fell on the pale aguish heads that started out of the shadow likethe heads of nocturnal animals. 

"Mary's over there, " someone said; and Mr. Miles, taking the bottle inhis hand, passed behind the table. Charity followed him, and they stoodbefore a mattress on the floor in a corner of the room. A woman lay onit, but she did not look like a dead woman; she seemed to have fallenacross her squalid bed in a drunken sleep, and to have been left lyingwhere she fell, in her ragged disordered clothes. One arm was flungabove her head, one leg drawn up under a torn skirt that left the otherbare to the knee: a swollen glistening leg with a ragged stocking rolleddown about the ankle. The woman lay on her back, her eyes staring upunblinkingly 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. "Itwas like this: I says to her on'y the night before: if you don't takeand quit, I says to her... "

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

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

"Who's the girl? Who brought her here?" she said, fixing her eyesmistrustfully on the young man who had rebuked her for not having acandle 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 withan 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 deadwoman's eyes. Charity, trembling and sick, knelt beside him, and triedto compose her mother's body. She drew the stocking over the dreadfulglistening leg, and pulled the skirt down to the battered upturnedboots. 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 nosign in it of anything human: she lay there like a dead dog in a ditchCharity's hands grew cold as they touched her. 

Mr. Miles drew the woman's arms across her breast and laid his coatover her. Then he covered her face with his handkerchief, and placed thebottle 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 liketer know?"

Mr. Miles, looking at the others, repeated: "Is it possible you have nocoffin ready?"

"That's what I say: them that has it sleeps better, " an old womanmurmured. "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 haddrawn a book from his pocket, and after a pause he opened it and beganto read, holding the book at arm's length and low down, so that thepages caught the feeble light. Charity had remained on her knees by themattress: now that her mother's face was covered it was easier to staynear her, and avoid the sight of the living faces which too horriblyshowed by what stages hers had lapsed into death. 

"I am the Resurrection and the Life, " Mr. Miles began; "he thatbelieveth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.... Though aftermy 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 andstony eyes under the handkerchief, and of the glistening leg over whichshe had drawn the stocking.... 

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

There was a sudden muttering and a scuffle at the back of the group. "Ibrought the stove, " said the elderly man with lank hair, pushing hisway between the others. "I wen' down to Creston'n bought it... N' I got aright 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 onthe bench against the wall. 

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

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

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

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

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

"Is the grave ready?" he asked. 

Liff Hyatt, who had come in while he was reading, nodded a "Yes, " andpushed forward to the side of the mattress. The young man on the benchwho 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 wereunsteady, and the coat slipped to the floor, revealing the poor body inits helpless misery. Charity, picking up the coat, covered her motheronce more. Liff had brought a lantern, and the old woman who had alreadyspoken took it up, and opened the door to let the little processionpass out. The wind had dropped, and the night was very dark and bitterlycold. The old woman walked ahead, the lantern shaking in her hand andspreading out before her a pale patch of dead grass and coarse-leavedweeds enclosed in an immensity of blackness. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Miles took the lantern from the old woman's hand and swept its lightacross the circle of bleared faces. "Now kneel down, all of you, " hecommanded, in a voice of authority that Charity had never heard. She knelt down at the edge of the grave, and the others, stiffly andhesitatingly, got to their knees beside her. Mr. Miles knelt, too. "Andnow pray with me--you know this prayer, " he said, and he began: "OurFather which art in Heaven... " One or two of the women falteringly tookthe words up, and when he ended, the lank-haired man flung himself onthe neck of the tall youth. "It was this way, " he said. "I tole her thenight 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 anotherworld. 

"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 whatyou are doing. You can't stay among these people: you must come withme. "

She shook her head and rose from her knees. The group about the gravehad scattered in the darkness, but the old woman with the lantern stoodwaiting. Her mournful withered face was not unkind, and Charity went upto 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 oneto the other with his feeble smile. "She's my mother. She'll take youhome, " he said; and he added, raising his voice to speak to theold woman: "It's the girl from lawyer Royall's--Mary's girl... Youremember.... "

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 lanternto show them the track they were to follow; then she turned back, and insilence she and Charity walked away together through the night. 

XVII

CHARITY lay on the floor on a mattress, as her dead mother's body hadlain. The room in which she lay was cold and dark and low-ceilinged, andeven 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 ona blanket, with two children--her grandchildren, she said--rolled upagainst her like sleeping puppies. They had their thin clothes spreadover them, having given the only other blanket to their guest. 

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

Charity's bewildered brain laboured with the attempt to picture hermother's past, and to relate it in any way to the designs of a just butmerciful God; but it was impossible to imagine any link between them. She herself felt as remote from the poor creature she had seen loweredinto 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 communitywhere poor thrifty Mrs. Hawes and the industrious Ally represented thenearest approach to destitution there was nothing to suggest the savagemisery of the Mountain farmers. 

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

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

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

Vague thoughts of Nettleton flitted through her mind. She said toherself that she would find some quiet place where she could bear herchild, and give it to decent people to keep; and then she would go outlike Julia Hawes and earn its living and hers. She knew that girls ofthat 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 couldrun 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 onthe Mountain.... 

The old woman and the children were still sleeping when Charity rosefrom her mattress. Her body was stiff with cold and fatigue, and shemoved slowly lest her heavy steps should rouse them. She was faint withhunger, and had nothing left in her satchel; but on the table she sawthe half of a stale loaf. No doubt it was to serve as the breakfast ofold Mrs. Hyatt and the children; but Charity did not care; she had herown baby to think of. She broke off a piece of the bread and ateit greedily; then her glance fell on the thin faces of the sleepingchildren, and filled with compunction she rummaged in her satchel forsomething with which to pay for what she had taken. She found one ofthe pretty chemises that Ally had made for her, with a blue ribbon runthrough its edging. It was one of the dainty things on which she hadsquandered her savings, and as she looked at it the blood rushed to herforehead. She laid the chemise on the table, and stealing across thefloor lifted the latch and went out.... 

The morning was icy cold and a pale sun was just rising above theeastern shoulder of the Mountain. The houses scattered on the hillsidelay cold and smokeless under the sun-flecked clouds, and not a humanbeing was in sight. Charity paused on the threshold and tried todiscover the road by which she had come the night before. Across thefield surrounding Mrs. Hyatt's shanty she saw the tumble-down house inwhich she supposed the funeral service had taken place. The trailran across the ground between the two houses and disappeared in thepine-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 spoton the fawn-coloured stubble. Charity walked across the field to theground. 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 branchof the thorn above the grave. She stood a minute listening to his smallsolitary song; then she rejoined the trail and began to mount the hillto the pine-wood. 

Thus far she had been impelled by the blind instinct of flight; but eachstep seemed to bring her nearer to the realities of which her feverishvigil had given only a shadowy image. Now that she walked again in adaylight world, on the way back to familiar things, her imaginationmoved more soberly. On one point she was still decided: she could notremain 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 fromthe shelter of the pines to the open grassy roof of the Mountain thecold wind of the night before sprang out on her. She bent her shouldersand struggled on against it for a while; but presently her breathfailed, and she sat down under a ledge of rock overhung by shiveringbirches. From where she sat she saw the trail wandering across thebleached grass in the direction of Hamblin, and the granite wall of theMountain falling away to infinite distances. On that side of the ridgethe valleys still lay in wintry shadow; but in the plain beyond the sunwas touching village roofs and steeples, and gilding the haze of smokeover far-off invisible towns. 

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

Her eyes turned back to the trail across the top of the Mountain, andin the distance she saw a buggy against the sky. She knew its antiqueoutline, and the gaunt build of the old horse pressing forward withlowered head; and after a moment she recognized the heavy bulk of theman who held the reins. The buggy was following the trail and makingstraight for the pine-wood through which she had climbed; and she knewat once that the driver was in search of her. Her first impulse wasto crouch down under the ledge till he had passed; but the instinct ofconcealment was overruled by the relief of feeling that someone was nearher 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 twolater he was abreast of Charity; their eyes met, and without speaking heleaned over and helped her up into the buggy. 

She tried to speak, to stammer out some explanation, but no words cameto her; and as he drew the cover over her knees he simply said: "Theminister 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. Royalloccasionally uttered a word of encouragement to the horse: "Get alongthere, Dan.... I gave him a rest at Hamblin; but I brought him alongpretty 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 topof the Mountain so early he must have left North Dormer at the coldesthour of the night, and have travelled steadily but for the halt atHamblin; and she felt a softness at her heart which no act of his hadever produced since he had brought her the Crimson Rambler because shehad given up boarding-school to stay with him. 

After an interval he began again: "It was a day just like this, onlyspitting snow, when I come up here for you the first time. " Then, as iffearing 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 tosay. 

"Ho, there, Dan, step out, " he muttered, jerking the bridle. "We ain'thome yet. --You cold?" he asked abruptly. 

She shook her head, but he drew the cover higher up, and stooped to tuckit in about the ankles. She continued to look straight ahead. Tears ofweariness 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 uponHamblin, and Mr. Royall did not speak again till they reached theoutskirts of the village. Then he let the reins droop on the dashboardand drew out his watch. 

"Charity, " he said, "you look fair done up, and North Dormer's a goodishway off. I've figured out that we'd do better to stop here long enoughfor you to get a mouthful of breakfast and then drive down to Crestonand 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 reachedthe door of the first house in the village. "This is old Mrs. Hobart'splace, " he said. "She'll give us something hot to drink. "

Charity, half unconsciously, found herself getting out of the buggy andfollowing him in at the open door. They entered a decent kitchen with afire crackling in the stove. An old woman with a kindly face was settingout cups and saucers on the table. She looked up and nodded as theycame in, and Mr. Royall advanced to the stove, clapping his numb handstogether. 

"Well, Mrs. Hobart, you got any breakfast for this young lady? You cansee 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 completepassiveness had once more come over her, and she was conscious only ofthe pleasant animal sensations of warmth and rest. 

Mrs. Hobart put bread and milk on the table, and then went out of thehouse: Charity saw her leading the horse away to the barn across theyard. She did not come back, and Mr. Royall and Charity sat alone at thetable 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 thoughtscleared and she began to feel like a living being again; but the returnto life was so painful that the food choked in her throat and she satstaring 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 herstartled eyes to his. He was standing on the other side of the tablelooking at her kindly and gravely; and suddenly she understood what hewas going to say. She continued to sit motionless, a leaden weight uponher 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. ButI'll never feel any way but one about you; and if you say so we'll drivedown in time to catch that train, and go straight to the minister'shouse; and when you come back home you'll come as Mrs. Royall. "

His voice had the grave persuasive accent that had moved his hearers atthe Home Week festival; she had a sense of depths of mournful toleranceunder that easy tone. Her whole body began to tremble with the dread ofher 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 heoffered, or already struggling against the temptation of taking whatshe no longer had a right to. She stood up, shaking and bewildered, andbegan to speak:

"I know I ain't been fair to you always; but I want to be now.... I wantyou to know... I want... " Her voice failed her and she stopped. 

Mr. Royall leaned against the wall. He was paler than usual, but hisface was composed and kindly and her agitation did not appear to perturbhim. 

"What's all this about wanting?" he said as she paused. "Do you knowwhat you really want? I'll tell you. You want to be took home and tookcare 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 thingsthat matter and the things that don't; that's about the only good turnlife does us. "

His tone was so strong and resolute that it was like a supporting armabout her. She felt her resistance melting, her strength slipping awayfrom 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'vegot 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 abouther shoulders. She followed him out of the house, and then walked acrossthe yard to the shed, where the horse was tied. Mr. Royall unblanketedhim and led him out into the road. Charity got into the buggy and hedrew the cover about her and shook out the reins with a cluck. Whenthey reached the end of the village he turned the horse's head towardCreston. 

XVIII

They began to jog down the winding road to the valley at old Dan'slanguid pace. Charity felt herself sinking into deeper depths ofweariness, and as they descended through the bare woods there weremoments when she lost the exact sense of things, and seemed to besitting beside her lover with the leafy arch of summer bending overthem. But this illusion was faint and transitory. For the most part shehad only a confused sensation of slipping down a smooth irresistiblecurrent; and she abandoned herself to the feeling as a refuge from thetorment of thought. 

Mr. Royall seldom spoke, but his silent presence gave her, for the firsttime, a sense of peace and security. She knew that where he was therewould be warmth, rest, silence; and for the moment they were all shewanted. She shut her eyes, and even these things grew dim to her.... 

In the train, during the short run from Creston to Nettleton, the warmtharoused her, and the consciousness of being under strange eyes gave hera momentary energy. She sat upright, facing Mr. Royall, and stared outof the window at the denuded country. Forty-eight hours earlier, whenshe 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 thelines of the landscape' were as finely pencilled as in December. Afew days of autumn cold had wiped out all trace of the rich fields andlanguid groves through which she had passed on the Fourth of July; andwith the fading of the landscape those fervid hours had faded, too. Shecould no longer believe that she was the being who had lived them; shewas 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 atMr. Royall's side the sense of unreality grew more overpowering. Thephysical strain of the night and day had left no room in her mind fornew sensations and she followed Mr. Royall as passively as a tiredchild. As in a confused dream she presently found herself sitting withhim in a pleasant room, at a table with a red and white table-clothon which hot food and tea were placed. He filled her cup and plate andwhenever she lifted her eyes from them she found his resting on her withthe same steady tranquil gaze that had reassured and strengthenedher when they had faced each other in old Mrs. Hobart's kitchen. Aseverything else in her consciousness grew more and more confusedand immaterial, became more and more like the universal shimmer thatdissolves the world to failing eyes, Mr. Royall's presence began todetach itself with rocky firmness from this elusive background. She hadalways thought of him--when she thought of him at all--as of someonehateful and obstructive, but whom she could outwit and dominate whenshe chose to make the effort. Only once, on the day of the Old Home Weekcelebration, while the stray fragments of his address drifted acrossher troubled mind, had she caught a glimpse of another being, a being sodifferent from the dull-witted enemy with whom she had supposed herselfto be living that even through the burning mist of her own dreams hehad stood out with startling distinctness. For a moment, then, what hesaid--and something in his way of saying it--had made her see why he hadalways struck her as such a lonely man. But the mist of her dreams hadhidden him again, and she had forgotten that fugitive impression. 

It came back to her now, as they sat at the table, and gave her, throughher own immeasurable desolation, a sudden sense of their nearness toeach other. But all these feelings were only brief streaks of light inthe grey blur of her physical weakness. Through it she was aware thatMr. Royall presently left her sitting by the table in the warm room, andcame back after an interval with a carriage from the station--a closed"hack" with sun-burnt blue silk blinds--in which they drove togetherto a house covered with creepers and standing next to a church with acarpet of turf before it. They got out at this house, and the carriagewaited while they walked up the path and entered a wainscoted hall andthen a room full of books. In this room a clergyman whom Charity hadnever seen received them pleasantly, and asked them to be seated for afew 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, shenoticed that his lips were twitching a little; but the look in his eyeswas grave and calm. Once he paused before her and said timidly: "Yourhair's got kinder loose with the wind, " and she lifted her hands andtried to smooth back the locks that had escaped from her braid. Therewas a looking-glass in a carved frame on the wall, but she was ashamedto look at herself in it, and she sat with her hands folded on her kneetill the clergyman returned. Then they went out again, along a sort ofarcaded 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 wasprobably his wife, and a man in a blue shirt who had been raking deadleaves on the lawn, came in and sat on one of the benches. 

The clergyman opened a book and signed to Charity and Mr. Royall toapproach. Mr. Royall advanced a few steps, and Charity followed him asshe had followed him to the buggy when they went out of Mrs. Hobart'skitchen; 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 beneathher feet. 

The clergyman began to read, and on her dazed mind there rose the memoryof Mr. Miles, standing the night before in the desolate house of theMountain, and reading out of the same book words that had the same dreadsound of finality:

"I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful dayof judgment when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that ifeither of you know any impediment whereby ye may not be lawfully joinedtogether... "

Charity raised her eyes and met Mr. Royall's. They were still lookingat 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 sobusy trying to understand the gestures that the clergyman was signallingto her to make that she no longer heard what was being said. Afteranother interval the lady on the bench stood up, and taking her hand putit in Mr. Royall's. It lay enclosed in his strong palm and she felta ring that was too big for her being slipped on her thin finger. Sheunderstood then that she was married.... 

Late that afternoon Charity sat alone in a bedroom of the fashionablehotel where she and Harney had vainly sought a table on the Fourth ofJuly. She had never before been in so handsomely furnished a room. Themirror above the dressing-table reflected the high head-board and flutedpillow-slips of the double bed, and a bedspread so spotlessly white thatshe had hesitated to lay her hat and jacket on it. The humming radiatordiffused an atmosphere of drowsy warmth, and through a half-open doorshe 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 fromher and she sat with closed eyes, surrendering herself to the spell ofwarmth and silence. But presently this merciful apathy was succeeded bythe sudden acuteness of vision with which sick people sometimes wake outof a heavy sleep. As she opened her eyes they rested on the picturethat hung above the bed. It was a large engraving with a dazzling whitemargin enclosed in a wide frame of bird's-eye maple with an inner scrollof gold. The engraving represented a young man in a boat on a lakeover-hung with trees. He was leaning over to gather water-lilies for thegirl in a light dress who lay among the cushions in the stern. The scenewas full of a drowsy midsummer radiance, and Charity averted her eyesfrom it and, rising from her chair, began to wander restlessly about theroom. 

It was on the fifth floor, and its broad window of plate glass lookedover the roofs of the town. Beyond them stretched a wooded landscape inwhich the last fires of sunset were picking out a steely gleam. Charitygazed at the gleam with startled eyes. Even through the gatheringtwilight she recognized the contour of the soft hills encircling it, andthe way the meadows sloped to its edge. It was Nettleton Lake that shewas looking at. 

She stood a long time in the window staring out at the fading water. Thesight of it had roused her for the first time to a realization of whatshe had done. Even the feeling of the ring on her hand had not broughther this sharp sense of the irretrievable. For an instant the oldimpulse of flight swept through her; but it was only the lift of abroken 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 hadbeen trimmed and smoothed. He moved strongly and quickly, squaring hisshoulders and carrying his head high, as if he did not want to passunnoticed. 

"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, andputting his finger on the wall flooded the room with a blaze of lightfrom the central chandelier. In this unfamiliar illumination husbandand 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 toconfess 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 inthe marble-panelled hall while Mr. Royall, before the brass latticeof one of the corner counters, selected a cigar and bought anevening paper. Men were lounging in rocking chairs under the blazingchandeliers, travellers coming and going, bells ringing, portersshuffling by with luggage. Over Mr. Royall's shoulder, as he leanedagainst the counter, a girl with her hair puffed high smirked and noddedat 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 inertas if she had been one of the tables screwed to the marble floor. Allher soul was gathered up into one sick sense of coming doom, and shewatched Mr. Royall in fascinated terror while he pinched the cigars insuccessive boxes and unfolded his evening paper with a steady hand. 

Presently he turned and joined her. "You go right along up to bed--I'mgoing to sit down here and have my smoke, " he said. He spoke as easilyand naturally as if they had been an old couple, long used to eachother's ways, and her contracted heart gave a flutter of relief. Shefollowed him to the lift, and he put her in and enjoined the buttonedand braided boy to show her to her room. 

She groped her way in through the darkness, forgetting where theelectric button was, and not knowing how to manipulate it. But a whiteautumn moon had risen, and the illuminated sky put a pale light in theroom. By it she undressed, and after folding up the ruffled pillow-slipscrept timidly under the spotless counterpane. She had never felt suchsmooth sheets or such light warm blankets; but the softness of the beddid not soothe her. She lay there trembling with a fear that ran throughher veins like ice. "What have I done? Oh, what have I done?" shewhispered, shuddering to her pillow; and pressing her face against itto shut out the pale landscape beyond the window she lay in the darknessstraining 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 musthave slept in the interval, for she had heard no one enter. The moon wassetting beyond the opposite roofs, and in the darkness outlinedagainst the grey square of the window, she saw a figure seated in therocking-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 whosat there. He had not undressed, but had taken the blanket from thefoot of the bed and laid it across his knees. Trembling and holding herbreath 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 hewas asleep. 

As she continued to watch him ineffable relief stole slowly over her, relaxing her strained nerves and exhausted body. He knew, then... Heknew... It was because he knew that he had married her, and that hesat there in the darkness to show her she was safe with him. A stirof something deeper than she had ever felt in thinking of him flittedthrough her tired brain, and cautiously, noiselessly, she let her headsink on the pillow.... 

When she woke the room was full of morning light, and her first glanceshowed her that she was alone in it. She got up and dressed, and asshe was fastening her dress the door opened, and Mr. Royall came in. Helooked old and tired in the bright daylight, but his face wore the sameexpression 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 afterbreakfast he told her he had some insurance business to attend to. "Iguess while I'm doing it you'd better step out and buy yourself whateveryou need. " He smiled, and added with an embarrassed laugh: "You know Ialways wanted you to beat all the other girls. " He drew something fromhis pocket, and pushed it across the table to her; and she saw that hehad given her two twenty-dollar bills. "If it ain't enough there's morewhere 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 backhis chair and was leading the way out of the dining-room. In the hall hepaused a minute to say that if it suited her they would take the threeo'clock train back to North Dormer; then he took his hat and coat fromthe rack and went out. 

A few minutes later Charity went out, too. She had watched to see inwhat direction he was going, and she took the opposite way and walkedquickly down the main street to the brick building on the corner ofLake Avenue. There she paused to look cautiously up and down thethoroughfare, and then climbed the brass-bound stairs to Dr. Merkle'sdoor. The same bushy-headed mulatto girl admitted her, and after thesame interval of waiting in the red plush parlor she was once moresummoned to Dr. Merkle's office. The doctor received her withoutsurprise, and led her into the inner plush sanctuary. 

"I thought you'd be back, but you've come a mite too soon: I told youto be patient and not fret, " she observed, after a pause of penetratingscrutiny. 

Charity drew the money from her breast. "I've come to get my bluebrooch, " she said, flushing. 

"Your brooch?" Dr. Merkle appeared not to remember. "My, yes--I get somany things of that kind. Well, my dear, you'll have to wait while I getit out of the safe. I don't leave valuables like that laying round likethe noospaper. "

She disappeared for a moment, and returned with a bit of twisted-uptissue paper from which she unwrapped the brooch. 

Charity, as she looked at it, felt a stir of warmth at her heart. Sheheld out an eager hand. 

"Have you got the change?" she asked a little breathlessly, laying oneof the twenty-dollar bills on the table. 

"Change? What'd I want to have change for? I only see two twentiesthere, " Dr. Merkle answered brightly. 

Charity paused, disconcerted. "I thought... You said it was five dollarsa visit.... "

"For YOU, as a favour--I did. But how about the responsibility and theinsurance? I don't s'pose you ever thought of that? This pin's worth ahundred dollars easy. If it had got lost or stole, where'd I been whenyou 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 foryour brooch, my dear. I'd a good deal ruther folks paid me my regularcharge than have 'em put me to all this trouble. "

She paused, and Charity, seized with a desperate longing to escape, roseto 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, andhand 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 seemsyou got married yesterday, up to the 'Piscopal church; I heard all aboutthe wedding from the minister's chore-man. It would be a pity, wouldn'tit, to let Mr. Royall know you had an account running here? I just putit to you as your own mother might. "

Anger flamed up in Charity, and for an instant she thought of abandoningthe brooch and letting Dr. Merkle do her worst. But how could she leaveher only treasure with that evil woman? She wanted it for her baby: shemeant it, in some mysterious way, to be a link between Harney's childand its unknown father. Trembling and hating herself while she did it, she laid Mr. Royall's money on the table, and catching up the broochfled out of the room and the house.... 

In the street she stood still, dazed by this last adventure. But thebrooch lay in her bosom like a talisman, and she felt a secret lightnessof heart. It gave her strength, after a moment, to walk on slowly in thedirection of the post office, and go in through the swinging doors. Atone of the windows she bought a sheet of letter-paper, an envelope and astamp; then she sat down at a table and dipped the rusty post office penin ink. She had come there possessed with a fear which had haunted herever since she had felt Mr. Royall's ring on her finger: the fear thatHarney might, after all, free himself and come back to her. It was apossibility which had never occurred to her during the dreadful hoursafter she had received his letter; only when the decisive step she hadtaken made longing turn to apprehension did such a contingency seemconceivable. She addressed the envelope, and on the sheet of paper shewrote:

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; theyhad flowed from her pen irresistibly. She had not had the strength tocomplete her sacrifice; but, after all, what did it matter? Now thatthere was no chance of ever seeing Harney again, why should she not tellhim the truth?

When she had put the letter in the box she went out into the busy sunlitstreet and began to walk to the hotel. Behind the plateglass windows ofthe department stores she noticed the tempting display of dresses anddress-materials that had fired her imagination on the day when she andHarney had looked in at them together. They reminded her of Mr. Royall'sinjunction to go out and buy all she needed. She looked down at hershabby dress, and wondered what she should say when he saw her comingback empty-handed. As she drew near the hotel she saw him waiting on thedoorstep, and her heart began to beat with apprehension. 

He nodded and waved his hand at her approach, and they walked throughthe 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 fortheir midday dinner. In the bedroom, while she was thrusting back intothe satchel the few things she had brought away with her, she suddenlyfelt that his eyes were on her and that he was going to speak. She stoodstill, her half-folded night-gown in her hand, while the blood rushed upto her drawn cheeks. 

"Well, did you rig yourself out handsomely? I haven't seen any bundlesround, " he said jocosely. 

"Oh, I'd rather let Ally Hawes make the few things I want, " sheanswered. 

"That so?" He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment and his eye-browsprojected in a scowl. Then his face grew friendly again. "Well, I wantedyou to go back looking stylisher than any of them; but I guess you'reright. 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 smiledwithout answering, and they went out of the room together and droppeddown to the hall in the glittering lift. 

Late that evening, in the cold autumn moonlight, they drove up to thedoor of the red house.