It was not in the room known at the red house as Mr. Royall's “office”
that he received his infrequent clients. Professional dignity and
masculine independence made it necessary that he should have a real
office, under a different roof; and his standing as the only lawyer of
North Dormer required that the roof should be the same as that which
sheltered the Town Hall and the post-office.
It was his habit to walk to this office twice a day, morning and
afternoon. It was on the ground floor of the building, with a separate
entrance, and a weathered name-plate on the door. Before going in
he stepped in to the post-office for his mail--usually an empty
ceremony--said a word or two to the town-clerk, who sat across the
passage in idle state, and then went over to the store on the opposite
corner, where Carrick Fry, the storekeeper, always kept a chair for him,
and where he was sure to find one or two selectmen leaning on the long
counter, in an atmosphere of rope, leather, tar and coffee-beans. Mr.
Royall, though monosyllabic at home, was not averse, in certain moods,
to imparting his views to his fellow-townsmen; perhaps, also, he was
unwilling that his rare clients should surprise him sitting, clerkless
and unoccupied, in his dusty office. At any rate, his hours there were
not much longer or more regular than Charity's at the library; the rest
of the time he spent either at the store or in driving about the country
on business connected with the insurance companies that he represented,
or in sitting at home reading Bancroft's History of the United States
and the speeches of Daniel Webster.
Since the day when Charity had told him that she wished to succeed
to Eudora Skeff's post their relations had undefinably but definitely
changed. Lawyer Royall had kept his word. He had obtained the place for
her at the cost of considerable maneuvering, as she guessed from the
number of rival candidates, and from the acerbity with which two of
them, Orma Fry and the eldest Targatt girl, treated her for nearly a
year afterward. And he had engaged Verena Marsh to come up from
Creston and do the cooking. Verena was a poor old widow, doddering and
shiftless: Charity suspected that she came for her keep. Mr. Royall was
too close a man to give a dollar a day to a smart girl when he could
get a deaf pauper for nothing. But at any rate, Verena was there, in the
attic just over Charity, and the fact that she was deaf did not greatly
trouble the young girl.
Charity knew that what had happened on that hateful night would not
happen again. She understood that, profoundly as she had despised Mr.
Royall ever since, he despised himself still more profoundly. If she had
asked for a woman in the house it was far less for her own defense than
for his humiliation. She needed no one to defend her: his humbled pride
was her surest protection. He had never spoken a word of excuse
or extenuation; the incident was as if it had never been. Yet its
consequences were latent in every word that he and she exchanged, in
every glance they instinctively turned from each other. Nothing now
would ever shake her rule in the red house.
On the night of her meeting with Miss Hatchard's cousin Charity lay in
bed, her bare arms clasped under her rough head, and continued to think
of him. She supposed that he meant to spend some time in North Dormer.
He had said he was looking up the old houses in the neighbourhood; and
though she was not very clear as to his purpose, or as to why anyone
should look for old houses, when they lay in wait for one on every
roadside, she understood that he needed the help of books, and resolved
to hunt up the next day the volume she had failed to find, and any
others that seemed related to the subject.
Never had her ignorance of life and literature so weighed on her as in
reliving the short scene of her discomfiture. “It's no use trying to be
anything in this place,” she muttered to her pillow; and she shrivelled
at the vision of vague metropolises, shining super-Nettletons,
where girls in better clothes than Belle Balch's talked fluently of
architecture to young men with hands like Lucius Harney's. Then she
remembered his sudden pause when he had come close to the desk and had
his first look at her. The sight had made him forget what he was going
to say; she recalled the change in his face, and jumping up she ran over
the bare boards to her washstand, found the matches, lit a candle, and
lifted it to the square of looking-glass on the white-washed wall. Her
small face, usually so darkly pale, glowed like a rose in the faint orb
of light, and under her rumpled hair her eyes seemed deeper and larger
than by day. Perhaps after all it was a mistake to wish they were blue.
A clumsy band and button fastened her unbleached night-gown about the
throat. She undid it, freed her thin shoulders, and saw herself a bride
in low-necked satin, walking down an aisle with Lucius Harney. He would
kiss her as they left the church.... She put down the candle and covered
her face with her hands as if to imprison the kiss. At that moment she
heard Mr. Royall's step as he came up the stairs to bed, and a fierce
revulsion of feeling swept over her. Until then she had merely despised
him; now deep hatred of him filled her heart. He became to her a
horrible old man....
The next day, when Mr. Royall came back to dinner, they faced each other
in silence as usual. Verena's presence at the table was an excuse for
their not talking, though her deafness would have permitted the freest
interchange of confidences. But when the meal was over, and Mr. Royall
rose from the table, he looked back at Charity, who had stayed to help
the old woman clear away the dishes.
“I want to speak to you a minute,” he said; and she followed him across
the passage, wondering.
He seated himself in his black horse-hair armchair, and she leaned
against the window, indifferently. She was impatient to be gone to the
library, to hunt for the book on North Dormer.
“See here,” he said, “why ain't you at the library the days you're
supposed to be there?”
The question, breaking in on her mood of blissful abstraction, deprived
her of speech, and she stared at him for a moment without answering.
“Who says I ain't?”
“There's been some complaints made, it appears. Miss Hatchard sent for
me this morning----”
Charity's smouldering resentment broke into a blaze. “I know! Orma Fry,
and that toad of a Targatt girl and Ben Fry, like as not. He's going
round with her. The low-down sneaks--I always knew they'd try to have me
out! As if anybody ever came to the library, anyhow!”
“Somebody did yesterday, and you weren't there.”
“Yesterday?” she laughed at her happy recollection. “At what time wasn't
I there yesterday, I'd like to know?”
“Round about four o'clock.”
Charity was silent. She had been so steeped in the dreamy remembrance of
young Harney's visit that she had forgotten having deserted her post as
soon as he had left the library.
“Who came at four o'clock?”
“Miss Hatchard did.”
“Miss Hatchard? Why, she ain't ever been near the place since she's been
lame. She couldn't get up the steps if she tried.”
“She can be helped up, I guess. She was yesterday, anyhow, by the
young fellow that's staying with her. He found you there, I understand,
earlier in the afternoon; and he went back and told Miss Hatchard the
books were in bad shape and needed attending to. She got excited, and
had herself wheeled straight round; and when she got there the place was
locked. So she sent for me, and told me about that, and about the other
complaints. She claims you've neglected things, and that she's going to
get a trained librarian.”
Charity had not moved while he spoke. She stood with her head thrown
back against the window-frame, her arms hanging against her sides, and
her hands so tightly clenched that she felt, without knowing what hurt
her, the sharp edge of her nails against her palms.
Of all Mr. Royall had said she had retained only the phrase: “He told
Miss Hatchard the books were in bad shape.” What did she care for the
other charges against her? Malice or truth, she despised them as she
despised her detractors. But that the stranger to whom she had felt
herself so mysteriously drawn should have betrayed her! That at the
very moment when she had fled up the hillside to think of him more
deliciously he should have been hastening home to denounce her
short-comings! She remembered how, in the darkness of her room, she had
covered her face to press his imagined kiss closer; and her heart raged
against him for the liberty he had not taken.
“Well, I'll go,” she said suddenly. “I'll go right off.”
“Go where?” She heard the startled note in Mr. Royall's voice.
“Why, out of their old library: straight out, and never set foot in
it again. They needn't think I'm going to wait round and let them say
they've discharged me!”
“Charity--Charity Royall, you listen----” he began, getting heavily out
of his chair; but she waved him aside, and walked out of the room.
Upstairs she took the library key from the place where she always hid it
under her pincushion--who said she wasn't careful?--put on her hat, and
swept down again and out into the street. If Mr. Royall heard her go
he made no motion to detain her: his sudden rages probably made him
understand the uselessness of reasoning with hers.
She reached the brick temple, unlocked the door and entered into the
glacial twilight. “I'm glad I'll never have to sit in this old vault
again when other folks are out in the sun!” she said aloud as the
familiar chill took her. She looked with abhorrence at the long dingy
rows of books, the sheep-nosed Minerva on her black pedestal, and the
mild-faced young man in a high stock whose effigy pined above her desk.
She meant to take out of the drawer her roll of lace and the library
register, and go straight to Miss Hatchard to announce her resignation.
But suddenly a great desolation overcame her, and she sat down and laid
her face against the desk. Her heart was ravaged by life's cruelest
discovery: the first creature who had come toward her out of the
wilderness had brought her anguish instead of joy. She did not cry;
tears came hard to her, and the storms of her heart spent themselves
inwardly. But as she sat there in her dumb woe she felt her life to be
too desolate, too ugly and intolerable.
“What have I ever done to it, that it should hurt me so?” she groaned,
and pressed her fists against her lids, which were beginning to swell
with weeping.
“I won't--I won't go there looking like a horror!” she muttered,
springing up and pushing back her hair as if it stifled her. She opened
the drawer, dragged out the register, and turned toward the door. As
she did so it opened, and the young man from Miss Hatchard's came in
whistling.