He stopped and lifted his hat with a shy smile. “I beg your pardon,” he
said. “I thought there was no one here.”
Charity stood before him, barring his way. “You can't come in. The
library ain't open to the public Wednesdays.”
“I know it's not; but my cousin gave me her key.”
“Miss Hatchard's got no right to give her key to other folks, any more'n
I have. I'm the librarian and I know the by-laws. This is my library.”
The young man looked profoundly surprised.
“Why, I know it is; I'm so sorry if you mind my coming.”
“I suppose you came to see what more you could say to set her against
me? But you needn't trouble: it's my library today, but it won't be
this time tomorrow. I'm on the way now to take her back the key and the
register.”
Young Harney's face grew grave, but without betraying the consciousness
of guilt she had looked for.
“I don't understand,” he said. “There must be some mistake. Why should I
say things against you to Miss Hatchard--or to anyone?”
The apparent evasiveness of the reply caused Charity's indignation to
overflow. “I don't know why you should. I could understand Orma Fry's
doing it, because she's always wanted to get me out of here ever since
the first day. I can't see why, when she's got her own home, and her
father to work for her; nor Ida Targatt, neither, when she got a legacy
from her step-brother on'y last year. But anyway we all live in the
same place, and when it's a place like North Dormer it's enough to make
people hate each other just to have to walk down the same street every
day. But you don't live here, and you don't know anything about any of
us, so what did you have to meddle for? Do you suppose the other girls'd
have kept the books any better'n I did? Why, Orma Fry don't hardly know
a book from a flat-iron! And what if I don't always sit round here
doing nothing till it strikes five up at the church? Who cares if the
library's open or shut? Do you suppose anybody ever comes here for
books? What they'd like to come for is to meet the fellows they're going
with if I'd let 'em. But I wouldn't let Bill Sollas from over the hill
hang round here waiting for the youngest Targatt girl, because I know
him... that's all... even if I don't know about books all I ought to....”
She stopped with a choking in her throat. Tremors of rage were running
through her, and she steadied herself against the edge of the desk lest
he should see her weakness.
What he saw seemed to affect him deeply, for he grew red under his
sunburn, and stammered out: “But, Miss Royall, I assure you... I assure
you....”
His distress inflamed her anger, and she regained her voice to fling
back: “If I was you I'd have the nerve to stick to what I said!”
The taunt seemed to restore his presence of mind. “I hope I should if I
knew; but I don't. Apparently something disagreeable has happened, for
which you think I'm to blame. But I don't know what it is, because I've
been up on Eagle Ridge ever since the early morning.”
“I don't know where you've been this morning, but I know you were here
in this library yesterday; and it was you that went home and told your
cousin the books were in bad shape, and brought her round to see how I'd
neglected them.”
Young Harney looked sincerely concerned. “Was that what you were told?
I don't wonder you're angry. The books are in bad shape, and as some are
interesting it's a pity. I told Miss Hatchard they were suffering from
dampness and lack of air; and I brought her here to show her how easily
the place could be ventilated. I also told her you ought to have some
one to help you do the dusting and airing. If you were given a wrong
version of what I said I'm sorry; but I'm so fond of old books that
I'd rather see them made into a bonfire than left to moulder away like
these.”
Charity felt her sobs rising and tried to stifle them in words. “I don't
care what you say you told her. All I know is she thinks it's all my
fault, and I'm going to lose my job, and I wanted it more'n anyone in
the village, because I haven't got anybody belonging to me, the way
other folks have. All I wanted was to put aside money enough to get away
from here sometime. D'you suppose if it hadn't been for that I'd have
kept on sitting day after day in this old vault?”
Of this appeal her hearer took up only the last question. “It is an
old vault; but need it be? That's the point. And it's my putting the
question to my cousin that seems to have been the cause of the trouble.”
His glance explored the melancholy penumbra of the long narrow room,
resting on the blotched walls, the discoloured rows of books, and the
stern rosewood desk surmounted by the portrait of the young Honorius.
“Of course it's a bad job to do anything with a building jammed against
a hill like this ridiculous mausoleum: you couldn't get a good draught
through it without blowing a hole in the mountain. But it can be
ventilated after a fashion, and the sun can be let in: I'll show you
how if you like....” The architect's passion for improvement had
already made him lose sight of her grievance, and he lifted his stick
instructively toward the cornice. But her silence seemed to tell him
that she took no interest in the ventilation of the library, and turning
back to her abruptly he held out both hands. “Look here--you don't mean
what you said? You don't really think I'd do anything to hurt you?”
A new note in his voice disarmed her: no one had ever spoken to her in
that tone.
“Oh, what DID you do it for then?” she wailed. He had her hands in
his, and she was feeling the smooth touch that she had imagined the day
before on the hillside.
He pressed her hands lightly and let them go. “Why, to make things
pleasanter for you here; and better for the books. I'm sorry if my
cousin twisted around what I said. She's excitable, and she lives on
trifles: I ought to have remembered that. Don't punish me by letting her
think you take her seriously.”
It was wonderful to hear him speak of Miss Hatchard as if she were a
querulous baby: in spite of his shyness he had the air of power that the
experience of cities probably gave. It was the fact of having lived
in Nettleton that made lawyer Royall, in spite of his infirmities, the
strongest man in North Dormer; and Charity was sure that this young man
had lived in bigger places than Nettleton.
She felt that if she kept up her denunciatory tone he would secretly
class her with Miss Hatchard; and the thought made her suddenly simple.
“It don't matter to Miss Hatchard how I take her. Mr. Royall says she's
going to get a trained librarian; and I'd sooner resign than have the
village say she sent me away.”
“Naturally you would. But I'm sure she doesn't mean to send you away.
At any rate, won't you give me the chance to find out first and let you
know? It will be time enough to resign if I'm mistaken.”
Her pride flamed into her cheeks at the suggestion of his intervening.
“I don't want anybody should coax her to keep me if I don't suit.”
He coloured too. “I give you my word I won't do that. Only wait till
tomorrow, will you?” He looked straight into her eyes with his shy grey
glance. “You can trust me, you know--you really can.”
All the old frozen woes seemed to melt in her, and she murmured
awkwardly, looking away from him: “Oh, I'll wait.”
V
There had never been such a June in Eagle County. Usually it was a month
of moods, with abrupt alternations of belated frost and mid-summer heat;
this year, day followed day in a sequence of temperate beauty. Every
morning a breeze blew steadily from the hills. Toward noon it built up
great canopies of white cloud that threw a cool shadow over fields and
woods; then before sunset the clouds dissolved again, and the western
light rained its unobstructed brightness on the valley.
On such an afternoon Charity Royall lay on a ridge above a sunlit
hollow, her face pressed to the earth and the warm currents of the grass
running through her. Directly in her line of vision a blackberry branch
laid its frail white flowers and blue-green leaves against the sky. Just
beyond, a tuft of sweet-fern uncurled between the beaded shoots of the
grass, and a small yellow butterfly vibrated over them like a fleck of
sunshine. This was all she saw; but she felt, above her and about her,
the strong growth of the beeches clothing the ridge, the rounding of
pale green cones on countless spruce-branches, the push of myriads of
sweet-fern fronds in the cracks of the stony slope below the wood,
and the crowding shoots of meadowsweet and yellow flags in the pasture
beyond. All this bubbling of sap and slipping of sheaths and bursting of
calyxes was carried to her on mingled currents of fragrance. Every leaf
and bud and blade seemed to contribute its exhalation to the pervading
sweetness in which the pungency of pine-sap prevailed over the spice
of thyme and the subtle perfume of fern, and all were merged in a moist
earth-smell that was like the breath of some huge sun-warmed animal.
Charity had lain there a long time, passive and sun-warmed as the slope
on which she lay, when there came between her eyes and the dancing
butterfly the sight of a man's foot in a large worn boot covered with
red mud.
“Oh, don't!” she exclaimed, raising herself on her elbow and stretching
out a warning hand.
“Don't what?” a hoarse voice asked above her head.
“Don't stamp on those bramble flowers, you dolt!” she retorted,
springing to her knees. The foot paused and then descended clumsily on
the frail branch, and raising her eyes she saw above her the bewildered
face of a slouching man with a thin sunburnt beard, and white arms
showing through his ragged shirt.
“Don't you ever SEE anything, Liff Hyatt?” she assailed him, as he stood
before her with the look of a man who has stirred up a wasp's nest.
He grinned. “I seen you! That's what I come down for.”
“Down from where?” she questioned, stooping to gather up the petals his
foot had scattered.
He jerked his thumb toward the heights. “Been cutting down trees for Dan
Targatt.”
Charity sank back on her heels and looked at him musingly. She was
not in the least afraid of poor Liff Hyatt, though he “came from the
Mountain,” and some of the girls ran when they saw him. Among the more
reasonable he passed for a harmless creature, a sort of link between the
mountain and civilized folk, who occasionally came down and did a little
wood cutting for a farmer when hands were short. Besides, she knew the
Mountain people would never hurt her: Liff himself had told her so
once when she was a little girl, and had met him one day at the edge
of lawyer Royall's pasture. “They won't any of 'em touch you up there,
f'ever you was to come up.... But I don't s'pose you will,” he had added
philosophically, looking at her new shoes, and at the red ribbon that
Mrs. Royall had tied in her hair.
Charity had, in truth, never felt any desire to visit her birthplace.
She did not care to have it known that she was of the Mountain, and was
shy of being seen in talk with Liff Hyatt. But today she was not sorry
to have him appear. A great many things had happened to her since the
day when young Lucius Harney had entered the doors of the Hatchard
Memorial, but none, perhaps, so unforeseen as the fact of her suddenly
finding it a convenience to be on good terms with Liff Hyatt. She
continued to look up curiously at his freckled weather-beaten face,
with feverish hollows below the cheekbones and the pale yellow eyes of
a harmless animal. “I wonder if he's related to me?” she thought, with a
shiver of disdain.
“Is there any folks living in the brown house by the swamp, up under
Porcupine?” she presently asked in an indifferent tone.
Liff Hyatt, for a while, considered her with surprise; then he scratched
his head and shifted his weight from one tattered sole to the other.
“There's always the same folks in the brown house,” he said with his
vague grin.
“They're from up your way, ain't they?”
“Their name's the same as mine,” he rejoined uncertainly.
Charity still held him with resolute eyes. “See here, I want to go there
some day and take a gentleman with me that's boarding with us. He's up
in these parts drawing pictures.”
She did not offer to explain this statement. It was too far beyond Liff
Hyatt's limitations for the attempt to be worth making. “He wants to see
the brown house, and go all over it,” she pursued.
Liff was still running his fingers perplexedly through his shock of
straw-colored hair. “Is it a fellow from the city?” he asked.
“Yes. He draws pictures of things. He's down there now drawing the
Bonner house.” She pointed to a chimney just visible over the dip of the
pasture below the wood.
“The Bonner house?” Liff echoed incredulously.
“Yes. You won't understand--and it don't matter. All I say is: he's
going to the Hyatts' in a day or two.”
Liff looked more and more perplexed. “Bash is ugly sometimes in the
afternoons.”
She threw her head back, her eyes full on Hyatt's. “I'm coming too: you
tell him.”
“They won't none of them trouble you, the Hyatts won't. What d'you want
a take a stranger with you though?”
“I've told you, haven't I? You've got to tell Bash Hyatt.”
He looked away at the blue mountains on the horizon; then his gaze
dropped to the chimney-top below the pasture.
“He's down there now?”
“Yes.”
He shifted his weight again, crossed his arms, and continued to survey
the distant landscape. “Well, so long,” he said at last, inconclusively;
and turning away he shambled up the hillside. From the ledge above
her, he paused to call down: “I wouldn't go there a Sunday”; then he
clambered on till the trees closed in on him. Presently, from high
overhead, Charity heard the ring of his axe.
She lay on the warm ridge, thinking of many things that the woodsman's
appearance had stirred up in her. She knew nothing of her early life,
and had never felt any curiosity about it: only a sullen reluctance to
explore the corner of her memory where certain blurred images lingered.
But all that had happened to her within the last few weeks had stirred
her to the sleeping depths. She had become absorbingly interesting to
herself, and everything that had to do with her past was illuminated by
this sudden curiosity.
She hated more than ever the fact of coming from the Mountain; but it
was no longer indifferent to her. Everything that in any way affected
her was alive and vivid: even the hateful things had grown interesting
because they were a part of herself.
“I wonder if Liff Hyatt knows who my mother was?” she mused; and it
filled her with a tremor of surprise to think that some woman who was
once young and slight, with quick motions of the blood like hers, had
carried her in her breast, and watched her sleeping. She had always
thought of her mother as so long dead as to be no more than a nameless
pinch of earth; but now it occurred to her that the once-young woman
might be alive, and wrinkled and elf-locked like the woman she had
sometimes seen in the door of the brown house that Lucius Harney wanted
to draw.
The thought brought him back to the central point in her mind, and
she strayed away from the conjectures roused by Liff Hyatt's presence.
Speculations concerning the past could not hold her long when the
present was so rich, the future so rosy, and when Lucius Harney,
a stone's throw away, was bending over his sketch-book, frowning,
calculating, measuring, and then throwing his head back with the sudden
smile that had shed its brightness over everything.
She scrambled to her feet, but as she did so she saw him coming up the
pasture and dropped down on the grass to wait. When he was drawing and
measuring one of “his houses,” as she called them, she often strayed
away by herself into the woods or up the hillside. It was partly from
shyness that she did so: from a sense of inadequacy that came to her
most painfully when her companion, absorbed in his job, forgot her
ignorance and her inability to follow his least allusion, and plunged
into a monologue on art and life. To avoid the awkwardness of listening
with a blank face, and also to escape the surprised stare of the
inhabitants of the houses before which he would abruptly pull up their
horse and open his sketch-book, she slipped away to some spot from
which, without being seen, she could watch him at work, or at least look
down on the house he was drawing. She had not been displeased, at first,
to have it known to North Dormer and the neighborhood that she was
driving Miss Hatchard's cousin about the country in the buggy he had
hired of lawyer Royall. She had always kept to herself, contemptuously
aloof from village love-making, without exactly knowing whether her
fierce pride was due to the sense of her tainted origin, or whether she
was reserving herself for a more brilliant fate. Sometimes she envied
the other girls their sentimental preoccupations, their long hours of
inarticulate philandering with one of the few youths who still lingered
in the village; but when she pictured herself curling her hair or
putting a new ribbon on her hat for Ben Fry or one of the Sollas boys
the fever dropped and she relapsed into indifference.
Now she knew the meaning of her disdains and reluctances. She had
learned what she was worth when Lucius Harney, looking at her for the
first time, had lost the thread of his speech, and leaned reddening on
the edge of her desk. But another kind of shyness had been born in
her: a terror of exposing to vulgar perils the sacred treasure of her
happiness. She was not sorry to have the neighbors suspect her of “going
with” a young man from the city; but she did not want it known to all
the countryside how many hours of the long June days she spent with him.
What she most feared was that the inevitable comments should reach Mr.
Royall. Charity was instinctively aware that few things concerning her
escaped the eyes of the silent man under whose roof she lived; and in
spite of the latitude which North Dormer accorded to courting couples
she had always felt that, on the day when she showed too open a
preference, Mr. Royall might, as she phrased it, make her “pay for
it.” How, she did not know; and her fear was the greater because it
was undefinable. If she had been accepting the attentions of one of the
village youths she would have been less apprehensive: Mr. Royall could
not prevent her marrying when she chose to. But everybody knew that
“going with a city fellow” was a different and less straightforward
affair: almost every village could show a victim of the perilous
venture. And her dread of Mr. Royall's intervention gave a sharpened
joy to the hours she spent with young Harney, and made her, at the same
time, shy of being too generally seen with him.
As he approached she rose to her knees, stretching her arms above her
head with the indolent gesture that was her way of expressing a profound
well-being.
“I'm going to take you to that house up under Porcupine,” she announced.
“What house? Oh, yes; that ramshackle place near the swamp, with the
gipsy-looking people hanging about. It's curious that a house with
traces of real architecture should have been built in such a place. But
the people were a sulky-looking lot--do you suppose they'll let us in?”
“They'll do whatever I tell them,” she said with assurance.
He threw himself down beside her. “Will they?” he rejoined with a smile.
“Well, I should like to see what's left inside the house. And I should
like to have a talk with the people. Who was it who was telling me the
other day that they had come down from the Mountain?”
Charity shot a sideward look at him. It was the first time he had spoken
of the Mountain except as a feature of the landscape. What else did he
know about it, and about her relation to it? Her heart began to beat
with the fierce impulse of resistance which she instinctively opposed to
every imagined slight.
“The Mountain? I ain't afraid of the Mountain!”
Her tone of defiance seemed to escape him. He lay breast-down on the
grass, breaking off sprigs of thyme and pressing them against his lips.
Far off, above the folds of the nearer hills, the Mountain thrust itself
up menacingly against a yellow sunset.
“I must go up there some day: I want to see it,” he continued.
Her heart-beats slackened and she turned again to examine his profile.
It was innocent of all unfriendly intention.
“What'd you want to go up the Mountain for?”
“Why, it must be rather a curious place. There's a queer colony up
there, you know: sort of out-laws, a little independent kingdom. Of
course you've heard them spoken of; but I'm told they have nothing to
do with the people in the valleys--rather look down on them, in fact.
I suppose they're rough customers; but they must have a good deal of
character.”
She did not quite know what he meant by having a good deal of character;
but his tone was expressive of admiration, and deepened her dawning
curiosity. It struck her now as strange that she knew so little about
the Mountain. She had never asked, and no one had ever offered to
enlighten her. North Dormer took the Mountain for granted, and implied
its disparagement by an intonation rather than by explicit criticism.
“It's queer, you know,” he continued, “that, just over there, on top of
that hill, there should be a handful of people who don't give a damn for
anybody.”
The words thrilled her. They seemed the clue to her own revolts and
defiances, and she longed to have him tell her more.
“I don't know much about them. Have they always been there?”
“Nobody seems to know exactly how long. Down at Creston they told me
that the first colonists are supposed to have been men who worked on the
railway that was built forty or fifty years ago between Springfield
and Nettleton. Some of them took to drink, or got into trouble with the
police, and went off--disappeared into the woods. A year or two later
there was a report that they were living up on the Mountain. Then I
suppose others joined them--and children were born. Now they say there
are over a hundred people up there. They seem to be quite outside the
jurisdiction of the valleys. No school, no church--and no sheriff ever
goes up to see what they're about. But don't people ever talk of them at
North Dormer?”
“I don't know. They say they're bad.”
He laughed. “Do they? We'll go and see, shall we?”
She flushed at the suggestion, and turned her face to his. “You never
heard, I suppose--I come from there. They brought me down when I was
little.”
“You?” He raised himself on his elbow, looking at her with sudden
interest. “You're from the Mountain? How curious! I suppose that's why
you're so different....”
Her happy blood bathed her to the forehead. He was praising her--and
praising her because she came from the Mountain!
“Am I... different?” she triumphed, with affected wonder.
“Oh, awfully!” He picked up her hand and laid a kiss on the sunburnt
knuckles.
“Come,” he said, “let's be off.” He stood up and shook the grass from
his loose grey clothes. “What a good day! Where are you going to take me
tomorrow?”