VI

That evening after supper Charity sat alone in the kitchen and listened

to Mr. Royall and young Harney talking in the porch.

She had remained indoors after the table had been cleared and old Verena

had hobbled up to bed. The kitchen window was open, and Charity seated

herself near it, her idle hands on her knee. The evening was cool and

still. Beyond the black hills an amber west passed into pale green,

and then to a deep blue in which a great star hung. The soft hoot of a

little owl came through the dusk, and between its calls the men's voices

rose and fell.

Mr. Royall's was full of a sonorous satisfaction. It was a long time

since he had had anyone of Lucius Harney's quality to talk to: Charity

divined that the young man symbolized all his ruined and unforgotten

past. When Miss Hatchard had been called to Springfield by the illness

of a widowed sister, and young Harney, by that time seriously embarked

on his task of drawing and measuring all the old houses between

Nettleton and the New Hampshire border, had suggested the possibility of

boarding at the red house in his cousin's absence, Charity had trembled

lest Mr. Royall should refuse. There had been no question of lodging

the young man: there was no room for him. But it appeared that he could

still live at Miss Hatchard's if Mr. Royall would let him take his meals

at the red house; and after a day's deliberation Mr. Royall consented.

Charity suspected him of being glad of the chance to make a little

money. He had the reputation of being an avaricious man; but she was

beginning to think he was probably poorer than people knew. His practice

had become little more than a vague legend, revived only at lengthening

intervals by a summons to Hepburn or Nettleton; and he appeared to

depend for his living mainly on the scant produce of his farm, and

on the commissions received from the few insurance agencies that he

represented in the neighbourhood. At any rate, he had been prompt in

accepting Harney's offer to hire the buggy at a dollar and a half a

day; and his satisfaction with the bargain had manifested itself,

unexpectedly enough, at the end of the first week, by his tossing a

ten-dollar bill into Charity's lap as she sat one day retrimming her old

hat.

“Here--go get yourself a Sunday bonnet that'll make all the other girls

mad,” he said, looking at her with a sheepish twinkle in his deep-set

eyes; and she immediately guessed that the unwonted present--the only

gift of money she had ever received from him--represented Harney's first

payment.

But the young man's coming had brought Mr. Royall other than

pecuniary benefit. It gave him, for the first time in years, a man's

companionship. Charity had only a dim understanding of her guardian's

needs; but she knew he felt himself above the people among whom he

lived, and she saw that Lucius Harney thought him so. She was surprised

to find how well he seemed to talk now that he had a listener who

understood him; and she was equally struck by young Harney's friendly

deference.

Their conversation was mostly about politics, and beyond her range; but

tonight it had a peculiar interest for her, for they had begun to speak

of the Mountain. She drew back a little, lest they should see she was in

hearing.

“The Mountain? The Mountain?” she heard Mr. Royall say. “Why, the

Mountain's a blot--that's what it is, sir, a blot. That scum up there

ought to have been run in long ago--and would have, if the people down

here hadn't been clean scared of them. The Mountain belongs to this

township, and it's North Dormer's fault if there's a gang of thieves

and outlaws living over there, in sight of us, defying the laws of their

country. Why, there ain't a sheriff or a tax-collector or a coroner'd

durst go up there. When they hear of trouble on the Mountain the

selectmen look the other way, and pass an appropriation to beautify the

town pump. The only man that ever goes up is the minister, and he goes

because they send down and get him whenever there's any of them dies.

They think a lot of Christian burial on the Mountain--but I never heard

of their having the minister up to marry them. And they never trouble

the Justice of the Peace either. They just herd together like the

heathen.”

He went on, explaining in somewhat technical language how the little

colony of squatters had contrived to keep the law at bay, and Charity,

with burning eagerness, awaited young Harney's comment; but the young

man seemed more concerned to hear Mr. Royall's views than to express his

own.

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

“Yes, I have,” said Mr. Royall with a contemptuous laugh. “The wiseacres

down here told me I'd be done for before I got back; but nobody lifted a

finger to hurt me. And I'd just had one of their gang sent up for seven

years too.”

“You went up after that?”

“Yes, sir: right after it. The fellow came down to Nettleton and ran

amuck, the way they sometimes do. After they've done a wood-cutting

job they come down and blow the money in; and this man ended up with

manslaughter. I got him convicted, though they were scared of the

Mountain even at Nettleton; and then a queer thing happened. The fellow

sent for me to go and see him in gaol. I went, and this is what he says:

'The fool that defended me is a chicken-livered son of a--and all

the rest of it,' he says. 'I've got a job to be done for me up on the

Mountain, and you're the only man I seen in court that looks as if he'd

do it.' He told me he had a child up there--or thought he had--a little

girl; and he wanted her brought down and reared like a Christian. I was

sorry for the fellow, so I went up and got the child.” He paused, and

Charity listened with a throbbing heart. “That's the only time I ever

went up the Mountain,” he concluded.

There was a moment's silence; then Harney spoke. “And the child--had she

no mother?”

“Oh, yes: there was a mother. But she was glad enough to have her go.

She'd have given her to anybody. They ain't half human up there. I guess

the mother's dead by now, with the life she was leading. Anyhow, I've

never heard of her from that day to this.”

“My God, how ghastly,” Harney murmured; and Charity, choking with

humiliation, sprang to her feet and ran upstairs. She knew at last: knew

that she was the child of a drunken convict and of a mother who wasn't

“half human,” and was glad to have her go; and she had heard this

history of her origin related to the one being in whose eyes she longed

to appear superior to the people about her! She had noticed that Mr.

Royall had not named her, had even avoided any allusion that might

identify her with the child he had brought down from the Mountain; and

she knew it was out of regard for her that he had kept silent. But

of what use was his discretion, since only that afternoon, misled by

Harney's interest in the out-law colony, she had boasted to him of

coming from the Mountain? Now every word that had been spoken showed her

how such an origin must widen the distance between them.

During his ten days' sojourn at North Dormer Lucius Harney had not

spoken a word of love to her. He had intervened in her behalf with his

cousin, and had convinced Miss Hatchard of her merits as a librarian;

but that was a simple act of justice, since it was by his own fault that

those merits had been questioned. He had asked her to drive him about

the country when he hired lawyer Royall's buggy to go on his sketching

expeditions; but that too was natural enough, since he was unfamiliar

with the region. Lastly, when his cousin was called to Springfield, he

had begged Mr. Royall to receive him as a boarder; but where else in

North Dormer could he have boarded? Not with Carrick Fry, whose wife was

paralysed, and whose large family crowded his table to over-flowing; not

with the Targatts, who lived a mile up the road, nor with poor old Mrs.

Hawes, who, since her eldest daughter had deserted her, barely had the

strength to cook her own meals while Ally picked up her living as a

seamstress. Mr. Royall's was the only house where the young man

could have been offered a decent hospitality. There had been nothing,

therefore, in the outward course of events to raise in Charity's breast

the hopes with which it trembled. But beneath the visible incidents

resulting from Lucius Harney's arrival there ran an undercurrent as

mysterious and potent as the influence that makes the forest break into

leaf before the ice is off the pools.

The business on which Harney had come was authentic; Charity had seen

the letter from a New York publisher commissioning him to make a study

of the eighteenth century houses in the less familiar districts of New

England. But incomprehensible as the whole affair was to her, and hard

as she found it to understand why he paused enchanted before certain

neglected and paintless houses, while others, refurbished and “improved”

by the local builder, did not arrest a glance, she could not but suspect

that Eagle County was less rich in architecture than he averred, and

that the duration of his stay (which he had fixed at a month) was not

unconnected with the look in his eyes when he had first paused before

her in the library. Everything that had followed seemed to have grown

out of that look: his way of speaking to her, his quickness in catching

her meaning, his evident eagerness to prolong their excursions and to

seize on every chance of being with her.

The signs of his liking were manifest enough; but it was hard to guess

how much they meant, because his manner was so different from anything

North Dormer had ever shown her. He was at once simpler and more

deferential than any one she had known; and sometimes it was just when

he was simplest that she most felt the distance between them. Education

and opportunity had divided them by a width that no effort of hers could

bridge, and even when his youth and his admiration brought him nearest,

some chance word, some unconscious allusion, seemed to thrust her back

across the gulf.

Never had it yawned so wide as when she fled up to her room carrying

with her the echo of Mr. Royall's tale. Her first confused thought

was the prayer that she might never see young Harney again. It was

too bitter to picture him as the detached impartial listener to such

a story. “I wish he'd go away: I wish he'd go tomorrow, and never come

back!” she moaned to her pillow; and far into the night she lay there,

in the disordered dress she had forgotten to take off, her whole soul

a tossing misery on which her hopes and dreams spun about like drowning

straws.

Of all this tumult only a vague heart-soreness was left when she opened

her eyes the next morning. Her first thought was of the weather, for

Harney had asked her to take him to the brown house under Porcupine,

and then around by Hamblin; and as the trip was a long one they were to

start at nine. The sun rose without a cloud, and earlier than usual she

was in the kitchen, making cheese sandwiches, decanting buttermilk into

a bottle, wrapping up slices of apple pie, and accusing Verena of having

given away a basket she needed, which had always hung on a hook in the

passage. When she came out into the porch, in her pink calico, which had

run a little in the washing, but was still bright enough to set off

her dark tints, she had such a triumphant sense of being a part of the

sunlight and the morning that the last trace of her misery vanished.

What did it matter where she came from, or whose child she was, when

love was dancing in her veins, and down the road she saw young Harney

coming toward her?

Mr. Royall was in the porch too. He had said nothing at breakfast, but

when she came out in her pink dress, the basket in her hand, he looked

at her with surprise. “Where you going to?” he asked.

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

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

yet?”

She made no answer, and he sat tilted back in his chair, drumming on the

rail of the porch. It was the first time he had ever spoken of the young

man in that tone, and Charity felt a faint chill of apprehension. After

a moment he stood up and walked away toward the bit of ground behind the

house, where the hired man was hoeing.

The air was cool and clear, with the autumnal sparkle that a north wind

brings to the hills in early summer, and the night had been so still

that the dew hung on everything, not as a lingering moisture, but in

separate beads that glittered like diamonds on the ferns and grasses. It

was a long drive to the foot of Porcupine: first across the valley, with

blue hills bounding the open slopes; then down into the beech-woods,

following the course of the Creston, a brown brook leaping over velvet

ledges; then out again onto the farm-lands about Creston Lake, and

gradually up the ridges of the Eagle Range. At last they reached the

yoke of the hills, and before them opened another valley, green and

wild, and beyond it more blue heights eddying away to the sky like the

waves of a receding tide.

Harney tied the horse to a tree-stump, and they unpacked their basket

under an aged walnut with a riven trunk out of which bumblebees darted.

The sun had grown hot, and behind them was the noonday murmur of

the forest. Summer insects danced on the air, and a flock of white

butterflies fanned the mobile tips of the crimson fireweed. In the

valley below not a house was visible; it seemed as if Charity Royall and

young Harney were the only living beings in the great hollow of earth

and sky.

Charity's spirits flagged and disquieting thoughts stole back on her.

Young Harney had grown silent, and as he lay beside her, his arms under

his head, his eyes on the network of leaves above him, she wondered if

he were musing on what Mr. Royall had told him, and if it had really

debased her in his thoughts. She wished he had not asked her to take him

that day to the brown house; she did not want him to see the people she

came from while the story of her birth was fresh in his mind. More than

once she had been on the point of suggesting that they should follow the

ridge and drive straight to Hamblin, where there was a little deserted

house he wanted to see; but shyness and pride held her back. “He'd

better know what kind of folks I belong to,” she said to herself, with

a somewhat forced defiance; for in reality it was shame that kept her

silent.

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

coming up.”

He followed her glance and smiled. “Is it that scrap of cloud among the

pines that frightens you?”

“It's over the Mountain; and a cloud over the Mountain always means

trouble.”

“Oh, I don't believe half the bad things you all say of the Mountain!

But anyhow, we'll get down to the brown house before the rain comes.”

He was not far wrong, for only a few isolated drops had fallen when they

turned into the road under the shaggy flank of Porcupine, and came

upon the brown house. It stood alone beside a swamp bordered with alder

thickets and tall bulrushes. Not another dwelling was in sight, and it

was hard to guess what motive could have actuated the early settler who

had made his home in so unfriendly a spot.

Charity had picked up enough of her companion's erudition to understand

what had attracted him to the house. She noticed the fan-shaped tracery

of the broken light above the door, the flutings of the paintless

pilasters at the corners, and the round window set in the gable; and she

knew that, for reasons that still escaped her, these were things to

be admired and recorded. Still, they had seen other houses far more

“typical” (the word was Harney's); and as he threw the reins on the

horse's neck he said with a slight shiver of repugnance: “We won't stay

long.”

Against the restless alders turning their white lining to the storm the

house looked singularly desolate. The paint was almost gone from the

clap-boards, the window-panes were broken and patched with rags, and the

garden was a poisonous tangle of nettles, burdocks and tall swamp-weeds

over which big blue-bottles hummed.

At the sound of wheels a child with a tow-head and pale eyes like Liff

Hyatt's peered over the fence and then slipped away behind an out-house.

Harney jumped down and helped Charity out; and as he did so the rain

broke on them. It came slant-wise, on a furious gale, laying shrubs and

young trees flat, tearing off their leaves like an autumn storm, turning

the road into a river, and making hissing pools of every hollow. Thunder

rolled incessantly through the roar of the rain, and a strange glitter

of light ran along the ground under the increasing blackness.

“Lucky we're here after all,” Harney laughed. He fastened the horse

under a half-roofless shed, and wrapping Charity in his coat ran with

her to the house. The boy had not reappeared, and as there was no

response to their knocks Harney turned the door-handle and they went in.

There were three people in the kitchen to which the door admitted

them. An old woman with a handkerchief over her head was sitting by the

window. She held a sickly-looking kitten on her knees, and whenever

it jumped down and tried to limp away she stooped and lifted it back

without any change of her aged, unnoticing face. Another woman, the

unkempt creature that Charity had once noticed in driving by, stood

leaning against the window-frame and stared at them; and near the stove

an unshaved man in a tattered shirt sat on a barrel asleep.

The place was bare and miserable and the air heavy with the smell of

dirt and stale tobacco. Charity's heart sank. Old derided tales of

the Mountain people came back to her, and the woman's stare was so

disconcerting, and the face of the sleeping man so sodden and bestial,

that her disgust was tinged with a vague dread. She was not afraid for

herself; she knew the Hyatts would not be likely to trouble her; but she

was not sure how they would treat a “city fellow.”

Lucius Harney would certainly have laughed at her fears. He glanced

about the room, uttered a general “How are you?” to which no one

responded, and then asked the younger woman if they might take shelter

till the storm was over.

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

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

The colour rose in Charity's face. “I'm Charity Royall,” she said, as

if asserting her right to the name in the very place where it might have

been most open to question.

The woman did not seem to notice. “You kin stay,” she merely said;

then she turned away and stooped over a dish in which she was stirring

something.

Harney and Charity sat down on a bench made of a board resting on two

starch boxes. They faced a door hanging on a broken hinge, and through

the crack they saw the eyes of the tow-headed boy and of a pale little

girl with a scar across her cheek. Charity smiled, and signed to the

children to come in; but as soon as they saw they were discovered they

slipped away on bare feet. It occurred to her that they were afraid of

rousing the sleeping man; and probably the woman shared their fear, for

she moved about as noiselessly and avoided going near the stove.

The rain continued to beat against the house, and in one or two places

it sent a stream through the patched panes and ran into pools on the

floor. Every now and then the kitten mewed and struggled down, and the

old woman stooped and caught it, holding it tight in her bony hands; and

once or twice the man on the barrel half woke, changed his position

and dozed again, his head falling forward on his hairy breast. As the

minutes passed, and the rain still streamed against the windows, a

loathing of the place and the people came over Charity. The sight of

the weak-minded old woman, of the cowed children, and the ragged man

sleeping off his liquor, made the setting of her own life seem a vision

of peace and plenty. She thought of the kitchen at Mr. Royall's, with

its scrubbed floor and dresser full of china, and the peculiar smell of

yeast and coffee and soft-soap that she had always hated, but that now

seemed the very symbol of household order. She saw Mr. Royall's room,

with the high-backed horsehair chair, the faded rag carpet, the row of

books on a shelf, the engraving of “The Surrender of Burgoyne” over

the stove, and the mat with a brown and white spaniel on a moss-green

border. And then her mind travelled to Miss Hatchard's house, where all

was freshness, purity and fragrance, and compared to which the red house

had always seemed so poor and plain.

“This is where I belong--this is where I belong,” she kept repeating to

herself; but the words had no meaning for her. Every instinct and habit

made her a stranger among these poor swamp-people living like vermin in

their lair. With all her soul she wished she had not yielded to Harney's

curiosity, and brought him there.

The rain had drenched her, and she began to shiver under the thin folds

of her dress. The younger woman must have noticed it, for she went out

of the room and came back with a broken tea-cup which she offered to

Charity. It was half full of whiskey, and Charity shook her head; but

Harney took the cup and put his lips to it. When he had set it down

Charity saw him feel in his pocket and draw out a dollar; he hesitated

a moment, and then put it back, and she guessed that he did not wish her

to see him offering money to people she had spoken of as being her kin.

The sleeping man stirred, lifted his head and opened his eyes. They

rested vacantly for a moment on Charity and Harney, and then closed

again, and his head drooped; but a look of anxiety came into the woman's

face. She glanced out of the window and then came up to Harney. “I guess

you better go along now,” she said. The young man understood and got to

his feet. “Thank you,” he said, holding out his hand. She seemed not to

notice the gesture, and turned away as they opened the door.

The rain was still coming down, but they hardly noticed it: the pure air

was like balm in their faces. The clouds were rising and breaking, and

between their edges the light streamed down from remote blue hollows.

Harney untied the horse, and they drove off through the diminishing

rain, which was already beaded with sunlight.

For a while Charity was silent, and her companion did not speak. She

looked timidly at his profile: it was graver than usual, as though he

too were oppressed by what they had seen. Then she broke out abruptly:

“Those people back there are the kind of folks I come from. They may be

my relations, for all I know.” She did not want him to think that she

regretted having told him her story.

“Poor creatures,” he rejoined. “I wonder why they came down to that

fever-hole.”

She laughed ironically. “To better themselves! It's worse up on the

Mountain. Bash Hyatt married the daughter of the farmer that used to own

the brown house. That was him by the stove, I suppose.”

Harney seemed to find nothing to say and she went on: “I saw you take

out a dollar to give to that poor woman. Why did you put it back?”

He reddened, and leaned forward to flick a swamp-fly from the horse's

neck. “I wasn't sure----”

“Was it because you knew they were my folks, and thought I'd be ashamed

to see you give them money?”

He turned to her with eyes full of reproach. “Oh, Charity----” It was

the first time he had ever called her by her name. Her misery welled

over.

“I ain't--I ain't ashamed. They're my people, and I ain't ashamed of

them,” she sobbed.

“My dear...” he murmured, putting his arm about her; and she leaned

against him and wept out her pain.

It was too late to go around to Hamblin, and all the stars were out in a

clear sky when they reached the North Dormer valley and drove up to the

red house.