CHARITY sat before the mirror trying on a hat which Ally Hawes, with
much secrecy, had trimmed for her. It was of white straw, with a
drooping brim and cherry-coloured lining that made her face glow like
the inside of the shell on the parlour mantelpiece.
She propped the square of looking-glass against Mr. Royall's black
leather Bible, steadying it in front with a white stone on which a view
of the Brooklyn Bridge was painted; and she sat before her reflection,
bending the brim this way and that, while Ally Hawes's pale face looked
over her shoulder like the ghost of wasted opportunities.
“I look awful, don't I?” she said at last with a happy sigh.
Ally smiled and took back the hat. “I'll stitch the roses on right here,
so's you can put it away at once.”
Charity laughed, and ran her fingers through her rough dark hair.
She knew that Harney liked to see its reddish edges ruffled about her
forehead and breaking into little rings at the nape. She sat down on her
bed and watched Ally stoop over the hat with a careful frown.
“Don't you ever feel like going down to Nettleton for a day?” she asked.
Ally shook her head without looking up. “No, I always remember that
awful time I went down with Julia--to that doctor's.”
“Oh, Ally----”
“I can't help it. The house is on the corner of Wing Street and Lake
Avenue. The trolley from the station goes right by it, and the day the
minister took us down to see those pictures I recognized it right off,
and couldn't seem to see anything else. There's a big black sign with
gold letters all across the front--'Private Consultations.' She came as
near as anything to dying....”
“Poor Julia!” Charity sighed from the height of her purity and her
security. She had a friend whom she trusted and who respected her.
She was going with him to spend the next day--the Fourth of July--at
Nettleton. Whose business was it but hers, and what was the harm? The
pity of it was that girls like Julia did not know how to choose, and to
keep bad fellows at a distance.... Charity slipped down from the bed, and
stretched out her hands.
“Is it sewed? Let me try it on again.” She put the hat on, and smiled at
her image. The thought of Julia had vanished....
The next morning she was up before dawn, and saw the yellow sunrise
broaden behind the hills, and the silvery luster preceding a hot day
tremble across the sleeping fields.
Her plans had been made with great care. She had announced that she was
going down to the Band of Hope picnic at Hepburn, and as no one else
from North Dormer intended to venture so far it was not likely that her
absence from the festivity would be reported. Besides, if it were she
would not greatly care. She was determined to assert her independence,
and if she stooped to fib about the Hepburn picnic it was chiefly
from the secretive instinct that made her dread the profanation of her
happiness. Whenever she was with Lucius Harney she would have liked some
impenetrable mountain mist to hide her.
It was arranged that she should walk to a point of the Creston road
where Harney was to pick her up and drive her across the hills to
Hepburn in time for the nine-thirty train to Nettleton. Harney at first
had been rather lukewarm about the trip. He declared himself ready to
take her to Nettleton, but urged her not to go on the Fourth of July,
on account of the crowds, the probable lateness of the trains,
the difficulty of her getting back before night; but her evident
disappointment caused him to give way, and even to affect a faint
enthusiasm for the adventure. She understood why he was not more eager:
he must have seen sights beside which even a Fourth of July at Nettleton
would seem tame. But she had never seen anything; and a great longing
possessed her to walk the streets of a big town on a holiday, clinging
to his arm and jostled by idle crowds in their best clothes. The only
cloud on the prospect was the fact that the shops would be closed; but
she hoped he would take her back another day, when they were open.
She started out unnoticed in the early sunlight, slipping through the
kitchen while Verena bent above the stove. To avoid attracting notice,
she carried her new hat carefully wrapped up, and had thrown a long
grey veil of Mrs. Royall's over the new white muslin dress which Ally's
clever fingers had made for her. All of the ten dollars Mr. Royall had
given her, and a part of her own savings as well, had been spent on
renewing her wardrobe; and when Harney jumped out of the buggy to meet
her she read her reward in his eyes.
The freckled boy who had brought her the note two weeks earlier was
to wait with the buggy at Hepburn till their return. He perched at
Charity's feet, his legs dangling between the wheels, and they could
not say much because of his presence. But it did not greatly matter, for
their past was now rich enough to have given them a private language;
and with the long day stretching before them like the blue distance
beyond the hills there was a delicate pleasure in postponement.
When Charity, in response to Harney's message, had gone to meet him at
the Creston pool her heart had been so full of mortification and anger
that his first words might easily have estranged her. But it happened
that he had found the right word, which was one of simple friendship.
His tone had instantly justified her, and put her guardian in the
wrong. He had made no allusion to what had passed between Mr. Royall and
himself, but had simply let it appear that he had left because means of
conveyance were hard to find at North Dormer, and because Creston River
was a more convenient centre. He told her that he had hired by the week
the buggy of the freckled boy's father, who served as livery-stable
keeper to one or two melancholy summer boarding-houses on Creston Lake,
and had discovered, within driving distance, a number of houses worthy
of his pencil; and he said that he could not, while he was in the
neighbourhood, give up the pleasure of seeing her as often as possible.
When they took leave of each other she promised to continue to be his
guide; and during the fortnight which followed they roamed the hills in
happy comradeship. In most of the village friendships between youths and
maidens lack of conversation was made up for by tentative fondling; but
Harney, except when he had tried to comfort her in her trouble on their
way back from the Hyatts', had never put his arm about her, or sought
to betray her into any sudden caress. It seemed to be enough for him to
breathe her nearness like a flower's; and since his pleasure at being
with her, and his sense of her youth and her grace, perpetually shone in
his eyes and softened the inflection of his voice, his reserve did not
suggest coldness, but the deference due to a girl of his own class.
The buggy was drawn by an old trotter who whirled them along so briskly
that the pace created a little breeze; but when they reached Hepburn
the full heat of the airless morning descended on them. At the railway
station the platform was packed with a sweltering throng, and they took
refuge in the waiting-room, where there was another throng, already
dejected by the heat and the long waiting for retarded trains. Pale
mothers were struggling with fretful babies, or trying to keep their
older offspring from the fascination of the track; girls and their
“fellows” were giggling and shoving, and passing about candy in sticky
bags, and older men, collarless and perspiring, were shifting heavy
children from one arm to the other, and keeping a haggard eye on the
scattered members of their families.
At last the train rumbled in, and engulfed the waiting multitude. Harney
swept Charity up on to the first car and they captured a bench for
two, and sat in happy isolation while the train swayed and roared along
through rich fields and languid tree-clumps. The haze of the morning
had become a sort of clear tremor over everything, like the colourless
vibration about a flame; and the opulent landscape seemed to droop under
it. But to Charity the heat was a stimulant: it enveloped the whole
world in the same glow that burned at her heart. Now and then a lurch of
the train flung her against Harney, and through her thin muslin she felt
the touch of his sleeve. She steadied herself, their eyes met, and the
flaming breath of the day seemed to enclose them.
The train roared into the Nettleton station, the descending mob caught
them on its tide, and they were swept out into a vague dusty square
thronged with seedy “hacks” and long curtained omnibuses drawn by horses
with tasselled fly-nets over their withers, who stood swinging their
depressed heads drearily from side to side.
A mob of 'bus and hack drivers were shouting “To the Eagle House,”
“To the Washington House,” “This way to the Lake,” “Just starting for
Greytop;” and through their yells came the popping of fire-crackers,
the explosion of torpedoes, the banging of toy-guns, and the crash of
a firemen's band trying to play the Merry Widow while they were being
packed into a waggonette streaming with bunting.
The ramshackle wooden hotels about the square were all hung with flags
and paper lanterns, and as Harney and Charity turned into the main
street, with its brick and granite business blocks crowding out the old
low-storied shops, and its towering poles strung with innumerable wires
that seemed to tremble and buzz in the heat, they saw the double line of
flags and lanterns tapering away gaily to the park at the other end of
the perspective. The noise and colour of this holiday vision seemed to
transform Nettleton into a metropolis. Charity could not believe
that Springfield or even Boston had anything grander to show, and
she wondered if, at this very moment, Annabel Balch, on the arm of
as brilliant a young man, were threading her way through scenes as
resplendent.
“Where shall we go first?” Harney asked; but as she turned her happy
eyes on him he guessed the answer and said: “We'll take a look round,
shall we?”
The street swarmed with their fellow-travellers, with other
excursionists arriving from other directions, with Nettleton's own
population, and with the mill-hands trooping in from the factories on
the Creston. The shops were closed, but one would scarcely have noticed
it, so numerous were the glass doors swinging open on saloons, on
restaurants, on drug-stores gushing from every soda-water tap, on fruit
and confectionery shops stacked with strawberry-cake, cocoanut drops,
trays of glistening molasses candy, boxes of caramels and chewing-gum,
baskets of sodden strawberries, and dangling branches of bananas.
Outside of some of the doors were trestles with banked-up oranges and
apples, spotted pears and dusty raspberries; and the air reeked with
the smell of fruit and stale coffee, beer and sarsaparilla and fried
potatoes.
Even the shops that were closed offered, through wide expanses of
plate-glass, hints of hidden riches. In some, waves of silk and ribbon
broke over shores of imitation moss from which ravishing hats rose like
tropical orchids. In others, the pink throats of gramophones opened
their giant convolutions in a soundless chorus; or bicycles shining in
neat ranks seemed to await the signal of an invisible starter; or tiers
of fancy-goods in leatherette and paste and celluloid dangled their
insidious graces; and, in one vast bay that seemed to project them into
exciting contact with the public, wax ladies in daring dresses chatted
elegantly, or, with gestures intimate yet blameless, pointed to their
pink corsets and transparent hosiery.
Presently Harney found that his watch had stopped, and turned in at a
small jeweller's shop which chanced to still be open. While the watch
was being examined Charity leaned over the glass counter where, on a
background of dark blue velvet, pins, rings, and brooches glittered
like the moon and stars. She had never seen jewellry so near by, and
she longed to lift the glass lid and plunge her hand among the shining
treasures. But already Harney's watch was repaired, and he laid his hand
on her arm and drew her from her dream.
“Which do you like best?” he asked leaning over the counter at her side.
“I don't know....” She pointed to a gold lily-of-the-valley with white
flowers.
“Don't you think the blue pin's better?” he suggested, and immediately
she saw that the lily of the valley was mere trumpery compared to the
small round stone, blue as a mountain lake, with little sparks of light
all round it. She coloured at her want of discrimination.
“It's so lovely I guess I was afraid to look at it,” she said.
He laughed, and they went out of the shop; but a few steps away he
exclaimed: “Oh, by Jove, I forgot something,” and turned back and
left her in the crowd. She stood staring down a row of pink gramophone
throats till he rejoined her and slipped his arm through hers.
“You mustn't be afraid of looking at the blue pin any longer, because it
belongs to you,” he said; and she felt a little box being pressed into
her hand. Her heart gave a leap of joy, but it reached her lips only in
a shy stammer. She remembered other girls whom she had heard planning to
extract presents from their fellows, and was seized with a sudden dread
lest Harney should have imagined that she had leaned over the pretty
things in the glass case in the hope of having one given to her....
A little farther down the street they turned in at a glass doorway
opening on a shining hall with a mahogany staircase, and brass cages in
its corners. “We must have something to eat,” Harney said; and the next
moment Charity found herself in a dressing-room all looking-glass and
lustrous surfaces, where a party of showy-looking girls were dabbing
on powder and straightening immense plumed hats. When they had gone she
took courage to bathe her hot face in one of the marble basins, and
to straighten her own hat-brim, which the parasols of the crowd had
indented. The dresses in the shops had so impressed her that she
scarcely dared look at her reflection; but when she did so, the glow
of her face under her cherry-coloured hat, and the curve of her young
shoulders through the transparent muslin, restored her courage; and when
she had taken the blue brooch from its box and pinned it on her bosom
she walked toward the restaurant with her head high, as if she had
always strolled through tessellated halls beside young men in flannels.
Her spirit sank a little at the sight of the slim-waisted waitresses in
black, with bewitching mob-caps on their haughty heads, who were moving
disdainfully between the tables. “Not f'r another hour,” one of them
dropped to Harney in passing; and he stood doubtfully glancing about
him.
“Oh, well, we can't stay sweltering here,” he decided; “let's try
somewhere else--” and with a sense of relief Charity followed him from
that scene of inhospitable splendour.
That “somewhere else” turned out--after more hot tramping, and several
failures--to be, of all things, a little open-air place in a back street
that called itself a French restaurant, and consisted in two or three
rickety tables under a scarlet-runner, between a patch of zinnias
and petunias and a big elm bending over from the next yard. Here they
lunched on queerly flavoured things, while Harney, leaning back in a
crippled rocking-chair, smoked cigarettes between the courses and poured
into Charity's glass a pale yellow wine which he said was the very same
one drank in just such jolly places in France.
Charity did not think the wine as good as sarsaparilla, but she sipped a
mouthful for the pleasure of doing what he did, and of fancying herself
alone with him in foreign countries. The illusion was increased by their
being served by a deep-bosomed woman with smooth hair and a pleasant
laugh, who talked to Harney in unintelligible words, and seemed amazed
and overjoyed at his answering her in kind. At the other tables other
people sat, mill-hands probably, homely but pleasant looking, who spoke
the same shrill jargon, and looked at Harney and Charity with friendly
eyes; and between the table-legs a poodle with bald patches and pink
eyes nosed about for scraps, and sat up on his hind legs absurdly.
Harney showed no inclination to move, for hot as their corner was, it
was at least shaded and quiet; and, from the main thoroughfares came the
clanging of trolleys, the incessant popping of torpedoes, the jingle
of street-organs, the bawling of megaphone men and the loud murmur of
increasing crowds. He leaned back, smoking his cigar, patting the dog,
and stirring the coffee that steamed in their chipped cups. “It's the
real thing, you know,” he explained; and Charity hastily revised her
previous conception of the beverage.
They had made no plans for the rest of the day, and when Harney
asked her what she wanted to do next she was too bewildered by rich
possibilities to find an answer. Finally she confessed that she longed
to go to the Lake, where she had not been taken on her former visit,
and when he answered, “Oh, there's time for that--it will be pleasanter
later,” she suggested seeing some pictures like the ones Mr. Miles had
taken her to. She thought Harney looked a little disconcerted; but
he passed his fine handkerchief over his warm brow, said gaily, “Come
along, then,” and rose with a last pat for the pink-eyed dog.
Mr. Miles's pictures had been shown in an austere Y.M.C.A. hall,
with white walls and an organ; but Harney led Charity to a glittering
place--everything she saw seemed to glitter--where they passed, between
immense pictures of yellow-haired beauties stabbing villains in evening
dress, into a velvet-curtained auditorium packed with spectators to
the last limit of compression. After that, for a while, everything
was merged in her brain in swimming circles of heat and blinding
alternations of light and darkness. All the world has to show seemed
to pass before her in a chaos of palms and minarets, charging cavalry
regiments, roaring lions, comic policemen and scowling murderers; and
the crowd around her, the hundreds of hot sallow candy-munching faces,
young, old, middle-aged, but all kindled with the same contagious
excitement, became part of the spectacle, and danced on the screen with
the rest.
Presently the thought of the cool trolley-run to the Lake grew
irresistible, and they struggled out of the theatre. As they stood
on the pavement, Harney pale with the heat, and even Charity a little
confused by it, a young man drove by in an electric run-about with a
calico band bearing the words: “Ten dollars to take you round the Lake.”
Before Charity knew what was happening, Harney had waved a hand, and
they were climbing in. “Say, for twenny-five I'll run you out to see the
ball-game and back,” the driver proposed with an insinuating grin; but
Charity said quickly: “Oh, I'd rather go rowing on the Lake.” The street
was so thronged that progress was slow; but the glory of sitting in the
little carriage while it wriggled its way between laden omnibuses and
trolleys made the moments seem too short. “Next turn is Lake Avenue,”
the young man called out over his shoulder; and as they paused in the
wake of a big omnibus groaning with Knights of Pythias in cocked hats
and swords, Charity looked up and saw on the corner a brick house with
a conspicuous black and gold sign across its front. “Dr. Merkle; Private
Consultations at all hours. Lady Attendants,” she read; and suddenly
she remembered Ally Hawes's words: “The house was at the corner of Wing
Street and Lake Avenue... there's a big black sign across the front....”
Through all the heat and the rapture a shiver of cold ran over her.
X
THE Lake at last--a sheet of shining metal brooded over by drooping
trees. Charity and Harney had secured a boat and, getting away from the
wharves and the refreshment-booths, they drifted idly along, hugging the
shadow of the shore. Where the sun struck the water its shafts flamed
back blindingly at the heat-veiled sky; and the least shade was black by
contrast. The Lake was so smooth that the reflection of the trees on
its edge seemed enamelled on a solid surface; but gradually, as the sun
declined, the water grew transparent, and Charity, leaning over, plunged
her fascinated gaze into depths so clear that she saw the inverted
tree-tops interwoven with the green growths of the bottom.
They rounded a point at the farther end of the Lake, and entering an
inlet pushed their bow against a protruding tree-trunk. A green veil of
willows overhung them. Beyond the trees, wheat-fields sparkled in the
sun; and all along the horizon the clear hills throbbed with light.
Charity leaned back in the stern, and Harney unshipped the oars and lay
in the bottom of the boat without speaking.
Ever since their meeting at the Creston pool he had been subject to
these brooding silences, which were as different as possible from the
pauses when they ceased to speak because words were needless. At such
times his face wore the expression she had seen on it when she had
looked in at him from the darkness and again there came over her a
sense of the mysterious distance between them; but usually his fits
of abstraction were followed by bursts of gaiety that chased away the
shadow before it chilled her.
She was still thinking of the ten dollars he had handed to the driver
of the run-about. It had given them twenty minutes of pleasure, and it
seemed unimaginable that anyone should be able to buy amusement at that
rate. With ten dollars he might have bought her an engagement ring; she
knew that Mrs. Tom Fry's, which came from Springfield, and had a diamond
in it, had cost only eight seventy-five. But she did not know why the
thought had occurred to her. Harney would never buy her an engagement
ring: they were friends and comrades, but no more. He had been perfectly
fair to her: he had never said a word to mislead her. She wondered what
the girl was like whose hand was waiting for his ring....
Boats were beginning to thicken on the Lake and the clang of incessantly
arriving trolleys announced the return of the crowds from the
ball-field. The shadows lengthened across the pearl-grey water and two
white clouds near the sun were turning golden. On the opposite shore men
were hammering hastily at a wooden scaffolding in a field. Charity asked
what it was for.
“Why, the fireworks. I suppose there'll be a big show.” Harney looked at
her and a smile crept into his moody eyes. “Have you never seen any good
fireworks?”
“Miss Hatchard always sends up lovely rockets on the Fourth,” she
answered doubtfully.
“Oh----” his contempt was unbounded. “I mean a big performance like
this, illuminated boats, and all the rest.”
She flushed at the picture. “Do they send them up from the Lake, too?”
“Rather. Didn't you notice that big raft we passed? It's wonderful to
see the rockets completing their orbits down under one's feet.” She said
nothing, and he put the oars into the rowlocks. “If we stay we'd better
go and pick up something to eat.”
“But how can we get back afterwards?” she ventured, feeling it would
break her heart if she missed it.
He consulted a time-table, found a ten o'clock train and reassured her.
“The moon rises so late that it will be dark by eight, and we'll have
over an hour of it.”
Twilight fell, and lights began to show along the shore. The trolleys
roaring out from Nettleton became great luminous serpents coiling in and
out among the trees. The wooden eating-houses at the Lake's edge danced
with lanterns, and the dusk echoed with laughter and shouts and the
clumsy splashing of oars.
Harney and Charity had found a table in the corner of a balcony built
over the Lake, and were patiently awaiting an unattainable chowder.
Close under them the water lapped the piles, agitated by the evolutions
of a little white steamboat trellised with coloured globes which was to
run passengers up and down the Lake. It was already black with them as
it sheered off on its first trip.
Suddenly Charity heard a woman's laugh behind her. The sound was
familiar, and she turned to look. A band of showily dressed girls and
dapper young men wearing badges of secret societies, with new straw hats
tilted far back on their square-clipped hair, had invaded the balcony
and were loudly clamouring for a table. The girl in the lead was the
one who had laughed. She wore a large hat with a long white feather,
and from under its brim her painted eyes looked at Charity with amused
recognition.
“Say! if this ain't like Old Home Week,” she remarked to the girl at her
elbow; and giggles and glances passed between them. Charity knew at once
that the girl with the white feather was Julia Hawes. She had lost her
freshness, and the paint under her eyes made her face seem thinner; but
her lips had the same lovely curve, and the same cold mocking smile, as
if there were some secret absurdity in the person she was looking at,
and she had instantly detected it.
Charity flushed to the forehead and looked away. She felt herself
humiliated by Julia's sneer, and vexed that the mockery of such a
creature should affect her. She trembled lest Harney should notice that
the noisy troop had recognized her; but they found no table free, and
passed on tumultuously.
Presently there was a soft rush through the air and a shower of silver
fell from the blue evening sky. In another direction, pale Roman candles
shot up singly through the trees, and a fire-haired rocket swept the
horizon like a portent. Between these intermittent flashes the velvet
curtains of the darkness were descending, and in the intervals of
eclipse the voices of the crowds seemed to sink to smothered murmurs.
Charity and Harney, dispossessed by newcomers, were at length obliged
to give up their table and struggle through the throng about the
boat-landings. For a while there seemed no escape from the tide of late
arrivals; but finally Harney secured the last two places on the stand
from which the more privileged were to see the fireworks. The seats were
at the end of a row, one above the other. Charity had taken off her hat
to have an uninterrupted view; and whenever she leaned back to follow
the curve of some dishevelled rocket she could feel Harney's knees
against her head.
After a while the scattered fireworks ceased. A longer interval of
darkness followed, and then the whole night broke into flower. From
every point of the horizon, gold and silver arches sprang up and crossed
each other, sky-orchards broke into blossom, shed their flaming petals
and hung their branches with golden fruit; and all the while the air was
filled with a soft supernatural hum, as though great birds were building
their nests in those invisible tree-tops.
Now and then there came a lull, and a wave of moonlight swept the Lake.
In a flash it revealed hundreds of boats, steel-dark against lustrous
ripples; then it withdrew as if with a furling of vast translucent
wings. Charity's heart throbbed with delight. It was as if all the
latent beauty of things had been unveiled to her. She could not imagine
that the world held anything more wonderful; but near her she heard
someone say, “You wait till you see the set piece,” and instantly her
hopes took a fresh flight. At last, just as it was beginning to seem as
though the whole arch of the sky were one great lid pressed against her
dazzled eye-balls, and striking out of them continuous jets of
jewelled light, the velvet darkness settled down again, and a murmur of
expectation ran through the crowd.
“Now--now!” the same voice said excitedly; and Charity, grasping the hat
on her knee, crushed it tight in the effort to restrain her rapture.
For a moment the night seemed to grow more impenetrably black; then
a great picture stood out against it like a constellation. It was
surmounted by a golden scroll bearing the inscription, “Washington
crossing the Delaware,” and across a flood of motionless golden ripples
the National Hero passed, erect, solemn and gigantic, standing with
folded arms in the stern of a slowly moving golden boat.
A long “Oh-h-h” burst from the spectators: the stand creaked and shook
with their blissful trepidations. “Oh-h-h,” Charity gasped: she had
forgotten where she was, had at last forgotten even Harney's nearness.
She seemed to have been caught up into the stars....
The picture vanished and darkness came down. In the obscurity she felt
her head clasped by two hands: her face was drawn backward, and Harney's
lips were pressed on hers. With sudden vehemence he wound his arms about
her, holding her head against his breast while she gave him back his
kisses. An unknown Harney had revealed himself, a Harney who dominated
her and yet over whom she felt herself possessed of a new mysterious
power.
But the crowd was beginning to move, and he had to release her. “Come,”
he said in a confused voice. He scrambled over the side of the stand,
and holding up his arm caught her as she sprang to the ground. He passed
his arm about her waist, steadying her against the descending rush
of people; and she clung to him, speechless, exultant, as if all the
crowding and confusion about them were a mere vain stirring of the air.
“Come,” he repeated, “we must try to make the trolley.” He drew her
along, and she followed, still in her dream. They walked as if they were
one, so isolated in ecstasy that the people jostling them on every side
seemed impalpable. But when they reached the terminus the illuminated
trolley was already clanging on its way, its platforms black with
passengers. The cars waiting behind it were as thickly packed; and
the throng about the terminus was so dense that it seemed hopeless to
struggle for a place.
“Last trip up the Lake,” a megaphone bellowed from the wharf; and the
lights of the little steam-boat came dancing out of the darkness.
“No use waiting here; shall we run up the Lake?” Harney suggested.
They pushed their way back to the edge of the water just as the
gang-plank lowered from the white side of the boat. The electric light
at the end of the wharf flashed full on the descending passengers, and
among them Charity caught sight of Julia Hawes, her white feather askew,
and the face under it flushed with coarse laughter. As she stepped from
the gang-plank she stopped short, her dark-ringed eyes darting malice.
“Hullo, Charity Royall!” she called out; and then, looking back over
her shoulder: “Didn't I tell you it was a family party? Here's grandpa's
little daughter come to take him home!”
A snigger ran through the group; and then, towering above them, and
steadying himself by the hand-rail in a desperate effort at erectness,
Mr. Royall stepped stiffly ashore. Like the young men of the party, he
wore a secret society emblem in the buttonhole of his black frock-coat.
His head was covered by a new Panama hat, and his narrow black tie,
half undone, dangled down on his rumpled shirt-front. His face, a livid
brown, with red blotches of anger and lips sunken in like an old man's,
was a lamentable ruin in the searching glare.
He was just behind Julia Hawes, and had one hand on her arm; but as he
left the gang-plank he freed himself, and moved a step or two away
from his companions. He had seen Charity at once, and his glance passed
slowly from her to Harney, whose arm was still about her. He stood
staring at them, and trying to master the senile quiver of his lips;
then he drew himself up with the tremulous majesty of drunkenness, and
stretched out his arm.
“You whore--you damn--bare-headed whore, you!” he enunciated slowly.
There was a scream of tipsy laughter from the party, and Charity
involuntarily put her hands to her head. She remembered that her hat had
fallen from her lap when she jumped up to leave the stand; and suddenly
she had a vision of herself, hatless, dishevelled, with a man's arm
about her, confronting that drunken crew, headed by her guardian's
pitiable figure. The picture filled her with shame. She had known since
childhood about Mr. Royall's “habits”: had seen him, as she went up to
bed, sitting morosely in his office, a bottle at his elbow; or coming
home, heavy and quarrelsome, from his business expeditions to Hepburn
or Springfield; but the idea of his associating himself publicly with a
band of disreputable girls and bar-room loafers was new and dreadful to
her.
“Oh----” she said in a gasp of misery; and releasing herself from
Harney's arm she went straight up to Mr. Royall.
“You come home with me--you come right home with me,” she said in a
low stern voice, as if she had not heard his apostrophe; and one of the
girls called out: “Say, how many fellers does she want?”
There was another laugh, followed by a pause of curiosity, during which
Mr. Royall continued to glare at Charity. At length his twitching
lips parted. “I said, 'You--damn--whore!'” he repeated with precision,
steadying himself on Julia's shoulder.
Laughs and jeers were beginning to spring up from the circle of people
beyond their group; and a voice called out from the gangway: “Now,
then, step lively there--all ABOARD!” The pressure of approaching and
departing passengers forced the actors in the rapid scene apart, and
pushed them back into the throng. Charity found herself clinging to
Harney's arm and sobbing desperately. Mr. Royall had disappeared, and in
the distance she heard the receding sound of Julia's laugh.
The boat, laden to the taffrail, was puffing away on her last trip.