NORTH DORMER'S celebration naturally included the villages attached to
its township, and the festivities were to radiate over the whole group,
from Dormer and the two Crestons to Hamblin, the lonely hamlet on the
north slope of the Mountain where the first snow always fell. On the
third day there were speeches and ceremonies at Creston and Creston
River; on the fourth the principal performers were to be driven in
buck-boards to Dormer and Hamblin.
It was on the fourth day that Charity returned for the first time to the
little house. She had not seen Harney alone since they had parted at the
wood's edge the night before the celebrations began. In the interval she
had passed through many moods, but for the moment the terror which had
seized her in the Town Hall had faded to the edge of consciousness.
She had fainted because the hall was stiflingly hot, and because the
speakers had gone on and on.... Several other people had been affected by
the heat, and had had to leave before the exercises were over. There had
been thunder in the air all the afternoon, and everyone said afterward
that something ought to have been done to ventilate the hall....
At the dance that evening--where she had gone reluctantly, and only
because she feared to stay away, she had sprung back into instant
reassurance. 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. Her
feet were full of music, and though her only training had been with the
village youths she had no difficulty in tuning her steps to his. As they
circled about the floor all her vain fears dropped from her, and she
even forgot that she was probably dancing in Annabel Balch's slippers.
When the waltz was over Harney, with a last hand-clasp, left her to
meet Miss Hatchard and Miss Balch, who were just entering. Charity had
a moment of anguish as Miss Balch appeared; but it did not last. The
triumphant fact of her own greater beauty, and of Harney's sense of
it, swept her apprehensions aside. Miss Balch, in an unbecoming dress,
looked sallow and pinched, and Charity fancied there was a worried
expression in her pale-lashed eyes. She took a seat near Miss Hatchard
and it was presently apparent that she did not mean to dance. Charity
did not dance often either. Harney explained to her that Miss Hatchard
had begged him to give each of the other girls a turn; but he went
through the form of asking Charity's permission each time he led one
out, and that gave her a sense of secret triumph even completer than
when she was whirling about the room with him.
She was thinking of all this as she waited for him in the deserted
house. The late afternoon was sultry, and she had tossed aside her hat
and stretched herself at full length on the Mexican blanket because it
was cooler indoors than under the trees. She lay with her arms folded
beneath her head, gazing out at the shaggy shoulder of the Mountain. The
sky 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 cousin
and her friends, so that he might be able to make his escape earlier
and stop on the way back at the deserted house, which was on the road
to Hamblin. They had smiled together at the joke of hearing the crowded
buck-boards roll by on the return, while they lay close in their
hiding above the road. Such childish triumphs still gave her a sense of
reckless security.
Nevertheless she had not wholly forgotten the vision of fear that had
opened before her in the Town Hall. The sense of lastingness was gone
from her and every moment with Harney would now be ringed with doubt.
The Mountain was turning purple against a fiery sunset from which it
seemed to be divided by a knife-edge of quivering light; and above
this wall of flame the whole sky was a pure pale green, like some cold
mountain lake in shadow. Charity lay gazing up at it, and watching for
the first white star....
Her eyes were still fixed on the upper reaches of the sky when she
became aware that a shadow had flitted across the glory-flooded room: it
must have been Harney passing the window against the sunset.... She half
raised herself, and then dropped back on her folded arms. The combs had
slipped from her hair, and it trailed in a rough dark rope across her
breast. She lay quite still, a sleepy smile on her lips, her indolent
lids half shut. There was a fumbling at the padlock and she called out:
“Have you slipped the chain?” The door opened, and Mr. Royall walked
into the room.
She started up, sitting back against the cushions, and they looked at
each other without speaking. Then Mr. Royall closed the door-latch and
advanced 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 looked
ash-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 set
herself in order. She groped for her comb, and tried to fasten up the
coil. Mr. Royall silently watched her.
“Charity,” he said, “he'll be here in a minute. Let me talk to you
first.”
“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 illuminated
room. Purple asters and red maple-leaves filled the jar on the table; on
a shelf against the wall stood a lamp, the kettle, a little pile of cups
and 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 calm
acceptance of things as they were left her without a weapon.
“See here, Charity--you're always telling me I've got no rights over
you. There might be two ways of looking at that--but I ain't going
to argue it. All I know is I raised you as good as I could, and meant
fairly by you always except once, for a bad half-hour. There's no
justice in weighing that half-hour against the rest, and you know it. If
you hadn't, you wouldn't have gone on living under my roof. Seems to me
the fact of your doing that gives me some sort of a right; the right
to try and keep you out of trouble. I'm not asking you to consider any
other.”
She listened in silence, and then gave a slight laugh. “Better wait till
I'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 waiting
for happened; the door opened again and Harney entered.
He stopped short with a face of astonishment, and then, quickly
controlling himself, went up to Mr. Royall with a frank look.
“Have you come to see me, sir?” he said coolly, throwing his cap on the
table with an air of proprietorship.
Mr. Royall again looked slowly about the room; then his eyes turned to
the young man.
“Is this your house?” he inquired.
Harney laughed: “Well--as much as it's anybody's. I come here to sketch
occasionally.”
“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 with
anger, started forward, and then stood silent, too humbled for speech.
Harney's eyes had dropped under the old man's gaze; but he raised them
presently, and looking steadily at Mr. Royall, said: “Miss Royall is not
a child. Isn't it rather absurd to talk of her as if she were? I believe
she considers herself free to come and go as she pleases, without any
questions from anyone.” He paused and added: “I'm ready to answer any
she 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--a
broken laugh, with a scraping sound in it. “You darsn't!” he shouted out
with 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 again
upon 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 any
other man either. I'm the only one that was fool enough not to know
that; 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 know
her mother was a woman of the town from Nettleton, that followed one of
those Mountain fellows up to his place and lived there with him like a
heathen. I saw her there sixteen years ago, when I went to bring this
child down. I went to save her from the kind of life her mother was
leading--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 beyond
them, at the menacing Mountain with its rim of fire; then he sat down
beside the table on which they had so often spread their rustic supper,
and covered his face with his hands. Harney leaned in the window, a
frown on his face: he was twirling between his fingers a small package
that dangled from a loop of string.... Charity heard Mr. Royall draw a
hard breath or two, and his shoulders shook a little. Presently he
stood up and walked across the room. He did not look again at the young
people: 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 to
speak; but he seemed at first not to find anything to say. At length he
broke 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 a
minute!”
“No.”
She waited to be caught into his arms, but he turned away from
her irresolutely. The last glow was gone from behind the Mountain.
Everything in the room had turned grey and indistinct, and an autumnal
dampness crept up from the hollow below the orchard, laying its cold
touch on their flushed faces. Harney walked the length of the room, and
then 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 and
spread 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 to
eat.
“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 the
sandwiches. Darkness had descended in the little room, and Harney's face
was a dim blur to Charity. Suddenly he leaned across the table and laid
his hand on hers.
“I shall have to go off for a while--a month or two, perhaps--to arrange
some 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 the
vibrations she knew. Her hand lay inertly under his, and she left it
there, and raised her head, trying to answer him. But the words died
in her throat. They sat motionless, in their attitude of confident
endearment, as if some strange death had surprised them. At length
Harney sprang to his feet with a slight shiver. “God! it's damp--we
couldn't have come here much longer.” He went to the shelf, took down a
tin candle-stick and lit the candle; then he propped an unhinged shutter
against the empty window-frame and put the candle on the table. It threw
a queer shadow on his frowning forehead, and made the smile on his lips
a grimace.
“But it's been good, though, hasn't it, Charity?... What's the
matter--why do you stand there staring at me? Haven't the days here been
good?” He went up to her and caught her to his breast. “And there'll be
others--lots of others... jollier... even jollier... won't there,
darling?”
He turned her head back, feeling for the curve of her throat below the
ear, and kissing here there, and on the hair and eyes and lips. She
clung to him desperately, and as he drew her to his knees on the couch
she felt as if they were being sucked down together into some bottomless
abyss.