That night, as usual, they said good-bye at the wood's edge.
Harney was to leave the next morning early. He asked Charity to say
nothing of their plans till his return, and, strangely even to herself,
she was glad of the postponement. A leaden weight of shame hung on her,
benumbing every other sensation, and she bade him good-bye with hardly
a sign of emotion. His reiterated promises to return seemed almost
wounding. She had no doubt that he intended to come back; her doubts
were far deeper and less definable.
Since the fanciful vision of the future that had flitted through her
imagination at their first meeting she had hardly ever thought of his
marrying her. She had not had to put the thought from her mind; it had
not been there. If ever she looked ahead she felt instinctively that the
gulf between them was too deep, and that the bridge their passion had
flung across it was as insubstantial as a rainbow. But she seldom
looked ahead; each day was so rich that it absorbed her.... Now her first
feeling was that everything would be different, and that she herself
would be a different being to Harney. Instead of remaining separate and
absolute, she would be compared with other people, and unknown things
would be expected of her. She was too proud to be afraid, but the
freedom of her spirit drooped....
Harney had not fixed any date for his return; he had said he would have
to look about first, and settle things. He had promised to write as soon
as there was anything definite to say, and had left her his address, and
asked her to write also. But the address frightened her. It was in New
York, at a club with a long name in Fifth Avenue: it seemed to raise an
insurmountable barrier between them. Once or twice, in the first days,
she got out a sheet of paper, and sat looking at it, and trying to think
what to say; but she had the feeling that her letter would never reach
its destination. She had never written to anyone farther away than
Hepburn.
Harney's first letter came after he had been gone about ten days. It was
tender but grave, and bore no resemblance to the gay little notes he had
sent her by the freckled boy from Creston River. He spoke positively of
his intention of coming back, but named no date, and reminded Charity of
their agreement that their plans should not be divulged till he had had
time to “settle things.” When that would be he could not yet foresee;
but she could count on his returning as soon as the way was clear.
She read the letter with a strange sense of its coming from immeasurable
distances and having lost most of its meaning on the way; and in reply
she sent him a coloured postcard of Creston Falls, on which she wrote:
“With love from Charity.” She felt the pitiful inadequacy of this, and
understood, with a sense of despair, that in her inability to express
herself she must give him an impression of coldness and reluctance; but
she could not help it. She could not forget that he had never spoken
to her of marriage till Mr. Royall had forced the word from his lips;
though she had not had the strength to shake off the spell that bound
her to him she had lost all spontaneity of feeling, and seemed to
herself to be passively awaiting a fate she could not avert.
She had not seen Mr. Royall on her return to the red house. The morning
after her parting from Harney, when she came down from her room, Verena
told her that her guardian had gone off to Worcester and Portland. It
was the time of year when he usually reported to the insurance agencies
he represented, and there was nothing unusual in his departure except
its suddenness. She thought little about him, except to be glad he was
not there....
She kept to herself for the first days, while North Dormer was
recovering from its brief plunge into publicity, and the subsiding
agitation left her unnoticed. But the faithful Ally could not be long
avoided. For the first few days after the close of the Old Home Week
festivities Charity escaped her by roaming the hills all day when she
was not at her post in the library; but after that a period of rain set
in, and one pouring afternoon, Ally, sure that she would find her friend
indoors, came around to the red house with her sewing.
The two girls sat upstairs in Charity's room. Charity, her idle hands in
her lap, was sunk in a kind of leaden dream, through which she was only
half-conscious of Ally, who sat opposite her in a low rush-bottomed
chair, her work pinned to her knee, and her thin lips pursed up as she
bent above it.
“It was my idea running a ribbon through the gauging,” she said proudly,
drawing back to contemplate the blouse she was trimming. “It's for Miss
Balch: she was awfully pleased.” She paused and then added, with a queer
tremor in her piping voice: “I darsn't have told her I got the idea from
one I saw on Julia.”
Charity raised her eyes listlessly. “Do you still see Julia sometimes?”
Ally reddened, as if the allusion had escaped her unintentionally. “Oh,
it was a long time ago I seen her with those gaugings....”
Silence fell again, and Ally presently continued: “Miss Balch left me a
whole lot of things to do over this time.”
“Why--has she gone?” Charity inquired with an inner start of
apprehension.
“Didn't you know? She went off the morning after they had the
celebration at Hamblin. I seen her drive by early with Mr. Harney.”
There was another silence, measured by the steady tick of the rain
against the window, and, at intervals, by the snipping sound of Ally's
scissors.
Ally gave a meditative laugh. “Do you know what she told me before she
went away? She told me she was going to send for me to come over to
Springfield and make some things for her wedding.”
Charity again lifted her heavy lids and stared at Ally's pale pointed
face, which moved to and fro above her moving fingers.
“Is she going to get married?”
Ally let the blouse sink to her knee, and sat gazing at it. Her lips
seemed suddenly dry, and she moistened them a little with her tongue.
“Why, I presume so... from what she said.... Didn't you know?”
“Why should I know?”
Ally did not answer. She bent above the blouse, and began picking out a
basting thread with the point of the scissors.
“Why should I know?” Charity repeated harshly.
“I didn't know but what... folks here say she's engaged to Mr. Harney.”
Charity stood up with a laugh, and stretched her arms lazily above her
head.
“If all the people got married that folks say are going to you'd have
your time full making wedding-dresses,” she said ironically.
“Why--don't you believe it?” Ally ventured.
“It would not make it true if I did--nor prevent it if I didn't.”
“That's so.... I only know I seen her crying the night of the party
because her dress didn't set right. That was why she wouldn't dance
any....”
Charity stood absently gazing down at the lacy garment on Ally's knee.
Abruptly she stooped and snatched it up.
“Well, I guess she won't dance in this either,” she said with sudden
violence; and grasping the blouse in her strong young hands she tore it
in two and flung the tattered bits to the floor.
“Oh, Charity----” Ally cried, springing up. For a long interval the two
girls faced each other across the ruined garment. Ally burst into tears.
“Oh, what'll I say to her? What'll I do? It was real lace!” she wailed
between her piping sobs.
Charity glared at her unrelentingly. “You'd oughtn't to have brought it
here,” she said, breathing quickly. “I hate other people's clothes--it's
just as if they was there themselves.” The two stared at each other
again over this avowal, till Charity brought out, in a gasp of anguish:
“Oh, go--go--go--or I'll hate you too....”
When Ally left her, she fell sobbing across her bed.
The long storm was followed by a north-west gale, and when it was over,
the hills took on their first umber tints, the sky grew more densely
blue, and the big white clouds lay against the hills like snow-banks.
The first crisp maple-leaves began to spin across Miss Hatchard's lawn,
and the Virginia creeper on the Memorial splashed the white porch with
scarlet. It was a golden triumphant September. Day by day the flame of
the Virginia creeper spread to the hillsides in wider waves of carmine
and crimson, the larches glowed like the thin yellow halo about a fire,
the maples blazed and smouldered, and the black hemlocks turned to
indigo against the incandescence of the forest.
The nights were cold, with a dry glitter of stars so high up that they
seemed smaller and more vivid. Sometimes, as Charity lay sleepless on
her bed through the long hours, she felt as though she were bound to
those wheeling fires and swinging with them around the great black
vault. At night she planned many things... it was then she wrote to
Harney. But the letters were never put on paper, for she did not know
how to express what she wanted to tell him. So she waited. Since her
talk with Ally she had felt sure that Harney was engaged to Annabel
Balch, and that the process of “settling things” would involve the
breaking of this tie. Her first rage of jealousy over, she felt no fear
on this score. She was still sure that Harney would come back, and she
was equally sure that, for the moment at least, it was she whom he loved
and not Miss Balch. Yet the girl, no less, remained a rival, since she
represented all the things that Charity felt herself most incapable of
understanding or achieving. Annabel Balch was, if not the girl Harney
ought to marry, at least the kind of girl it would be natural for him to
marry. Charity had never been able to picture herself as his wife; had
never been able to arrest the vision and follow it out in its daily
consequences; but she could perfectly imagine Annabel Balch in that
relation to him.
The more she thought of these things the more the sense of fatality
weighed on her: she felt the uselessness of struggling against the
circumstances. She had never known how to adapt herself; she could only
break and tear and destroy. The scene with Ally had left her stricken
with shame at her own childish savagery. What would Harney have thought
if he had witnessed it? But when she turned the incident over in her
puzzled mind she could not imagine what a civilized person would have
done in her place. She felt herself too unequally pitted against unknown
forces....
At length this feeling moved her to sudden action. She took a sheet of
letter paper from Mr. Royall's office, and sitting by the kitchen
lamp, one night after Verena had gone to bed, began her first letter to
Harney. It was very short:
I want you should marry Annabel Balch if you promised to. I think maybe
you were afraid I'd feel too bad about it. I feel I'd rather you acted
right. Your loving CHARITY.
She posted the letter early the next morning, and for a few days her
heart felt strangely light. Then she began to wonder why she received no
answer.
One day as she sat alone in the library pondering these things the walls
of books began to spin around her, and the rosewood desk to rock under
her elbows. The dizziness was followed by a wave of nausea like that she
had felt on the day of the exercises in the Town Hall. But the Town Hall
had been crowded and stiflingly hot, and the library was empty, and so
chilly that she had kept on her jacket. Five minutes before she had felt
perfectly well; and now it seemed as if she were going to die. The bit
of lace at which she still languidly worked dropped from her fingers,
and the steel crochet hook clattered to the floor. She pressed her
temples hard between her damp hands, steadying herself against the desk
while the wave of sickness swept over her. Little by little it subsided,
and after a few minutes she stood up, shaken and terrified, groped for
her hat, and stumbled out into the air. But the whole sunlit autumn
whirled, reeled and roared around her as she dragged herself along the
interminable length of the road home.
As she approached the red house she saw a buggy standing at the door,
and her heart gave a leap. But it was only Mr. Royall who got out, his
travelling-bag in hand. He saw her coming, and waited in the porch.
She was conscious that he was looking at her intently, as if there was
something strange in her appearance, and she threw back her head with a
desperate effort at ease. Their eyes met, and she said: “You back?” as
if nothing had happened, and he answered: “Yes, I'm back,” and walked
in ahead of her, pushing open the door of his office. She climbed to
her room, every step of the stairs holding her fast as if her feet were
lined with glue.
Two days later, she descended from the train at Nettleton, and walked
out of the station into the dusty square. The brief interval of cold
weather was over, and the day was as soft, and almost as hot, as when
she and Harney had emerged on the same scene on the Fourth of July. In
the square the same broken-down hacks and carry-alls stood drawn up in
a despondent line, and the lank horses with fly-nets over their withers
swayed their heads drearily to and fro. She recognized the staring signs
over the eating-houses and billiard saloons, and the long lines of wires
on lofty poles tapering down the main street to the park at its other
end. Taking the way the wires pointed, she went on hastily, with bent
head, till she reached a wide transverse street with a brick building
at the corner. She crossed this street and glanced furtively up at
the front of the brick building; then she returned, and entered a door
opening on a flight of steep brass-rimmed stairs. On the second landing
she rang a bell, and a mulatto girl with a bushy head and a frilled
apron let her into a hall where a stuffed fox on his hind legs proffered
a brass card-tray to visitors. At the back of the hall was a glazed door
marked: “Office.” After waiting a few minutes in a handsomely furnished
room, with plush sofas surmounted by large gold-framed photographs of
showy young women, Charity was shown into the office....
When she came out of the glazed door Dr. Merkle followed, and led her
into another room, smaller, and still more crowded with plush and gold
frames. Dr. Merkle was a plump woman with small bright eyes, an immense
mass of black hair coming down low on her forehead, and unnaturally
white and even teeth. She wore a rich black dress, with gold chains
and charms hanging from her bosom. Her hands were large and smooth, and
quick in all their movements; and she smelt of musk and carbolic acid.
She smiled on Charity with all her faultless teeth. “Sit down, my
dear. Wouldn't you like a little drop of something to pick you
up?... No.... Well, just lay back a minute then.... There's nothing to
be done just yet; but in about a month, if you'll step round again... I
could take you right into my own house for two or three days, and there
wouldn't be a mite of trouble. Mercy me! The next time you'll know
better'n to fret like this....”
Charity gazed at her with widening eyes. This woman with the false hair,
the false teeth, the false murderous smile--what was she offering her
but immunity from some unthinkable crime? Charity, till then, had
been conscious only of a vague self-disgust and a frightening physical
distress; now, of a sudden, there came to her the grave surprise of
motherhood. She had come to this dreadful place because she knew of no
other way of making sure that she was not mistaken about her state;
and the woman had taken her for a miserable creature like Julia.... The
thought was so horrible that she sprang up, white and shaking, one of
her great rushes of anger sweeping over her.
Dr. Merkle, still smiling, also rose. “Why do you run off in such a
hurry? You can stretch out right here on my sofa....” She paused, and
her smile grew more motherly. “Afterwards--if there's been any talk at
home, and you want to get away for a while... I have a lady friend in
Boston who's looking for a companion... you're the very one to suit her,
my dear....”
Charity had reached the door. “I don't want to stay. I don't want to
come back here,” she stammered, her hand on the knob; but with a swift
movement, Dr. Merkle edged her from the threshold.
“Oh, very well. Five dollars, please.”
Charity looked helplessly at the doctor's tight lips and rigid face.
Her last savings had gone in repaying Ally for the cost of Miss Balch's
ruined blouse, and she had had to borrow four dollars from her friend
to pay for her railway ticket and cover the doctor's fee. It had never
occurred to her that medical advice could cost more than two dollars.
“I didn't know... I haven't got that much...” she faltered, bursting into
tears.
Dr. Merkle gave a short laugh which did not show her teeth, and inquired
with concision if Charity supposed she ran the establishment for her own
amusement? She leaned her firm shoulders against the door as she spoke,
like a grim gaoler making terms with her captive.
“You say you'll come round and settle later? I've heard that pretty
often too. Give me your address, and if you can't pay me I'll send the
bill to your folks.... What? I can't understand what you say.... That
don't suit you either? My, you're pretty particular for a girl that
ain't got enough to settle her own bills....” She paused, and fixed
her eyes on the brooch with a blue stone that Charity had pinned to her
blouse.
“Ain't you ashamed to talk that way to a lady that's got to earn her
living, when you go about with jewellery like that on you?... It ain't
in my line, and I do it only as a favour... but if you're a mind to leave
that brooch as a pledge, I don't say no.... Yes, of course, you can get
it back when you bring me my money....”
On the way home, she felt an immense and unexpected quietude. It had
been horrible to have to leave Harney's gift in the woman's hands, but
even at that price the news she brought away had not been too dearly
bought. She sat with half-closed eyes as the train rushed through the
familiar landscape; and now the memories of her former journey, instead
of flying before her like dead leaves, seemed to be ripening in her
blood like sleeping grain. She would never again know what it was to
feel herself alone. Everything seemed to have grown suddenly clear
and simple. She no longer had any difficulty in picturing herself as
Harney's wife now that she was the mother of his child; and compared to
her sovereign right Annabel Balch's claim seemed no more than a girl's
sentimental fancy.
That evening, at the gate of the red house, she found Ally waiting in
the dusk. “I was down at the post-office just as they were closing up,
and Will Targatt said there was a letter for you, so I brought it.”
Ally held out the letter, looking at Charity with piercing sympathy.
Since the scene of the torn blouse there had been a new and fearful
admiration in the eyes she bent on her friend.
Charity snatched the letter with a laugh. “Oh, thank you--good-night,”
she called out over her shoulder as she ran up the path. If she had
lingered a moment she knew she would have had Ally at her heels.
She hurried upstairs and felt her way into her dark room. Her hands
trembled as she groped for the matches and lit her candle, and the flap
of the envelope was so closely stuck that she had to find her scissors
and slit it open. At length she read: