I have your letter, and it touches me more than I can say. Won't you
trust me, in return, to do my best? There are things it is hard to
explain, much less to justify; but your generosity makes everything
easier. All I can do now is to thank you from my soul for understanding.
Your telling me that you wanted me to do right has helped me beyond
expression. If ever there is a hope of realizing what we dreamed of you
will see me back on the instant; and I haven't yet lost that hope.
She read the letter with a rush; then she went over and over it, each
time more slowly and painstakingly. It was so beautifully expressed
that she found it almost as difficult to understand as the gentleman's
explanation of the Bible pictures at Nettleton; but gradually she became
aware that the gist of its meaning lay in the last few words. “If ever
there is a hope of realizing what we dreamed of...”
But then he wasn't even sure of that? She understood now that every word
and every reticence was an avowal of Annabel Balch's prior claim. It was
true that he was engaged to her, and that he had not yet found a way of
breaking his engagement.
As she read the letter over Charity understood what it must have cost
him to write it. He was not trying to evade an importunate claim; he was
honestly and contritely struggling between opposing duties. She did not
even reproach him in her thoughts for having concealed from her that
he was not free: she could not see anything more reprehensible in his
conduct than in her own. From the first she had needed him more than he
had wanted her, and the power that had swept them together had been
as far beyond resistance as a great gale loosening the leaves of the
forest.... Only, there stood between them, fixed and upright in the
general upheaval, the indestructible figure of Annabel Balch....
Face to face with his admission of the fact, she sat staring at the
letter. A cold tremor ran over her, and the hard sobs struggled up into
her throat and shook her from head to foot. For a while she was caught
and tossed on great waves of anguish that left her hardly conscious of
anything but the blind struggle against their assaults. Then, little by
little, she began to relive, with a dreadful poignancy, each separate
stage of her poor romance. Foolish things she had said came back to her,
gay answers Harney had made, his first kiss in the darkness between
the fireworks, their choosing the blue brooch together, the way he had
teased her about the letters she had dropped in her flight from the
evangelist. All these memories, and a thousand others, hummed through
her brain till his nearness grew so vivid that she felt his fingers in
her hair, and his warm breath on her cheek as he bent her head back like
a flower. These things were hers; they had passed into her blood, and
become a part of her, they were building the child in her womb; it was
impossible to tear asunder strands of life so interwoven.
The conviction gradually strengthened her, and she began to form in her
mind the first words of the letter she meant to write to Harney. She
wanted to write it at once, and with feverish hands she began to rummage
in her drawer for a sheet of letter paper. But there was none left; she
must go downstairs to get it. She had a superstitious feeling that the
letter must be written on the instant, that setting down her secret in
words would bring her reassurance and safety; and taking up her candle
she went down to Mr. Royall's office.
At that hour she was not likely to find him there: he had probably had
his supper and walked over to Carrick Fry's. She pushed open the door of
the unlit room, and the light of her lifted candle fell on his figure,
seated in the darkness in his high-backed chair. His arms lay along
the arms of the chair, and his head was bent a little; but he lifted
it quickly as Charity entered. She started back as their eyes met,
remembering that her own were red with weeping, and that her face was
livid with the fatigue and emotion of her journey. But it was too late
to escape, and she stood and looked at him in silence.
He had risen from his chair, and came toward her with outstretched
hands. The gesture was so unexpected that she let him take her hands in
his and they stood thus, without speaking, till Mr. Royall said gravely:
“Charity--was you looking for me?”
She freed herself abruptly and fell back. “Me? No----” She set down the
candle on his desk. “I wanted some letter-paper, that's all.” His face
contracted, and the bushy brows jutted forward over his eyes. Without
answering he opened the drawer of the desk, took out a sheet of paper
and an envelope, and pushed them toward her. “Do you want a stamp too?”
he asked.
She nodded, and he gave her the stamp. As he did so she felt that he was
looking at her intently, and she knew that the candle light flickering
up on her white face must be distorting her swollen features and
exaggerating the dark rings about her eyes. She snatched up the paper,
her reassurance dissolving under his pitiless gaze, in which she seemed
to read the grim perception of her state, and the ironic recollection
of the day when, in that very room, he had offered to compel Harney to
marry her. His look seemed to say that he knew she had taken the paper
to write to her lover, who had left her as he had warned her she would
be left. She remembered the scorn with which she had turned from him
that day, and knew, if he guessed the truth, what a list of old scores
it must settle. She turned and fled upstairs; but when she got back to
her room all the words that had been waiting had vanished....
If she could have gone to Harney it would have been different; she would
only have had to show herself to let his memories speak for her. But
she had no money left, and there was no one from whom she could have
borrowed enough for such a journey. There was nothing to do but to
write, and await his reply. For a long time she sat bent above the blank
page; but she found nothing to say that really expressed what she was
feeling....
Harney had written that she had made it easier for him, and she was glad
it was so; she did not want to make things hard. She knew she had it in
her power to do that; she held his fate in her hands. All she had to
do was to tell him the truth; but that was the very fact that held her
back.... Her five minutes face to face with Mr. Royall had stripped her
of her last illusion, and brought her back to North Dormer's point of
view. Distinctly and pitilessly there rose before her the fate of the
girl who was married “to make things right.” She had seen too many
village love-stories end in that way. Poor Rose Coles's miserable
marriage was of the number; and what good had come of it for her or
for Halston Skeff? They had hated each other from the day the minister
married them; and whenever old Mrs. Skeff had a fancy to humiliate her
daughter-in-law she had only to say: “Who'd ever think the baby's only
two? And for a seven months' child--ain't it a wonder what a size he
is?” North Dormer had treasures of indulgence for brands in the burning,
but only derision for those who succeeded in getting snatched from
it; and Charity had always understood Julia Hawes's refusal to be
snatched....
Only--was there no alternative but Julia's? Her soul recoiled from the
vision of the white-faced woman among the plush sofas and gilt frames.
In the established order of things as she knew them she saw no place for
her individual adventure....
She sat in her chair without undressing till faint grey streaks began
to divide the black slats of the shutters. Then she stood up and pushed
them open, letting in the light. The coming of a new day brought a
sharper consciousness of ineluctable reality, and with it a sense of the
need of action. She looked at herself in the glass, and saw her face,
white in the autumn dawn, with pinched cheeks and dark-ringed eyes, and
all the marks of her state that she herself would never have noticed,
but that Dr. Merkle's diagnosis had made plain to her. She could not
hope that those signs would escape the watchful village; even before her
figure lost its shape she knew her face would betray her.
Leaning from her window she looked out on the dark and empty scene; the
ashen houses with shuttered windows, the grey road climbing the slope to
the hemlock belt above the cemetery, and the heavy mass of the Mountain
black against a rainy sky. To the east a space of light was broadening
above the forest; but over that also the clouds hung. Slowly her gaze
travelled across the fields to the rugged curve of the hills. She had
looked out so often on that lifeless circle, and wondered if anything
could ever happen to anyone who was enclosed in it....
Almost without conscious thought her decision had been reached; as her
eyes had followed the circle of the hills her mind had also travelled
the old round. She supposed it was something in her blood that made the
Mountain the only answer to her questioning, the inevitable escape
from all that hemmed her in and beset her. At any rate it began to loom
against the rainy dawn; and the longer she looked at it the more clearly
she understood that now at last she was really going there.