Chapter 1
    A girl came out of lawyer Royall's house, at the end ofthe one street of North Dormer, and stood on thedoorstep.
　　It was the beginning of a June afternoon. Thespringlike transparent sky shed a rain of silversunshine on the roofs of the village, and on thepastures and larchwoods surrounding it. A little windmoved among the round white clouds on the shoulders ofthe hills, driving their shadows across the fields anddown the grassy road that takes the name of street whenit passes through North Dormer. The place lies highand in the open, and lacks the lavish shade of the moreprotected New England villages. The clump of weeping-willows about the duck pond, and the Norway spruces infront of the Hatchard gate, cast almost the onlyroadside shadow between lawyer Royall's house and thepoint where, at the other end of the village, the roadrises above the church and skirts the black hemlockwall enclosing the cemetery.
　　The little June wind, frisking down the street, shookthe doleful fringes of the Hatchard spruces, caught thestraw hat of a young man just passing under them, andspun it clean across the road into the duck-pond.
　　As he ran to fish it out the girl on lawyer Royall'sdoorstep noticed that he was a stranger, that he worecity clothes, and that he was laughing with all histeeth, as the young and careless laugh at such mishaps.
　　Her heart contracted a little, and the shrinking thatsometimes came over her when she saw people withholiday faces made her draw back into the house andpretend to look for the key that she knew she hadalready put into her pocket. A narrow greenish mirrorwith a gilt eagle over it hung on the passage wall, andshe looked critically at her reflection, wished for thethousandth time that she had blue eyes like AnnabelBalch, the girl who sometimes came from Springfield tospend a week with old Miss Hatchard, straightened thesunburnt hat over her small swarthy face, and turnedout again into the sunshine.
　　"How I hate everything!" she murmured.
　　The young man had passed through the Hatchard gate, andshe had the street to herself. North Dormer is at alltimes an empty place, and at three o'clock on a Juneafternoon its few able-bodied men are off in the fieldsor woods, and the women indoors, engaged in languidhousehold drudgery.
　　The girl walked along, swinging her key on a finger,and looking about her with the heightened attentionproduced by the presence of a stranger in a familiarplace. What, she wondered, did North Dormer look liketo people from other parts of the world? She herselfhad lived there since the age of five, and had longsupposed it to be a place of some importance. Butabout a year before, Mr. Miles, the new Episcopalclergyman at Hepburn, who drove over every otherSunday--when the roads were not ploughed up by hauling--to hold a service in the North Dormer church, hadproposed, in a fit of missionary zeal, to take theyoung people down to Nettleton to hear an illustratedlecture on the Holy Land; and the dozen girls and boyswho represented the future of North Dormer had beenpiled into a farm-waggon, driven over the hills toHepburn, put into a way-train and carried to Nettleton.
　　In the course of that incredible day Charity Royallhad, for the first and only time, experienced railway-travel, looked into shops with plate-glass fronts,tasted cocoanut pie, sat in a theatre, and listened toa gentleman saying unintelligible things beforepictures that she would have enjoyed looking at if hisexplanations had not prevented her from understandingthem. This initiation had shown her that North Dormerwas a small place, and developed in her a thirst forinformation that her position as custodian of thevillage library had previously failed to excite. For amonth or two she dipped feverishly and disconnectedlyinto the dusty volumes of the Hatchard MemorialLibrary; then the impression of Nettleton began tofade, and she found it easier to take North Dormer asthe norm of the universe than to go on reading.
　　The sight of the stranger once more revived memories ofNettleton, and North Dormer shrank to its real size. Asshe looked up and down it, from lawyer Royall's fadedred house at one end to the white church at the other,she pitilessly took its measure. There it lay, aweather-beaten sunburnt village of the hills, abandonedof men, left apart by railway, trolley, telegraph, andall the forces that link life to life in moderncommunities. It had no shops, no theatres, nolectures, no "business block"; only a church that wasopened every other Sunday if the state of the roadspermitted, and a library for which no new books hadbeen bought for twenty years, and where the old onesmouldered undisturbed on the damp shelves. Yet CharityRoyall had always been told that she ought to considerit a privilege that her lot had been cast in NorthDormer. She knew that, compared to the place she hadcome from, North Dormer represented all the blessingsof the most refined civilization. Everyone in thevillage had told her so ever since she had been broughtthere as a child. Even old Miss Hatchard had said toher, on a terrible occasion in her life: "My child, youmust never cease to remember that it was Mr. Royall whobrought you down from the Mountain."She had been "brought down from the Mountain"; from thescarred cliff that lifted its sullen wall above thelesser slopes of Eagle Range, making a perpetualbackground of gloom to the lonely valley. The Mountainwas a good fifteen miles away, but it rose so abruptlyfrom the lower hills that it seemed almost to cast itsshadow over North Dormer. And it was like a greatmagnet drawing the clouds and scattering them in stormacross the valley. If ever, in the purest summer sky,there trailed a thread of vapour over North Dormer, itdrifted to the Mountain as a ship drifts to awhirlpool, and was caught among the rocks, torn up andmultiplied, to sweep back over the village in rain anddarkness.
　　Charity was not very clear about the Mountain; but sheknew it was a bad place, and a shame to have come from,and that, whatever befell her in North Dormer, sheought, as Miss Hatchard had once reminded her, toremember that she had been brought down from there, andhold her tongue and be thankful. She looked up at theMountain, thinking of these things, and tried as usualto be thankful. But the sight of the young man turningin at Miss Hatchard's gate had brought back the visionof the glittering streets of Nettleton, and she feltashamed of her old sun-hat, and sick of North Dormer,and jealously aware of Annabel Balch of Springfield,opening her blue eyes somewhere far off on gloriesgreater than the glories of Nettleton.
　　"How I hate everything!" she said again.
　　Half way down the street she stopped at a weak-hingedgate. Passing through it, she walked down a brick pathto a queer little brick temple with white woodencolumns supporting a pediment on which was inscribed intarnished gold letters: "The Honorius Hatchard MemorialLibrary, 1832."Honorius Hatchard had been old Miss Hatchard's great-uncle; though she would undoubtedly have reversed thephrase, and put forward, as her only claim todistinction, the fact that she was his great-niece.
　　For Honorius Hatchard, in the early years of thenineteenth century, had enjoyed a modest celebrity. Asthe marble tablet in the interior of the libraryinformed its infrequent visitors, he had possessedmarked literary gifts, written a series of paperscalled "The Recluse of Eagle Range," enjoyed theacquaintance of Washington Irving and Fitz-GreeneHalleck, and been cut off in his flower by a fevercontracted in Italy. Such had been the sole linkbetween North Dormer and literature, a link piouslycommemorated by the erection of the monument whereCharity Royall, every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon,sat at her desk under a freckled steel engraving of thedeceased author, and wondered if he felt any deader inhis grave than she did in his library.
　　Entering her prison-house with a listless step she tookoff her hat, hung it on a plaster bust of Minerva,opened the shutters, leaned out to see if there wereany eggs in the swallow's nest above one of thewindows, and finally, seating herself behind the desk,drew out a roll of cotton lace and a steel crochethook. She was not an expert workwoman, and it had takenher many weeks to make the half-yard of narrow lacewhich she kept wound about the buckram back of adisintegrated copy of "The Lamplighter." But there wasno other way of getting any lace to trim her summerblouse, and since Ally Hawes, the poorest girl in thevillage, had shown herself in church with enviabletransparencies about the shoulders, Charity's hook hadtravelled faster. She unrolled the lace, dug the hookinto a loop, and bent to the task with furrowed brows.
　　Suddenly the door opened, and before she had raised hereyes she knew that the young man she had seen going inat the Hatchard gate had entered the library.
　　Without taking any notice of her he began to moveslowly about the long vault-like room, his hands behindhis back, his short-sighted eyes peering up and downthe rows of rusty bindings. At length he reached thedesk and stood before her.
　　"Have you a card-catalogue?" he asked in a pleasantabrupt voice; and the oddness of the question causedher to drop her work.
　　"A WHAT?""Why, you know----" He broke off, and she becameconscious that he was looking at her for the firsttime, having apparently, on his entrance, included herin his general short-sighted survey as part of thefurniture of the library.
　　The fact that, in discovering her, he lost the threadof his remark, did not escape her attention, and shelooked down and smiled. He smiled also.
　　"No, I don't suppose you do know," he correctedhimself. "In fact, it would be almost a pity----"She thought she detected a slight condescension in histone, and asked sharply: "Why?""Because it's so much pleasanter, in a small librarylike this, to poke about by one's self--with the helpof the librarian."He added the last phrase so respectfully that she wasmollified, and rejoined with a sigh: "I'm afraid Ican't help you much.""Why?" he questioned in his turn; and she replied thatthere weren't many books anyhow, and that she'd hardlyread any of them. "The worms are getting at them," sheadded gloomily.
　　"Are they? That's a pity, for I see there are some goodones." He seemed to have lost interest in theirconversation, and strolled away again, apparentlyforgetting her. His indifference nettled her, and shepicked up her work, resolved not to offer him the leastassistance. Apparently he did not need it, for hespent a long time with his back to her, lifting down,one after another, the tall cob-webby volumes from adistant shelf.
　　"Oh, I say!" he exclaimed; and looking up she saw thathe had drawn out his handkerchief and was carefullywiping the edges of the book in his hand. The actionstruck her as an unwarranted criticism on her care ofthe books, and she said irritably: "It's not my faultif they're dirty."He turned around and looked at her with revivinginterest. "Ah--then you're not the librarian?""Of course I am; but I can't dust all these books.
　　Besides, nobody ever looks at them, now Miss Hatchard'stoo lame to come round.""No, I suppose not." He laid down the book he had beenwiping, and stood considering her in silence. Shewondered if Miss Hatchard had sent him round to pryinto the way the library was looked after, and thesuspicion increased her resentment. "I saw you goinginto her house just now, didn't I?" she asked, with theNew England avoidance of the proper name. She wasdetermined to find out why he was poking about amongher books.
　　"Miss Hatchard's house? Yes--she's my cousin and I'mstaying there," the young man answered; adding, as ifto disarm a visible distrust: "My name is Harney--Lucius Harney. She may have spoken of me.""No, she hasn't," said Charity, wishing she could havesaid: "Yes, she has.""Oh, well----" said Miss Hatchard's cousin with alaugh; and after another pause, during which itoccurred to Charity that her answer had not beenencouraging, he remarked: "You don't seem strong onarchitecture."Her bewilderment was complete: the more she wished toappear to understand him the more unintelligible hisremarks became. He reminded her of the gentleman whohad "explained" the pictures at Nettleton, and theweight of her ignorance settled down on her again likea pall.
　　"I mean, I can't see that you have any books on the oldhouses about here. I suppose, for that matter, thispart of the country hasn't been much explored. Theyall go on doing Plymouth and Salem. So stupid. Mycousin's house, now, is remarkable. This place musthave had a past--it must have been more of a placeonce." He stopped short, with the blush of a shy manwho overhears himself, and fears he has been voluble.
　　"I'm an architect, you see, and I'm hunting up oldhouses in these parts."She stared. "Old houses? Everything's old in NorthDormer, isn't it? The folks are, anyhow."He laughed, and wandered away again.
　　"Haven't you any kind of a history of the place?
　　I think there was one written about 1840: a book orpamphlet about its first settlement," he presently saidfrom the farther end of the room.
　　She pressed her crochet hook against her lip andpondered. There was such a work, she knew: "NorthDormer and the Early Townships of Eagle County." Shehad a special grudge against it because it was a limpweakly book that was always either falling off theshelf or slipping back and disappearing if one squeezedit in between sustaining volumes. She remembered, thelast time she had picked it up, wondering how anyonecould have taken the trouble to write a book aboutNorth Dormer and its neighbours: Dormer, Hamblin,Creston and Creston River. She knew them all, mere lostclusters of houses in the folds of the desolate ridges:
　　Dormer, where North Dormer went for its apples; CrestonRiver, where there used to be a paper-mill, and itsgrey walls stood decaying by the stream; and Hamblin,where the first snow always fell. Such were theirtitles to fame.
　　She got up and began to move about vaguely before theshelves. But she had no idea where she had last putthe book, and something told her that it was going toplay her its usual trick and remain invisible. It wasnot one of her lucky days.
　　"I guess it's somewhere," she said, to prove her zeal;but she spoke without conviction, and felt that herwords conveyed none.
　　"Oh, well----" he said again. She knew he was going,and wished more than ever to find the book.
　　"It will be for next time," he added; and picking upthe volume he had laid on the desk he handed it to her.
　　"By the way, a little air and sun would do this good;it's rather valuable."He gave her a nod and smile, and passed out.
Chapter 2
    The hours of the Hatchard Memorial librarian were fromthree to five; and Charity Royall's sense of dutyusually kept her at her desk until nearly half-pastfour.
　　But she had never perceived that any practicaladvantage thereby accrued either to North Dormer or toherself; and she had no scruple in decreeing, when itsuited her, that the library should close an hourearlier. A few minutes after Mr. Harney's departureshe formed this decision, put away her lace, fastenedthe shutters, and turned the key in the door of thetemple of knowledge.
　　The street upon which she emerged was still empty: andafter glancing up and down it she began to walk towardher house. But instead of entering she passed on,turned into a field-path and mounted to a pasture onthe hillside. She let down the bars of the gate,followed a trail along the crumbling wall of thepasture, and walked on till she reached a knoll where aclump of larches shook out their fresh tassels to thewind. There she lay down on the slope, tossed off herhat and hid her face in the grass.
　　She was blind and insensible to many things, and dimlyknew it; but to all that was light and air, perfume andcolour, every drop of blood in her responded. Sheloved the roughness of the dry mountain grass under herpalms, the smell of the thyme into which she crushedher face, the fingering of the wind in her hair andthrough her cotton blouse, and the creak of the larchesas they swayed to it.
　　She often climbed up the hill and lay there alone forthe mere pleasure of feeling the wind and of rubbingher cheeks in the grass. Generally at such times shedid not think of anything, but lay immersed in aninarticulate well-being. Today the sense of well-beingwas intensified by her joy at escaping from thelibrary. She liked well enough to have a friend drop inand talk to her when she was on duty, but she hated tobe bothered about books. How could she remember wherethey were, when they were so seldom asked for? Orma Fryoccasionally took out a novel, and her brother Ben wasfond of what he called "jography," and of booksrelating to trade and bookkeeping; but no one elseasked for anything except, at intervals, "Uncle Tom'sCabin," or "Opening of a Chestnut Burr," or Longfellow.
　　She had these under her hand, and could have found themin the dark; but unexpected demands came so rarely thatthey exasperated her like an injustice....
　　She had liked the young man's looks, and his short-sighted eyes, and his odd way of speaking, that wasabrupt yet soft, just as his hands were sun-burnt andsinewy, yet with smooth nails like a woman's. His hairwas sunburnt-looking too, or rather the colour ofbracken after frost; his eyes grey, with the appealinglook of the shortsighted, his smile shy yet confident,as if he knew lots of things she had never dreamed of,and yet wouldn't for the world have had her feel hissuperiority. But she did feel it, and liked thefeeling; for it was new to her. Poor and ignorant asshe was, and knew herself to be--humblest of the humbleeven in North Dormer, where to come from the Mountainwas the worst disgrace--yet in her narrow world she hadalways ruled. It was partly, of course, owing to thefact that lawyer Royall was "the biggest man in NorthDormer"; so much too big for it, in fact, thatoutsiders, who didn't know, always wondered how it heldhim. In spite of everything--and in spite even of MissHatchard--lawyer Royall ruled in North Dormer; andCharity ruled in lawyer Royall's house. She had neverput it to herself in those terms; but she knew herpower, knew what it was made of, and hated it.
　　Confusedly, the young man in the library had made herfeel for the first time what might be the sweetness ofdependence.
　　She sat up, brushed the bits of grass from her hair,and looked down on the house where she held sway. Itstood just below her, cheerless and untended, its fadedred front divided from the road by a "yard" with a pathbordered by gooseberry bushes, a stone well overgrownwith traveller's joy, and a sickly Crimson Rambler tiedto a fan-shaped support, which Mr. Royall had oncebrought up from Hepburn to please her. Behind thehouse a bit of uneven ground with clothes-lines strungacross it stretched up to a dry wall, and beyond thewall a patch of corn and a few rows of potatoes strayedvaguely into the adjoining wilderness of rock and fern.
　　Charity could not recall her first sight of the house.
　　She had been told that she was ill of a fever when shewas brought down from the Mountain; and she could onlyremember waking one day in a cot at the foot of Mrs.
　　Royall's bed, and opening her eyes on the cold neatnessof the room that was afterward to be hers.
　　Mrs. Royall died seven or eight years later; and bythat time Charity had taken the measure of most thingsabout her. She knew that Mrs. Royall was sad and timidand weak; she knew that lawyer Royall was harsh andviolent, and still weaker. She knew that she had beenchristened Charity (in the white church at the otherend of the village) to commemorate Mr. Royall'sdisinterestedness in "bringing her down," and to keepalive in her a becoming sense of her dependence; sheknew that Mr. Royall was her guardian, but that he hadnot legally adopted her, though everybody spoke of heras Charity Royall; and she knew why he had come back tolive at North Dormer, instead of practising atNettleton, where he had begun his legal career.
　　After Mrs. Royall's death there was some talk ofsending her to a boarding-school. Miss Hatchardsuggested it, and had a long conference with Mr.
　　Royall, who, in pursuance of her plan, departed one dayfor Starkfield to visit the institution sherecommended. He came back the next night with a blackface; worse, Charity observed, than she had ever seenhim; and by that time she had had some experience.
　　When she asked him how soon she was to start heanswered shortly, "You ain't going," and shut himselfup in the room he called his office; and the next daythe lady who kept the school at Starkfield wrote that"under the circumstances" she was afraid she could notmake room just then for another pupil.
　　Charity was disappointed; but she understood. Itwasn't the temptations of Starkfield that had been Mr.
　　Royall's undoing; it was the thought of losing her. Hewas a dreadfully "lonesome" man; she had made that outbecause she was so "lonesome" herself. He and she,face to face in that sad house, had sounded the depthsof isolation; and though she felt no particularaffection for him, and not the slightest gratitude, shepitied him because she was conscious that he wassuperior to the people about him, and that she was theonly being between him and solitude. Therefore, whenMiss Hatchard sent for her a day or two later, to talkof a school at Nettleton, and to say that this time afriend of hers would "make the necessary arrangements,"Charity cut her short with the announcement that shehad decided not to leave North Dormer.
　　Miss Hatchard reasoned with her kindly, but to nopurpose; she simply repeated: "I guess Mr. Royall's toolonesome."Miss Hatchard blinked perplexedly behind her eye-glasses. Her long frail face was full of puzzledwrinkles, and she leant forward, resting her hands onthe arms of her mahogany armchair, with the evidentdesire to say something that ought to be said.
　　"The feeling does you credit, my dear."She looked about the pale walls of her sitting-room,seeking counsel of ancestral daguerreotypes anddidactic samplers; but they seemed to make utterancemore difficult.
　　"The fact is, it's not only--not only because of theadvantages. There are other reasons. You're too youngto understand----""Oh, no, I ain't," said Charity harshly; and MissHatchard blushed to the roots of her blonde cap. Butshe must have felt a vague relief at having herexplanation cut short, for she concluded, againinvoking the daguerreotypes: "Of course I shall alwaysdo what I can for you; and in case....in case....youknow you can always come to me...."Lawyer Royall was waiting for Charity in the porch whenshe returned from this visit. He had shaved, andbrushed his black coat, and looked a magnificentmonument of a man; at such moments she really admiredhim.
　　"Well," he said, "is it settled?""Yes, it's settled. I ain't going.""Not to the Nettleton school?""Not anywhere."He cleared his throat and asked sternly: "Why?""I'd rather not," she said, swinging past him on herway to her room. It was the following week that hebrought her up the Crimson Rambler and its fan fromHepburn. He had never given her anything before.
　　The next outstanding incident of her life had happenedtwo years later, when she was seventeen. LawyerRoyall, who hated to go to Nettleton, had been calledthere in connection with a case. He still exercisedhis profession, though litigation languished in NorthDormer and its outlying hamlets; and for once he hadhad an opportunity that he could not afford to refuse.
　　He spent three days in Nettleton, won his case, andcame back in high good-humour. It was a rare mood withhim, and manifested itself on this occasion by histalking impressively at the supper-table of the"rousing welcome" his old friends had given him. Hewound up confidentially: "I was a damn fool ever toleave Nettleton. It was Mrs. Royall that made me doit."Charity immediately perceived that something bitter hadhappened to him, and that he was trying to talk downthe recollection. She went up to bed early, leavinghim seated in moody thought, his elbows propped on theworn oilcloth of the supper table. On the way up shehad extracted from his overcoat pocket the key of thecupboard where the bottle of whiskey was kept.
　　She was awakened by a rattling at her door and jumpedout of bed. She heard Mr. Royall's voice, low andperemptory, and opened the door, fearing an accident.
　　No other thought had occurred to her; but when she sawhim in the doorway, a ray from the autumn moon fallingon his discomposed face, she understood.
　　For a moment they looked at each other in silence;then, as he put his foot across the threshold, shestretched out her arm and stopped him.
　　"You go right back from here," she said, in a shrillvoice that startled her; "you ain't going to have thatkey tonight.""Charity, let me in. I don't want the key. I'm alonesome man," he began, in the deep voice thatsometimes moved her.
　　Her heart gave a startled plunge, but she continued tohold him back contemptuously. "Well, I guess you madea mistake, then. This ain't your wife's room anylonger."She was not frightened, she simply felt a deep disgust;and perhaps he divined it or read it in her face, forafter staring at her a moment he drew back and turnedslowly away from the door. With her ear to her keyholeshe heard him feel his way down the dark stairs, andtoward the kitchen; and she listened for the crash ofthe cupboard panel, but instead she heard him, after aninterval, unlock the door of the house, and his heavysteps came to her through the silence as he walked downthe path. She crept to the window and saw his bentfigure striding up the road in the moonlight. Then abelated sense of fear came to her with theconsciousness of victory, and she slipped into bed,cold to the bone.
　　A day or two later poor Eudora Skeff, who for twentyyears had been the custodian of the Hatchard library,died suddenly of pneumonia; and the day after thefuneral Charity went to see Miss Hatchard, and asked tobe appointed librarian. The request seemed to surpriseMiss Hatchard: she evidently questioned the newcandidate's qualifications.
　　"Why, I don't know, my dear. Aren't you rather tooyoung?" she hesitated.
　　"I want to earn some money," Charity merely answered.
　　"Doesn't Mr. Royall give you all you require? No one isrich in North Dormer.""I want to earn money enough to get away.""To get away?" Miss Hatchard's puzzled wrinklesdeepened, and there was a distressful pause. "You wantto leave Mr. Royall?""Yes: or I want another woman in the house with me,"said Charity resolutely.
　　Miss Hatchard clasped her nervous hands about the armsof her chair. Her eyes invoked the faded countenanceson the wall, and after a faint cough of indecision shebrought out: "The...the housework's too hard for you, Isuppose?"Charity's heart grew cold. She understood that MissHatchard had no help to give her and that she wouldhave to fight her way out of her difficulty alone. Adeeper sense of isolation overcame her; she feltincalculably old. "She's got to be talked to like ababy," she thought, with a feeling of compassion forMiss Hatchard's long immaturity. "Yes, that's it," shesaid aloud. "The housework's too hard for me: I'vebeen coughing a good deal this fall."She noted the immediate effect of this suggestion. MissHatchard paled at the memory of poor Eudora's taking-off, and promised to do what she could. But of coursethere were people she must consult: the clergyman, theselectmen of North Dormer, and a distant Hatchardrelative at Springfield. "If you'd only gone toschool!" she sighed. She followed Charity to the door,and there, in the security of the threshold, said witha glance of evasive appeal: "I know Mr. Royallis...trying at times; but his wife bore with him; andyou must always remember, Charity, that it was Mr.
　　Royall who brought you down from the Mountain." Charitywent home and opened the door of Mr. Royall's "office."He was sitting there by the stove reading DanielWebster's speeches. They had met at meals during thefive days that had elapsed since he had come to herdoor, and she had walked at his side at Eudora'sfuneral; but they had not spoken a word to each other.
　　He glanced up in surprise as she entered, and shenoticed that he was unshaved, and that he lookedunusually old; but as she had always thought of him asan old man the change in his appearance did not moveher. She told him she had been to see Miss Hatchard,and with what object. She saw that he was astonished;but he made no comment.
　　"I told her the housework was too hard for me, and Iwanted to earn the money to pay for a hired girl. ButI ain't going to pay for her: you've got to. I want tohave some money of my own."Mr. Royall's bushy black eyebrows were drawn togetherin a frown, and he sat drumming with ink-stained nailson the edge of his desk.
　　"What do you want to earn money for?" he asked.
　　"So's to get away when I want to.""Why do you want to get away?"Her contempt flashed out. "Do you suppose anybody'dstay at North Dormer if they could help it? Youwouldn't, folks say!"With lowered head he asked: "Where'd you go to?""Anywhere where I can earn my living. I'll try herefirst, and if I can't do it here I'll go somewhereelse. I'll go up the Mountain if I have to." Shepaused on this threat, and saw that it had takeneffect. "I want you should get Miss Hatchard and theselectmen to take me at the library: and I want a womanhere in the house with me," she repeated.
　　Mr. Royall had grown exceedingly pale. When she endedhe stood up ponderously, leaning against the desk; andfor a second or two they looked at each other.
　　"See here," he said at length as though utterance weredifficult, "there's something I've been wanting to sayto you; I'd ought to have said it before. I want youto marry me."The girl still stared at him without moving. "I wantyou to marry me," he repeated, clearing his throat.
　　"The minister'll be up here next Sunday and we can fixit up then. Or I'll drive you down to Hepburn to theJustice, and get it done there. I'll do whatever yousay." His eyes fell under the merciless stare shecontinued to fix on him, and he shifted his weightuneasily from one foot to the other. As he stood therebefore her, unwieldy, shabby, disordered, the purpleveins distorting the hands he pressed against the desk,and his long orator's jaw trembling with the effort ofhis avowal, he seemed like a hideous parody of thefatherly old man she had always known.
　　"Marry you? Me?" she burst out with a scornful laugh.
　　"Was that what you came to ask me the other night?
　　What's come over you, I wonder? How long is it sinceyou've looked at yourself in the glass?" Shestraightened herself, insolently conscious of her youthand strength. "I suppose you think it would be cheaperto marry me than to keep a hired girl. Everybody knowsyou're the closest man in Eagle County; but I guessyou're not going to get your mending done for you thatway twice."Mr. Royall did not move while she spoke. His face wasash-coloured and his black eyebrows quivered as thoughthe blaze of her scorn had blinded him. When sheceased he held up his hand.
　　"That'll do--that'll about do," he said. He turned tothe door and took his hat from the hat-peg. On thethreshold he paused. "People ain't been fair to me--from the first they ain't been fair to me," he said.
　　Then he went out.
　　A few days later North Dormer learned with surprisethat Charity had been appointed librarian of theHatchard Memorial at a salary of eight dollars a month,and that old Verena Marsh, from the Creston Almshouse,was coming to live at lawyer Royall's and do thecooking.
Chapter 3
    It was not in the room known at the red house as Mr.
　　Royall's "office" that he received his infrequentclients. Professional dignity and masculineindependence made it necessary that he should have areal office, under a different roof; and his standingas the only lawyer of North Dormer required that theroof should be the same as that which sheltered theTown Hall and the post-office.
　　It was his habit to walk to this office twice a day,morning and afternoon. It was on the ground floor ofthe building, with a separate entrance, and a weatheredname-plate on the door. Before going in he stepped into the post-office for his mail--usually an emptyceremony--said a word or two to the town-clerk, who satacross the passage in idle state, and then went over tothe store on the opposite corner, where Carrick Fry,the storekeeper, always kept a chair for him, and wherehe was sure to find one or two selectmen leaning on thelong counter, in an atmosphere of rope, leather, tarand coffee-beans. Mr. Royall, though monosyllabic athome, was not averse, in certain moods, to impartinghis views to his fellow-townsmen; perhaps, also, he wasunwilling that his rare clients should surprise himsitting, clerkless and unoccupied, in his dusty office.
　　At any rate, his hours there were not much longer ormore regular than Charity's at the library; the rest ofthe time he spent either at the store or in drivingabout the country on business connected with theinsurance companies that he represented, or in sittingat home reading Bancroft's History of the United Statesand the speeches of Daniel Webster.
　　Since the day when Charity had told him that she wishedto succeed to Eudora Skeff's post their relations hadundefinably but definitely changed. Lawyer Royall hadkept his word. He had obtained the place for her atthe cost of considerable maneuvering, as she guessedfrom the number of rival candidates, and from theacerbity with which two of them, Orma Fry and theeldest Targatt girl, treated her for nearly a yearafterward. And he had engaged Verena Marsh to come upfrom Creston and do the cooking. Verena was a poor oldwidow, doddering and shiftless: Charity suspected thatshe came for her keep. Mr. Royall was too close a manto give a dollar a day to a smart girl when he couldget a deaf pauper for nothing. But at any rate, Verenawas there, in the attic just over Charity, and the factthat she was deaf did not greatly trouble the younggirl.
　　Charity knew that what had happened on that hatefulnight would not happen again. She understood that,profoundly as she had despised Mr. Royall ever since,he despised himself still more profoundly. If she hadasked for a woman in the house it was far less for herown defense than for his humiliation. She needed noone to defend her: his humbled pride was her surestprotection. He had never spoken a word of excuse orextenuation; the incident was as if it had never been.
　　Yet its consequences were latent in every word that heand she exchanged, in every glance they instinctivelyturned from each other. Nothing now would ever shakeher rule in the red house.
　　On the night of her meeting with Miss Hatchard's cousinCharity lay in bed, her bare arms clasped under herrough head, and continued to think of him. Shesupposed that he meant to spend some time in NorthDormer. He had said he was looking up the old houses inthe neighbourhood; and though she was not very clear asto his purpose, or as to why anyone should look for oldhouses, when they lay in wait for one on everyroadside, she understood that he needed the help ofbooks, and resolved to hunt up the next day the volumeshe had failed to find, and any others that seemedrelated to the subject.
　　Never had her ignorance of life and literature soweighed on her as in reliving the short scene of herdiscomfiture. "It's no use trying to be anything inthis place," she muttered to her pillow; and sheshrivelled at the vision of vague metropolises, shiningsuper-Nettletons, where girls in better clothes thanBelle Balch's talked fluently of architecture to youngmen with hands like Lucius Harney's. Then sheremembered his sudden pause when he had come close tothe desk and had his first look at her. The sight hadmade him forget what he was going to say; she recalledthe change in his face, and jumping up she ran over thebare boards to her washstand, found the matches, lit acandle, and lifted it to the square of looking-glass onthe white-washed wall. Her small face, usually sodarkly pale, glowed like a rose in the faint orb oflight, and under her rumpled hair her eyes seemeddeeper and larger than by day. Perhaps after all itwas a mistake to wish they were blue. A clumsy bandand button fastened her unbleached night-gown about thethroat. She undid it, freed her thin shoulders, and sawherself a bride in low-necked satin, walking down anaisle with Lucius Harney. He would kiss her as theyleft the church....She put down the candle and coveredher face with her hands as if to imprison the kiss. Atthat moment she heard Mr. Royall's step as he came upthe stairs to bed, and a fierce revulsion of feelingswept over her. Until then she had merely despisedhim; now deep hatred of him filled her heart. He becameto her a horrible old man....
　　The next day, when Mr. Royall came back to dinner, theyfaced each other in silence as usual. Verena'spresence at the table was an excuse for their nottalking, though her deafness would have permitted thefreest interchange of confidences. But when the mealwas over, and Mr. Royall rose from the table, he lookedback at Charity, who had stayed to help the old womanclear away the dishes.
　　"I want to speak to you a minute," he said; and shefollowed him across the passage, wondering.
　　He seated himself in his black horse-hair armchair, andshe leaned against the window, indifferently. She wasimpatient to be gone to the library, to hunt for thebook on North Dormer.
　　"See here," he said, "why ain't you at the library thedays you're supposed to be there?"The question, breaking in on her mood of blissfulabstraction, deprived her of speech, and she stared athim for a moment without answering.
　　"Who says I ain't?""There's been some complaints made, it appears. MissHatchard sent for me this morning----"Charity's smouldering resentment broke into a blaze. "Iknow! Orma Fry, and that toad of a Targatt girl and BenFry, like as not. He's going round with her. The low-down sneaks--I always knew they'd try to have me out!
　　As if anybody ever came to the library, anyhow!""Somebody did yesterday, and you weren't there.""Yesterday?" she laughed at her happy recollection. "Atwhat time wasn't I there yesterday, I'd like to know?""Round about four o'clock."Charity was silent. She had been so steeped in thedreamy remembrance of young Harney's visit that she hadforgotten having deserted her post as soon as he hadleft the library.
　　"Who came at four o'clock?""Miss Hatchard did.""Miss Hatchard? Why, she ain't ever been near the placesince she's been lame. She couldn't get up the stepsif she tried.""She can be helped up, I guess. She was yesterday,anyhow, by the young fellow that's staying with her. Hefound you there, I understand, earlier in theafternoon; and he went back and told Miss Hatchard thebooks were in bad shape and needed attending to. Shegot excited, and had herself wheeled straight round;and when she got there the place was locked. So shesent for me, and told me about that, and about theother complaints. She claims you've neglected things,and that she's going to get a trained librarian."Charity had not moved while he spoke. She stood withher head thrown back against the window-frame, her armshanging against her sides, and her hands so tightlyclenched that she felt, without knowing what hurt her,the sharp edge of her nails against her palms.
　　Of all Mr. Royall had said she had retained only thephrase: "He told Miss Hatchard the books were in badshape." What did she care for the other charges againsther? Malice or truth, she despised them as she despisedher detractors. But that the stranger to whom she hadfelt herself so mysteriously drawn should have betrayedher! That at the very moment when she had fled up thehillside to think of him more deliciously he shouldhave been hastening home to denounce her short-comings!
　　She remembered how, in the darkness of her room, shehad covered her face to press his imagined kiss closer;and her heart raged against him for the liberty he hadnot taken.
　　"Well, I'll go," she said suddenly. "I'll go rightoff.""Go where?" She heard the startled note in Mr. Royall'svoice.
　　"Why, out of their old library: straight out, and neverset foot in it again. They needn't think I'm going towait round and let them say they've discharged me!""Charity--Charity Royall, you listen----" he began,getting heavily out of his chair; but she waved himaside, and walked out of the room.
　　Upstairs she took the library key from the place whereshe always hid it under her pincushion--who said shewasn't careful?--put on her hat, and swept down againand out into the street. If Mr. Royall heard her go hemade no motion to detain her: his sudden rages probablymade him understand the uselessness of reasoning withhers.
　　She reached the brick temple, unlocked the door andentered into the glacial twilight. "I'm glad I'llnever have to sit in this old vault again when otherfolks are out in the sun!" she said aloud as thefamiliar chill took her. She looked with abhorrence atthe long dingy rows of books, the sheep-nosed Minervaon her black pedestal, and the mild-faced young man ina high stock whose effigy pined above her desk. Shemeant to take out of the drawer her roll of lace andthe library register, and go straight to Miss Hatchardto announce her resignation. But suddenly a greatdesolation overcame her, and she sat down and laid herface against the desk. Her heart was ravaged by life'scruelest discovery: the first creature who had cometoward her out of the wilderness had brought heranguish instead of joy. She did not cry; tears camehard to her, and the storms of her heart spentthemselves inwardly. But as she sat there in her dumbwoe she felt her life to be too desolate, too ugly andintolerable.
　　"What have I ever done to it, that it should hurt meso?" she groaned, and pressed her fists against herlids, which were beginning to swell with weeping.
　　"I won't--I won't go there looking like a horror!" shemuttered, springing up and pushing back her hair as ifit stifled her. She opened the drawer, dragged out theregister, and turned toward the door. As she did so itopened, and the young man from Miss Hatchard's came inwhistling.
Chapter 4
    He stopped and lifted his hat with a shy smile. "I begyour pardon," he said. "I thought there was no onehere."Charity stood before him, barring his way. "You can'tcome in. The library ain't open to the publicWednesdays.""I know it's not; but my cousin gave me her key.""Miss Hatchard's got no right to give her key to otherfolks, any more'n I have. I'm the librarian and I knowthe by-laws. This is my library."The young man looked profoundly surprised.
　　"Why, I know it is; I'm so sorry if you mind mycoming.""I suppose you came to see what more you could say toset her against me? But you needn't trouble: it's mylibrary today, but it won't be this time tomorrow. I'mon the way now to take her back the key and theregister."Young Harney's face grew grave, but without betrayingthe consciousness of guilt she had looked for.
　　"I don't understand," he said. "There must be somemistake. Why should I say things against you to MissHatchard--or to anyone?"The apparent evasiveness of the reply caused Charity'sindignation to overflow. "I don't know why you should.
　　I could understand Orma Fry's doing it, because she'salways wanted to get me out of here ever since thefirst day. I can't see why, when she's got her ownhome, and her father to work for her; nor Ida Targatt,neither, when she got a legacy from her step-brotheron'y last year. But anyway we all live in the sameplace, and when it's a place like North Dormer it'senough to make people hate each other just to have towalk down the same street every day. But you don'tlive here, and you don't know anything about any of us,so what did you have to meddle for? Do you suppose theother girls'd have kept the books any better'n I did?
　　Why, Orma Fry don't hardly know a book from a flat-iron! And what if I don't always sit round here doingnothing till it strikes five up at the church? Whocares if the library's open or shut? Do you supposeanybody ever comes here for books? What they'd like tocome for is to meet the fellows they're going with ifI'd let 'em. But I wouldn't let Bill Sollas from overthe hill hang round here waiting for the youngestTargatt girl, because I know him...that's all...even ifI don't know about books all I ought to...."She stopped with a choking in her throat. Tremors ofrage were running through her, and she steadied herselfagainst the edge of the desk lest he should see herweakness.
　　What he saw seemed to affect him deeply, for he grewred under his sunburn, and stammered out: "But, MissRoyall, I assure you...I assure you..."His distress inflamed her anger, and she regained hervoice to fling back: "If I was you I'd have the nerveto stick to what I said!"The taunt seemed to restore his presence of mind. "Ihope I should if I knew; but I don't. Apparentlysomething disagreeable has happened, for which youthink I'm to blame. But I don't know what it is,because I've been up on Eagle Ridge ever since theearly morning.""I don't know where you've been this morning, but Iknow you were here in this library yesterday; and itwas you that went home and told your cousin the bookswere in bad shape, and brought her round to see how I'dneglected them."Young Harney looked sincerely concerned. "Was thatwhat you were told? I don't wonder you're angry. Thebooks are in bad shape, and as some are interestingit's a pity. I told Miss Hatchard they were sufferingfrom dampness and lack of air; and I brought her hereto show her how easily the place could be ventilated. Ialso told her you ought to have some one to help you dothe dusting and airing. If you were given a wrongversion of what I said I'm sorry; but I'm so fond ofold books that I'd rather see them made into a bonfirethan left to moulder away like these."Charity felt her sobs rising and tried to stifle themin words. "I don't care what you say you told her. AllI know is she thinks it's all my fault, and I'm goingto lose my job, and I wanted it more'n anyone in thevillage, because I haven't got anybody belonging to me,the way other folks have. All I wanted was to putaside money enough to get away from here sometime.
　　D'you suppose if it hadn't been for that I'd have kepton sitting day after day in this old vault?"Of this appeal her hearer took up only the lastquestion. "It is an old vault; but need it be? That'sthe point. And it's my putting the question to mycousin that seems to have been the cause of thetrouble." His glance explored the melancholy penumbraof the long narrow room, resting on the blotched walls,the discoloured rows of books, and the stern rosewooddesk surmounted by the portrait of the young Honorius.
　　"Of course it's a bad job to do anything with abuilding jammed against a hill like this ridiculousmausoleum: you couldn't get a good draught through itwithout blowing a hole in the mountain. But it can beventilated after a fashion, and the sun can be let in:
　　I'll show you how if you like...." The architect'spassion for improvement had already made him lose sightof her grievance, and he lifted his stick instructivelytoward the cornice. But her silence seemed to tell himthat she took no interest in the ventilation of thelibrary, and turning back to her abruptly he held outboth hands. "Look here--you don't mean what you said?
　　You don't really think I'd do anything to hurt you?"A new note in his voice disarmed her: no one had everspoken to her in that tone.
　　"Oh, what DID you do it for then?" she wailed. Hehad her hands in his, and she was feeling the smoothtouch that she had imagined the day before on thehillside.
　　He pressed her hands lightly and let them go. "Why, tomake things pleasanter for you here; and better for thebooks. I'm sorry if my cousin twisted around what Isaid. She's excitable, and she lives on trifles: Iought to have remembered that. Don't punish me byletting her think you take her seriously."It was wonderful to hear him speak of Miss Hatchard asif she were a querulous baby: in spite of his shynesshe had the air of power that the experience of citiesprobably gave. It was the fact of having lived inNettleton that made lawyer Royall, in spite of hisinfirmities, the strongest man in North Dormer; andCharity was sure that this young man had lived inbigger places than Nettleton.
　　She felt that if she kept up her denunciatory tone hewould secretly class her with Miss Hatchard; and thethought made her suddenly simple.
　　"It don't matter to Miss Hatchard how I take her. Mr.
　　Royall says she's going to get a trained librarian; andI'd sooner resign than have the village say she sent meaway.""Naturally you would. But I'm sure she doesn't mean tosend you away. At any rate, won't you give me thechance to find out first and let you know? It will betime enough to resign if I'm mistaken."Her pride flamed into her cheeks at the suggestion ofhis intervening. "I don't want anybody should coax herto keep me if I don't suit."He coloured too. "I give you my word I won't do that.
　　Only wait till tomorrow, will you?" He looked straightinto her eyes with his shy grey glance. "You can trustme, you know--you really can."All the old frozen woes seemed to melt in her, and shemurmured awkwardly, looking away from him: "Oh, I'llwait."
Chapter 5
    There had never been such a June in Eagle County.
　　Usually it was a month of moods, with abruptalternations of belated frost and mid-summer heat; thisyear, day followed day in a sequence of temperatebeauty. Every morning a breeze blew steadily from thehills. Toward noon it built up great canopies ofwhite cloud that threw a cool shadow over fields andwoods; then before sunset the clouds dissolved again,and the western light rained its unobstructedbrightness on the valley.
　　On such an afternoon Charity Royall lay on a ridgeabove a sunlit hollow, her face pressed to the earthand the warm currents of the grass running through her.
　　Directly in her line of vision a blackberry branch laidits frail white flowers and blue-green leaves againstthe sky. Just beyond, a tuft of sweet-fern uncurledbetween the beaded shoots of the grass, and a smallyellow butterfly vibrated over them like a fleck ofsunshine. This was all she saw; but she felt, aboveher and about her, the strong growth of the beechesclothing the ridge, the rounding of pale green cones oncountless spruce-branches, the push of myriads ofsweet-fern fronds in the cracks of the stony slopebelow the wood, and the crowding shoots of meadowsweetand yellow flags in the pasture beyond. All thisbubbling of sap and slipping of sheaths and bursting ofcalyxes was carried to her on mingled currents offragrance. Every leaf and bud and blade seemed tocontribute its exhalation to the pervading sweetness inwhich the pungency of pine-sap prevailed over the spiceof thyme and the subtle perfume of fern, and all weremerged in a moist earth-smell that was like the breathof some huge sun-warmed animal.
　　Charity had lain there a long time, passive and sun-warmed as the slope on which she lay, when there camebetween her eyes and the dancing butterfly the sight ofa man's foot in a large worn boot covered with red mud.
　　"Oh, don't!" she exclaimed, raising herself on herelbow and stretching out a warning hand.
　　"Don't what?" a hoarse voice asked above her head.
　　"Don't stamp on those bramble flowers, you dolt!" sheretorted, springing to her knees. The foot paused andthen descended clumsily on the frail branch, andraising her eyes she saw above her the bewildered faceof a slouching man with a thin sunburnt beard, andwhite arms showing through his ragged shirt.
　　"Don't you ever SEE anything, Liff Hyatt?" sheassailed him, as he stood before her with the look of aman who has stirred up a wasp's nest.
　　He grinned. "I seen you! That's what I come down for.""Down from where?" she questioned, stooping to gatherup the petals his foot had scattered.
　　He jerked his thumb toward the heights. "Been cuttingdown trees for Dan Targatt."Charity sank back on her heels and looked at himmusingly. She was not in the least afraid of poor LiffHyatt, though he "came from the Mountain," and some ofthe girls ran when they saw him. Among the morereasonable he passed for a harmless creature, a sort oflink between the mountain and civilized folk, whooccasionally came down and did a little wood cuttingfor a farmer when hands were short. Besides, she knewthe Mountain people would never hurt her: Liff himselfhad told her so once when she was a little girl, andhad met him one day at the edge of lawyer Royall'spasture. "They won't any of 'em touch you up there,f'ever you was to come up....But I don't s'pose youwill," he had added philosophically, looking at her newshoes, and at the red ribbon that Mrs. Royall had tiedin her hair.
　　Charity had, in truth, never felt any desire to visither birthplace. She did not care to have it known thatshe was of the Mountain, and was shy of being seen intalk with Liff Hyatt. But today she was not sorry tohave him appear. A great many things had happened toher since the day when young Lucius Harney had enteredthe doors of the Hatchard Memorial, but none, perhaps,so unforeseen as the fact of her suddenly finding it aconvenience to be on good terms with Liff Hyatt. Shecontinued to look up curiously at his freckled weather-beaten face, with feverish hollows below the cheekbonesand the pale yellow eyes of a harmless animal. "Iwonder if he's related to me?" she thought, with ashiver of disdain.
　　"Is there any folks living in the brown house by theswamp, up under Porcupine?" she presently asked in anindifferent tone.
　　Liff Hyatt, for a while, considered her with surprise;then he scratched his head and shifted his weight fromone tattered sole to the other.
　　"There's always the same folks in the brown house," hesaid with his vague grin.
　　"They're from up your way, ain't they?""Their name's the same as mine," he rejoineduncertainly.
　　Charity still held him with resolute eyes. "See here,I want to go there some day and take a gentleman withme that's boarding with us. He's up in these partsdrawing pictures."She did not offer to explain this statement. It wastoo far beyond Liff Hyatt's limitations for the attemptto be worth making. "He wants to see the brown house,and go all over it," she pursued.
　　Liff was still running his fingers perplexedly throughhis shock of straw-colored hair. "Is it a fellow fromthe city?" he asked.
　　"Yes. He draws pictures of things. He's down therenow drawing the Bonner house." She pointed to a chimneyjust visible over the dip of the pasture below thewood.
　　"The Bonner house?" Liff echoed incredulously.
　　"Yes. You won't understand--and it don't matter. AllI say is: he's going to the Hyatts' in a day or two."Liff looked more and more perplexed. "Bash is uglysometimes in the afternoons."She threw her head back, her eyes full on Hyatt's. "I'mcoming too: you tell him.""They won't none of them trouble you, the Hyatts won't.
　　What d'you want a take a stranger with you though?"I've told you, haven't I? You've got to tell BashHyatt."He looked away at the blue mountains on the horizon;then his gaze dropped to the chimney-top below thepasture.
　　"He's down there now?""Yes."He shifted his weight again, crossed his arms, andcontinued to survey the distant landscape. "Well, solong," he said at last, inconclusively; and turningaway he shambled up the hillside. From the ledge aboveher, he paused to call down: "I wouldn't go there aSunday"; then he clambered on till the trees closed inon him. Presently, from high overhead, Charity heardthe ring of his axe.
　　She lay on the warm ridge, thinking of many things thatthe woodsman's appearance had stirred up in her. Sheknew nothing of her early life, and had never felt anycuriosity about it: only a sullen reluctance to explorethe corner of her memory where certain blurred imageslingered. But all that had happened to her within thelast few weeks had stirred her to the sleeping depths.
　　She had become absorbingly interesting to herself, andeverything that had to do with her past was illuminatedby this sudden curiosity.
　　She hated more than ever the fact of coming from theMountain; but it was no longer indifferent to her.
　　Everything that in any way affected her was alive andvivid: even the hateful things had grown interestingbecause they were a part of herself.
　　"I wonder if Liff Hyatt knows who my mother was?" shemused; and it filled her with a tremor of surprise tothink that some woman who was once young and slight,with quick motions of the blood like hers, had carriedher in her breast, and watched her sleeping. She hadalways thought of her mother as so long dead as to beno more than a nameless pinch of earth; but now itoccurred to her that the once-young woman might bealive, and wrinkled and elf-locked like the woman shehad sometimes seen in the door of the brown house thatLucius Harney wanted to draw.
　　The thought brought him back to the central point inher mind, and she strayed away from the conjecturesroused by Liff Hyatt's presence. Speculationsconcerning the past could not hold her long when thepresent was so rich, the future so rosy, and whenLucius Harney, a stone's throw away, was bending overhis sketch-book, frowning, calculating, measuring, andthen throwing his head back with the sudden smile thathad shed its brightness over everything.
　　She scrambled to her feet, but as she did so she sawhim coming up the pasture and dropped down on the grassto wait. When he was drawing and measuring one of "hishouses," as she called them, she often strayed away byherself into the woods or up the hillside. It waspartly from shyness that she did so: from a sense ofinadequacy that came to her most painfully when hercompanion, absorbed in his job, forgot her ignoranceand her inability to follow his least allusion, andplunged into a monologue on art and life. To avoid theawkwardness of listening with a blank face, and also toescape the surprised stare of the inhabitants of thehouses before which he would abruptly pull up theirhorse and open his sketch-book, she slipped away tosome spot from which, without being seen, she couldwatch him at work, or at least look down on the househe was drawing. She had not been displeased, at first,to have it known to North Dormer and the neighborhoodthat she was driving Miss Hatchard's cousin about thecountry in the buggy he had hired of lawyer Royall.
　　She had always kept to herself, contemptuously alooffrom village love-making, without exactly knowingwhether her fierce pride was due to the sense of hertainted origin, or whether she was reserving herselffor a more brilliant fate. Sometimes she envied theother girls their sentimental preoccupations, theirlong hours of inarticulate philandering with one of thefew youths who still lingered in the village; but whenshe pictured herself curling her hair or putting a newribbon on her hat for Ben Fry or one of the Sollas boysthe fever dropped and she relapsed into indifference.
　　Now she knew the meaning of her disdains andreluctances. She had learned what she was worth whenLucius Harney, looking at her for the first time, hadlost the thread of his speech, and leaned reddening onthe edge of her desk. But another kind of shyness hadbeen born in her: a terror of exposing to vulgar perilsthe sacred treasure of her happiness. She was notsorry to have the neighbors suspect her of "going with"a young man from the city; but she did not want itknown to all the countryside how many hours of the longJune days she spent with him. What she most feared wasthat the inevitable comments should reach Mr. Royall.
　　Charity was instinctively aware that few thingsconcerning her escaped the eyes of the silent man underwhose roof she lived; and in spite of the latitudewhich North Dormer accorded to courting couples she hadalways felt that, on the day when she showed too open apreference, Mr. Royall might, as she phrased it, makeher "pay for it." How, she did not know; and her fearwas the greater because it was undefinable. If she hadbeen accepting the attentions of one of the villageyouths she would have been less apprehensive: Mr.
　　Royall could not prevent her marrying when she choseto. But everybody knew that "going with a city fellow"was a different and less straightforward affair: almostevery village could show a victim of the perilousventure. And her dread of Mr. Royall's interventiongave a sharpened joy to the hours she spent with youngHarney, and made her, at the same time, shy of beingtoo generally seen with him.
　　As he approached she rose to her knees, stretching herarms above her head with the indolent gesture that washer way of expressing a profound well-being.
　　"I'm going to take you to that house up underPorcupine," she announced.
　　"What house? Oh, yes; that ramshackle place near theswamp, with the gipsy-looking people hanging about.
　　It's curious that a house with traces of realarchitecture should have been built in such a place.
　　But the people were a sulky-looking lot--do you supposethey'll let us in?""They'll do whatever I tell them," she said withassurance.
　　He threw himself down beside her. "Will they?" herejoined with a smile. "Well, I should like to seewhat's left inside the house. And I should like tohave a talk with the people. Who was it who wastelling me the other day that they had come down fromthe Mountain?"Charity shot a sideward look at him. It was the firsttime he had spoken of the Mountain except as a featureof the landscape. What else did he know about it, andabout her relation to it? Her heart began to beat withthe fierce impulse of resistance which sheinstinctively opposed to every imagined slight.
　　"The Mountain? I ain't afraid of the Mountain!"Her tone of defiance seemed to escape him. He laybreast-down on the grass, breaking off sprigs of thymeand pressing them against his lips. Far off, above thefolds of the nearer hills, the Mountain thrust itselfup menacingly against a yellow sunset.
　　"I must go up there some day: I want to see it," hecontinued.
　　Her heart-beats slackened and she turned again toexamine his profile. It was innocent of all unfriendlyintention.
　　"What'd you want to go up the Mountain for?""Why, it must be rather a curious place. There's aqueer colony up there, you know: sort of out-laws, alittle independent kingdom. Of course you've heardthem spoken of; but I'm told they have nothing to dowith the people in the valleys--rather look down onthem, in fact. I suppose they're rough customers; butthey must have a good deal of character."She did not quite know what he meant by having a gooddeal of character; but his tone was expressive ofadmiration, and deepened her dawning curiosity. Itstruck her now as strange that she knew so little aboutthe Mountain. She had never asked, and no one had everoffered to enlighten her. North Dormer took theMountain for granted, and implied its disparagement byan intonation rather than by explicit criticism.
　　"It's queer, you know," he continued, "that, just overthere, on top of that hill, there should be a handfulof people who don't give a damn for anybody."The words thrilled her. They seemed the clue to herown revolts and defiances, and she longed to have himtell her more.
　　"I don't know much about them. Have they always beenthere?""Nobody seems to know exactly how long. Down atCreston they told me that the first colonists aresupposed to have been men who worked on the railwaythat was built forty or fifty years ago betweenSpringfield and Nettleton. Some of them took to drink,or got into trouble with the police, and went off--disappeared into the woods. A year or two later therewas a report that they were living up on the Mountain.
　　Then I suppose others joined them--and children wereborn. Now they say there are over a hundred people upthere. They seem to be quite outside the jurisdictionof the valleys. No school, no church--and no sheriffever goes up to see what they're about. But don'tpeople ever talk of them at North Dormer?""I don't know. They say they're bad."He laughed. "Do they? We'll go and see, shall we?"She flushed at the suggestion, and turned her face tohis. "You never heard, I suppose--I come from there.
　　They brought me down when I was little.""You?" He raised himself on his elbow, looking at herwith sudden interest. "You're from the Mountain? Howcurious! I suppose that's why you're so different...."Her happy blood bathed her to the forehead. He waspraising her--and praising her because she came fromthe Mountain!
　　"Am I...different?" she triumphed, with affectedwonder.
　　"Oh, awfully!" He picked up her hand and laid a kiss onthe sunburnt knuckles.
　　"Come," he said, "let's be off." He stood up and shookthe grass from his loose grey clothes. "What a goodday! Where are you going to take me tomorrow?"
Chapter 6
    That evening after supper Charity sat alone in thekitchen and listened to Mr. Royall and young Harneytalking in the porch.
　　She had remained indoors after the table had beencleared and old Verena had hobbled up to bed. Thekitchen window was open, and Charity seated herselfnear it, her idle hands on her knee. The evening wascool and still. Beyond the black hills an amber westpassed into pale green, and then to a deep blue inwhich a great star hung. The soft hoot of a little owlcame through the dusk, and between its calls the men'svoices rose and fell.
　　Mr. Royall's was full of a sonorous satisfaction. Itwas a long time since he had had anyone of LuciusHarney's quality to talk to: Charity divined that theyoung man symbolized all his ruined and unforgottenpast. When Miss Hatchard had been called toSpringfield by the illness of a widowed sister, andyoung Harney, by that time seriously embarked on histask of drawing and measuring all the old housesbetween Nettleton and the New Hampshire border, hadsuggested the possibility of boarding at the red housein his cousin's absence, Charity had trembled lest Mr.
　　Royall should refuse. There had been no question oflodging the young man: there was no room for him. Butit appeared that he could still live at Miss Hatchard'sif Mr. Royall would let him take his meals at the redhouse; and after a day's deliberation Mr. Royallconsented.
　　Charity suspected him of being glad of the chance tomake a little money. He had the reputation of being anavaricious man; but she was beginning to think he wasprobably poorer than people knew. His practice hadbecome little more than a vague legend, revived only atlengthening intervals by a summons to Hepburn orNettleton; and he appeared to depend for his livingmainly on the scant produce of his farm, and on thecommissions received from the few insurance agenciesthat he represented in the neighbourhood. At any rate,he had been prompt in accepting Harney's offer to hirethe buggy at a dollar and a half a day; and hissatisfaction with the bargain had manifested itself,unexpectedly enough, at the end of the first week, byhis tossing a ten-dollar bill into Charity's lap as shesat one day retrimming her old hat.
　　"Here--go get yourself a Sunday bonnet that'll make allthe other girls mad," he said, looking at her with asheepish twinkle in his deep-set eyes; and sheimmediately guessed that the unwonted present--the onlygift of money she had ever received from him--represented Harney's first payment.
　　But the young man's coming had brought Mr. Royall otherthan pecuniary benefit. It gave him, for the firsttime in years, a man's companionship. Charity had onlya dim understanding of her guardian's needs; but sheknew he felt himself above the people among whom helived, and she saw that Lucius Harney thought him so.
　　She was surprised to find how well he seemed to talknow that he had a listener who understood him; and shewas equally struck by young Harney's friendlydeference.
　　Their conversation was mostly about politics, andbeyond her range; but tonight it had a peculiarinterest for her, for they had begun to speak of theMountain. She drew back a little, lest they should seeshe was in hearing.
　　"The Mountain? The Mountain?" she heard Mr. Royall say.
　　"Why, the Mountain's a blot--that's what it is, sir, ablot. That scum up there ought to have been run inlong ago--and would have, if the people down herehadn't been clean scared of them. The Mountain belongsto this township, and it's North Dormer's fault ifthere's a gang of thieves and outlaws living overthere, in sight of us, defying the laws of theircountry. Why, there ain't a sheriff or a tax-collectoror a coroner'd durst go up there. When they hear oftrouble on the Mountain the selectmen look the otherway, and pass an appropriation to beautify the townpump. The only man that ever goes up is the minister,and he goes because they send down and get him wheneverthere's any of them dies. They think a lot ofChristian burial on the Mountain--but I never heard oftheir having the minister up to marry them. And theynever trouble the Justice of the Peace either. Theyjust herd together like the heathen."He went on, explaining in somewhat technical languagehow the little colony of squatters had contrived tokeep the law at bay, and Charity, with burningeagerness, awaited young Harney's comment; but theyoung man seemed more concerned to hear Mr. Royall'sviews than to express his own.
　　"I suppose you've never been up there yourself?" hepresently asked.
　　"Yes, I have," said Mr. Royall with a contemptuouslaugh. "The wiseacres down here told me I'd be donefor before I got back; but nobody lifted a finger tohurt me. And I'd just had one of their gang sent upfor seven years too.""You went up after that?""Yes, sir: right after it. The fellow came down toNettleton and ran amuck, the way they sometimes do.
　　After they've done a wood-cutting job they come downand blow the money in; and this man ended up withmanslaughter. I got him convicted, though they werescared of the Mountain even at Nettleton; and then aqueer thing happened. The fellow sent for me to go andsee him in gaol. I went, and this is what he says:
　　'The fool that defended me is a chicken-livered son ofa--and all the rest of it,' he says. 'I've got a jobto be done for me up on the Mountain, and you're theonly 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 andreared like a Christian. I was sorry for the fellow,so I went up and got the child." He paused, and Charitylistened with a throbbing heart. "That's the only timeI ever went up the Mountain," he concluded.
　　There was a moment's silence; then Harney spoke. "Andthe child--had she no mother?""Oh, yes: there was a mother. But she was glad enoughto have her go. She'd have given her to anybody. Theyain't half human up there. I guess the mother's deadby now, with the life she was leading. Anyhow, I'venever heard of her from that day to this.""My God, how ghastly," Harney murmured; and Charity,choking with humiliation, sprang to her feet and ranupstairs. She knew at last: knew that she was thechild of a drunken convict and of a mother who wasn't"half human," and was glad to have her go; and she hadheard this history of her origin related to the onebeing in whose eyes she longed to appear superior tothe people about her! She had noticed that Mr. Royallhad not named her, had even avoided any allusion thatmight identify her with the child he had brought downfrom the Mountain; and she knew it was out of regardfor her that he had kept silent. But of what use washis discretion, since only that afternoon, misled byHarney's interest in the out-law colony, she hadboasted to him of coming from the Mountain? Now everyword that had been spoken showed her how such an originmust widen the distance between them.
　　During his ten days' sojourn at North Dormer LuciusHarney had not spoken a word of love to her. He hadintervened in her behalf with his cousin, and hadconvinced Miss Hatchard of her merits as a librarian;but that was a simple act of justice, since it was byhis own fault that those merits had been questioned. Hehad asked her to drive him about the country when hehired lawyer Royall's buggy to go on his sketchingexpeditions; but that too was natural enough, since hewas unfamiliar with the region. Lastly, when hiscousin was called to Springfield, he had begged Mr.
　　Royall to receive him as a boarder; but where else inNorth Dormer could he have boarded? Not with CarrickFry, whose wife was paralysed, and whose large familycrowded his table to over-flowing; not with theTargatts, who lived a mile up the road, nor with poorold Mrs. Hawes, who, since her eldest daughter haddeserted her, barely had the strength to cook her ownmeals while Ally picked up her living as a seamstress.
　　Mr. Royall's was the only house where the young mancould have been offered a decent hospitality. Therehad been nothing, therefore, in the outward course ofevents to raise in Charity's breast the hopes withwhich it trembled. But beneath the visible incidentsresulting from Lucius Harney's arrival there ran anundercurrent as mysterious and potent as the influencethat makes the forest break into leaf before the ice isoff the pools.
　　The business on which Harney had come was authentic;Charity had seen the letter from a New York publishercommissioning him to make a study of the eighteenthcentury houses in the less familiar districts of NewEngland. But incomprehensible as the whole affair wasto her, and hard as she found it to understand why hepaused enchanted before certain neglected and paintlesshouses, while others, refurbished and "improved" by thelocal builder, did not arrest a glance, she could notbut suspect that Eagle County was less rich inarchitecture than he averred, and that the duration ofhis stay (which he had fixed at a month) was notunconnected with the look in his eyes when he had firstpaused before her in the library. Everything that hadfollowed seemed to have grown out of that look: his wayof speaking to her, his quickness in catching hermeaning, his evident eagerness to prolong theirexcursions and to seize on every chance of being withher.
　　The signs of his liking were manifest enough; but itwas hard to guess how much they meant, because hismanner was so different from anything North Dormer hadever shown her. He was at once simpler and moredeferential than any one she had known; and sometimesit was just when he was simplest that she most felt thedistance between them. Education and opportunity haddivided them by a width that no effort of hers couldbridge, and even when his youth and his admirationbrought him nearest, some chance word, some unconsciousallusion, seemed to thrust her back across the gulf.
　　Never had it yawned so wide as when she fled up to herroom carrying with her the echo of Mr. Royall's tale.
　　Her first confused thought was the prayer that shemight never see young Harney again. It was toobitter to picture him as the detached impartiallistener to such a story. "I wish he'd go away: Iwish he'd go tomorrow, and never come back!" she moanedto her pillow; and far into the night she lay there, inthe disordered dress she had forgotten to take off, herwhole soul a tossing misery on which her hopes anddreams spun about like drowning straws.
　　Of all this tumult only a vague heart-soreness was leftwhen she opened her eyes the next morning. Her firstthought was of the weather, for Harney had asked her totake him to the brown house under Porcupine, and thenaround by Hamblin; and as the trip was a long one theywere to start at nine. The sun rose without a cloud,and earlier than usual she was in the kitchen, makingcheese sandwiches, decanting buttermilk into a bottle,wrapping up slices of apple pie, and accusing Verena ofhaving given away a basket she needed, which had alwayshung on a hook in the passage. When she came out intothe porch, in her pink calico, which had run a littlein the washing, but was still bright enough to set offher dark tints, she had such a triumphant sense ofbeing a part of the sunlight and the morning thatthe last trace of her misery vanished. What did itmatter where she came from, or whose child she was,when love was dancing in her veins, and down the roadshe saw young Harney coming toward her?
　　Mr. Royall was in the porch too. He had said nothingat 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 howto drive a horse yet?"She made no answer, and he sat tilted back in hischair, drumming on the rail of the porch. It was thefirst time he had ever spoken of the young man in thattone, and Charity felt a faint chill of apprehension.
　　After a moment he stood up and walked away toward thebit of ground behind the house, where the hired man washoeing.
　　The air was cool and clear, with the autumnal sparklethat a north wind brings to the hills in early summer,and the night had been so still that the dew hung oneverything, not as a lingering moisture, but inseparate beads that glittered like diamonds on theferns and grasses. It was a long drive to the foot ofPorcupine: first across the valley, with blue hillsbounding the open slopes; then down into the beech-woods, following the course of the Creston, a brownbrook leaping over velvet ledges; then out again ontothe farm-lands about Creston Lake, and gradually up theridges of the Eagle Range. At last they reached theyoke of the hills, and before them opened anothervalley, green and wild, and beyond it more blue heightseddying away to the sky like the waves of a recedingtide.
　　Harney tied the horse to a tree-stump, and theyunpacked their basket under an aged walnut with a riventrunk out of which bumblebees darted. The sun hadgrown hot, and behind them was the noonday murmur ofthe forest. Summer insects danced on the air, and aflock of white butterflies fanned the mobile tips ofthe crimson fireweed. In the valley below not a housewas visible; it seemed as if Charity Royall and youngHarney were the only living beings in the great hollowof earth and sky.
　　Charity's spirits flagged and disquieting thoughtsstole back on her. Young Harney had grown silent,and as he lay beside her, his arms under his head, hiseyes on the network of leaves above him, she wonderedif he were musing on what Mr. Royall had told him, andif it had really debased her in his thoughts. Shewished he had not asked her to take him that day to thebrown house; she did not want him to see the people shecame from while the story of her birth was fresh in hismind. More than once she had been on the point ofsuggesting that they should follow the ridge and drivestraight to Hamblin, where there was a little desertedhouse he wanted to see; but shyness and pride held herback. "He'd better know what kind of folks I belongto," she said to herself, with a somewhat forceddefiance; for in reality it was shame that kept hersilent.
　　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 scrapof cloud among the pines that frightens you?""It's over the Mountain; and a cloud over the Mountainalways means trouble.""Oh, I don't believe half the bad things you allsay of the Mountain! But anyhow, we'll get down tothe brown house before the rain comes."He was not far wrong, for only a few isolated drops hadfallen when they turned into the road under the shaggyflank of Porcupine, and came upon the brown house. Itstood alone beside a swamp bordered with alder thicketsand tall bulrushes. Not another dwelling was in sight,and it was hard to guess what motive could haveactuated the early settler who had made his home in sounfriendly a spot.
　　Charity had picked up enough of her companion'serudition to understand what had attracted him to thehouse. She noticed the fan-shaped tracery of thebroken light above the door, the flutings of thepaintless pilasters at the corners, and the roundwindow set in the gable; and she knew that, for reasonsthat still escaped her, these were things to be admiredand recorded. Still, they had seen other houses farmore "typical" (the word was Harney's); and as he threwthe reins on the horse's neck he said with a slightshiver of repugnance: "We won't stay long."Against the restless alders turning their white liningto the storm the house looked singularly desolate.
　　The paint was almost gone from the clap-boards, thewindow-panes were broken and patched with rags, and thegarden was a poisonous tangle of nettles, burdocks andtall swamp-weeds over which big blue-bottles hummed.
　　At the sound of wheels a child with a tow-head and paleeyes like Liff Hyatt's peered over the fence and thenslipped away behind an out-house. Harney jumped downand helped Charity out; and as he did so the rain brokeon them. It came slant-wise, on a furious gale, layingshrubs and young trees flat, tearing off their leaveslike an autumn storm, turning the road into a river,and making hissing pools of every hollow. Thunderrolled incessantly through the roar of the rain, and astrange glitter of light ran along the ground under theincreasing blackness.
　　"Lucky we're here after all," Harney laughed. Hefastened the horse under a half-roofless shed, andwrapping Charity in his coat ran with her to the house.
　　The boy had not reappeared, and as there was noresponse to their knocks Harney turned the door-handleand they went in.
　　There were three people in the kitchen to which thedoor admitted them. An old woman with ahandkerchief over her head was sitting by thewindow. She held a sickly-looking kitten on her knees,and whenever it jumped down and tried to limp away shestooped and lifted it back without any change of heraged, unnoticing face. Another woman, the unkemptcreature that Charity had once noticed in driving by,stood leaning against the window-frame and stared atthem; and near the stove an unshaved man in a tatteredshirt sat on a barrel asleep.
　　The place was bare and miserable and the air heavy withthe smell of dirt and stale tobacco. Charity's heartsank. Old derided tales of the Mountain people cameback to her, and the woman's stare was sodisconcerting, and the face of the sleeping man sosodden and bestial, that her disgust was tinged with avague dread. She was not afraid for herself; she knewthe Hyatts would not be likely to trouble her; but shewas not sure how they would treat a "city fellow."Lucius Harney would certainly have laughed at herfears. He glanced about the room, uttered a general"How are you?" to which no one responded, and thenasked the younger woman if they might take shelter tillthe storm was over.
　　She turned her eyes away from him and looked atCharity.
　　"You're the girl from Royall's, ain't you?"The colour rose in Charity's face. "I'm CharityRoyall," she said, as if asserting her right to thename in the very place where it might have been mostopen to question.
　　The woman did not seem to notice. "You kin stay," shemerely said; then she turned away and stooped over adish in which she was stirring something.
　　Harney and Charity sat down on a bench made of a boardresting on two starch boxes. They faced a door hangingon a broken hinge, and through the crack they saw theeyes of the tow-headed boy and of a pale little girlwith a scar across her cheek. Charity smiled, andsigned to the children to come in; but as soon as theysaw they were discovered they slipped away on barefeet. It occurred to her that they were afraid ofrousing the sleeping man; and probably the woman sharedtheir fear, for she moved about as noiselessly andavoided going near the stove.
　　The rain continued to beat against the house, and inone or two places it sent a stream through thepatched 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 ittight in her bony hands; and once or twice the man onthe barrel half woke, changed his position and dozedagain, his head falling forward on his hairy breast. Asthe minutes passed, and the rain still streamed againstthe windows, a loathing of the place and the peoplecame over Charity. The sight of the weak-minded oldwoman, of the cowed children, and the ragged mansleeping off his liquor, made the setting of her ownlife seem a vision of peace and plenty. She thought ofthe kitchen at Mr. Royall's, with its scrubbed floorand dresser full of china, and the peculiar smell ofyeast and coffee and soft-soap that she had alwayshated, but that now seemed the very symbol of householdorder. She saw Mr. Royall's room, with the high-backedhorsehair chair, the faded rag carpet, the row of bookson a shelf, the engraving of "The Surrender ofBurgoyne" over the stove, and the mat with a brown andwhite spaniel on a moss-green border. And then hermind travelled to Miss Hatchard's house, where all wasfreshness, purity and fragrance, and compared to whichthe red house had always seemed so poor and plain.
　　"This is where I belong--this is where I belong," shekept repeating to herself; but the words had no meaningfor her. Every instinct and habit made her a strangeramong these poor swamp-people living like vermin intheir lair. With all her soul she wished she had notyielded to Harney's curiosity, and brought him there.
　　The rain had drenched her, and she began to shiverunder the thin folds of her dress. The younger womanmust have noticed it, for she went out of the room andcame back with a broken tea-cup which she offered toCharity. It was half full of whiskey, and Charityshook her head; but Harney took the cup and put hislips to it. When he had set it down Charity saw himfeel in his pocket and draw out a dollar; he hesitateda moment, and then put it back, and she guessed that hedid not wish her to see him offering money to peopleshe had spoken of as being her kin.
　　The sleeping man stirred, lifted his head and openedhis eyes. They rested vacantly for a moment on Charityand Harney, and then closed again, and his headdrooped; but a look of anxiety came into the woman'sface. She glanced out of the window and then cameup to Harney. "I guess you better go along now," shesaid. The young man understood and got to his feet.
　　"Thank you," he said, holding out his hand. She seemednot to notice the gesture, and turned away as theyopened the door.
　　The rain was still coming down, but they hardly noticedit: the pure air was like balm in their faces. Theclouds were rising and breaking, and between theiredges the light streamed down from remote blue hollows.
　　Harney untied the horse, and they drove off through thediminishing rain, which was already beaded withsunlight.
　　For a while Charity was silent, and her companion didnot speak. She looked timidly at his profile: it wasgraver than usual, as though he too were oppressed bywhat they had seen. Then she broke out abruptly:
　　"Those people back there are the kind of folks I comefrom. They may be my relations, for all I know." Shedid not want him to think that she regretted havingtold him her story.
　　"Poor creatures," he rejoined. "I wonder why they camedown to that fever-hole."She laughed ironically. "To better themselves! It'sworse up on the Mountain. Bash Hyatt married thedaughter of the farmer that used to own the brownhouse. 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 poorwoman. Why did you put it back?"He reddened, and leaned forward to flick a swamp-flyfrom the horse's neck. "I wasn't sure----""Was it because you knew they were my folks, andthought 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 calledher by her name. Her misery welled over.
　　"I ain't--I ain't ashamed. They're my people, and Iain'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 thestars were out in a clear sky when they reached theNorth Dormer valley and drove up to the red house.
Chapter 7
    SINCE her reinstatement in Miss Hatchard's favourCharity had not dared to curtail by a moment her hoursof attendance at the library. She even made a point ofarriving before the time, and showed a laudableindignation when the youngest Targatt girl, who hadbeen engaged to help in the cleaning and rearranging ofthe books, came trailing in late and neglected her taskto peer through the window at the Sollas boy.
　　Nevertheless, "library days" seemed more than everirksome to Charity after her vivid hours of liberty;and she would have found it hard to set a good exampleto her subordinate if Lucius Harney had not beencommissioned, before Miss Hatchard's departure, toexamine with the local carpenter the best means ofventilating the "Memorial."He was careful to prosecute this inquiry on the dayswhen the library was open to the public; and Charitywas therefore sure of spending part of the afternoon inhis company. The Targatt girl's presence, and therisk of being interrupted by some passer-by suddenlysmitten with a thirst for letters, restricted theirintercourse to the exchange of commonplaces; but therewas a fascination to Charity in the contrast betweenthese public civilities and their secret intimacy.
　　The day after their drive to the brown house was"library day," and she sat at her desk working at therevised catalogue, while the Targatt girl, one eye onthe window, chanted out the titles of a pile of books.
　　Charity's thoughts were far away, in the dismal houseby the swamp, and under the twilight sky during thelong drive home, when Lucius Harney had consoled herwith endearing words. That day, for the first timesince he had been boarding with them, he had failed toappear as usual at the midday meal. No message hadcome to explain his absence, and Mr. Royall, who wasmore than usually taciturn, had betrayed no surprise,and made no comment. In itself this indifference wasnot particularly significant, for Mr. Royall, in commonwith most of his fellow-citizens, had a way ofaccepting events passively, as if he had long sincecome to the conclusion that no one who lived in NorthDormer could hope to modify them. But to Charity,in the reaction from her mood of passionate exaltation,there was something disquieting in his silence. It wasalmost as if Lucius Harney had never had a part intheir lives: Mr. Royall's imperturbable indifferenceseemed to relegate him to the domain of unreality.
　　As she sat at work, she tried to shake off herdisappointment at Harney's non-appearing. Sometrifling incident had probably kept him from joiningthem at midday; but she was sure he must be eager tosee her again, and that he would not want to wait tillthey met at supper, between Mr. Royall and Verena. Shewas wondering what his first words would be, and tryingto devise a way of getting rid of the Targatt girlbefore he came, when she heard steps outside, and hewalked up the path with Mr. Miles.
　　The clergyman from Hepburn seldom came to North Dormerexcept when he drove over to officiate at the old whitechurch which, by an unusual chance, happened to belongto the Episcopal communion. He was a brisk affableman, eager to make the most of the fact that a littlenucleus of "church-people" had survived in thesectarian wilderness, and resolved to undermine theinfluence of the ginger-bread-coloured Baptistchapel at the other end of the village; but he was keptbusy by parochial work at Hepburn, where there werepaper-mills and saloons, and it was not often that hecould spare time for North Dormer.
　　Charity, who went to the white church (like all thebest people in North Dormer), admired Mr. Miles, andhad even, during the memorable trip to Nettleton,imagined herself married to a man who had such astraight nose and such a beautiful way of speaking, andwho lived in a brown-stone rectory covered withVirginia creeper. It had been a shock to discover thatthe privilege was already enjoyed by a lady withcrimped hair and a large baby; but the arrival ofLucius Harney had long since banished Mr. Miles fromCharity's dreams, and as he walked up the path atHarney's side she saw him as he really was: a fatmiddle-aged man with a baldness showing under hisclerical hat, and spectacles on his Grecian nose. Shewondered what had called him to North Dormer on aweekday, and felt a little hurt that Harney should havebrought him to the library.
　　It presently appeared that his presence there was dueto Miss Hatchard. He had been spending a few daysat Springfield, to fill a friend's pulpit, and had beenconsulted by Miss Hatchard as to young Harney's planfor ventilating the "Memorial." To lay hands on theHatchard ark was a grave matter, and Miss Hatchard,always full of scruples about her scruples (it wasHarney's phrase), wished to have Mr. Miles's opinionbefore deciding.
　　"I couldn't," Mr. Miles explained, "quite make out fromyour cousin what changes you wanted to make, and as theother trustees did not understand either I thought Ihad better drive over and take a look--though I'msure," he added, turning his friendly spectacles on theyoung man, "that no one could be more competent--but ofcourse this spot has its peculiar sanctity!""I hope a little fresh air won't desecrate it," Harneylaughingly rejoined; and they walked to the other endof the library while he set forth his idea to theRector.
　　Mr. Miles had greeted the two girls with his usualfriendliness, but Charity saw that he was occupied withother things, and she presently became aware, by thescraps of conversation drifting over to her, that hewas still under the charm of his visit toSpringfield, which appeared to have been full ofagreeable incidents.
　　"Ah, the Coopersons...yes, you know them, of course,"she heard. "That's a fine old house! And Ned Coopersonhas collected some really remarkable impressionistpictures...." The names he cited were unknown toCharity. "Yes; yes; the Schaefer quartette played atLyric Hall on Saturday evening; and on Monday I had theprivilege of hearing them again at the Towers.
　　Beautifully done...Bach and Beethoven...a lawn-partyfirst...I saw Miss Balch several times, by theway...looking extremely handsome...."Charity dropped her pencil and forgot to listen to theTargatt girl's sing-song. Why had Mr. Miles suddenlybrought up Annabel Balch's name?
　　"Oh, really?" she heard Harney rejoin; and, raising hisstick, he pursued: "You see, my plan is to move theseshelves away, and open a round window in this wall, onthe axis of the one under the pediment.""I suppose she'll be coming up here later to stay withMiss Hatchard?" Mr. Miles went on, following on histrain of thought; then, spinning about and tilting hishead back: "Yes, yes, I see--I understand: thatwill give a draught without materially altering thelook of things. I can see no objection."The discussion went on for some minutes, and graduallythe two men moved back toward the desk. Mr. Milesstopped again and looked thoughtfully at Charity.
　　"Aren't you a little pale, my dear? Not overworking?
　　Mr. Harney tells me you and Mamie are giving thelibrary a thorough overhauling." He was always carefulto remember his parishioners' Christian names, and atthe right moment he bent his benignant spectacles onthe Targatt girl.
　　Then he turned to Charity. "Don't take things hard, mydear; don't take things hard. Come down and see Mrs.
　　Miles and me some day at Hepburn," he said, pressingher hand and waving a farewell to Mamie Targatt. Hewent out of the library, and Harney followed him.
　　Charity thought she detected a look of constraint inHarney's eyes. She fancied he did not want to be alonewith her; and with a sudden pang she wondered if herepented the tender things he had said to her the nightbefore. His words had been more fraternal than lover-like; but she had lost their exact sense in thecaressing warmth of his voice. He had made her feelthat the fact of her being a waif from the Mountain wasonly another reason for holding her close and soothingher with consolatory murmurs; and when the drive wasover, and she got out of the buggy, tired, cold, andaching with emotion, she stepped as if the ground werea sunlit wave and she the spray on its crest.
　　Why, then, had his manner suddenly changed, and why didhe leave the library with Mr. Miles? Her restlessimagination fastened on the name of Annabel Balch: fromthe moment it had been mentioned she fancied thatHarney's expression had altered. Annabel Balch at agarden-party at Springfield, looking "extremelyhandsome"...perhaps Mr. Miles had seen her there at thevery moment when Charity and Harney were sitting in theHyatts' hovel, between a drunkard and a half-witted oldwoman! Charity did not know exactly what a garden-partywas, but her glimpse of the flower-edged lawns ofNettleton helped her to visualize the scene, andenvious recollections of the "old things" which MissBalch avowedly "wore out" when she came to North Dormermade it only too easy to picture her in her splendour.
　　Charity understood what associations the name musthave called up, and felt the uselessness of strugglingagainst the unseen influences in Harney's life.
　　When she came down from her room for supper he was notthere; and while she waited in the porch she recalledthe tone in which Mr. Royall had commented the daybefore on their early start. Mr. Royall sat at herside, his chair tilted back, his broad black boots withside-elastics resting against the lower bar of therailings. His rumpled grey hair stood up above hisforehead like the crest of an angry bird, and theleather-brown of his veined cheeks was blotched withred. Charity knew that those red spots were the signsof a coming explosion.
　　Suddenly he said: "Where's supper? Has Verena Marshslipped up again on her soda-biscuits?"Charity threw a startled glance at him. "I presumeshe's waiting for Mr. Harney.""Mr. Harney, is she? She'd better dish up, then. Heain't coming." He stood up, walked to the door, andcalled out, in the pitch necessary to penetrate the oldwoman's tympanum: "Get along with the supper, Verena."Charity was trembling with apprehension. Somethinghad happened--she was sure of it now--and Mr. Royallknew what it was. But not for the world would she havegratified him by showing her anxiety. She took herusual place, and he seated himself opposite, and pouredout a strong cup of tea before passing her the tea-pot.
　　Verena brought some scrambled eggs, and he piled hisplate with them. "Ain't you going to take any?" heasked. Charity roused herself and began to eat.
　　The tone with which Mr. Royall had said "He's notcoming" seemed to her full of an ominous satisfaction.
　　She saw that he had suddenly begun to hate LuciusHarney, and guessed herself to be the cause of thischange of feeling. But she had no means of finding outwhether some act of hostility on his part had made theyoung man stay away, or whether he simply wished toavoid seeing her again after their drive back from thebrown house. She ate her supper with a studied show ofindifference, but she knew that Mr. Royall was watchingher and that her agitation did not escape him.
　　After supper she went up to her room. She heard Mr.
　　Royall cross the passage, and presently the soundsbelow her window showed that he had returned to theporch. She seated herself on her bed and began tostruggle against the desire to go down and ask him whathad happened. "I'd rather die than do it," shemuttered to herself. With a word he could haverelieved her uncertainty: but never would she gratifyhim by saying it.
　　She rose and leaned out of the window. The twilighthad deepened into night, and she watched the frailcurve of the young moon dropping to the edge of thehills. Through the darkness she saw one or two figuresmoving down the road; but the evening was too cold forloitering, and presently the strollers disappeared.
　　Lamps were beginning to show here and there in thewindows. A bar of light brought out the whiteness of aclump of lilies in the Hawes's yard: and farther downthe street Carrick Fry's Rochester lamp cast its boldillumination on the rustic flower-tub in the middle ofhis grass-plot.
　　For a long time she continued to lean in the window.
　　But a fever of unrest consumed her, and finally shewent downstairs, took her hat from its hook, and swungout of the house. Mr. Royall sat in the porch, Verenabeside him, her old hands crossed on her patched skirt.
　　As Charity went down the steps Mr. Royall called afterher: "Where you going?" She could easily haveanswered: "To Orma's," or "Down to the Targatts'"; andeither answer might have been true, for she had nopurpose. But she swept on in silence, determined notto recognize his right to question her.
　　At the gate she paused and looked up and down the road.
　　The darkness drew her, and she thought of climbing thehill and plunging into the depths of the larch-woodabove the pasture. Then she glanced irresolutely alongthe street, and as she did so a gleam appeared throughthe spruces at Miss Hatchard's gate. Lucius Harney wasthere, then--he had not gone down to Hepburn with Mr.
　　Miles, as she had at first imagined. But where had hetaken his evening meal, and what had caused him to stayaway from Mr. Royall's? The light was positive proof ofhis presence, for Miss Hatchard's servants were away ona holiday, and her farmer's wife came only in themornings, to make the young man's bed and prepare hiscoffee. Beside that lamp he was doubtless sitting atthis moment. To know the truth Charity had only towalk half the length of the village, and knock at thelighted window. She hesitated a minute or two longer,and then turned toward Miss Hatchard's.
　　She walked quickly, straining her eyes to detectanyone who might be coming along the street; and beforereaching the Frys' she crossed over to avoid the lightfrom their window. Whenever she was unhappy she feltherself at bay against a pitiless world, and a kind ofanimal secretiveness possessed her. But the street wasempty, and she passed unnoticed through the gate and upthe path to the house. Its white front glimmeredindistinctly through the trees, showing only one oblongof light on the lower floor. She had supposed that thelamp was in Miss Hatchard's sitting-room; but she nowsaw that it shone through a window at the farthercorner of the house. She did not know the room towhich this window belonged, and she paused under thetrees, checked by a sense of strangeness. Then shemoved on, treading softly on the short grass, andkeeping so close to the house that whoever was in theroom, even if roused by her approach, would not be ableto see her.
　　The window opened on a narrow verandah with a trellisedarch. She leaned close to the trellis, and parting thesprays of clematis that covered it looked into a cornerof the room. She saw the foot of a mahogany bed, anengraving on the wall, a wash-stand on which atowel had been tossed, and one end of the green-coveredtable which held the lamp. Half of the lampshadeprojected into her field of vision, and just under ittwo smooth sunburnt hands, one holding a pencil and theother a ruler, were moving to and fro over a drawing-board.
　　Her heart jumped and then stood still. He was there, afew feet away; and while her soul was tossing on seasof woe he had been quietly sitting at his drawing-board. The sight of those two hands, moving with theirusual skill and precision, woke her out of her dream.
　　Her eyes were opened to the disproportion between whatshe had felt and the cause of her agitation; and shewas turning away from the window when one hand abruptlypushed aside the drawing-board and the other flung downthe pencil.
　　Charity had often noticed Harney's loving care of hisdrawings, and the neatness and method with which hecarried on and concluded each task. The impatientsweeping aside of the drawing-board seemed to reveal anew mood. The gesture suggested sudden discouragement,or distaste for his work and she wondered if he toowere agitated by secret perplexities. Her impulse offlight was checked; she stepped up on the verandahand looked into the room.
　　Harney had put his elbows on the table and was restinghis chin on his locked hands. He had taken off hiscoat and waistcoat, and unbuttoned the low collar ofhis flannel shirt; she saw the vigorous lines of hisyoung throat, and the root of the muscles where theyjoined the chest. He sat staring straight ahead ofhim, a look of weariness and self-disgust on his face:
　　it was almost as if he had been gazing at a distortedreflection of his own features. For a moment Charitylooked at him with a kind of terror, as if he had beena stranger under familiar lineaments; then she glancedpast him and saw on the floor an open portmanteau halffull of clothes. She understood that he was preparingto leave, and that he had probably decided to gowithout seeing her. She saw that the decision, fromwhatever cause it was taken, had disturbed him deeply;and she immediately concluded that his change of planwas due to some surreptitious interference of Mr.
　　Royall's. All her old resentments and rebellions flamedup, confusedly mingled with the yearning roused byHarney's nearness. Only a few hours earlier she hadfelt secure in his comprehending pity; now she wasflung back on herself, doubly alone after that momentof communion.
　　Harney was still unaware of her presence. He satwithout moving, moodily staring before him at the samespot in the wall-paper. He had not even had the energyto finish his packing, and his clothes and papers layon the floor about the portmanteau. Presently heunlocked his clasped hands and stood up; and Charity,drawing back hastily, sank down on the step of theverandah. The night was so dark that there was notmuch chance of his seeing her unless he opened thewindow and before that she would have time to slip awayand be lost in the shadow of the trees. He stood for aminute or two looking around the room with the sameexpression of self-disgust, as if he hated himself andeverything about him; then he sat down again at thetable, drew a few more strokes, and threw his pencilaside. Finally he walked across the floor, kicking theportmanteau out of his way, and lay down on the bed,folding his arms under his head, and staring upmorosely at the ceiling. Just so, Charity had seen himat her side on the grass or the pine-needles, his eyesfixed on the sky, and pleasure flashing over his facelike the flickers of sun the branches shed on it.
　　But now the face was so changed that she hardly knewit; and grief at his grief gathered in her throat, roseto her eyes and ran over.
　　She continued to crouch on the steps, holding herbreath and stiffening herself into complete immobility.
　　One motion of her hand, one tap on the pane, and shecould picture the sudden change in his face. In everypulse of her rigid body she was aware of the welcomehis eyes and lips would give her; but something kepther from moving. It was not the fear of any sanction,human or heavenly; she had never in her life beenafraid. It was simply that she had suddenly understoodwhat would happen if she went in. It was the thingthat did happen between young men and girls, and thatNorth Dormer ignored in public and snickered over onthe sly. It was what Miss Hatchard was still ignorantof, but every girl of Charity's class knew about beforeshe left school. It was what had happened to AllyHawes's sister Julia, and had ended in her going toNettleton, and in people's never mentioning her name.
　　It did not, of course, always end so sensationally;nor, perhaps, on the whole, so untragically. Charityhad always suspected that the shunned Julia's fatemight have its compensations. There were others, worseendings that the village knew of, mean, miserable,unconfessed; other lives that went on drearily, withoutvisible change, in the same cramped setting ofhypocrisy. But these were not the reasons that heldher back. Since the day before, she had known exactlywhat she would feel if Harney should take her in hisarms: the melting of palm into palm and mouth on mouth,and the long flame burning her from head to foot. Butmixed with this feeling was another: the wonderingpride in his liking for her, the startled softness thathis sympathy had put into her heart. Sometimes, whenher youth flushed up in her, she had imagined yieldinglike other girls to furtive caresses in the twilight;but she could not so cheapen herself to Harney. Shedid not know why he was going; but since he was goingshe felt she must do nothing to deface the image of herthat he carried away. If he wanted her he must seekher: he must not be surprised into taking her as girlslike Julia Hawes were taken....
　　No sound came from the sleeping village, and in thedeep darkness of the garden she heard now and thena secret rustle of branches, as though some night-birdbrushed them. Once a footfall passed the gate, and sheshrank back into her corner; but the steps died awayand left a profounder quiet. Her eyes were still onHarney's tormented face: she felt she could not movetill he moved. But she was beginning to grow numb fromher constrained position, and at times her thoughtswere so indistinct that she seemed to be held thereonly by a vague weight of weariness.
　　A long time passed in this strange vigil. Harney stilllay on the bed, motionless and with fixed eyes, asthough following his vision to its bitter end. At lasthe stirred and changed his attitude slightly, andCharity's heart began to tremble. But he only flungout his arms and sank back into his former position.
　　With a deep sigh he tossed the hair from his forehead;then his whole body relaxed, his head turned sidewayson the pillow, and she saw that he had fallen asleep.
　　The sweet expression came back to his lips, and thehaggardness faded from his face, leaving it as fresh asa boy's.
　　She rose and crept away.
Chapter 8
    SHE had lost the sense of time, and did not know howlate it was till she came out into the street and sawthat all the windows were dark between Miss Hatchard'sand the Royall house.
　　As she passed from under the black pall of the Norwayspruces she fancied she saw two figures in the shadeabout the duck-pond. She drew back and watched; butnothing moved, and she had stared so long into thelamp-lit room that the darkness confused her, and shethought she must have been mistaken.
　　She walked on, wondering whether Mr. Royall was stillin the porch. In her exalted mood she did not greatlycare whether he was waiting for her or not: she seemedto be floating high over life, on a great cloud ofmisery beneath which every-day realities had dwindledto mere specks in space. But the porch was empty, Mr.
　　Royall's hat hung on its peg in the passage, and thekitchen lamp had been left to light her to bed. Shetook it and went up.
　　The morning hours of the next day dragged bywithout incident. Charity had imagined that, in someway or other, she would learn whether Harney hadalready left; but Verena's deafness prevented her beinga source of news, and no one came to the house whocould bring enlightenment.
　　Mr. Royall went out early, and did not return tillVerena had set the table for the midday meal. When hecame in he went straight to the kitchen and shouted tothe old woman: "Ready for dinner----" then he turnedinto the dining-room, where Charity was already seated.
　　Harney's plate was in its usual place, but Mr. Royalloffered no explanation of his absence, and Charityasked none. The feverish exaltation of the nightbefore had dropped, and she said to herself that he hadgone away, indifferently, almost callously, and thatnow her life would lapse again into the narrow rut outof which he had lifted it. For a moment she wasinclined to sneer at herself for not having used thearts that might have kept him.
　　She sat at table till the meal was over, lest Mr.
　　Royall should remark on her leaving; but when he stoodup she rose also, without waiting to help Verena.
　　She had her foot on the stairs when he called to her tocome back.
　　"I've got a headache. I'm going up to lie down.""I want you should come in here first; I've gotsomething to say to you."She was sure from his tone that in a moment she wouldlearn what every nerve in her ached to know; but as sheturned back she made a last effort of indifference.
　　Mr. Royall stood in the middle of the office, his thickeyebrows beetling, his lower jaw trembling a little.
　　At first she thought he had been drinking; then she sawthat he was sober, but stirred by a deep and sternemotion totally unlike his usual transient angers. Andsuddenly she understood that, until then, she had neverreally noticed him or thought about him. Except on theoccasion of his one offense he had been to her merelythe person who is always there, the unquestionedcentral fact of life, as inevitable but asuninteresting as North Dormer itself, or any of theother conditions fate had laid on her. Even then shehad regarded him only in relation to herself, and hadnever speculated as to his own feelings, beyondinstinctively concluding that he would not troubleher again in the same way. But now she began to wonderwhat he was really like.
　　He had grasped the back of his chair with both hands,and stood looking hard at her. At length he said:
　　"Charity, for once let's you and me talk together likefriends."Instantly she felt that something had happened, andthat he held her in his hand.
　　"Where is Mr. Harney? Why hasn't he come back? Have yousent him away?" she broke out, without knowing what shewas saying.
　　The change in Mr. Royall frightened her. All the bloodseemed to leave his veins and against his swarthypallor the deep lines in his face looked black.
　　"Didn't he have time to answer some of those questionslast night? You was with him long enough!" he said.
　　Charity stood speechless. The taunt was so unrelatedto what had been happening in her soul that she hardlyunderstood it. But the instinct of self-defense awokein her.
　　"Who says I was with him last night?""The whole place is saying it by now.""Then it was you that put the lie into theirmouths.--Oh, how I've always hated you!" she cried.
　　She had expected a retort in kind, and it startled herto hear her exclamation sounding on through silence.
　　"Yes, I know," Mr. Royall said slowly. "But that ain'tgoing to help us much now.""It helps me not to care a straw what lies you tellabout me!""If they're lies, they're not my lies: my Bible oath onthat, Charity. I didn't know where you were: I wasn'tout of this house last night."She made no answer and he went on: "Is it a lie thatyou were seen coming out of Miss Hatchard's nigh ontomidnight?"She straightened herself with a laugh, all her recklessinsolence recovered. "I didn't look to see what timeit was.""You lost girl...you...you...Oh, my God, why did youtell me?" he broke out, dropping into his chair, hishead bowed down like an old man's.
　　Charity's self-possession had returned with the senseof her danger. "Do you suppose I'd take thetrouble to lie to YOU? Who are you, anyhow, toask me where I go to when I go out at night?"Mr. Royall lifted his head and looked at her. His facehad grown quiet and almost gentle, as she rememberedseeing it sometimes when she was a little girl, beforeMrs. Royall died.
　　"Don't let's go on like this, Charity. It can't do anygood to either of us. You were seen going into thatfellow's house...you were seen coming out of it....I'vewatched this thing coming, and I've tried to stop it.
　　As God sees me, I have....""Ah, it WAS you, then? I knew it was you that senthim away!"He looked at her in surprise. "Didn't he tell you so?
　　I thought he understood." He spoke slowly, withdifficult pauses, "I didn't name you to him: I'd havecut my hand off sooner. I just told him I couldn'tspare the horse any longer; and that the cooking wasgetting too heavy for Verena. I guess he's the kindthat's heard the same thing before. Anyhow, he took itquietly enough. He said his job here was about done,anyhow; and there didn't another word pass betweenus....If he told you otherwise he told you an untruth."Charity listened in a cold trance of anger. Itwas nothing to her what the village said...but all thisfingering of her dreams!
　　"I've told you he didn't tell me anything. I didn'tspeak with him last night.""You didn't speak with him?""No....It's not that I care what any of you say...butyou may as well know. Things ain't between us the wayyou think...and the other people in this place. He waskind to me; he was my friend; and all of a sudden hestopped coming, and I knew it was you that done it--YOU!" All her unreconciled memory of the past flamedout at him. "So I went there last night to find outwhat you'd said to him: that's all."Mr. Royall drew a heavy breath. "But, then--if hewasn't there, what were you doing there all that time?--Charity, for pity's sake, tell me. I've got to know,to stop their talking."This pathetic abdication of all authority over her didnot move her: she could feel only the outrage of hisinterference.
　　"Can't you see that I don't care what anybody says?
　　It's true I went there to see him; and he was in hisroom, and I stood outside for ever so long and watchedhim; but I dursn't go in for fear he'd think I'dcome after him...." She felt her voice breaking, andgathered it up in a last defiance. "As long as I liveI'll never forgive you!" she cried.
　　Mr. Royall made no answer. He sat and pondered withsunken head, his veined hands clasped about the arms ofhis chair. Age seemed to have come down on him aswinter comes on the hills after a storm. At length helooked up.
　　"Charity, you say you don't care; but you're theproudest girl I know, and the last to want people totalk against you. You know there's always eyeswatching you: you're handsomer and smarter than therest, and that's enough. But till lately you've nevergiven them a chance. Now they've got it, and they'regoing to use it. I believe what you say, but theywon't....It was Mrs. Tom Fry seen you going in...andtwo or three of them watched for you to come outagain....You've been with the fellow all day long everyday since he come here...and I'm a lawyer, and I knowhow hard slander dies." He paused, but she stoodmotionless, without giving him any sign of acquiescenceor even of attention. "He's a pleasant fellow to talkto--I liked having him here myself. The young men uphere ain't had his chances. But there's one thingas old as the hills and as plain as daylight: if he'dwanted you the right way he'd have said so."Charity did not speak. It seemed to her that nothingcould exceed the bitterness of hearing such words fromsuch lips.
　　Mr. Royall rose from his seat. "See here, CharityRoyall: I had a shameful thought once, and you've mademe pay for it. Isn't that score pretty near wipedout?...There's a streak in me I ain't always master of;but I've always acted straight to you but that once.
　　And you've known I would--you've trusted me. For allyour sneers and your mockery you've always known Iloved you the way a man loves a decent woman. I'm agood many years older than you, but I'm head andshoulders above this place and everybody in it, and youknow that too. I slipped up once, but that's no reasonfor not starting again. If you'll come with me I'll doit. If you'll marry me we'll leave here and settle insome big town, where there's men, and business, andthings doing. It's not too late for me to find anopening....I can see it by the way folks treat me whenI go down to Hepburn or Nettleton...."Charity made no movement. Nothing in his appealreached her heart, and she thought only of words towound and wither. But a growing lassitude restrainedher. What did anything matter that he was saying? Shesaw the old life closing in on her, and hardly heededhis fanciful picture of renewal.
　　"Charity--Charity--say you'll do it," she heard himurge, all his lost years and wasted passion in hisvoice.
　　"Oh, what's the use of all this? When I leave here itwon't be with you."She moved toward the door as she spoke, and he stood upand placed himself between her and the threshold. Heseemed suddenly tall and strong, as though theextremity of his humiliation had given him new vigour.
　　"That's all, is it? It's not much." He leaned againstthe door, so towering and powerful that he seemed tofill the narrow room. "Well, then look here....You'reright: I've no claim on you--why should you look at abroken man like me? You want the other fellow...and Idon't blame you. You picked out the best when you seenit...well, that was always my way." He fixed his sterneyes on her, and she had the sense that thestruggle within him was at its highest. "Do you wanthim to marry you?" he asked.
　　They stood and looked at each other for a long moment,eye to eye, with the terrible equality of courage thatsometimes made her feel as if she had his blood in herveins.
　　"Do you want him to--say? I'll have him here in an hourif you do. I ain't been in the law thirty years fornothing. He's hired Carrick Fry's team to take him toHepburn, but he ain't going to start for another hour.
　　And I can put things to him so he won't be longdeciding....He's soft: I could see that. I don't sayyou won't be sorry afterward--but, by God, I'll giveyou the chance to be, if you say so."She heard him out in silence, too remote from all hewas feeling and saying for any sally of scorn torelieve her. As she listened, there flitted throughher mind the vision of Liff Hyatt's muddy boot comingdown on the white bramble-flowers. The same thing hadhappened now; something transient and exquisite hadflowered in her, and she had stood by and seen ittrampled to earth. While the thought passed throughher she was aware of Mr. Royall, still leaningagainst the door, but crestfallen, diminished, asthough her silence were the answer he most dreaded.
　　"I don't want any chance you can give me: I'm glad he'sgoing away," she said.
　　He kept his place a moment longer, his hand on thedoor-knob. "Charity!" he pleaded. She made no answer,and he turned the knob and went out. She heard himfumble with the latch of the front door, and saw himwalk down the steps. He passed out of the gate, andhis figure, stooping and heavy, receded slowly up thestreet.
　　For a while she remained where he had left her. Shewas still trembling with the humiliation of his lastwords, which rang so loud in her ears that it seemed asthough they must echo through the village, proclaimingher a creature to lend herself to such vilesuggestions. Her shame weighed on her like a physicaloppression: the roof and walls seemed to be closing inon her, and she was seized by the impulse to get away,under the open sky, where there would be room tobreathe. She went to the front door, and as she did soLucius Harney opened it.
　　He looked graver and less confident than usual,and for a moment or two neither of them spoke.
　　Then he held out his hand. "Are you going out?" heasked. "May I come in?"Her heart was beating so violently that she was afraidto speak, and stood looking at him with tear-dilatedeyes; then she became aware of what her silence mustbetray, and said quickly: "Yes: come in."She led the way into the dining-room, and they sat downon opposite sides of the table, the cruet-stand andjapanned bread-basket between them. Harney had laidhis straw hat on the table, and as he sat there, in hiseasy-looking summer clothes, a brown tie knotted underhis flannel collar, and his smooth brown hair brushedback from his forehead, she pictured him, as she hadseen him the night before, lying on his bed, with thetossed locks falling into his eyes, and his bare throatrising out of his unbuttoned shirt. He had neverseemed so remote as at the moment when that visionflashed through her mind.
　　"I'm so sorry it's good-bye: I suppose you know I'mleaving," he began, abruptly and awkwardly; she guessedthat he was wondering how much she knew of his reasonsfor going.
　　"I presume you found your work was over quickerthan what you expected," she said.
　　"Well, yes--that is, no: there are plenty of things Ishould have liked to do. But my holiday's limited; andnow that Mr. Royall needs the horse for himself it'srather difficult to find means of getting about.""There ain't any too many teams for hire around here,"she acquiesced; and there was another silence.
　　"These days here have been--awfully pleasant: I wantedto thank you for making them so," he continued, hiscolour rising.
　　She could not think of any reply, and he went on:
　　"You've been wonderfully kind to me, and I wanted totell you....I wish I could think of you as happier,less lonely....Things are sure to change for you by andby....""Things don't change at North Dormer: people just getused to them."The answer seemed to break up the order of hisprearranged consolations, and he sat looking at heruncertainly. Then he said, with his sweet smile:
　　"That's not true of you. It can't be."The smile was like a knife-thrust through herheart: everything in her began to tremble andbreak loose. She felt her tears run over, and stoodup.
　　"Well, good-bye," she said.
　　She was aware of his taking her hand, and of feelingthat his touch was lifeless.
　　"Good-bye." He turned away, and stopped on thethreshold. "You'll say good-bye for me to Verena?"She heard the closing of the outer door and the soundof his quick tread along the path. The latch of thegate clicked after him.
　　The next morning when she arose in the cold dawn andopened her shutters she saw a freckled boy standing onthe other side of the road and looking up at her. Hewas a boy from a farm three or four miles down theCreston road, and she wondered what he was doing thereat that hour, and why he looked so hard at her window.
　　When he saw her he crossed over and leaned against thegate unconcernedly. There was no one stirring in thehouse, and she threw a shawl over her night-gown andran down and let herself out. By the time she reachedthe gate the boy was sauntering down the road,whistling carelessly; but she saw that a letter hadbeen thrust between the slats and the crossbar ofthe gate. She took it out and hastened back to herroom.
　　The envelope bore her name, and inside was a leaf tornfrom a pocket-diary.
　　DEAR CHARITY:
　　I can't go away like this. I am staying for a few daysat Creston River. Will you come down and meet me atCreston pool? I will wait for you till evening.
Chapter 9
    CHARITY sat before the mirror trying on a hat whichAlly Hawes, with much secrecy, had trimmed for her. Itwas of white straw, with a drooping brim and cherry-coloured lining that made her face glow like the insideof the shell on the parlour mantelpiece.
　　She propped the square of looking-glass against Mr.
　　Royall's black leather Bible, steadying it in frontwith a white stone on which a view of the BrooklynBridge was painted; and she sat before her reflection,bending the brim this way and that, while Ally Hawes'spale face looked over her shoulder like the ghost ofwasted opportunities.
　　"I look awful, don't I?" she said at last with a happysigh.
　　Ally smiled and took back the hat. "I'll stitch theroses on right here, so's you can put it away at once."Charity laughed, and ran her fingers through her roughdark hair. She knew that Harney liked to see itsreddish edges ruffled about her forehead and breakinginto little rings at the nape. She sat down on her bedand watched Ally stoop over the hat with a carefulfrown.
　　"Don't you ever feel like going down to Nettleton for aday?" she asked.
　　Ally shook her head without looking up. "No, I alwaysremember that awful time I went down with Julia--tothat doctor's.""Oh, Ally----""I can't help it. The house is on the corner of WingStreet and Lake Avenue. The trolley from the stationgoes right by it, and the day the minister took us downto see those pictures I recognized it right off, andcouldn't seem to see anything else. There's a bigblack sign with gold letters all across the front--'Private Consultations.' She came as near as anythingto dying....""Poor Julia!" Charity sighed from the height of herpurity and her security. She had a friend whom shetrusted and who respected her. She was going with himto spend the next day--the Fourth of July--atNettleton. Whose business was it but hers, and whatwas the harm? The pity of it was that girls like Juliadid not know how to choose, and to keep badfellows at a distance....Charity slipped down from thebed, and stretched out her hands.
　　"Is it sewed? Let me try it on again." She put the haton, and smiled at her image. The thought of Julia hadvanished....
　　The next morning she was up before dawn, and saw theyellow sunrise broaden behind the hills, and thesilvery luster preceding a hot day tremble across thesleeping fields.
　　Her plans had been made with great care. She hadannounced that she was going down to the Band of Hopepicnic at Hepburn, and as no one else from North Dormerintended to venture so far it was not likely that herabsence from the festivity would be reported. Besides,if it were she would not greatly care. She wasdetermined to assert her independence, and if shestooped to fib about the Hepburn picnic it was chieflyfrom the secretive instinct that made her dread theprofanation of her happiness. Whenever she was withLucius Harney she would have liked some impenetrablemountain mist to hide her.
　　It was arranged that she should walk to a point ofthe Creston road where Harney was to pick her up anddrive her across the hills to Hepburn in time for thenine-thirty train to Nettleton. Harney at first hadbeen rather lukewarm about the trip. He declaredhimself ready to take her to Nettleton, but urged hernot to go on the Fourth of July, on account of thecrowds, the probable lateness of the trains, thedifficulty of her getting back before night; but herevident disappointment caused him to give way, and evento affect a faint enthusiasm for the adventure. Sheunderstood why he was not more eager: he must have seensights beside which even a Fourth of July at Nettletonwould seem tame. But she had never seen anything; anda great longing possessed her to walk the streets of abig town on a holiday, clinging to his arm and jostledby idle crowds in their best clothes. The only cloudon the prospect was the fact that the shops would beclosed; but she hoped he would take her back anotherday, when they were open.
　　She started out unnoticed in the early sunlight,slipping through the kitchen while Verena bent abovethe stove. To avoid attracting notice, she carried hernew hat carefully wrapped up, and had thrown a longgrey veil of Mrs. Royall's over the new whitemuslin dress which Ally's clever fingers had made forher. All of the ten dollars Mr. Royall had given her,and a part of her own savings as well, had been spenton renewing her wardrobe; and when Harney jumped out ofthe buggy to meet her she read her reward in his eyes.
　　The freckled boy who had brought her the note two weeksearlier was to wait with the buggy at Hepburn tilltheir return. He perched at Charity's feet, his legsdangling between the wheels, and they could not saymuch because of his presence. But it did not greatlymatter, for their past was now rich enough to havegiven them a private language; and with the long daystretching before them like the blue distance beyondthe hills there was a delicate pleasure inpostponement.
　　When Charity, in response to Harney's message, had goneto meet him at the Creston pool her heart had been sofull of mortification and anger that his first wordsmight easily have estranged her. But it happened thathe had found the right word, which was one of simplefriendship. His tone had instantly justified her, andput her guardian in the wrong. He had made no allusionto what had passed between Mr. Royall and himself, buthad simply let it appear that he had left becausemeans 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 ofthe freckled boy's father, who served as livery-stablekeeper to one or two melancholy summer boarding-houseson Creston Lake, and had discovered, within drivingdistance, a number of houses worthy of his pencil; andhe said that he could not, while he was in theneighbourhood, give up the pleasure of seeing her asoften as possible.
　　When they took leave of each other she promised tocontinue to be his guide; and during the fortnightwhich followed they roamed the hills in happycomradeship. In most of the village friendshipsbetween youths and maidens lack of conversation wasmade up for by tentative fondling; but Harney, exceptwhen he had tried to comfort her in her trouble ontheir way back from the Hyatts', had never put his armabout her, or sought to betray her into any suddencaress. It seemed to be enough for him to breathe hernearness like a flower's; and since his pleasure atbeing with her, and his sense of her youth and hergrace, perpetually shone in his eyes and softenedthe inflection of his voice, his reserve did notsuggest coldness, but the deference due to a girl ofhis own class.
　　The buggy was drawn by an old trotter who whirled themalong so briskly that the pace created a little breeze;but when they reached Hepburn the full heat of theairless morning descended on them. At the railwaystation the platform was packed with a swelteringthrong, and they took refuge in the waiting-room, wherethere was another throng, already dejected by the heatand the long waiting for retarded trains. Pale motherswere struggling with fretful babies, or trying to keeptheir older offspring from the fascination of thetrack; girls and their "fellows" were giggling andshoving, and passing about candy in sticky bags, andolder men, collarless and perspiring, were shiftingheavy children from one arm to the other, and keeping ahaggard eye on the scattered members of their families.
　　At last the train rumbled in, and engulfed the waitingmultitude. Harney swept Charity up on to the first carand they captured a bench for two, and sat in happyisolation while the train swayed and roared alongthrough rich fields and languid tree-clumps. Thehaze of the morning had become a sort of clear tremorover everything, like the colourless vibration about aflame; and the opulent landscape seemed to droop underit. But to Charity the heat was a stimulant: itenveloped the whole world in the same glow that burnedat her heart. Now and then a lurch of the train flungher against Harney, and through her thin muslin shefelt the touch of his sleeve. She steadied herself,their eyes met, and the flaming breath of the dayseemed to enclose them.
　　The train roared into the Nettleton station, thedescending mob caught them on its tide, and they wereswept out into a vague dusty square thronged with seedy"hacks" and long curtained omnibuses drawn by horseswith tasselled fly-nets over their withers, who stoodswinging their depressed heads drearily from side toside.
　　A mob of 'bus and hack drivers were shouting "To theEagle House," "To the Washington House," "This way tothe Lake," "Just starting for Greytop;" and throughtheir yells came the popping of fire-crackers, theexplosion of torpedoes, the banging of toy-guns, andthe crash of a firemen's band trying to play the MerryWidow while they were being packed into awaggonette streaming with bunting.
　　The ramshackle wooden hotels about the square were allhung with flags and paper lanterns, and as Harney andCharity turned into the main street, with its brick andgranite business blocks crowding out the old low-storied shops, and its towering poles strung withinnumerable wires that seemed to tremble and buzz inthe heat, they saw the double line of flags andlanterns tapering away gaily to the park at the otherend of the perspective. The noise and colour of thisholiday vision seemed to transform Nettleton into ametropolis. Charity could not believe that Springfieldor even Boston had anything grander to show, and shewondered if, at this very moment, Annabel Balch, on thearm of as brilliant a young man, were threading her waythrough scenes as resplendent.
　　"Where shall we go first?" Harney asked; but as sheturned her happy eyes on him he guessed the answer andsaid: "We'll take a look round, shall we?"The street swarmed with their fellow-travellers, withother excursionists arriving from other directions,with Nettleton's own population, and with themill-hands trooping in from the factories on theCreston. The shops were closed, but one would scarcelyhave noticed it, so numerous were the glass doorsswinging open on saloons, on restaurants, on drug-stores gushing from every soda-water tap, on fruit andconfectionery shops stacked with strawberry-cake,cocoanut drops, trays of glistening molasses candy,boxes of caramels and chewing-gum, baskets of soddenstrawberries, and dangling branches of bananas. Outsideof some of the doors were trestles with banked-uporanges and apples, spotted pears and dustyraspberries; and the air reeked with the smell of fruitand stale coffee, beer and sarsaparilla and friedpotatoes.
　　Even the shops that were closed offered, through wideexpanses of plate-glass, hints of hidden riches. Insome, waves of silk and ribbon broke over shores ofimitation moss from which ravishing hats rose liketropical orchids. In others, the pink throats ofgramophones opened their giant convolutions in asoundless chorus; or bicycles shining in neat ranksseemed to await the signal of an invisible starter; ortiers of fancy-goods in leatherette and paste andcelluloid dangled their insidious graces; and, in onevast bay that seemed to project them into excitingcontact with the public, wax ladies in daringdresses chatted elegantly, or, with gestures intimateyet blameless, pointed to their pink corsets andtransparent hosiery.
　　Presently Harney found that his watch had stopped, andturned in at a small jeweller's shop which chanced tostill be open. While the watch was being examinedCharity leaned over the glass counter where, on abackground of dark blue velvet, pins, rings, andbrooches glittered like the moon and stars. She hadnever seen jewellry so near by, and she longed to liftthe glass lid and plunge her hand among the shiningtreasures. But already Harney's watch was repaired,and he laid his hand on her arm and drew her from herdream.
　　"Which do you like best?" he asked leaning over thecounter 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 wasmere trumpery compared to the small round stone, blueas a mountain lake, with little sparks of light allround it. She coloured at her want of discrimination.
　　"It's so lovely I guess I was afraid to look atit," she said.
　　He laughed, and they went out of the shop; but a fewsteps away he exclaimed: "Oh, by Jove, I forgotsomething," and turned back and left her in the crowd.
　　She stood staring down a row of pink gramophone throatstill he rejoined her and slipped his arm through hers.
　　"You mustn't be afraid of looking at the blue pin anylonger, because it belongs to you," he said; and shefelt a little box being pressed into her hand. Herheart gave a leap of joy, but it reached her lips onlyin a shy stammer. She remembered other girls whom shehad heard planning to extract presents from theirfellows, and was seized with a sudden dread lest Harneyshould have imagined that she had leaned over thepretty things in the glass case in the hope of havingone given to her....
　　A little farther down the street they turned in at aglass doorway opening on a shining hall with a mahoganystaircase, and brass cages in its corners. "We musthave something to eat," Harney said; and the nextmoment Charity found herself in a dressing-room alllooking-glass and lustrous surfaces, where a party ofshowy-looking girls were dabbing on powder andstraightening immense plumed hats. When they had goneshe took courage to bathe her hot face in one of themarble basins, and to straighten her own hat-brim,which the parasols of the crowd had indented. Thedresses in the shops had so impressed her that shescarcely dared look at her reflection; but when she didso, the glow of her face under her cherry-coloured hat,and the curve of her young shoulders through thetransparent muslin, restored her courage; and when shehad taken the blue brooch from its box and pinned it onher bosom she walked toward the restaurant with herhead high, as if she had always strolled throughtessellated halls beside young men in flannels.
　　Her spirit sank a little at the sight of the slim-waisted waitresses in black, with bewitching mob-capson their haughty heads, who were moving disdainfullybetween the tables. "Not f'r another hour," one of themdropped to Harney in passing; and he stood doubtfullyglancing about him.
　　"Oh, well, we can't stay sweltering here," he decided;"let's try somewhere else--" and with a sense of reliefCharity followed him from that scene of inhospitablesplendour.
　　That "somewhere else" turned out--after more hottramping, and several failures--to be, of all things, alittle open-air place in a back street that calleditself a French restaurant, and consisted in two orthree rickety tables under a scarlet-runner, between apatch of zinnias and petunias and a big elm bendingover from the next yard. Here they lunched on queerlyflavoured things, while Harney, leaning back in acrippled rocking-chair, smoked cigarettes between thecourses and poured into Charity's glass a pale yellowwine which he said was the very same one drank in justsuch jolly places in France.
　　Charity did not think the wine as good as sarsaparilla,but she sipped a mouthful for the pleasure of doingwhat he did, and of fancying herself alone with him inforeign countries. The illusion was increased by theirbeing served by a deep-bosomed woman with smooth hairand a pleasant laugh, who talked to Harney inunintelligible words, and seemed amazed and overjoyedat his answering her in kind. At the other tablesother people sat, mill-hands probably, homely butpleasant looking, who spoke the same shrill jargon, andlooked at Harney and Charity with friendly eyes; andbetween the table-legs a poodle with bald patchesand pink eyes nosed about for scraps, and sat up on hishind legs absurdly.
　　Harney showed no inclination to move, for hot as theircorner was, it was at least shaded and quiet; and, fromthe main thoroughfares came the clanging of trolleys,the incessant popping of torpedoes, the jingle ofstreet-organs, the bawling of megaphone men and theloud murmur of increasing crowds. He leaned back,smoking his cigar, patting the dog, and stirring thecoffee that steamed in their chipped cups. "It's thereal thing, you know," he explained; and Charityhastily revised her previous conception of thebeverage.
　　They had made no plans for the rest of the day, andwhen Harney asked her what she wanted to do next shewas too bewildered by rich possibilities to find ananswer. Finally she confessed that she longed to go tothe Lake, where she had not been taken on her formervisit, and when he answered, "Oh, there's time forthat--it will be pleasanter later," she suggestedseeing some pictures like the ones Mr. Miles had takenher to. She thought Harney looked a littledisconcerted; but he passed his fine handkerchief overhis warm brow, said gaily, "Come along, then," androse with a last pat for the pink-eyed dog.
　　Mr. Miles's pictures had been shown in an austereY.M.C.A. hall, with white walls and an organ; butHarney led Charity to a glittering place--everythingshe saw seemed to glitter--where they passed, betweenimmense pictures of yellow-haired beauties stabbingvillains in evening dress, into a velvet-curtainedauditorium packed with spectators to the last limit ofcompression. After that, for a while, everything wasmerged in her brain in swimming circles of heat andblinding alternations of light and darkness. All theworld has to show seemed to pass before her in a chaosof palms and minarets, charging cavalry regiments,roaring lions, comic policemen and scowling murderers;and the crowd around her, the hundreds of hot sallowcandy-munching faces, young, old, middle-aged, but allkindled with the same contagious excitement, becamepart of the spectacle, and danced on the screen withthe rest.
　　Presently the thought of the cool trolley-run to theLake grew irresistible, and they struggled out of thetheatre. As they stood on the pavement, Harney palewith the heat, and even Charity a little confusedby it, a young man drove by in an electric run-aboutwith a calico band bearing the words: "Ten dollars totake you round the Lake." Before Charity knew what washappening, Harney had waved a hand, and they wereclimbing in. "Say, for twenny-five I'll run you out tosee the ball-game and back," the driver proposed withan insinuating grin; but Charity said quickly: "Oh, I'drather go rowing on the Lake." The street was sothronged that progress was slow; but the glory ofsitting in the little carriage while it wriggled itsway between laden omnibuses and trolleys made themoments seem too short. "Next turn is Lake Avenue,"the young man called out over his shoulder; and as theypaused in the wake of a big omnibus groaning withKnights of Pythias in cocked hats and swords, Charitylooked up and saw on the corner a brick house with aconspicuous black and gold sign across its front. "Dr.
　　Merkle; Private Consultations at all hours. LadyAttendants," she read; and suddenly she remembered AllyHawes's words: "The house was at the corner of WingStreet and Lake Avenue...there's a big black signacross the front...." Through all the heat and therapture a shiver of cold ran over her.
Chapter 10
    THE Lake at last--a sheet of shining metal brooded overby drooping trees. Charity and Harney had secured aboat and, getting away from the wharves and therefreshment-booths, they drifted idly along, huggingthe shadow of the shore. Where the sun struck thewater 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 treeson its edge seemed enamelled on a solid surface; butgradually, as the sun declined, the water grewtransparent, and Charity, leaning over, plunged herfascinated gaze into depths so clear that she saw theinverted tree-tops interwoven with the green growths ofthe bottom.
　　They rounded a point at the farther end of the Lake,and entering an inlet pushed their bow against aprotruding tree-trunk. A green veil of willowsoverhung them. Beyond the trees, wheat-fields sparkledin the sun; and all along the horizon the clearhills throbbed with light. Charity leaned back in thestern, and Harney unshipped the oars and lay in thebottom of the boat without speaking.
　　Ever since their meeting at the Creston pool he hadbeen subject to these brooding silences, which were asdifferent as possible from the pauses when they ceasedto speak because words were needless. At such timeshis face wore the expression she had seen on it whenshe had looked in at him from the darkness and againthere came over her a sense of the mysterious distancebetween them; but usually his fits of abstraction werefollowed by bursts of gaiety that chased away theshadow before it chilled her.
　　She was still thinking of the ten dollars he had handedto the driver of the run-about. It had given themtwenty minutes of pleasure, and it seemed unimaginablethat anyone should be able to buy amusement at thatrate. With ten dollars he might have bought her anengagement ring; she knew that Mrs. Tom Fry's, whichcame from Springfield, and had a diamond in it, hadcost only eight seventy-five. But she did not know whythe thought had occurred to her. Harney would neverbuy her an engagement ring: they were friends andcomrades, but no more. He had been perfectly fair toher: he had never said a word to mislead her. Shewondered what the girl was like whose hand was waitingfor his ring....
　　Boats were beginning to thicken on the Lake and theclang of incessantly arriving trolleys announced thereturn of the crowds from the ball-field. The shadowslengthened across the pearl-grey water and two whiteclouds near the sun were turning golden. On theopposite shore men were hammering hastily at a woodenscaffolding in a field. Charity asked what it was for.
　　"Why, the fireworks. I suppose there'll be a bigshow." Harney looked at her and a smile crept into hismoody eyes. "Have you never seen any good fireworks?""Miss Hatchard always sends up lovely rockets on theFourth," she answered doubtfully.
　　"Oh----" his contempt was unbounded. "I mean a bigperformance like this, illuminated boats, and all therest."She flushed at the picture. "Do they send them up fromthe Lake, too?""Rather. Didn't you notice that big raft wepassed? It's wonderful to see the rocketscompleting their orbits down under one's feet." Shesaid nothing, and he put the oars into the rowlocks.
　　"If we stay we'd better go and pick up something toeat.""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 trainand reassured her. "The moon rises so late that itwill be dark by eight, and we'll have over an hour ofit."Twilight fell, and lights began to show along theshore. The trolleys roaring out from Nettleton becamegreat luminous serpents coiling in and out among thetrees. The wooden eating-houses at the Lake's edgedanced with lanterns, and the dusk echoed with laughterand shouts and the clumsy splashing of oars.
　　Harney and Charity had found a table in the corner of abalcony built over the Lake, and were patientlyawaiting an unattainable chowder. Close under them thewater lapped the piles, agitated by the evolutions of alittle white steamboat trellised with coloured globeswhich was to run passengers up and down the Lake.
　　It was already black with them as it sheered off on itsfirst trip.
　　Suddenly Charity heard a woman's laugh behind her. Thesound was familiar, and she turned to look. A band ofshowily dressed girls and dapper young men wearingbadges of secret societies, with new straw hats tiltedfar back on their square-clipped hair, had invaded thebalcony and were loudly clamouring for a table. Thegirl in the lead was the one who had laughed. She worea large hat with a long white feather, and from underits brim her painted eyes looked at Charity with amusedrecognition.
　　"Say! if this ain't like Old Home Week," she remarkedto the girl at her elbow; and giggles and glancespassed between them. Charity knew at once that thegirl with the white feather was Julia Hawes. She hadlost her freshness, and the paint under her eyes madeher face seem thinner; but her lips had the same lovelycurve, and the same cold mocking smile, as if therewere some secret absurdity in the person she waslooking at, and she had instantly detected it.
　　Charity flushed to the forehead and looked away.
　　She felt herself humiliated by Julia's sneer, andvexed that the mockery of such a creature should affecther. She trembled lest Harney should notice that thenoisy troop had recognized her; but they found no tablefree, and passed on tumultuously.
　　Presently there was a soft rush through the air and ashower of silver fell from the blue evening sky. Inanother direction, pale Roman candles shot up singlythrough the trees, and a fire-haired rocket swept thehorizon like a portent. Between these intermittentflashes the velvet curtains of the darkness weredescending, and in the intervals of eclipse the voicesof the crowds seemed to sink to smothered murmurs.
　　Charity and Harney, dispossessed by newcomers, were atlength obliged to give up their table and strugglethrough the throng about the boat-landings. For awhile there seemed no escape from the tide of latearrivals; but finally Harney secured the last twoplaces on the stand from which the more privileged wereto see the fireworks. The seats were at the end of arow, one above the other. Charity had taken off herhat to have an uninterrupted view; and whenever sheleaned back to follow the curve of somedishevelled rocket she could feel Harney's kneesagainst her head.
　　After a while the scattered fireworks ceased. A longerinterval of darkness followed, and then the whole nightbroke into flower. From every point of the horizon,gold and silver arches sprang up and crossed eachother, sky-orchards broke into blossom, shed theirflaming petals and hung their branches with goldenfruit; and all the while the air was filled with a softsupernatural hum, as though great birds were buildingtheir nests in those invisible tree-tops.
　　Now and then there came a lull, and a wave of moonlightswept the Lake. In a flash it revealed hundreds ofboats, steel-dark against lustrous ripples; then itwithdrew as if with a furling of vast translucentwings. Charity's heart throbbed with delight. It wasas if all the latent beauty of things had been unveiledto her. She could not imagine that the world heldanything more wonderful; but near her she heard someonesay, "You wait till you see the set piece," andinstantly her hopes took a fresh flight. At last, justas it was beginning to seem as though the whole arch ofthe sky were one great lid pressed against her dazzledeye-balls, and striking out of them continuousjets of jewelled light, the velvet darkness settleddown again, and a murmur of expectation ran through thecrowd.
　　"Now--now!" the same voice said excitedly; and Charity,grasping the hat on her knee, crushed it tight in theeffort to restrain her rapture.
　　For a moment the night seemed to grow more impenetrablyblack; then a great picture stood out against it like aconstellation. It was surmounted by a golden scrollbearing the inscription, "Washington crossing theDelaware," and across a flood of motionless goldenripples the National Hero passed, erect, solemn andgigantic, standing with folded arms in the stern of aslowly moving golden boat.
　　A long "Oh-h-h" burst from the spectators: the standcreaked and shook with their blissful trepidations.
　　"Oh-h-h," Charity gasped: she had forgotten where shewas, had at last forgotten even Harney's nearness. Sheseemed to have been caught up into the stars....
　　The picture vanished and darkness came down. In theobscurity she felt her head clasped by two hands: herface was drawn backward, and Harney's lips werepressed on hers. With sudden vehemence he wound hisarms about her, holding her head against his breastwhile she gave him back his kisses. An unknown Harneyhad revealed himself, a Harney who dominated her andyet over whom she felt herself possessed of a newmysterious power.
　　But the crowd was beginning to move, and he had torelease her. "Come," he said in a confused voice. Hescrambled over the side of the stand, and holding uphis arm caught her as she sprang to the ground. Hepassed his arm about her waist, steadying her againstthe descending rush of people; and she clung to him,speechless, exultant, as if all the crowding andconfusion about them were a mere vain stirring of theair.
　　"Come," he repeated, "we must try to make the trolley."He drew her along, and she followed, still in herdream. They walked as if they were one, so isolated inecstasy that the people jostling them on every sideseemed impalpable. But when they reached the terminusthe illuminated trolley was already clanging on itsway, its platforms black with passengers. The carswaiting behind it were as thickly packed; and thethrong about the terminus was so dense that itseemed hopeless to struggle for a place.
　　"Last trip up the Lake," a megaphone bellowed from thewharf; and the lights of the little steam-boat camedancing out of the darkness.
　　"No use waiting here; shall we run up the Lake?" Harneysuggested.
　　They pushed their way back to the edge of the waterjust as the gang-plank lowered from the white side ofthe boat. The electric light at the end of the wharfflashed full on the descending passengers, and amongthem Charity caught sight of Julia Hawes, her whitefeather askew, and the face under it flushed withcoarse laughter. As she stepped from the gang-plankshe 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 itwas a family party? Here's grandpa's little daughtercome to take him home!"A snigger ran through the group; and then, toweringabove them, and steadying himself by the hand-rail in adesperate effort at erectness, Mr. Royall steppedstiffly ashore. Like the young men of the party, hewore a secret society emblem in the buttonhole ofhis black frock-coat. His head was covered by a newPanama hat, and his narrow black tie, half undone,dangled down on his rumpled shirt-front. His face, alivid brown, with red blotches of anger and lips sunkenin like an old man's, was a lamentable ruin in thesearching glare.
　　He was just behind Julia Hawes, and had one hand on herarm; but as he left the gang-plank he freed himself,and moved a step or two away from his companions. Hehad seen Charity at once, and his glance passed slowlyfrom her to Harney, whose arm was still about her. Hestood staring at them, and trying to master the senilequiver of his lips; then he drew himself up with thetremulous majesty of drunkenness, and stretched out hisarm.
　　"You whore--you damn--bare-headed whore, you!" heenunciated 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 lapwhen she jumped up to leave the stand; and suddenly shehad a vision of herself, hatless, dishevelled, with aman's arm about her, confronting that drunkencrew, headed by her guardian's pitiable figure. Thepicture filled her with shame. She had known sincechildhood about Mr. Royall's "habits": had seen him, asshe went up to bed, sitting morosely in his office, abottle at his elbow; or coming home, heavy andquarrelsome, from his business expeditions to Hepburnor Springfield; but the idea of his associating himselfpublicly with a band of disreputable girls and bar-roomloafers was new and dreadful to her.
　　"Oh----" she said in a gasp of misery; and releasingherself 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 heardhis apostrophe; and one of the girls called out: "Say,how many fellers does she want?"There was another laugh, followed by a pause ofcuriosity, during which Mr. Royall continued to glareat Charity. At length his twitching lips parted. "Isaid, 'You--damn--whore!'" he repeated with precision,steadying himself on Julia's shoulder.
　　Laughs and jeers were beginning to spring up from thecircle of people beyond their group; and a voice calledout from the gangway: "Now, then, step livelythere--all ABOARD!" The pressure of approaching anddeparting passengers forced the actors in the rapidscene apart, and pushed them back into the throng.
　　Charity found herself clinging to Harney's arm andsobbing desperately. Mr. Royall had disappeared, andin the distance she heard the receding sound of Julia'slaugh.
　　The boat, laden to the taffrail, was puffing away onher last trip.
Chapter 11
    AT two o'clock in the morning the freckled boy fromCreston stopped his sleepy horse at the door of the redhouse, and Charity got out. Harney had taken leave ofher at Creston River, charging the boy to drive herhome. Her mind was still in a fog of misery, and shedid not remember very clearly what had happened, orwhat they said to each other, during the interminableinterval since their departure from Nettleton; but thesecretive instinct of the animal in pain was so strongin her that she had a sense of relief when Harney gotout and she drove on alone.
　　The full moon hung over North Dormer, whitening themist that filled the hollows between the hills andfloated transparently above the fields. Charity stooda moment at the gate, looking out into the waningnight. She watched the boy drive off, his horse's headwagging heavily to and fro; then she went around to thekitchen door and felt under the mat for the key. Shefound it, unlocked the door and went in. Thekitchen was dark, but she discovered a box of matches,lit a candle and went upstairs. Mr. Royall's door,opposite hers, stood open on his unlit room; evidentlyhe had not come back. She went into her room, boltedher door and began slowly to untie the ribbon about herwaist, and to take off her dress. Under the bed shesaw the paper bag in which she had hidden her new hatfrom inquisitive eyes....
　　She lay for a long time sleepless on her bed, staringup at the moonlight on the low ceiling; dawn was in thesky when she fell asleep, and when she woke the sun wason her face.
　　She dressed and went down to the kitchen. Verena wasthere alone: she glanced at Charity tranquilly, withher old deaf-looking eyes. There was no sign of Mr.
　　Royall about the house and the hours passed without hisreappearing. Charity had gone up to her room, and satthere listlessly, her hands on her lap. Puffs ofsultry air fanned her dimity window curtains and fliesbuzzed stiflingly against the bluish panes.
　　At one o'clock Verena hobbled up to see if she were notcoming down to dinner; but she shook her head, andthe old woman went away, saying: "I'll cover up, then."The sun turned and left her room, and Charity seatedherself in the window, gazing down the village streetthrough the half-opened shutters. Not a thought was inher mind; it was just a dark whirlpool of crowdingimages; and she watched the people passing along thestreet, Dan Targatt's team hauling a load of pine-trunks down to Hepburn, the sexton's old white horsegrazing on the bank across the way, as if she looked atthese familiar sights from the other side of the grave.
　　She was roused from her apathy by seeing Ally Hawescome out of the Frys' gate and walk slowly toward thered house with her uneven limping step. At the sightCharity recovered her severed contact with reality. Shedivined that Ally was coming to hear about her day: noone else was in the secret of the trip to Nettleton,and it had flattered Ally profoundly to be allowed toknow of it.
　　At the thought of having to see her, of having to meether eyes and answer or evade her questions, the wholehorror of the previous night's adventure rushed backupon Charity. What had been a feverish nightmarebecame a cold and unescapable fact. Poor Ally, at thatmoment, represented North Dormer, with all its meancuriosities, its furtive malice, its shamunconsciousness of evil. Charity knew that, althoughall relations with Julia were supposed to be severed,the tender-hearted Ally still secretly communicatedwith her; and no doubt Julia would exult in the chanceof retailing the scandal of the wharf. The story,exaggerated and distorted, was probably already on itsway to North Dormer.
　　Ally's dragging pace had not carried her far from theFrys' gate when she was stopped by old Mrs. Sollas, whowas a great talker, and spoke very slowly because shehad never been able to get used to her new teeth fromHepburn. Still, even this respite would not last long;in another ten minutes Ally would be at the door, andCharity would hear her greeting Verena in the kitchen,and then calling up from the foot of the stairs.
　　Suddenly it became clear that flight, and instantflight, was the only thing conceivable. The longing toescape, to get away from familiar faces, from placeswhere she was known, had always been strong in her inmoments of distress. She had a childish belief inthe miraculous power of strange scenes and new faces totransform her life and wipe out bitter memories. Butsuch impulses were mere fleeting whims compared to thecold resolve which now possessed her. She felt shecould not remain an hour longer under the roof of theman who had publicly dishonoured her, and face to facewith the people who would presently be gloating overall the details of her humiliation.
　　Her passing pity for Mr. Royall had been swallowed upin loathing: everything in her recoiled from thedisgraceful spectacle of the drunken old manapostrophizing her in the presence of a band of loafersand street-walkers. Suddenly, vividly, she relivedagain the horrible moment when he had tried to forcehimself into her room, and what she had before supposedto be a mad aberration now appeared to her as a vulgarincident in a debauched and degraded life.
　　While these thoughts were hurrying through her she haddragged out her old canvas school-bag, and wasthrusting into it a few articles of clothing and thelittle packet of letters she had received from Harney.
　　From under her pincushion she took the library key, andlaid it in full view; then she felt at the back ofa drawer for the blue brooch that Harney had given her.
　　She would not have dared to wear it openly at NorthDormer, but now she fastened it on her bosom as if itwere a talisman to protect her in her flight. Thesepreparations had taken but a few minutes, and when theywere finished Ally Hawes was still at the Frys' cornertalking to old Mrs. Sollas....
　　She had said to herself, as she always said in momentsof revolt: "I'll go to the Mountain--I'll go back to myown folks." She had never really meant it before; butnow, as she considered her case, no other course seemedopen. She had never learned any trade that would havegiven her independence in a strange place, and she knewno one in the big towns of the valley, where she mighthave hoped to find employment. Miss Hatchard was stillaway; but even had she been at North Dormer she was thelast person to whom Charity would have turned, sinceone of the motives urging her to flight was the wishnot to see Lucius Harney. Travelling back fromNettleton, in the crowded brightly-lit train, allexchange of confidence between them had beenimpossible; but during their drive from Hepburn toCreston River she had gathered from Harney's snatchesof consolatory talk--again hampered by the freckledboy's presence--that he intended to see her the nextday. At the moment she had found a vague comfort inthe assurance; but in the desolate lucidity of thehours that followed she had come to see theimpossibility of meeting him again. Her dream ofcomradeship was over; and the scene on the wharf--vileand disgraceful as it had been--had after all shed thelight of truth on her minute of madness. It was as ifher guardian's words had stripped her bare in the faceof the grinning crowd and proclaimed to the world thesecret admonitions of her conscience.
　　She did not think these things out clearly; she simplyfollowed the blind propulsion of her wretchedness. Shedid not want, ever again, to see anyone she had known;above all, she did not want to see Harney....
　　She climbed the hill-path behind the house and struckthrough the woods by a short-cut leading to the Crestonroad. A lead-coloured sky hung heavily over thefields, and in the forest the motionless air wasstifling; but she pushed on, impatient to reachthe road which was the shortest way to the Mountain.
　　To do so, she had to follow the Creston road for a mileor two, and go within half a mile of the village; andshe walked quickly, fearing to meet Harney. But therewas no sign of him, and she had almost reached thebranch road when she saw the flanks of a large whitetent projecting through the trees by the roadside. Shesupposed that it sheltered a travelling circus whichhad come there for the Fourth; but as she drew nearershe saw, over the folded-back flap, a large signbearing the inscription, "Gospel Tent." The interiorseemed to be empty; but a young man in a black alpacacoat, his lank hair parted over a round white face,stepped from under the flap and advanced toward herwith a smile.
　　"Sister, your Saviour knows everything. Won't you comein and lay your guilt before Him?" he askedinsinuatingly, putting his hand on her arm.
　　Charity started back and flushed. For a moment shethought the evangelist must have heard a report of thescene at Nettleton; then she saw the absurdity of thesupposition.
　　"I on'y wish't I had any to lay!" she retorted,with one of her fierce flashes of self-derision;and the young man murmured, aghast: "Oh, Sister, don'tspeak blasphemy...."But she had jerked her arm out of his hold, and wasrunning up the branch road, trembling with the fear ofmeeting a familiar face. Presently she was out ofsight of the village, and climbing into the heart ofthe forest. She could not hope to do the fifteen milesto the Mountain that afternoon; but she knew of a placehalf-way to Hamblin where she could sleep, and where noone would think of looking for her. It was a littledeserted house on a slope in one of the lonely rifts ofthe hills. She had seen it once, years before, whenshe had gone on a nutting expedition to the grove ofwalnuts below it. The party had taken refuge in thehouse from a sudden mountain storm, and she rememberedthat Ben Sollas, who liked frightening girls, had toldthem that it was said to be haunted.
　　She was growing faint and tired, for she had eatennothing since morning, and was not used to walking sofar. Her head felt light and she sat down for a momentby the roadside. As she sat there she heard the clickof a bicycle-bell, and started up to plunge back intothe forest; but before she could move the bicyclehad swept around the curve of the road, and Harney,jumping off, was approaching her with outstretchedarms.
　　"Charity! What on earth are you doing here?"She stared as if he were a vision, so startled by theunexpectedness of his being there that no words came toher.
　　"Where were you going? Had you forgotten that I wascoming?" he continued, trying to draw her to him; butshe shrank from his embrace.
　　"I was going away--I don't want to see you--I want youshould leave me alone," she broke out wildly.
　　He looked at her and his face grew grave, as though theshadow of a premonition brushed it.
　　"Going away--from me, Charity?""From everybody. I want you should leave me."He stood glancing doubtfully up and down the lonelyforest road that stretched away into sun-fleckeddistances.
　　"Where were you going?'
　　"Home.""Home--this way?"She threw her head back defiantly. "To my home--upyonder: to the Mountain."As she spoke she became aware of a change in hisface. He was no longer listening to her, he was onlylooking at her, with the passionate absorbed expressionshe had seen in his eyes after they had kissed on thestand at Nettleton. He was the new Harney again, theHarney abruptly revealed in that embrace, who seemed sopenetrated with the joy of her presence that he wasutterly careless of what she was thinking or feeling.
　　He caught her hands with a laugh. "How do you supposeI found you?" he said gaily. He drew out the littlepacket of his letters and flourished them before herbewildered eyes.
　　"You dropped them, you imprudent young person--droppedthem in the middle of the road, not far from here; andthe young man who is running the Gospel tent pickedthem up just as I was riding by." He drew back, holdingher at arm's length, and scrutinizing her troubled facewith the minute searching gaze of his short-sightedeyes.
　　"Did you really think you could run away from me? Yousee you weren't meant to," he said; and before shecould answer he had kissed her again, not vehemently,but tenderly, almost fraternally, as if he hadguessed her confused pain, and wanted her to know heunderstood it. He wound his fingers through hers.
　　"Come let's walk a little. I want to talk to you.
　　There's so much to say."He spoke with a boy's gaiety, carelessly andconfidently, as if nothing had happened that couldshame or embarrass them; and for a moment, in thesudden relief of her release from lonely pain, she feltherself yielding to his mood. But he had turned, andwas drawing her back along the road by which she hadcome. She stiffened herself and stopped short.
　　"I won't go back," she said.
　　They looked at each other a moment in silence; then heanswered gently: "Very well: let's go the other way,then."She remained motionless, gazing silently at the ground,and he went on: "Isn't there a house up here somewhere--a little abandoned house--you meant to show me someday?" Still she made no answer, and he continued, inthe same tone of tender reassurance: "Let us go therenow and sit down and talk quietly." He took one of thehands that hung by her side and pressed his lips to thepalm. "Do you suppose I'm going to let you sendme away? Do you suppose I don't understand?"The little old house--its wooden walls sun-bleached toa ghostly gray--stood in an orchard above the road.
　　The garden palings had fallen, but the broken gatedangled between its posts, and the path to the housewas marked by rose-bushes run wild and hanging theirsmall pale blossoms above the crowding grasses.
　　Slender pilasters and an intricate fan-light framed theopening where the door had hung; and the door itselflay rotting in the grass, with an old apple-tree fallenacross it.
　　Inside, also, wind and weather had blanched everythingto the same wan silvery tint; the house was as dry andpure as the interior of a long-empty shell. But itmust have been exceptionally well built, for the littlerooms had kept something of their human aspect: thewooden mantels with their neat classic ornaments werein place, and the corners of one ceiling retained alight film of plaster tracery.
　　Harney had found an old bench at the back door anddragged it into the house. Charity sat on it,leaning her head against the wall in a state ofdrowsy lassitude. He had guessed that she was hungryand thirsty, and had brought her some tablets ofchocolate from his bicycle-bag, and filled hisdrinking-cup from a spring in the orchard; and now hesat at her feet, smoking a cigarette, and looking up ather without speaking. Outside, the afternoon shadowswere lengthening across the grass, and through theempty window-frame that faced her she saw the Mountainthrusting its dark mass against a sultry sunset. Itwas time to go.
　　She stood up, and he sprang to his feet also, andpassed his arm through hers with an air of authority.
　　"Now, Charity, you're coming back with me."She looked at him and shook her head. "I ain't evergoing back. You don't know.""What don't I know?" She was silent, and he continued:
　　"What happened on the wharf was horrible--it's naturalyou should feel as you do. But it doesn't make anyreal difference: you can't be hurt by such things. Youmust try to forget. And you must try to understandthat men...men sometimes...""I know about men. That's why."He coloured a little at the retort, as though ithad touched him in a way she did not suspect.
　　"Well, then...you must know one has to makeallowances....He'd been drinking....""I know all that, too. I've seen him so before. Buthe wouldn't have dared speak to me that way if hehadn't...""Hadn't what? What do you mean?""Hadn't wanted me to be like those other girls...." Shelowered her voice and looked away from him. "So's 'the wouldn't have to go out...."Harney stared at her. For a moment he did not seem toseize her meaning; then his face grew dark. "Thedamned hound! The villainous low hound!" His wrathblazed up, crimsoning him to the temples. "I neverdreamed--good God, it's too vile," he broke off, as ifhis thoughts recoiled from the discovery.
　　"I won't never go back there," she repeated doggedly.
　　"No----" he assented.
　　There was a long interval of silence, during which sheimagined that he was searching her face for morelight on what she had revealed to him; and a flush ofshame swept over her.
　　"I know the way you must feel about me," she broke out,"...telling you such things...."But once more, as she spoke, she became aware that hewas no longer listening. He came close and caught herto him as if he were snatching her from some imminentperil: his impetuous eyes were in hers, and she couldfeel the hard beat of his heart as he held her againstit.
　　"Kiss me again--like last night," he said, pushing herhair back as if to draw her whole face up into hiskiss.
Chapter 12
    ONE afternoon toward the end of August a group of girlssat in a room at Miss Hatchard's in a gay confusion offlags, turkey-red, blue and white paper muslin, harvestsheaves and illuminated scrolls.
　　North Dormer was preparing for its Old Home Week. Thatform of sentimental decentralization was still in itsearly stages, and, precedents being few, and the desireto set an example contagious, the matter had become asubject of prolonged and passionate discussion underMiss Hatchard's roof. The incentive to the celebrationhad come rather from those who had left North Dormerthan from those who had been obliged to stay there, andthere was some difficulty in rousing the village to theproper state of enthusiasm. But Miss Hatchard's paleprim drawing-room was the centre of constant comingsand goings from Hepburn, Nettleton, Springfield andeven more distant cities; and whenever a visitorarrived he was led across the hall, and treated toa glimpse of the group of girls deep in their prettypreparations.
　　"All the old names...all the old names...." MissHatchard would be heard, tapping across the hall on hercrutches. "Targatt...Sollas...Fry: this is Miss OrmaFry sewing the stars on the drapery for the organ-loft.
　　Don't move, girls....and this is Miss Ally Hawes, ourcleverest needle-woman...and Miss Charity Royall makingour garlands of evergreen....I like the idea of its allbeing homemade, don't you? We haven't had to call inany foreign talent: my young cousin Lucius Harney, thearchitect--you know he's up here preparing a book onColonial houses--he's taken the whole thing in hand socleverly; but you must come and see his sketch for thestage we're going to put up in the Town Hall."One of the first results of the Old Home Week agitationhad, in fact, been the reappearance of Lucius Harney inthe village street. He had been vaguely spoken of asbeing not far off, but for some weeks past no one hadseen him at North Dormer, and there was a recent reportof his having left Creston River, where he was said tohave been staying, and gone away from the neighbourhoodfor good. Soon after Miss Hatchard's return,however, he came back to his old quarters in her house,and began to take a leading part in the planning of thefestivities. He threw himself into the idea withextraordinary good-humour, and was so prodigal ofsketches, and so inexhaustible in devices, that he gavean immediate impetus to the rather languid movement,and infected the whole village with his enthusiasm.
　　"Lucius has such a feeling for the past that he hasroused us all to a sense of our privileges," MissHatchard would say, lingering on the last word, whichwas a favourite one. And before leading her visitorback to the drawing-room she would repeat, for thehundredth time, that she supposed he thought it verybold of little North Dormer to start up and have a HomeWeek of its own, when so many bigger places hadn'tthought of it yet; but that, after all, Associationscounted more than the size of the population, didn'tthey? And of course North Dormer was so full ofAssociations...historic, literary (here a filial sighfor Honorius) and ecclesiastical...he knew about theold pewter communion service imported from England in1769, she supposed? And it was so important, in awealthy materialistic age, to set the example ofreverting to the old ideals, the family and thehomestead, and so on. This peroration usually carriedher half-way back across the hall, leaving the girls toreturn to their interrupted activities.
　　The day on which Charity Royall was weaving hemlockgarlands for the procession was the last before thecelebration. When Miss Hatchard called upon the NorthDormer maidenhood to collaborate in the festalpreparations Charity had at first held aloof; but ithad been made clear to her that her non-appearancemight excite conjecture, and, reluctantly, she hadjoined the other workers. The girls, at first shy andembarrassed, and puzzled as to the exact nature of theprojected commemoration, had soon become interested inthe amusing details of their task, and excited by thenotice they received. They would not for the worldhave missed their afternoons at Miss Hatchard's, and,while they cut out and sewed and draped and pasted,their tongues kept up such an accompaniment to thesewing-machine that Charity's silence sheltered itselfunperceived under their chatter.
　　In spirit she was still almost unconscious of thepleasant stir about her. Since her return to thered house, on the evening of the day when Harney hadovertaken her on her way to the Mountain, she had livedat North Dormer as if she were suspended in the void.
　　She had come back there because Harney, after appearingto agree to the impossibility of her doing so, hadended by persuading her that any other course would bemadness. She had nothing further to fear from Mr.
　　Royall. Of this she had declared herself sure, thoughshe had failed to add, in his exoneration, that he hadtwice offered to make her his wife. Her hatred of himmade it impossible, at the moment, for her to sayanything that might partly excuse him in Harney's eyes.
　　Harney, however, once satisfied of her security, hadfound plenty of reasons for urging her to return. Thefirst, and the most unanswerable, was that she hadnowhere else to go. But the one on which he laid thegreatest stress was that flight would be equivalent toavowal. If--as was almost inevitable--rumours of thescandalous scene at Nettleton should reach NorthDormer, how else would her disappearance beinterpreted? Her guardian had publicly taken away hercharacter, and she immediately vanished from hishouse. Seekers after motives could hardly fail todraw an unkind conclusion. But if she came back atonce, and was seen leading her usual life, the incidentwas reduced to its true proportions, as the outbreak ofa drunken old man furious at being surprised indisreputable company. People would say that Mr. Royallhad insulted his ward to justify himself, and thesordid tale would fall into its place in the chronicleof his obscure debaucheries.
　　Charity saw the force of the argument; but if sheacquiesced it was not so much because of that asbecause it was Harney's wish. Since that evening inthe deserted house she could imagine no reason fordoing or not doing anything except the fact that Harneywished or did not wish it. All her tossingcontradictory impulses were merged in a fatalisticacceptance of his will. It was not that she felt inhim any ascendancy of character--there were momentsalready when she knew she was the stronger--but thatall the rest of life had become a mere cloudy rim aboutthe central glory of their passion. Whenever shestopped thinking about that for a moment she felt asshe sometimes did after lying on the grass and staringup too long at the sky; her eyes were so full oflight that everything about her was a blur.
　　Each time that Miss Hatchard, in the course of herperiodical incursions into the work-room, dropped anallusion to her young cousin, the architect, the effectwas the same on Charity. The hemlock garland she waswearing fell to her knees and she sat in a kind oftrance. It was so manifestly absurd that Miss Hatchardshould talk of Harney in that familiar possessive way,as if she had any claim on him, or knew anything abouthim. She, Charity Royall, was the only being on earthwho really knew him, knew him from the soles of hisfeet to the rumpled crest of his hair, knew theshifting lights in his eyes, and the inflexions of hisvoice, and the things he liked and disliked, andeverything there was to know about him, as minutely andyet unconsciously as a child knows the walls of theroom it wakes up in every morning. It was this fact,which nobody about her guessed, or would haveunderstood, that made her life something apart andinviolable, as if nothing had any power to hurt ordisturb her as long as her secret was safe.
　　The room in which the girls sat was the one which hadbeen Harney's bedroom. He had been sent upstairs,to make room for the Home Week workers; but thefurniture had not been moved, and as Charity sat thereshe had perpetually before her the vision she hadlooked in on from the midnight garden. The table atwhich Harney had sat was the one about which the girlswere gathered; and her own seat was near the bed onwhich she had seen him lying. Sometimes, when theothers were not looking, she bent over as if to pick upsomething, and laid her cheek for a moment against thepillow.
　　Toward sunset the girls disbanded. Their work wasdone, and the next morning at daylight the draperiesand garlands were to be nailed up, and the illuminatedscrolls put in place in the Town Hall. The firstguests were to drive over from Hepburn in time for themidday banquet under a tent in Miss Hatchard's field;and after that the ceremonies were to begin. MissHatchard, pale with fatigue and excitement, thanked heryoung assistants, and stood in the porch, leaning onher crutches and waving a farewell as she watched themtroop away down the street.
　　Charity had slipped off among the first; but at thegate she heard Ally Hawes calling after her, andreluctantly turned.
　　"Will you come over now and try on your dress?"Ally asked, looking at her with wistful admiration. "Iwant to be sure the sleeves don't ruck up the same asthey did yesterday."Charity gazed at her with dazzled eyes. "Oh, it'slovely," she said, and hastened away without listeningto Ally's protest. She wanted her dress to be aspretty as the other girls'--wanted it, in fact, tooutshine the rest, since she was to take part in the"exercises"--but she had no time just then to fix hermind on such matters....
　　She sped up the street to the library, of which she hadthe key about her neck. From the passage at the backshe dragged forth a bicycle, and guided it to the edgeof the street. She looked about to see if any of thegirls were approaching; but they had drifted awaytogether toward the Town Hall, and she sprang into thesaddle and turned toward the Creston road. There wasan almost continual descent to Creston, and with herfeet against the pedals she floated through the stillevening air like one of the hawks she had often watchedslanting downward on motionless wings. Twenty minutesfrom the time when she had left Miss Hatchard's doorshe was turning up the wood-road on which Harneyhad overtaken her on the day of her flight; and a fewminutes afterward she had jumped from her bicycle atthe gate of the deserted house.
　　In the gold-powdered sunset it looked more than everlike some frail shell dried and washed by many seasons;but at the back, whither Charity advanced, drawing herbicycle after her, there were signs of recenthabitation. A rough door made of boards hung in thekitchen doorway, and pushing it open she entered a roomfurnished in primitive camping fashion. In the windowwas a table, also made of boards, with an earthenwarejar holding a big bunch of wild asters, two canvaschairs stood near by, and in one corner was a mattresswith a Mexican blanket over it.
　　The room was empty, and leaning her bicycle against thehouse Charity clambered up the slope and sat down on arock under an old apple-tree. The air was perfectlystill, and from where she sat she would be able to hearthe tinkle of a bicycle-bell a long way down theroad....
　　She was always glad when she got to the little housebefore Harney. She liked to have time to take in everydetail of its secret sweetness--the shadows of theapple-trees swaying on the grass, the old walnutsrounding their domes below the road, the meadowssloping westward in the afternoon light--before hisfirst kiss blotted it all out. Everything unrelated tothe hours spent in that tranquil place was as faint asthe remembrance of a dream. The only reality was thewondrous unfolding of her new self, the reaching out tothe light of all her contracted tendrils. She hadlived all her life among people whose sensibilitiesseemed to have withered for lack of use; and morewonderful, at first, than Harney's endearments were thewords that were a part of them. She had always thoughtof love as something confused and furtive, and he madeit as bright and open as the summer air.
　　On the morrow of the day when she had shown him the wayto the deserted house he had packed up and left CrestonRiver for Boston; but at the first station he hadjumped on the train with a hand-bag and scrambled upinto the hills. For two golden rainless August weekshe had camped in the house, getting eggs and milk fromthe solitary farm in the valley, where no one knew him,and doing his cooking over a spirit-lamp. He got upevery day with the sun, took a plunge in a brown poolhe knew of, and spent long hours lying in thescented hemlock-woods above the house, or wanderingalong the yoke of the Eagle Ridge, far above the mistyblue valleys that swept away east and west between theendless hills. And in the afternoon Charity came tohim.
　　With part of what was left of her savings she had hireda bicycle for a month, and every day after dinner, assoon as her guardian started to his office, she hurriedto the library, got out her bicycle, and flew down theCreston road. She knew that Mr. Royall, like everyoneelse in North Dormer, was perfectly aware of heracquisition: possibly he, as well as the rest of thevillage, knew what use she made of it. She did notcare: she felt him to be so powerless that if he hadquestioned her she would probably have told him thetruth. But they had never spoken to each other sincethe night on the wharf at Nettleton. He had returnedto North Dormer only on the third day after thatencounter, arriving just as Charity and Verena weresitting down to supper. He had drawn up his chair,taken his napkin from the side-board drawer, pulled itout of its ring, and seated himself as unconcernedly asif he had come in from his usual afternoon sessionat Carrick Fry's; and the long habit of the householdmade it seem almost natural that Charity should not somuch as raise her eyes when he entered. She had simplylet him understand that her silence was not accidentalby leaving the table while he was still eating, andgoing up without a word to shut herself into her room.
　　After that he formed the habit of talking loudly andgenially to Verena whenever Charity was in the room;but otherwise there was no apparent change in theirrelations.
　　She did not think connectedly of these things while shesat waiting for Harney, but they remained in her mindas a sullen background against which her short hourswith him flamed out like forest fires. Nothing elsemattered, neither the good nor the bad, or what mighthave seemed so before she knew him. He had caught herup and carried her away into a new world, from which,at stated hours, the ghost of her came back to performcertain customary acts, but all so thinly andinsubstantially that she sometimes wondered that thepeople she went about among could see her....
　　Behind the swarthy Mountain the sun had gone down inwaveless gold. From a pasture up the slope atinkle of cow-bells sounded; a puff of smoke hung overthe farm in the valley, trailed on the pure air and wasgone. For a few minutes, in the clear light that isall shadow, fields and woods were outlined with anunreal precision; then the twilight blotted them out,and the little house turned gray and spectral under itswizened apple-branches.
　　Charity's heart contracted. The first fall of nightafter a day of radiance often gave her a sense ofhidden menace: it was like looking out over the worldas it would be when love had gone from it. Shewondered if some day she would sit in that same placeand watch in vain for her lover....
　　His bicycle-bell sounded down the lane, and in a minuteshe was at the gate and his eyes were laughing in hers.
　　They walked back through the long grass, and pushedopen the door behind the house. The room at firstseemed quite dark and they had to grope their way inhand in hand. Through the window-frame the sky lookedlight by contrast, and above the black mass of astersin the earthen jar one white star glimmered like amoth.
　　"There was such a lot to do at the last minute," Harneywas explaining, "and I had to drive down toCreston to meet someone who has come to stay with mycousin for the show."He had his arms about her, and his kisses were in herhair and on her lips. Under his touch things deep downin her struggled to the light and sprang up likeflowers in sunshine. She twisted her fingers into his,and they sat down side by side on the improvised couch.
　　She hardly heard his excuses for being late: in hisabsence a thousand doubts tormented her, but as soon ashe appeared she ceased to wonder where he had comefrom, what had delayed him, who had kept him from her.
　　It seemed as if the places he had been in, and thepeople he had been with, must cease to exist when heleft them, just as her own life was suspended in hisabsence.
　　He continued, now, to talk to her volubly and gaily,deploring his lateness, grumbling at the demands on histime, and good-humouredly mimicking Miss Hatchard'sbenevolent agitation. "She hurried off Miles to askMr. Royall to speak at the Town Hall tomorrow: I didn'tknow till it was done." Charity was silent, and headded: "After all, perhaps it's just as well. No oneelse could have done it."Charity made no answer: She did not care what parther guardian played in the morrow's ceremonies. Likeall the other figures peopling her meagre world he hadgrown non-existent to her. She had even put off hatinghim.
　　"Tomorrow I shall only see you from far off," Harneycontinued. "But in the evening there'll be the dancein the Town Hall. Do you want me to promise not todance with any other girl?"Any other girl? Were there any others? She hadforgotten even that peril, so enclosed did he and sheseem in their secret world. Her heart gave afrightened jerk.
　　"Yes, promise."He laughed and took her in his arms. "You goose--noteven if they're hideous?"He pushed the hair from her forehead, bending her faceback, as his way was, and leaning over so that his headloomed black between her eyes and the paleness of thesky, in which the white star floated...
　　Side by side they sped back along the dark wood-road tothe village. A late moon was rising, full orbed andfiery, turning the mountain ranges from fluid grayto a massive blackness, and making the upper sky solight that the stars looked as faint as their ownreflections in water. At the edge of the wood, half amile from North Dormer, Harney jumped from his bicycle,took Charity in his arms for a last kiss, and thenwaited while she went on alone.
　　They were later than usual, and instead of taking thebicycle to the library she propped it against the backof the wood-shed and entered the kitchen of the redhouse. Verena sat there alone; when Charity came inshe looked at her with mild impenetrable eyes and thentook a plate and a glass of milk from the shelf and setthem silently on the table. Charity nodded her thanks,and sitting down, fell hungrily upon her piece of pieand emptied the glass. Her face burned with her quickflight through the night, and her eyes were dazzled bythe twinkle of the kitchen lamp. She felt like anight-bird suddenly caught and caged.
　　"He ain't come back since supper," Verena said. "He'sdown to the Hall."Charity took no notice. Her soul was still wingingthrough the forest. She washed her plate and tumbler,and then felt her way up the dark stairs. When sheopened her door a wonder arrested her. Before goingout she had closed her shutters against the afternoonheat, but they had swung partly open, and a bar ofmoonlight, crossing the room, rested on her bed andshowed a dress of China silk laid out on it in virginwhiteness. Charity had spent more than she couldafford on the dress, which was to surpass those of allthe other girls; she had wanted to let North Dormer seethat she was worthy of Harney's admiration. Above thedress, folded on the pillow, was the white veil whichthe young women who took part in the exercises were towear under a wreath of asters; and beside the veil apair of slim white satin shoes that Ally had producedfrom an old trunk in which she stored mysterioustreasures.
　　Charity stood gazing at all the outspread whiteness. Itrecalled a vision that had come to her in the nightafter her first meeting with Harney. She no longer hadsuch visions...warmer splendours had displacedthem...but it was stupid of Ally to have paraded allthose white things on her bed, exactly as HattieTargatt's wedding dress from Springfield had beenspread out for the neighbours to see when she marriedTom Fry....
　　Charity took up the satin shoes and looked at themcuriously. By day, no doubt, they would appear alittle worn, but in the moonlight they seemed carved ofivory. She sat down on the floor to try them on, andthey fitted her perfectly, though when she stood up shelurched a little on the high heels. She looked down ather feet, which the graceful mould of the slippers hadmarvellously arched and narrowed. She had never seensuch shoes before, even in the shop-windows atNettleton...never, except...yes, once, she had noticeda pair of the same shape on Annabel Balch.
　　A blush of mortification swept over her. Allysometimes sewed for Miss Balch when that brilliantbeing descended on North Dormer, and no doubt shepicked up presents of cast-off clothing: the treasuresin the mysterious trunk all came from the people sheworked for; there could be no doubt that the whiteslippers were Annabel Balch's....
　　As she stood there, staring down moodily at her feet,she heard the triple click-click-click of a bicycle-bell under her window. It was Harney's secret signalas he passed on his way home. She stumbled to thewindow on her high heels, flung open the shutters andleaned out. He waved to her and sped by, hisblack shadow dancing merrily ahead of him down theempty moonlit road; and she leaned there watching himtill he vanished under the Hatchard spruces.
Chapter 13
    THE Town Hall was crowded and exceedingly hot. AsCharity marched into it third in the white muslin fileheaded by Orma Fry, she was conscious mainly of thebrilliant effect of the wreathed columns framing thegreen-carpeted stage toward which she was moving; andof the unfamiliar faces turning from the front rows towatch the advance of the procession.
　　But it was all a bewildering blur of eyes and colourstill she found herself standing at the back of thestage, her great bunch of asters and goldenrod heldwell in front of her, and answering the nervous glanceof Lambert Sollas, the organist from Mr. Miles'schurch, who had come up from Nettleton to play theharmonium and sat behind it, his conductor's eyerunning over the fluttered girls.
　　A moment later Mr. Miles, pink and twinkling, emergedfrom the background, as if buoyed up on his broad whitegown, and briskly dominated the bowed heads in thefront rows. He prayed energetically and brieflyand then retired, and a fierce nod from Lambert Sollaswarned the girls that they were to follow at once with"Home, Sweet Home." It was a joy to Charity to sing: itseemed as though, for the first time, her secretrapture might burst from her and flash its defiance atthe world. All the glow in her blood, the breath ofthe summer earth, the rustle of the forest, the freshcall of birds at sunrise, and the brooding middaylanguors, seemed to pass into her untrained voice,lifted and led by the sustaining chorus.
　　And then suddenly the song was over, and after anuncertain pause, during which Miss Hatchard's pearl-grey gloves started a furtive signalling down the hall,Mr. Royall, emerging in turn, ascended the steps of thestage and appeared behind the flower-wreathed desk. Hepassed close to Charity, and she noticed that hisgravely set face wore the look of majesty that used toawe and fascinate her childhood. His frock-coat hadbeen carefully brushed and ironed, and the ends of hisnarrow black tie were so nearly even that the tyingmust have cost him a protracted struggle. Hisappearance struck her all the more because it was thefirst time she had looked him full in the face sincethe night at Nettleton, and nothing in his graveand impressive demeanour revealed a trace of thelamentable figure on the wharf.
　　He stood a moment behind the desk, resting his finger-tips against it, and bending slightly toward hisaudience; then he straightened himself and began.
　　At first she paid no heed to what he was saying: onlyfragments of sentences, sonorous quotations, allusionsto illustrious men, including the obligatory tribute toHonorius Hatchard, drifted past her inattentive ears.
　　She was trying to discover Harney among the notablepeople in the front row; but he was nowhere near MissHatchard, who, crowned by a pearl-grey hat that matchedher gloves, sat just below the desk, supported by Mrs.
　　Miles and an important-looking unknown lady. Charitywas near one end of the stage, and from where she satthe other end of the first row of seats was cut off bythe screen of foliage masking the harmonium. Theeffort to see Harney around the corner of the screen,or through its interstices, made her unconscious ofeverything else; but the effort was unsuccessful, andgradually she found her attention arrested by herguardian's discourse.
　　She had never heard him speak in public before,but she was familiar with the rolling music of hisvoice when he read aloud, or held forth to theselectmen about the stove at Carrick Fry's. Today hisinflections were richer and graver than she had everknown them: he spoke slowly, with pauses that seemed toinvite his hearers to silent participation in histhought; and Charity perceived a light of response intheir faces.
　　He was nearing the end of his address..."Most of you,"he said, "most of you who have returned here today, totake contact with this little place for a brief hour,have come only on a pious pilgrimage, and will go backpresently to busy cities and lives full of largerduties. But that is not the only way of coming back toNorth Dormer. Some of us, who went out from here inour youth...went out, like you, to busy cities andlarger duties...have come back in another way--comeback for good. I am one of those, as many of youknow...." He paused, and there was a sense of suspensein the listening hall. "My history is withoutinterest, but it has its lesson: not so much for thoseof you who have already made your lives in otherplaces, as for the young men who are perhapsplanning even now to leave these quiet hills and godown into the struggle. Things they cannot foresee maysend some of those young men back some day to thelittle township and the old homestead: they may comeback for good...." He looked about him, and repeatedgravely: "For GOOD. There's the point I want tomake...North Dormer is a poor little place, almost lostin a mighty landscape: perhaps, by this time, it mighthave been a bigger place, and more in scale with thelandscape, if those who had to come back had come withthat feeling in their minds--that they wanted to comeback for GOOD...and not for bad...or just forindifference....
　　"Gentlemen, let us look at things as they are. Some ofus have come back to our native town because we'dfailed to get on elsewhere. One way or other, thingshad gone wrong with us...what we'd dreamed of hadn'tcome true. But the fact that we had failed elsewhereis no reason why we should fail here. Our veryexperiments in larger places, even if they wereunsuccessful, ought to have helped us to make NorthDormer a larger place...and you young men who arepreparing even now to follow the call of ambition, andturn your back on the old homes--well, let me saythis to you, that if ever you do come back to them it'sworth while to come back to them for their good....Andto do that, you must keep on loving them while you'reaway from them; and even if you come back against yourwill--and thinking it's all a bitter mistake of Fate orProvidence--you must try to make the best of it, and tomake the best of your old town; and after a while--well, ladies and gentlemen, I give you my recipe forwhat it's worth; after a while, I believe you'll beable to say, as I can say today: 'I'm glad I'm here.'
　　Believe me, all of you, the best way to help the placeswe live in is to be glad we live there."He stopped, and a murmur of emotion and surprise ranthrough the audience. It was not in the least whatthey had expected, but it moved them more than whatthey had expected would have moved them. "Hear, hear!"a voice cried out in the middle of the hall. Anoutburst of cheers caught up the cry, and as theysubsided Charity heard Mr. Miles saying to someone nearhim: "That was a MAN talking----" He wiped hisspectacles.
　　Mr. Royall had stepped back from the desk, andtaken his seat in the row of chairs in front ofthe harmonium. A dapper white-haired gentleman--adistant Hatchard--succeeded him behind the goldenrod,and began to say beautiful things about the old oakenbucket, patient white-haired mothers, and where theboys used to go nutting...and Charity began again tosearch for Harney....
　　Suddenly Mr. Royall pushed back his seat, and one ofthe maple branches in front of the harmonium collapsedwith a crash. It uncovered the end of the first rowand in one of the seats Charity saw Harney, and in thenext a lady whose face was turned toward him, andalmost hidden by the brim of her drooping hat. Charitydid not need to see the face. She knew at a glance theslim figure, the fair hair heaped up under the hat-brim, the long pale wrinkled gloves with braceletsslipping over them. At the fall of the branch MissBalch turned her head toward the stage, and in herpretty thin-lipped smile there lingered the reflectionof something her neighbour had been whispering toher....
　　Someone came forward to replace the fallen branch, andMiss Balch and Harney were once more hidden. But toCharity the vision of their two faces had blottedout everything. In a flash they had shown her the barereality of her situation. Behind the frail screen ofher lover's caresses was the whole inscrutable mysteryof his life: his relations with other people--withother women--his opinions, his prejudices, hisprinciples, the net of influences and interests andambitions in which every man's life is entangled. Ofall these she knew nothing, except what he had told herof his architectural aspirations. She had always dimlyguessed him to be in touch with important people,involved in complicated relations--but she felt it allto be so far beyond her understanding that the wholesubject hung like a luminous mist on the farthest vergeof her thoughts. In the foreground, hiding all else,there was the glow of his presence, the light andshadow of his face, the way his short-sighted eyes, ather approach, widened and deepened as if to draw herdown into them; and, above all, the flush of youth andtenderness in which his words enclosed her.
　　Now she saw him detached from her, drawn back into theunknown, and whispering to another girl things thatprovoked the same smile of mischievous complicity hehad so often called to her own lips. The feelingpossessing her was not one of jealousy: she was toosure of his love. It was rather a terror of theunknown, of all the mysterious attractions that musteven now be dragging him away from her, and of her ownpowerlessness to contend with them.
　　She had given him all she had--but what was it comparedto the other gifts life held for him? She understoodnow the case of girls like herself to whom this kind ofthing happened. They gave all they had, but their allwas not enough: it could not buy more than a fewmoments....
　　The heat had grown suffocating--she felt it descend onher in smothering waves, and the faces in the crowdedhall began to dance like the pictures flashed on thescreen at Nettleton. For an instant Mr. Royall'scountenance detached itself from the general blur. Hehad resumed his place in front of the harmonium, andsat close to her, his eyes on her face; and his lookseemed to pierce to the very centre of her confusedsensations....A feeling of physical sickness rushedover her--and then deadly apprehension. The light ofthe fiery hours in the little house swept back on herin a glare of fear....
　　She forced herself to look away from her guardian,and became aware that the oratory of the Hatchardcousin had ceased, and that Mr. Miles was againflapping his wings. Fragments of his perorationfloated through her bewildered brain...."A rich harvestof hallowed memories....A sanctified hour to which, inmoments of trial, your thoughts will prayerfullyreturn....And now, O Lord, let us humbly and ferventlygive thanks for this blessed day of reunion, here inthe old home to which we have come back from so far.
　　Preserve it to us, O Lord, in times to come, in all itshomely sweetness--in the kindliness and wisdom of itsold people, in the courage and industry of its youngmen, in the piety and purity of this group of innocentgirls----" He flapped a white wing in their direction,and at the same moment Lambert Sollas, with his fiercenod, struck the opening bars of "Auld LangSyne."...Charity stared straight ahead of her and then,dropping her flowers, fell face downward at Mr.
　　Royall's feet.
Chapter 14
    NORTH DORMER'S celebration naturally included thevillages attached to its township, and the festivitieswere to radiate over the whole group, from Dormer andthe two Crestons to Hamblin, the lonely hamlet on thenorth slope of the Mountain where the first snow alwaysfell. On the third day there were speeches andceremonies at Creston and Creston River; on the fourththe principal performers were to be driven in buck-boards to Dormer and Hamblin.
　　It was on the fourth day that Charity returned for thefirst time to the little house. She had not seenHarney alone since they had parted at the wood's edgethe night before the celebrations began. In theinterval she had passed through many moods, but for themoment the terror which had seized her in the Town Hallhad faded to the edge of consciousness. She hadfainted because the hall was stiflingly hot, andbecause the speakers had gone on and on....Severalother people had been affected by the heat, andhad had to leave before the exercises were over. Therehad been thunder in the air all the afternoon, andeveryone said afterward that something ought to havebeen done to ventilate the hall....
　　At the dance that evening--where she had gonereluctantly, and only because she feared to stay away,she had sprung back into instant reassurance. As soonas she entered she had seen Harney waiting for her, andhe had come up with kind gay eyes, and swept her off ina waltz. Her feet were full of music, and though heronly training had been with the village youths she hadno difficulty in tuning her steps to his. As theycircled about the floor all her vain fears dropped fromher, and she even forgot that she was probably dancingin 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 werejust entering. Charity had a moment of anguish as MissBalch appeared; but it did not last. The triumphantfact of her own greater beauty, and of Harney's senseof it, swept her apprehensions aside. Miss Balch, inan unbecoming dress, looked sallow and pinched, andCharity fancied there was a worried expression inher pale-lashed eyes. She took a seat near MissHatchard and it was presently apparent that she did notmean to dance. Charity did not dance often either.
　　Harney explained to her that Miss Hatchard had beggedhim to give each of the other girls a turn; but he wentthrough the form of asking Charity's permission eachtime he led one out, and that gave her a sense ofsecret triumph even completer than when she waswhirling about the room with him.
　　She was thinking of all this as she waited for him inthe deserted house. The late afternoon was sultry, andshe had tossed aside her hat and stretched herself atfull length on the Mexican blanket because it wascooler indoors than under the trees. She lay with herarms folded beneath her head, gazing out at the shaggyshoulder of the Mountain. The sky behind it was fullof the splintered glories of the descending sun, andbefore long she expected to hear Harney's bicycle-bellin the lane. He had bicycled to Hamblin, instead ofdriving there with his cousin and her friends, so thathe might be able to make his escape earlier and stop onthe way back at the deserted house, which was onthe road to Hamblin. They had smiled together at thejoke of hearing the crowded buck-boards roll by on thereturn, while they lay close in their hiding above theroad. Such childish triumphs still gave her a sense ofreckless security.
　　Nevertheless she had not wholly forgotten the vision offear that had opened before her in the Town Hall. Thesense of lastingness was gone from her and every momentwith Harney would now be ringed with doubt.
　　The Mountain was turning purple against a fiery sunsetfrom which it seemed to be divided by a knife-edge ofquivering light; and above this wall of flame the wholesky was a pure pale green, like some cold mountain lakein shadow. Charity lay gazing up at it, and watchingfor the first white star....
　　Her eyes were still fixed on the upper reaches of thesky when she became aware that a shadow had flittedacross the glory-flooded room: it must have been Harneypassing the window against the sunset....She halfraised herself, and then dropped back on her foldedarms. The combs had slipped from her hair, and ittrailed in a rough dark rope across her breast. Shelay quite still, a sleepy smile on her lips, herindolent lids half shut. There was a fumbling at thepadlock and she called out: "Have you slipped thechain?" The door opened, and Mr. Royall walked into theroom.
　　She started up, sitting back against the cushions, andthey 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'sface, 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 looseacross her breast, and it seemed as though she couldnot speak to him till she had set herself in order. Shegroped 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 metalk to you first.""You've got no right to talk to me. I can do what Iplease.""Yes. What is it you mean to do?""I needn't answer that, or anything else."He had glanced away, and stood looking curiously aboutthe illuminated room. Purple asters and red maple-leaves filled the jar on the table; on a shelf againstthe wall stood a lamp, the kettle, a little pile ofcups and saucers. The canvas chairs were groupedabout the table.
　　"So this is where you meet," he said.
　　His tone was quiet and controlled, and the factdisconcerted her. She had been ready to give himviolence for violence, but this calm acceptance ofthings as they were left her without a weapon.
　　"See here, Charity--you're always telling me I've gotno rights over you. There might be two ways of lookingat that--but I ain't going to argue it. All I know isI raised you as good as I could, and meant fairly byyou always except once, for a bad half-hour. There'sno justice in weighing that half-hour against the rest,and you know it. If you hadn't, you wouldn't have goneon living under my roof. Seems to me the fact of yourdoing that gives me some sort of a right; the right totry and keep you out of trouble. I'm not asking you toconsider any other."She listened in silence, and then gave a slightlaugh. "Better wait till I'm in trouble," shesaid. 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 shehad been waiting for happened; the door opened againand Harney entered.
　　He stopped short with a face of astonishment, and then,quickly controlling himself, went up to Mr. Royall witha frank look.
　　"Have you come to see me, sir?" he said coolly,throwing his cap on the table with an air ofproprietorship.
　　Mr. Royall again looked slowly about the room; then hiseyes turned to the young man.
　　"Is this your house?" he inquired.
　　Harney laughed: "Well--as much as it's anybody's. Icome 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 youget married?"There was an immense and oppressive silence. Charity,quivering with anger, started forward, and thenstood silent, too humbled for speech. Harney's eyeshad dropped under the old man's gaze; but he raisedthem presently, and looking steadily at Mr. Royall,said: "Miss Royall is not a child. Isn't it ratherabsurd to talk of her as if she were? I believe sheconsiders herself free to come and go as she pleases,without any questions from anyone." He paused andadded: "I'm ready to answer any she wishes to ask me."Mr. Royall turned to her. "Ask him when he's going tomarry you, then----" There was another silence, and helaughed in his turn--a broken laugh, with a scrapingsound in it. "You darsn't!" he shouted out with suddenpassion. He went close up to Charity, his right armlifted, not in menace but in tragic exhortation.
　　"You darsn't, and you know it--and you know why!" Heswung back again upon the young man. "And you know whyyou ain't asked her to marry you, and why you don'tmean to. It's because you hadn't need to; nor anyother man either. I'm the only one that was foolenough not to know that; and I guess nobody'll repeatmy mistake--not in Eagle County, anyhow. They all knowwhat she is, and what she came from. They all know hermother was a woman of the town from Nettleton,that followed one of those Mountain fellows up to hisplace and lived there with him like a heathen. I sawher there sixteen years ago, when I went to bring thischild down. I went to save her from the kind of lifeher mother was leading--but I'd better have left her inthe kennel she came from...." He paused and stareddarkly at the two young people, and out beyond them, atthe menacing Mountain with its rim of fire; then he satdown beside the table on which they had so often spreadtheir rustic supper, and covered his face with hishands. Harney leaned in the window, a frown on hisface: he was twirling between his fingers a smallpackage that dangled from a loop of string....Charityheard Mr. Royall draw a hard breath or two, and hisshoulders shook a little. Presently he stood up andwalked across the room. He did not look again at theyoung people: they saw him feel his way to the door andfumble for the latch; and then he went out into thedarkness.
　　After he had gone there was a long silence. Charitywaited for Harney to speak; but he seemed at first notto find anything to say. At length he broke outirrelevantly: "I wonder how he found out?"She made no answer and he tossed down the package hehad been holding, and went up to her.
　　"I'm so sorry, dear...that this should havehappened...."She threw her head back proudly. "I ain't ever beensorry--not a minute!""No."She waited to be caught into his arms, but he turnedaway from her irresolutely. The last glow was gonefrom behind the Mountain. Everything in the room hadturned grey and indistinct, and an autumnal dampnesscrept up from the hollow below the orchard, laying itscold touch on their flushed faces. Harney walked thelength of the room, and then turned back and sat downat the table.
　　"Come," he said imperiously.
　　She sat down beside him, and he untied the string aboutthe package and spread out a pile of sandwiches.
　　"I stole them from the love-feast at Hamblin," he saidwith a laugh, pushing them over to her. She laughedtoo, 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." Hesaid nothing more, and sitting opposite to each otherthey went on silently eating the sandwiches. Darknesshad descended in the little room, and Harney's face wasa dim blur to Charity. Suddenly he leaned across thetable 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 comeback...and we'll get married."His voice seemed like a stranger's: nothing was left init of the vibrations she knew. Her hand lay inertlyunder his, and she left it there, and raised her head,trying to answer him. But the words died in herthroat. They sat motionless, in their attitude ofconfident endearment, as if some strange death hadsurprised them. At length Harney sprang to his feetwith a slight shiver. "God! it's damp--we couldn'thave come here much longer." He went to the shelf, tookdown a tin candle-stick and lit the candle; then hepropped an unhinged shutter against the empty window-frame and put the candle on the table. It threw aqueer shadow on his frowning forehead, and made thesmile on his lips a grimace.
　　"But it's been good, though, hasn't it,Charity?...What's the matter--why do you stand therestaring at me? Haven't the days here been good?" Hewent up to her and caught her to his breast. "Andthere'll be others--lots of others...jollier...evenjollier...won't there, darling?"He turned her head back, feeling for the curve of herthroat below the ear, and kissing here there, and onthe hair and eyes and lips. She clung to himdesperately, and as he drew her to his knees on thecouch she felt as if they were being sucked downtogether into some bottomless abyss.
Chapter 15
    That night, as usual, they said good-bye at the wood'sedge.
　　Harney was to leave the next morning early. He askedCharity to say nothing of their plans till his return,and, strangely even to herself, she was glad of thepostponement. 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 reiteratedpromises to return seemed almost wounding. She had nodoubt that he intended to come back; her doubts werefar deeper and less definable.
　　Since the fanciful vision of the future that hadflitted through her imagination at their first meetingshe had hardly ever thought of his marrying her. Shehad not had to put the thought from her mind; it hadnot been there. If ever she looked ahead she feltinstinctively that the gulf between them was too deep,and that the bridge their passion had flung across itwas as insubstantial as a rainbow. But she seldomlooked ahead; each day was so rich that it absorbedher....Now her first feeling was that everything wouldbe different, and that she herself would be a differentbeing to Harney. Instead of remaining separate andabsolute, she would be compared with other people, andunknown things would be expected of her. She was tooproud to be afraid, but the freedom of her spiritdrooped....
　　Harney had not fixed any date for his return; he hadsaid he would have to look about first, and settlethings. He had promised to write as soon as there wasanything definite to say, and had left her his address,and asked her to write also. But the addressfrightened her. It was in New York, at a club with along name in Fifth Avenue: it seemed to raise aninsurmountable barrier between them. Once or twice, inthe first days, she got out a sheet of paper, and satlooking at it, and trying to think what to say; but shehad the feeling that her letter would never reach itsdestination. She had never written to anyone fartheraway than Hepburn.
　　Harney's first letter came after he had been gone aboutten days. It was tender but grave, and bore noresemblance to the gay little notes he had sent her bythe freckled boy from Creston River. He spokepositively of his intention of coming back, but namedno date, and reminded Charity of their agreement thattheir plans should not be divulged till he had had timeto "settle things." When that would be he could not yetforesee; but she could count on his returning as soonas the way was clear.
　　She read the letter with a strange sense of its comingfrom immeasurable distances and having lost most of itsmeaning on the way; and in reply she sent him acoloured postcard of Creston Falls, on which she wrote:
　　"With love from Charity." She felt the pitifulinadequacy of this, and understood, with a sense ofdespair, that in her inability to express herself shemust give him an impression of coldness and reluctance;but she could not help it. She could not forget thathe had never spoken to her of marriage till Mr. Royallhad forced the word from his lips; though she had nothad the strength to shake off the spell that bound herto him she had lost all spontaneity of feeling, andseemed to herself to be passively awaiting a fate shecould not avert.
　　She had not seen Mr. Royall on her return to thered house. The morning after her parting from Harney,when she came down from her room, Verena told her thather guardian had gone off to Worcester and Portland.
　　It was the time of year when he usually reported to theinsurance agencies he represented, and there wasnothing unusual in his departure except its suddenness.
　　She thought little about him, except to be glad he wasnot there....
　　She kept to herself for the first days, while NorthDormer was recovering from its brief plunge intopublicity, and the subsiding agitation left herunnoticed. But the faithful Ally could not be longavoided. For the first few days after the close of theOld Home Week festivities Charity escaped her byroaming the hills all day when she was not at her postin the library; but after that a period of rain set in,and one pouring afternoon, Ally, sure that she wouldfind her friend indoors, came around to the red housewith her sewing.
　　The two girls sat upstairs in Charity's room. Charity,her idle hands in her lap, was sunk in a kind of leadendream, through which she was only half-conscious ofAlly, who sat opposite her in a low rush-bottomedchair, her work pinned to her knee, and her thin lipspursed up as she bent above it.
　　"It was my idea running a ribbon through the gauging,"she said proudly, drawing back to contemplate theblouse she was trimming. "It's for Miss Balch: she wasawfully pleased." She paused and then added, with aqueer tremor in her piping voice: "I darsn't have toldher I got the idea from one I saw on Julia."Charity raised her eyes listlessly. "Do you still seeJulia sometimes?"Ally reddened, as if the allusion had escaped herunintentionally. "Oh, it was a long time ago I seenher with those gaugings...."Silence fell again, and Ally presently continued: "MissBalch left me a whole lot of things to do over thistime.""Why--has she gone?" Charity inquired with an innerstart of apprehension.
　　"Didn't you know? She went off the morning after theyhad the celebration at Hamblin. I seen her drive byearly with Mr. Harney."There was another silence, measured by the steady tickof the rain against the window, and, at intervals, bythe snipping sound of Ally's scissors.
　　Ally gave a meditative laugh. "Do you know whatshe told me before she went away? She told me she wasgoing to send for me to come over to Springfield andmake some things for her wedding."Charity again lifted her heavy lids and stared atAlly's pale pointed face, which moved to and fro aboveher moving fingers.
　　"Is she going to get married?"Ally let the blouse sink to her knee, and sat gazing atit. Her lips seemed suddenly dry, and she moistenedthem a little with her tongue.
　　"Why, I presume so...from what she said....Didn't youknow?""Why should I know?"Ally did not answer. She bent above the blouse, andbegan picking out a basting thread with the point ofthe scissors.
　　"Why should I know?" Charity repeated harshly.
　　"I didn't know but what...folks here say she's engagedto Mr. Harney."Charity stood up with a laugh, and stretched her armslazily above her head.
　　"If all the people got married that folks say aregoing 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 ifI didn't.""That's so....I only know I seen her crying the nightof the party because her dress didn't set right. Thatwas why she wouldn't dance any...."Charity stood absently gazing down at the lacy garmenton Ally's knee. Abruptly she stooped and snatched itup.
　　"Well, I guess she won't dance in this either," shesaid with sudden violence; and grasping the blouse inher strong young hands she tore it in two and flung thetattered bits to the floor.
　　"Oh, Charity----" Ally cried, springing up. For a longinterval the two girls faced each other across theruined garment. Ally burst into tears.
　　"Oh, what'll I say to her? What'll I do? It was reallace!" she wailed between her piping sobs.
　　Charity glared at her unrelentingly. "You'd oughtn'tto have brought it here," she said, breathing quickly.
　　"I hate other people's clothes--it's just as if theywas there themselves." The two stared at each otheragain over this avowal, till Charity brought out,in a gasp of anguish: "Oh, go--go--go--or I'll hate youtoo...."When Ally left her, she fell sobbing across her bed.
　　The long storm was followed by a north-west gale, andwhen it was over, the hills took on their first umbertints, the sky grew more densely blue, and the bigwhite clouds lay against the hills like snow-banks. Thefirst crisp maple-leaves began to spin across MissHatchard's lawn, and the Virginia creeper on theMemorial splashed the white porch with scarlet. It wasa golden triumphant September. Day by day the flame ofthe Virginia creeper spread to the hillsides in widerwaves of carmine and crimson, the larches glowed likethe thin yellow halo about a fire, the maples blazedand smouldered, and the black hemlocks turned to indigoagainst the incandescence of the forest.
　　The nights were cold, with a dry glitter of stars sohigh up that they seemed smaller and more vivid.
　　Sometimes, as Charity lay sleepless on her bed throughthe long hours, she felt as though she were bound tothose wheeling fires and swinging with them around thegreat black vault. At night she planned manythings...it was then she wrote to Harney. But theletters were never put on paper, for she did not knowhow to express what she wanted to tell him. So shewaited. Since her talk with Ally she had felt surethat Harney was engaged to Annabel Balch, and that theprocess of "settling things" would involve the breakingof this tie. Her first rage of jealousy over, she feltno fear on this score. She was still sure that Harneywould come back, and she was equally sure that, for themoment at least, it was she whom he loved and not MissBalch. Yet the girl, no less, remained a rival, sinceshe represented all the things that Charity feltherself most incapable of understanding or achieving.
　　Annabel Balch was, if not the girl Harney ought tomarry, at least the kind of girl it would be naturalfor him to marry. Charity had never been able topicture herself as his wife; had never been able toarrest the vision and follow it out in its dailyconsequences; but she could perfectly imagine AnnabelBalch in that relation to him.
　　The more she thought of these things the more the senseof fatality weighed on her: she felt the uselessness ofstruggling against the circumstances. She had neverknown how to adapt herself; she could only breakand tear and destroy. The scene with Ally had left herstricken with shame at her own childish savagery. Whatwould Harney have thought if he had witnessed it? Butwhen she turned the incident over in her puzzled mindshe could not imagine what a civilized person wouldhave done in her place. She felt herself too unequallypitted against unknown forces....
　　At length this feeling moved her to sudden action. Shetook a sheet of letter paper from Mr. Royall's office,and sitting by the kitchen lamp, one night after Verenahad gone to bed, began her first letter to Harney. Itwas very short:
　　I want you should marry Annabel Balch if you promisedto. I think maybe you were afraid I'd feel too badabout it. I feel I'd rather you acted right.
　　Your lovingCHARITY.
　　She posted the letter early the next morning, and for afew days her heart felt strangely light. Then shebegan to wonder why she received no answer.
　　One day as she sat alone in the library pondering thesethings the walls of books began to spin around her, andthe rosewood desk to rock under her elbows. Thedizziness was followed by a wave of nausea like thatshe had felt on the day of the exercises in the TownHall. But the Town Hall had been crowded andstiflingly hot, and the library was empty, and sochilly that she had kept on her jacket. Five minutesbefore she had felt perfectly well; and now it seemedas if she were going to die. The bit of lace at whichshe still languidly worked dropped from her fingers,and the steel crochet hook clattered to the floor. Shepressed her temples hard between her damp hands,steadying herself against the desk while the wave ofsickness swept over her. Little by little it subsided,and after a few minutes she stood up, shaken andterrified, groped for her hat, and stumbled out intothe air. But the whole sunlit autumn whirled, reeledand roared around her as she dragged herself along theinterminable length of the road home.
　　As she approached the red house she saw a buggystanding at the door, and her heart gave a leap. Butit was only Mr. Royall who got out, his travelling-bagin 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 desperateeffort at ease. Their eyes met, and she said: "Youback?" as if nothing had happened, and he answered:
　　"Yes, I'm back," and walked in ahead of her, pushingopen the door of his office. She climbed to her room,every step of the stairs holding her fast as if herfeet were lined with glue.
　　Two days later, she descended from the train atNettleton, and walked out of the station into the dustysquare. The brief interval of cold weather was over,and the day was as soft, and almost as hot, as when sheand Harney had emerged on the same scene on the Fourthof July. In the square the same broken-down hacks andcarry-alls stood drawn up in a despondent line, and thelank horses with fly-nets over their withers swayedtheir heads drearily to and fro. She recognized thestaring signs over the eating-houses and billiardsaloons, and the long lines of wires on lofty polestapering down the main street to the park at its otherend. Taking the way the wires pointed, she went onhastily, with bent head, till she reached a widetransverse street with a brick building at the corner.
　　She crossed this street and glanced furtively up at thefront of the brick building; then she returned,and entered a door opening on a flight of steepbrass-rimmed stairs. On the second landing she rang abell, and a mulatto girl with a bushy head and afrilled apron let her into a hall where a stuffed foxon his hind legs proffered a brass card-tray tovisitors. At the back of the hall was a glazed doormarked: "Office." After waiting a few minutes in ahandsomely furnished room, with plush sofas surmountedby large gold-framed photographs of showy young women,Charity was shown into the office....
　　When she came out of the glazed door Dr. Merklefollowed, and led her into another room, smaller, andstill more crowded with plush and gold frames. Dr.
　　Merkle was a plump woman with small bright eyes, animmense mass of black hair coming down low on herforehead, and unnaturally white and even teeth. Shewore a rich black dress, with gold chains and charmshanging from her bosom. Her hands were large andsmooth, and quick in all their movements; and she smeltof musk and carbolic acid.
　　She smiled on Charity with all her faultless teeth.
　　"Sit down, my dear. Wouldn't you like a littledrop of something to pick you up?...No....Well,just lay back a minute then....There's nothing to bedone just yet; but in about a month, if you'll stepround again...I could take you right into my own housefor two or three days, and there wouldn't be a mite oftrouble. Mercy me! The next time you'll know better'nto fret like this...."Charity gazed at her with widening eyes. This womanwith the false hair, the false teeth, the falsemurderous smile--what was she offering her but immunityfrom some unthinkable crime? Charity, till then, hadbeen conscious only of a vague self-disgust and afrightening physical distress; now, of a sudden, therecame to her the grave surprise of motherhood. She hadcome to this dreadful place because she knew of noother way of making sure that she was not mistakenabout her state; and the woman had taken her for amiserable creature like Julia....The thought was sohorrible that she sprang up, white and shaking, one ofher great rushes of anger sweeping over her.
　　Dr. Merkle, still smiling, also rose. "Why do you runoff in such a hurry? You can stretch out right here onmy sofa...." She paused, and her smile grew moremotherly. "Afterwards--if there's been any talk athome, and you want to get away for a while...I have alady friend in Boston who's looking for acompanion...you're the very one to suit her, mydear...."Charity had reached the door. "I don't want to stay. Idon't want to come back here," she stammered, her handon the knob; but with a swift movement, Dr. Merkleedged her from the threshold.
　　"Oh, very well. Five dollars, please."Charity looked helplessly at the doctor's tight lipsand rigid face. Her last savings had gone in repayingAlly for the cost of Miss Balch's ruined blouse, andshe had had to borrow four dollars from her friend topay for her railway ticket and cover the doctor's fee.
　　It had never occurred to her that medical advice couldcost more than two dollars.
　　"I didn't know...I haven't got that much..." shefaltered, bursting into tears.
　　Dr. Merkle gave a short laugh which did not show herteeth, and inquired with concision if Charity supposedshe ran the establishment for her own amusement? Sheleaned her firm shoulders against the door as shespoke, like a grim gaoler making terms with hercaptive.
　　"You say you'll come round and settle later? I've heardthat pretty often too. Give me your address, and ifyou can't pay me I'll send the bill to yourfolks....What? I can't understand what you say....Thatdon't suit you either? My, you're pretty particular fora girl that ain't got enough to settle her ownbills...." She paused, and fixed her eyes on the broochwith a blue stone that Charity had pinned to herblouse.
　　"Ain't you ashamed to talk that way to a lady that'sgot to earn her living, when you go about withjewellery like that on you?...It ain't in my line, andI do it only as a favour...but if you're a mind toleave that brooch as a pledge, I don't say no....Yes,of course, you can get it back when you bring me mymoney...."On the way home, she felt an immense and unexpectedquietude. It had been horrible to have to leaveHarney's gift in the woman's hands, but even at thatprice the news she brought away had not been too dearlybought. She sat with half-closed eyes as the trainrushed through the familiar landscape; and now thememories of her former journey, instead of flyingbefore her like dead leaves, seemed to be ripening inher blood like sleeping grain. She would never againknow what it was to feel herself alone. Everythingseemed to have grown suddenly clear and simple. She nolonger had any difficulty in picturing herself asHarney's wife now that she was the mother of his child;and compared to her sovereign right Annabel Balch'sclaim seemed no more than a girl's sentimental fancy.
　　That evening, at the gate of the red house, she foundAlly waiting in the dusk. "I was down at the post-office just as they were closing up, and Will Targattsaid there was a letter for you, so I brought it."Ally held out the letter, looking at Charity withpiercing sympathy. Since the scene of the torn blousethere had been a new and fearful admiration in the eyesshe bent on her friend.
　　Charity snatched the letter with a laugh. "Oh, thankyou--good-night," she called out over her shoulder asshe ran up the path. If she had lingered a moment sheknew she would have had Ally at her heels.
　　She hurried upstairs and felt her way into herdark room. Her hands trembled as she groped for thematches and lit her candle, and the flap of theenvelope was so closely stuck that she had to find herscissors and slit it open. At length she read:
　　DEAR CHARITY:
　　I have your letter, and it touches me more than I cansay. Won't you trust me, in return, to do my best?
　　There are things it is hard to explain, much less tojustify; but your generosity makes everything easier.
　　All I can do now is to thank you from my soul forunderstanding. Your telling me that you wanted me todo right has helped me beyond expression. If everthere is a hope of realizing what we dreamed of youwill see me back on the instant; and I haven't yet lostthat hope.
　　She read the letter with a rush; then she went over andover it, each time more slowly and painstakingly. Itwas so beautifully expressed that she found it almostas difficult to understand as the gentleman'sexplanation of the Bible pictures at Nettleton; butgradually she became aware that the gist of its meaninglay in the last few words. "If ever there is a hope ofrealizing what we dreamed of..."But then he wasn't even sure of that? Sheunderstood now that every word and every reticence wasan avowal of Annabel Balch's prior claim. It was truethat he was engaged to her, and that he had not yetfound a way of breaking his engagement.
　　As she read the letter over Charity understood what itmust have cost him to write it. He was not trying toevade an importunate claim; he was honestly andcontritely struggling between opposing duties. She didnot even reproach him in her thoughts for havingconcealed from her that he was not free: she could notsee anything more reprehensible in his conduct than inher own. From the first she had needed him more thanhe had wanted her, and the power that had swept themtogether had been as far beyond resistance as a greatgale loosening the leaves of the forest....Only, therestood between them, fixed and upright in the generalupheaval, the indestructible figure of AnnabelBalch....
　　Face to face with his admission of the fact, she satstaring at the letter. A cold tremor ran over her, andthe hard sobs struggled up into her throat and shookher from head to foot. For a while she was caughtand tossed on great waves of anguish that left herhardly conscious of anything but the blind struggleagainst their assaults. Then, little by little, shebegan to relive, with a dreadful poignancy, eachseparate stage of her poor romance. Foolish things shehad 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 hadteased her about the letters she had dropped in herflight from the evangelist. All these memories, and athousand others, hummed through her brain till hisnearness grew so vivid that she felt his fingers in herhair, and his warm breath on her cheek as he bent herhead back like a flower. These things were hers; theyhad passed into her blood, and become a part of her,they were building the child in her womb; it wasimpossible to tear asunder strands of life sointerwoven.
　　The conviction gradually strengthened her, and shebegan to form in her mind the first words of the lettershe meant to write to Harney. She wanted to write itat once, and with feverish hands she began to rummagein her drawer for a sheet of letter paper. But therewas none left; she must go downstairs to get it.
　　She had a superstitious feeling that the letter must bewritten on the instant, that setting down her secret inwords would bring her reassurance and safety; andtaking up her candle she went down to Mr. Royall'soffice.
　　At that hour she was not likely to find him there: hehad probably had his supper and walked over to CarrickFry's. She pushed open the door of the unlit room, andthe light of her lifted candle fell on his figure,seated in the darkness in his high-backed chair. Hisarms lay along the arms of the chair, and his head wasbent a little; but he lifted it quickly as Charityentered. She started back as their eyes met,remembering that her own were red with weeping, andthat her face was livid with the fatigue and emotion ofher journey. But it was too late to escape, and shestood and looked at him in silence.
　　He had risen from his chair, and came toward her withoutstretched hands. The gesture was so unexpected thatshe 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 wantedsome 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 pushedthem toward her. "Do you want a stamp too?" he asked.
　　She nodded, and he gave her the stamp. As he did soshe felt that he was looking at her intently, and sheknew that the candle light flickering up on her whiteface must be distorting her swollen features andexaggerating the dark rings about her eyes. Shesnatched up the paper, her reassurance dissolving underhis pitiless gaze, in which she seemed to read the grimperception of her state, and the ironic recollection ofthe day when, in that very room, he had offered tocompel Harney to marry her. His look seemed to saythat he knew she had taken the paper to write to herlover, who had left her as he had warned her she wouldbe left. She remembered the scorn with which she hadturned from him that day, and knew, if he guessed thetruth, what a list of old scores it must settle. Sheturned and fled upstairs; but when she got back to herroom all the words that had been waiting hadvanished....
　　If she could have gone to Harney it would havebeen different; she would only have had to show herselfto let his memories speak for her. But she had nomoney left, and there was no one from whom she couldhave borrowed enough for such a journey. There wasnothing to do but to write, and await his reply. For along time she sat bent above the blank page; but shefound nothing to say that really expressed what she wasfeeling....
　　Harney had written that she had made it easier for him,and she was glad it was so; she did not want to makethings hard. She knew she had it in her power to dothat; she held his fate in her hands. All she had todo was to tell him the truth; but that was the veryfact that held her back....Her five minutes face toface with Mr. Royall had stripped her of her lastillusion, and brought her back to North Dormer's pointof view. Distinctly and pitilessly there rose beforeher the fate of the girl who was married "to makethings right." She had seen too many village love-stories end in that way. Poor Rose Coles's miserablemarriage was of the number; and what good had come ofit for her or for Halston Skeff? They had hated eachother from the day the minister married them; andwhenever old Mrs. Skeff had a fancy to humiliate herdaughter-in-law she had only to say: "Who'd ever thinkthe baby's only two? And for a seven months' child--ain't it a wonder what a size he is?" North Dormer hadtreasures of indulgence for brands in the burning, butonly derision for those who succeeded in gettingsnatched from it; and Charity had always understoodJulia Hawes's refusal to be snatched....
　　Only--was there no alternative but Julia's? Her soulrecoiled from the vision of the white-faced woman amongthe plush sofas and gilt frames. In the establishedorder of things as she knew them she saw no place forher individual adventure....
　　She sat in her chair without undressing till faint greystreaks began to divide the black slats of theshutters. Then she stood up and pushed them open,letting in the light. The coming of a new day broughta sharper consciousness of ineluctable reality, andwith it a sense of the need of action. She looked atherself in the glass, and saw her face, white in theautumn dawn, with pinched cheeks and dark-ringed eyes,and all the marks of her state that she herself wouldnever have noticed, but that Dr. Merkle's diagnosis hadmade plain to her. She could not hope that thosesigns would escape the watchful village; even beforeher figure lost its shape she knew her face wouldbetray her.
　　Leaning from her window she looked out on the dark andempty scene; the ashen houses with shuttered windows,the grey road climbing the slope to the hemlock beltabove the cemetery, and the heavy mass of the Mountainblack against a rainy sky. To the east a space oflight was broadening above the forest; but over thatalso the clouds hung. Slowly her gaze travelled acrossthe fields to the rugged curve of the hills. She hadlooked out so often on that lifeless circle, andwondered if anything could ever happen to anyone whowas enclosed in it....
　　Almost without conscious thought her decision had beenreached; as her eyes had followed the circle of thehills her mind had also travelled the old round. Shesupposed it was something in her blood that made theMountain the only answer to her questioning, theinevitable escape from all that hemmed her in and besether. At any rate it began to loom against the rainydawn; and the longer she looked at it the more clearlyshe understood that now at last she was really goingthere.
Chapter 16
    THE rain held off, and an hour later, when she started,wild gleams of sunlight were blowing across the fields.
　　After Harney's departure she had returned her bicycleto its owner at Creston, and she was not sure of beingable to walk all the way to the Mountain. The desertedhouse was on the road; but the idea of spending thenight there was unendurable, and she meant to try topush on to Hamblin, where she could sleep under a wood-shed if her strength should fail her. Her preparationshad been made with quiet forethought. Before startingshe had forced herself to swallow a glass of milk andeat a piece of bread; and she had put in her canvassatchel a little packet of the chocolate that Harneyalways carried in his bicycle bag. She wanted aboveall to keep up her strength, and reach her destinationwithout attracting notice....
　　Mile by mile she retraced the road over which she hadso often flown to her lover. When she reached theturn where the wood-road branched off from the Crestonhighway she remembered the Gospel tent--long sincefolded up and transplanted--and her start ofinvoluntary terror when the fat evangelist had said:
　　"Your Saviour knows everything. Come and confess yourguilt." There was no sense of guilt in her now, butonly a desperate desire to defend her secret fromirreverent eyes, and begin life again among people towhom the harsh code of the village was unknown. Theimpulse did not shape itself in thought: she only knewshe must save her baby, and hide herself with itsomewhere where no one would ever come to trouble them.
　　She walked on and on, growing more heavy-footed as theday advanced. It seemed a cruel chance that compelledher to retrace every step of the way to the desertedhouse; and when she came in sight of the orchard, andthe silver-gray roof slanting crookedly through theladen branches, her strength failed her and she satdown by the road-side. She sat there a long time,trying to gather the courage to start again, and walkpast the broken gate and the untrimmed rose-bushesstrung with scarlet hips. A few drops of rain werefalling, and she thought of the warm evenings whenshe and Harney had sat embraced in the shadowy room,and the noise of summer showers on the roof had rustledthrough their kisses. At length she understood that ifshe stayed any longer the rain might compel her to takeshelter in the house overnight, and she got up andwalked on, averting her eyes as she came abreast of thewhite gate and the tangled garden.
　　The hours wore on, and she walked more and more slowly,pausing now and then to rest, and to eat a little breadand an apple picked up from the roadside. Her bodyseemed to grow heavier with every yard of the way, andshe wondered how she would be able to carry her childlater, if already he laid such a burden on her....Afresh wind had sprung up, scattering the rain andblowing down keenly from the mountain. Presently theclouds lowered again, and a few white darts struck herin the face: it was the first snow falling overHamblin. The roofs of the lonely village were onlyhalf a mile ahead, and she was resolved to push beyondit, and try to reach the Mountain that night. She hadno clear plan of action, except that, once in thesettlement, she meant to look for Liff Hyatt, and gethim to take her to her mother. She herself hadbeen born as her own baby was going to be born; andwhatever her mother's subsequent life had been, shecould hardly help remembering the past, and receiving adaughter who was facing the trouble she had known.
　　Suddenly the deadly faintness came over her once moreand she sat down on the bank and leaned her headagainst a tree-trunk. The long road and the cloudylandscape vanished from her eyes, and for a time sheseemed to be circling about in some terrible wheelingdarkness. Then that too faded.
　　She opened her eyes, and saw a buggy drawn up besideher, and a man who had jumped down from it and wasgazing at her with a puzzled face. Slowlyconsciousness came back, and she saw that the man wasLiff Hyatt.
　　She was dimly aware that he was asking her something,and she looked at him in silence, trying to findstrength to speak. At length her voice stirred in herthroat, and she said in a whisper: "I'm going up theMountain.""Up the Mountain?" he repeated, drawing aside a little;and as he moved she saw behind him, in the buggy, aheavily coated figure with a familiar pink faceand gold spectacles on the bridge of a Grecian nose.
　　"Charity! What on earth are you doing here?" Mr. Milesexclaimed, throwing the reins on the horse's back andscrambling down from the buggy.
　　She lifted her heavy eyes to his. "I'm going to see mymother."The two men glanced at each other, and for a momentneither of them spoke.
　　Then Mr. Miles said: "You look ill, my dear, and it's along way. Do you think it's wise?"Charity stood up. "I've got to go to her."A vague mirthless grin contracted Liff Hyatt's face,and Mr. Miles again spoke uncertainly. "You know,then--you'd been told?"She stared at him. "I don't know what you mean. Iwant to go to her."Mr. Miles was examining her thoughtfully. She fanciedshe saw a change in his expression, and the bloodrushed to her forehead. "I just want to go to her,"she repeated.
　　He laid his hand on her arm. "My child, your mother isdying. Liff Hyatt came down to fetch me....Get in andcome with us."He helped her up to the seat at his side, LiffHyatt clambered in at the back, and they drove offtoward Hamblin. At first Charity had hardly graspedwhat Mr. Miles was saying; the physical relief offinding herself seated in the buggy, and securely onher road to the Mountain, effaced the impression of hiswords. But as her head cleared she began tounderstand. She knew the Mountain had but the mostinfrequent intercourse with the valleys; she had oftenenough heard it said that no one ever went up thereexcept the minister, when someone was dying. And nowit was her mother who was dying...and she would findherself as much alone on the Mountain as anywhere elsein the world. The sense of unescapable isolation wasall she could feel for the moment; then she began towonder at the strangeness of its being Mr. Miles whohad undertaken to perform this grim errand. He did notseem in the least like the kind of man who would careto go up the Mountain. But here he was at her side,guiding the horse with a firm hand, and bending on herthe kindly gleam of his spectacles, as if there werenothing unusual in their being together in suchcircumstances.
　　For a while she found it impossible to speak, and heseemed to understand this, and made no attempt toquestion her. But presently she felt her tears riseand flow down over her drawn cheeks; and he must haveseen them too, for he laid his hand on hers, and saidin a low voice: "Won't you tell me what is troublingyou?"She shook her head, and he did not insist: but after awhile he said, in the same low tone, so that theyshould not be overheard: "Charity, what do you know ofyour childhood, before you came down to North Dormer?"She controlled herself, and answered: "Nothing onlywhat I heard Mr. Royall say one day. He said hebrought me down because my father went to prison.""And you've never been up there since?""Never."Mr. Miles was silent again, then he said: "I'm gladyou're coming with me now. Perhaps we may find yourmother alive, and she may know that you have come."They had reached Hamblin, where the snow-flurry hadleft white patches in the rough grass on the roadside,and in the angles of the roofs facing north. It was apoor bleak village under the granite flank of theMountain, and as soon as they left it they beganto climb. The road was steep and full of ruts, andthe horse settled down to a walk while they mounted andmounted, the world dropping away below them in greatmottled stretches of forest and field, and stormy darkblue distances.
　　Charity had often had visions of this ascent of theMountain but she had not known it would reveal so widea country, and the sight of those strange landsreaching away on every side gave her a new sense ofHarney's remoteness. She knew he must be miles andmiles beyond the last range of hills that seemed to bethe outmost verge of things, and she wondered how shehad ever dreamed of going to New York to find him....
　　As the road mounted the country grew bleaker, and theydrove across fields of faded mountain grass bleached bylong months beneath the snow. In the hollows a fewwhite birches trembled, or a mountain ash lit itsscarlet clusters; but only a scant growth of pinesdarkened the granite ledges. The wind was blowingfiercely across the open slopes; the horse faced itwith bent head and straining flanks, and now and thenthe buggy swayed so that Charity had to clutch itsside.
　　Mr. Miles had not spoken again; he seemed tounderstand that she wanted to be left alone.
　　After a while the track they were following forked, andhe pulled up the horse, as if uncertain of the way.
　　Liff Hyatt craned his head around from the back, andshouted against the wind: "Left----" and they turnedinto a stunted pine-wood and began to drive down theother side of the Mountain.
　　A mile or two farther on they came out on a clearingwhere two or three low houses lay in stony fields,crouching among the rocks as if to brace themselvesagainst the wind. They were hardly more than sheds,built of logs and rough boards, with tin stove-pipessticking out of their roofs. The sun was setting, anddusk had already fallen on the lower world, but ayellow glare still lay on the lonely hillside and thecrouching houses. The next moment it faded and leftthe landscape in dark autumn twilight.
　　"Over there," Liff called out, stretching his long armover Mr. Miles's shoulder. The clergyman turned to theleft, across a bit of bare ground overgrown with docksand nettles, and stopped before the most ruinous of thesheds. A stove-pipe reached its crooked arm out of onewindow, and the broken panes of the other were stuffedwith rags and paper.
　　In contrast to such a dwelling the brown house inthe swamp might have stood for the home of plenty.
　　As the buggy drew up two or three mongrel dogs jumpedout of the twilight with a great barking, and a youngman slouched to the door and stood there staring. Inthe twilight Charity saw that his face had the samesodden look as Bash Hyatt's, the day she had seen himsleeping by the stove. He made no effort to silencethe dogs, but leaned in the door, as if roused from adrunken lethargy, while Mr. Miles got out of the buggy.
　　"Is it here?" the clergyman asked Liff in a low voice;and Liff nodded.
　　Mr. Miles turned to Charity. "Just hold the horse aminute, my dear: I'll go in first," he said, puttingthe reins in her hands. She took them passively, andsat staring straight ahead of her at the darkeningscene while Mr. Miles and Liff Hyatt went up to thehouse. They stood a few minutes talking with the manin the door, and then Mr. Miles came back. As he cameclose, Charity saw that his smooth pink face wore afrightened solemn look.
　　"Your mother is dead, Charity; you'd better come withme," he said.
　　She got down and followed him while Liff led thehorse away. As she approached the door she saidto herself: "This is where I was born...this is where Ibelong...." She had said it to herself often enough asshe looked across the sunlit valleys at the Mountain;but it had meant nothing then, and now it had become areality. Mr. Miles took her gently by the arm, andthey entered what appeared to be the only room in thehouse. It was so dark that she could just discern agroup of a dozen people sitting or sprawling about atable made of boards laid across two barrels. Theylooked up listlessly as Mr. Miles and Charity came in,and a woman's thick voice said: "Here's the preacher."But no one moved.
　　Mr. Miles paused and looked about him; then he turnedto the young man who had met them at the door.
　　"Is the body here?" he asked.
　　The young man, instead of answering, turned his headtoward the group. "Where's the candle? I tole yer tobring a candle," he said with sudden harshness to agirl who was lolling against the table. She did notanswer, but another man got up and took from somecorner a candle stuck into a bottle.
　　"How'll I light it? The stove's out," the girlgrumbled.
　　Mr. Miles fumbled under his heavy wrappings and drewout a match-box. He held a match to the candle, and ina moment or two a faint circle of light fell on thepale aguish heads that started out of the shadow likethe heads of nocturnal animals.
　　"Mary's over there," someone said; and Mr. Miles,taking the bottle in his hand, passed behind the table.
　　Charity followed him, and they stood before a mattresson the floor in a corner of the room. A woman lay onit, but she did not look like a dead woman; she seemedto have fallen across her squalid bed in a drunkensleep, and to have been left lying where she fell, inher ragged disordered clothes. One arm was flung aboveher head, one leg drawn up under a torn skirt that leftthe other bare to the knee: a swollen glistening legwith a ragged stocking rolled down about the ankle. Thewoman lay on her back, her eyes staring up unblinkinglyat the candle that trembled in Mr. Miles's hand.
　　"She jus' dropped off," a woman said, over the shoulderof the others; and the young man added: "I jus' come inand found her."An elderly man with lank hair and a feeble grinpushed between them. "It was like this: I says to heron'y the night before: if you don't take and quit, Isays to her..."Someone pulled him back and sent him reeling against abench along the wall, where he dropped down mutteringhis unheeded narrative.
　　There was a silence; then the young woman who had beenlolling against the table suddenly parted the group,and stood in front of Charity. She was healthier androbuster looking than the others, and her weather-beaten face had a certain sullen beauty.
　　"Who's the girl? Who brought her here?" she said,fixing her eyes mistrustfully on the young man who hadrebuked her for not having a candle ready.
　　Mr. Miles spoke. "I brought her; she is Mary Hyatt'sdaughter.""What? Her too?" the girl sneered; and the young manturned on her with an oath. "Shut your mouth, damnyou, or get out of here," he said; then he relapsedinto his former apathy, and dropped down on the bench,leaning his head against the wall.
　　Mr. Miles had set the candle on the floor and taken offhis heavy coat. He turned to Charity. "Come and helpme," he said.
　　He knelt down by the mattress, and pressed thelids over the dead woman's eyes. Charity, tremblingand sick, knelt beside him, and tried to compose hermother's body. She drew the stocking over the dreadfulglistening leg, and pulled the skirt down to thebattered upturned boots. As she did so, she looked ather mother's face, thin yet swollen, with lips partedin a frozen gasp above the broken teeth. There was nosign in it of anything human: she lay there like adead dog in a ditch Charity's hands grew cold as theytouched her.
　　Mr. Miles drew the woman's arms across her breast andlaid his coat over her. Then he covered her face withhis handkerchief, and placed the bottle with the candlein it at her head. Having done this he stood up.
　　"Is there no coffin?" he asked, turning to the groupbehind him.
　　There was a moment of bewildered silence; then thefierce girl spoke up. "You'd oughter brought it withyou. Where'd we get one here, I'd like ter know?"Mr. Miles, looking at the others, repeated: "Is itpossible you have no coffin ready?""That's what I say: them that has it sleepsbetter," an old woman murmured. "But then shenever had no bed....""And the stove warn't hers," said the lank-haired man,on the defensive.
　　Mr. Miles turned away from them and moved a few stepsapart. He had drawn a book from his pocket, and aftera pause he opened it and began to read, holding thebook at arm's length and low down, so that the pagescaught the feeble light. Charity had remained on herknees by the mattress: now that her mother's face wascovered it was easier to stay near her, and avoid thesight of the living faces which too horribly showed bywhat stages hers had lapsed into death.
　　"I am the Resurrection and the Life," Mr. Miles began;"he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yetshall he live....Though after my skin worms destroy mybody, yet in my flesh shall I see God...."IN MY FLESH SHALL I SEE GOD! Charity thought of thegaping mouth and stony eyes under the handkerchief, andof the glistening leg over which she had drawn thestocking....
　　"We brought nothing into this world and we shall takenothing out of it----"There was a sudden muttering and a scuffle at theback of the group. "I brought the stove," said theelderly man with lank hair, pushing his way between theothers. "I wen' down to Creston'n bought it...n' I gota right to take it outer here...n' I'll lick any fellersays I ain't....""Sit down, damn you!" shouted the tall youth who hadbeen drowsing on the bench against the wall.
　　"For man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquietethhimself in vain; he heapeth up riches and cannot tellwho shall gather them....""Well, it ARE his," a woman in the backgroundinterjected in a frightened whine.
　　The tall youth staggered to his feet. "If you don'thold your mouths I'll turn you all out o' here, thewhole lot of you," he cried with many oaths. "G'wan,minister...don't let 'em faze you....""Now is Christ risen from the dead and become thefirst-fruits of them that slept....Behold, I show you amystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all bechanged, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, atthe last trump....For this corruptible must put onincorruption and this mortal must put on immortality.
　　So when this corruption shall have put onincorruption, and when this mortal shall have put onimmortality, then shall be brought to pass the sayingthat is written, Death is swallowed up in Victory...."One by one the mighty words fell on Charity's bowedhead, soothing the horror, subduing the tumult,mastering her as they mastered the drink-dazedcreatures at her back. Mr. Miles read to the lastword, and then closed the book.
　　"Is the grave ready?" he asked.
　　Liff Hyatt, who had come in while he was reading,nodded a "Yes," and pushed forward to the side of themattress. The young man on the bench who seemed toassert some sort of right of kinship with the deadwoman, got to his feet again, and the proprietor of thestove joined him. Between them they raised up themattress; but their movements were unsteady, and thecoat slipped to the floor, revealing the poor body inits helpless misery. Charity, picking up the coat,covered her mother once more. Liff had brought alantern, and the old woman who had already spoken tookit up, and opened the door to let the little processionpass out. The wind had dropped, and the night was verydark and bitterly cold. The old woman walkedahead, the lantern shaking in her hand andspreading out before her a pale patch of dead grass andcoarse-leaved weeds enclosed in an immensity ofblackness.
　　Mr. Miles took Charity by the arm, and side by sidethey walked behind the mattress. At length the oldwoman with the lantern stopped, and Charity saw thelight fall on the stooping shoulders of the bearers andon a ridge of upheaved earth over which they werebending. Mr. Miles released her arm and approached thehollow on the other side of the ridge; and while themen stooped down, lowering the mattress into the grave,he began to speak again.
　　"Man that is born of woman hath but a short time tolive and is full of misery....He cometh up and is cutdown...he fleeth as it were a shadow....Yet, O Lord Godmost holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and mercifulSaviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains ofeternal death....""Easy there...is she down?" piped the claimant to thestove; and the young man called over his shoulder:
　　"Lift the light there, can't you?"There was a pause, during which the light floateduncertainly over the open grave. Someone bentover and pulled out Mr. Miles's coat----("No, no--leave the handkerchief," he interposed)--and then LiffHyatt, coming forward with a spade, began to shovel inthe earth.
　　"Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His greatmercy to take unto Himself the soul of our dear sisterhere departed, we therefore commit her body to theground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust todust..." Liff's gaunt shoulders rose and bent in thelantern light as he dashed the clods of earth into thegrave. "God--it's froze a'ready," he muttered,spitting into his palm and passing his ragged shirt-sleeve across his perspiring face.
　　"Through our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change ourvile body that it may be like unto His glorious body,according to the mighty working, whereby He is able tosubdue all things unto Himself..." The last spadeful ofearth fell on the vile body of Mary Hyatt, and Liffrested on his spade, his shoulder blades still heavingwith the effort.
　　"Lord, have mercy upon us, Christ have mercy upon us,Lord have mercy upon us..."Mr. Miles took the lantern from the old woman'shand and swept its light across the circle ofbleared faces. "Now kneel down, all of you," hecommanded, in a voice of authority that Charity hadnever heard. She knelt down at the edge of the grave,and the others, stiffly and hesitatingly, got to theirknees beside her. Mr. Miles knelt, too. "And now praywith me--you know this prayer," he said, and he began:
　　"Our Father which art in Heaven..." One or two of thewomen falteringly took the words up, and when he ended,the lank-haired man flung himself on the neck of thetall youth. "It was this way," he said. "I tole herthe night before, I says to her..." The reminiscenceended in a sob.
　　Mr. Miles had been getting into his coat again. Hecame up to Charity, who had remained passively kneelingby the rough mound of earth.
　　"My child, you must come. It's very late."She lifted her eyes to his face: he seemed to speak outof another world.
　　"I ain't coming: I'm going to stay here.""Here? Where? What do you mean?""These are my folks. I'm going to stay with them."Mr. Miles lowered his voice. "But it's notpossible--you don't know what you are doing. Youcan't stay among these people: you must come with me."She shook her head and rose from her knees. The groupabout the grave had scattered in the darkness, but theold woman with the lantern stood waiting. Her mournfulwithered face was not unkind, and Charity went up toher.
　　"Have you got a place where I can lie down for thenight?" she asked. Liff came up, leading the buggy outof the night. He looked from one to the other with hisfeeble smile. "She's my mother. She'll take youhome," he said; and he added, raising his voice tospeak to the old woman: "It's the girl from lawyerRoyall's--Mary's girl...you remember...."The woman nodded and raised her sad old eyes toCharity's. When Mr. Miles and Liff clambered into thebuggy she went ahead with the lantern to show them thetrack they were to follow; then she turned back, and insilence she and Charity walked away together throughthe night.
Chapter 17
    CHARITY lay on the floor on a mattress, as her deadmother's body had lain. The room in which she lay wascold and dark and low-ceilinged, and even poorer andbarer than the scene of Mary Hyatt's earthlypilgrimage. On the other side of the fireless stoveLiff Hyatt's mother slept on a blanket, with twochildren--her grandchildren, she said--rolled upagainst her like sleeping puppies. They had their thinclothes spread over them, having given the only otherblanket to their guest.
　　Through the small square of glass in the opposite wallCharity saw a deep funnel of sky, so black, so remote,so palpitating with frosty stars that her very soulseemed to be sucked into it. Up there somewhere, shesupposed, the God whom Mr. Miles had invoked waswaiting for Mary Hyatt to appear. What a long flightit was! And what would she have to say when she reachedHim?
　　Charity's bewildered brain laboured with the attempt topicture her mother's past, and to relate it in anyway to the designs of a just but merciful God; but itwas impossible to imagine any link between them. Sheherself felt as remote from the poor creature she hadseen lowered into her hastily dug grave as if theheight of the heavens divided them. She had seenpoverty and misfortune in her life; but in a communitywhere poor thrifty Mrs. Hawes and the industrious Allyrepresented the nearest approach to destitution therewas nothing to suggest the savage misery of theMountain farmers.
　　As she lay there, half-stunned by her tragicinitiation, Charity vainly tried to think herself intothe life about her. But she could not even make outwhat relationship these people bore to each other, orto her dead mother; they seemed to be herded togetherin a sort of passive promiscuity in which their commonmisery was the strongest link. She tried to picture toherself what her life would have been if she had grownup on the Mountain, running wild in rags, sleeping onthe floor curled up against her mother, like the pale-faced children huddled against old Mrs. Hyatt, andturning into a fierce bewildered creature like the girlwho had apostrophized her in such strange words. Shewas frightened by the secret affinity she had feltwith this girl, and by the light it threw on her ownbeginnings. Then she remembered what Mr. Royall hadsaid in telling her story to Lucius Harney: "Yes, therewas a mother; but she was glad to have the child go.
　　She'd have given her to anybody...."Well! after all, was her mother so much to blame?
　　Charity, since that day, had always thought of her asdestitute of all human feeling; now she seemed merelypitiful. What mother would not want to save her childfrom such a life? Charity thought of the future of herown child, and tears welled into her aching eyes, andran down over her face. If she had been lessexhausted, less burdened with his weight, she wouldhave sprung up then and there and fled away....
　　The grim hours of the night dragged themselves slowlyby, and at last the sky paled and dawn threw a coldblue beam into the room. She lay in her corner staringat the dirty floor, the clothes-line hung with decayingrags, the old woman huddled against the cold stove, andthe light gradually spreading across the wintry world,and bringing with it a new day in which she would haveto live, to choose, to act, to make herself aplace among these people--or to go back to the life shehad left. A mortal lassitude weighed on her. Therewere moments when she felt that all she asked was to goon lying there unnoticed; then her mind revolted at thethought of becoming one of the miserable herd fromwhich she sprang, and it seemed as though, to save herchild from such a fate, she would find strength totravel any distance, and bear any burden life might puton her.
　　Vague thoughts of Nettleton flitted through her mind.
　　She said to herself that she would find some quietplace where she could bear her child, and give it todecent people to keep; and then she would go out likeJulia Hawes and earn its living and hers. She knewthat girls of that kind sometimes made enough to havetheir children nicely cared for; and every otherconsideration disappeared in the vision of her baby,cleaned and combed and rosy, and hidden away somewherewhere she could run in and kiss it, and bring it prettythings to wear. Anything, anything was better than toadd another life to the nest of misery on theMountain....
　　The old woman and the children were still sleepingwhen Charity rose from her mattress. Her body wasstiff with cold and fatigue, and she moved slowly lesther heavy steps should rouse them. She was faint withhunger, and had nothing left in her satchel; but on thetable she saw the half of a stale loaf. No doubt itwas to serve as the breakfast of old Mrs. Hyatt and thechildren; but Charity did not care; she had her ownbaby to think of. She broke off a piece of the breadand ate it greedily; then her glance fell on the thinfaces of the sleeping children, and filled withcompunction she rummaged in her satchel for somethingwith which to pay for what she had taken. She foundone of the pretty chemises that Ally had made for her,with a blue ribbon run through its edging. It was oneof the dainty things on which she had squandered hersavings, and as she looked at it the blood rushed toher forehead. She laid the chemise on the table, andstealing across the floor lifted the latch and wentout....
　　The morning was icy cold and a pale sun was just risingabove the eastern shoulder of the Mountain. The housesscattered on the hillside lay cold and smokeless underthe sun-flecked clouds, and not a human being was insight. Charity paused on the threshold and triedto discover the road by which she had come the nightbefore. Across the field surrounding Mrs. Hyatt'sshanty she saw the tumble-down house in which shesupposed the funeral service had taken place. Thetrail ran across the ground between the two houses anddisappeared in the pine-wood on the flank of theMountain; and a little way to the right, under a wind-beaten thorn, a mound of fresh earth made a dark spoton the fawn-coloured stubble. Charity walked acrossthe field to the ground. As she approached it sheheard a bird's note in the still air, and looking upshe saw a brown song-sparrow perched in an upper branchof the thorn above the grave. She stood a minutelistening to his small solitary song; then she rejoinedthe trail and began to mount the hill to the pine-wood.
　　Thus far she had been impelled by the blind instinct offlight; but each step seemed to bring her nearer to therealities of which her feverish vigil had given only ashadowy image. Now that she walked again in a daylightworld, on the way back to familiar things, herimagination moved more soberly. On one point she wasstill decided: she could not remain at North Dormer,and the sooner she got away from it the better.
　　But everything beyond was darkness.
　　As she continued to climb the air grew keener, and whenshe passed from the shelter of the pines to the opengrassy roof of the Mountain the cold wind of the nightbefore sprang out on her. She bent her shoulders andstruggled on against it for a while; but presently herbreath failed, and she sat down under a ledge of rockoverhung by shivering birches. From where she sat shesaw the trail wandering across the bleached grass inthe direction of Hamblin, and the granite wall of theMountain falling away to infinite distances. On thatside of the ridge the valleys still lay in wintryshadow; but in the plain beyond the sun was touchingvillage roofs and steeples, and gilding the haze ofsmoke over far-off invisible towns.
　　Charity felt herself a mere speck in the lonely circleof the sky. The events of the last two days seemed tohave divided her forever from her short dream of bliss.
　　Even Harney's image had been blurred by that crushingexperience: she thought of him as so remote from herthat he seemed hardly more than a memory. In herfagged and floating mind only one sensation had theweight of reality; it was the bodily burden of herchild. But for it she would have felt as rootless asthe whiffs of thistledown the wind blew past her. Herchild was like a load that held her down, and yet likea hand that pulled her to her feet. She said toherself that she must get up and struggle on....
　　Her eyes turned back to the trail across the top of theMountain, and in the distance she saw a buggy againstthe sky. She knew its antique outline, and the gauntbuild of the old horse pressing forward with loweredhead; and after a moment she recognized the heavy bulkof the man who held the reins. The buggy was followingthe trail and making straight for the pine-wood throughwhich she had climbed; and she knew at once that thedriver was in search of her. Her first impulse was tocrouch down under the ledge till he had passed; but theinstinct of concealment was overruled by the relief offeeling that someone was near her in the awfulemptiness. She stood up and walked toward the buggy.
　　Mr. Royall saw her, and touched the horse with thewhip. A minute or two later he was abreast of Charity;their eyes met, and without speaking he leaned over andhelped her up into the buggy.
　　She tried to speak, to stammer out someexplanation, but no words came to her; and as he drewthe cover over her knees he simply said: "The ministertold me he'd left you up here, so I come up for you."He turned the horse's head, and they began to jog backtoward Hamblin. Charity sat speechless, staringstraight ahead of her, and Mr. Royall occasionallyuttered a word of encouragement to the horse: "Getalong there, Dan....I gave him a rest at Hamblin; but Ibrought him along pretty quick, and it's a stiff pullup here against the wind."As he spoke it occurred to her for the first time thatto reach the top of the Mountain so early he must haveleft North Dormer at the coldest hour of the night, andhave travelled steadily but for the halt at Hamblin;and she felt a softness at her heart which no act ofhis had ever produced since he had brought her theCrimson Rambler because she had given up boarding-school to stay with him.
　　After an interval he began again: "It was a day justlike this, only spitting snow, when I come up here foryou the first time." Then, as if fearing that shemight take his remark as a reminder of past benefits,he added quickly: "I dunno's you think it was such agood job, either.""Yes, I do," she murmured, looking straight ahead ofher.
　　"Well," he said, "I tried----"He did not finish the sentence, and she could think ofnothing more to say.
　　"Ho, there, Dan, step out," he muttered, jerking thebridle. "We ain't home yet.--You cold?" he askedabruptly.
　　She shook her head, but he drew the cover higher up,and stooped to tuck it in about the ankles. Shecontinued to look straight ahead. Tears of wearinessand weakness were dimming her eyes and beginning to runover, but she dared not wipe them away lest he shouldobserve the gesture.
　　They drove in silence, following the long loops of thedescent upon Hamblin, and Mr. Royall did not speakagain till they reached the outskirts of the village.
　　Then he let the reins droop on the dashboard and drewout his watch.
　　"Charity," he said, "you look fair done up, and NorthDormer's a goodish way off. I've figured out that we'ddo better to stop here long enough for you to geta mouthful of breakfast and then drive down to Crestonand take the train."She roused herself from her apathetic musing. "Thetrain--what train?"Mr. Royall, without answering, let the horse jog ontill they reached the door of the first house in thevillage. "This is old Mrs. Hobart's place," he said.
　　"She'll give us something hot to drink."Charity, half unconsciously, found herself getting outof the buggy and following him in at the open door.
　　They entered a decent kitchen with a fire crackling inthe stove. An old woman with a kindly face was settingout cups and saucers on the table. She looked up andnodded as they came in, and Mr. Royall advanced to thestove, clapping his numb hands together.
　　"Well, Mrs. Hobart, you got any breakfast for thisyoung lady? You can see she's cold and hungry."Mrs. Hobart smiled on Charity and took a tin coffee-potfrom the fire. "My, you do look pretty mean," she saidcompassionately.
　　Charity reddened, and sat down at the table. A feelingof complete passiveness had once more come overher, and she was conscious only of the pleasant animalsensations of warmth and rest.
　　Mrs. Hobart put bread and milk on the table, and thenwent out of the house: Charity saw her leading thehorse away to the barn across the yard. She did notcome back, and Mr. Royall and Charity sat alone at thetable with the smoking coffee between them. He pouredout a cup for her, and put a piece of bread in thesaucer, and she began to eat.
　　As the warmth of the coffee flowed through her veinsher thoughts cleared and she began to feel like aliving being again; but the return to life was sopainful that the food choked in her throat and she satstaring down at the table in silent anguish.
　　After a while Mr. Royall pushed back his chair. "Now,then," he said, "if you're a mind to go along----" Shedid not move, and he continued: "We can pick up thenoon train for Nettleton if you say so."The words sent the blood rushing to her face, and sheraised her startled eyes to his. He was standing onthe other side of the table looking at her kindly andgravely; and suddenly she understood what he wasgoing to say. She continued to sit motionless, aleaden weight upon her lips.
　　"You and me have spoke some hard things to each otherin our time, Charity; and there's no good that I cansee in any more talking now. But I'll never feel anyway but one about you; and if you say so we'll drivedown in time to catch that train, and go straight tothe minister's house; and when you come back homeyou'll come as Mrs. Royall."His voice had the grave persuasive accent that hadmoved his hearers at the Home Week festival; she had asense of depths of mournful tolerance under that easytone. Her whole body began to tremble with the dreadof her own weakness.
　　"Oh, I can't----" she burst out desperately.
　　"Can't what?"She herself did not know: she was not sure if she wasrejecting what he offered, or already strugglingagainst the temptation of taking what she no longer hada right to. She stood up, shaking and bewildered, andbegan to speak:
　　"I know I ain't been fair to you always; but I want tobe now....I want you to know...I want..." Her voicefailed her and she stopped.
　　Mr. Royall leaned against the wall. He was palerthan usual, but his face was composed and kindlyand her agitation did not appear to perturb him.
　　"What's all this about wanting?" he said as she paused.
　　"Do you know what you really want? I'll tell you. Youwant to be took home and took care of. And I guessthat's all there is to say.""No...it's not all....""Ain't it?" He looked at his watch. "Well, I'll tellyou another thing. All I want is to know if you'llmarry me. If there was anything else, I'd tell you so;but there ain't. Come to my age, a man knows thethings that matter and the things that don't; that'sabout the only good turn life does us."His tone was so strong and resolute that it was like asupporting arm about her. She felt her resistancemelting, her strength slipping away from her as hespoke.
　　"Don't cry, Charity," he exclaimed in a shaken voice.
　　She looked up, startled at his emotion, and their eyesmet.
　　"See here," he said gently, "old Dan's come a longdistance, and we've got to let him take it easy therest of the way...."He picked up the cloak that had slipped to herchair and laid it about her shoulders. Shefollowed him out of the house, and then walked acrossthe yard to the shed, where the horse was tied. Mr.
　　Royall unblanketed him and led him out into the road.
　　Charity got into the buggy and he drew the cover abouther and shook out the reins with a cluck. When theyreached the end of the village he turned the horse'shead toward Creston.
Chapter 18
    They began to jog down the winding road to the valleyat old Dan's languid pace. Charity felt herselfsinking into deeper depths of weariness, and as theydescended through the bare woods there were momentswhen she lost the exact sense of things, and seemed tobe sitting beside her lover with the leafy arch ofsummer bending over them. But this illusion was faintand transitory. For the most part she had only aconfused sensation of slipping down a smoothirresistible current; and she abandoned herself to thefeeling as a refuge from the torment of thought.
　　Mr. Royall seldom spoke, but his silent presence gaveher, for the first time, a sense of peace and security.
　　She knew that where he was there would be warmth, rest,silence; and for the moment they were all she wanted.
　　She shut her eyes, and even these things grew dim toher....
　　In the train, during the short run from Creston toNettleton, the warmth aroused her, and theconsciousness of being under strange eyes gave hera momentary energy. She sat upright, facing Mr.
　　Royall, and stared out of the window at the denudedcountry. Forty-eight hours earlier, when she had lasttraversed it, many of the trees still held theirleaves; but the high wind of the last two nights hadstripped them, and the lines of the landscape' were asfinely pencilled as in December. A few days of autumncold had wiped out all trace of the rich fields andlanguid groves through which she had passed on theFourth of July; and with the fading of the landscapethose fervid hours had faded, too. She could no longerbelieve that she was the being who had lived them; shewas someone to whom something irreparable andoverwhelming had happened, but the traces of the stepsleading up to it had almost vanished.
　　When the train reached Nettleton and she walked outinto the square at Mr. Royall's side the sense ofunreality grew more overpowering. The physical strainof the night and day had left no room in her mind fornew sensations and she followed Mr. Royall as passivelyas a tired child. As in a confused dream she presentlyfound herself sitting with him in a pleasant room, at atable with a red and white table-cloth on whichhot food and tea were placed. He filled her cup andplate and whenever she lifted her eyes from them shefound his resting on her with the same steady tranquilgaze that had reassured and strengthened her when theyhad faced each other in old Mrs. Hobart's kitchen. Aseverything else in her consciousness grew more and moreconfused and immaterial, became more and more like theuniversal shimmer that dissolves the world to failingeyes, Mr. Royall's presence began to detach itself withrocky firmness from this elusive background. She hadalways thought of him--when she thought of him at all--as of someone hateful and obstructive, but whom shecould outwit and dominate when she chose to make theeffort. Only once, on the day of the Old Home Weekcelebration, while the stray fragments of his addressdrifted across her troubled mind, had she caught aglimpse of another being, a being so different from thedull-witted enemy with whom she had supposed herself tobe living that even through the burning mist of her owndreams he had stood out with startling distinctness.
　　For a moment, then, what he said--and something in hisway of saying it--had made her see why he had alwaysstruck her as such a lonely man. But the mist ofher dreams had hidden him again, and she had forgottenthat fugitive impression.
　　It came back to her now, as they sat at the table, andgave her, through her own immeasurable desolation, asudden sense of their nearness to each other. But allthese feelings were only brief streaks of light in thegrey blur of her physical weakness. Through it she wasaware that Mr. Royall presently left her sitting by thetable in the warm room, and came back after an intervalwith a carriage from the station--a closed "hack" withsun-burnt blue silk blinds--in which they drovetogether to a house covered with creepers and standingnext to a church with a carpet of turf before it. Theygot out at this house, and the carriage waited whilethey walked up the path and entered a wainscoted halland then a room full of books. In this room aclergyman whom Charity had never seen received thempleasantly, and asked them to be seated for a fewminutes while witnesses were being summoned.
　　Charity sat down obediently, and Mr. Royall, his handsbehind his back, paced slowly up and down the room. Ashe turned and faced Charity, she noticed that hislips were twitching a little; but the look in his eyeswas grave and calm. Once he paused before her and saidtimidly: "Your hair's got kinder loose with the wind,"and she lifted her hands and tried to smooth back thelocks that had escaped from her braid. There was alooking-glass in a carved frame on the wall, but shewas ashamed to look at herself in it, and she sat withher hands folded on her knee till the clergymanreturned. Then they went out again, along a sort ofarcaded passage, and into a low vaulted room with across on an altar, and rows of benches. The clergyman,who had left them at the door, presently reappearedbefore the altar in a surplice, and a lady who wasprobably his wife, and a man in a blue shirt who hadbeen raking dead leaves on the lawn, came in and sat onone of the benches.
　　The clergyman opened a book and signed to Charity andMr. Royall to approach. Mr. Royall advanced a fewsteps, and Charity followed him as she had followed himto the buggy when they went out of Mrs. Hobart'skitchen; she had the feeling that if she ceased to keepclose to him, and do what he told her to do, the worldwould slip away from beneath her feet.
　　The clergyman began to read, and on her dazed mindthere rose the memory of Mr. Miles, standing the nightbefore in the desolate house of the Mountain, andreading out of the same book words that had the samedread sound of finality:
　　"I require and charge you both, as ye will answer atthe dreadful day of judgment when the secrets of allhearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you knowany impediment whereby ye may not be lawfully joinedtogether..."Charity raised her eyes and met Mr. Royall's. Theywere still looking at her kindly and steadily. "Iwill!" she heard him say a moment later, after anotherinterval of words that she had failed to catch. Shewas so busy trying to understand the gestures that theclergyman was signalling to her to make that she nolonger heard what was being said. After anotherinterval the lady on the bench stood up, and taking herhand put it in Mr. Royall's. It lay enclosed in hisstrong palm and she felt a ring that was too big forher being slipped on her thin finger. She understoodthen that she was married....
　　Late that afternoon Charity sat alone in a bedroom ofthe fashionable hotel where she and Harney hadvainly sought a table on the Fourth of July. She hadnever before been in so handsomely furnished a room.
　　The mirror above the dressing-table reflected the highhead-board and fluted pillow-slips of the double bed,and a bedspread so spotlessly white that she hadhesitated to lay her hat and jacket on it. The hummingradiator diffused an atmosphere of drowsy warmth, andthrough a half-open door she saw the glitter of thenickel taps above twin marble basins.
　　For a while the long turmoil of the night and day hadslipped away from her and she sat with closed eyes,surrendering herself to the spell of warmth andsilence. But presently this merciful apathy wassucceeded by the sudden acuteness of vision with whichsick people sometimes wake out of a heavy sleep. Asshe opened her eyes they rested on the picture thathung above the bed. It was a large engraving with adazzling white margin enclosed in a wide frame ofbird's-eye maple with an inner scroll of gold. Theengraving represented a young man in a boat on a lakeover-hung with trees. He was leaning over to gatherwater-lilies for the girl in a light dress who layamong the cushions in the stern. The scene wasfull of a drowsy midsummer radiance, and Charityaverted her eyes from it and, rising from her chair,began to wander restlessly about the room.
　　It was on the fifth floor, and its broad window ofplate glass looked over the roofs of the town. Beyondthem stretched a wooded landscape in which the lastfires of sunset were picking out a steely gleam.
　　Charity gazed at the gleam with startled eyes. Eventhrough the gathering twilight she recognized thecontour of the soft hills encircling it, and the waythe meadows sloped to its edge. It was Nettleton Lakethat she was looking at.
　　She stood a long time in the window staring out at thefading water. The sight of it had roused her for thefirst time to a realization of what she had done. Eventhe feeling of the ring on her hand had not brought herthis sharp sense of the irretrievable. For an instantthe old impulse of flight swept through her; but it wasonly the lift of a broken wing. She heard the dooropen behind her, and Mr. Royall came in.
　　He had gone to the barber's to be shaved, and hisshaggy grey hair had been trimmed and smoothed. Hemoved strongly and quickly, squaring his shouldersand carrying his head high, as if he did not want topass unnoticed.
　　"What are you doing in the dark?" he called out in acheerful voice. Charity made no answer. He went up tothe window to draw the blind, and putting his finger onthe wall flooded the room with a blaze of light fromthe central chandelier. In this unfamiliarillumination husband and wife faced each otherawkwardly for a moment; then Mr. Royall said: "We'llstep down and have some supper, if you say so."The thought of food filled her with repugnance; but notdaring to confess it she smoothed her hair and followedhim to the lift.
　　An hour later, coming out of the glare of the dining-room, she waited in the marble-panelled hall while Mr.
　　Royall, before the brass lattice of one of the cornercounters, selected a cigar and bought an evening paper.
　　Men were lounging in rocking chairs under the blazingchandeliers, travellers coming and going, bellsringing, porters shuffling by with luggage. Over Mr.
　　Royall's shoulder, as he leaned against the counter, agirl with her hair puffed high smirked and nodded at adapper drummer who was getting his key at the deskacross the hall.
　　Charity stood among these cross-currents of life asmotionless and inert as if she had been one of thetables screwed to the marble floor. All her soul wasgathered up into one sick sense of coming doom, and shewatched Mr. Royall in fascinated terror while hepinched the cigars in successive boxes and unfolded hisevening paper with a steady hand.
　　Presently he turned and joined her. "You go rightalong up to bed--I'm going to sit down here and have mysmoke," he said. He spoke as easily and naturally asif they had been an old couple, long used to eachother's ways, and her contracted heart gave a flutterof relief. She followed him to the lift, and he puther in and enjoined the buttoned and braided boy toshow her to her room.
　　She groped her way in through the darkness, forgettingwhere the electric button was, and not knowing how tomanipulate it. But a white autumn moon had risen, andthe illuminated sky put a pale light in the room. Byit she undressed, and after folding up the ruffledpillow-slips crept timidly under the spotlesscounterpane. She had never felt such smooth sheets orsuch light warm blankets; but the softness of the beddid not soothe her. She lay there trembling with afear that ran through her veins like ice. "What have Idone? Oh, what have I done?" she whispered, shudderingto her pillow; and pressing her face against it to shutout the pale landscape beyond the window she lay in thedarkness straining her ears, and shaking at everyfootstep that approached....
　　Suddenly she sat up and pressed her hands against herfrightened heart. A faint sound had told her thatsomeone was in the room; but she must have slept in theinterval, for she had heard no one enter. The moon wassetting beyond the opposite roofs, and in the darknessoutlined against the grey square of the window, she sawa figure seated in the rocking-chair. The figure didnot move: it was sunk deep in the chair, with bowedhead and folded arms, and she saw that it was Mr.
　　Royall who sat there. He had not undressed, but hadtaken the blanket from the foot of the bed and laid itacross his knees. Trembling and holding her breath shewatched him, fearing that he had been roused by hermovement; but he did not stir, and she concludedthat he wished her to think he was asleep.
　　As she continued to watch him ineffable relief stoleslowly over her, relaxing her strained nerves andexhausted body. He knew, then...he knew...it wasbecause he knew that he had married her, and that hesat there in the darkness to show her she was safe withhim. A stir of something deeper than she had everfelt in thinking of him flitted through her tiredbrain, and cautiously, noiselessly, she let her headsink on the pillow....
　　When she woke the room was full of morning light, andher first glance showed her that she was alone in it.
　　She got up and dressed, and as she was fastening herdress the door opened, and Mr. Royall came in. Helooked old and tired in the bright daylight, but hisface wore the same expression of grave friendlinessthat had reassured her on the Mountain. It was as ifall the dark spirits had gone out of him.
　　They went downstairs to the dining-room for breakfast,and after breakfast he told her he had some insurancebusiness to attend to. "I guess while I'm doing ityou'd better step out and buy yourself whatever youneed." He smiled, and added with an embarrassedlaugh: "You know I always wanted you to beat all theother girls." He drew something from his pocket, andpushed it across the table to her; and she saw that hehad given her two twenty-dollar bills. "If it ain'tenough there's more where that come from--I want you tobeat 'em all hollow," he repeated.
　　She flushed and tried to stammer out her thanks, but hehad pushed back his chair and was leading the way outof the dining-room. In the hall he paused a minute tosay that if it suited her they would take the threeo'clock train back to North Dormer; then he took hishat and coat from the rack and went out.
　　A few minutes later Charity went out, too. She hadwatched to see in what direction he was going, and shetook the opposite way and walked quickly down the mainstreet to the brick building on the corner of LakeAvenue. There she paused to look cautiously up anddown the thoroughfare, and then climbed the brass-boundstairs to Dr. Merkle's door. The same bushy-headedmulatto girl admitted her, and after the same intervalof waiting in the red plush parlor she was once moresummoned to Dr. Merkle's office. The doctorreceived her without surprise, and led her into theinner plush sanctuary.
　　"I thought you'd be back, but you've come a mite toosoon: I told you to be patient and not fret," sheobserved, after a pause of penetrating scrutiny.
　　Charity drew the money from her breast. "I've come toget my blue brooch," she said, flushing.
　　"Your brooch?" Dr. Merkle appeared not to remember.
　　"My, yes--I get so many things of that kind. Well, mydear, you'll have to wait while I get it out of thesafe. I don't leave valuables like that laying roundlike the noospaper."She disappeared for a moment, and returned with a bitof twisted-up tissue paper from which she unwrapped thebrooch.
　　Charity, as she looked at it, felt a stir of warmth ather heart. She held out an eager hand.
　　"Have you got the change?" she asked a littlebreathlessly, laying one of the twenty-dollar bills onthe table.
　　"Change? What'd I want to have change for? I only seetwo twenties there," Dr. Merkle answered brightly.
　　Charity paused, disconcerted. "I thought...you said itwas five dollars a visit....""For YOU, as a favour--I did. But how aboutthe responsibility and the insurance? I don't s'poseyou ever thought of that? This pin's worth a hundreddollars easy. If it had got lost or stole, where'd Ibeen when you come to claim it?"Charity remained silent, puzzled and half-convinced bythe argument, and Dr. Merkle promptly followed up heradvantage. "I didn't ask you for your brooch, my dear.
　　I'd a good deal ruther folks paid me my regular chargethan have 'em put me to all this trouble."She paused, and Charity, seized with a desperatelonging to escape, rose to her feet and held out one ofthe bills.
　　"Will you take that?" she asked.
　　"No, I won't take that, my dear; but I'll take it withits mate, and hand you over a signed receipt if youdon't trust me.""Oh, but I can't--it's all I've got," Charityexclaimed.
　　Dr. Merkle looked up at her pleasantly from the plushsofa. "It seems you got married yesterday, up to the'Piscopal church; I heard all about the wedding fromthe minister's chore-man. It would be a pity, wouldn'tit, to let Mr. Royall know you had an accountrunning here? I just put it to you as your own mothermight."Anger flamed up in Charity, and for an instant shethought of abandoning the brooch and letting Dr. Merkledo her worst. But how could she leave her onlytreasure with that evil woman? She wanted it for herbaby: she meant it, in some mysterious way, to be alink between Harney's child and its unknown father.
　　Trembling and hating herself while she did it, she laidMr. Royall's money on the table, and catching up thebrooch fled out of the room and the house....
　　In the street she stood still, dazed by this lastadventure. But the brooch lay in her bosom like atalisman, and she felt a secret lightness of heart. Itgave her strength, after a moment, to walk on slowly inthe direction of the post office, and go in through theswinging doors. At one of the windows she bought asheet of letter-paper, an envelope and a stamp; thenshe sat down at a table and dipped the rusty postoffice pen in ink. She had come there possessed with afear which had haunted her ever since she had felt Mr.
　　Royall's ring on her finger: the fear that Harneymight, after all, free himself and come back to her. Itwas a possibility which had never occurred to herduring the dreadful hours after she had received hisletter; only when the decisive step she had taken madelonging turn to apprehension did such a contingencyseem conceivable. She addressed the envelope, and onthe sheet of paper she wrote:
　　I'm married to Mr. Royall. I'll always remember you.
　　CHARITY.
　　The last words were not in the least what she had meantto write; they had flowed from her pen irresistibly.
　　She had not had the strength to complete her sacrifice;but, after all, what did it matter? Now that there wasno chance of ever seeing Harney again, why should shenot tell him the truth?
　　When she had put the letter in the box she went outinto the busy sunlit street and began to walk to thehotel. Behind the plateglass windows of the departmentstores she noticed the tempting display of dresses anddress-materials that had fired her imagination on theday when she and Harney had looked in at them together.
　　They reminded her of Mr. Royall's injunction to go outand buy all she needed. She looked down at her shabbydress, and wondered what she should say when hesaw her coming back empty-handed. As she drew nearthe hotel she saw him waiting on the doorstep, and herheart began to beat with apprehension.
　　He nodded and waved his hand at her approach, and theywalked through the hall and went upstairs to collecttheir possessions, so that Mr. Royall might give up thekey of the room when they went down again for theirmidday dinner. In the bedroom, while she was thrustingback into the satchel the few things she had broughtaway with her, she suddenly felt that his eyes were onher and that he was going to speak. She stood still,her half-folded night-gown in her hand, while the bloodrushed up to her drawn cheeks.
　　"Well, did you rig yourself out handsomely? I haven'tseen any bundles round," he said jocosely.
　　"Oh, I'd rather let Ally Hawes make the few things Iwant," she answered.
　　"That so?" He looked at her thoughtfully for a momentand his eye-brows projected in a scowl. Then his facegrew friendly again. "Well, I wanted you to go backlooking stylisher than any of them; but I guess you'reright. You're a good girl, Charity."Their eyes met, and something rose in his that shehad never seen there: a look that made her feel ashamedand yet secure.
　　"I guess you're good, too," she said, shyly andquickly. He smiled without answering, and they wentout of the room together and dropped down to the hallin the glittering lift.
　　Late that evening, in the cold autumn moonlight, theydrove up to the door of the red house.
The End