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CHAPTER III
It was not in the room known at the red house as Mr.
Royall's "office" that he received his infrequent
clients. Professional dignity and masculine
independence made it necessary that he should have a
real office, under a different roof; and his standing
as the only lawyer of North Dormer required that the
roof should be the same as that which sheltered the
Town 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 of
the building, with a separate entrance, and a weathered
name-plate on the door. Before going in he stepped in
to the post-office for his mail--usually an empty
ceremony--said a word or two to the town-clerk, who sat
across the passage in idle state, and then went over to
the store on the opposite corner, where Carrick Fry,
the storekeeper, always kept a chair for him, and where
he was sure to find one or two selectmen leaning on the
long counter, in an atmosphere of rope, leather, tar
and coffee-beans. Mr. Royall, though monosyllabic at
home, was not averse, in certain moods, to imparting
his views to his fellow-townsmen; perhaps, also, he was
unwilling that his rare clients should surprise him
sitting, clerkless and unoccupied, in his dusty office.
At any rate, his hours there were not much longer or
more regular than Charity's at the library; the rest of
the time he spent either at the store or in driving
about the country on business connected with the
insurance companies that he represented, or in sitting
at home reading Bancroft's History of the United States
and the speeches of Daniel Webster.
Since the day when Charity had told him that she wished
to succeed to Eudora Skeff's post their relations had
undefinably but definitely changed. Lawyer Royall had
kept his word. He had obtained the place for her at
the cost of considerable maneuvering, as she guessed
from the number of rival candidates, and from the
acerbity with which two of them, Orma Fry and the
eldest Targatt girl, treated her for nearly a year
afterward. And he had engaged Verena Marsh to come up
from Creston and do the cooking. Verena was a poor old
widow, doddering and shiftless: Charity suspected that
she came for her keep. Mr. Royall was too close a man
to give a dollar a day to a smart girl when he could
get a deaf pauper for nothing. But at any rate, Verena
was there, in the attic just over Charity, and the fact
that she was deaf did not greatly trouble the young
girl.
Charity knew that what had happened on that hateful
night would not happen again. She understood that,
profoundly as she had despised Mr. Royall ever since,
he despised himself still more profoundly. If she had
asked for a woman in the house it was far less for her
own defense than for his humiliation. She needed no
one to defend her: his humbled pride was her surest
protection. He had never spoken a word of excuse or
extenuation; the incident was as if it had never been.
Yet its consequences were latent in every word that he
and she exchanged, in every glance they instinctively
turned from each other. Nothing now would ever shake
her rule in the red house.
On the night of her meeting with Miss Hatchard's cousin
Charity lay in bed, her bare arms clasped under her
rough head, and continued to think of him. She
supposed that he meant to spend some time in North
Dormer. He had said he was looking up the old houses in
the neighbourhood; and though she was not very clear as
to his purpose, or as to why anyone should look for old
houses, when they lay in wait for one on every
roadside, she understood that he needed the help of
books, and resolved to hunt up the next day the volume
she had failed to find, and any others that seemed
related to the subject.
Never had her ignorance of life and literature so
weighed on her as in reliving the short scene of her
discomfiture. "It's no use trying to be anything in
this place," she muttered to her pillow; and she
shrivelled at the vision of vague metropolises, shining
super-Nettletons, where girls in better clothes than
Belle Balch's talked fluently of architecture to young
men with hands like Lucius Harney's. Then she
remembered his sudden pause when he had come close to
the desk and had his first look at her. The sight had
made him forget what he was going to say; she recalled
the change in his face, and jumping up she ran over the
bare boards to her washstand, found the matches, lit a
candle, and lifted it to the square of looking-glass on
the white-washed wall. Her small face, usually so
darkly pale, glowed like a rose in the faint orb of
light, and under her rumpled hair her eyes seemed
deeper and larger than by day. Perhaps after all it
was a mistake to wish they were blue. A clumsy band
and button fastened her unbleached night-gown about the
throat. She undid it, freed her thin shoulders, and saw
herself a bride in low-necked satin, walking down an
aisle with Lucius Harney. He would kiss her as they
left the church....She put down the candle and covered
her face with her hands as if to imprison the kiss. At
that moment she heard Mr. Royall's step as he came up
the stairs to bed, and a fierce revulsion of feeling
swept over her. Until then she had merely despised
him; now deep hatred of him filled her heart. He became
to her a horrible old man....
The next day, when Mr. Royall came back to dinner, they
faced each other in silence as usual. Verena's
presence at the table was an excuse for their not
talking, though her deafness would have permitted the
freest interchange of confidences. But when the meal
was over, and Mr. Royall rose from the table, he looked
back at Charity, who had stayed to help the old woman
clear away the dishes.
"I want to speak to you a minute," he said; and she
followed him across the passage, wondering.
He seated himself in his black horse-hair armchair, and
she leaned against the window, indifferently. She was
impatient to be gone to the library, to hunt for the
book on North Dormer.
"See here," he said, "why ain't you at the library the
days you're supposed to be there?"
The question, breaking in on her mood of blissful
abstraction, deprived her of speech, and she stared at
him for a moment without answering.
"Who says I ain't?"
"There's been some complaints made, it appears. Miss
Hatchard sent for me this morning----"
Charity's smouldering resentment broke into a blaze. "I
know! Orma Fry, and that toad of a Targatt girl and Ben
Fry, 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. "At
what 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 the
dreamy remembrance of young Harney's visit that she had
forgotten having deserted her post as soon as he had
left the library.
"Who came at four o'clock?"
"Miss Hatchard did."
"Miss Hatchard? Why, she ain't ever been near the place
since she's been lame. She couldn't get up the steps
if she tried."
"She can be helped up, I guess. She was yesterday,
anyhow, by the young fellow that's staying with her. He
found you there, I understand, earlier in the
afternoon; and he went back and told Miss Hatchard the
books were in bad shape and needed attending to. She
got excited, and had herself wheeled straight round;
and when she got there the place was locked. So she
sent for me, and told me about that, and about the
other 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 with
her head thrown back against the window-frame, her arms
hanging against her sides, and her hands so tightly
clenched 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 the
phrase: "He told Miss Hatchard the books were in bad
shape." What did she care for the other charges against
her? Malice or truth, she despised them as she despised
her detractors. But that the stranger to whom she had
felt herself so mysteriously drawn should have betrayed
her! That at the very moment when she had fled up the
hillside to think of him more deliciously he should
have been hastening home to denounce her short-comings!
She remembered how, in the darkness of her room, she
had covered her face to press his imagined kiss closer;
and her heart raged against him for the liberty he had
not taken.
"Well, I'll go," she said suddenly. "I'll go right
off."
"Go where?" She heard the startled note in Mr. Royall's
voice.
"Why, out of their old library: straight out, and never
set foot in it again. They needn't think I'm going to
wait 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 him
aside, and walked out of the room.
Upstairs she took the library key from the place where
she always hid it under her pincushion--who said she
wasn't careful?--put on her hat, and swept down again
and out into the street. If Mr. Royall heard her go he
made no motion to detain her: his sudden rages probably
made him understand the uselessness of reasoning with
hers.
She reached the brick temple, unlocked the door and
entered into the glacial twilight. "I'm glad I'll
never have to sit in this old vault again when other
folks are out in the sun!" she said aloud as the
familiar chill took her. She looked with abhorrence at
the long dingy rows of books, the sheep-nosed Minerva
on her black pedestal, and the mild-faced young man in
a high stock whose effigy pined above her desk. She
meant to take out of the drawer her roll of lace and
the library register, and go straight to Miss Hatchard
to announce her resignation. But suddenly a great
desolation overcame her, and she sat down and laid her
face against the desk. Her heart was ravaged by life's
cruelest discovery: the first creature who had come
toward her out of the wilderness had brought her
anguish instead of joy. She did not cry; tears came
hard to her, and the storms of her heart spent
themselves inwardly. But as she sat there in her dumb
woe she felt her life to be too desolate, too ugly and
intolerable.
"What have I ever done to it, that it should hurt me
so?" she groaned, and pressed her fists against her
lids, which were beginning to swell with weeping.
"I won't--I won't go there looking like a horror!" she
muttered, springing up and pushing back her hair as if
it stifled her. She opened the drawer, dragged out the
register, and turned toward the door. As she did so it
opened, and the young man from Miss Hatchard's came in
whistling.
Content of CHAPTER III [Edith Wharton's novel: Summer]
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