________________________________________________
_
CHAPTER X
THE Lake at last--a sheet of shining metal brooded over
by drooping trees. Charity and Harney had secured a
boat and, getting away from the wharves and the
refreshment-booths, they drifted idly along, hugging
the shadow of the shore. Where the sun struck the
water 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 trees
on its edge seemed enamelled on a solid surface; but
gradually, as the sun declined, the water grew
transparent, and Charity, leaning over, plunged her
fascinated gaze into depths so clear that she saw the
inverted tree-tops interwoven with the green growths of
the bottom.
They rounded a point at the farther end of the Lake,
and entering an inlet pushed their bow against a
protruding tree-trunk. A green veil of willows
overhung them. Beyond the trees, wheat-fields sparkled
in the sun; and all along the horizon the clear
hills throbbed with light. Charity leaned back in the
stern, and Harney unshipped the oars and lay in the
bottom of the boat without speaking.
Ever since their meeting at the Creston pool he had
been subject to these brooding silences, which were as
different as possible from the pauses when they ceased
to speak because words were needless. At such times
his face wore the expression she had seen on it when
she had looked in at him from the darkness and again
there came over her a sense of the mysterious distance
between them; but usually his fits of abstraction were
followed by bursts of gaiety that chased away the
shadow before it chilled her.
She was still thinking of the ten dollars he had handed
to the driver of the run-about. It had given them
twenty minutes of pleasure, and it seemed unimaginable
that anyone should be able to buy amusement at that
rate. With ten dollars he might have bought her an
engagement ring; she knew that Mrs. Tom Fry's, which
came from Springfield, and had a diamond in it, had
cost only eight seventy-five. But she did not know why
the thought had occurred to her. Harney would never
buy her an engagement ring: they were friends and
comrades, but no more. He had been perfectly fair to
her: he had never said a word to mislead her. She
wondered what the girl was like whose hand was waiting
for his ring....
Boats were beginning to thicken on the Lake and the
clang of incessantly arriving trolleys announced the
return of the crowds from the ball-field. The shadows
lengthened across the pearl-grey water and two white
clouds near the sun were turning golden. On the
opposite shore men were hammering hastily at a wooden
scaffolding in a field. Charity asked what it was for.
"Why, the fireworks. I suppose there'll be a big
show." Harney looked at her and a smile crept into his
moody eyes. "Have you never seen any good fireworks?"
"Miss Hatchard always sends up lovely rockets on the
Fourth," she answered doubtfully.
"Oh----" his contempt was unbounded. "I mean a big
performance like this, illuminated boats, and all the
rest."
She flushed at the picture. "Do they send them up from
the Lake, too?"
"Rather. Didn't you notice that big raft we
passed? It's wonderful to see the rockets
completing their orbits down under one's feet." She
said nothing, and he put the oars into the rowlocks.
"If we stay we'd better go and pick up something to
eat."
"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 train
and reassured her. "The moon rises so late that it
will be dark by eight, and we'll have over an hour of
it."
Twilight fell, and lights began to show along the
shore. The trolleys roaring out from Nettleton became
great luminous serpents coiling in and out among the
trees. The wooden eating-houses at the Lake's edge
danced with lanterns, and the dusk echoed with laughter
and shouts and the clumsy splashing of oars.
Harney and Charity had found a table in the corner of a
balcony built over the Lake, and were patiently
awaiting an unattainable chowder. Close under them the
water lapped the piles, agitated by the evolutions of a
little white steamboat trellised with coloured globes
which was to run passengers up and down the Lake.
It was already black with them as it sheered off on its
first trip.
Suddenly Charity heard a woman's laugh behind her. The
sound was familiar, and she turned to look. A band of
showily dressed girls and dapper young men wearing
badges of secret societies, with new straw hats tilted
far back on their square-clipped hair, had invaded the
balcony and were loudly clamouring for a table. The
girl in the lead was the one who had laughed. She wore
a large hat with a long white feather, and from under
its brim her painted eyes looked at Charity with amused
recognition.
"Say! if this ain't like Old Home Week," she remarked
to the girl at her elbow; and giggles and glances
passed between them. Charity knew at once that the
girl with the white feather was Julia Hawes. She had
lost her freshness, and the paint under her eyes made
her face seem thinner; but her lips had the same lovely
curve, and the same cold mocking smile, as if there
were some secret absurdity in the person she was
looking at, and she had instantly detected it.
Charity flushed to the forehead and looked away.
She felt herself humiliated by Julia's sneer, and
vexed that the mockery of such a creature should affect
her. She trembled lest Harney should notice that the
noisy troop had recognized her; but they found no table
free, and passed on tumultuously.
Presently there was a soft rush through the air and a
shower of silver fell from the blue evening sky. In
another direction, pale Roman candles shot up singly
through the trees, and a fire-haired rocket swept the
horizon like a portent. Between these intermittent
flashes the velvet curtains of the darkness were
descending, and in the intervals of eclipse the voices
of the crowds seemed to sink to smothered murmurs.
Charity and Harney, dispossessed by newcomers, were at
length obliged to give up their table and struggle
through the throng about the boat-landings. For a
while there seemed no escape from the tide of late
arrivals; but finally Harney secured the last two
places on the stand from which the more privileged were
to see the fireworks. The seats were at the end of a
row, one above the other. Charity had taken off her
hat to have an uninterrupted view; and whenever she
leaned back to follow the curve of some
dishevelled rocket she could feel Harney's knees
against her head.
After a while the scattered fireworks ceased. A longer
interval of darkness followed, and then the whole night
broke into flower. From every point of the horizon,
gold and silver arches sprang up and crossed each
other, sky-orchards broke into blossom, shed their
flaming petals and hung their branches with golden
fruit; and all the while the air was filled with a soft
supernatural hum, as though great birds were building
their nests in those invisible tree-tops.
Now and then there came a lull, and a wave of moonlight
swept the Lake. In a flash it revealed hundreds of
boats, steel-dark against lustrous ripples; then it
withdrew as if with a furling of vast translucent
wings. Charity's heart throbbed with delight. It was
as if all the latent beauty of things had been unveiled
to her. She could not imagine that the world held
anything more wonderful; but near her she heard someone
say, "You wait till you see the set piece," and
instantly her hopes took a fresh flight. At last, just
as it was beginning to seem as though the whole arch of
the sky were one great lid pressed against her dazzled
eye-balls, and striking out of them continuous
jets of jewelled light, the velvet darkness settled
down again, and a murmur of expectation ran through the
crowd.
"Now--now!" the same voice said excitedly; and Charity,
grasping the hat on her knee, crushed it tight in the
effort to restrain her rapture.
For a moment the night seemed to grow more impenetrably
black; then a great picture stood out against it like a
constellation. It was surmounted by a golden scroll
bearing the inscription, "Washington crossing the
Delaware," and across a flood of motionless golden
ripples the National Hero passed, erect, solemn and
gigantic, standing with folded arms in the stern of a
slowly moving golden boat.
A long "Oh-h-h" burst from the spectators: the stand
creaked and shook with their blissful trepidations.
"Oh-h-h," Charity gasped: she had forgotten where she
was, had at last forgotten even Harney's nearness. She
seemed to have been caught up into the stars....
The picture vanished and darkness came down. In the
obscurity she felt her head clasped by two hands: her
face was drawn backward, and Harney's lips were
pressed on hers. With sudden vehemence he wound his
arms about her, holding her head against his breast
while she gave him back his kisses. An unknown Harney
had revealed himself, a Harney who dominated her and
yet over whom she felt herself possessed of a new
mysterious power.
But the crowd was beginning to move, and he had to
release her. "Come," he said in a confused voice. He
scrambled over the side of the stand, and holding up
his arm caught her as she sprang to the ground. He
passed his arm about her waist, steadying her against
the descending rush of people; and she clung to him,
speechless, exultant, as if all the crowding and
confusion about them were a mere vain stirring of the
air.
"Come," he repeated, "we must try to make the trolley."
He drew her along, and she followed, still in her
dream. They walked as if they were one, so isolated in
ecstasy that the people jostling them on every side
seemed impalpable. But when they reached the terminus
the illuminated trolley was already clanging on its
way, its platforms black with passengers. The cars
waiting behind it were as thickly packed; and the
throng about the terminus was so dense that it
seemed hopeless to struggle for a place.
"Last trip up the Lake," a megaphone bellowed from the
wharf; and the lights of the little steam-boat came
dancing out of the darkness.
"No use waiting here; shall we run up the Lake?" Harney
suggested.
They pushed their way back to the edge of the water
just as the gang-plank lowered from the white side of
the boat. The electric light at the end of the wharf
flashed full on the descending passengers, and among
them Charity caught sight of Julia Hawes, her white
feather askew, and the face under it flushed with
coarse laughter. As she stepped from the gang-plank
she 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 it
was a family party? Here's grandpa's little daughter
come to take him home!"
A snigger ran through the group; and then, towering
above them, and steadying himself by the hand-rail in a
desperate effort at erectness, Mr. Royall stepped
stiffly ashore. Like the young men of the party, he
wore a secret society emblem in the buttonhole of
his black frock-coat. His head was covered by a new
Panama hat, and his narrow black tie, half undone,
dangled down on his rumpled shirt-front. His face, a
livid brown, with red blotches of anger and lips sunken
in like an old man's, was a lamentable ruin in the
searching glare.
He was just behind Julia Hawes, and had one hand on her
arm; but as he left the gang-plank he freed himself,
and moved a step or two away from his companions. He
had seen Charity at once, and his glance passed slowly
from her to Harney, whose arm was still about her. He
stood staring at them, and trying to master the senile
quiver of his lips; then he drew himself up with the
tremulous majesty of drunkenness, and stretched out his
arm.
"You whore--you damn--bare-headed whore, you!" he
enunciated 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 lap
when she jumped up to leave the stand; and suddenly she
had a vision of herself, hatless, dishevelled, with a
man's arm about her, confronting that drunken
crew, headed by her guardian's pitiable figure. The
picture filled her with shame. She had known since
childhood about Mr. Royall's "habits": had seen him, as
she went up to bed, sitting morosely in his office, a
bottle at his elbow; or coming home, heavy and
quarrelsome, from his business expeditions to Hepburn
or Springfield; but the idea of his associating himself
publicly with a band of disreputable girls and bar-room
loafers was new and dreadful to her.
"Oh----" she said in a gasp of misery; and releasing
herself 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 heard
his apostrophe; and one of the girls called out: "Say,
how many fellers does she want?"
There was another laugh, followed by a pause of
curiosity, during which Mr. Royall continued to glare
at Charity. At length his twitching lips parted. "I
said, 'You--damn--whore!'" he repeated with precision,
steadying himself on Julia's shoulder.
Laughs and jeers were beginning to spring up from the
circle of people beyond their group; and a voice called
out from the gangway: "Now, then, step lively
there--all ABOARD!" The pressure of approaching and
departing passengers forced the actors in the rapid
scene apart, and pushed them back into the throng.
Charity found herself clinging to Harney's arm and
sobbing desperately. Mr. Royall had disappeared, and
in the distance she heard the receding sound of Julia's
laugh.
The boat, laden to the taffrail, was puffing away on
her last trip.
Content of CHAPTER X [Edith Wharton's novel: Summer]
_
Read next: CHAPTER XI
Read previous: CHAPTER IX
Table of content of Summer
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
