________________________________________________
_
CHAPTER XIV
NORTH DORMER'S celebration naturally included the
villages attached to its township, and the festivities
were to radiate over the whole group, from Dormer and
the two Crestons to Hamblin, the lonely hamlet on the
north slope of the Mountain where the first snow always
fell. On the third day there were speeches and
ceremonies at Creston and Creston River; on the fourth
the principal performers were to be driven in buck-
boards to Dormer and Hamblin.
It was on the fourth day that Charity returned for the
first time to the little house. She had not seen
Harney alone since they had parted at the wood's edge
the night before the celebrations began. In the
interval she had passed through many moods, but for the
moment the terror which had seized her in the Town Hall
had faded to the edge of consciousness. She had
fainted because the hall was stiflingly hot, and
because the speakers had gone on and on....Several
other people had been affected by the heat, and
had had to leave before the exercises were over. There
had been thunder in the air all the afternoon, and
everyone said afterward that something ought to have
been done to ventilate the hall....
At the dance that evening--where she had gone
reluctantly, and only because she feared to stay away,
she had sprung back into instant reassurance. As soon
as she entered she had seen Harney waiting for her, and
he had come up with kind gay eyes, and swept her off in
a waltz. Her feet were full of music, and though her
only training had been with the village youths she had
no difficulty in tuning her steps to his. As they
circled about the floor all her vain fears dropped from
her, and she even forgot that she was probably dancing
in 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 were
just entering. Charity had a moment of anguish as Miss
Balch appeared; but it did not last. The triumphant
fact of her own greater beauty, and of Harney's sense
of it, swept her apprehensions aside. Miss Balch, in
an unbecoming dress, looked sallow and pinched, and
Charity fancied there was a worried expression in
her pale-lashed eyes. She took a seat near Miss
Hatchard and it was presently apparent that she did not
mean to dance. Charity did not dance often either.
Harney explained to her that Miss Hatchard had begged
him to give each of the other girls a turn; but he went
through the form of asking Charity's permission each
time he led one out, and that gave her a sense of
secret triumph even completer than when she was
whirling about the room with him.
She was thinking of all this as she waited for him in
the deserted house. The late afternoon was sultry, and
she had tossed aside her hat and stretched herself at
full length on the Mexican blanket because it was
cooler indoors than under the trees. She lay with her
arms folded beneath her head, gazing out at the shaggy
shoulder of the Mountain. The sky behind it was full
of the splintered glories of the descending sun, and
before long she expected to hear Harney's bicycle-bell
in the lane. He had bicycled to Hamblin, instead of
driving there with his cousin and her friends, so that
he might be able to make his escape earlier and stop on
the way back at the deserted house, which was on
the road to Hamblin. They had smiled together at the
joke of hearing the crowded buck-boards roll by on the
return, while they lay close in their hiding above the
road. Such childish triumphs still gave her a sense of
reckless security.
Nevertheless she had not wholly forgotten the vision of
fear that had opened before her in the Town Hall. The
sense of lastingness was gone from her and every moment
with Harney would now be ringed with doubt.
The Mountain was turning purple against a fiery sunset
from which it seemed to be divided by a knife-edge of
quivering light; and above this wall of flame the whole
sky was a pure pale green, like some cold mountain lake
in shadow. Charity lay gazing up at it, and watching
for the first white star....
Her eyes were still fixed on the upper reaches of the
sky when she became aware that a shadow had flitted
across the glory-flooded room: it must have been Harney
passing the window against the sunset....She half
raised herself, and then dropped back on her folded
arms. The combs had slipped from her hair, and it
trailed in a rough dark rope across her breast. She
lay quite still, a sleepy smile on her lips, her
indolent lids half shut. There was a fumbling at the
padlock and she called out: "Have you slipped the
chain?" The door opened, and Mr. Royall walked into the
room.
She started up, sitting back against the cushions, and
they 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's
face, 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 loose
across her breast, and it seemed as though she could
not speak to him till she had set herself in order. She
groped 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 me
talk to you first."
"You've got no right to talk to me. I can do what I
please."
"Yes. What is it you mean to do?"
"I needn't answer that, or anything else."
He had glanced away, and stood looking curiously about
the illuminated room. Purple asters and red maple-
leaves filled the jar on the table; on a shelf against
the wall stood a lamp, the kettle, a little pile of
cups and saucers. The canvas chairs were grouped
about the table.
"So this is where you meet," he said.
His tone was quiet and controlled, and the fact
disconcerted her. She had been ready to give him
violence for violence, but this calm acceptance of
things as they were left her without a weapon.
"See here, Charity--you're always telling me I've got
no rights over you. There might be two ways of looking
at that--but I ain't going to argue it. All I know is
I raised you as good as I could, and meant fairly by
you always except once, for a bad half-hour. There's
no justice in weighing that half-hour against the rest,
and you know it. If you hadn't, you wouldn't have gone
on living under my roof. Seems to me the fact of your
doing that gives me some sort of a right; the right to
try and keep you out of trouble. I'm not asking you to
consider any other."
She listened in silence, and then gave a slight
laugh. "Better wait till I'm in trouble," she
said. 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 she
had been waiting for happened; the door opened again
and Harney entered.
He stopped short with a face of astonishment, and then,
quickly controlling himself, went up to Mr. Royall with
a frank look.
"Have you come to see me, sir?" he said coolly,
throwing his cap on the table with an air of
proprietorship.
Mr. Royall again looked slowly about the room; then his
eyes turned to the young man.
"Is this your house?" he inquired.
Harney laughed: "Well--as much as it's anybody's. I
come 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 you
get married?"
There was an immense and oppressive silence. Charity,
quivering with anger, started forward, and then
stood silent, too humbled for speech. Harney's eyes
had dropped under the old man's gaze; but he raised
them presently, and looking steadily at Mr. Royall,
said: "Miss Royall is not a child. Isn't it rather
absurd to talk of her as if she were? I believe she
considers herself free to come and go as she pleases,
without any questions from anyone." He paused and
added: "I'm ready to answer any she wishes to ask me."
Mr. Royall turned to her. "Ask him when he's going to
marry you, then----" There was another silence, and he
laughed in his turn--a broken laugh, with a scraping
sound in it. "You darsn't!" he shouted out with sudden
passion. He went close up to Charity, his right arm
lifted, not in menace but in tragic exhortation.
"You darsn't, and you know it--and you know why!" He
swung back again upon the young man. "And you know why
you ain't asked her to marry you, and why you don't
mean to. It's because you hadn't need to; nor any
other man either. I'm the only one that was fool
enough not to know that; and I guess nobody'll repeat
my mistake--not in Eagle County, anyhow. They all know
what she is, and what she came from. They all know her
mother was a woman of the town from Nettleton,
that followed one of those Mountain fellows up to his
place and lived there with him like a heathen. I saw
her there sixteen years ago, when I went to bring this
child down. I went to save her from the kind of life
her mother was leading--but I'd better have left her in
the kennel she came from...." He paused and stared
darkly at the two young people, and out beyond them, at
the menacing Mountain with its rim of fire; then he sat
down beside the table on which they had so often spread
their rustic supper, and covered his face with his
hands. Harney leaned in the window, a frown on his
face: he was twirling between his fingers a small
package that dangled from a loop of string....Charity
heard Mr. Royall draw a hard breath or two, and his
shoulders shook a little. Presently he stood up and
walked across the room. He did not look again at the
young people: they saw him feel his way to the door and
fumble for the latch; and then he went out into the
darkness.
After he had gone there was a long silence. Charity
waited for Harney to speak; but he seemed at first not
to find anything to say. At length he broke out
irrelevantly: "I wonder how he found out?"
She made no answer and he tossed down the package he
had been holding, and went up to her.
"I'm so sorry, dear...that this should have
happened...."
She threw her head back proudly. "I ain't ever been
sorry--not a minute!"
"No."
She waited to be caught into his arms, but he turned
away from her irresolutely. The last glow was gone
from behind the Mountain. Everything in the room had
turned grey and indistinct, and an autumnal dampness
crept up from the hollow below the orchard, laying its
cold touch on their flushed faces. Harney walked the
length of the room, and then turned back and sat down
at the table.
"Come," he said imperiously.
She sat down beside him, and he untied the string about
the package and spread out a pile of sandwiches.
"I stole them from the love-feast at Hamblin," he said
with a laugh, pushing them over to her. She laughed
too, 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." He
said nothing more, and sitting opposite to each other
they went on silently eating the sandwiches. Darkness
had descended in the little room, and Harney's face was
a dim blur to Charity. Suddenly he leaned across the
table 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 come
back...and we'll get married."
His voice seemed like a stranger's: nothing was left in
it of the vibrations she knew. Her hand lay inertly
under his, and she left it there, and raised her head,
trying to answer him. But the words died in her
throat. They sat motionless, in their attitude of
confident endearment, as if some strange death had
surprised them. At length Harney sprang to his feet
with a slight shiver. "God! it's damp--we couldn't
have come here much longer." He went to the shelf, took
down a tin candle-stick and lit the candle; then he
propped an unhinged shutter against the empty window-
frame and put the candle on the table. It threw a
queer shadow on his frowning forehead, and made the
smile on his lips a grimace.
"But it's been good, though, hasn't it,
Charity?...What's the matter--why do you stand there
staring at me? Haven't the days here been good?" He
went up to her and caught her to his breast. "And
there'll be others--lots of others...jollier...even
jollier...won't there, darling?"
He turned her head back, feeling for the curve of her
throat below the ear, and kissing here there, and on
the hair and eyes and lips. She clung to him
desperately, and as he drew her to his knees on the
couch she felt as if they were being sucked down
together into some bottomless abyss.
Content of CHAPTER XIV [Edith Wharton's novel: Summer]
_
Read next: CHAPTER XV
Read previous: CHAPTER XIII
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
