Bot-S: The Complete Works of Edith Wharton

ETHAN FROME


By Edith Wharton




ETHAN FROME



I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally
happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.

If you know Starkfield, Massachusetts, you know the post-office. If you
know the post-office you must have seen Ethan Frome drive up to it, drop
the reins on his hollow-backed bay and drag himself across the brick
pavement to the white colonnade; and you must have asked who he was.

It was there that, several years ago, I saw him for the first time; and
the sight pulled me up sharp. Even then he was the most striking figure
in Starkfield, though he was but the ruin of a man. It was not so much
his great height that marked him, for the “natives” were easily singled
out by their lank longitude from the stockier foreign breed: it was the
careless powerful look he had, in spite of a lameness checking each step
like the jerk of a chain. There was something bleak and unapproachable
in his face, and he was so stiffened and grizzled that I took him for an
old man and was surprised to hear that he was not more than fifty-two.
I had this from Harmon Gow, who had driven the stage from Bettsbridge
to Starkfield in pre-trolley days and knew the chronicle of all the
families on his line.

“He’s looked that way ever since he had his smash-up; and that’s
twenty-four years ago come next February,” Harmon threw out between
reminiscent pauses.

The “smash-up” it was--I gathered from the same informant--which, besides
drawing the red gash across Ethan Frome’s forehead, had so shortened and
warped his right side that it cost him a visible effort to take the few
steps from his buggy to the post-office window. He used to drive in
from his farm every day at about noon, and as that was my own hour for
fetching my mail I often passed him in the porch or stood beside him
while we waited on the motions of the distributing hand behind the
grating. I noticed that, though he came so punctually, he seldom
received anything but a copy of the Bettsbridge Eagle, which he put
without a glance into his sagging pocket. At intervals, however, the
post-master would hand him an envelope addressed to Mrs. Zenobia--or Mrs.
Zeena--Frome, and usually bearing conspicuously in the upper left-hand
corner the address of some manufacturer of patent medicine and the name
of his specific. These documents my neighbour would also pocket without
a glance, as if too much used to them to wonder at their number and
variety, and would then turn away with a silent nod to the post-master.

Every one in Starkfield knew him and gave him a greeting tempered to
his own grave mien; but his taciturnity was respected and it was only on
rare occasions that one of the older men of the place detained him for
a word. When this happened he would listen quietly, his blue eyes on the
speaker’s face, and answer in so low a tone that his words never reached
me; then he would climb stiffly into his buggy, gather up the reins in
his left hand and drive slowly away in the direction of his farm.

“It was a pretty bad smash-up?” I questioned Harmon, looking after
Frome’s retreating figure, and thinking how gallantly his lean brown
head, with its shock of light hair, must have sat on his strong
shoulders before they were bent out of shape.

“Wust kind,” my informant assented. “More’n enough to kill most men. But
the Fromes are tough. Ethan’ll likely touch a hundred.”

“Good God!” I exclaimed. At the moment Ethan Frome, after climbing to
his seat, had leaned over to assure himself of the security of a wooden
box--also with a druggist’s label on it--which he had placed in the back
of the buggy, and I saw his face as it probably looked when he thought
himself alone. “That man touch a hundred? He looks as if he was dead and
in hell now!”

Harmon drew a slab of tobacco from his pocket, cut off a wedge and
pressed it into the leather pouch of his cheek. “Guess he’s been in
Starkfield too many winters. Most of the smart ones get away.”

“Why didn’t he?”

“Somebody had to stay and care for the folks. There warn’t ever anybody
but Ethan. Fust his father--then his mother--then his wife.”

“And then the smash-up?”

Harmon chuckled sardonically. “That’s so. He had to stay then.”

“I see. And since then they’ve had to care for him?”

Harmon thoughtfully passed his tobacco to the other cheek. “Oh, as to
that: I guess it’s always Ethan done the caring.”

Though Harmon Gow developed the tale as far as his mental and moral
reach permitted there were perceptible gaps between his facts, and I had
the sense that the deeper meaning of the story was in the gaps. But
one phrase stuck in my memory and served as the nucleus about which I
grouped my subsequent inferences: “Guess he’s been in Starkfield too
many winters.”

Before my own time there was up I had learned to know what that meant.
Yet I had come in the degenerate day of trolley, bicycle and rural
delivery, when communication was easy between the scattered mountain
villages, and the bigger towns in the valleys, such as Bettsbridge and
Shadd’s Falls, had libraries, theatres and Y. M. C. A. halls to which
the youth of the hills could descend for recreation. But when winter
shut down on Starkfield and the village lay under a sheet of snow
perpetually renewed from the pale skies, I began to see what life
there--or rather its negation--must have been in Ethan Frome’s young
manhood.

I had been sent up by my employers on a job connected with the big
power-house at Corbury Junction, and a long-drawn carpenters’ strike
had so delayed the work that I found myself anchored at Starkfield--the
nearest habitable spot--for the best part of the winter. I chafed at
first, and then, under the hypnotising effect of routine, gradually
began to find a grim satisfaction in the life. During the early part of
my stay I had been struck by the contrast between the vitality of
the climate and the deadness of the community. Day by day, after the
December snows were over, a blazing blue sky poured down torrents
of light and air on the white landscape, which gave them back in an
intenser glitter. One would have supposed that such an atmosphere must
quicken the emotions as well as the blood; but it seemed to produce
no change except that of retarding still more the sluggish pulse of
Starkfield. When I had been there a little longer, and had seen this
phase of crystal clearness followed by long stretches of sunless cold;
when the storms of February had pitched their white tents about the
devoted village and the wild cavalry of March winds had charged down to
their support; I began to understand why Starkfield emerged from its
six months’ siege like a starved garrison capitulating without quarter.
Twenty years earlier the means of resistance must have been far fewer,
and the enemy in command of almost all the lines of access between the
beleaguered villages; and, considering these things, I felt the sinister
force of Harmon’s phrase: “Most of the smart ones get away.” But if that
were the case, how could any combination of obstacles have hindered the
flight of a man like Ethan Frome?

During my stay at Starkfield I lodged with a middle-aged widow
colloquially known as Mrs. Ned Hale. Mrs. Hale’s father had been the
village lawyer of the previous generation, and “lawyer Varnum’s house,”
 where my landlady still lived with her mother, was the most considerable
mansion in the village. It stood at one end of the main street, its
classic portico and small-paned windows looking down a flagged path
between Norway spruces to the slim white steeple of the Congregational
church. It was clear that the Varnum fortunes were at the ebb, but the
two women did what they could to preserve a decent dignity; and Mrs.
Hale, in particular, had a certain wan refinement not out of keeping
with her pale old-fashioned house.

In the “best parlour,” with its black horse-hair and mahogany weakly
illuminated by a gurgling Carcel lamp, I listened every evening to
another and more delicately shaded version of the Starkfield chronicle.
It was not that Mrs. Ned Hale felt, or affected, any social superiority
to the people about her; it was only that the accident of a finer
sensibility and a little more education had put just enough distance
between herself and her neighbours to enable her to judge them with
detachment. She was not unwilling to exercise this faculty, and I had
great hopes of getting from her the missing facts of Ethan Frome’s
story, or rather such a key to his character as should co-ordinate the
facts I knew. Her mind was a store-house of innocuous anecdote and any
question about her acquaintances brought forth a volume of detail; but
on the subject of Ethan Frome I found her unexpectedly reticent. There
was no hint of disapproval in her reserve; I merely felt in her an
insurmountable reluctance to speak of him or his affairs, a low “Yes, I
knew them both... it was awful...” seeming to be the utmost concession
that her distress could make to my curiosity.

So marked was the change in her manner, such depths of sad initiation
did it imply, that, with some doubts as to my delicacy, I put the case
anew to my village oracle, Harmon Gow; but got for my pains only an
uncomprehending grunt.

“Ruth Varnum was always as nervous as a rat; and, come to think of it,
she was the first one to see ‘em after they was picked up. It happened
right below lawyer Varnum’s, down at the bend of the Corbury road, just
round about the time that Ruth got engaged to Ned Hale. The young folks
was all friends, and I guess she just can’t bear to talk about it. She’s
had troubles enough of her own.”

All the dwellers in Starkfield, as in more notable communities, had had
troubles enough of their own to make them comparatively indifferent to
those of their neighbours; and though all conceded that Ethan Frome’s
had been beyond the common measure, no one gave me an explanation of the
look in his face which, as I persisted in thinking, neither poverty
nor physical suffering could have put there. Nevertheless, I might have
contented myself with the story pieced together from these hints had
it not been for the provocation of Mrs. Hale’s silence, and--a little
later--for the accident of personal contact with the man.

On my arrival at Starkfield, Denis Eady, the rich Irish grocer, who was
the proprietor of Starkfield’s nearest approach to a livery stable, had
entered into an agreement to send me over daily to Corbury Flats, where
I had to pick up my train for the Junction. But about the middle of the
winter Eady’s horses fell ill of a local epidemic. The illness spread
to the other Starkfield stables and for a day or two I was put to it to
find a means of transport. Then Harmon Gow suggested that Ethan Frome’s
bay was still on his legs and that his owner might be glad to drive me
over.

I stared at the suggestion. “Ethan Frome? But I’ve never even spoken to
him. Why on earth should he put himself out for me?”

Harmon’s answer surprised me still more. “I don’t know as he would; but
I know he wouldn’t be sorry to earn a dollar.”

I had been told that Frome was poor, and that the saw-mill and the arid
acres of his farm yielded scarcely enough to keep his household through
the winter; but I had not supposed him to be in such want as Harmon’s
words implied, and I expressed my wonder.

“Well, matters ain’t gone any too well with him,” Harmon said. “When a
man’s been setting round like a hulk for twenty years or more, seeing
things that want doing, it eats inter him, and he loses his grit. That
Frome farm was always ‘bout as bare’s a milkpan when the cat’s been
round; and you know what one of them old water-mills is wuth nowadays.
When Ethan could sweat over ‘em both from sunup to dark he kinder choked
a living out of ‘em; but his folks ate up most everything, even then,
and I don’t see how he makes out now. Fust his father got a kick, out
haying, and went soft in the brain, and gave away money like Bible texts
afore he died. Then his mother got queer and dragged along for years as
weak as a baby; and his wife Zeena, she’s always been the greatest hand
at doctoring in the county. Sickness and trouble: that’s what Ethan’s
had his plate full up with, ever since the very first helping.”

The next morning, when I looked out, I saw the hollow-backed bay between
the Varnum spruces, and Ethan Frome, throwing back his worn bearskin,
made room for me in the sleigh at his side. After that, for a week, he
drove me over every morning to Corbury Flats, and on my return in the
afternoon met me again and carried me back through the icy night to
Starkfield. The distance each way was barely three miles, but the old
bay’s pace was slow, and even with firm snow under the runners we were
nearly an hour on the way. Ethan Frome drove in silence, the reins
loosely held in his left hand, his brown seamed profile, under the
helmet-like peak of the cap, relieved against the banks of snow like the
bronze image of a hero. He never turned his face to mine, or
answered, except in monosyllables, the questions I put, or such slight
pleasantries as I ventured. He seemed a part of the mute melancholy
landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that was warm
and sentient in him fast bound below the surface; but there was nothing
unfriendly in his silence. I simply felt that he lived in a depth of
moral isolation too remote for casual access, and I had the sense that
his loneliness was not merely the result of his personal plight, tragic
as I guessed that to be, but had in it, as Harmon Gow had hinted, the
profound accumulated cold of many Starkfield winters.

Only once or twice was the distance between us bridged for a moment;
and the glimpses thus gained confirmed my desire to know more. Once I
happened to speak of an engineering job I had been on the previous year
in Florida, and of the contrast between the winter landscape about us
and that in which I had found myself the year before; and to my surprise
Frome said suddenly: “Yes: I was down there once, and for a good while
afterward I could call up the sight of it in winter. But now it’s all
snowed under.”

He said no more, and I had to guess the rest from the inflection of his
voice and his sharp relapse into silence.

Another day, on getting into my train at the Flats, I missed a volume
of popular science--I think it was on some recent discoveries in
bio-chemistry--which I had carried with me to read on the way. I thought
no more about it till I got into the sleigh again that evening, and saw
the book in Frome’s hand.

“I found it after you were gone,” he said.

I put the volume into my pocket and we dropped back into our usual
silence; but as we began to crawl up the long hill from Corbury Flats to
the Starkfield ridge I became aware in the dusk that he had turned his
face to mine.

“There are things in that book that I didn’t know the first word about,”
 he said.

I wondered less at his words than at the queer note of resentment in
his voice. He was evidently surprised and slightly aggrieved at his own
ignorance.

“Does that sort of thing interest you?” I asked.

“It used to.”

“There are one or two rather new things in the book: there have been
some big strides lately in that particular line of research.” I waited
a moment for an answer that did not come; then I said: “If you’d like to
look the book through I’d be glad to leave it with you.”

He hesitated, and I had the impression that he felt himself about to
yield to a stealing tide of inertia; then, “Thank you--I’ll take it,” he
answered shortly.

I hoped that this incident might set up some more direct communication
between us. Frome was so simple and straightforward that I was sure his
curiosity about the book was based on a genuine interest in its subject.
Such tastes and acquirements in a man of his condition made the contrast
more poignant between his outer situation and his inner needs, and I
hoped that the chance of giving expression to the latter might at least
unseal his lips. But something in his past history, or in his present
way of living, had apparently driven him too deeply into himself for any
casual impulse to draw him back to his kind. At our next meeting he made
no allusion to the book, and our intercourse seemed fated to remain as
negative and one-sided as if there had been no break in his reserve.

Frome had been driving me over to the Flats for about a week when one
morning I looked out of my window into a thick snow-fall. The height of
the white waves massed against the garden-fence and along the wall of
the church showed that the storm must have been going on all night,
and that the drifts were likely to be heavy in the open. I thought
it probable that my train would be delayed; but I had to be at the
power-house for an hour or two that afternoon, and I decided, if Frome
turned up, to push through to the Flats and wait there till my train
came in. I don’t know why I put it in the conditional, however, for I
never doubted that Frome would appear. He was not the kind of man to be
turned from his business by any commotion of the elements; and at
the appointed hour his sleigh glided up through the snow like a
stage-apparition behind thickening veils of gauze.

I was getting to know him too well to express either wonder or gratitude
at his keeping his appointment; but I exclaimed in surprise as I saw him
turn his horse in a direction opposite to that of the Corbury road.

“The railroad’s blocked by a freight-train that got stuck in a drift
below the Flats,” he explained, as we jogged off into the stinging
whiteness.

“But look here--where are you taking me, then?”

“Straight to the Junction, by the shortest way,” he answered, pointing
up School House Hill with his whip.

“To the Junction--in this storm? Why, it’s a good ten miles!”

“The bay’ll do it if you give him time. You said you had some business
there this afternoon. I’ll see you get there.”

He said it so quietly that I could only answer: “You’re doing me the
biggest kind of a favour.”

“That’s all right,” he rejoined.

Abreast of the schoolhouse the road forked, and we dipped down a lane
to the left, between hemlock boughs bent inward to their trunks by the
weight of the snow. I had often walked that way on Sundays, and knew
that the solitary roof showing through bare branches near the bottom of
the hill was that of Frome’s saw-mill. It looked exanimate enough, with
its idle wheel looming above the black stream dashed with yellow-white
spume, and its cluster of sheds sagging under their white load. Frome
did not even turn his head as we drove by, and still in silence we began
to mount the next slope. About a mile farther, on a road I had never
travelled, we came to an orchard of starved apple-trees writhing over
a hillside among outcroppings of slate that nuzzled up through the snow
like animals pushing out their noses to breathe. Beyond the orchard
lay a field or two, their boundaries lost under drifts; and above the
fields, huddled against the white immensities of land and sky, one of
those lonely New England farm-houses that make the landscape lonelier.

“That’s my place,” said Frome, with a sideway jerk of his lame elbow;
and in the distress and oppression of the scene I did not know what to
answer. The snow had ceased, and a flash of watery sunlight exposed the
house on the slope above us in all its plaintive ugliness. The black
wraith of a deciduous creeper flapped from the porch, and the thin
wooden walls, under their worn coat of paint, seemed to shiver in the
wind that had risen with the ceasing of the snow.

“The house was bigger in my father’s time: I had to take down the ‘L,’
a while back,” Frome continued, checking with a twitch of the left rein
the bay’s evident intention of turning in through the broken-down gate.

I saw then that the unusually forlorn and stunted look of the house was
partly due to the loss of what is known in New England as the “L”:
that long deep-roofed adjunct usually built at right angles to the main
house, and connecting it, by way of storerooms and tool-house, with the
wood-shed and cow-barn. Whether because of its symbolic sense, the image
it presents of a life linked with the soil, and enclosing in itself the
chief sources of warmth and nourishment, or whether merely because
of the consolatory thought that it enables the dwellers in that harsh
climate to get to their morning’s work without facing the weather, it
is certain that the “L” rather than the house itself seems to be the
centre, the actual hearth-stone of the New England farm. Perhaps this
connection of ideas, which had often occurred to me in my rambles about
Starkfield, caused me to hear a wistful note in Frome’s words, and to
see in the diminished dwelling the image of his own shrunken body.

“We’re kinder side-tracked here now,” he added, “but there was
considerable passing before the railroad was carried through to the
Flats.” He roused the lagging bay with another twitch; then, as if the
mere sight of the house had let me too deeply into his confidence for
any farther pretence of reserve, he went on slowly: “I’ve always set
down the worst of mother’s trouble to that. When she got the rheumatism
so bad she couldn’t move around she used to sit up there and watch the
road by the hour; and one year, when they was six months mending the
Bettsbridge pike after the floods, and Harmon Gow had to bring his stage
round this way, she picked up so that she used to get down to the gate
most days to see him. But after the trains begun running nobody ever
come by here to speak of, and mother never could get it through her head
what had happened, and it preyed on her right along till she died.”

As we turned into the Corbury road the snow began to fall again, cutting
off our last glimpse of the house; and Frome’s silence fell with it,
letting down between us the old veil of reticence. This time the wind
did not cease with the return of the snow. Instead, it sprang up to
a gale which now and then, from a tattered sky, flung pale sweeps of
sunlight over a landscape chaotically tossed. But the bay was as good
as Frome’s word, and we pushed on to the Junction through the wild white
scene.

In the afternoon the storm held off, and the clearness in the west
seemed to my inexperienced eye the pledge of a fair evening. I finished
my business as quickly as possible, and we set out for Starkfield with
a good chance of getting there for supper. But at sunset the clouds
gathered again, bringing an earlier night, and the snow began to fall
straight and steadily from a sky without wind, in a soft universal
diffusion more confusing than the gusts and eddies of the morning. It
seemed to be a part of the thickening darkness, to be the winter night
itself descending on us layer by layer.

The small ray of Frome’s lantern was soon lost in this smothering
medium, in which even his sense of direction, and the bay’s homing
instinct, finally ceased to serve us. Two or three times some ghostly
landmark sprang up to warn us that we were astray, and then was sucked
back into the mist; and when we finally regained our road the old horse
began to show signs of exhaustion. I felt myself to blame for having
accepted Frome’s offer, and after a short discussion I persuaded him
to let me get out of the sleigh and walk along through the snow at the
bay’s side. In this way we struggled on for another mile or two, and
at last reached a point where Frome, peering into what seemed to me
formless night, said: “That’s my gate down yonder.”

The last stretch had been the hardest part of the way. The bitter cold
and the heavy going had nearly knocked the wind out of me, and I could
feel the horse’s side ticking like a clock under my hand.

“Look here, Frome,” I began, “there’s no earthly use in your going any
farther--” but he interrupted me: “Nor you neither. There’s been about
enough of this for anybody.”

I understood that he was offering me a night’s shelter at the farm, and
without answering I turned into the gate at his side, and followed him
to the barn, where I helped him to unharness and bed down the tired
horse. When this was done he unhooked the lantern from the sleigh,
stepped out again into the night, and called to me over his shoulder:
“This way.”

Far off above us a square of light trembled through the screen of snow.
Staggering along in Frome’s wake I floundered toward it, and in the
darkness almost fell into one of the deep drifts against the front of
the house. Frome scrambled up the slippery steps of the porch, digging
a way through the snow with his heavily booted foot. Then he lifted his
lantern, found the latch, and led the way into the house. I went
after him into a low unlit passage, at the back of which a ladder-like
staircase rose into obscurity. On our right a line of light marked the
door of the room which had sent its ray across the night; and behind the
door I heard a woman’s voice droning querulously.

Frome stamped on the worn oil-cloth to shake the snow from his boots,
and set down his lantern on a kitchen chair which was the only piece of
furniture in the hall. Then he opened the door.

“Come in,” he said; and as he spoke the droning voice grew still...

It was that night that I found the clue to Ethan Frome, and began to put
together this vision of his story.




I


The village lay under two feet of snow, with drifts at the windy
corners. In a sky of iron the points of the Dipper hung like icicles
and Orion flashed his cold fires. The moon had set, but the night was
so transparent that the white house-fronts between the elms looked gray
against the snow, clumps of bushes made black stains on it, and the
basement windows of the church sent shafts of yellow light far across
the endless undulations.

Young Ethan Frome walked at a quick pace along the deserted street, past
the bank and Michael Eady’s new brick store and Lawyer Varnum’s house
with the two black Norway spruces at the gate. Opposite the Varnum gate,
where the road fell away toward the Corbury valley, the church reared
its slim white steeple and narrow peristyle. As the young man walked
toward it the upper windows drew a black arcade along the side wall of
the building, but from the lower openings, on the side where the ground
sloped steeply down to the Corbury road, the light shot its long bars,
illuminating many fresh furrows in the track leading to the basement
door, and showing, under an adjoining shed, a line of sleighs with
heavily blanketed horses.

The night was perfectly still, and the air so dry and pure that it gave
little sensation of cold. The effect produced on Frome was rather of
a complete absence of atmosphere, as though nothing less tenuous than
ether intervened between the white earth under his feet and the metallic
dome overhead. “It’s like being in an exhausted receiver,” he
thought. Four or five years earlier he had taken a year’s course at a
technological college at Worcester, and dabbled in the laboratory with
a friendly professor of physics; and the images supplied by that
experience still cropped up, at unexpected moments, through the totally
different associations of thought in which he had since been living. His
father’s death, and the misfortunes following it, had put a premature
end to Ethan’s studies; but though they had not gone far enough to be
of much practical use they had fed his fancy and made him aware of huge
cloudy meanings behind the daily face of things.

As he strode along through the snow the sense of such meanings glowed in
his brain and mingled with the bodily flush produced by his sharp tramp.
At the end of the village he paused before the darkened front of the
church. He stood there a moment, breathing quickly, and looking up and
down the street, in which not another figure moved. The pitch of
the Corbury road, below lawyer Varnum’s spruces, was the favourite
coasting-ground of Starkfield, and on clear evenings the church corner
rang till late with the shouts of the coasters; but to-night not a sled
darkened the whiteness of the long declivity. The hush of midnight lay
on the village, and all its waking life was gathered behind the church
windows, from which strains of dance-music flowed with the broad bands
of yellow light.

The young man, skirting the side of the building, went down the slope
toward the basement door. To keep out of range of the revealing rays
from within he made a circuit through the untrodden snow and gradually
approached the farther angle of the basement wall. Thence, still hugging
the shadow, he edged his way cautiously forward to the nearest window,
holding back his straight spare body and craning his neck till he got a
glimpse of the room.

Seen thus, from the pure and frosty darkness in which he stood, it
seemed to be seething in a mist of heat. The metal reflectors of the
gas-jets sent crude waves of light against the whitewashed walls, and
the iron flanks of the stove at the end of the hall looked as though
they were heaving with volcanic fires. The floor was thronged with
girls and young men. Down the side wall facing the window stood a row of
kitchen chairs from which the older women had just risen. By this time
the music had stopped, and the musicians--a fiddler, and the young lady
who played the harmonium on Sundays--were hastily refreshing themselves
at one corner of the supper-table which aligned its devastated
pie-dishes and ice-cream saucers on the platform at the end of the hall.
The guests were preparing to leave, and the tide had already set toward
the passage where coats and wraps were hung, when a young man with a
sprightly foot and a shock of black hair shot into the middle of
the floor and clapped his hands. The signal took instant effect.
The musicians hurried to their instruments, the dancers--some already
half-muffled for departure--fell into line down each side of the room,
the older spectators slipped back to their chairs, and the lively young
man, after diving about here and there in the throng, drew forth a girl
who had already wound a cherry-coloured “fascinator” about her head,
and, leading her up to the end of the floor, whirled her down its length
to the bounding tune of a Virginia reel.

Frome’s heart was beating fast. He had been straining for a glimpse
of the dark head under the cherry-coloured scarf and it vexed him that
another eye should have been quicker than his. The leader of the reel,
who looked as if he had Irish blood in his veins, danced well, and his
partner caught his fire. As she passed down the line, her light figure
swinging from hand to hand in circles of increasing swiftness, the scarf
flew off her head and stood out behind her shoulders, and Frome, at each
turn, caught sight of her laughing panting lips, the cloud of dark hair
about her forehead, and the dark eyes which seemed the only fixed points
in a maze of flying lines.

The dancers were going faster and faster, and the musicians, to keep
up with them, belaboured their instruments like jockeys lashing their
mounts on the home-stretch; yet it seemed to the young man at the window
that the reel would never end. Now and then he turned his eyes from the
girl’s face to that of her partner, which, in the exhilaration of the
dance, had taken on a look of almost impudent ownership. Denis Eady was
the son of Michael Eady, the ambitious Irish grocer, whose suppleness
and effrontery had given Starkfield its first notion of “smart” business
methods, and whose new brick store testified to the success of the
attempt. His son seemed likely to follow in his steps, and was meanwhile
applying the same arts to the conquest of the Starkfield maidenhood.
Hitherto Ethan Frome had been content to think him a mean fellow; but
now he positively invited a horse-whipping. It was strange that the
girl did not seem aware of it: that she could lift her rapt face to her
dancer’s, and drop her hands into his, without appearing to feel the
offence of his look and touch.

Frome was in the habit of walking into Starkfield to fetch home his
wife’s cousin, Mattie Silver, on the rare evenings when some chance of
amusement drew her to the village. It was his wife who had suggested,
when the girl came to live with them, that such opportunities should be
put in her way. Mattie Silver came from Stamford, and when she entered
the Fromes’ household to act as her cousin Zeena’s aid it was thought
best, as she came without pay, not to let her feel too sharp a contrast
between the life she had left and the isolation of a Starkfield farm.
But for this--as Frome sardonically reflected--it would hardly have
occurred to Zeena to take any thought for the girl’s amusement.

When his wife first proposed that they should give Mattie an occasional
evening out he had inwardly demurred at having to do the extra two miles
to the village and back after his hard day on the farm; but not long
afterward he had reached the point of wishing that Starkfield might give
all its nights to revelry.

Mattie Silver had lived under his roof for a year, and from early
morning till they met at supper he had frequent chances of seeing her;
but no moments in her company were comparable to those when, her arm in
his, and her light step flying to keep time with his long stride, they
walked back through the night to the farm. He had taken to the girl from
the first day, when he had driven over to the Flats to meet her, and
she had smiled and waved to him from the train, crying out, “You must be
Ethan!” as she jumped down with her bundles, while he reflected, looking
over her slight person: “She don’t look much on housework, but she ain’t
a fretter, anyhow.” But it was not only that the coming to his house of
a bit of hopeful young life was like the lighting of a fire on a cold
hearth. The girl was more than the bright serviceable creature he had
thought her. She had an eye to see and an ear to hear: he could show her
things and tell her things, and taste the bliss of feeling that all he
imparted left long reverberations and echoes he could wake at will.

It was during their night walks back to the farm that he felt most
intensely the sweetness of this communion. He had always been more
sensitive than the people about him to the appeal of natural beauty. His
unfinished studies had given form to this sensibility and even in his
unhappiest moments field and sky spoke to him with a deep and powerful
persuasion. But hitherto the emotion had remained in him as a silent
ache, veiling with sadness the beauty that evoked it. He did not even
know whether any one else in the world felt as he did, or whether he
was the sole victim of this mournful privilege. Then he learned that
one other spirit had trembled with the same touch of wonder: that at his
side, living under his roof and eating his bread, was a creature to whom
he could say: “That’s Orion down yonder; the big fellow to the right is
Aldebaran, and the bunch of little ones--like bees swarming--they’re the
Pleiades...” or whom he could hold entranced before a ledge of granite
thrusting up through the fern while he unrolled the huge panorama of the
ice age, and the long dim stretches of succeeding time. The fact that
admiration for his learning mingled with Mattie’s wonder at what he
taught was not the least part of his pleasure. And there were other
sensations, less definable but more exquisite, which drew them together
with a shock of silent joy: the cold red of sunset behind winter
hills, the flight of cloud-flocks over slopes of golden stubble, or the
intensely blue shadows of hemlocks on sunlit snow. When she said to him
once: “It looks just as if it was painted!” it seemed to Ethan that the
art of definition could go no farther, and that words had at last been
found to utter his secret soul....

As he stood in the darkness outside the church these memories came back
with the poignancy of vanished things. Watching Mattie whirl down the
floor from hand to hand he wondered how he could ever have thought
that his dull talk interested her. To him, who was never gay but in her
presence, her gaiety seemed plain proof of indifference. The face she
lifted to her dancers was the same which, when she saw him, always
looked like a window that has caught the sunset. He even noticed two or
three gestures which, in his fatuity, he had thought she kept for him:
a way of throwing her head back when she was amused, as if to taste her
laugh before she let it out, and a trick of sinking her lids slowly when
anything charmed or moved her.

The sight made him unhappy, and his unhappiness roused his latent fears.
His wife had never shown any jealousy of Mattie, but of late she had
grumbled increasingly over the house-work and found oblique ways of
attracting attention to the girl’s inefficiency. Zeena had always been
what Starkfield called “sickly,” and Frome had to admit that, if she
were as ailing as she believed, she needed the help of a stronger arm
than the one which lay so lightly in his during the night walks to the
farm. Mattie had no natural turn for housekeeping, and her training had
done nothing to remedy the defect. She was quick to learn, but forgetful
and dreamy, and not disposed to take the matter seriously. Ethan had
an idea that if she were to marry a man she was fond of the dormant
instinct would wake, and her pies and biscuits become the pride of the
county; but domesticity in the abstract did not interest her. At first
she was so awkward that he could not help laughing at her; but she
laughed with him and that made them better friends. He did his best to
supplement her unskilled efforts, getting up earlier than usual to light
the kitchen fire, carrying in the wood overnight, and neglecting the
mill for the farm that he might help her about the house during the day.
He even crept down on Saturday nights to scrub the kitchen floor after
the women had gone to bed; and Zeena, one day, had surprised him at the
churn and had turned away silently, with one of her queer looks.

Of late there had been other signs of her disfavour, as intangible but
more disquieting. One cold winter morning, as he dressed in the dark,
his candle flickering in the draught of the ill-fitting window, he had
heard her speak from the bed behind him.

“The doctor don’t want I should be left without anybody to do for me,”
 she said in her flat whine.

He had supposed her to be asleep, and the sound of her voice had
startled him, though she was given to abrupt explosions of speech after
long intervals of secretive silence.

He turned and looked at her where she lay indistinctly outlined under
the dark calico quilt, her high-boned face taking a grayish tinge from
the whiteness of the pillow.

“Nobody to do for you?” he repeated.

“If you say you can’t afford a hired girl when Mattie goes.”

Frome turned away again, and taking up his razor stooped to catch the
reflection of his stretched cheek in the blotched looking-glass above
the wash-stand.

“Why on earth should Mattie go?”

“Well, when she gets married, I mean,” his wife’s drawl came from behind
him.

“Oh, she’d never leave us as long as you needed her,” he returned,
scraping hard at his chin.

“I wouldn’t ever have it said that I stood in the way of a poor girl
like Mattie marrying a smart fellow like Denis Eady,” Zeena answered in
a tone of plaintive self-effacement.

Ethan, glaring at his face in the glass, threw his head back to draw
the razor from ear to chin. His hand was steady, but the attitude was an
excuse for not making an immediate reply.

“And the doctor don’t want I should be left without anybody,” Zeena
continued. “He wanted I should speak to you about a girl he’s heard
about, that might come--”

Ethan laid down the razor and straightened himself with a laugh.

“Denis Eady! If that’s all, I guess there’s no such hurry to look round
for a girl.”

“Well, I’d like to talk to you about it,” said Zeena obstinately.

He was getting into his clothes in fumbling haste. “All right. But I
haven’t got the time now; I’m late as it is,” he returned, holding his
old silver turnip-watch to the candle.

Zeena, apparently accepting this as final, lay watching him in silence
while he pulled his suspenders over his shoulders and jerked his arms
into his coat; but as he went toward the door she said, suddenly and
incisively: “I guess you’re always late, now you shave every morning.”

That thrust had frightened him more than any vague insinuations about
Denis Eady. It was a fact that since Mattie Silver’s coming he had taken
to shaving every day; but his wife always seemed to be asleep when he
left her side in the winter darkness, and he had stupidly assumed that
she would not notice any change in his appearance. Once or twice in the
past he had been faintly disquieted by Zenobia’s way of letting things
happen without seeming to remark them, and then, weeks afterward, in
a casual phrase, revealing that she had all along taken her notes and
drawn her inferences. Of late, however, there had been no room in his
thoughts for such vague apprehensions. Zeena herself, from an oppressive
reality, had faded into an insubstantial shade. All his life was lived
in the sight and sound of Mattie Silver, and he could no longer conceive
of its being otherwise. But now, as he stood outside the church, and saw
Mattie spinning down the floor with Denis Eady, a throng of disregarded
hints and menaces wove their cloud about his brain....




II


As the dancers poured out of the hall Frome, drawing back behind the
projecting storm-door, watched the segregation of the grotesquely
muffled groups, in which a moving lantern ray now and then lit up a
face flushed with food and dancing. The villagers, being afoot, were
the first to climb the slope to the main street, while the country
neighbours packed themselves more slowly into the sleighs under the
shed.

“Ain’t you riding, Mattie?” a woman’s voice called back from the throng
about the shed, and Ethan’s heart gave a jump. From where he stood he
could not see the persons coming out of the hall till they had advanced
a few steps beyond the wooden sides of the storm-door; but through its
cracks he heard a clear voice answer: “Mercy no! Not on such a night.”

She was there, then, close to him, only a thin board between. In another
moment she would step forth into the night, and his eyes, accustomed
to the obscurity, would discern her as clearly as though she stood in
daylight. A wave of shyness pulled him back into the dark angle of the
wall, and he stood there in silence instead of making his presence known
to her. It had been one of the wonders of their intercourse that from
the first, she, the quicker, finer, more expressive, instead of crushing
him by the contrast, had given him something of her own ease and
freedom; but now he felt as heavy and loutish as in his student days,
when he had tried to “jolly” the Worcester girls at a picnic.

He hung back, and she came out alone and paused within a few yards of
him. She was almost the last to leave the hall, and she stood looking
uncertainly about her as if wondering why he did not show himself.
Then a man’s figure approached, coming so close to her that under their
formless wrappings they seemed merged in one dim outline.

“Gentleman friend gone back on you? Say, Matt, that’s tough! No, I
wouldn’t be mean enough to tell the other girls. I ain’t as low-down as
that.” (How Frome hated his cheap banter!) “But look at here, ain’t it
lucky I got the old man’s cutter down there waiting for us?”

Frome heard the girl’s voice, gaily incredulous: “What on earth’s your
father’s cutter doin’ down there?”

“Why, waiting for me to take a ride. I got the roan colt too. I kinder
knew I’d want to take a ride to-night,” Eady, in his triumph, tried to
put a sentimental note into his bragging voice.

The girl seemed to waver, and Frome saw her twirl the end of her scarf
irresolutely about her fingers. Not for the world would he have made
a sign to her, though it seemed to him that his life hung on her next
gesture.

“Hold on a minute while I unhitch the colt,” Denis called to her,
springing toward the shed.

She stood perfectly still, looking after him, in an attitude of tranquil
expectancy torturing to the hidden watcher. Frome noticed that she no
longer turned her head from side to side, as though peering through the
night for another figure. She let Denis Eady lead out the horse, climb
into the cutter and fling back the bearskin to make room for her at his
side; then, with a swift motion of flight, she turned about and darted
up the slope toward the front of the church.

“Good-bye! Hope you’ll have a lovely ride!” she called back to him over
her shoulder.

Denis laughed, and gave the horse a cut that brought him quickly abreast
of her retreating figure.

“Come along! Get in quick! It’s as slippery as thunder on this turn,” he
cried, leaning over to reach out a hand to her.

She laughed back at him: “Good-night! I’m not getting in.”

By this time they had passed beyond Frome’s earshot and he could only
follow the shadowy pantomime of their silhouettes as they continued
to move along the crest of the slope above him. He saw Eady, after a
moment, jump from the cutter and go toward the girl with the reins over
one arm. The other he tried to slip through hers; but she eluded him
nimbly, and Frome’s heart, which had swung out over a black void,
trembled back to safety. A moment later he heard the jingle of departing
sleigh bells and discerned a figure advancing alone toward the empty
expanse of snow before the church.

In the black shade of the Varnum spruces he caught up with her and she
turned with a quick “Oh!”

“Think I’d forgotten you, Matt?” he asked with sheepish glee.

She answered seriously: “I thought maybe you couldn’t come back for me.”

“Couldn’t? What on earth could stop me?”

“I knew Zeena wasn’t feeling any too good to-day.”

“Oh, she’s in bed long ago.” He paused, a question struggling in him.
“Then you meant to walk home all alone?”

“Oh, I ain’t afraid!” she laughed.

They stood together in the gloom of the spruces, an empty world
glimmering about them wide and grey under the stars. He brought his
question out.

“If you thought I hadn’t come, why didn’t you ride back with Denis
Eady?”

“Why, where were you? How did you know? I never saw you!”

Her wonder and his laughter ran together like spring rills in a thaw.
Ethan had the sense of having done something arch and ingenious. To
prolong the effect he groped for a dazzling phrase, and brought out, in
a growl of rapture: “Come along.”

He slipped an arm through hers, as Eady had done, and fancied it was
faintly pressed against her side, but neither of them moved. It was so
dark under the spruces that he could barely see the shape of her head
beside his shoulder. He longed to stoop his cheek and rub it against
her scarf. He would have liked to stand there with her all night in the
blackness. She moved forward a step or two and then paused again above
the dip of the Corbury road. Its icy slope, scored by innumerable
runners, looked like a mirror scratched by travellers at an inn.

“There was a whole lot of them coasting before the moon set,” she said.

“Would you like to come in and coast with them some night?” he asked.

“Oh, would you, Ethan? It would be lovely!”

“We’ll come to-morrow if there’s a moon.”

She lingered, pressing closer to his side. “Ned Hale and Ruth Varnum
came just as near running into the big elm at the bottom. We were all
sure they were killed.” Her shiver ran down his arm. “Wouldn’t it have
been too awful? They’re so happy!”

“Oh, Ned ain’t much at steering. I guess I can take you down all right!”
 he said disdainfully.

He was aware that he was “talking big,” like Denis Eady; but his
reaction of joy had unsteadied him, and the inflection with which she
had said of the engaged couple “They’re so happy!” made the words sound
as if she had been thinking of herself and him.

“The elm is dangerous, though. It ought to be cut down,” she insisted.

“Would you be afraid of it, with me?”

“I told you I ain’t the kind to be afraid” she tossed back, almost
indifferently; and suddenly she began to walk on with a rapid step.

These alterations of mood were the despair and joy of Ethan Frome. The
motions of her mind were as incalculable as the flit of a bird in the
branches. The fact that he had no right to show his feelings, and thus
provoke the expression of hers, made him attach a fantastic importance
to every change in her look and tone. Now he thought she understood him,
and feared; now he was sure she did not, and despaired. To-night the
pressure of accumulated misgivings sent the scale drooping toward
despair, and her indifference was the more chilling after the flush of
joy into which she had plunged him by dismissing Denis Eady. He mounted
School House Hill at her side and walked on in silence till they
reached the lane leading to the saw-mill; then the need of some definite
assurance grew too strong for him.

“You’d have found me right off if you hadn’t gone back to have that last
reel with Denis,” he brought out awkwardly. He could not pronounce the
name without a stiffening of the muscles of his throat.

“Why, Ethan, how could I tell you were there?”

“I suppose what folks say is true,” he jerked out at her, instead of
answering.

She stopped short, and he felt, in the darkness, that her face was
lifted quickly to his. “Why, what do folks say?”

“It’s natural enough you should be leaving us” he floundered on,
following his thought.

“Is that what they say?” she mocked back at him; then, with a sudden
drop of her sweet treble: “You mean that Zeena--ain’t suited with me any
more?” she faltered.

Their arms had slipped apart and they stood motionless, each seeking to
distinguish the other’s face.

“I know I ain’t anything like as smart as I ought to be,” she went on,
while he vainly struggled for expression. “There’s lots of things a
hired girl could do that come awkward to me still--and I haven’t got much
strength in my arms. But if she’d only tell me I’d try. You know she
hardly ever says anything, and sometimes I can see she ain’t suited,
and yet I don’t know why.” She turned on him with a sudden flash of
indignation. “You’d ought to tell me, Ethan Frome--you’d ought to! Unless
you want me to go too--”

Unless he wanted her to go too! The cry was balm to his raw wound. The
iron heavens seemed to melt and rain down sweetness. Again he struggled
for the all-expressive word, and again, his arm in hers, found only a
deep “Come along.”

They walked on in silence through the blackness of the hemlock-shaded
lane, where Ethan’s sawmill gloomed through the night, and out again
into the comparative clearness of the fields. On the farther side of the
hemlock belt the open country rolled away before them grey and lonely
under the stars. Sometimes their way led them under the shade of an
overhanging bank or through the thin obscurity of a clump of leafless
trees. Here and there a farmhouse stood far back among the fields, mute
and cold as a grave-stone. The night was so still that they heard the
frozen snow crackle under their feet. The crash of a loaded branch
falling far off in the woods reverberated like a musket-shot, and once a
fox barked, and Mattie shrank closer to Ethan, and quickened her steps.

At length they sighted the group of larches at Ethan’s gate, and as they
drew near it the sense that the walk was over brought back his words.

“Then you don’t want to leave us, Matt?”

He had to stoop his head to catch her stifled whisper: “Where’d I go, if
I did?”

The answer sent a pang through him but the tone suffused him with joy.
He forgot what else he had meant to say and pressed her against him so
closely that he seemed to feel her warmth in his veins.

“You ain’t crying are you, Matt?”

“No, of course I’m not,” she quavered.

They turned in at the gate and passed under the shaded knoll where,
enclosed in a low fence, the Frome grave-stones slanted at crazy angles
through the snow. Ethan looked at them curiously. For years that quiet
company had mocked his restlessness, his desire for change and freedom.
“We never got away--how should you?” seemed to be written on every
headstone; and whenever he went in or out of his gate he thought with a
shiver: “I shall just go on living here till I join them.” But now all
desire for change had vanished, and the sight of the little enclosure
gave him a warm sense of continuance and stability.

“I guess we’ll never let you go, Matt,” he whispered, as though even the
dead, lovers once, must conspire with him to keep her; and brushing by
the graves, he thought: “We’ll always go on living here together, and
some day she’ll lie there beside me.”

He let the vision possess him as they climbed the hill to the house.
He was never so happy with her as when he abandoned himself to these
dreams. Half-way up the slope Mattie stumbled against some unseen
obstruction and clutched his sleeve to steady herself. The wave of
warmth that went through him was like the prolongation of his vision.
For the first time he stole his arm about her, and she did not resist.
They walked on as if they were floating on a summer stream.

Zeena always went to bed as soon as she had had her supper, and the
shutterless windows of the house were dark. A dead cucumber-vine dangled
from the porch like the crape streamer tied to the door for a death, and
the thought flashed through Ethan’s brain: “If it was there for Zeena--”
 Then he had a distinct sight of his wife lying in their bedroom asleep,
her mouth slightly open, her false teeth in a tumbler by the bed...

They walked around to the back of the house, between the rigid
gooseberry bushes. It was Zeena’s habit, when they came back late from
the village, to leave the key of the kitchen door under the mat. Ethan
stood before the door, his head heavy with dreams, his arm still about
Mattie. “Matt--” he began, not knowing what he meant to say.

She slipped out of his hold without speaking, and he stooped down and
felt for the key.

“It’s not there!” he said, straightening himself with a start.

They strained their eyes at each other through the icy darkness. Such a
thing had never happened before.

“Maybe she’s forgotten it,” Mattie said in a tremulous whisper; but both
of them knew that it was not like Zeena to forget.

“It might have fallen off into the snow,” Mattie continued, after a
pause during which they had stood intently listening.

“It must have been pushed off, then,” he rejoined in the same tone.
Another wild thought tore through him. What if tramps had been
there--what if...

Again he listened, fancying he heard a distant sound in the house; then
he felt in his pocket for a match, and kneeling down, passed its light
slowly over the rough edges of snow about the doorstep.

He was still kneeling when his eyes, on a level with the lower panel of
the door, caught a faint ray beneath it. Who could be stirring in that
silent house? He heard a step on the stairs, and again for an instant
the thought of tramps tore through him. Then the door opened and he saw
his wife.

Against the dark background of the kitchen she stood up tall and
angular, one hand drawing a quilted counterpane to her flat breast,
while the other held a lamp. The light, on a level with her chin, drew
out of the darkness her puckered throat and the projecting wrist of the
hand that clutched the quilt, and deepened fantastically the hollows and
prominences of her high-boned face under its ring of crimping-pins. To
Ethan, still in the rosy haze of his hour with Mattie, the sight came
with the intense precision of the last dream before waking. He felt as
if he had never before known what his wife looked like.

She drew aside without speaking, and Mattie and Ethan passed into the
kitchen, which had the deadly chill of a vault after the dry cold of the
night.

“Guess you forgot about us, Zeena,” Ethan joked, stamping the snow from
his boots.

“No. I just felt so mean I couldn’t sleep.”

Mattie came forward, unwinding her wraps, the colour of the cherry scarf
in her fresh lips and cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Zeena! Isn’t there anything
I can do?”

“No; there’s nothing.” Zeena turned away from her. “You might ‘a’ shook
off that snow outside,” she said to her husband.

She walked out of the kitchen ahead of them and pausing in the hall
raised the lamp at arm’s-length, as if to light them up the stairs.

Ethan paused also, affecting to fumble for the peg on which he hung his
coat and cap. The doors of the two bedrooms faced each other across the
narrow upper landing, and to-night it was peculiarly repugnant to him
that Mattie should see him follow Zeena.

“I guess I won’t come up yet awhile,” he said, turning as if to go back
to the kitchen.

Zeena stopped short and looked at him. “For the land’s sake--what you
going to do down here?”

“I’ve got the mill accounts to go over.”

She continued to stare at him, the flame of the unshaded lamp bringing
out with microscopic cruelty the fretful lines of her face.

“At this time o’ night? You’ll ketch your death. The fire’s out long
ago.”

Without answering he moved away toward the kitchen. As he did so his
glance crossed Mattie’s and he fancied that a fugitive warning gleamed
through her lashes. The next moment they sank to her flushed cheeks and
she began to mount the stairs ahead of Zeena.

“That’s so. It is powerful cold down here,” Ethan assented; and with
lowered head he went up in his wife’s wake, and followed her across the
threshold of their room.




III


There was some hauling to be done at the lower end of the wood-lot, and
Ethan was out early the next day.

The winter morning was as clear as crystal. The sunrise burned red in a
pure sky, the shadows on the rim of the wood-lot were darkly blue, and
beyond the white and scintillating fields patches of far-off forest hung
like smoke.

It was in the early morning stillness, when his muscles were swinging
to their familiar task and his lungs expanding with long draughts of
mountain air, that Ethan did his clearest thinking. He and Zeena had not
exchanged a word after the door of their room had closed on them. She
had measured out some drops from a medicine-bottle on a chair by the bed
and, after swallowing them, and wrapping her head in a piece of yellow
flannel, had lain down with her face turned away. Ethan undressed
hurriedly and blew out the light so that he should not see her when he
took his place at her side. As he lay there he could hear Mattie moving
about in her room, and her candle, sending its small ray across the
landing, drew a scarcely perceptible line of light under his door. He
kept his eyes fixed on the light till it vanished. Then the room grew
perfectly black, and not a sound was audible but Zeena’s asthmatic
breathing. Ethan felt confusedly that there were many things he ought
to think about, but through his tingling veins and tired brain only one
sensation throbbed: the warmth of Mattie’s shoulder against his. Why had
he not kissed her when he held her there? A few hours earlier he would
not have asked himself the question. Even a few minutes earlier, when
they had stood alone outside the house, he would not have dared to think
of kissing her. But since he had seen her lips in the lamplight he felt
that they were his.

Now, in the bright morning air, her face was still before him. It was
part of the sun’s red and of the pure glitter on the snow. How the
girl had changed since she had come to Starkfield! He remembered what a
colourless slip of a thing she had looked the day he had met her at the
station. And all the first winter, how she had shivered with cold when
the northerly gales shook the thin clapboards and the snow beat like
hail against the loose-hung windows!

He had been afraid that she would hate the hard life, the cold and
loneliness; but not a sign of discontent escaped her. Zeena took the
view that Mattie was bound to make the best of Starkfield since she
hadn’t any other place to go to; but this did not strike Ethan as
conclusive. Zeena, at any rate, did not apply the principle in her own
case.

He felt all the more sorry for the girl because misfortune had, in
a sense, indentured her to them. Mattie Silver was the daughter of
a cousin of Zenobia Frome’s, who had inflamed his clan with mingled
sentiments of envy and admiration by descending from the hills to
Connecticut, where he had married a Stamford girl and succeeded to
her father’s thriving “drug” business. Unhappily Orin Silver, a man of
far-reaching aims, had died too soon to prove that the end justifies the
means. His accounts revealed merely what the means had been; and these
were such that it was fortunate for his wife and daughter that his books
were examined only after his impressive funeral. His wife died of the
disclosure, and Mattie, at twenty, was left alone to make her way on the
fifty dollars obtained from the sale of her piano. For this purpose her
equipment, though varied, was inadequate. She could trim a hat, make
molasses candy, recite “Curfew shall not ring to-night,” and play “The
Lost Chord” and a pot-pourri from “Carmen.” When she tried to extend the
field of her activities in the direction of stenography and book-keeping
her health broke down, and six months on her feet behind the counter of
a department store did not tend to restore it. Her nearest relations had
been induced to place their savings in her father’s hands, and though,
after his death, they ungrudgingly acquitted themselves of the Christian
duty of returning good for evil by giving his daughter all the advice
at their disposal, they could hardly be expected to supplement it by
material aid. But when Zenobia’s doctor recommended her looking about
for some one to help her with the house-work the clan instantly saw the
chance of exacting a compensation from Mattie. Zenobia, though doubtful
of the girl’s efficiency, was tempted by the freedom to find fault
without much risk of losing her; and so Mattie came to Starkfield.

Zenobia’s fault-finding was of the silent kind, but not the less
penetrating for that. During the first months Ethan alternately burned
with the desire to see Mattie defy her and trembled with fear of the
result. Then the situation grew less strained. The pure air, and the
long summer hours in the open, gave back life and elasticity to Mattie,
and Zeena, with more leisure to devote to her complex ailments, grew
less watchful of the girl’s omissions; so that Ethan, struggling on
under the burden of his barren farm and failing saw-mill, could at least
imagine that peace reigned in his house.

There was really, even now, no tangible evidence to the contrary; but
since the previous night a vague dread had hung on his sky-line. It was
formed of Zeena’s obstinate silence, of Mattie’s sudden look of warning,
of the memory of just such fleeting imperceptible signs as those which
told him, on certain stainless mornings, that before night there would
be rain.

His dread was so strong that, man-like, he sought to postpone certainty.
The hauling was not over till mid-day, and as the lumber was to be
delivered to Andrew Hale, the Starkfield builder, it was really easier
for Ethan to send Jotham Powell, the hired man, back to the farm on
foot, and drive the load down to the village himself. He had scrambled
up on the logs, and was sitting astride of them, close over his shaggy
grays, when, coming between him and their streaming necks, he had a
vision of the warning look that Mattie had given him the night before.

“If there’s going to be any trouble I want to be there,” was his vague
reflection, as he threw to Jotham the unexpected order to unhitch the
team and lead them back to the barn.

It was a slow trudge home through the heavy fields, and when the two
men entered the kitchen Mattie was lifting the coffee from the stove and
Zeena was already at the table. Her husband stopped short at sight of
her. Instead of her usual calico wrapper and knitted shawl she wore her
best dress of brown merino, and above her thin strands of hair, which
still preserved the tight undulations of the crimping-pins, rose a hard
perpendicular bonnet, as to which Ethan’s clearest notion was that he
had to pay five dollars for it at the Bettsbridge Emporium. On the floor
beside her stood his old valise and a bandbox wrapped in newspapers.

“Why, where are you going, Zeena?” he exclaimed.

“I’ve got my shooting pains so bad that I’m going over to Bettsbridge
to spend the night with Aunt Martha Pierce and see that new doctor,” she
answered in a matter-of-fact tone, as if she had said she was going into
the store-room to take a look at the preserves, or up to the attic to go
over the blankets.

In spite of her sedentary habits such abrupt decisions were not without
precedent in Zeena’s history. Twice or thrice before she had suddenly
packed Ethan’s valise and started off to Bettsbridge, or even
Springfield, to seek the advice of some new doctor, and her husband had
grown to dread these expeditions because of their cost. Zeena always
came back laden with expensive remedies, and her last visit to
Springfield had been commemorated by her paying twenty dollars for an
electric battery of which she had never been able to learn the use. But
for the moment his sense of relief was so great as to preclude all other
feelings. He had now no doubt that Zeena had spoken the truth in saying,
the night before, that she had sat up because she felt “too mean” to
sleep: her abrupt resolve to seek medical advice showed that, as usual,
she was wholly absorbed in her health.

As if expecting a protest, she continued plaintively; “If you’re too
busy with the hauling I presume you can let Jotham Powell drive me over
with the sorrel in time to ketch the train at the Flats.”

Her husband hardly heard what she was saying. During the winter months
there was no stage between Starkfield and Bettsbridge, and the trains
which stopped at Corbury Flats were slow and infrequent. A rapid
calculation showed Ethan that Zeena could not be back at the farm before
the following evening....

“If I’d supposed you’d ‘a’ made any objection to Jotham Powell’s driving
me over--” she began again, as though his silence had implied refusal. On
the brink of departure she was always seized with a flux of words. “All
I know is,” she continued, “I can’t go on the way I am much longer.
The pains are clear away down to my ankles now, or I’d ‘a’ walked in to
Starkfield on my own feet, sooner’n put you out, and asked Michael Eady
to let me ride over on his wagon to the Flats, when he sends to meet the
train that brings his groceries. I’d ‘a’ had two hours to wait in the
station, but I’d sooner ‘a’ done it, even with this cold, than to have
you say--”

“Of course Jotham’ll drive you over,” Ethan roused himself to answer.
He became suddenly conscious that he was looking at Mattie while Zeena
talked to him, and with an effort he turned his eyes to his wife. She
sat opposite the window, and the pale light reflected from the banks of
snow made her face look more than usually drawn and bloodless, sharpened
the three parallel creases between ear and cheek, and drew querulous
lines from her thin nose to the corners of her mouth. Though she was but
seven years her husband’s senior, and he was only twenty-eight, she was
already an old woman.

Ethan tried to say something befitting the occasion, but there was only
one thought in his mind: the fact that, for the first time since
Mattie had come to live with them, Zeena was to be away for a night. He
wondered if the girl were thinking of it too....

He knew that Zeena must be wondering why he did not offer to drive her
to the Flats and let Jotham Powell take the lumber to Starkfield, and
at first he could not think of a pretext for not doing so; then he said:
“I’d take you over myself, only I’ve got to collect the cash for the
lumber.”

As soon as the words were spoken he regretted them, not only because
they were untrue--there being no prospect of his receiving cash payment
from Hale--but also because he knew from experience the imprudence of
letting Zeena think he was in funds on the eve of one of her therapeutic
excursions. At the moment, however, his one desire was to avoid the long
drive with her behind the ancient sorrel who never went out of a walk.

Zeena made no reply: she did not seem to hear what he had said. She had
already pushed her plate aside, and was measuring out a draught from a
large bottle at her elbow.

“It ain’t done me a speck of good, but I guess I might as well use it
up,” she remarked; adding, as she pushed the empty bottle toward Mattie:
“If you can get the taste out it’ll do for pickles.”




IV


As soon as his wife had driven off Ethan took his coat and cap from the
peg. Mattie was washing up the dishes, humming one of the dance tunes
of the night before. He said “So long, Matt,” and she answered gaily “So
long, Ethan”; and that was all.

It was warm and bright in the kitchen. The sun slanted through the south
window on the girl’s moving figure, on the cat dozing in a chair, and on
the geraniums brought in from the door-way, where Ethan had planted
them in the summer to “make a garden” for Mattie. He would have liked to
linger on, watching her tidy up and then settle down to her sewing; but
he wanted still more to get the hauling done and be back at the farm
before night.

All the way down to the village he continued to think of his return to
Mattie. The kitchen was a poor place, not “spruce” and shining as his
mother had kept it in his boyhood; but it was surprising what a homelike
look the mere fact of Zeena’s absence gave it. And he pictured what it
would be like that evening, when he and Mattie were there after supper.
For the first time they would be alone together indoors, and they would
sit there, one on each side of the stove, like a married couple, he in
his stocking feet and smoking his pipe, she laughing and talking in that
funny way she had, which was always as new to him as if he had never
heard her before.

The sweetness of the picture, and the relief of knowing that his fears
of “trouble” with Zeena were unfounded, sent up his spirits with a rush,
and he, who was usually so silent, whistled and sang aloud as he
drove through the snowy fields. There was in him a slumbering spark of
sociability which the long Starkfield winters had not yet extinguished.
By nature grave and inarticulate, he admired recklessness and gaiety in
others and was warmed to the marrow by friendly human intercourse. At
Worcester, though he had the name of keeping to himself and not being
much of a hand at a good time, he had secretly gloried in being clapped
on the back and hailed as “Old Ethe” or “Old Stiff”; and the cessation
of such familiarities had increased the chill of his return to
Starkfield.

There the silence had deepened about him year by year. Left alone, after
his father’s accident, to carry the burden of farm and mill, he had had
no time for convivial loiterings in the village; and when his mother
fell ill the loneliness of the house grew more oppressive than that
of the fields. His mother had been a talker in her day, but after her
“trouble” the sound of her voice was seldom heard, though she had not
lost the power of speech. Sometimes, in the long winter evenings, when
in desperation her son asked her why she didn’t “say something,” she
would lift a finger and answer: “Because I’m listening”; and on stormy
nights, when the loud wind was about the house, she would complain, if
he spoke to her: “They’re talking so out there that I can’t hear you.”

It was only when she drew toward her last illness, and his cousin
Zenobia Pierce came over from the next valley to help him nurse her,
that human speech was heard again in the house. After the mortal silence
of his long imprisonment Zeena’s volubility was music in his ears. He
felt that he might have “gone like his mother” if the sound of a new
voice had not come to steady him. Zeena seemed to understand his case
at a glance. She laughed at him for not knowing the simplest sick-bed
duties and told him to “go right along out” and leave her to see to
things. The mere fact of obeying her orders, of feeling free to go about
his business again and talk with other men, restored his shaken balance
and magnified his sense of what he owed her. Her efficiency shamed and
dazzled him. She seemed to possess by instinct all the household wisdom
that his long apprenticeship had not instilled in him. When the end came
it was she who had to tell him to hitch up and go for the undertaker,
and she thought it “funny” that he had not settled beforehand who was
to have his mother’s clothes and the sewing-machine. After the funeral,
when he saw her preparing to go away, he was seized with an unreasoning
dread of being left alone on the farm; and before he knew what he was
doing he had asked her to stay there with him. He had often thought
since that it would not have happened if his mother had died in spring
instead of winter...

When they married it was agreed that, as soon as he could straighten out
the difficulties resulting from Mrs. Frome’s long illness, they would
sell the farm and saw-mill and try their luck in a large town. Ethan’s
love of nature did not take the form of a taste for agriculture. He had
always wanted to be an engineer, and to live in towns, where there
were lectures and big libraries and “fellows doing things.” A slight
engineering job in Florida, put in his way during his period of study at
Worcester, increased his faith in his ability as well as his eagerness
to see the world; and he felt sure that, with a “smart” wife like Zeena,
it would not be long before he had made himself a place in it.

Zeena’s native village was slightly larger and nearer to the railway
than Starkfield, and she had let her husband see from the first that
life on an isolated farm was not what she had expected when she married.
But purchasers were slow in coming, and while he waited for them Ethan
learned the impossibility of transplanting her. She chose to look down
on Starkfield, but she could not have lived in a place which looked
down on her. Even Bettsbridge or Shadd’s Falls would not have been
sufficiently aware of her, and in the greater cities which attracted
Ethan she would have suffered a complete loss of identity. And within
a year of their marriage she developed the “sickliness” which had since
made her notable even in a community rich in pathological instances.
When she came to take care of his mother she had seemed to Ethan like
the very genius of health, but he soon saw that her skill as a nurse had
been acquired by the absorbed observation of her own symptoms.

Then she too fell silent. Perhaps it was the inevitable effect of life
on the farm, or perhaps, as she sometimes said, it was because Ethan
“never listened.” The charge was not wholly unfounded. When she spoke
it was only to complain, and to complain of things not in his power to
remedy; and to check a tendency to impatient retort he had first formed
the habit of not answering her, and finally of thinking of other things
while she talked. Of late, however, since he had reasons for observing
her more closely, her silence had begun to trouble him. He recalled his
mother’s growing taciturnity, and wondered if Zeena were also turning
“queer.” Women did, he knew. Zeena, who had at her fingers’ ends the
pathological chart of the whole region, had cited many cases of the kind
while she was nursing his mother; and he himself knew of certain lonely
farm-houses in the neighbourhood where stricken creatures pined, and
of others where sudden tragedy had come of their presence. At times,
looking at Zeena’s shut face, he felt the chill of such forebodings.
At other times her silence seemed deliberately assumed to conceal
far-reaching intentions, mysterious conclusions drawn from suspicions
and resentments impossible to guess. That supposition was even more
disturbing than the other; and it was the one which had come to him the
night before, when he had seen her standing in the kitchen door.

Now her departure for Bettsbridge had once more eased his mind, and all
his thoughts were on the prospect of his evening with Mattie. Only one
thing weighed on him, and that was his having told Zeena that he was to
receive cash for the lumber. He foresaw so clearly the consequences
of this imprudence that with considerable reluctance he decided to ask
Andrew Hale for a small advance on his load.

When Ethan drove into Hale’s yard the builder was just getting out of
his sleigh.

“Hello, Ethe!” he said. “This comes handy.”

Andrew Hale was a ruddy man with a big gray moustache and a stubbly
double-chin unconstrained by a collar; but his scrupulously clean shirt
was always fastened by a small diamond stud. This display of opulence
was misleading, for though he did a fairly good business it was known
that his easygoing habits and the demands of his large family frequently
kept him what Starkfield called “behind.” He was an old friend of
Ethan’s family, and his house one of the few to which Zeena occasionally
went, drawn there by the fact that Mrs. Hale, in her youth, had done
more “doctoring” than any other woman in Starkfield, and was still a
recognised authority on symptoms and treatment.

Hale went up to the grays and patted their sweating flanks.

“Well, sir,” he said, “you keep them two as if they was pets.”

Ethan set about unloading the logs and when he had finished his job he
pushed open the glazed door of the shed which the builder used as his
office. Hale sat with his feet up on the stove, his back propped against
a battered desk strewn with papers: the place, like the man, was warm,
genial and untidy.

“Sit right down and thaw out,” he greeted Ethan.

The latter did not know how to begin, but at length he managed to bring
out his request for an advance of fifty dollars. The blood rushed to his
thin skin under the sting of Hale’s astonishment. It was the builder’s
custom to pay at the end of three months, and there was no precedent
between the two men for a cash settlement.

Ethan felt that if he had pleaded an urgent need Hale might have made
shift to pay him; but pride, and an instinctive prudence, kept him from
resorting to this argument. After his father’s death it had taken time
to get his head above water, and he did not want Andrew Hale, or any one
else in Starkfield, to think he was going under again. Besides, he hated
lying; if he wanted the money he wanted it, and it was nobody’s business
to ask why. He therefore made his demand with the awkwardness of a proud
man who will not admit to himself that he is stooping; and he was not
much surprised at Hale’s refusal.

The builder refused genially, as he did everything else: he treated the
matter as something in the nature of a practical joke, and wanted to
know if Ethan meditated buying a grand piano or adding a “cupolo” to his
house; offering, in the latter case, to give his services free of cost.

Ethan’s arts were soon exhausted, and after an embarrassed pause he
wished Hale good day and opened the door of the office. As he passed out
the builder suddenly called after him: “See here--you ain’t in a tight
place, are you?”

“Not a bit,” Ethan’s pride retorted before his reason had time to
intervene.

“Well, that’s good! Because I am, a shade. Fact is, I was going to ask
you to give me a little extra time on that payment. Business is pretty
slack, to begin with, and then I’m fixing up a little house for Ned and
Ruth when they’re married. I’m glad to do it for ‘em, but it costs.” His
look appealed to Ethan for sympathy. “The young people like things nice.
You know how it is yourself: it’s not so long ago since you fixed up
your own place for Zeena.”

Ethan left the grays in Hale’s stable and went about some other business
in the village. As he walked away the builder’s last phrase lingered in
his ears, and he reflected grimly that his seven years with Zeena seemed
to Starkfield “not so long.”

The afternoon was drawing to an end, and here and there a lighted pane
spangled the cold gray dusk and made the snow look whiter. The bitter
weather had driven every one indoors and Ethan had the long rural street
to himself. Suddenly he heard the brisk play of sleigh-bells and a
cutter passed him, drawn by a free-going horse. Ethan recognised Michael
Eady’s roan colt, and young Denis Eady, in a handsome new fur cap,
leaned forward and waved a greeting. “Hello, Ethe!” he shouted and spun
on.

The cutter was going in the direction of the Frome farm, and Ethan’s
heart contracted as he listened to the dwindling bells. What more likely
than that Denis Eady had heard of Zeena’s departure for Bettsbridge, and
was profiting by the opportunity to spend an hour with Mattie? Ethan was
ashamed of the storm of jealousy in his breast. It seemed unworthy of
the girl that his thoughts of her should be so violent.

He walked on to the church corner and entered the shade of the Varnum
spruces, where he had stood with her the night before. As he passed
into their gloom he saw an indistinct outline just ahead of him. At
his approach it melted for an instant into two separate shapes and then
conjoined again, and he heard a kiss, and a half-laughing “Oh!” provoked
by the discovery of his presence. Again the outline hastily disunited
and the Varnum gate slammed on one half while the other hurried on ahead
of him. Ethan smiled at the discomfiture he had caused. What did it
matter to Ned Hale and Ruth Varnum if they were caught kissing each
other? Everybody in Starkfield knew they were engaged. It pleased Ethan
to have surprised a pair of lovers on the spot where he and Mattie had
stood with such a thirst for each other in their hearts; but he felt a
pang at the thought that these two need not hide their happiness.

He fetched the grays from Hale’s stable and started on his long climb
back to the farm. The cold was less sharp than earlier in the day and a
thick fleecy sky threatened snow for the morrow. Here and there a star
pricked through, showing behind it a deep well of blue. In an hour
or two the moon would push over the ridge behind the farm, burn a
gold-edged rent in the clouds, and then be swallowed by them. A mournful
peace hung on the fields, as though they felt the relaxing grasp of the
cold and stretched themselves in their long winter sleep.

Ethan’s ears were alert for the jingle of sleigh-bells, but not a sound
broke the silence of the lonely road. As he drew near the farm he saw,
through the thin screen of larches at the gate, a light twinkling in
the house above him. “She’s up in her room,” he said to himself, “fixing
herself up for supper”; and he remembered Zeena’s sarcastic stare when
Mattie, on the evening of her arrival, had come down to supper with
smoothed hair and a ribbon at her neck.

He passed by the graves on the knoll and turned his head to glance at
one of the older headstones, which had interested him deeply as a boy
because it bore his name.

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF

ETHAN FROME AND ENDURANCE HIS WIFE,

WHO DWELLED TOGETHER IN PEACE

FOR FIFTY YEARS.

He used to think that fifty years sounded like a long time to live
together; but now it seemed to him that they might pass in a flash.
Then, with a sudden dart of irony, he wondered if, when their turn came,
the same epitaph would be written over him and Zeena.

He opened the barn-door and craned his head into the obscurity,
half-fearing to discover Denis Eady’s roan colt in the stall beside
the sorrel. But the old horse was there alone, mumbling his crib with
toothless jaws, and Ethan whistled cheerfully while he bedded down the
grays and shook an extra measure of oats into their mangers. His was not
a tuneful throat--but harsh melodies burst from it as he locked the barn
and sprang up the hill to the house. He reached the kitchen-porch and
turned the door-handle; but the door did not yield to his touch.

Startled at finding it locked he rattled the handle violently; then
he reflected that Mattie was alone and that it was natural she should
barricade herself at nightfall. He stood in the darkness expecting to
hear her step. It did not come, and after vainly straining his ears he
called out in a voice that shook with joy: “Hello, Matt!”

Silence answered; but in a minute or two he caught a sound on the stairs
and saw a line of light about the door-frame, as he had seen it the
night before. So strange was the precision with which the incidents of
the previous evening were repeating themselves that he half expected,
when he heard the key turn, to see his wife before him on the threshold;
but the door opened, and Mattie faced him.

She stood just as Zeena had stood, a lifted lamp in her hand, against
the black background of the kitchen. She held the light at the same
level, and it drew out with the same distinctness her slim young throat
and the brown wrist no bigger than a child’s. Then, striking upward, it
threw a lustrous fleck on her lips, edged her eyes with velvet shade,
and laid a milky whiteness above the black curve of her brows.

She wore her usual dress of darkish stuff, and there was no bow at her
neck; but through her hair she had run a streak of crimson ribbon. This
tribute to the unusual transformed and glorified her. She seemed to
Ethan taller, fuller, more womanly in shape and motion. She stood aside,
smiling silently, while he entered, and then moved away from him with
something soft and flowing in her gait. She set the lamp on the table,
and he saw that it was carefully laid for supper, with fresh dough-nuts,
stewed blueberries and his favourite pickles in a dish of gay red glass.
A bright fire glowed in the stove and the cat lay stretched before it,
watching the table with a drowsy eye.

Ethan was suffocated with the sense of well-being. He went out into the
passage to hang up his coat and pull off his wet boots. When he came
back Mattie had set the teapot on the table and the cat was rubbing
itself persuasively against her ankles.

“Why, Puss! I nearly tripped over you,” she cried, the laughter
sparkling through her lashes.

Again Ethan felt a sudden twinge of jealousy. Could it be his coming
that gave her such a kindled face?

“Well, Matt, any visitors?” he threw off, stooping down carelessly to
examine the fastening of the stove.

She nodded and laughed “Yes, one,” and he felt a blackness settling on
his brows.

“Who was that?” he questioned, raising himself up to slant a glance at
her beneath his scowl.

Her eyes danced with malice. “Why, Jotham Powell. He came in after he
got back, and asked for a drop of coffee before he went down home.”

The blackness lifted and light flooded Ethan’s brain. “That all? Well,
I hope you made out to let him have it.” And after a pause he felt it
right to add: “I suppose he got Zeena over to the Flats all right?”

“Oh, yes; in plenty of time.”

The name threw a chill between them, and they stood a moment looking
sideways at each other before Mattie said with a shy laugh. “I guess
it’s about time for supper.”

They drew their seats up to the table, and the cat, unbidden, jumped
between them into Zeena’s empty chair. “Oh, Puss!” said Mattie, and they
laughed again.

Ethan, a moment earlier, had felt himself on the brink of eloquence;
but the mention of Zeena had paralysed him. Mattie seemed to feel the
contagion of his embarrassment, and sat with downcast lids, sipping her
tea, while he feigned an insatiable appetite for dough-nuts and sweet
pickles. At last, after casting about for an effective opening, he took
a long gulp of tea, cleared his throat, and said: “Looks as if there’d
be more snow.”

She feigned great interest. “Is that so? Do you suppose it’ll interfere
with Zeena’s getting back?” She flushed red as the question escaped her,
and hastily set down the cup she was lifting.

Ethan reached over for another helping of pickles. “You never can tell,
this time of year, it drifts so bad on the Flats.” The name had benumbed
him again, and once more he felt as if Zeena were in the room between
them.

“Oh, Puss, you’re too greedy!” Mattie cried.

The cat, unnoticed, had crept up on muffled paws from Zeena’s seat to
the table, and was stealthily elongating its body in the direction
of the milk-jug, which stood between Ethan and Mattie. The two leaned
forward at the same moment and their hands met on the handle of the jug.
Mattie’s hand was underneath, and Ethan kept his clasped on it a
moment longer than was necessary. The cat, profiting by this unusual
demonstration, tried to effect an unnoticed retreat, and in doing so
backed into the pickle-dish, which fell to the floor with a crash.

Mattie, in an instant, had sprung from her chair and was down on her
knees by the fragments.

“Oh, Ethan, Ethan--it’s all to pieces! What will Zeena say?”

But this time his courage was up. “Well, she’ll have to say it to the
cat, any way!” he rejoined with a laugh, kneeling down at Mattie’s side
to scrape up the swimming pickles.

She lifted stricken eyes to him. “Yes, but, you see, she never meant it
should be used, not even when there was company; and I had to get up on
the step-ladder to reach it down from the top shelf of the china-closet,
where she keeps it with all her best things, and of course she’ll want
to know why I did it--”

The case was so serious that it called forth all of Ethan’s latent
resolution.

“She needn’t know anything about it if you keep quiet. I’ll get another
just like it to-morrow. Where did it come from? I’ll go to Shadd’s Falls
for it if I have to!”

“Oh, you’ll never get another even there! It was a wedding present--don’t
you remember? It came all the way from Philadelphia, from Zeena’s aunt
that married the minister. That’s why she wouldn’t ever use it. Oh,
Ethan, Ethan, what in the world shall I do?”

She began to cry, and he felt as if every one of her tears were pouring
over him like burning lead. “Don’t, Matt, don’t--oh, don’t!” he implored
her.

She struggled to her feet, and he rose and followed her helplessly while
she spread out the pieces of glass on the kitchen dresser. It seemed to
him as if the shattered fragments of their evening lay there.

“Here, give them to me,” he said in a voice of sudden authority.

She drew aside, instinctively obeying his tone. “Oh, Ethan, what are you
going to do?”

Without replying he gathered the pieces of glass into his broad palm
and walked out of the kitchen to the passage. There he lit a candle-end,
opened the china-closet, and, reaching his long arm up to the highest
shelf, laid the pieces together with such accuracy of touch that a close
inspection convinced him of the impossibility of detecting from below
that the dish was broken. If he glued it together the next morning
months might elapse before his wife noticed what had happened, and
meanwhile he might after all be able to match the dish at Shadd’s Falls
or Bettsbridge. Having satisfied himself that there was no risk of
immediate discovery he went back to the kitchen with a lighter step, and
found Mattie disconsolately removing the last scraps of pickle from the
floor.

“It’s all right, Matt. Come back and finish supper,” he commanded her.

Completely reassured, she shone on him through tear-hung lashes, and his
soul swelled with pride as he saw how his tone subdued her. She did not
even ask what he had done. Except when he was steering a big log down
the mountain to his mill he had never known such a thrilling sense of
mastery.




V


They finished supper, and while Mattie cleared the table Ethan went to
look at the cows and then took a last turn about the house. The earth
lay dark under a muffled sky and the air was so still that now and then
he heard a lump of snow come thumping down from a tree far off on the
edge of the wood-lot.

When he returned to the kitchen Mattie had pushed up his chair to the
stove and seated herself near the lamp with a bit of sewing. The scene
was just as he had dreamed of it that morning. He sat down, drew his
pipe from his pocket and stretched his feet to the glow. His hard day’s
work in the keen air made him feel at once lazy and light of mood, and
he had a confused sense of being in another world, where all was warmth
and harmony and time could bring no change. The only drawback to his
complete well-being was the fact that he could not see Mattie from where
he sat; but he was too indolent to move and after a moment he said:
“Come over here and sit by the stove.”

Zeena’s empty rocking-chair stood facing him. Mattie rose obediently,
and seated herself in it. As her young brown head detached itself
against the patch-work cushion that habitually framed his wife’s gaunt
countenance, Ethan had a momentary shock. It was almost as if the other
face, the face of the superseded woman, had obliterated that of the
intruder. After a moment Mattie seemed to be affected by the same sense
of constraint. She changed her position, leaning forward to bend her
head above her work, so that he saw only the foreshortened tip of her
nose and the streak of red in her hair; then she slipped to her feet,
saying “I can’t see to sew,” and went back to her chair by the lamp.

Ethan made a pretext of getting up to replenish the stove, and when he
returned to his seat he pushed it sideways that he might get a view of
her profile and of the lamplight falling on her hands. The cat, who
had been a puzzled observer of these unusual movements, jumped up into
Zeena’s chair, rolled itself into a ball, and lay watching them with
narrowed eyes.

Deep quiet sank on the room. The clock ticked above the dresser, a piece
of charred wood fell now and then in the stove, and the faint sharp
scent of the geraniums mingled with the odour of Ethan’s smoke, which
began to throw a blue haze about the lamp and to hang its greyish
cobwebs in the shadowy corners of the room.

All constraint had vanished between the two, and they began to talk
easily and simply. They spoke of every-day things, of the prospect
of snow, of the next church sociable, of the loves and quarrels of
Starkfield. The commonplace nature of what they said produced in Ethan
an illusion of long-established intimacy which no outburst of emotion
could have given, and he set his imagination adrift on the fiction that
they had always spent their evenings thus and would always go on doing
so...

“This is the night we were to have gone coasting, Matt,” he said at
length, with the rich sense, as he spoke, that they could go on any
other night they chose, since they had all time before them.

She smiled back at him. “I guess you forgot!”

“No, I didn’t forget; but it’s as dark as Egypt outdoors. We might go
to-morrow if there’s a moon.”

She laughed with pleasure, her head tilted back, the lamplight sparkling
on her lips and teeth. “That would be lovely, Ethan!”

He kept his eyes fixed on her, marvelling at the way her face changed
with each turn of their talk, like a wheat-field under a summer breeze.
It was intoxicating to find such magic in his clumsy words, and he
longed to try new ways of using it.

“Would you be scared to go down the Corbury road with me on a night like
this?” he asked.

Her cheeks burned redder. “I ain’t any more scared than you are!”

“Well, I’d be scared, then; I wouldn’t do it. That’s an ugly corner down
by the big elm. If a fellow didn’t keep his eyes open he’d go plumb into
it.” He luxuriated in the sense of protection and authority which his
words conveyed. To prolong and intensify the feeling he added: “I guess
we’re well enough here.”

She let her lids sink slowly, in the way he loved. “Yes, we’re well
enough here,” she sighed.

Her tone was so sweet that he took the pipe from his mouth and drew his
chair up to the table. Leaning forward, he touched the farther end of
the strip of brown stuff that she was hemming. “Say, Matt,” he began
with a smile, “what do you think I saw under the Varnum spruces, coming
along home just now? I saw a friend of yours getting kissed.”

The words had been on his tongue all the evening, but now that he had
spoken them they struck him as inexpressibly vulgar and out of place.

Mattie blushed to the roots of her hair and pulled her needle rapidly
twice or thrice through her work, insensibly drawing the end of it away
from him. “I suppose it was Ruth and Ned,” she said in a low voice, as
though he had suddenly touched on something grave.

Ethan had imagined that his allusion might open the way to the accepted
pleasantries, and these perhaps in turn to a harmless caress, if only
a mere touch on her hand. But now he felt as if her blush had set a
flaming guard about her. He supposed it was his natural awkwardness that
made him feel so. He knew that most young men made nothing at all of
giving a pretty girl a kiss, and he remembered that the night before,
when he had put his arm about Mattie, she had not resisted. But that had
been out-of-doors, under the open irresponsible night. Now, in the warm
lamplit room, with all its ancient implications of conformity and order,
she seemed infinitely farther away from him and more unapproachable.

To ease his constraint he said: “I suppose they’ll be setting a date
before long.”

“Yes. I shouldn’t wonder if they got married some time along in the
summer.” She pronounced the word married as if her voice caressed it.
It seemed a rustling covert leading to enchanted glades. A pang shot
through Ethan, and he said, twisting away from her in his chair: “It’ll
be your turn next, I wouldn’t wonder.”

She laughed a little uncertainly. “Why do you keep on saying that?”

He echoed her laugh. “I guess I do it to get used to the idea.”

He drew up to the table again and she sewed on in silence, with dropped
lashes, while he sat in fascinated contemplation of the way in which her
hands went up and down above the strip of stuff, just as he had seen
a pair of birds make short perpendicular flights over a nest they were
building. At length, without turning her head or lifting her lids, she
said in a low tone: “It’s not because you think Zeena’s got anything
against me, is it?”

His former dread started up full-armed at the suggestion. “Why, what do
you mean?” he stammered.

She raised distressed eyes to his, her work dropping on the table
between them. “I don’t know. I thought last night she seemed to have.”

“I’d like to know what,” he growled.

“Nobody can tell with Zeena.” It was the first time they had ever spoken
so openly of her attitude toward Mattie, and the repetition of the name
seemed to carry it to the farther corners of the room and send it back
to them in long repercussions of sound. Mattie waited, as if to give the
echo time to drop, and then went on: “She hasn’t said anything to you?”

He shook his head. “No, not a word.”

She tossed the hair back from her forehead with a laugh. “I guess I’m
just nervous, then. I’m not going to think about it any more.”

“Oh, no--don’t let’s think about it, Matt!”

The sudden heat of his tone made her colour mount again, not with
a rush, but gradually, delicately, like the reflection of a thought
stealing slowly across her heart. She sat silent, her hands clasped on
her work, and it seemed to him that a warm current flowed toward
him along the strip of stuff that still lay unrolled between them.
Cautiously he slid his hand palm-downward along the table till his
finger-tips touched the end of the stuff. A faint vibration of her
lashes seemed to show that she was aware of his gesture, and that it had
sent a counter-current back to her; and she let her hands lie motionless
on the other end of the strip.

As they sat thus he heard a sound behind him and turned his head. The
cat had jumped from Zeena’s chair to dart at a mouse in the wainscot,
and as a result of the sudden movement the empty chair had set up a
spectral rocking.

“She’ll be rocking in it herself this time to-morrow,” Ethan thought.
“I’ve been in a dream, and this is the only evening we’ll ever have
together.” The return to reality was as painful as the return to
consciousness after taking an anaesthetic. His body and brain ached with
indescribable weariness, and he could think of nothing to say or to do
that should arrest the mad flight of the moments.

His alteration of mood seemed to have communicated itself to Mattie. She
looked up at him languidly, as though her lids were weighted with sleep
and it cost her an effort to raise them. Her glance fell on his hand,
which now completely covered the end of her work and grasped it as if it
were a part of herself. He saw a scarcely perceptible tremor cross her
face, and without knowing what he did he stooped his head and kissed
the bit of stuff in his hold. As his lips rested on it he felt it glide
slowly from beneath them, and saw that Mattie had risen and was silently
rolling up her work. She fastened it with a pin, and then, finding
her thimble and scissors, put them with the roll of stuff into the
box covered with fancy paper which he had once brought to her from
Bettsbridge.

He stood up also, looking vaguely about the room. The clock above the
dresser struck eleven.

“Is the fire all right?” she asked in a low voice.

He opened the door of the stove and poked aimlessly at the embers. When
he raised himself again he saw that she was dragging toward the stove
the old soap-box lined with carpet in which the cat made its bed. Then
she recrossed the floor and lifted two of the geranium pots in her arms,
moving them away from the cold window. He followed her and brought the
other geraniums, the hyacinth bulbs in a cracked custard bowl and the
German ivy trained over an old croquet hoop.

When these nightly duties were performed there was nothing left to do
but to bring in the tin candlestick from the passage, light the candle
and blow out the lamp. Ethan put the candlestick in Mattie’s hand and
she went out of the kitchen ahead of him, the light that she carried
before her making her dark hair look like a drift of mist on the moon.

“Good night, Matt,” he said as she put her foot on the first step of the
stairs.

She turned and looked at him a moment. “Good night, Ethan,” she
answered, and went up.

When the door of her room had closed on her he remembered that he had
not even touched her hand.




VI


The next morning at breakfast Jotham Powell was between them, and Ethan
tried to hide his joy under an air of exaggerated indifference, lounging
back in his chair to throw scraps to the cat, growling at the weather,
and not so much as offering to help Mattie when she rose to clear away
the dishes.

He did not know why he was so irrationally happy, for nothing was
changed in his life or hers. He had not even touched the tip of her
fingers or looked her full in the eyes. But their evening together had
given him a vision of what life at her side might be, and he was glad
now that he had done nothing to trouble the sweetness of the picture. He
had a fancy that she knew what had restrained him...

There was a last load of lumber to be hauled to the village, and Jotham
Powell--who did not work regularly for Ethan in winter--had “come round”
 to help with the job. But a wet snow, melting to sleet, had fallen in
the night and turned the roads to glass. There was more wet in the air
and it seemed likely to both men that the weather would “milden” toward
afternoon and make the going safer. Ethan therefore proposed to his
assistant that they should load the sledge at the wood-lot, as they had
done on the previous morning, and put off the “teaming” to Starkfield
till later in the day. This plan had the advantage of enabling him to
send Jotham to the Flats after dinner to meet Zenobia, while he himself
took the lumber down to the village.

He told Jotham to go out and harness up the greys, and for a moment he
and Mattie had the kitchen to themselves. She had plunged the breakfast
dishes into a tin dish-pan and was bending above it with her slim arms
bared to the elbow, the steam from the hot water beading her forehead
and tightening her rough hair into little brown rings like the tendrils
on the traveller’s joy.

Ethan stood looking at her, his heart in his throat. He wanted to say:
“We shall never be alone again like this.” Instead, he reached down his
tobacco-pouch from a shelf of the dresser, put it into his pocket and
said: “I guess I can make out to be home for dinner.”

She answered “All right, Ethan,” and he heard her singing over the
dishes as he went.

As soon as the sledge was loaded he meant to send Jotham back to
the farm and hurry on foot into the village to buy the glue for the
pickle-dish. With ordinary luck he should have had time to carry out
this plan; but everything went wrong from the start. On the way over
to the wood-lot one of the greys slipped on a glare of ice and cut his
knee; and when they got him up again Jotham had to go back to the barn
for a strip of rag to bind the cut. Then, when the loading finally
began, a sleety rain was coming down once more, and the tree trunks were
so slippery that it took twice as long as usual to lift them and get
them in place on the sledge. It was what Jotham called a sour morning
for work, and the horses, shivering and stamping under their wet
blankets, seemed to like it as little as the men. It was long past the
dinner-hour when the job was done, and Ethan had to give up going to the
village because he wanted to lead the injured horse home and wash the
cut himself.

He thought that by starting out again with the lumber as soon as he had
finished his dinner he might get back to the farm with the glue before
Jotham and the old sorrel had had time to fetch Zenobia from the Flats;
but he knew the chance was a slight one. It turned on the state of
the roads and on the possible lateness of the Bettsbridge train.
He remembered afterward, with a grim flash of self-derision, what
importance he had attached to the weighing of these probabilities...

As soon as dinner was over he set out again for the wood-lot, not daring
to linger till Jotham Powell left. The hired man was still drying his
wet feet at the stove, and Ethan could only give Mattie a quick look as
he said beneath his breath: “I’ll be back early.”

He fancied that she nodded her comprehension; and with that scant solace
he had to trudge off through the rain.

He had driven his load half-way to the village when Jotham Powell
overtook him, urging the reluctant sorrel toward the Flats. “I’ll have
to hurry up to do it,” Ethan mused, as the sleigh dropped down ahead
of him over the dip of the school-house hill. He worked like ten at the
unloading, and when it was over hastened on to Michael Eady’s for the
glue. Eady and his assistant were both “down street,” and young Denis,
who seldom deigned to take their place, was lounging by the stove with
a knot of the golden youth of Starkfield. They hailed Ethan with ironic
compliment and offers of conviviality; but no one knew where to find
the glue. Ethan, consumed with the longing for a last moment alone with
Mattie, hung about impatiently while Denis made an ineffectual search in
the obscurer corners of the store.

“Looks as if we were all sold out. But if you’ll wait around till the
old man comes along maybe he can put his hand on it.”

“I’m obliged to you, but I’ll try if I can get it down at Mrs. Homan’s,”
 Ethan answered, burning to be gone.

Denis’s commercial instinct compelled him to aver on oath that what
Eady’s store could not produce would never be found at the widow
Homan’s; but Ethan, heedless of this boast, had already climbed to
the sledge and was driving on to the rival establishment. Here, after
considerable search, and sympathetic questions as to what he wanted
it for, and whether ordinary flour paste wouldn’t do as well if she
couldn’t find it, the widow Homan finally hunted down her solitary
bottle of glue to its hiding-place in a medley of cough-lozenges and
corset-laces.

“I hope Zeena ain’t broken anything she sets store by,” she called after
him as he turned the greys toward home.

The fitful bursts of sleet had changed into a steady rain and the horses
had heavy work even without a load behind them. Once or twice, hearing
sleigh-bells, Ethan turned his head, fancying that Zeena and Jotham
might overtake him; but the old sorrel was not in sight, and he set his
face against the rain and urged on his ponderous pair.

The barn was empty when the horses turned into it and, after giving them
the most perfunctory ministrations they had ever received from him, he
strode up to the house and pushed open the kitchen door.

Mattie was there alone, as he had pictured her. She was bending over a
pan on the stove; but at the sound of his step she turned with a start
and sprang to him.

“See, here, Matt, I’ve got some stuff to mend the dish with! Let me get
at it quick,” he cried, waving the bottle in one hand while he put her
lightly aside; but she did not seem to hear him.

“Oh, Ethan--Zeena’s come,” she said in a whisper, clutching his sleeve.

They stood and stared at each other, pale as culprits.

“But the sorrel’s not in the barn!” Ethan stammered.

“Jotham Powell brought some goods over from the Flats for his wife, and
he drove right on home with them,” she explained.

He gazed blankly about the kitchen, which looked cold and squalid in the
rainy winter twilight.

“How is she?” he asked, dropping his voice to Mattie’s whisper.

She looked away from him uncertainly. “I don’t know. She went right up
to her room.”

“She didn’t say anything?”

“No.”

Ethan let out his doubts in a low whistle and thrust the bottle back
into his pocket. “Don’t fret; I’ll come down and mend it in the night,”
 he said. He pulled on his wet coat again and went back to the barn to
feed the greys.

While he was there Jotham Powell drove up with the sleigh, and when the
horses had been attended to Ethan said to him: “You might as well come
back up for a bite.” He was not sorry to assure himself of Jotham’s
neutralising presence at the supper table, for Zeena was always
“nervous” after a journey. But the hired man, though seldom loth to
accept a meal not included in his wages, opened his stiff jaws to answer
slowly: “I’m obliged to you, but I guess I’ll go along back.”

Ethan looked at him in surprise. “Better come up and dry off. Looks as
if there’d be something hot for supper.”

Jotham’s facial muscles were unmoved by this appeal and, his vocabulary
being limited, he merely repeated: “I guess I’ll go along back.”

To Ethan there was something vaguely ominous in this stolid rejection of
free food and warmth, and he wondered what had happened on the drive to
nerve Jotham to such stoicism. Perhaps Zeena had failed to see the new
doctor or had not liked his counsels: Ethan knew that in such cases
the first person she met was likely to be held responsible for her
grievance.

When he re-entered the kitchen the lamp lit up the same scene of shining
comfort as on the previous evening. The table had been as carefully
laid, a clear fire glowed in the stove, the cat dozed in its warmth, and
Mattie came forward carrying a plate of dough-nuts.

She and Ethan looked at each other in silence; then she said, as she had
said the night before: “I guess it’s about time for supper.”




VII


Ethan went out into the passage to hang up his wet garments. He listened
for Zeena’s step and, not hearing it, called her name up the stairs. She
did not answer, and after a moment’s hesitation he went up and opened
her door. The room was almost dark, but in the obscurity he saw her
sitting by the window, bolt upright, and knew by the rigidity of the
outline projected against the pane that she had not taken off her
travelling dress.

“Well, Zeena,” he ventured from the threshold.

She did not move, and he continued: “Supper’s about ready. Ain’t you
coming?”

She replied: “I don’t feel as if I could touch a morsel.”

It was the consecrated formula, and he expected it to be followed, as
usual, by her rising and going down to supper. But she remained seated,
and he could think of nothing more felicitous than: “I presume you’re
tired after the long ride.”

Turning her head at this, she answered solemnly: “I’m a great deal
sicker than you think.”

Her words fell on his ear with a strange shock of wonder. He had often
heard her pronounce them before--what if at last they were true?

He advanced a step or two into the dim room. “I hope that’s not so,
Zeena,” he said.

She continued to gaze at him through the twilight with a mien of wan
authority, as of one consciously singled out for a great fate. “I’ve got
complications,” she said.

Ethan knew the word for one of exceptional import. Almost everybody in
the neighbourhood had “troubles,” frankly localized and specified;
but only the chosen had “complications.” To have them was in itself a
distinction, though it was also, in most cases, a death-warrant. People
struggled on for years with “troubles,” but they almost always succumbed
to “complications.”

Ethan’s heart was jerking to and fro between two extremities of feeling,
but for the moment compassion prevailed. His wife looked so hard and
lonely, sitting there in the darkness with such thoughts.

“Is that what the new doctor told you?” he asked, instinctively lowering
his voice.

“Yes. He says any regular doctor would want me to have an operation.”

Ethan was aware that, in regard to the important question of surgical
intervention, the female opinion of the neighbourhood was divided, some
glorying in the prestige conferred by operations while others shunned
them as indelicate. Ethan, from motives of economy, had always been glad
that Zeena was of the latter faction.

In the agitation caused by the gravity of her announcement he sought
a consolatory short cut. “What do you know about this doctor anyway?
Nobody ever told you that before.”

He saw his blunder before she could take it up: she wanted sympathy, not
consolation.

“I didn’t need to have anybody tell me I was losing ground every day.
Everybody but you could see it. And everybody in Bettsbridge knows
about Dr. Buck. He has his office in Worcester, and comes over once
a fortnight to Shadd’s Falls and Bettsbridge for consultations. Eliza
Spears was wasting away with kidney trouble before she went to him, and
now she’s up and around, and singing in the choir.”

“Well, I’m glad of that. You must do just what he tells you,” Ethan
answered sympathetically.

She was still looking at him. “I mean to,” she said. He was struck by a
new note in her voice. It was neither whining nor reproachful, but drily
resolute.

“What does he want you should do?” he asked, with a mounting vision of
fresh expenses.

“He wants I should have a hired girl. He says I oughtn’t to have to do a
single thing around the house.”

“A hired girl?” Ethan stood transfixed.

“Yes. And Aunt Martha found me one right off. Everybody said I was lucky
to get a girl to come away out here, and I agreed to give her a dollar
extry to make sure. She’ll be over to-morrow afternoon.”

Wrath and dismay contended in Ethan. He had foreseen an immediate demand
for money, but not a permanent drain on his scant resources. He no
longer believed what Zeena had told him of the supposed seriousness of
her state: he saw in her expedition to Bettsbridge only a plot hatched
between herself and her Pierce relations to foist on him the cost of a
servant; and for the moment wrath predominated.

“If you meant to engage a girl you ought to have told me before you
started,” he said.

“How could I tell you before I started? How did I know what Dr. Buck
would say?”

“Oh, Dr. Buck--” Ethan’s incredulity escaped in a short laugh. “Did Dr.
Buck tell you how I was to pay her wages?”

Her voice rose furiously with his. “No, he didn’t. For I’d ‘a’ been
ashamed to tell him that you grudged me the money to get back my health,
when I lost it nursing your own mother!”

“You lost your health nursing mother?”

“Yes; and my folks all told me at the time you couldn’t do no less than
marry me after--”

“Zeena!”

Through the obscurity which hid their faces their thoughts seemed to
dart at each other like serpents shooting venom. Ethan was seized
with horror of the scene and shame at his own share in it. It was as
senseless and savage as a physical fight between two enemies in the
darkness.

He turned to the shelf above the chimney, groped for matches and lit the
one candle in the room. At first its weak flame made no impression on
the shadows; then Zeena’s face stood grimly out against the uncurtained
pane, which had turned from grey to black.

It was the first scene of open anger between the couple in their sad
seven years together, and Ethan felt as if he had lost an irretrievable
advantage in descending to the level of recrimination. But the practical
problem was there and had to be dealt with.

“You know I haven’t got the money to pay for a girl, Zeena. You’ll have
to send her back: I can’t do it.”

“The doctor says it’ll be my death if I go on slaving the way I’ve had
to. He doesn’t understand how I’ve stood it as long as I have.”

“Slaving!--” He checked himself again, “You sha’n’t lift a hand, if he
says so. I’ll do everything round the house myself--”

She broke in: “You’re neglecting the farm enough already,” and this
being true, he found no answer, and left her time to add ironically:
“Better send me over to the almshouse and done with it... I guess
there’s been Fromes there afore now.”

The taunt burned into him, but he let it pass. “I haven’t got the money.
That settles it.”

There was a moment’s pause in the struggle, as though the combatants
were testing their weapons. Then Zeena said in a level voice: “I thought
you were to get fifty dollars from Andrew Hale for that lumber.”

“Andrew Hale never pays under three months.” He had hardly spoken when
he remembered the excuse he had made for not accompanying his wife to
the station the day before; and the blood rose to his frowning brows.

“Why, you told me yesterday you’d fixed it up with him to pay cash down.
You said that was why you couldn’t drive me over to the Flats.”

Ethan had no suppleness in deceiving. He had never before been convicted
of a lie, and all the resources of evasion failed him. “I guess that was
a misunderstanding,” he stammered.

“You ain’t got the money?”

“No.”

“And you ain’t going to get it?”

“No.”

“Well, I couldn’t know that when I engaged the girl, could I?”

“No.” He paused to control his voice. “But you know it now. I’m sorry,
but it can’t be helped. You’re a poor man’s wife, Zeena; but I’ll do the
best I can for you.”

For a while she sat motionless, as if reflecting, her arms stretched
along the arms of her chair, her eyes fixed on vacancy. “Oh, I guess
we’ll make out,” she said mildly.

The change in her tone reassured him. “Of course we will! There’s a
whole lot more I can do for you, and Mattie--”

Zeena, while he spoke, seemed to be following out some elaborate mental
calculation. She emerged from it to say: “There’ll be Mattie’s board
less, any how--”

Ethan, supposing the discussion to be over, had turned to go down to
supper. He stopped short, not grasping what he heard. “Mattie’s board
less--?” he began.

Zeena laughed. It was on odd unfamiliar sound--he did not remember ever
having heard her laugh before. “You didn’t suppose I was going to keep
two girls, did you? No wonder you were scared at the expense!”

He still had but a confused sense of what she was saying. From the
beginning of the discussion he had instinctively avoided the mention of
Mattie’s name, fearing he hardly knew what: criticism, complaints, or
vague allusions to the imminent probability of her marrying. But the
thought of a definite rupture had never come to him, and even now could
not lodge itself in his mind.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said. “Mattie Silver’s not a hired
girl. She’s your relation.”

“She’s a pauper that’s hung onto us all after her father’d done his best
to ruin us. I’ve kep’ her here a whole year: it’s somebody else’s turn
now.”

As the shrill words shot out Ethan heard a tap on the door, which he had
drawn shut when he turned back from the threshold.

“Ethan--Zeena!” Mattie’s voice sounded gaily from the landing, “do you
know what time it is? Supper’s been ready half an hour.”

Inside the room there was a moment’s silence; then Zeena called out from
her seat: “I’m not coming down to supper.”

“Oh, I’m sorry! Aren’t you well? Sha’n’t I bring you up a bite of
something?”

Ethan roused himself with an effort and opened the door. “Go along down,
Matt. Zeena’s just a little tired. I’m coming.”

He heard her “All right!” and her quick step on the stairs; then he
shut the door and turned back into the room. His wife’s attitude was
unchanged, her face inexorable, and he was seized with the despairing
sense of his helplessness.

“You ain’t going to do it, Zeena?”

“Do what?” she emitted between flattened lips.

“Send Mattie away--like this?”

“I never bargained to take her for life!”

He continued with rising vehemence: “You can’t put her out of the house
like a thief--a poor girl without friends or money. She’s done her best
for you and she’s got no place to go to. You may forget she’s your kin
but everybody else’ll remember it. If you do a thing like that what do
you suppose folks’ll say of you?”

Zeena waited a moment, as if giving him time to feel the full force
of the contrast between his own excitement and her composure. Then she
replied in the same smooth voice: “I know well enough what they say of
my having kep’ her here as long as I have.”

Ethan’s hand dropped from the door-knob, which he had held clenched
since he had drawn the door shut on Mattie. His wife’s retort was like a
knife-cut across the sinews and he felt suddenly weak and powerless.
He had meant to humble himself, to argue that Mattie’s keep didn’t cost
much, after all, that he could make out to buy a stove and fix up a
place in the attic for the hired girl--but Zeena’s words revealed the
peril of such pleadings.

“You mean to tell her she’s got to go--at once?” he faltered out, in
terror of letting his wife complete her sentence.

As if trying to make him see reason she replied impartially: “The girl
will be over from Bettsbridge to-morrow, and I presume she’s got to have
somewheres to sleep.”

Ethan looked at her with loathing. She was no longer the listless
creature who had lived at his side in a state of sullen self-absorption,
but a mysterious alien presence, an evil energy secreted from the long
years of silent brooding. It was the sense of his helplessness that
sharpened his antipathy. There had never been anything in her that
one could appeal to; but as long as he could ignore and command he had
remained indifferent. Now she had mastered him and he abhorred her.
Mattie was her relation, not his: there were no means by which he could
compel her to keep the girl under her roof. All the long misery of his
baffled past, of his youth of failure, hardship and vain effort, rose
up in his soul in bitterness and seemed to take shape before him in the
woman who at every turn had barred his way. She had taken everything
else from him; and now she meant to take the one thing that made up for
all the others. For a moment such a flame of hate rose in him that it
ran down his arm and clenched his fist against her. He took a wild step
forward and then stopped.

“You’re--you’re not coming down?” he said in a bewildered voice.

“No. I guess I’ll lay down on the bed a little while,” she answered
mildly; and he turned and walked out of the room.

In the kitchen Mattie was sitting by the stove, the cat curled up on her
knees. She sprang to her feet as Ethan entered and carried the covered
dish of meat-pie to the table.

“I hope Zeena isn’t sick?” she asked.

“No.”

She shone at him across the table. “Well, sit right down then. You must
be starving.” She uncovered the pie and pushed it over to him. So they
were to have one more evening together, her happy eyes seemed to say!

He helped himself mechanically and began to eat; then disgust took him
by the throat and he laid down his fork.

Mattie’s tender gaze was on him and she marked the gesture.

“Why, Ethan, what’s the matter? Don’t it taste right?”

“Yes--it’s first-rate. Only I--” He pushed his plate away, rose from his
chair, and walked around the table to her side. She started up with
frightened eyes.

“Ethan, there’s something wrong! I knew there was!”

She seemed to melt against him in her terror, and he caught her in his
arms, held her fast there, felt her lashes beat his cheek like netted
butterflies.

“What is it--what is it?” she stammered; but he had found her lips at
last and was drinking unconsciousness of everything but the joy they
gave him.

She lingered a moment, caught in the same strong current; then she
slipped from him and drew back a step or two, pale and troubled. Her
look smote him with compunction, and he cried out, as if he saw her
drowning in a dream: “You can’t go, Matt! I’ll never let you!”

“Go--go?” she stammered. “Must I go?”

The words went on sounding between them as though a torch of warning
flew from hand to hand through a black landscape.

Ethan was overcome with shame at his lack of self-control in flinging
the news at her so brutally. His head reeled and he had to support
himself against the table. All the while he felt as if he were still
kissing her, and yet dying of thirst for her lips.

“Ethan, what has happened? Is Zeena mad with me?”

Her cry steadied him, though it deepened his wrath and pity. “No, no,”
 he assured her, “it’s not that. But this new doctor has scared her about
herself. You know she believes all they say the first time she sees
them. And this one’s told her she won’t get well unless she lays up and
don’t do a thing about the house--not for months--”

He paused, his eyes wandering from her miserably. She stood silent a
moment, drooping before him like a broken branch. She was so small and
weak-looking that it wrung his heart; but suddenly she lifted her head
and looked straight at him. “And she wants somebody handier in my place?
Is that it?”

“That’s what she says to-night.”

“If she says it to-night she’ll say it to-morrow.”

Both bowed to the inexorable truth: they knew that Zeena never changed
her mind, and that in her case a resolve once taken was equivalent to an
act performed.

There was a long silence between them; then Mattie said in a low voice:
“Don’t be too sorry, Ethan.”

“Oh, God--oh, God,” he groaned. The glow of passion he had felt for her
had melted to an aching tenderness. He saw her quick lids beating back
the tears, and longed to take her in his arms and soothe her.

“You’re letting your supper get cold,” she admonished him with a pale
gleam of gaiety.

“Oh, Matt--Matt--where’ll you go to?”

Her lids sank and a tremor crossed her face. He saw that for the first
time the thought of the future came to her distinctly. “I might get
something to do over at Stamford,” she faltered, as if knowing that he
knew she had no hope.

He dropped back into his seat and hid his face in his hands. Despair
seized him at the thought of her setting out alone to renew the weary
quest for work. In the only place where she was known she was surrounded
by indifference or animosity; and what chance had she, inexperienced
and untrained, among the million bread-seekers of the cities? There came
back to him miserable tales he had heard at Worcester, and the faces
of girls whose lives had begun as hopefully as Mattie’s.... It was not
possible to think of such things without a revolt of his whole being. He
sprang up suddenly.

“You can’t go, Matt! I won’t let you! She’s always had her way, but I
mean to have mine now--”

Mattie lifted her hand with a quick gesture, and he heard his wife’s
step behind him.

Zeena came into the room with her dragging down-at-the-heel step, and
quietly took her accustomed seat between them.

“I felt a little mite better, and Dr. Buck says I ought to eat all I can
to keep my strength up, even if I ain’t got any appetite,” she said in
her flat whine, reaching across Mattie for the teapot. Her “good” dress
had been replaced by the black calico and brown knitted shawl which
formed her daily wear, and with them she had put on her usual face and
manner. She poured out her tea, added a great deal of milk to it, helped
herself largely to pie and pickles, and made the familiar gesture of
adjusting her false teeth before she began to eat. The cat rubbed itself
ingratiatingly against her, and she said “Good Pussy,” stooped to stroke
it and gave it a scrap of meat from her plate.

Ethan sat speechless, not pretending to eat, but Mattie nibbled
valiantly at her food and asked Zeena one or two questions about her
visit to Bettsbridge. Zeena answered in her every-day tone and, warming
to the theme, regaled them with several vivid descriptions of intestinal
disturbances among her friends and relatives. She looked straight at
Mattie as she spoke, a faint smile deepening the vertical lines between
her nose and chin.

When supper was over she rose from her seat and pressed her hand to the
flat surface over the region of her heart. “That pie of yours always
sets a mite heavy, Matt,” she said, not ill-naturedly. She seldom
abbreviated the girl’s name, and when she did so it was always a sign of
affability.

“I’ve a good mind to go and hunt up those stomach powders I got last
year over in Springfield,” she continued. “I ain’t tried them for quite
a while, and maybe they’ll help the heartburn.”

Mattie lifted her eyes. “Can’t I get them for you, Zeena?” she ventured.

“No. They’re in a place you don’t know about,” Zeena answered darkly,
with one of her secret looks.

She went out of the kitchen and Mattie, rising, began to clear the
dishes from the table. As she passed Ethan’s chair their eyes met and
clung together desolately. The warm still kitchen looked as peaceful as
the night before. The cat had sprung to Zeena’s rocking-chair, and the
heat of the fire was beginning to draw out the faint sharp scent of the
geraniums. Ethan dragged himself wearily to his feet.

“I’ll go out and take a look around,” he said, going toward the passage
to get his lantern.

As he reached the door he met Zeena coming back into the room, her lips
twitching with anger, a flush of excitement on her sallow face.
The shawl had slipped from her shoulders and was dragging at her
down-trodden heels, and in her hands she carried the fragments of the
red glass pickle-dish.

“I’d like to know who done this,” she said, looking sternly from Ethan
to Mattie.

There was no answer, and she continued in a trembling voice: “I went to
get those powders I’d put away in father’s old spectacle-case, top of
the china-closet, where I keep the things I set store by, so’s folks
shan’t meddle with them--” Her voice broke, and two small tears hung
on her lashless lids and ran slowly down her cheeks. “It takes the
stepladder to get at the top shelf, and I put Aunt Philura Maple’s
pickle-dish up there o’ purpose when we was married, and it’s never been
down since, ‘cept for the spring cleaning, and then I always lifted it
with my own hands, so’s ‘t it shouldn’t get broke.” She laid the fragments
reverently on the table. “I want to know who done this,” she quavered.

At the challenge Ethan turned back into the room and faced her. “I can
tell you, then. The cat done it.”

“The cat?”

“That’s what I said.”

She looked at him hard, and then turned her eyes to Mattie, who was
carrying the dish-pan to the table.

“I’d like to know how the cat got into my china-closet”’ she said.

“Chasin’ mice, I guess,” Ethan rejoined. “There was a mouse round the
kitchen all last evening.”

Zeena continued to look from one to the other; then she emitted her
small strange laugh. “I knew the cat was a smart cat,” she said in a
high voice, “but I didn’t know he was smart enough to pick up the pieces
of my pickle-dish and lay ‘em edge to edge on the very shelf he knocked
‘em off of.”

Mattie suddenly drew her arms out of the steaming water. “It wasn’t
Ethan’s fault, Zeena! The cat did break the dish; but I got it down from
the china-closet, and I’m the one to blame for its getting broken.”

Zeena stood beside the ruin of her treasure, stiffening into a stony
image of resentment, “You got down my pickle-dish-what for?”

A bright flush flew to Mattie’s cheeks. “I wanted to make the
supper-table pretty,” she said.

“You wanted to make the supper-table pretty; and you waited till my back
was turned, and took the thing I set most store by of anything I’ve got,
and wouldn’t never use it, not even when the minister come to dinner,
or Aunt Martha Pierce come over from Bettsbridge--” Zeena paused with a
gasp, as if terrified by her own evocation of the sacrilege. “You’re a
bad girl, Mattie Silver, and I always known it. It’s the way your father
begun, and I was warned of it when I took you, and I tried to keep my
things where you couldn’t get at ‘em--and now you’ve took from me the one
I cared for most of all--” She broke off in a short spasm of sobs that
passed and left her more than ever like a shape of stone.

“If I’d ‘a’ listened to folks, you’d ‘a’ gone before now, and this
wouldn’t ‘a’ happened,” she said; and gathering up the bits of broken
glass she went out of the room as if she carried a dead body...




VIII


When Ethan was called back to the farm by his father’s illness his
mother gave him, for his own use, a small room behind the untenanted
“best parlour.” Here he had nailed up shelves for his books, built
himself a box-sofa out of boards and a mattress, laid out his papers on
a kitchen-table, hung on the rough plaster wall an engraving of Abraham
Lincoln and a calendar with “Thoughts from the Poets,” and tried, with
these meagre properties, to produce some likeness to the study of a
“minister” who had been kind to him and lent him books when he was at
Worcester. He still took refuge there in summer, but when Mattie came to
live at the farm he had to give her his stove, and consequently the room
was uninhabitable for several months of the year.

To this retreat he descended as soon as the house was quiet, and Zeena’s
steady breathing from the bed had assured him that there was to be
no sequel to the scene in the kitchen. After Zeena’s departure he and
Mattie had stood speechless, neither seeking to approach the other. Then
the girl had returned to her task of clearing up the kitchen for the
night and he had taken his lantern and gone on his usual round outside
the house. The kitchen was empty when he came back to it; but his
tobacco-pouch and pipe had been laid on the table, and under them was
a scrap of paper torn from the back of a seedsman’s catalogue, on which
three words were written: “Don’t trouble, Ethan.”

Going into his cold dark “study” he placed the lantern on the table
and, stooping to its light, read the message again and again. It was the
first time that Mattie had ever written to him, and the possession of
the paper gave him a strange new sense of her nearness; yet it deepened
his anguish by reminding him that henceforth they would have no other
way of communicating with each other. For the life of her smile, the
warmth of her voice, only cold paper and dead words!

Confused motions of rebellion stormed in him. He was too young, too
strong, too full of the sap of living, to submit so easily to the
destruction of his hopes. Must he wear out all his years at the side
of a bitter querulous woman? Other possibilities had been in him,
possibilities sacrificed, one by one, to Zeena’s narrow-mindedness
and ignorance. And what good had come of it? She was a hundred times
bitterer and more discontented than when he had married her: the one
pleasure left her was to inflict pain on him. All the healthy instincts
of self-defence rose up in him against such waste...

He bundled himself into his old coon-skin coat and lay down on the
box-sofa to think. Under his cheek he felt a hard object with strange
protuberances. It was a cushion which Zeena had made for him when they
were engaged--the only piece of needlework he had ever seen her do. He
flung it across the floor and propped his head against the wall...

He knew a case of a man over the mountain--a young fellow of about his
own age--who had escaped from just such a life of misery by going West
with the girl he cared for. His wife had divorced him, and he had
married the girl and prospered. Ethan had seen the couple the summer
before at Shadd’s Falls, where they had come to visit relatives. They
had a little girl with fair curls, who wore a gold locket and was
dressed like a princess. The deserted wife had not done badly either.
Her husband had given her the farm and she had managed to sell it, and
with that and the alimony she had started a lunch-room at Bettsbridge
and bloomed into activity and importance. Ethan was fired by the
thought. Why should he not leave with Mattie the next day, instead of
letting her go alone? He would hide his valise under the seat of the
sleigh, and Zeena would suspect nothing till she went upstairs for her
afternoon nap and found a letter on the bed...

His impulses were still near the surface, and he sprang up, re-lit the
lantern, and sat down at the table. He rummaged in the drawer for a
sheet of paper, found one, and began to write.

“Zeena, I’ve done all I could for you, and I don’t see as it’s been any
use. I don’t blame you, nor I don’t blame myself. Maybe both of us will
do better separate. I’m going to try my luck West, and you can sell the
farm and mill, and keep the money--”

His pen paused on the word, which brought home to him the relentless
conditions of his lot. If he gave the farm and mill to Zeena what would
be left him to start his own life with? Once in the West he was sure of
picking up work--he would not have feared to try his chance alone. But
with Mattie depending on him the case was different. And what of Zeena’s
fate? Farm and mill were mortgaged to the limit of their value, and even
if she found a purchaser--in itself an unlikely chance--it was doubtful if
she could clear a thousand dollars on the sale. Meanwhile, how could
she keep the farm going? It was only by incessant labour and personal
supervision that Ethan drew a meagre living from his land, and his wife,
even if she were in better health than she imagined, could never carry
such a burden alone.

Well, she could go back to her people, then, and see what they would do
for her. It was the fate she was forcing on Mattie--why not let her try
it herself? By the time she had discovered his whereabouts, and brought
suit for divorce, he would probably--wherever he was--be earning enough to
pay her a sufficient alimony. And the alternative was to let Mattie go
forth alone, with far less hope of ultimate provision...

He had scattered the contents of the table-drawer in his search for a
sheet of paper, and as he took up his pen his eye fell on an old copy of
the Bettsbridge Eagle. The advertising sheet was folded uppermost, and
he read the seductive words: “Trips to the West: Reduced Rates.”

He drew the lantern nearer and eagerly scanned the fares; then the paper
fell from his hand and he pushed aside his unfinished letter. A moment
ago he had wondered what he and Mattie were to live on when they reached
the West; now he saw that he had not even the money to take her there.
Borrowing was out of the question: six months before he had given his
only security to raise funds for necessary repairs to the mill, and
he knew that without security no one at Starkfield would lend him ten
dollars. The inexorable facts closed in on him like prison-warders
handcuffing a convict. There was no way out--none. He was a prisoner for
life, and now his one ray of light was to be extinguished.

He crept back heavily to the sofa, stretching himself out with limbs so
leaden that he felt as if they would never move again. Tears rose in his
throat and slowly burned their way to his lids.

As he lay there, the window-pane that faced him, growing gradually
lighter, inlaid upon the darkness a square of moon-suffused sky. A
crooked tree-branch crossed it, a branch of the apple-tree under which,
on summer evenings, he had sometimes found Mattie sitting when he came
up from the mill. Slowly the rim of the rainy vapours caught fire and
burnt away, and a pure moon swung into the blue. Ethan, rising on his
elbow, watched the landscape whiten and shape itself under the sculpture
of the moon. This was the night on which he was to have taken Mattie
coasting, and there hung the lamp to light them! He looked out at the
slopes bathed in lustre, the silver-edged darkness of the woods, the
spectral purple of the hills against the sky, and it seemed as
though all the beauty of the night had been poured out to mock his
wretchedness...

He fell asleep, and when he woke the chill of the winter dawn was in the
room. He felt cold and stiff and hungry, and ashamed of being hungry.
He rubbed his eyes and went to the window. A red sun stood over the grey
rim of the fields, behind trees that looked black and brittle. He said
to himself: “This is Matt’s last day,” and tried to think what the place
would be without her.

As he stood there he heard a step behind him and she entered.

“Oh, Ethan--were you here all night?”

She looked so small and pinched, in her poor dress, with the red scarf
wound about her, and the cold light turning her paleness sallow, that
Ethan stood before her without speaking.

“You must be frozen,” she went on, fixing lustreless eyes on him.

He drew a step nearer. “How did you know I was here?”

“Because I heard you go down stairs again after I went to bed, and I
listened all night, and you didn’t come up.”

All his tenderness rushed to his lips. He looked at her and said: “I’ll
come right along and make up the kitchen fire.”

They went back to the kitchen, and he fetched the coal and kindlings
and cleared out the stove for her, while she brought in the milk and
the cold remains of the meat-pie. When warmth began to radiate from the
stove, and the first ray of sunlight lay on the kitchen floor, Ethan’s
dark thoughts melted in the mellower air. The sight of Mattie going
about her work as he had seen her on so many mornings made it seem
impossible that she should ever cease to be a part of the scene. He said
to himself that he had doubtless exaggerated the significance of Zeena’s
threats, and that she too, with the return of daylight, would come to a
saner mood.

He went up to Mattie as she bent above the stove, and laid his hand on
her arm. “I don’t want you should trouble either,” he said, looking down
into her eyes with a smile.

She flushed up warmly and whispered back: “No, Ethan, I ain’t going to
trouble.”

“I guess things’ll straighten out,” he added.

There was no answer but a quick throb of her lids, and he went on: “She
ain’t said anything this morning?”

“No. I haven’t seen her yet.”

“Don’t you take any notice when you do.”

With this injunction he left her and went out to the cow-barn. He saw
Jotham Powell walking up the hill through the morning mist, and the
familiar sight added to his growing conviction of security.

As the two men were clearing out the stalls Jotham rested on his
pitch-fork to say: “Dan’l Byrne’s goin’ over to the Flats to-day noon,
an’ he c’d take Mattie’s trunk along, and make it easier ridin’ when I
take her over in the sleigh.”

Ethan looked at him blankly, and he continued: “Mis’ Frome said the new
girl’d be at the Flats at five, and I was to take Mattie then, so’s ‘t
she could ketch the six o’clock train for Stamford.”

Ethan felt the blood drumming in his temples. He had to wait a moment
before he could find voice to say: “Oh, it ain’t so sure about Mattie’s
going--”

“That so?” said Jotham indifferently; and they went on with their work.

When they returned to the kitchen the two women were already at
breakfast. Zeena had an air of unusual alertness and activity. She drank
two cups of coffee and fed the cat with the scraps left in the pie-dish;
then she rose from her seat and, walking over to the window, snipped two
or three yellow leaves from the geraniums. “Aunt Martha’s ain’t got a
faded leaf on ‘em; but they pine away when they ain’t cared for,” she
said reflectively. Then she turned to Jotham and asked: “What time’d you
say Dan’l Byrne’d be along?”

The hired man threw a hesitating glance at Ethan. “Round about noon,” he
said.

Zeena turned to Mattie. “That trunk of yours is too heavy for the
sleigh, and Dan’l Byrne’ll be round to take it over to the Flats,” she
said.

“I’m much obliged to you, Zeena,” said Mattie.

“I’d like to go over things with you first,” Zeena continued in an
unperturbed voice. “I know there’s a huckabuck towel missing; and I
can’t make out what you done with that match-safe ‘t used to stand
behind the stuffed owl in the parlour.”

She went out, followed by Mattie, and when the men were alone Jotham
said to his employer: “I guess I better let Dan’l come round, then.”

Ethan finished his usual morning tasks about the house and barn; then
he said to Jotham: “I’m going down to Starkfield. Tell them not to wait
dinner.”

The passion of rebellion had broken out in him again. That which had
seemed incredible in the sober light of day had really come to pass,
and he was to assist as a helpless spectator at Mattie’s banishment.
His manhood was humbled by the part he was compelled to play and by the
thought of what Mattie must think of him. Confused impulses struggled
in him as he strode along to the village. He had made up his mind to do
something, but he did not know what it would be.

The early mist had vanished and the fields lay like a silver shield
under the sun. It was one of the days when the glitter of winter shines
through a pale haze of spring. Every yard of the road was alive with
Mattie’s presence, and there was hardly a branch against the sky or a
tangle of brambles on the bank in which some bright shred of memory was
not caught. Once, in the stillness, the call of a bird in a mountain ash
was so like her laughter that his heart tightened and then grew large;
and all these things made him see that something must be done at once.

Suddenly it occurred to him that Andrew Hale, who was a kind-hearted
man, might be induced to reconsider his refusal and advance a small sum
on the lumber if he were told that Zeena’s ill-health made it necessary
to hire a servant. Hale, after all, knew enough of Ethan’s situation
to make it possible for the latter to renew his appeal without too much
loss of pride; and, moreover, how much did pride count in the ebullition
of passions in his breast?

The more he considered his plan the more hopeful it seemed. If he could
get Mrs. Hale’s ear he felt certain of success, and with fifty dollars
in his pocket nothing could keep him from Mattie...

His first object was to reach Starkfield before Hale had started for
his work; he knew the carpenter had a job down the Corbury road and was
likely to leave his house early. Ethan’s long strides grew more rapid
with the accelerated beat of his thoughts, and as he reached the foot of
School House Hill he caught sight of Hale’s sleigh in the distance. He
hurried forward to meet it, but as it drew nearer he saw that it was
driven by the carpenter’s youngest boy and that the figure at his side,
looking like a large upright cocoon in spectacles, was that of Mrs.
Hale. Ethan signed to them to stop, and Mrs. Hale leaned forward, her
pink wrinkles twinkling with benevolence.

“Mr. Hale? Why, yes, you’ll find him down home now. He ain’t going to
his work this forenoon. He woke up with a touch o’ lumbago, and I just
made him put on one of old Dr. Kidder’s plasters and set right up into
the fire.”

Beaming maternally on Ethan, she bent over to add: “I on’y just heard
from Mr. Hale ‘bout Zeena’s going over to Bettsbridge to see that new
doctor. I’m real sorry she’s feeling so bad again! I hope he thinks he
can do something for her. I don’t know anybody round here’s had more
sickness than Zeena. I always tell Mr. Hale I don’t know what she’d ‘a’
done if she hadn’t ‘a’ had you to look after her; and I used to say
the same thing ‘bout your mother. You’ve had an awful mean time, Ethan
Frome.”

She gave him a last nod of sympathy while her son chirped to the horse;
and Ethan, as she drove off, stood in the middle of the road and stared
after the retreating sleigh.

It was a long time since any one had spoken to him as kindly as Mrs.
Hale. Most people were either indifferent to his troubles, or disposed
to think it natural that a young fellow of his age should have carried
without repining the burden of three crippled lives. But Mrs. Hale had
said, “You’ve had an awful mean time, Ethan Frome,” and he felt less
alone with his misery. If the Hales were sorry for him they would surely
respond to his appeal...

He started down the road toward their house, but at the end of a few
yards he pulled up sharply, the blood in his face. For the first time,
in the light of the words he had just heard, he saw what he was about to
do. He was planning to take advantage of the Hales’ sympathy to obtain
money from them on false pretences. That was a plain statement of the
cloudy purpose which had driven him in headlong to Starkfield.

With the sudden perception of the point to which his madness had carried
him, the madness fell and he saw his life before him as it was. He was a
poor man, the husband of a sickly woman, whom his desertion would leave
alone and destitute; and even if he had had the heart to desert her he
could have done so only by deceiving two kindly people who had pitied
him.

He turned and walked slowly back to the farm.




IX


At the kitchen door Daniel Byrne sat in his sleigh behind a big-boned
grey who pawed the snow and swung his long head restlessly from side to
side.

Ethan went into the kitchen and found his wife by the stove. Her head
was wrapped in her shawl, and she was reading a book called “Kidney
Troubles and Their Cure” on which he had had to pay extra postage only a
few days before.

Zeena did not move or look up when he entered, and after a moment he
asked: “Where’s Mattie?”

Without lifting her eyes from the page she replied: “I presume she’s
getting down her trunk.”

The blood rushed to his face. “Getting down her trunk--alone?”

“Jotham Powell’s down in the wood-lot, and Dan’l Byrne says he darsn’t
leave that horse,” she returned.

Her husband, without stopping to hear the end of the phrase, had left
the kitchen and sprung up the stairs. The door of Mattie’s room was
shut, and he wavered a moment on the landing. “Matt,” he said in a low
voice; but there was no answer, and he put his hand on the door-knob.

He had never been in her room except once, in the early summer, when
he had gone there to plaster up a leak in the eaves, but he remembered
exactly how everything had looked: the red-and-white quilt on her narrow
bed, the pretty pin-cushion on the chest of drawers, and over it the
enlarged photograph of her mother, in an oxydized frame, with a bunch of
dyed grasses at the back. Now these and all other tokens of her presence
had vanished, and the room looked as bare and comfortless as when Zeena
had shown her into it on the day of her arrival. In the middle of the
floor stood her trunk, and on the trunk she sat in her Sunday dress,
her back turned to the door and her face in her hands. She had not heard
Ethan’s call because she was sobbing and she did not hear his step till
he stood close behind her and laid his hands on her shoulders.

“Matt--oh, don’t--oh, Matt!”

She started up, lifting her wet face to his. “Ethan--I thought I wasn’t
ever going to see you again!”

He took her in his arms, pressing her close, and with a trembling hand
smoothed away the hair from her forehead.

“Not see me again? What do you mean?”

She sobbed out: “Jotham said you told him we wasn’t to wait dinner for
you, and I thought--”

“You thought I meant to cut it?” he finished for her grimly.

She clung to him without answering, and he laid his lips on her hair,
which was soft yet springy, like certain mosses on warm slopes, and had
the faint woody fragrance of fresh sawdust in the sun.

Through the door they heard Zeena’s voice calling out from below: “Dan’l
Byrne says you better hurry up if you want him to take that trunk.”

They drew apart with stricken faces. Words of resistance rushed to
Ethan’s lips and died there. Mattie found her handkerchief and dried her
eyes; then, bending down, she took hold of a handle of the trunk.

Ethan put her aside. “You let go, Matt,” he ordered her.

She answered: “It takes two to coax it round the corner”; and submitting
to this argument he grasped the other handle, and together they
manoeuvred the heavy trunk out to the landing.

“Now let go,” he repeated; then he shouldered the trunk and carried it
down the stairs and across the passage to the kitchen. Zeena, who had
gone back to her seat by the stove, did not lift her head from her book
as he passed. Mattie followed him out of the door and helped him to lift
the trunk into the back of the sleigh. When it was in place they stood
side by side on the door-step, watching Daniel Byrne plunge off behind
his fidgety horse.

It seemed to Ethan that his heart was bound with cords which an unseen
hand was tightening with every tick of the clock. Twice he opened his
lips to speak to Mattie and found no breath. At length, as she turned to
re-enter the house, he laid a detaining hand on her.

“I’m going to drive you over, Matt,” he whispered.

She murmured back: “I think Zeena wants I should go with Jotham.”

“I’m going to drive you over,” he repeated; and she went into the
kitchen without answering.

At dinner Ethan could not eat. If he lifted his eyes they rested on
Zeena’s pinched face, and the corners of her straight lips seemed to
quiver away into a smile. She ate well, declaring that the mild weather
made her feel better, and pressed a second helping of beans on Jotham
Powell, whose wants she generally ignored.

Mattie, when the meal was over, went about her usual task of clearing
the table and washing up the dishes. Zeena, after feeding the cat,
had returned to her rocking-chair by the stove, and Jotham Powell, who
always lingered last, reluctantly pushed back his chair and moved toward
the door.

On the threshold he turned back to say to Ethan: “What time’ll I come
round for Mattie?”

Ethan was standing near the window, mechanically filling his pipe while
he watched Mattie move to and fro. He answered: “You needn’t come round;
I’m going to drive her over myself.”

He saw the rise of the colour in Mattie’s averted cheek, and the quick
lifting of Zeena’s head.

“I want you should stay here this afternoon, Ethan,” his wife said.
“Jotham can drive Mattie over.”

Mattie flung an imploring glance at him, but he repeated curtly: “I’m
going to drive her over myself.”

Zeena continued in the same even tone: “I wanted you should stay and fix
up that stove in Mattie’s room afore the girl gets here. It ain’t been
drawing right for nigh on a month now.”

Ethan’s voice rose indignantly. “If it was good enough for Mattie I
guess it’s good enough for a hired girl.”

“That girl that’s coming told me she was used to a house where they had
a furnace,” Zeena persisted with the same monotonous mildness.

“She’d better ha’ stayed there then,” he flung back at her; and turning
to Mattie he added in a hard voice: “You be ready by three, Matt; I’ve
got business at Corbury.”

Jotham Powell had started for the barn, and Ethan strode down after him
aflame with anger. The pulses in his temples throbbed and a fog was in
his eyes. He went about his task without knowing what force directed
him, or whose hands and feet were fulfilling its orders. It was not till
he led out the sorrel and backed him between the shafts of the sleigh
that he once more became conscious of what he was doing. As he passed
the bridle over the horse’s head, and wound the traces around the
shafts, he remembered the day when he had made the same preparations
in order to drive over and meet his wife’s cousin at the Flats. It
was little more than a year ago, on just such a soft afternoon, with a
“feel” of spring in the air. The sorrel, turning the same big ringed eye
on him, nuzzled the palm of his hand in the same way; and one by one all
the days between rose up and stood before him...

He flung the bearskin into the sleigh, climbed to the seat, and drove up
to the house. When he entered the kitchen it was empty, but Mattie’s bag
and shawl lay ready by the door. He went to the foot of the stairs and
listened. No sound reached him from above, but presently he thought he
heard some one moving about in his deserted study, and pushing open the
door he saw Mattie, in her hat and jacket, standing with her back to him
near the table.

She started at his approach and turning quickly, said: “Is it time?”

“What are you doing here, Matt?” he asked her.

She looked at him timidly. “I was just taking a look round--that’s all,”
 she answered, with a wavering smile.

They went back into the kitchen without speaking, and Ethan picked up
her bag and shawl.

“Where’s Zeena?” he asked.

“She went upstairs right after dinner. She said she had those shooting
pains again, and didn’t want to be disturbed.”

“Didn’t she say good-bye to you?”

“No. That was all she said.”

Ethan, looking slowly about the kitchen, said to himself with a shudder
that in a few hours he would be returning to it alone. Then the sense
of unreality overcame him once more, and he could not bring himself to
believe that Mattie stood there for the last time before him.

“Come on,” he said almost gaily, opening the door and putting her bag
into the sleigh. He sprang to his seat and bent over to tuck the rug
about her as she slipped into the place at his side. “Now then, go
‘long,” he said, with a shake of the reins that sent the sorrel placidly
jogging down the hill.

“We got lots of time for a good ride, Matt!” he cried, seeking her hand
beneath the fur and pressing it in his. His face tingled and he felt
dizzy, as if he had stopped in at the Starkfield saloon on a zero day
for a drink.

At the gate, instead of making for Starkfield, he turned the sorrel to
the right, up the Bettsbridge road. Mattie sat silent, giving no sign
of surprise; but after a moment she said: “Are you going round by Shadow
Pond?”

He laughed and answered: “I knew you’d know!”

She drew closer under the bearskin, so that, looking sideways around his
coat-sleeve, he could just catch the tip of her nose and a blown brown
wave of hair. They drove slowly up the road between fields glistening
under the pale sun, and then bent to the right down a lane edged with
spruce and larch. Ahead of them, a long way off, a range of hills
stained by mottlings of black forest flowed away in round white curves
against the sky. The lane passed into a pine-wood with boles reddening
in the afternoon sun and delicate blue shadows on the snow. As they
entered it the breeze fell and a warm stillness seemed to drop from the
branches with the dropping needles. Here the snow was so pure that the
tiny tracks of wood-animals had left on it intricate lace-like patterns,
and the bluish cones caught in its surface stood out like ornaments of
bronze.

Ethan drove on in silence till they reached a part of the wood where the
pines were more widely spaced; then he drew up and helped Mattie to get
out of the sleigh. They passed between the aromatic trunks, the snow
breaking crisply under their feet, till they came to a small sheet
of water with steep wooded sides. Across its frozen surface, from the
farther bank, a single hill rising against the western sun threw the
long conical shadow which gave the lake its name. It was a shy secret
spot, full of the same dumb melancholy that Ethan felt in his heart.

He looked up and down the little pebbly beach till his eye lit on a
fallen tree-trunk half submerged in snow.

“There’s where we sat at the picnic,” he reminded her.

The entertainment of which he spoke was one of the few that they had
taken part in together: a “church picnic” which, on a long afternoon of
the preceding summer, had filled the retired place with merry-making.
Mattie had begged him to go with her but he had refused. Then, toward
sunset, coming down from the mountain where he had been felling timber,
he had been caught by some strayed revellers and drawn into the group by
the lake, where Mattie, encircled by facetious youths, and bright as
a blackberry under her spreading hat, was brewing coffee over a gipsy
fire. He remembered the shyness he had felt at approaching her in his
uncouth clothes, and then the lighting up of her face, and the way she
had broken through the group to come to him with a cup in her hand. They
had sat for a few minutes on the fallen log by the pond, and she had
missed her gold locket, and set the young men searching for it; and it
was Ethan who had spied it in the moss.... That was all; but all their
intercourse had been made up of just such inarticulate flashes, when
they seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a
butterfly in the winter woods...

“It was right there I found your locket,” he said, pushing his foot into
a dense tuft of blueberry bushes.

“I never saw anybody with such sharp eyes!” she answered.

She sat down on the tree-trunk in the sun and he sat down beside her.

“You were as pretty as a picture in that pink hat,” he said.

She laughed with pleasure. “Oh, I guess it was the hat!” she rejoined.

They had never before avowed their inclination so openly, and Ethan, for
a moment, had the illusion that he was a free man, wooing the girl he
meant to marry. He looked at her hair and longed to touch it again, and
to tell her that it smelt of the woods; but he had never learned to say
such things.

Suddenly she rose to her feet and said: “We mustn’t stay here any
longer.”

He continued to gaze at her vaguely, only half-roused from his dream.
“There’s plenty of time,” he answered.

They stood looking at each other as if the eyes of each were straining
to absorb and hold fast the other’s image. There were things he had to
say to her before they parted, but he could not say them in that place
of summer memories, and he turned and followed her in silence to
the sleigh. As they drove away the sun sank behind the hill and the
pine-boles turned from red to grey.

By a devious track between the fields they wound back to the Starkfield
road. Under the open sky the light was still clear, with a reflection of
cold red on the eastern hills. The clumps of trees in the snow seemed to
draw together in ruffled lumps, like birds with their heads under their
wings; and the sky, as it paled, rose higher, leaving the earth more
alone.

As they turned into the Starkfield road Ethan said: “Matt, what do you
mean to do?”

She did not answer at once, but at length she said: “I’ll try to get a
place in a store.”

“You know you can’t do it. The bad air and the standing all day nearly
killed you before.”

“I’m a lot stronger than I was before I came to Starkfield.”

“And now you’re going to throw away all the good it’s done you!”

There seemed to be no answer to this, and again they drove on for a
while without speaking. With every yard of the way some spot where they
had stood, and laughed together or been silent, clutched at Ethan and
dragged him back.

“Isn’t there any of your father’s folks could help you?”

“There isn’t any of ‘em I’d ask.”

He lowered his voice to say: “You know there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for
you if I could.”

“I know there isn’t.”

“But I can’t--”

She was silent, but he felt a slight tremor in the shoulder against his.

“Oh, Matt,” he broke out, “if I could ha’ gone with you now I’d ha’ done
it--”

She turned to him, pulling a scrap of paper from her breast. “Ethan--I
found this,” she stammered. Even in the failing light he saw it was the
letter to his wife that he had begun the night before and forgotten
to destroy. Through his astonishment there ran a fierce thrill of joy.
“Matt--” he cried; “if I could ha’ done it, would you?”

“Oh, Ethan, Ethan--what’s the use?” With a sudden movement she tore the
letter in shreds and sent them fluttering off into the snow.

“Tell me, Matt! Tell me!” he adjured her.

She was silent for a moment; then she said, in such a low tone that he
had to stoop his head to hear her: “I used to think of it sometimes,
summer nights when the moon was so bright. I couldn’t sleep.”

His heart reeled with the sweetness of it. “As long ago as that?”

She answered, as if the date had long been fixed for her: “The first
time was at Shadow Pond.”

“Was that why you gave me my coffee before the others?”

“I don’t know. Did I? I was dreadfully put out when you wouldn’t go to
the picnic with me; and then, when I saw you coming down the road, I
thought maybe you’d gone home that way o’ purpose; and that made me
glad.”

They were silent again. They had reached the point where the road
dipped to the hollow by Ethan’s mill and as they descended the darkness
descended with them, dropping down like a black veil from the heavy
hemlock boughs.

“I’m tied hand and foot, Matt. There isn’t a thing I can do,” he began
again.

“You must write to me sometimes, Ethan.”

“Oh, what good’ll writing do? I want to put my hand out and touch you. I
want to do for you and care for you. I want to be there when you’re sick
and when you’re lonesome.”

“You mustn’t think but what I’ll do all right.”

“You won’t need me, you mean? I suppose you’ll marry!”

“Oh, Ethan!” she cried.

“I don’t know how it is you make me feel, Matt. I’d a’most rather have
you dead than that!”

“Oh, I wish I was, I wish I was!” she sobbed.

The sound of her weeping shook him out of his dark anger, and he felt
ashamed.

“Don’t let’s talk that way,” he whispered.

“Why shouldn’t we, when it’s true? I’ve been wishing it every minute of
the day.”

“Matt! You be quiet! Don’t you say it.”

“There’s never anybody been good to me but you.”

“Don’t say that either, when I can’t lift a hand for you!”

“Yes; but it’s true just the same.”

They had reached the top of School House Hill and Starkfield lay below
them in the twilight. A cutter, mounting the road from the village,
passed them by in a joyous flutter of bells, and they straightened
themselves and looked ahead with rigid faces. Along the main street
lights had begun to shine from the house-fronts and stray figures were
turning in here and there at the gates. Ethan, with a touch of his whip,
roused the sorrel to a languid trot.

As they drew near the end of the village the cries of children reached
them, and they saw a knot of boys, with sleds behind them, scattering
across the open space before the church.

“I guess this’ll be their last coast for a day or two,” Ethan said,
looking up at the mild sky.

Mattie was silent, and he added: “We were to have gone down last night.”

Still she did not speak and, prompted by an obscure desire to
help himself and her through their miserable last hour, he went on
discursively: “Ain’t it funny we haven’t been down together but just
that once last winter?”

She answered: “It wasn’t often I got down to the village.”

“That’s so,” he said.

They had reached the crest of the Corbury road, and between the
indistinct white glimmer of the church and the black curtain of the
Varnum spruces the slope stretched away below them without a sled on its
length. Some erratic impulse prompted Ethan to say: “How’d you like me
to take you down now?”

She forced a laugh. “Why, there isn’t time!”

“There’s all the time we want. Come along!” His one desire now was to
postpone the moment of turning the sorrel toward the Flats.

“But the girl,” she faltered. “The girl’ll be waiting at the station.”

“Well, let her wait. You’d have to if she didn’t. Come!”

The note of authority in his voice seemed to subdue her, and when he
had jumped from the sleigh she let him help her out, saying only, with a
vague feint of reluctance: “But there isn’t a sled round anywheres.”

“Yes, there is! Right over there under the spruces.” He threw the
bearskin over the sorrel, who stood passively by the roadside, hanging
a meditative head. Then he caught Mattie’s hand and drew her after him
toward the sled.

She seated herself obediently and he took his place behind her, so close
that her hair brushed his face. “All right, Matt?” he called out, as if
the width of the road had been between them.

She turned her head to say: “It’s dreadfully dark. Are you sure you can
see?”

He laughed contemptuously: “I could go down this coast with my
eyes tied!” and she laughed with him, as if she liked his audacity.
Nevertheless he sat still a moment, straining his eyes down the long
hill, for it was the most confusing hour of the evening, the hour when
the last clearness from the upper sky is merged with the rising night in
a blur that disguises landmarks and falsifies distances.

“Now!” he cried.

The sled started with a bound, and they flew on through the dusk,
gathering smoothness and speed as they went, with the hollow night
opening out below them and the air singing by like an organ. Mattie sat
perfectly still, but as they reached the bend at the foot of the hill,
where the big elm thrust out a deadly elbow, he fancied that she shrank
a little closer.

“Don’t be scared, Matt!” he cried exultantly, as they spun safely past
it and flew down the second slope; and when they reached the level
ground beyond, and the speed of the sled began to slacken, he heard her
give a little laugh of glee.

They sprang off and started to walk back up the hill. Ethan dragged the
sled with one hand and passed the other through Mattie’s arm.

“Were you scared I’d run you into the elm?” he asked with a boyish
laugh.

“I told you I was never scared with you,” she answered.

The strange exaltation of his mood had brought on one of his rare fits
of boastfulness. “It is a tricky place, though. The least swerve,
and we’d never ha’ come up again. But I can measure distances to a
hair’s-breadth--always could.”

She murmured: “I always say you’ve got the surest eye...”

Deep silence had fallen with the starless dusk, and they leaned on each
other without speaking; but at every step of their climb Ethan said to
himself: “It’s the last time we’ll ever walk together.”

They mounted slowly to the top of the hill. When they were abreast of
the church he stooped his head to her to ask: “Are you tired?” and she
answered, breathing quickly: “It was splendid!”

With a pressure of his arm he guided her toward the Norway spruces. “I
guess this sled must be Ned Hale’s. Anyhow I’ll leave it where I found
it.” He drew the sled up to the Varnum gate and rested it against the
fence. As he raised himself he suddenly felt Mattie close to him among
the shadows.

“Is this where Ned and Ruth kissed each other?” she whispered
breathlessly, and flung her arms about him. Her lips, groping for his,
swept over his face, and he held her fast in a rapture of surprise.

“Good-bye-good-bye,” she stammered, and kissed him again.

“Oh, Matt, I can’t let you go!” broke from him in the same old cry.

She freed herself from his hold and he heard her sobbing. “Oh, I can’t
go either!” she wailed.

“Matt! What’ll we do? What’ll we do?”

They clung to each other’s hands like children, and her body shook with
desperate sobs.

Through the stillness they heard the church clock striking five.

“Oh, Ethan, it’s time!” she cried.

He drew her back to him. “Time for what? You don’t suppose I’m going to
leave you now?”

“If I missed my train where’d I go?”

“Where are you going if you catch it?”

She stood silent, her hands lying cold and relaxed in his.

“What’s the good of either of us going anywheres without the other one
now?” he said.

She remained motionless, as if she had not heard him. Then she snatched
her hands from his, threw her arms about his neck, and pressed a sudden
drenched cheek against his face. “Ethan! Ethan! I want you to take me
down again!”

“Down where?”

“The coast. Right off,” she panted. “So ‘t we’ll never come up any
more.”

“Matt! What on earth do you mean?”

She put her lips close against his ear to say: “Right into the big elm.
You said you could. So ‘t we’d never have to leave each other any more.”

“Why, what are you talking of? You’re crazy!”

“I’m not crazy; but I will be if I leave you.”

“Oh, Matt, Matt--” he groaned.

She tightened her fierce hold about his neck. Her face lay close to his
face.

“Ethan, where’ll I go if I leave you? I don’t know how to get along
alone. You said so yourself just now. Nobody but you was ever good to
me. And there’ll be that strange girl in the house... and she’ll sleep
in my bed, where I used to lay nights and listen to hear you come up the
stairs...”

The words were like fragments torn from his heart. With them came the
hated vision of the house he was going back to--of the stairs he would
have to go up every night, of the woman who would wait for him there.
And the sweetness of Mattie’s avowal, the wild wonder of knowing at
last that all that had happened to him had happened to her too, made the
other vision more abhorrent, the other life more intolerable to return
to...

Her pleadings still came to him between short sobs, but he no longer
heard what she was saying. Her hat had slipped back and he was stroking
her hair. He wanted to get the feeling of it into his hand, so that it
would sleep there like a seed in winter. Once he found her mouth again,
and they seemed to be by the pond together in the burning August sun.
But his cheek touched hers, and it was cold and full of weeping, and he
saw the road to the Flats under the night and heard the whistle of the
train up the line.

The spruces swathed them in blackness and silence. They might have been
in their coffins underground. He said to himself: “Perhaps it’ll feel
like this...” and then again: “After this I sha’n’t feel anything...”

Suddenly he heard the old sorrel whinny across the road, and thought:
“He’s wondering why he doesn’t get his supper...”

“Come!” Mattie whispered, tugging at his hand.

Her sombre violence constrained him: she seemed the embodied instrument
of fate. He pulled the sled out, blinking like a night-bird as he passed
from the shade of the spruces into the transparent dusk of the open. The
slope below them was deserted. All Starkfield was at supper, and not a
figure crossed the open space before the church. The sky, swollen with
the clouds that announce a thaw, hung as low as before a summer storm.
He strained his eyes through the dimness, and they seemed less keen,
less capable than usual.

He took his seat on the sled and Mattie instantly placed herself in
front of him. Her hat had fallen into the snow and his lips were in her
hair. He stretched out his legs, drove his heels into the road to keep
the sled from slipping forward, and bent her head back between his
hands. Then suddenly he sprang up again.

“Get up,” he ordered her.

It was the tone she always heeded, but she cowered down in her seat,
repeating vehemently: “No, no, no!”

“Get up!”

“Why?”

“I want to sit in front.”

“No, no! How can you steer in front?”

“I don’t have to. We’ll follow the track.”

They spoke in smothered whispers, as though the night were listening.

“Get up! Get up!” he urged her; but she kept on repeating: “Why do you
want to sit in front?”

“Because I--because I want to feel you holding me,” he stammered, and
dragged her to her feet.

The answer seemed to satisfy her, or else she yielded to the power of
his voice. He bent down, feeling in the obscurity for the glassy slide
worn by preceding coasters, and placed the runners carefully between its
edges. She waited while he seated himself with crossed legs in the front
of the sled; then she crouched quickly down at his back and clasped her
arms about him. Her breath in his neck set him shuddering again, and
he almost sprang from his seat. But in a flash he remembered the
alternative. She was right: this was better than parting. He leaned back
and drew her mouth to his...

Just as they started he heard the sorrel’s whinny again, and the
familiar wistful call, and all the confused images it brought with it,
went with him down the first reach of the road. Half-way down there
was a sudden drop, then a rise, and after that another long delirious
descent. As they took wing for this it seemed to him that they were
flying indeed, flying far up into the cloudy night, with Starkfield
immeasurably below them, falling away like a speck in space... Then the
big elm shot up ahead, lying in wait for them at the bend of the road,
and he said between his teeth: “We can fetch it; I know we can fetch
it--”

As they flew toward the tree Mattie pressed her arms tighter, and her
blood seemed to be in his veins. Once or twice the sled swerved a little
under them. He slanted his body to keep it headed for the elm, repeating
to himself again and again: “I know we can fetch it”; and little phrases
she had spoken ran through his head and danced before him on the air.
The big tree loomed bigger and closer, and as they bore down on it
he thought: “It’s waiting for us: it seems to know.” But suddenly his
wife’s face, with twisted monstrous lineaments, thrust itself between
him and his goal, and he made an instinctive movement to brush it aside.
The sled swerved in response, but he righted it again, kept it straight,
and drove down on the black projecting mass. There was a last instant
when the air shot past him like millions of fiery wires; and then the
elm...

The sky was still thick, but looking straight up he saw a single star,
and tried vaguely to reckon whether it were Sirius, or--or--The effort
tired him too much, and he closed his heavy lids and thought that he
would sleep... The stillness was so profound that he heard a little
animal twittering somewhere near by under the snow. It made a small
frightened cheep like a field mouse, and he wondered languidly if
it were hurt. Then he understood that it must be in pain: pain so
excruciating that he seemed, mysteriously, to feel it shooting through
his own body. He tried in vain to roll over in the direction of the
sound, and stretched his left arm out across the snow. And now it was as
though he felt rather than heard the twittering; it seemed to be under
his palm, which rested on something soft and springy. The thought of
the animal’s suffering was intolerable to him and he struggled to raise
himself, and could not because a rock, or some huge mass, seemed to be
lying on him. But he continued to finger about cautiously with his left
hand, thinking he might get hold of the little creature and help it; and
all at once he knew that the soft thing he had touched was Mattie’s hair
and that his hand was on her face.

He dragged himself to his knees, the monstrous load on him moving with
him as he moved, and his hand went over and over her face, and he felt
that the twittering came from her lips...

He got his face down close to hers, with his ear to her mouth, and in
the darkness he saw her eyes open and heard her say his name.

“Oh, Matt, I thought we’d fetched it,” he moaned; and far off, up the
hill, he heard the sorrel whinny, and thought: “I ought to be getting
him his feed...”


*****


THE QUERULOUS DRONE ceased as I entered Frome’s kitchen, and of the two
women sitting there I could not tell which had been the speaker.

One of them, on my appearing, raised her tall bony figure from her seat,
not as if to welcome me--for she threw me no more than a brief glance
of surprise--but simply to set about preparing the meal which Frome’s
absence had delayed. A slatternly calico wrapper hung from her shoulders
and the wisps of her thin grey hair were drawn away from a high forehead
and fastened at the back by a broken comb. She had pale opaque eyes
which revealed nothing and reflected nothing, and her narrow lips were
of the same sallow colour as her face.

The other woman was much smaller and slighter. She sat huddled in an
arm-chair near the stove, and when I came in she turned her head quickly
toward me, without the least corresponding movement of her body.
Her hair was as grey as her companion’s, her face as bloodless and
shrivelled, but amber-tinted, with swarthy shadows sharpening the nose
and hollowing the temples. Under her shapeless dress her body kept its
limp immobility, and her dark eyes had the bright witch-like stare that
disease of the spine sometimes gives.

Even for that part of the country the kitchen was a poor-looking place.
With the exception of the dark-eyed woman’s chair, which looked like a
soiled relic of luxury bought at a country auction, the furniture was of
the roughest kind. Three coarse china plates and a broken-nosed milk-jug
had been set on a greasy table scored with knife-cuts, and a couple
of straw-bottomed chairs and a kitchen dresser of unpainted pine stood
meagrely against the plaster walls.

“My, it’s cold here! The fire must be ‘most out,” Frome said, glancing
about him apologetically as he followed me in.

The tall woman, who had moved away from us toward the dresser, took no
notice; but the other, from her cushioned niche, answered complainingly,
in a high thin voice. “It’s on’y just been made up this very minute.
Zeena fell asleep and slep’ ever so long, and I thought I’d be frozen
stiff before I could wake her up and get her to ‘tend to it.”

I knew then that it was she who had been speaking when we entered.

Her companion, who was just coming back to the table with the remains
of a cold mince-pie in a battered pie-dish, set down her unappetising
burden without appearing to hear the accusation brought against her.

Frome stood hesitatingly before her as she advanced; then he looked at
me and said: “This is my wife, Mis’ Frome.” After another interval he
added, turning toward the figure in the arm-chair: “And this is Miss
Mattie Silver...”


*****


Mrs. Hale, tender soul, had pictured me as lost in the Flats and buried
under a snow-drift; and so lively was her satisfaction on seeing me
safely restored to her the next morning that I felt my peril had caused
me to advance several degrees in her favour.

Great was her amazement, and that of old Mrs. Varnum, on learning that
Ethan Frome’s old horse had carried me to and from Corbury Junction
through the worst blizzard of the winter; greater still their surprise
when they heard that his master had taken me in for the night.

Beneath their wondering exclamations I felt a secret curiosity to know
what impressions I had received from my night in the Frome household,
and divined that the best way of breaking down their reserve was to let
them try to penetrate mine. I therefore confined myself to saying, in a
matter-of-fact tone, that I had been received with great kindness, and
that Frome had made a bed for me in a room on the ground-floor which
seemed in happier days to have been fitted up as a kind of writing-room
or study.

“Well,” Mrs. Hale mused, “in such a storm I suppose he felt he couldn’t
do less than take you in--but I guess it went hard with Ethan. I don’t
believe but what you’re the only stranger has set foot in that house for
over twenty years. He’s that proud he don’t even like his oldest friends
to go there; and I don’t know as any do, any more, except myself and the
doctor...”

“You still go there, Mrs. Hale?” I ventured.

“I used to go a good deal after the accident, when I was first married;
but after awhile I got to think it made ‘em feel worse to see us. And
then one thing and another came, and my own troubles... But I generally
make out to drive over there round about New Year’s, and once in the
summer. Only I always try to pick a day when Ethan’s off somewheres.
It’s bad enough to see the two women sitting there--but his face, when he
looks round that bare place, just kills me... You see, I can look back
and call it up in his mother’s day, before their troubles.”

Old Mrs. Varnum, by this time, had gone up to bed, and her daughter
and I were sitting alone, after supper, in the austere seclusion of
the horse-hair parlour. Mrs. Hale glanced at me tentatively, as though
trying to see how much footing my conjectures gave her; and I guessed
that if she had kept silence till now it was because she had been
waiting, through all the years, for some one who should see what she
alone had seen.

I waited to let her trust in me gather strength before I said: “Yes,
it’s pretty bad, seeing all three of them there together.”

She drew her mild brows into a frown of pain. “It was just awful from
the beginning. I was here in the house when they were carried up--they
laid Mattie Silver in the room you’re in. She and I were great friends,
and she was to have been my bridesmaid in the spring... When she came
to I went up to her and stayed all night. They gave her things to quiet
her, and she didn’t know much till to’rd morning, and then all of a
sudden she woke up just like herself, and looked straight at me out
of her big eyes, and said... Oh, I don’t know why I’m telling you all
this,” Mrs. Hale broke off, crying.

She took off her spectacles, wiped the moisture from them, and put them
on again with an unsteady hand. “It got about the next day,” she went
on, “that Zeena Frome had sent Mattie off in a hurry because she had a
hired girl coming, and the folks here could never rightly tell what she
and Ethan were doing that night coasting, when they’d ought to have been
on their way to the Flats to ketch the train... I never knew myself
what Zeena thought--I don’t to this day. Nobody knows Zeena’s thoughts.
Anyhow, when she heard o’ the accident she came right in and stayed with
Ethan over to the minister’s, where they’d carried him. And as soon as
the doctors said that Mattie could be moved, Zeena sent for her and took
her back to the farm.”

“And there she’s been ever since?”

Mrs. Hale answered simply: “There was nowhere else for her to go;” and
my heart tightened at the thought of the hard compulsions of the poor.

“Yes, there she’s been,” Mrs. Hale continued, “and Zeena’s done for her,
and done for Ethan, as good as she could. It was a miracle, considering
how sick she was--but she seemed to be raised right up just when the call
came to her. Not as she’s ever given up doctoring, and she’s had sick
spells right along; but she’s had the strength given her to care for
those two for over twenty years, and before the accident came she
thought she couldn’t even care for herself.”

Mrs. Hale paused a moment, and I remained silent, plunged in the vision
of what her words evoked. “It’s horrible for them all,” I murmured.

“Yes: it’s pretty bad. And they ain’t any of ‘em easy people either.
Mattie was, before the accident; I never knew a sweeter nature. But
she’s suffered too much--that’s what I always say when folks tell me how
she’s soured. And Zeena, she was always cranky. Not but what she bears
with Mattie wonderful--I’ve seen that myself. But sometimes the two
of them get going at each other, and then Ethan’s face’d break your
heart... When I see that, I think it’s him that suffers most... anyhow
it ain’t Zeena, because she ain’t got the time... It’s a pity, though,”
 Mrs. Hale ended, sighing, “that they’re all shut up there’n that one
kitchen. In the summertime, on pleasant days, they move Mattie into
the parlour, or out in the door-yard, and that makes it easier... but
winters there’s the fires to be thought of; and there ain’t a dime to
spare up at the Fromes.’”

Mrs. Hale drew a deep breath, as though her memory were eased of its
long burden, and she had no more to say; but suddenly an impulse of
complete avowal seized her.

She took off her spectacles again, leaned toward me across the bead-work
table-cover, and went on with lowered voice: “There was one day, about
a week after the accident, when they all thought Mattie couldn’t live.
Well, I say it’s a pity she did. I said it right out to our minister
once, and he was shocked at me. Only he wasn’t with me that morning
when she first came to... And I say, if she’d ha’ died, Ethan might ha’
lived; and the way they are now, I don’t see’s there’s much difference
between the Fromes up at the farm and the Fromes down in the graveyard;
‘cept that down there they’re all quiet, and the women have got to hold
their tongues.”






SUMMER

by Edith Wharton


1917




I


A girl came out of lawyer Royall’s house, at the end of the one street
of North Dormer, and stood on the doorstep.

It was the beginning of a June afternoon. The springlike transparent sky
shed a rain of silver sunshine on the roofs of the village, and on the
pastures and larchwoods surrounding it. A little wind moved among the
round white clouds on the shoulders of the hills, driving their shadows
across the fields and down the grassy road that takes the name of street
when it passes through North Dormer. The place lies high and in the
open, and lacks the lavish shade of the more protected New England
villages. The clump of weeping-willows about the duck pond, and the
Norway spruces in front of the Hatchard gate, cast almost the only
roadside shadow between lawyer Royall’s house and the point where, at
the other end of the village, the road rises above the church and skirts
the black hemlock wall enclosing the cemetery.

The little June wind, frisking down the street, shook the doleful
fringes of the Hatchard spruces, caught the straw hat of a young man
just passing under them, and spun it clean across the road into the
duck-pond.

As he ran to fish it out the girl on lawyer Royall’s doorstep noticed
that he was a stranger, that he wore city clothes, and that he was
laughing with all his teeth, as the young and careless laugh at such
mishaps.

Her heart contracted a little, and the shrinking that sometimes came
over her when she saw people with holiday faces made her draw back into
the house and pretend to look for the key that she knew she had already
put into her pocket. A narrow greenish mirror with a gilt eagle over it
hung on the passage wall, and she looked critically at her reflection,
wished for the thousandth time that she had blue eyes like Annabel
Balch, the girl who sometimes came from Springfield to spend a week with
old Miss Hatchard, straightened the sunburnt hat over her small swarthy
face, and turned out again into the sunshine.

“How I hate everything!” she murmured.

The young man had passed through the Hatchard gate, and she had the
street to herself. North Dormer is at all times an empty place, and at
three o’clock on a June afternoon its few able-bodied men are off in
the fields or woods, and the women indoors, engaged in languid household
drudgery.

The girl walked along, swinging her key on a finger, and looking about
her with the heightened attention produced by the presence of a stranger
in a familiar place. What, she wondered, did North Dormer look like to
people from other parts of the world? She herself had lived there
since the age of five, and had long supposed it to be a place of some
importance. But about a year before, Mr. Miles, the new Episcopal
clergyman at Hepburn, who drove over every other Sunday--when the roads
were not ploughed up by hauling--to hold a service in the North Dormer
church, had proposed, in a fit of missionary zeal, to take the young
people down to Nettleton to hear an illustrated lecture on the Holy
Land; and the dozen girls and boys who represented the future of North
Dormer had been piled into a farm-waggon, driven over the hills to
Hepburn, put into a way-train and carried to Nettleton.

In the course of that incredible day Charity Royall had, 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
to a gentleman saying unintelligible things before pictures that she
would have enjoyed looking at if his explanations had not prevented her
from understanding them. This initiation had shown her that North Dormer
was a small place, and developed in her a thirst for information that
her position as custodian of the village library had previously failed
to excite. For a month or two she dipped feverishly and disconnectedly
into the dusty volumes of the Hatchard Memorial Library; then the
impression of Nettleton began to fade, and she found it easier to take
North Dormer as the norm of the universe than to go on reading.

The sight of the stranger once more revived memories of Nettleton, and
North Dormer shrank to its real size. As she looked up and down it, from
lawyer Royall’s faded red house at one end to the white church at the
other, she pitilessly took its measure. There it lay, a weather-beaten
sunburnt village of the hills, abandoned of men, left apart by railway,
trolley, telegraph, and all the forces that link life to life in modern
communities. It had no shops, no theatres, no lectures, no “business
block”; only a church that was opened every other Sunday if the state
of the roads permitted, and a library for which no new books had been
bought for twenty years, and where the old ones mouldered undisturbed on
the damp shelves. Yet Charity Royall had always been told that she ought
to consider it a privilege that her lot had been cast in North Dormer.
She knew that, compared to the place she had come from, North Dormer
represented all the blessings of the most refined civilization. Everyone
in the village had told her so ever since she had been brought there as
a child. Even old Miss Hatchard had said to her, on a terrible occasion
in her life: “My child, you must never cease to remember that it was Mr.
Royall who brought you down from the Mountain.”

She had been “brought down from the Mountain”; from the scarred cliff
that lifted its sullen wall above the lesser slopes of Eagle Range,
making a perpetual background of gloom to the lonely valley. The
Mountain was a good fifteen miles away, but it rose so abruptly from the
lower hills that it seemed almost to cast its shadow over North Dormer.
And it was like a great magnet drawing the clouds and scattering them
in storm across the valley. If ever, in the purest summer sky, there
trailed a thread of vapour over North Dormer, it drifted to the Mountain
as a ship drifts to a whirlpool, and was caught among the rocks, torn up
and multiplied, to sweep back over the village in rain and darkness.

Charity was not very clear about the Mountain; but she knew it was a bad
place, and a shame to have come from, and that, whatever befell her
in North Dormer, she ought, as Miss Hatchard had once reminded her, to
remember that she had been brought down from there, and hold her tongue
and be thankful. She looked up at the Mountain, thinking of these
things, and tried as usual to be thankful. But the sight of the young
man turning in at Miss Hatchard’s gate had brought back the vision of
the glittering streets of Nettleton, and she felt ashamed 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 glories
greater than the glories of Nettleton.

“How I hate everything!” she said again.

Half way down the street she stopped at a weak-hinged gate. Passing
through it, she walked down a brick path to a queer little brick temple
with white wooden columns supporting a pediment on which was inscribed
in tarnished gold letters: “The Honorius Hatchard Memorial Library,
1832.”

Honorius Hatchard had been old Miss Hatchard’s great-uncle; though she
would undoubtedly have reversed the phrase, and put forward, as her
only claim to distinction, the fact that she was his great-niece. For
Honorius Hatchard, in the early years of the nineteenth century, had
enjoyed a modest celebrity. As the marble tablet in the interior of
the library informed its infrequent visitors, he had possessed marked
literary gifts, written a series of papers called “The Recluse of Eagle
Range,” enjoyed the acquaintance of Washington Irving and Fitz-Greene
Halleck, and been cut off in his flower by a fever contracted in Italy.
Such had been the sole link between North Dormer and literature, a
link piously commemorated by the erection of the monument where Charity
Royall, every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, sat at her desk under a
freckled steel engraving of the deceased author, and wondered if he felt
any deader in his grave than she did in his library.

Entering her prison-house with a listless step she took off her hat,
hung it on a plaster bust of Minerva, opened the shutters, leaned out
to see if there were any eggs in the swallow’s nest above one of the
windows, and finally, seating herself behind the desk, drew out a
roll of cotton lace and a steel crochet hook. She was not an expert
workwoman, and it had taken her many weeks to make the half-yard
of narrow lace which she kept wound about the buckram back of a
disintegrated copy of “The Lamplighter.” But there was no other way of
getting any lace to trim her summer blouse, and since Ally Hawes, the
poorest girl in the village, had shown herself in church with enviable
transparencies about the shoulders, Charity’s hook had travelled faster.
She unrolled the lace, dug the hook into a loop, and bent to the task
with furrowed brows.

Suddenly the door opened, and before she had raised her eyes she knew
that the young man she had seen going in at the Hatchard gate had
entered the library.

Without taking any notice of her he began to move slowly about the
long vault-like room, his hands behind his back, his short-sighted eyes
peering up and down the rows of rusty bindings. At length he reached the
desk and stood before her.

“Have you a card-catalogue?” he asked in a pleasant abrupt voice; and
the oddness of the question caused her to drop her work.

“A WHAT?”

“Why, you know----” He broke off, and she became conscious that he was
looking at her for the first time, having apparently, on his entrance,
included her in his general short-sighted survey as part of the
furniture of the library.

The fact that, in discovering her, he lost the thread of his remark,
did not escape her attention, and she looked down and smiled. He smiled
also.

“No, I don’t suppose you do know,” he corrected himself. “In fact, it
would be almost a pity----”

She thought she detected a slight condescension in his tone, and asked
sharply: “Why?”

“Because it’s so much pleasanter, in a small library like this, to poke
about by one’s self--with the help of the librarian.”

He added the last phrase so respectfully that she was mollified, and
rejoined with a sigh: “I’m afraid I can’t help you much.”

“Why?” he questioned in his turn; and she replied that there weren’t
many books anyhow, and that she’d hardly read any of them. “The worms
are getting at them,” she added gloomily.

“Are they? That’s a pity, for I see there are some good ones.” He seemed
to have lost interest in their conversation, and strolled away again,
apparently forgetting her. His indifference nettled her, and she picked
up her work, resolved not to offer him the least assistance. Apparently
he did not need it, for he spent a long time with his back to her,
lifting down, one after another, the tall cob-webby volumes from a
distant shelf.

“Oh, I say!” he exclaimed; and looking up she saw that he had drawn out
his handkerchief and was carefully wiping the edges of the book in his
hand. The action struck her as an unwarranted criticism on her care of
the books, and she said irritably: “It’s not my fault if they’re dirty.”

He turned around and looked at her with reviving interest. “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’s too lame to come round.”

“No, I suppose not.” He laid down the book he had been wiping, and stood
considering her in silence. She wondered if Miss Hatchard had sent
him round to pry into the way the library was looked after, and the
suspicion increased her resentment. “I saw you going into her house just
now, didn’t I?” she asked, with the New England avoidance of the proper
name. She was determined to find out why he was poking about among her
books.

“Miss Hatchard’s house? Yes--she’s my cousin and I’m staying there,” the
young man answered; adding, as if to 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 have said: “Yes, she
has.”

“Oh, well----” said Miss Hatchard’s cousin with a laugh; and after
another pause, during which it occurred to Charity that her answer
had not been encouraging, he remarked: “You don’t seem strong on
architecture.”

Her bewilderment was complete: the more she wished to appear to
understand him the more unintelligible his remarks became. He reminded
her of the gentleman who had “explained” the pictures at Nettleton, and
the weight of her ignorance settled down on her again like a pall.

“I mean, I can’t see that you have any books on the old houses about
here. I suppose, for that matter, this part of the country hasn’t been
much explored. They all go on doing Plymouth and Salem. So stupid. My
cousin’s house, now, is remarkable. This place must have had a past--it
must have been more of a place once.” He stopped short, with the blush
of a shy man who overhears himself, and fears he has been voluble. “I’m
an architect, you see, and I’m hunting up old houses in these parts.”

She stared. “Old houses? Everything’s old in North Dormer, 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 or pamphlet about its first settlement,” he
presently said from the farther end of the room.

She pressed her crochet hook against her lip and pondered. There was
such a work, she knew: “North Dormer and the Early Townships of Eagle
County.” She had a special grudge against it because it was a limp
weakly book that was always either falling off the shelf or slipping
back and disappearing if one squeezed it in between sustaining volumes.
She remembered, the last time she had picked it up, wondering how anyone
could have taken the trouble to write a book about North Dormer and its
neighbours: Dormer, Hamblin, Creston and Creston River. She knew them
all, mere lost clusters of houses in the folds of the desolate ridges:
Dormer, where North Dormer went for its apples; Creston River, where
there used to be a paper-mill, and its grey walls stood decaying by the
stream; and Hamblin, where the first snow always fell. Such were their
titles to fame.

She got up and began to move about vaguely before the shelves. But she
had no idea where she had last put the book, and something told her that
it was going to play her its usual trick and remain invisible. It was
not one of her lucky days.

“I guess it’s somewhere,” she said, to prove her zeal; but she spoke
without conviction, and felt that her words 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 up the 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.




II


The hours of the Hatchard Memorial librarian were from three to five;
and Charity Royall’s sense of duty usually kept her at her desk until
nearly half-past four.

But she had never perceived that any practical advantage thereby
accrued either to North Dormer or to herself; and she had no scruple
in decreeing, when it suited her, that the library should close an hour
earlier. A few minutes after Mr. Harney’s departure she formed this
decision, put away her lace, fastened the shutters, and turned the key
in the door of the temple of knowledge.

The street upon which she emerged was still empty: and after glancing up
and down it she began to walk toward her house. But instead of entering
she passed on, turned into a field-path and mounted to a pasture on the
hillside. She let down the bars of the gate, followed a trail along the
crumbling wall of the pasture, and walked on till she reached a knoll
where a clump of larches shook out their fresh tassels to the wind.
There she lay down on the slope, tossed off her hat and hid her face in
the grass.

She was blind and insensible to many things, and dimly knew it; but to
all that was light and air, perfume and colour, every drop of blood in
her responded. She loved the roughness of the dry mountain grass under
her palms, the smell of the thyme into which she crushed her face, the
fingering of the wind in her hair and through her cotton blouse, and the
creak of the larches as they swayed to it.

She often climbed up the hill and lay there alone for the mere pleasure
of feeling the wind and of rubbing her cheeks in the grass. Generally
at such times she did not think of anything, but lay immersed in an
inarticulate well-being. Today the sense of well-being was intensified
by her joy at escaping from the library. She liked well enough to have a
friend drop in and talk to her when she was on duty, but she hated to be
bothered about books. How could she remember where they were, when they
were so seldom asked for? Orma Fry occasionally took out a novel, and
her brother Ben was fond of what he called “jography,” and of books
relating to trade and bookkeeping; but no one else asked for anything
except, at intervals, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” or “Opening of a Chestnut
Burr,” or Longfellow. She had these under her hand, and could have
found them in the dark; but unexpected demands came so rarely that they
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 was abrupt yet soft, just as his hands were
sun-burnt and sinewy, yet with smooth nails like a woman’s. His hair was
sunburnt-looking too, or rather the colour of bracken after frost; his
eyes grey, with the appealing look 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 his superiority. But
she did feel it, and liked the feeling; for it was new to her. Poor and
ignorant as she was, and knew herself to be--humblest of the humble
even in North Dormer, where to come from the Mountain was the worst
disgrace--yet in her narrow world she had always ruled. It was partly,
of course, owing to the fact that lawyer Royall was “the biggest man
in North Dormer”; so much too big for it, in fact, that outsiders,
who didn’t know, always wondered how it held him. In spite of
everything--and in spite even of Miss Hatchard--lawyer Royall ruled in
North Dormer; and Charity ruled in lawyer Royall’s house. She had never
put it to herself in those terms; but she knew her power, knew what it
was made of, and hated it. Confusedly, the young man in the library
had made her feel for the first time what might be the sweetness of
dependence.

She sat up, brushed the bits of grass from her hair, and looked down on
the house where she held sway. It stood just below her, cheerless and
untended, its faded red front divided from the road by a “yard” with
a path bordered by gooseberry bushes, a stone well overgrown with
traveller’s joy, and a sickly Crimson Rambler tied to a fan-shaped
support, which Mr. Royall had once brought up from Hepburn to please
her. Behind the house a bit of uneven ground with clothes-lines strung
across it stretched up to a dry wall, and beyond the wall a patch of
corn and a few rows of potatoes strayed vaguely 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 she was brought down from the Mountain;
and she could only remember waking one day in a cot at the foot of Mrs.
Royall’s bed, and opening her eyes on the cold neatness of the room that
was afterward to be hers.

Mrs. Royall died seven or eight years later; and by that time Charity
had taken the measure of most things about her. She knew that Mrs.
Royall was sad and timid and weak; she knew that lawyer Royall was harsh
and violent, and still weaker. She knew that she had been christened
Charity (in the white church at the other end of the village) to
commemorate Mr. Royall’s disinterestedness in “bringing her down,” and
to keep alive in her a becoming sense of her dependence; she knew that
Mr. Royall was her guardian, but that he had not legally adopted her,
though everybody spoke of her as Charity Royall; and she knew why he had
come back to live at North Dormer, instead of practising at Nettleton,
where he had begun his legal career.

After Mrs. Royall’s death there was some talk of sending her to a
boarding-school. Miss Hatchard suggested it, and had a long conference
with Mr. Royall, who, in pursuance of her plan, departed one day for
Starkfield to visit the institution she recommended. He came back the
next night with a black face; worse, Charity observed, than she had ever
seen him; and by that time she had had some experience.

When she asked him how soon she was to start he answered shortly, “You
ain’t going,” and shut himself up in the room he called his office;
and the next day the lady who kept the school at Starkfield wrote that
“under the circumstances” she was afraid she could not make room just
then for another pupil.

Charity was disappointed; but she understood. It wasn’t the temptations
of Starkfield that had been Mr. Royall’s undoing; it was the thought of
losing her. He was a dreadfully “lonesome” man; she had made that out
because she was so “lonesome” herself. He and she, face to face in that
sad house, had sounded the depths of isolation; and though she felt
no particular affection for him, and not the slightest gratitude, she
pitied him because she was conscious that he was superior to the people
about him, and that she was the only being between him and solitude.
Therefore, when Miss Hatchard sent for her a day or two later, to talk
of a school at Nettleton, and to say that this time a friend of hers
would “make the necessary arrangements,” Charity cut her short with the
announcement that she had decided not to leave North Dormer.

Miss Hatchard reasoned with her kindly, but to no purpose; she simply
repeated: “I guess Mr. Royall’s too lonesome.”

Miss Hatchard blinked perplexedly behind her eye-glasses. Her long frail
face was full of puzzled wrinkles, and she leant forward, resting her
hands on the arms of her mahogany armchair, with the evident desire 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 and didactic samplers; but they seemed to make
utterance more difficult.

“The fact is, it’s not only--not only because of the advantages. There
are other reasons. You’re too young to understand----”

“Oh, no, I ain’t,” said Charity harshly; and Miss Hatchard blushed to
the roots of her blonde cap. But she must have felt a vague relief at
having her explanation cut short, for she concluded, again invoking the
daguerreotypes: “Of course I shall always do what I can for you; and in
case... in case... you know you can always come to me....”

Lawyer Royall was waiting for Charity in the porch when she returned
from this visit. He had shaved, and brushed his black coat, and looked a
magnificent monument of a man; at such moments she really admired him.

“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 her way to her room.
It was the following week that he brought her up the Crimson Rambler and
its fan from Hepburn. He had never given her anything before.

The next outstanding incident of her life had happened two years later,
when she was seventeen. Lawyer Royall, who hated to go to Nettleton,
had been called there in connection with a case. He still exercised
his profession, though litigation languished in North Dormer and its
outlying hamlets; and for once he had had an opportunity that he could
not afford to refuse. He spent three days in Nettleton, won his case,
and came back in high good-humour. It was a rare mood with him, and
manifested itself on this occasion by his talking impressively at the
supper-table of the “rousing welcome” his old friends had given him. He
wound up confidentially: “I was a damn fool ever to leave Nettleton. It
was Mrs. Royall that made me do it.”

Charity immediately perceived that something bitter had happened to him,
and that he was trying to talk down the recollection. She went up to bed
early, leaving him seated in moody thought, his elbows propped on the
worn oilcloth of the supper table. On the way up she had extracted from
his overcoat pocket the key of the cupboard where the bottle of whiskey
was kept.

She was awakened by a rattling at her door and jumped out of bed. She
heard Mr. Royall’s voice, low and peremptory, and opened the door,
fearing an accident. No other thought had occurred to her; but when
she saw him in the doorway, a ray from the autumn moon falling on his
discomposed face, she understood.

For a moment they looked at each other in silence; then, as he put his
foot across the threshold, she stretched out her arm and stopped him.

“You go right back from here,” she said, in a shrill voice that startled
her; “you ain’t going to have that key tonight.”

“Charity, let me in. I don’t want the key. I’m a lonesome man,” he
began, in the deep voice that sometimes moved her.

Her heart gave a startled plunge, but she continued to hold him back
contemptuously. “Well, I guess you made a mistake, then. This ain’t your
wife’s room any longer.”

She was not frightened, she simply felt a deep disgust; and perhaps he
divined it or read it in her face, for after staring at her a moment
he drew back and turned slowly away from the door. With her ear to her
keyhole she heard him feel his way down the dark stairs, and toward
the kitchen; and she listened for the crash of the cupboard panel, but
instead she heard him, after an interval, unlock the door of the house,
and his heavy steps came to her through the silence as he walked down
the path. She crept to the window and saw his bent figure striding up
the road in the moonlight. Then a belated sense of fear came to her
with the consciousness of victory, and she slipped into bed, cold to the
bone.


A day or two later poor Eudora Skeff, who for twenty years had been the
custodian of the Hatchard library, died suddenly of pneumonia; and the
day after the funeral Charity went to see Miss Hatchard, and asked to be
appointed librarian. The request seemed to surprise Miss Hatchard: she
evidently questioned the new candidate’s qualifications.

“Why, I don’t know, my dear. Aren’t you rather too young?” she
hesitated.

“I want to earn some money,” Charity merely answered.

“Doesn’t Mr. Royall give you all you require? No one is rich in North
Dormer.”

“I want to earn money enough to get away.”

“To get away?” Miss Hatchard’s puzzled wrinkles deepened, and there was
a distressful pause. “You want to 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 arms of her chair. Her
eyes invoked the faded countenances on the wall, and after a faint cough
of indecision she brought out: “The... the housework’s too hard for you,
I suppose?”

Charity’s heart grew cold. She understood that Miss Hatchard had no
help to give her and that she would have to fight her way out of her
difficulty alone. A deeper sense of isolation overcame her; she felt
incalculably old. “She’s got to be talked to like a baby,” she thought,
with a feeling of compassion for Miss Hatchard’s long immaturity. “Yes,
that’s it,” she said aloud. “The housework’s too hard for me: I’ve been
coughing a good deal this fall.”

She noted the immediate effect of this suggestion. Miss Hatchard paled
at the memory of poor Eudora’s taking-off, and promised to do what she
could. But of course there were people she must consult: the clergyman,
the selectmen of North Dormer, and a distant Hatchard relative at
Springfield. “If you’d only gone to school!” she sighed. She followed
Charity to the door, and there, in the security of the threshold, said
with a glance of evasive appeal: “I know Mr. Royall is... trying at
times; but his wife bore with him; and you must always remember,
Charity, that it was Mr. Royall who brought you down from the Mountain.”
 Charity went home and opened the door of Mr. Royall’s “office.” He was
sitting there by the stove reading Daniel Webster’s speeches. They had
met at meals during the five days that had elapsed since he had come to
her door, and she had walked at his side at Eudora’s funeral; but they
had not spoken a word to each other.

He glanced up in surprise as she entered, and she noticed that he
was unshaved, and that he looked unusually old; but as she had always
thought of him as an old man the change in his appearance did not move
her. 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 I wanted to earn the
money to pay for a hired girl. But I ain’t going to pay for her: you’ve
got to. I want to have some money of my own.”

Mr. Royall’s bushy black eyebrows were drawn together in a frown, and he
sat drumming with ink-stained nails on 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’d stay at North Dormer
if they could help it? You wouldn’t, folks say!”

With lowered head he asked: “Where’d you go to?”

“Anywhere where I can earn my living. I’ll try here first, and if I
can’t do it here I’ll go somewhere else. I’ll go up the Mountain if I
have to.” She paused on this threat, and saw that it had taken effect.
“I want you should get Miss Hatchard and the selectmen to take me at the
library: and I want a woman here in the house with me,” she repeated.

Mr. Royall had grown exceedingly pale. When she ended he stood up
ponderously, leaning against the desk; and for a second or two they
looked at each other.

“See here,” he said at length as though utterance were difficult,
“there’s something I’ve been wanting to say to you; I’d ought to have
said it before. I want you to marry me.”

The girl still stared at him without moving. “I want you to marry me,”
 he repeated, clearing his throat. “The minister’ll be up here next
Sunday and we can fix it up then. Or I’ll drive you down to Hepburn to
the Justice, and get it done there. I’ll do whatever you say.” His
eyes fell under the merciless stare she continued to fix on him, and
he shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other. As he
stood there before her, unwieldy, shabby, disordered, the purple veins
distorting the hands he pressed against the desk, and his long orator’s
jaw trembling with the effort of his avowal, he seemed like a hideous
parody of the fatherly 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 since you’ve looked at yourself in the glass?” She straightened
herself, insolently conscious of her youth and strength. “I suppose
you think it would be cheaper to marry me than to keep a hired girl.
Everybody knows you’re the closest man in Eagle County; but I guess
you’re not going to get your mending done for you that way twice.”

Mr. Royall did not move while she spoke. His face was ash-coloured and
his black eyebrows quivered as though the blaze of her scorn had blinded
him. When she ceased he held up his hand.

“That’ll do--that’ll about do,” he said. He turned to the door and took
his hat from the hat-peg. On the threshold 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 surprise that Charity had
been appointed librarian of the Hatchard 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 the cooking.




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.




IV


He stopped and lifted his hat with a shy smile. “I beg your pardon,” he
said. “I thought there was no one here.”

Charity stood before him, barring his way. “You can’t come in. The
library ain’t open to the public Wednesdays.”

“I know it’s not; but my cousin gave me her key.”

“Miss Hatchard’s got no right to give her key to other folks, any more’n
I have. I’m the librarian and I know the by-laws. This is my library.”

The young man looked profoundly surprised.

“Why, I know it is; I’m so sorry if you mind my coming.”

“I suppose you came to see what more you could say to set her against
me? But you needn’t trouble: it’s my library today, but it won’t be
this time tomorrow. I’m on the way now to take her back the key and the
register.”

Young Harney’s face grew grave, but without betraying the consciousness
of guilt she had looked for.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “There must be some mistake. Why should I
say things against you to Miss Hatchard--or to anyone?”

The apparent evasiveness of the reply caused Charity’s indignation to
overflow. “I don’t know why you should. I could understand Orma Fry’s
doing it, because she’s always wanted to get me out of here ever since
the first day. I can’t see why, when she’s got her own home, and her
father to work for her; nor Ida Targatt, neither, when she got a legacy
from her step-brother on’y last year. But anyway we all live in the
same place, and when it’s a place like North Dormer it’s enough to make
people hate each other just to have to walk down the same street every
day. But you don’t live here, and you don’t know anything about any of
us, so what did you have to meddle for? Do you suppose the other 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
doing nothing till it strikes five up at the church? Who cares if the
library’s open or shut? Do you suppose anybody ever comes here for
books? What they’d like to come for is to meet the fellows they’re going
with if I’d let ’em. But I wouldn’t let Bill Sollas from over the hill
hang round here waiting for the youngest Targatt girl, because I know
him... that’s all... even if I don’t know about books all I ought to....”

She stopped with a choking in her throat. Tremors of rage were running
through her, and she steadied herself against the edge of the desk lest
he should see her weakness.

What he saw seemed to affect him deeply, for he grew red under his
sunburn, and stammered out: “But, Miss Royall, I assure you... I assure
you....”

His distress inflamed her anger, and she regained her voice to fling
back: “If I was you I’d have the nerve to stick to what I said!”

The taunt seemed to restore his presence of mind. “I hope I should if I
knew; but I don’t. Apparently something disagreeable has happened, for
which you think I’m to blame. But I don’t know what it is, because I’ve
been up on Eagle Ridge ever since the early morning.”

“I don’t know where you’ve been this morning, but I know you were here
in this library yesterday; and it was you that went home and told your
cousin the books were in bad shape, and brought her round to see how I’d
neglected them.”

Young Harney looked sincerely concerned. “Was that what you were told?
I don’t wonder you’re angry. The books are in bad shape, and as some are
interesting it’s a pity. I told Miss Hatchard they were suffering from
dampness and lack of air; and I brought her here to show her how easily
the place could be ventilated. I also told her you ought to have some
one to help you do the dusting and airing. If you were given a wrong
version of what I said I’m sorry; but I’m so fond of old books that
I’d rather see them made into a bonfire than left to moulder away like
these.”

Charity felt her sobs rising and tried to stifle them in words. “I don’t
care what you say you told her. All I know is she thinks it’s all my
fault, and I’m going to lose my job, and I wanted it more’n anyone in
the village, because I haven’t got anybody belonging to me, the way
other folks have. All I wanted was to put aside money enough to get away
from here sometime. D’you suppose if it hadn’t been for that I’d have
kept on sitting day after day in this old vault?”

Of this appeal her hearer took up only the last question. “It is an
old vault; but need it be? That’s the point. And it’s my putting the
question to my cousin that seems to have been the cause of the trouble.”
 His glance explored the melancholy penumbra of the long narrow room,
resting on the blotched walls, the discoloured rows of books, and the
stern rosewood desk surmounted by the portrait of the young Honorius.
“Of course it’s a bad job to do anything with a building jammed against
a hill like this ridiculous mausoleum: you couldn’t get a good draught
through it without blowing a hole in the mountain. But it can be
ventilated after a fashion, and the sun can be let in: I’ll show you
how if you like....” The architect’s passion for improvement had
already made him lose sight of her grievance, and he lifted his stick
instructively toward the cornice. But her silence seemed to tell him
that she took no interest in the ventilation of the library, and turning
back to her abruptly he held out both 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 ever spoken to her in
that tone.

“Oh, what DID you do it for then?” she wailed. He had her hands in
his, and she was feeling the smooth touch that she had imagined the day
before on the hillside.

He pressed her hands lightly and let them go. “Why, to make things
pleasanter for you here; and better for the books. I’m sorry if my
cousin twisted around what I said. She’s excitable, and she lives on
trifles: I ought to have remembered that. Don’t punish me by letting her
think you take her seriously.”

It was wonderful to hear him speak of Miss Hatchard as if she were a
querulous baby: in spite of his shyness he had the air of power that the
experience of cities probably gave. It was the fact of having lived
in Nettleton that made lawyer Royall, in spite of his infirmities, the
strongest man in North Dormer; and Charity was sure that this young man
had lived in bigger places than Nettleton.

She felt that if she kept up her denunciatory tone he would secretly
class her with Miss Hatchard; and the thought 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; and I’d sooner resign than have the
village say she sent me away.”

“Naturally you would. But I’m sure she doesn’t mean to send you away.
At any rate, won’t you give me the chance to find out first and let you
know? It will be time enough to resign if I’m mistaken.”

Her pride flamed into her cheeks at the suggestion of his intervening.
“I don’t want anybody should coax her to 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 straight into her eyes with his shy grey
glance. “You can trust me, you know--you really can.”

All the old frozen woes seemed to melt in her, and she murmured
awkwardly, looking away from him: “Oh, I’ll wait.”




V


There had never been such a June in Eagle County. Usually it was a month
of moods, with abrupt alternations of belated frost and mid-summer heat;
this year, day followed day in a sequence of temperate beauty. Every
morning a breeze blew steadily from the hills. Toward noon it built up
great canopies of white cloud that threw a cool shadow over fields and
woods; then before sunset the clouds dissolved again, and the western
light rained its unobstructed brightness on the valley.

On such an afternoon Charity Royall lay on a ridge above a sunlit
hollow, her face pressed to the earth and the warm currents of the grass
running through her. Directly in her line of vision a blackberry branch
laid its frail white flowers and blue-green leaves against the sky. Just
beyond, a tuft of sweet-fern uncurled between the beaded shoots of the
grass, and a small yellow butterfly vibrated over them like a fleck of
sunshine. This was all she saw; but she felt, above her and about her,
the strong growth of the beeches clothing the ridge, the rounding of
pale green cones on countless spruce-branches, the push of myriads of
sweet-fern fronds in the cracks of the stony slope below the wood,
and the crowding shoots of meadowsweet and yellow flags in the pasture
beyond. All this bubbling of sap and slipping of sheaths and bursting of
calyxes was carried to her on mingled currents of fragrance. Every leaf
and bud and blade seemed to contribute its exhalation to the pervading
sweetness in which the pungency of pine-sap prevailed over the spice
of thyme and the subtle perfume of fern, and all were merged in a moist
earth-smell that was like the breath of 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 came between her eyes and the dancing
butterfly the sight of a man’s foot in a large worn boot covered with
red mud.

“Oh, don’t!” she exclaimed, raising herself on her elbow 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!” she retorted,
springing to her knees. The foot paused and then descended clumsily on
the frail branch, and raising her eyes she saw above her the bewildered
face of a slouching man with a thin sunburnt beard, and white arms
showing through his ragged shirt.

“Don’t you ever SEE anything, Liff Hyatt?” she assailed him, as he stood
before her with the look of a man 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 gather up the petals his
foot had scattered.

He jerked his thumb toward the heights. “Been cutting down trees for Dan
Targatt.”

Charity sank back on her heels and looked at him musingly. She was
not in the least afraid of poor Liff Hyatt, though he “came from the
Mountain,” and some of the girls ran when they saw him. Among the more
reasonable he passed for a harmless creature, a sort of link between the
mountain and civilized folk, who occasionally came down and did a little
wood cutting for a farmer when hands were short. Besides, she knew the
Mountain people would never hurt her: Liff himself had told her so
once when she was a little girl, and had met him one day at the edge
of lawyer Royall’s pasture. “They won’t any of ’em touch you up there,
f’ever you was to come up.... But I don’t s’pose you will,” he had added
philosophically, looking at her new shoes, and at the red ribbon that
Mrs. Royall had tied in her hair.

Charity had, in truth, never felt any desire to visit her birthplace.
She did not care to have it known that she was of the Mountain, and was
shy of being seen in talk with Liff Hyatt. But today she was not sorry
to have him appear. A great many things had happened to her since the
day when young Lucius Harney had entered the doors of the Hatchard
Memorial, but none, perhaps, so unforeseen as the fact of her suddenly
finding it a convenience to be on good terms with Liff Hyatt. She
continued to look up curiously at his freckled weather-beaten face,
with feverish hollows below the cheekbones and the pale yellow eyes of
a harmless animal. “I wonder if he’s related to me?” she thought, with a
shiver of disdain.

“Is there any folks living in the brown house by the swamp, up under
Porcupine?” she presently asked in an indifferent tone.

Liff Hyatt, for a while, considered her with surprise; then he scratched
his head and shifted his weight from one tattered sole to the other.

“There’s always the same folks in the brown house,” he said with his
vague grin.

“They’re from up your way, ain’t they?”

“Their name’s the same as mine,” he rejoined uncertainly.

Charity still held him with resolute eyes. “See here, I want to go there
some day and take a gentleman with me that’s boarding with us. He’s up
in these parts drawing pictures.”

She did not offer to explain this statement. It was too far beyond Liff
Hyatt’s limitations for the attempt to be worth making. “He wants to see
the brown house, and go all over it,” she pursued.

Liff was still running his fingers perplexedly through his shock of
straw-colored hair. “Is it a fellow from the city?” he asked.

“Yes. He draws pictures of things. He’s down there now drawing the
Bonner house.” She pointed to a chimney just visible over the dip of the
pasture below the wood.

“The Bonner house?” Liff echoed incredulously.

“Yes. You won’t understand--and it don’t matter. All I say is: he’s
going to the Hyatts’ in a day or two.”

Liff looked more and more perplexed. “Bash is ugly sometimes in the
afternoons.”

She threw her head back, her eyes full on Hyatt’s. “I’m coming 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 Bash Hyatt.”

He looked away at the blue mountains on the horizon; then his gaze
dropped to the chimney-top below the pasture.

“He’s down there now?”

“Yes.”

He shifted his weight again, crossed his arms, and continued to survey
the distant landscape. “Well, so long,” he said at last, inconclusively;
and turning away he shambled up the hillside. From the ledge above
her, he paused to call down: “I wouldn’t go there a Sunday”; then he
clambered on till the trees closed in on him. Presently, from high
overhead, Charity heard the ring of his axe.

She lay on the warm ridge, thinking of many things that the woodsman’s
appearance had stirred up in her. She knew nothing of her early life,
and had never felt any curiosity about it: only a sullen reluctance to
explore the corner of her memory where certain blurred images lingered.
But all that had happened to her within the last few weeks had stirred
her to the sleeping depths. She had become absorbingly interesting to
herself, and everything that had to do with her past was illuminated by
this sudden curiosity.

She hated more than ever the fact of coming from the Mountain; but it
was no longer indifferent to her. Everything that in any way affected
her was alive and vivid: even the hateful things had grown interesting
because they were a part of herself.

“I wonder if Liff Hyatt knows who my mother was?” she mused; and it
filled her with a tremor of surprise to think that some woman who was
once young and slight, with quick motions of the blood like hers, had
carried her in her breast, and watched her sleeping. She had always
thought of her mother as so long dead as to be no more than a nameless
pinch of earth; but now it occurred to her that the once-young woman
might be alive, and wrinkled and elf-locked like the woman she had
sometimes seen in the door of the brown house that Lucius Harney wanted
to draw.

The thought brought him back to the central point in her mind, and
she strayed away from the conjectures roused by Liff Hyatt’s presence.
Speculations concerning the past could not hold her long when the
present was so rich, the future so rosy, and when Lucius Harney,
a stone’s throw away, was bending over his sketch-book, frowning,
calculating, measuring, and then throwing his head back with the sudden
smile that had shed its brightness over everything.

She scrambled to her feet, but as she did so she saw him coming up the
pasture and dropped down on the grass to wait. When he was drawing and
measuring one of “his houses,” as she called them, she often strayed
away by herself into the woods or up the hillside. It was partly from
shyness that she did so: from a sense of inadequacy that came to her
most painfully when her companion, absorbed in his job, forgot her
ignorance and her inability to follow his least allusion, and plunged
into a monologue on art and life. To avoid the awkwardness of listening
with a blank face, and also to escape the surprised stare of the
inhabitants of the houses before which he would abruptly pull up their
horse and open his sketch-book, she slipped away to some spot from
which, without being seen, she could watch him at work, or at least look
down on the house he was drawing. She had not been displeased, at first,
to have it known to North Dormer and the neighborhood that she was
driving Miss Hatchard’s cousin about the country in the buggy he had
hired of lawyer Royall. She had always kept to herself, contemptuously
aloof from village love-making, without exactly knowing whether her
fierce pride was due to the sense of her tainted origin, or whether she
was reserving herself for a more brilliant fate. Sometimes she envied
the other girls their sentimental preoccupations, their long hours of
inarticulate philandering with one of the few youths who still lingered
in the village; but when she pictured herself curling her hair or
putting a new ribbon on her hat for Ben Fry or one of the Sollas boys
the fever dropped and she relapsed into indifference.

Now she knew the meaning of her disdains and reluctances. She had
learned what she was worth when Lucius Harney, looking at her for the
first time, had lost the thread of his speech, and leaned reddening on
the edge of her desk. But another kind of shyness had been born in
her: a terror of exposing to vulgar perils the sacred treasure of her
happiness. She was not sorry to have the neighbors suspect her of “going
with” a young man from the city; but she did not want it known to all
the countryside how many hours of the long June days she spent with him.
What she most feared was that the inevitable comments should reach Mr.
Royall. Charity was instinctively aware that few things concerning her
escaped the eyes of the silent man under whose roof she lived; and in
spite of the latitude which North Dormer accorded to courting couples
she had always felt that, on the day when she showed too open a
preference, Mr. Royall might, as she phrased it, make her “pay for
it.” How, she did not know; and her fear was the greater because it
was undefinable. If she had been accepting the attentions of one of the
village youths she would have been less apprehensive: Mr. Royall could
not prevent her marrying when she chose to. But everybody knew that
“going with a city fellow” was a different and less straightforward
affair: almost every village could show a victim of the perilous
venture. And her dread of Mr. Royall’s intervention gave a sharpened
joy to the hours she spent with young Harney, and made her, at the same
time, shy of being too generally seen with him.

As he approached she rose to her knees, stretching her arms above her
head with the indolent gesture that was her way of expressing a profound
well-being.

“I’m going to take you to that house up under Porcupine,” she announced.

“What house? Oh, yes; that ramshackle place near the swamp, with the
gipsy-looking people hanging about. It’s curious that a house with
traces of real architecture should have been built in such a place. But
the people were a sulky-looking lot--do you suppose they’ll let us in?”

“They’ll do whatever I tell them,” she said with assurance.

He threw himself down beside her. “Will they?” he rejoined with a smile.
“Well, I should like to see what’s left inside the house. And I should
like to have a talk with the people. Who was it who was telling me the
other day that they had come down from the Mountain?”

Charity shot a sideward look at him. It was the first time he had spoken
of the Mountain except as a feature of the landscape. What else did he
know about it, and about her relation to it? Her heart began to beat
with the fierce impulse of resistance which she instinctively opposed to
every imagined slight.

“The Mountain? I ain’t afraid of the Mountain!”

Her tone of defiance seemed to escape him. He lay breast-down on the
grass, breaking off sprigs of thyme and pressing them against his lips.
Far off, above the folds of the nearer hills, the Mountain thrust itself
up menacingly against a yellow sunset.

“I must go up there some day: I want to see it,” he continued.

Her heart-beats slackened and she turned again to examine his profile.
It was innocent of all unfriendly intention.

“What’d you want to go up the Mountain for?”

“Why, it must be rather a curious place. There’s a queer colony up
there, you know: sort of out-laws, a little independent kingdom. Of
course you’ve heard them spoken of; but I’m told they have nothing to
do with the people in the valleys--rather look down on them, in fact.
I suppose they’re rough customers; but they must have a good deal of
character.”

She did not quite know what he meant by having a good deal of character;
but his tone was expressive of admiration, and deepened her dawning
curiosity. It struck her now as strange that she knew so little about
the Mountain. She had never asked, and no one had ever offered to
enlighten her. North Dormer took the Mountain for granted, and implied
its disparagement by an intonation rather than by explicit criticism.

“It’s queer, you know,” he continued, “that, just over there, on top of
that hill, there should be a handful of people who don’t give a damn for
anybody.”

The words thrilled her. They seemed the clue to her own revolts and
defiances, and she longed to have him tell her more.

“I don’t know much about them. Have they always been there?”

“Nobody seems to know exactly how long. Down at Creston they told me
that the first colonists are supposed to have been men who worked on the
railway that was built forty or fifty years ago between Springfield
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
there was a report that they were living up on the Mountain. Then I
suppose others joined them--and children were born. Now they say there
are over a hundred people up there. They seem to be quite outside the
jurisdiction of the valleys. No school, no church--and no sheriff ever
goes up to see what they’re about. But don’t people 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 to his. “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 her with sudden
interest. “You’re from the Mountain? How curious! I suppose that’s why
you’re so different....”

Her happy blood bathed her to the forehead. He was praising her--and
praising her because she came from the Mountain!

“Am I... different?” she triumphed, with affected wonder.

“Oh, awfully!” He picked up her hand and laid a kiss on the sunburnt
knuckles.

“Come,” he said, “let’s be off.” He stood up and shook the grass from
his loose grey clothes. “What a good day! Where are you going to take me
tomorrow?”




VI


That evening after supper Charity sat alone in the kitchen and listened
to Mr. Royall and young Harney talking in the porch.

She had remained indoors after the table had been cleared and old Verena
had hobbled up to bed. The kitchen window was open, and Charity seated
herself near it, her idle hands on her knee. The evening was cool and
still. Beyond the black hills an amber west passed into pale green,
and then to a deep blue in which a great star hung. The soft hoot of a
little owl came through the dusk, and between its calls the men’s voices
rose and fell.

Mr. Royall’s was full of a sonorous satisfaction. It was a long time
since he had had anyone of Lucius Harney’s quality to talk to: Charity
divined that the young man symbolized all his ruined and unforgotten
past. When Miss Hatchard had been called to Springfield by the illness
of a widowed sister, and young Harney, by that time seriously embarked
on his task of drawing and measuring all the old houses between
Nettleton and the New Hampshire border, had suggested the possibility of
boarding at the red house in his cousin’s absence, Charity had trembled
lest Mr. Royall should refuse. There had been no question of lodging
the young man: there was no room for him. But it appeared that he could
still live at Miss Hatchard’s if Mr. Royall would let him take his meals
at the red house; and after a day’s deliberation Mr. Royall consented.

Charity suspected him of being glad of the chance to make a little
money. He had the reputation of being an avaricious man; but she was
beginning to think he was probably poorer than people knew. His practice
had become little more than a vague legend, revived only at lengthening
intervals by a summons to Hepburn or Nettleton; and he appeared to
depend for his living mainly on the scant produce of his farm, and
on the commissions received from the few insurance agencies that he
represented in the neighbourhood. At any rate, he had been prompt in
accepting Harney’s offer to hire the buggy at a dollar and a half a
day; and his satisfaction with the bargain had manifested itself,
unexpectedly enough, at the end of the first week, by his tossing a
ten-dollar bill into Charity’s lap as she sat one day retrimming her old
hat.

“Here--go get yourself a Sunday bonnet that’ll make all the other girls
mad,” he said, looking at her with a sheepish twinkle in his deep-set
eyes; and she immediately guessed that the unwonted present--the only
gift of money she had ever received from him--represented Harney’s first
payment.

But the young man’s coming had brought Mr. Royall other than
pecuniary benefit. It gave him, for the first time in years, a man’s
companionship. Charity had only a dim understanding of her guardian’s
needs; but she knew he felt himself above the people among whom he
lived, and she saw that Lucius Harney thought him so. She was surprised
to find how well he seemed to talk now that he had a listener who
understood him; and she was equally struck by young Harney’s friendly
deference.

Their conversation was mostly about politics, and beyond her range; but
tonight it had a peculiar interest for her, for they had begun to speak
of the Mountain. She drew back a little, lest they should see she was in
hearing.

“The Mountain? The Mountain?” she heard Mr. Royall say. “Why, the
Mountain’s a blot--that’s what it is, sir, a blot. That scum up there
ought to have been run in long ago--and would have, if the people down
here hadn’t been clean scared of them. The Mountain belongs to this
township, and it’s North Dormer’s fault if there’s a gang of thieves
and outlaws living over there, in sight of us, defying the laws of their
country. Why, there ain’t a sheriff or a tax-collector or a coroner’d
durst go up there. When they hear of trouble on the Mountain the
selectmen look the other way, and pass an appropriation to beautify the
town pump. The only man that ever goes up is the minister, and he goes
because they send down and get him whenever there’s any of them dies.
They think a lot of Christian burial on the Mountain--but I never heard
of their having the minister up to marry them. And they never trouble
the Justice of the Peace either. They just herd together like the
heathen.”

He went on, explaining in somewhat technical language how the little
colony of squatters had contrived to keep the law at bay, and Charity,
with burning eagerness, awaited young Harney’s comment; but the young
man seemed more concerned to hear Mr. Royall’s views than to express his
own.

“I suppose you’ve never been up there yourself?” he presently asked.

“Yes, I have,” said Mr. Royall with a contemptuous laugh. “The wiseacres
down here told me I’d be done for before I got back; but nobody lifted a
finger to hurt me. And I’d just had one of their gang sent up for seven
years too.”

“You went up after that?”

“Yes, sir: right after it. The fellow came down to Nettleton and ran
amuck, the way they sometimes do. After they’ve done a wood-cutting
job they come down and blow the money in; and this man ended up with
manslaughter. I got him convicted, though they were scared of the
Mountain even at Nettleton; and then a queer thing happened. The fellow
sent for me to go and see him in gaol. I went, and this is what he says:
‘The fool that defended me is a chicken-livered son of a--and all
the rest of it,’ he says. ‘I’ve got a job to be done for me up on the
Mountain, and you’re the only 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 and reared like a Christian. I was
sorry for the fellow, so I went up and got the child.” He paused, and
Charity listened with a throbbing heart. “That’s the only time I ever
went up the Mountain,” he concluded.

There was a moment’s silence; then Harney spoke. “And the child--had she
no mother?”

“Oh, yes: there was a mother. But she was glad enough to have her go.
She’d have given her to anybody. They ain’t half human up there. I guess
the mother’s dead by now, with the life she was leading. Anyhow, I’ve
never heard of her from that day to this.”

“My God, how ghastly,” Harney murmured; and Charity, choking with
humiliation, sprang to her feet and ran upstairs. She knew at last: knew
that she was the child of a drunken convict and of a mother who wasn’t
“half human,” and was glad to have her go; and she had heard this
history of her origin related to the one being in whose eyes she longed
to appear superior to the people about her! She had noticed that Mr.
Royall had not named her, had even avoided any allusion that might
identify her with the child he had brought down from the Mountain; and
she knew it was out of regard for her that he had kept silent. But
of what use was his discretion, since only that afternoon, misled by
Harney’s interest in the out-law colony, she had boasted to him of
coming from the Mountain? Now every word that had been spoken showed her
how such an origin must widen the distance between them.

During his ten days’ sojourn at North Dormer Lucius Harney had not
spoken a word of love to her. He had intervened in her behalf with his
cousin, and had convinced Miss Hatchard of her merits as a librarian;
but that was a simple act of justice, since it was by his own fault that
those merits had been questioned. He had asked her to drive him about
the country when he hired lawyer Royall’s buggy to go on his sketching
expeditions; but that too was natural enough, since he was unfamiliar
with the region. Lastly, when his cousin was called to Springfield, he
had begged Mr. Royall to receive him as a boarder; but where else in
North Dormer could he have boarded? Not with Carrick Fry, whose wife was
paralysed, and whose large family crowded his table to over-flowing; not
with the Targatts, who lived a mile up the road, nor with poor old Mrs.
Hawes, who, since her eldest daughter had deserted her, barely had the
strength to cook her own meals while Ally picked up her living as a
seamstress. Mr. Royall’s was the only house where the young man
could have been offered a decent hospitality. There had been nothing,
therefore, in the outward course of events to raise in Charity’s breast
the hopes with which it trembled. But beneath the visible incidents
resulting from Lucius Harney’s arrival there ran an undercurrent as
mysterious and potent as the influence that makes the forest break into
leaf before the ice is off the pools.

The business on which Harney had come was authentic; Charity had seen
the letter from a New York publisher commissioning him to make a study
of the eighteenth century houses in the less familiar districts of New
England. But incomprehensible as the whole affair was to her, and hard
as she found it to understand why he paused enchanted before certain
neglected and paintless houses, while others, refurbished and “improved”
 by the local builder, did not arrest a glance, she could not but suspect
that Eagle County was less rich in architecture than he averred, and
that the duration of his stay (which he had fixed at a month) was not
unconnected with the look in his eyes when he had first paused before
her in the library. Everything that had followed seemed to have grown
out of that look: his way of speaking to her, his quickness in catching
her meaning, his evident eagerness to prolong their excursions and to
seize on every chance of being with her.

The signs of his liking were manifest enough; but it was hard to guess
how much they meant, because his manner was so different from anything
North Dormer had ever shown her. He was at once simpler and more
deferential than any one she had known; and sometimes it was just when
he was simplest that she most felt the distance between them. Education
and opportunity had divided them by a width that no effort of hers could
bridge, and even when his youth and his admiration brought him nearest,
some chance word, some unconscious allusion, seemed to thrust her back
across the gulf.

Never had it yawned so wide as when she fled up to her room carrying
with her the echo of Mr. Royall’s tale. Her first confused thought
was the prayer that she might never see young Harney again. It was
too bitter to picture him as the detached impartial listener to such
a story. “I wish he’d go away: I wish he’d go tomorrow, and never come
back!” she moaned to her pillow; and far into the night she lay there,
in the disordered dress she had forgotten to take off, her whole soul
a tossing misery on which her hopes and dreams spun about like drowning
straws.

Of all this tumult only a vague heart-soreness was left when she opened
her eyes the next morning. Her first thought was of the weather, for
Harney had asked her to take him to the brown house under Porcupine,
and then around by Hamblin; and as the trip was a long one they were to
start at nine. The sun rose without a cloud, and earlier than usual she
was in the kitchen, making cheese sandwiches, decanting buttermilk into
a bottle, wrapping up slices of apple pie, and accusing Verena of having
given away a basket she needed, which had always hung on a hook in the
passage. When she came out into the porch, in her pink calico, which had
run a little in the washing, but was still bright enough to set off
her dark tints, she had such a triumphant sense of being a part of the
sunlight and the morning that the last trace of her misery vanished.
What did it matter where she came from, or whose child she was, when
love was dancing in her veins, and down the road she saw young Harney
coming toward her?

Mr. Royall was in the porch too. He had said nothing at 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 how to drive a horse
yet?”

She made no answer, and he sat tilted back in his chair, drumming on the
rail of the porch. It was the first time he had ever spoken of the young
man in that tone, and Charity felt a faint chill of apprehension. After
a moment he stood up and walked away toward the bit of ground behind the
house, where the hired man was hoeing.

The air was cool and clear, with the autumnal sparkle that a north wind
brings to the hills in early summer, and the night had been so still
that the dew hung on everything, not as a lingering moisture, but in
separate beads that glittered like diamonds on the ferns and grasses. It
was a long drive to the foot of Porcupine: first across the valley, with
blue hills bounding the open slopes; then down into the beech-woods,
following the course of the Creston, a brown brook leaping over velvet
ledges; then out again onto the farm-lands about Creston Lake, and
gradually up the ridges of the Eagle Range. At last they reached the
yoke of the hills, and before them opened another valley, green and
wild, and beyond it more blue heights eddying away to the sky like the
waves of a receding tide.

Harney tied the horse to a tree-stump, and they unpacked their basket
under an aged walnut with a riven trunk out of which bumblebees darted.
The sun had grown hot, and behind them was the noonday murmur of
the forest. Summer insects danced on the air, and a flock of white
butterflies fanned the mobile tips of the crimson fireweed. In the
valley below not a house was visible; it seemed as if Charity Royall and
young Harney were the only living beings in the great hollow of earth
and sky.

Charity’s spirits flagged and disquieting thoughts stole back on her.
Young Harney had grown silent, and as he lay beside her, his arms under
his head, his eyes on the network of leaves above him, she wondered if
he were musing on what Mr. Royall had told him, and if it had really
debased her in his thoughts. She wished he had not asked her to take him
that day to the brown house; she did not want him to see the people she
came from while the story of her birth was fresh in his mind. More than
once she had been on the point of suggesting that they should follow the
ridge and drive straight to Hamblin, where there was a little deserted
house he wanted to see; but shyness and pride held her back. “He’d
better know what kind of folks I belong to,” she said to herself, with
a somewhat forced defiance; for in reality it was shame that kept her
silent.

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 scrap of cloud among the
pines that frightens you?”

“It’s over the Mountain; and a cloud over the Mountain always means
trouble.”

“Oh, I don’t believe half the bad things you all say of the Mountain!
But anyhow, we’ll get down to the brown house before the rain comes.”

He was not far wrong, for only a few isolated drops had fallen when they
turned into the road under the shaggy flank of Porcupine, and came
upon the brown house. It stood alone beside a swamp bordered with alder
thickets and tall bulrushes. Not another dwelling was in sight, and it
was hard to guess what motive could have actuated the early settler who
had made his home in so unfriendly a spot.

Charity had picked up enough of her companion’s erudition to understand
what had attracted him to the house. She noticed the fan-shaped tracery
of the broken light above the door, the flutings of the paintless
pilasters at the corners, and the round window set in the gable; and she
knew that, for reasons that still escaped her, these were things to
be admired and recorded. Still, they had seen other houses far more
“typical” (the word was Harney’s); and as he threw the reins on the
horse’s neck he said with a slight shiver of repugnance: “We won’t stay
long.”

Against the restless alders turning their white lining to the storm the
house looked singularly desolate. The paint was almost gone from the
clap-boards, the window-panes were broken and patched with rags, and the
garden was a poisonous tangle of nettles, burdocks and tall swamp-weeds
over which big blue-bottles hummed.

At the sound of wheels a child with a tow-head and pale eyes like Liff
Hyatt’s peered over the fence and then slipped away behind an out-house.
Harney jumped down and helped Charity out; and as he did so the rain
broke on them. It came slant-wise, on a furious gale, laying shrubs and
young trees flat, tearing off their leaves like an autumn storm, turning
the road into a river, and making hissing pools of every hollow. Thunder
rolled incessantly through the roar of the rain, and a strange glitter
of light ran along the ground under the increasing blackness.

“Lucky we’re here after all,” Harney laughed. He fastened the horse
under a half-roofless shed, and wrapping Charity in his coat ran with
her to the house. The boy had not reappeared, and as there was no
response to their knocks Harney turned the door-handle and they went in.

There were three people in the kitchen to which the door admitted
them. An old woman with a handkerchief over her head was sitting by the
window. She held a sickly-looking kitten on her knees, and whenever
it jumped down and tried to limp away she stooped and lifted it back
without any change of her aged, unnoticing face. Another woman, the
unkempt creature that Charity had once noticed in driving by, stood
leaning against the window-frame and stared at them; and near the stove
an unshaved man in a tattered shirt sat on a barrel asleep.

The place was bare and miserable and the air heavy with the smell of
dirt and stale tobacco. Charity’s heart sank. Old derided tales of
the Mountain people came back to her, and the woman’s stare was so
disconcerting, and the face of the sleeping man so sodden and bestial,
that her disgust was tinged with a vague dread. She was not afraid for
herself; she knew the Hyatts would not be likely to trouble her; but she
was not sure how they would treat a “city fellow.”

Lucius Harney would certainly have laughed at her fears. He glanced
about the room, uttered a general “How are you?” to which no one
responded, and then asked the younger woman if they might take shelter
till the storm was over.

She turned her eyes away from him and looked at Charity.

“You’re the girl from Royall’s, ain’t you?”

The colour rose in Charity’s face. “I’m Charity Royall,” she said, as
if asserting her right to the name in the very place where it might have
been most open to question.

The woman did not seem to notice. “You kin stay,” she merely said;
then she turned away and stooped over a dish in which she was stirring
something.

Harney and Charity sat down on a bench made of a board resting on two
starch boxes. They faced a door hanging on a broken hinge, and through
the crack they saw the eyes of the tow-headed boy and of a pale little
girl with a scar across her cheek. Charity smiled, and signed to the
children to come in; but as soon as they saw they were discovered they
slipped away on bare feet. It occurred to her that they were afraid of
rousing the sleeping man; and probably the woman shared their fear, for
she moved about as noiselessly and avoided going near the stove.

The rain continued to beat against the house, and in one or two places
it sent a stream through the patched 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 it tight in her bony hands; and
once or twice the man on the barrel half woke, changed his position
and dozed again, his head falling forward on his hairy breast. As the
minutes passed, and the rain still streamed against the windows, a
loathing of the place and the people came over Charity. The sight of
the weak-minded old woman, of the cowed children, and the ragged man
sleeping off his liquor, made the setting of her own life seem a vision
of peace and plenty. She thought of the kitchen at Mr. Royall’s, with
its scrubbed floor and dresser full of china, and the peculiar smell of
yeast and coffee and soft-soap that she had always hated, but that now
seemed the very symbol of household order. She saw Mr. Royall’s room,
with the high-backed horsehair chair, the faded rag carpet, the row of
books on a shelf, the engraving of “The Surrender of Burgoyne” over
the stove, and the mat with a brown and white spaniel on a moss-green
border. And then her mind travelled to Miss Hatchard’s house, where all
was freshness, purity and fragrance, and compared to which the red house
had always seemed so poor and plain.

“This is where I belong--this is where I belong,” she kept repeating to
herself; but the words had no meaning for her. Every instinct and habit
made her a stranger among these poor swamp-people living like vermin in
their lair. With all her soul she wished she had not yielded to Harney’s
curiosity, and brought him there.

The rain had drenched her, and she began to shiver under the thin folds
of her dress. The younger woman must have noticed it, for she went out
of the room and came back with a broken tea-cup which she offered to
Charity. It was half full of whiskey, and Charity shook her head; but
Harney took the cup and put his lips to it. When he had set it down
Charity saw him feel in his pocket and draw out a dollar; he hesitated
a moment, and then put it back, and she guessed that he did not wish her
to see him offering money to people she had spoken of as being her kin.

The sleeping man stirred, lifted his head and opened his eyes. They
rested vacantly for a moment on Charity and Harney, and then closed
again, and his head drooped; but a look of anxiety came into the woman’s
face. She glanced out of the window and then came up to Harney. “I guess
you better go along now,” she said. The young man understood and got to
his feet. “Thank you,” he said, holding out his hand. She seemed not to
notice the gesture, and turned away as they opened the door.

The rain was still coming down, but they hardly noticed it: the pure air
was like balm in their faces. The clouds were rising and breaking, and
between their edges the light streamed down from remote blue hollows.
Harney untied the horse, and they drove off through the diminishing
rain, which was already beaded with sunlight.

For a while Charity was silent, and her companion did not speak. She
looked timidly at his profile: it was graver than usual, as though he
too were oppressed by what they had seen. Then she broke out abruptly:
“Those people back there are the kind of folks I come from. They may be
my relations, for all I know.” She did not want him to think that she
regretted having told him her story.

“Poor creatures,” he rejoined. “I wonder why they came down to that
fever-hole.”

She laughed ironically. “To better themselves! It’s worse up on the
Mountain. Bash Hyatt married the daughter of the farmer that used to own
the brown house. 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 poor woman. Why did you put it back?”

He reddened, and leaned forward to flick a swamp-fly from the horse’s
neck. “I wasn’t sure----”

“Was it because you knew they were my folks, and thought 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 called her by her name. Her misery welled
over.

“I ain’t--I ain’t ashamed. They’re my people, and I ain’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 the stars were out in a
clear sky when they reached the North Dormer valley and drove up to the
red house.




VII


SINCE her reinstatement in Miss Hatchard’s favour Charity had not dared
to curtail by a moment her hours of attendance at the library. She
even made a point of arriving before the time, and showed a laudable
indignation when the youngest Targatt girl, who had been engaged to help
in the cleaning and rearranging of the books, came trailing in late
and neglected her task to peer through the window at the Sollas boy.
Nevertheless, “library days” seemed more than ever irksome to Charity
after her vivid hours of liberty; and she would have found it hard to
set a good example to her subordinate if Lucius Harney had not been
commissioned, before Miss Hatchard’s departure, to examine with the
local carpenter the best means of ventilating the “Memorial.”

He was careful to prosecute this inquiry on the days when the library
was open to the public; and Charity was therefore sure of spending part
of the afternoon in his company. The Targatt girl’s presence, and the
risk of being interrupted by some passer-by suddenly smitten with a
thirst for letters, restricted their intercourse to the exchange of
commonplaces; but there was a fascination to Charity in the contrast
between these 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 the revised catalogue, while the Targatt
girl, one eye on the window, chanted out the titles of a pile of books.
Charity’s thoughts were far away, in the dismal house by the swamp, and
under the twilight sky during the long drive home, when Lucius Harney
had consoled her with endearing words. That day, for the first time
since he had been boarding with them, he had failed to appear as usual
at the midday meal. No message had come to explain his absence, and Mr.
Royall, who was more than usually taciturn, had betrayed no surprise,
and made no comment. In itself this indifference was not particularly
significant, for Mr. Royall, in common with most of his fellow-citizens,
had a way of accepting events passively, as if he had long since come
to the conclusion that no one who lived in North Dormer 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 was
almost as if Lucius Harney had never had a part in their lives: Mr.
Royall’s imperturbable indifference seemed to relegate him to the domain
of unreality.

As she sat at work, she tried to shake off her disappointment at
Harney’s non-appearing. Some trifling incident had probably kept him
from joining them at midday; but she was sure he must be eager to see
her again, and that he would not want to wait till they met at supper,
between Mr. Royall and Verena. She was wondering what his first words
would be, and trying to devise a way of getting rid of the Targatt girl
before he came, when she heard steps outside, and he walked up the path
with Mr. Miles.

The clergyman from Hepburn seldom came to North Dormer except when he
drove over to officiate at the old white church which, by an unusual
chance, happened to belong to the Episcopal communion. He was a brisk
affable man, eager to make the most of the fact that a little nucleus of
“church-people” had survived in the sectarian wilderness, and resolved
to undermine the influence of the ginger-bread-coloured Baptist chapel
at the other end of the village; but he was kept busy by parochial work
at Hepburn, where there were paper-mills and saloons, and it was not
often that he could spare time for North Dormer.

Charity, who went to the white church (like all the best people in North
Dormer), admired Mr. Miles, and had even, during the memorable trip to
Nettleton, imagined herself married to a man who had such a straight
nose and such a beautiful way of speaking, and who lived in a
brown-stone rectory covered with Virginia creeper. It had been a shock
to discover that the privilege was already enjoyed by a lady with
crimped hair and a large baby; but the arrival of Lucius Harney had long
since banished Mr. Miles from Charity’s dreams, and as he walked up the
path at Harney’s side she saw him as he really was: a fat middle-aged
man with a baldness showing under his clerical hat, and spectacles on
his Grecian nose. She wondered what had called him to North Dormer on a
weekday, and felt a little hurt that Harney should have brought him to
the library.

It presently appeared that his presence there was due to Miss Hatchard.
He had been spending a few days at Springfield, to fill a friend’s
pulpit, and had been consulted by Miss Hatchard as to young Harney’s
plan for ventilating the “Memorial.” To lay hands on the Hatchard ark
was a grave matter, and Miss Hatchard, always full of scruples about her
scruples (it was Harney’s phrase), wished to have Mr. Miles’s opinion
before deciding.

“I couldn’t,” Mr. Miles explained, “quite make out from your cousin what
changes you wanted to make, and as the other trustees did not understand
either I thought I had better drive over and take a look--though I’m
sure,” he added, turning his friendly spectacles on the young man, “that
no one could be more competent--but of course this spot has its peculiar
sanctity!”

“I hope a little fresh air won’t desecrate it,” Harney laughingly
rejoined; and they walked to the other end of the library while he set
forth his idea to the Rector.

Mr. Miles had greeted the two girls with his usual friendliness, but
Charity saw that he was occupied with other things, and she presently
became aware, by the scraps of conversation drifting over to her, that
he was still under the charm of his visit to Springfield, which appeared
to have been full of agreeable incidents.

“Ah, the Coopersons... yes, you know them, of course,” she heard. “That’s
a fine old house! And Ned Cooperson has collected some really remarkable
impressionist pictures....” The names he cited were unknown to Charity.
“Yes; yes; the Schaefer quartette played at Lyric Hall on Saturday
evening; and on Monday I had the privilege of hearing them again at the
Towers. Beautifully done... Bach and Beethoven... a lawn-party
first... I saw Miss Balch several times, by the way... looking extremely
handsome....”

Charity dropped her pencil and forgot to listen to the Targatt girl’s
sing-song. Why had Mr. Miles suddenly brought up Annabel Balch’s name?

“Oh, really?” she heard Harney rejoin; and, raising his stick, he
pursued: “You see, my plan is to move these shelves away, and open a
round window in this wall, on the axis of the one under the pediment.”

“I suppose she’ll be coming up here later to stay with Miss Hatchard?”
 Mr. Miles went on, following on his train of thought; then, spinning
about and tilting his head back: “Yes, yes, I see--I understand: that
will give a draught without materially altering the look of things. I
can see no objection.”

The discussion went on for some minutes, and gradually the two men moved
back toward the desk. Mr. Miles stopped 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 the library a thorough overhauling.”
 He was always careful to remember his parishioners’ Christian names,
and at the right moment he bent his benignant spectacles on the Targatt
girl.

Then he turned to Charity. “Don’t take things hard, my dear; don’t take
things hard. Come down and see Mrs. Miles and me some day at Hepburn,”
 he said, pressing her hand and waving a farewell to Mamie Targatt. He
went out of the library, and Harney followed him.

Charity thought she detected a look of constraint in Harney’s eyes. She
fancied he did not want to be alone with her; and with a sudden pang she
wondered if he repented the tender things he had said to her the night
before. His words had been more fraternal than lover-like; but she had
lost their exact sense in the caressing warmth of his voice. He had made
her feel that the fact of her being a waif from the Mountain was only
another reason for holding her close and soothing her with consolatory
murmurs; and when the drive was over, and she got out of the buggy,
tired, cold, and aching with emotion, she stepped as if the ground were
a sunlit wave and she the spray on its crest.

Why, then, had his manner suddenly changed, and why did he leave the
library with Mr. Miles? Her restless imagination fastened on the name
of Annabel Balch: from the moment it had been mentioned she fancied
that Harney’s expression had altered. Annabel Balch at a garden-party at
Springfield, looking “extremely handsome”... perhaps Mr. Miles had seen
her there at the very moment when Charity and Harney were sitting in the
Hyatts’ hovel, between a drunkard and a half-witted old woman! Charity
did not know exactly what a garden-party was, but her glimpse of the
flower-edged lawns of Nettleton helped her to visualize the scene, and
envious recollections of the “old things” which Miss Balch avowedly
“wore out” when she came to North Dormer made it only too easy to
picture her in her splendour. Charity understood what associations the
name must have called up, and felt the uselessness of struggling against
the unseen influences in Harney’s life.

When she came down from her room for supper he was not there; and while
she waited in the porch she recalled the tone in which Mr. Royall had
commented the day before on their early start. Mr. Royall sat at her
side, his chair tilted back, his broad black boots with side-elastics
resting against the lower bar of the railings. His rumpled grey hair
stood up above his forehead like the crest of an angry bird, and the
leather-brown of his veined cheeks was blotched with red. Charity knew
that those red spots were the signs of a coming explosion.

Suddenly he said: “Where’s supper? Has Verena Marsh slipped up again on
her soda-biscuits?”

Charity threw a startled glance at him. “I presume she’s waiting for Mr.
Harney.”

“Mr. Harney, is she? She’d better dish up, then. He ain’t coming.” He
stood up, walked to the door, and called out, in the pitch necessary to
penetrate the old woman’s tympanum: “Get along with the supper, Verena.”

Charity was trembling with apprehension. Something had happened--she was
sure of it now--and Mr. Royall knew what it was. But not for the world
would she have gratified him by showing her anxiety. She took her usual
place, and he seated himself opposite, and poured out a strong cup of
tea before passing her the tea-pot. Verena brought some scrambled eggs,
and he piled his plate with them. “Ain’t you going to take any?” he
asked. Charity roused herself and began to eat.

The tone with which Mr. Royall had said “He’s not coming” seemed to her
full of an ominous satisfaction. She saw that he had suddenly begun to
hate Lucius Harney, and guessed herself to be the cause of this change
of feeling. But she had no means of finding out whether some act of
hostility on his part had made the young man stay away, or whether he
simply wished to avoid seeing her again after their drive back from the
brown house. She ate her supper with a studied show of indifference, but
she knew that Mr. Royall was watching her 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 sounds below her window showed that he
had returned to the porch. She seated herself on her bed and began to
struggle against the desire to go down and ask him what had happened.
“I’d rather die than do it,” she muttered to herself. With a word he
could have relieved her uncertainty: but never would she gratify him by
saying it.

She rose and leaned out of the window. The twilight had deepened into
night, and she watched the frail curve of the young moon dropping to
the edge of the hills. Through the darkness she saw one or two figures
moving down the road; but the evening was too cold for loitering, and
presently the strollers disappeared. Lamps were beginning to show here
and there in the windows. A bar of light brought out the whiteness of a
clump of lilies in the Hawes’s yard: and farther down the street Carrick
Fry’s Rochester lamp cast its bold illumination on the rustic flower-tub
in the middle of his grass-plot.

For a long time she continued to lean in the window. But a fever of
unrest consumed her, and finally she went downstairs, took her hat
from its hook, and swung out of the house. Mr. Royall sat in the porch,
Verena beside him, her old hands crossed on her patched skirt. As
Charity went down the steps Mr. Royall called after her: “Where you
going?” She could easily have answered: “To Orma’s,” or “Down to the
Targatts’”; and either answer might have been true, for she had no
purpose. But she swept on in silence, determined not to 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 the hill and plunging into
the depths of the larch-wood above the pasture. Then she glanced
irresolutely along the street, and as she did so a gleam appeared
through the spruces at Miss Hatchard’s gate. Lucius Harney was there,
then--he had not gone down to Hepburn with Mr. Miles, as she had at
first imagined. But where had he taken his evening meal, and what had
caused him to stay away from Mr. Royall’s? The light was positive proof
of his presence, for Miss Hatchard’s servants were away on a holiday,
and her farmer’s wife came only in the mornings, to make the young man’s
bed and prepare his coffee. Beside that lamp he was doubtless sitting at
this moment. To know the truth Charity had only to walk half the length
of the village, and knock at the lighted window. She hesitated a minute
or two longer, and then turned toward Miss Hatchard’s.

She walked quickly, straining her eyes to detect anyone who might be
coming along the street; and before reaching the Frys’ she crossed over
to avoid the light from their window. Whenever she was unhappy she
felt herself at bay against a pitiless world, and a kind of animal
secretiveness possessed her. But the street was empty, and she passed
unnoticed through the gate and up the path to the house. Its white front
glimmered indistinctly through the trees, showing only one oblong of
light on the lower floor. She had supposed that the lamp was in Miss
Hatchard’s sitting-room; but she now saw that it shone through a window
at the farther corner of the house. She did not know the room to which
this window belonged, and she paused under the trees, checked by a sense
of strangeness. Then she moved on, treading softly on the short grass,
and keeping so close to the house that whoever was in the room, even if
roused by her approach, would not be able to see her.

The window opened on a narrow verandah with a trellised arch. She leaned
close to the trellis, and parting the sprays of clematis that covered it
looked into a corner of the room. She saw the foot of a mahogany bed,
an engraving on the wall, a wash-stand on which a towel had been tossed,
and one end of the green-covered table which held the lamp. Half of
the lampshade projected into her field of vision, and just under it two
smooth sunburnt hands, one holding a pencil and the other a ruler, were
moving to and fro over a drawing-board.

Her heart jumped and then stood still. He was there, a few feet away;
and while her soul was tossing on seas of woe he had been quietly
sitting at his drawing-board. The sight of those two hands, moving with
their usual skill and precision, woke her out of her dream. Her eyes
were opened to the disproportion between what she had felt and the cause
of her agitation; and she was turning away from the window when one hand
abruptly pushed aside the drawing-board and the other flung down the
pencil.

Charity had often noticed Harney’s loving care of his drawings, and the
neatness and method with which he carried on and concluded each task.
The impatient sweeping aside of the drawing-board seemed to reveal a new
mood. The gesture suggested sudden discouragement, or distaste for his
work and she wondered if he too were agitated by secret perplexities.
Her impulse of flight was checked; she stepped up on the verandah and
looked into the room.

Harney had put his elbows on the table and was resting his chin on his
locked hands. He had taken off his coat and waistcoat, and unbuttoned
the low collar of his flannel shirt; she saw the vigorous lines of his
young throat, and the root of the muscles where they joined the
chest. He sat staring straight ahead of him, a look of weariness and
self-disgust on his face: it was almost as if he had been gazing at a
distorted reflection of his own features. For a moment Charity looked at
him with a kind of terror, as if he had been a stranger under familiar
lineaments; then she glanced past him and saw on the floor an open
portmanteau half full of clothes. She understood that he was preparing
to leave, and that he had probably decided to go without seeing her. She
saw that the decision, from whatever cause it was taken, had disturbed
him deeply; and she immediately concluded that his change of plan was
due to some surreptitious interference of Mr. Royall’s. All her old
resentments and rebellions flamed up, confusedly mingled with the
yearning roused by Harney’s nearness. Only a few hours earlier she
had felt secure in his comprehending pity; now she was flung back on
herself, doubly alone after that moment of communion.

Harney was still unaware of her presence. He sat without moving, moodily
staring before him at the same spot in the wall-paper. He had not even
had the energy to finish his packing, and his clothes and papers lay on
the floor about the portmanteau. Presently he unlocked his clasped hands
and stood up; and Charity, drawing back hastily, sank down on the step
of the verandah. The night was so dark that there was not much chance
of his seeing her unless he opened the window and before that she would
have time to slip away and be lost in the shadow of the trees. He stood
for a minute or two looking around the room with the same expression of
self-disgust, as if he hated himself and everything about him; then
he sat down again at the table, drew a few more strokes, and threw
his pencil aside. Finally he walked across the floor, kicking the
portmanteau out of his way, and lay down on the bed, folding his arms
under his head, and staring up morosely at the ceiling. Just so, Charity
had seen him at her side on the grass or the pine-needles, his eyes
fixed on the sky, and pleasure flashing over his face like the flickers
of sun the branches shed on it. But now the face was so changed that she
hardly knew it; and grief at his grief gathered in her throat, rose to
her eyes and ran over.

She continued to crouch on the steps, holding her breath and stiffening
herself into complete immobility. One motion of her hand, one tap on
the pane, and she could picture the sudden change in his face. In every
pulse of her rigid body she was aware of the welcome his eyes and lips
would give her; but something kept her from moving. It was not the
fear of any sanction, human or heavenly; she had never in her life been
afraid. It was simply that she had suddenly understood what would happen
if she went in. It was the thing that did happen between young men and
girls, and that North Dormer ignored in public and snickered over on the
sly. It was what Miss Hatchard was still ignorant of, but every girl
of Charity’s class knew about before she left school. It was what had
happened to Ally Hawes’s sister Julia, and had ended in her going to
Nettleton, and in people’s never mentioning her name.

It did not, of course, always end so sensationally; nor, perhaps, on the
whole, so untragically. Charity had always suspected that the shunned
Julia’s fate might have its compensations. There were others, worse
endings that the village knew of, mean, miserable, unconfessed; other
lives that went on drearily, without visible change, in the same cramped
setting of hypocrisy. But these were not the reasons that held her
back. Since the day before, she had known exactly what she would feel
if Harney should take her in his arms: the melting of palm into palm and
mouth on mouth, and the long flame burning her from head to foot. But
mixed with this feeling was another: the wondering pride in his liking
for her, the startled softness that his sympathy had put into her heart.
Sometimes, when her youth flushed up in her, she had imagined yielding
like other girls to furtive caresses in the twilight; but she could not
so cheapen herself to Harney. She did not know why he was going; but
since he was going she felt she must do nothing to deface the image of
her that he carried away. If he wanted her he must seek her: he must not
be surprised into taking her as girls like Julia Hawes were taken....

No sound came from the sleeping village, and in the deep darkness of
the garden she heard now and then a secret rustle of branches, as though
some night-bird brushed them. Once a footfall passed the gate, and
she shrank back into her corner; but the steps died away and left a
profounder quiet. Her eyes were still on Harney’s tormented face: she
felt she could not move till he moved. But she was beginning to grow
numb from her constrained position, and at times her thoughts were so
indistinct that she seemed to be held there only by a vague weight of
weariness.

A long time passed in this strange vigil. Harney still lay on the bed,
motionless and with fixed eyes, as though following his vision to its
bitter end. At last he stirred and changed his attitude slightly, and
Charity’s heart began to tremble. But he only flung out 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
sideways on the pillow, and she saw that he had fallen asleep. The sweet
expression came back to his lips, and the haggardness faded from his
face, leaving it as fresh as a boy’s.

She rose and crept away.




VIII


SHE had lost the sense of time, and did not know how late it was till
she came out into the street and saw that all the windows were dark
between Miss Hatchard’s and the Royall house.

As she passed from under the black pall of the Norway spruces she
fancied she saw two figures in the shade about the duck-pond. She drew
back and watched; but nothing moved, and she had stared so long into the
lamp-lit room that the darkness confused her, and she thought she must
have been mistaken.

She walked on, wondering whether Mr. Royall was still in the porch. In
her exalted mood she did not greatly care whether he was waiting for her
or not: she seemed to be floating high over life, on a great cloud of
misery beneath which every-day realities had dwindled to mere specks in
space. But the porch was empty, Mr. Royall’s hat hung on its peg in the
passage, and the kitchen lamp had been left to light her to bed. She
took it and went up.

The morning hours of the next day dragged by without incident. Charity
had imagined that, in some way or other, she would learn whether Harney
had already left; but Verena’s deafness prevented her being a source of
news, and no one came to the house who could bring enlightenment.

Mr. Royall went out early, and did not return till Verena had set the
table for the midday meal. When he came in he went straight to the
kitchen and shouted to the old woman: “Ready for dinner----” then he
turned into the dining-room, where Charity was already seated. Harney’s
plate was in its usual place, but Mr. Royall offered no explanation
of his absence, and Charity asked none. The feverish exaltation of the
night before had dropped, and she said to herself that he had gone away,
indifferently, almost callously, and that now her life would lapse again
into the narrow rut out of which he had lifted it. For a moment she was
inclined to sneer at herself for not having used the arts 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 stood up she rose also, without waiting to
help Verena. She had her foot on the stairs when he called to her to
come back.

“I’ve got a headache. I’m going up to lie down.”

“I want you should come in here first; I’ve got something to say to
you.”

She was sure from his tone that in a moment she would learn what every
nerve in her ached to know; but as she turned back she made a last
effort of indifference.

Mr. Royall stood in the middle of the office, his thick eyebrows
beetling, his lower jaw trembling a little. At first she thought he had
been drinking; then she saw that he was sober, but stirred by a deep and
stern emotion totally unlike his usual transient angers. And suddenly
she understood that, until then, she had never really noticed him or
thought about him. Except on the occasion of his one offense he had been
to her merely the person who is always there, the unquestioned central
fact of life, as inevitable but as uninteresting as North Dormer itself,
or any of the other conditions fate had laid on her. Even then she had
regarded him only in relation to herself, and had never speculated as
to his own feelings, beyond instinctively concluding that he would not
trouble her again in the same way. But now she began to wonder what 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 like friends.”

Instantly she felt that something had happened, and that he held her in
his hand.

“Where is Mr. Harney? Why hasn’t he come back? Have you sent him away?”
 she broke out, without knowing what she was saying.

The change in Mr. Royall frightened her. All the blood seemed to leave
his veins and against his swarthy pallor the deep lines in his face
looked black.

“Didn’t he have time to answer some of those questions last night? You
was with him long enough!” he said.

Charity stood speechless. The taunt was so unrelated to what had been
happening in her soul that she hardly understood it. But the instinct of
self-defense awoke in 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 their mouths.--Oh, how I’ve
always hated you!” she cried.

She had expected a retort in kind, and it startled her to hear her
exclamation sounding on through silence.

“Yes, I know,” Mr. Royall said slowly. “But that ain’t going to help us
much now.”

“It helps me not to care a straw what lies you tell about me!”

“If they’re lies, they’re not my lies: my Bible oath on that, Charity. I
didn’t know where you were: I wasn’t out of this house last night.”

She made no answer and he went on: “Is it a lie that you were seen
coming out of Miss Hatchard’s nigh onto midnight?”

She straightened herself with a laugh, all her reckless insolence
recovered. “I didn’t look to see what time it was.”

“You lost girl... you... you.... Oh, my God, why did you tell me?” he
broke out, dropping into his chair, his head bowed down like an old
man’s.

Charity’s self-possession had returned with the sense of her danger. “Do
you suppose I’d take the trouble to lie to YOU? Who are you, anyhow, to
ask me where I go to when I go out at night?”

Mr. Royall lifted his head and looked at her. His face had grown quiet
and almost gentle, as she remembered seeing it sometimes when she was a
little girl, before Mrs. Royall died.

“Don’t let’s go on like this, Charity. It can’t do any good to either of
us. You were seen going into that fellow’s house... you were seen coming
out of it.... I’ve watched 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 sent him away!”

He looked at her in surprise. “Didn’t he tell you so? I thought he
understood.” He spoke slowly, with difficult pauses, “I didn’t name
you to him: I’d have cut my hand off sooner. I just told him I couldn’t
spare the horse any longer; and that the cooking was getting too heavy
for Verena. I guess he’s the kind that’s heard the same thing before.
Anyhow, he took it quietly enough. He said his job here was about done,
anyhow; and there didn’t another word pass between us.... If he told you
otherwise he told you an untruth.”

Charity listened in a cold trance of anger. It was nothing to her what
the village said... but all this fingering of her dreams!

“I’ve told you he didn’t tell me anything. I didn’t speak with him last
night.”

“You didn’t speak with him?”

“No.... It’s not that I care what any of you say... but you may as well
know. Things ain’t between us the way you think... and the other people
in this place. He was kind to me; he was my friend; and all of a sudden
he stopped coming, and I knew it was you that done it--YOU!” All her
unreconciled memory of the past flamed out at him. “So I went there last
night to find out what you’d said to him: that’s all.”

Mr. Royall drew a heavy breath. “But, then--if he wasn’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 did not move her: she
could feel only the outrage of his interference.

“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 his room, and I stood outside for ever
so long and watched him; but I dursn’t go in for fear he’d think I’d
come after him....” She felt her voice breaking, and gathered it up in a
last defiance. “As long as I live I’ll never forgive you!” she cried.

Mr. Royall made no answer. He sat and pondered with sunken head, his
veined hands clasped about the arms of his chair. Age seemed to have
come down on him as winter comes on the hills after a storm. At length
he looked up.

“Charity, you say you don’t care; but you’re the proudest girl I know,
and the last to want people to talk against you. You know there’s always
eyes watching you: you’re handsomer and smarter than the rest, and
that’s enough. But till lately you’ve never given them a chance. Now
they’ve got it, and they’re going to use it. I believe what you say, but
they won’t.... It was Mrs. Tom Fry seen you going in... and two or three
of them watched for you to come out again.... You’ve been with the fellow
all day long every day since he come here... and I’m a lawyer, and I know
how hard slander dies.” He paused, but she stood motionless, without
giving him any sign of acquiescence or even of attention. “He’s a
pleasant fellow to talk to--I liked having him here myself. The young
men up here ain’t had his chances. But there’s one thing as old as the
hills and as plain as daylight: if he’d wanted you the right way he’d
have said so.”

Charity did not speak. It seemed to her that nothing could exceed the
bitterness of hearing such words from such lips.

Mr. Royall rose from his seat. “See here, Charity Royall: I had a
shameful thought once, and you’ve made me pay for it. Isn’t that score
pretty near wiped out?... 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 all your sneers and your mockery
you’ve always known I loved you the way a man loves a decent woman. I’m
a good many years older than you, but I’m head and shoulders above this
place and everybody in it, and you know that too. I slipped up once, but
that’s no reason for not starting again. If you’ll come with me I’ll
do it. If you’ll marry me we’ll leave here and settle in some big town,
where there’s men, and business, and things doing. It’s not too late for
me to find an opening.... I can see it by the way folks treat me when I
go down to Hepburn or Nettleton....”

Charity made no movement. Nothing in his appeal reached her heart, and
she thought only of words to wound and wither. But a growing lassitude
restrained her. What did anything matter that he was saying? She saw the
old life closing in on her, and hardly heeded his fanciful picture of
renewal.

“Charity--Charity--say you’ll do it,” she heard him urge, all his lost
years and wasted passion in his voice.

“Oh, what’s the use of all this? When I leave here it won’t be with
you.”

She moved toward the door as she spoke, and he stood up and placed
himself between her and the threshold. He seemed suddenly tall and
strong, as though the extremity of his humiliation had given him new
vigour.

“That’s all, is it? It’s not much.” He leaned against the door, so
towering and powerful that he seemed to fill the narrow room. “Well,
then look here.... You’re right: I’ve no claim on you--why should you
look at a broken man like me? You want the other fellow... and I don’t
blame you. You picked out the best when you seen it... well, that was
always my way.” He fixed his stern eyes on her, and she had the sense
that the struggle within him was at its highest. “Do you want him 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 that sometimes made her feel as if she
had his blood in her veins.

“Do you want him to--say? I’ll have him here in an hour if you do. I
ain’t been in the law thirty years for nothing. He’s hired Carrick Fry’s
team to take him to Hepburn, but he ain’t going to start for another
hour. And I can put things to him so he won’t be long deciding.... He’s
soft: I could see that. I don’t say you won’t be sorry afterward--but,
by God, I’ll give you the chance to be, if you say so.”

She heard him out in silence, too remote from all he was feeling and
saying for any sally of scorn to relieve her. As she listened, there
flitted through her mind the vision of Liff Hyatt’s muddy boot coming
down on the white bramble-flowers. The same thing had happened now;
something transient and exquisite had flowered in her, and she had stood
by and seen it trampled to earth. While the thought passed through
her she was aware of Mr. Royall, still leaning against the door, but
crestfallen, diminished, as though her silence were the answer he most
dreaded.

“I don’t want any chance you can give me: I’m glad he’s going away,” she
said.

He kept his place a moment longer, his hand on the door-knob. “Charity!”
 he pleaded. She made no answer, and he turned the knob and went out. She
heard him fumble with the latch of the front door, and saw him walk
down the steps. He passed out of the gate, and his figure, stooping and
heavy, receded slowly up the street.

For a while she remained where he had left her. She was still trembling
with the humiliation of his last words, which rang so loud in her ears
that it seemed as though they must echo through the village, proclaiming
her a creature to lend herself to such vile suggestions. Her shame
weighed on her like a physical oppression: the roof and walls seemed
to be closing in on her, and she was seized by the impulse to get away,
under the open sky, where there would be room to breathe. She went to
the front door, and as she did so Lucius 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?”
 he asked. “May I come in?”

Her heart was beating so violently that she was afraid to speak, and
stood looking at him with tear-dilated eyes; then she became aware of
what her silence must betray, and said quickly: “Yes: come in.”

She led the way into the dining-room, and they sat down on opposite
sides of the table, the cruet-stand and japanned bread-basket between
them. Harney had laid his straw hat on the table, and as he sat there,
in his easy-looking summer clothes, a brown tie knotted under his
flannel collar, and his smooth brown hair brushed back from his
forehead, she pictured him, as she had seen him the night before, lying
on his bed, with the tossed locks falling into his eyes, and his bare
throat rising out of his unbuttoned shirt. He had never seemed so remote
as at the moment when that vision flashed through her mind.

“I’m so sorry it’s good-bye: I suppose you know I’m leaving,” he began,
abruptly and awkwardly; she guessed that he was wondering how much she
knew of his reasons for going.

“I presume you found your work was over quicker than what you expected,”
 she said.

“Well, yes--that is, no: there are plenty of things I should have liked
to do. But my holiday’s limited; and now that Mr. Royall needs the horse
for himself it’s rather 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 wanted to thank you for
making them so,” he continued, his colour rising.

She could not think of any reply, and he went on: “You’ve been
wonderfully kind to me, and I wanted to tell you.... I wish I could think
of you as happier, less lonely.... Things are sure to change for you by
and by....”

“Things don’t change at North Dormer: people just get used to them.”

The answer seemed to break up the order of his prearranged consolations,
and he sat looking at her uncertainly. 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 her heart: everything in her
began to tremble and break loose. She felt her tears run over, and stood
up.

“Well, good-bye,” she said.

She was aware of his taking her hand, and of feeling that his touch was
lifeless.

“Good-bye.” He turned away, and stopped on the threshold. “You’ll say
good-bye for me to Verena?”

She heard the closing of the outer door and the sound of his quick tread
along the path. The latch of the gate clicked after him.

The next morning when she arose in the cold dawn and opened her shutters
she saw a freckled boy standing on the other side of the road and
looking up at her. He was a boy from a farm three or four miles down the
Creston road, and she wondered what he was doing there at that hour, and
why he looked so hard at her window. When he saw her he crossed over and
leaned against the gate unconcernedly. There was no one stirring in the
house, and she threw a shawl over her night-gown and ran down and let
herself out. By the time she reached the gate the boy was sauntering
down the road, whistling carelessly; but she saw that a letter had been
thrust between the slats and the crossbar of the gate. She took it out
and hastened back to her room.

The envelope bore her name, and inside was a leaf torn from a
pocket-diary.


DEAR CHARITY:

I can’t go away like this. I am staying for a few days at Creston River.
Will you come down and meet me at Creston pool? I will wait for you till
evening.




IX


CHARITY sat before the mirror trying on a hat which Ally Hawes, with
much secrecy, had trimmed for her. It was of white straw, with a
drooping brim and cherry-coloured lining that made her face glow like
the inside of the shell on the parlour mantelpiece.

She propped the square of looking-glass against Mr. Royall’s black
leather Bible, steadying it in front with a white stone on which a view
of the Brooklyn Bridge was painted; and she sat before her reflection,
bending the brim this way and that, while Ally Hawes’s pale face looked
over her shoulder like the ghost of wasted opportunities.

“I look awful, don’t I?” she said at last with a happy sigh.

Ally smiled and took back the hat. “I’ll stitch the roses on right here,
so’s you can put it away at once.”

Charity laughed, and ran her fingers through her rough dark hair.
She knew that Harney liked to see its reddish edges ruffled about her
forehead and breaking into little rings at the nape. She sat down on her
bed and watched Ally stoop over the hat with a careful frown.

“Don’t you ever feel like going down to Nettleton for a day?” she asked.

Ally shook her head without looking up. “No, I always remember that
awful time I went down with Julia--to that doctor’s.”

“Oh, Ally----”

“I can’t help it. The house is on the corner of Wing Street and Lake
Avenue. The trolley from the station goes right by it, and the day the
minister took us down to see those pictures I recognized it right off,
and couldn’t seem to see anything else. There’s a big black sign with
gold letters all across the front--‘Private Consultations.’ She came as
near as anything to dying....”

“Poor Julia!” Charity sighed from the height of her purity and her
security. She had a friend whom she trusted and who respected her.
She was going with him to spend the next day--the Fourth of July--at
Nettleton. Whose business was it but hers, and what was the harm? The
pity of it was that girls like Julia did not know how to choose, and to
keep bad fellows at a distance.... Charity slipped down from the bed, and
stretched out her hands.

“Is it sewed? Let me try it on again.” She put the hat on, and smiled at
her image. The thought of Julia had vanished....

The next morning she was up before dawn, and saw the yellow sunrise
broaden behind the hills, and the silvery luster preceding a hot day
tremble across the sleeping fields.

Her plans had been made with great care. She had announced that she was
going down to the Band of Hope picnic at Hepburn, and as no one else
from North Dormer intended to venture so far it was not likely that her
absence from the festivity would be reported. Besides, if it were she
would not greatly care. She was determined to assert her independence,
and if she stooped to fib about the Hepburn picnic it was chiefly
from the secretive instinct that made her dread the profanation of her
happiness. Whenever she was with Lucius Harney she would have liked some
impenetrable mountain mist to hide her.

It was arranged that she should walk to a point of the Creston road
where Harney was to pick her up and drive her across the hills to
Hepburn in time for the nine-thirty train to Nettleton. Harney at first
had been rather lukewarm about the trip. He declared himself ready to
take her to Nettleton, but urged her not to go on the Fourth of July,
on account of the crowds, the probable lateness of the trains,
the difficulty of her getting back before night; but her evident
disappointment caused him to give way, and even to affect a faint
enthusiasm for the adventure. She understood why he was not more eager:
he must have seen sights beside which even a Fourth of July at Nettleton
would seem tame. But she had never seen anything; and a great longing
possessed her to walk the streets of a big town on a holiday, clinging
to his arm and jostled by idle crowds in their best clothes. The only
cloud on the prospect was the fact that the shops would be closed; but
she hoped he would take her back another day, when they were open.

She started out unnoticed in the early sunlight, slipping through the
kitchen while Verena bent above the stove. To avoid attracting notice,
she carried her new hat carefully wrapped up, and had thrown a long
grey veil of Mrs. Royall’s over the new white muslin dress which Ally’s
clever fingers had made for her. All of the ten dollars Mr. Royall had
given her, and a part of her own savings as well, had been spent on
renewing her wardrobe; and when Harney jumped out of the buggy to meet
her she read her reward in his eyes.

The freckled boy who had brought her the note two weeks earlier was
to wait with the buggy at Hepburn till their return. He perched at
Charity’s feet, his legs dangling between the wheels, and they could
not say much because of his presence. But it did not greatly matter, for
their past was now rich enough to have given them a private language;
and with the long day stretching before them like the blue distance
beyond the hills there was a delicate pleasure in postponement.

When Charity, in response to Harney’s message, had gone to meet him at
the Creston pool her heart had been so full of mortification and anger
that his first words might easily have estranged her. But it happened
that he had found the right word, which was one of simple friendship.
His tone had instantly justified her, and put her guardian in the
wrong. He had made no allusion to what had passed between Mr. Royall and
himself, but had simply let it appear that he had left because means 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 of the freckled boy’s father, who served as livery-stable
keeper to one or two melancholy summer boarding-houses on Creston Lake,
and had discovered, within driving distance, a number of houses worthy
of his pencil; and he said that he could not, while he was in the
neighbourhood, give up the pleasure of seeing her as often as possible.

When they took leave of each other she promised to continue to be his
guide; and during the fortnight which followed they roamed the hills in
happy comradeship. In most of the village friendships between youths and
maidens lack of conversation was made up for by tentative fondling; but
Harney, except when he had tried to comfort her in her trouble on their
way back from the Hyatts’, had never put his arm about her, or sought
to betray her into any sudden caress. It seemed to be enough for him to
breathe her nearness like a flower’s; and since his pleasure at being
with her, and his sense of her youth and her grace, perpetually shone in
his eyes and softened the inflection of his voice, his reserve did not
suggest coldness, but the deference due to a girl of his own class.

The buggy was drawn by an old trotter who whirled them along so briskly
that the pace created a little breeze; but when they reached Hepburn
the full heat of the airless morning descended on them. At the railway
station the platform was packed with a sweltering throng, and they took
refuge in the waiting-room, where there was another throng, already
dejected by the heat and the long waiting for retarded trains. Pale
mothers were struggling with fretful babies, or trying to keep their
older offspring from the fascination of the track; girls and their
“fellows” were giggling and shoving, and passing about candy in sticky
bags, and older men, collarless and perspiring, were shifting heavy
children from one arm to the other, and keeping a haggard eye on the
scattered members of their families.

At last the train rumbled in, and engulfed the waiting multitude. Harney
swept Charity up on to the first car and they captured a bench for
two, and sat in happy isolation while the train swayed and roared along
through rich fields and languid tree-clumps. The haze of the morning
had become a sort of clear tremor over everything, like the colourless
vibration about a flame; and the opulent landscape seemed to droop under
it. But to Charity the heat was a stimulant: it enveloped the whole
world in the same glow that burned at her heart. Now and then a lurch of
the train flung her against Harney, and through her thin muslin she felt
the touch of his sleeve. She steadied herself, their eyes met, and the
flaming breath of the day seemed to enclose them.

The train roared into the Nettleton station, the descending mob caught
them on its tide, and they were swept out into a vague dusty square
thronged with seedy “hacks” and long curtained omnibuses drawn by horses
with tasselled fly-nets over their withers, who stood swinging their
depressed heads drearily from side to side.

A mob of ‘bus and hack drivers were shouting “To the Eagle House,”
 “To the Washington House,” “This way to the Lake,” “Just starting for
Greytop;” and through their yells came the popping of fire-crackers,
the explosion of torpedoes, the banging of toy-guns, and the crash of
a firemen’s band trying to play the Merry Widow while they were being
packed into a waggonette streaming with bunting.

The ramshackle wooden hotels about the square were all hung with flags
and paper lanterns, and as Harney and Charity turned into the main
street, with its brick and granite business blocks crowding out the old
low-storied shops, and its towering poles strung with innumerable wires
that seemed to tremble and buzz in the heat, they saw the double line of
flags and lanterns tapering away gaily to the park at the other end of
the perspective. The noise and colour of this holiday vision seemed to
transform Nettleton into a metropolis. Charity could not believe
that Springfield or even Boston had anything grander to show, and
she wondered if, at this very moment, Annabel Balch, on the arm of
as brilliant a young man, were threading her way through scenes as
resplendent.

“Where shall we go first?” Harney asked; but as she turned her happy
eyes on him he guessed the answer and said: “We’ll take a look round,
shall we?”

The street swarmed with their fellow-travellers, with other
excursionists arriving from other directions, with Nettleton’s own
population, and with the mill-hands trooping in from the factories on
the Creston. The shops were closed, but one would scarcely have noticed
it, so numerous were the glass doors swinging open on saloons, on
restaurants, on drug-stores gushing from every soda-water tap, on fruit
and confectionery shops stacked with strawberry-cake, cocoanut drops,
trays of glistening molasses candy, boxes of caramels and chewing-gum,
baskets of sodden strawberries, and dangling branches of bananas.
Outside of some of the doors were trestles with banked-up oranges and
apples, spotted pears and dusty raspberries; and the air reeked with
the smell of fruit and stale coffee, beer and sarsaparilla and fried
potatoes.

Even the shops that were closed offered, through wide expanses of
plate-glass, hints of hidden riches. In some, waves of silk and ribbon
broke over shores of imitation moss from which ravishing hats rose like
tropical orchids. In others, the pink throats of gramophones opened
their giant convolutions in a soundless chorus; or bicycles shining in
neat ranks seemed to await the signal of an invisible starter; or tiers
of fancy-goods in leatherette and paste and celluloid dangled their
insidious graces; and, in one vast bay that seemed to project them into
exciting contact with the public, wax ladies in daring dresses chatted
elegantly, or, with gestures intimate yet blameless, pointed to their
pink corsets and transparent hosiery.

Presently Harney found that his watch had stopped, and turned in at a
small jeweller’s shop which chanced to still be open. While the watch
was being examined Charity leaned over the glass counter where, on a
background of dark blue velvet, pins, rings, and brooches glittered
like the moon and stars. She had never seen jewellry so near by, and
she longed to lift the glass lid and plunge her hand among the shining
treasures. But already Harney’s watch was repaired, and he laid his hand
on her arm and drew her from her dream.

“Which do you like best?” he asked leaning over the counter 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 was mere trumpery compared to the
small round stone, blue as a mountain lake, with little sparks of light
all round it. She coloured at her want of discrimination.

“It’s so lovely I guess I was afraid to look at it,” she said.

He laughed, and they went out of the shop; but a few steps away he
exclaimed: “Oh, by Jove, I forgot something,” and turned back and
left her in the crowd. She stood staring down a row of pink gramophone
throats till he rejoined her and slipped his arm through hers.

“You mustn’t be afraid of looking at the blue pin any longer, because it
belongs to you,” he said; and she felt a little box being pressed into
her hand. Her heart gave a leap of joy, but it reached her lips only in
a shy stammer. She remembered other girls whom she had heard planning to
extract presents from their fellows, and was seized with a sudden dread
lest Harney should have imagined that she had leaned over the pretty
things in the glass case in the hope of having one given to her....

A little farther down the street they turned in at a glass doorway
opening on a shining hall with a mahogany staircase, and brass cages in
its corners. “We must have something to eat,” Harney said; and the next
moment Charity found herself in a dressing-room all looking-glass and
lustrous surfaces, where a party of showy-looking girls were dabbing
on powder and straightening immense plumed hats. When they had gone she
took courage to bathe her hot face in one of the marble basins, and
to straighten her own hat-brim, which the parasols of the crowd had
indented. The dresses in the shops had so impressed her that she
scarcely dared look at her reflection; but when she did so, the glow
of her face under her cherry-coloured hat, and the curve of her young
shoulders through the transparent muslin, restored her courage; and when
she had taken the blue brooch from its box and pinned it on her bosom
she walked toward the restaurant with her head high, as if she had
always strolled through tessellated halls beside young men in flannels.

Her spirit sank a little at the sight of the slim-waisted waitresses in
black, with bewitching mob-caps on their haughty heads, who were moving
disdainfully between the tables. “Not f’r another hour,” one of them
dropped to Harney in passing; and he stood doubtfully glancing about
him.

“Oh, well, we can’t stay sweltering here,” he decided; “let’s try
somewhere else--” and with a sense of relief Charity followed him from
that scene of inhospitable splendour.

That “somewhere else” turned out--after more hot tramping, and several
failures--to be, of all things, a little open-air place in a back street
that called itself a French restaurant, and consisted in two or three
rickety tables under a scarlet-runner, between a patch of zinnias
and petunias and a big elm bending over from the next yard. Here they
lunched on queerly flavoured things, while Harney, leaning back in a
crippled rocking-chair, smoked cigarettes between the courses and poured
into Charity’s glass a pale yellow wine which he said was the very same
one drank in just such jolly places in France.

Charity did not think the wine as good as sarsaparilla, but she sipped a
mouthful for the pleasure of doing what he did, and of fancying herself
alone with him in foreign countries. The illusion was increased by their
being served by a deep-bosomed woman with smooth hair and a pleasant
laugh, who talked to Harney in unintelligible words, and seemed amazed
and overjoyed at his answering her in kind. At the other tables other
people sat, mill-hands probably, homely but pleasant looking, who spoke
the same shrill jargon, and looked at Harney and Charity with friendly
eyes; and between the table-legs a poodle with bald patches and pink
eyes nosed about for scraps, and sat up on his hind legs absurdly.

Harney showed no inclination to move, for hot as their corner was, it
was at least shaded and quiet; and, from the main thoroughfares came the
clanging of trolleys, the incessant popping of torpedoes, the jingle
of street-organs, the bawling of megaphone men and the loud murmur of
increasing crowds. He leaned back, smoking his cigar, patting the dog,
and stirring the coffee that steamed in their chipped cups. “It’s the
real thing, you know,” he explained; and Charity hastily revised her
previous conception of the beverage.

They had made no plans for the rest of the day, and when Harney
asked her what she wanted to do next she was too bewildered by rich
possibilities to find an answer. Finally she confessed that she longed
to go to the Lake, where she had not been taken on her former visit,
and when he answered, “Oh, there’s time for that--it will be pleasanter
later,” she suggested seeing some pictures like the ones Mr. Miles had
taken her to. She thought Harney looked a little disconcerted; but
he passed his fine handkerchief over his warm brow, said gaily, “Come
along, then,” and rose with a last pat for the pink-eyed dog.

Mr. Miles’s pictures had been shown in an austere Y.M.C.A. hall,
with white walls and an organ; but Harney led Charity to a glittering
place--everything she saw seemed to glitter--where they passed, between
immense pictures of yellow-haired beauties stabbing villains in evening
dress, into a velvet-curtained auditorium packed with spectators to
the last limit of compression. After that, for a while, everything
was merged in her brain in swimming circles of heat and blinding
alternations of light and darkness. All the world has to show seemed
to pass before her in a chaos of palms and minarets, charging cavalry
regiments, roaring lions, comic policemen and scowling murderers; and
the crowd around her, the hundreds of hot sallow candy-munching faces,
young, old, middle-aged, but all kindled with the same contagious
excitement, became part of the spectacle, and danced on the screen with
the rest.

Presently the thought of the cool trolley-run to the Lake grew
irresistible, and they struggled out of the theatre. As they stood
on the pavement, Harney pale with the heat, and even Charity a little
confused by it, a young man drove by in an electric run-about with a
calico band bearing the words: “Ten dollars to take you round the Lake.”
 Before Charity knew what was happening, Harney had waved a hand, and
they were climbing in. “Say, for twenny-five I’ll run you out to see the
ball-game and back,” the driver proposed with an insinuating grin; but
Charity said quickly: “Oh, I’d rather go rowing on the Lake.” The street
was so thronged that progress was slow; but the glory of sitting in the
little carriage while it wriggled its way between laden omnibuses and
trolleys made the moments seem too short. “Next turn is Lake Avenue,”
 the young man called out over his shoulder; and as they paused in the
wake of a big omnibus groaning with Knights of Pythias in cocked hats
and swords, Charity looked up and saw on the corner a brick house with
a conspicuous black and gold sign across its front. “Dr. Merkle; Private
Consultations at all hours. Lady Attendants,” she read; and suddenly
she remembered Ally Hawes’s words: “The house was at the corner of Wing
Street and Lake Avenue... there’s a big black sign across the front....”
 Through all the heat and the rapture a shiver of cold ran over her.




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.




XI


AT two o’clock in the morning the freckled boy from Creston stopped his
sleepy horse at the door of the red house, and Charity got out. Harney
had taken leave of her at Creston River, charging the boy to drive her
home. Her mind was still in a fog of misery, and she did not remember
very clearly what had happened, or what they said to each other, during
the interminable interval since their departure from Nettleton; but the
secretive instinct of the animal in pain was so strong in her that she
had a sense of relief when Harney got out and she drove on alone.

The full moon hung over North Dormer, whitening the mist that filled the
hollows between the hills and floated transparently above the fields.
Charity stood a moment at the gate, looking out into the waning night.
She watched the boy drive off, his horse’s head wagging heavily to and
fro; then she went around to the kitchen door and felt under the mat for
the key. She found it, unlocked the door and went in. The kitchen
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; evidently he had not come back. She went into her room, bolted her
door and began slowly to untie the ribbon about her waist, and to take
off her dress. Under the bed she saw the paper bag in which she had
hidden her new hat from inquisitive eyes....

She lay for a long time sleepless on her bed, staring up at the
moonlight on the low ceiling; dawn was in the sky when she fell asleep,
and when she woke the sun was on her face.

She dressed and went down to the kitchen. Verena was there alone: she
glanced at Charity tranquilly, with her old deaf-looking eyes. There was
no sign of Mr. Royall about the house and the hours passed without his
reappearing. Charity had gone up to her room, and sat there listlessly,
her hands on her lap. Puffs of sultry air fanned her dimity window
curtains and flies buzzed stiflingly against the bluish panes.

At one o’clock Verena hobbled up to see if she were not coming down to
dinner; but she shook her head, and the old woman went away, saying:
“I’ll cover up, then.”

The sun turned and left her room, and Charity seated herself in the
window, gazing down the village street through the half-opened shutters.
Not a thought was in her mind; it was just a dark whirlpool of crowding
images; and she watched the people passing along the street, Dan
Targatt’s team hauling a load of pine-trunks down to Hepburn, the
sexton’s old white horse grazing on the bank across the way, as if she
looked at these familiar sights from the other side of the grave.

She was roused from her apathy by seeing Ally Hawes come out of the
Frys’ gate and walk slowly toward the red house with her uneven limping
step. At the sight Charity recovered her severed contact with reality.
She divined that Ally was coming to hear about her day: no one else
was in the secret of the trip to Nettleton, and it had flattered Ally
profoundly to be allowed to know of it.

At the thought of having to see her, of having to meet her eyes and
answer or evade her questions, the whole horror of the previous night’s
adventure rushed back upon Charity. What had been a feverish nightmare
became a cold and unescapable fact. Poor Ally, at that moment,
represented North Dormer, with all its mean curiosities, its furtive
malice, its sham unconsciousness of evil. Charity knew that, although
all relations with Julia were supposed to be severed, the tender-hearted
Ally still secretly communicated with her; and no doubt Julia would
exult in the chance of retailing the scandal of the wharf. The story,
exaggerated and distorted, was probably already on its way to North
Dormer.

Ally’s dragging pace had not carried her far from the Frys’ gate when
she was stopped by old Mrs. Sollas, who was a great talker, and spoke
very slowly because she had never been able to get used to her new teeth
from Hepburn. Still, even this respite would not last long; in another
ten minutes Ally would be at the door, and Charity 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 instant flight, was the only
thing conceivable. The longing to escape, to get away from familiar
faces, from places where she was known, had always been strong in her in
moments of distress. She had a childish belief in the miraculous power
of strange scenes and new faces to transform her life and wipe out
bitter memories. But such impulses were mere fleeting whims compared to
the cold resolve which now possessed her. She felt she could not remain
an hour longer under the roof of the man who had publicly dishonoured
her, and face to face with the people who would presently be gloating
over all the details of her humiliation.

Her passing pity for Mr. Royall had been swallowed up in loathing:
everything in her recoiled from the disgraceful spectacle of the drunken
old man apostrophizing her in the presence of a band of loafers and
street-walkers. Suddenly, vividly, she relived again the horrible moment
when he had tried to force himself into her room, and what she had
before supposed to be a mad aberration now appeared to her as a vulgar
incident in a debauched and degraded life.

While these thoughts were hurrying through her she had dragged out
her old canvas school-bag, and was thrusting into it a few articles of
clothing and the little packet of letters she had received from Harney.
From under her pincushion she took the library key, and laid it in full
view; then she felt at the back of a drawer for the blue brooch that
Harney had given her. She would not have dared to wear it openly at
North Dormer, but now she fastened it on her bosom as if it were a
talisman to protect her in her flight. These preparations had taken but
a few minutes, and when they were finished Ally Hawes was still at the
Frys’ corner talking to old Mrs. Sollas....

She had said to herself, as she always said in moments of revolt: “I’ll
go to the Mountain--I’ll go back to my own folks.” She had never really
meant it before; but now, as she considered her case, no other course
seemed open. She had never learned any trade that would have given her
independence in a strange place, and she knew no one in the big towns of
the valley, where she might have hoped to find employment. Miss Hatchard
was still away; but even had she been at North Dormer she was the last
person to whom Charity would have turned, since one of the motives
urging her to flight was the wish not to see Lucius Harney. Travelling
back from Nettleton, in the crowded brightly-lit train, all exchange of
confidence between them had been impossible; but during their drive
from Hepburn to Creston River she had gathered from Harney’s snatches of
consolatory talk--again hampered by the freckled boy’s presence--that
he intended to see her the next day. At the moment she had found a vague
comfort in the assurance; but in the desolate lucidity of the hours that
followed she had come to see the impossibility of meeting him again.
Her dream of comradeship was over; and the scene on the wharf--vile and
disgraceful as it had been--had after all shed the light of truth on her
minute of madness. It was as if her guardian’s words had stripped her
bare in the face of the grinning crowd and proclaimed to the world the
secret admonitions of her conscience.

She did not think these things out clearly; she simply followed the
blind propulsion of her wretchedness. She did 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 struck through the woods
by a short-cut leading to the Creston road. A lead-coloured sky hung
heavily over the fields, and in the forest the motionless air was
stifling; but she pushed on, impatient to reach the road which was the
shortest way to the Mountain.

To do so, she had to follow the Creston road for a mile or two, and go
within half a mile of the village; and she walked quickly, fearing to
meet Harney. But there was no sign of him, and she had almost reached
the branch road when she saw the flanks of a large white tent projecting
through the trees by the roadside. She supposed that it sheltered a
travelling circus which had come there for the Fourth; but as she drew
nearer she saw, over the folded-back flap, a large sign bearing the
inscription, “Gospel Tent.” The interior seemed to be empty; but a young
man in a black alpaca coat, his lank hair parted over a round white
face, stepped from under the flap and advanced toward her with a smile.

“Sister, your Saviour knows everything. Won’t you come in and lay your
guilt before Him?” he asked insinuatingly, putting his hand on her arm.

Charity started back and flushed. For a moment she thought the
evangelist must have heard a report of the scene at Nettleton; then she
saw the absurdity of the supposition.

“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’t speak blasphemy....”

But she had jerked her arm out of his hold, and was running up the
branch road, trembling with the fear of meeting a familiar face.
Presently she was out of sight of the village, and climbing into the
heart of the forest. She could not hope to do the fifteen miles to the
Mountain that afternoon; but she knew of a place half-way to Hamblin
where she could sleep, and where no one would think of looking for her.
It was a little deserted house on a slope in one of the lonely rifts of
the hills. She had seen it once, years before, when she had gone on a
nutting expedition to the grove of walnuts below it. The party had taken
refuge in the house from a sudden mountain storm, and she remembered
that Ben Sollas, who liked frightening girls, had told them that it was
said to be haunted.

She was growing faint and tired, for she had eaten nothing since
morning, and was not used to walking so far. Her head felt light and she
sat down for a moment by the roadside. As she sat there she heard the
click of a bicycle-bell, and started up to plunge back into the forest;
but before she could move the bicycle had swept around the curve of the
road, and Harney, jumping off, was approaching her with outstretched
arms.

“Charity! What on earth are you doing here?”

She stared as if he were a vision, so startled by the unexpectedness of
his being there that no words came to her.

“Where were you going? Had you forgotten that I was coming?” he
continued, trying to draw her to him; but she shrank from his embrace.

“I was going away--I don’t want to see you--I want you should leave me
alone,” she broke out wildly.

He looked at her and his face grew grave, as though the shadow 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 lonely forest road that
stretched away into sun-flecked distances.

“Where were you going?’

“Home.”

“Home--this way?”

She threw her head back defiantly. “To my home--up yonder: to the
Mountain.”

As she spoke she became aware of a change in his face. He was no longer
listening to her, he was only looking at her, with the passionate
absorbed expression she had seen in his eyes after they had kissed on
the stand at Nettleton. He was the new Harney again, the Harney abruptly
revealed in that embrace, who seemed so penetrated with the joy of
her presence that he was utterly careless of what she was thinking or
feeling.

He caught her hands with a laugh. “How do you suppose I found you?” he
said gaily. He drew out the little packet of his letters and flourished
them before her bewildered eyes.

“You dropped them, you imprudent young person--dropped them in the
middle of the road, not far from here; and the young man who is running
the Gospel tent picked them up just as I was riding by.” He drew back,
holding her at arm’s length, and scrutinizing her troubled face with the
minute searching gaze of his short-sighted eyes.

“Did you really think you could run away from me? You see you weren’t
meant to,” he said; and before she could answer he had kissed her again,
not vehemently, but tenderly, almost fraternally, as if he had guessed
her confused pain, and wanted her to know he understood 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 and confidently, as if nothing
had happened that could shame or embarrass them; and for a moment, in
the sudden relief of her release from lonely pain, she felt herself
yielding to his mood. But he had turned, and was drawing her back along
the road by which she had come. She stiffened herself and stopped short.

“I won’t go back,” she said.

They looked at each other a moment in silence; then he answered 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 some day?” Still she made no answer, and he continued,
in the same tone of tender reassurance: “Let us go there now and sit
down and talk quietly.” He took one of the hands that hung by her side
and pressed his lips to the palm. “Do you suppose I’m going to let you
send me away? Do you suppose I don’t understand?”

The little old house--its wooden walls sun-bleached to a ghostly
gray--stood in an orchard above the road. The garden palings had fallen,
but the broken gate dangled between its posts, and the path to the house
was marked by rose-bushes run wild and hanging their small pale blossoms
above the crowding grasses. Slender pilasters and an intricate fan-light
framed the opening where the door had hung; and the door itself lay
rotting in the grass, with an old apple-tree fallen across it.

Inside, also, wind and weather had blanched everything to the same
wan silvery tint; the house was as dry and pure as the interior of a
long-empty shell. But it must have been exceptionally well built, for
the little rooms had kept something of their human aspect: the wooden
mantels with their neat classic ornaments were in place, and the corners
of one ceiling retained a light film of plaster tracery.

Harney had found an old bench at the back door and dragged it into the
house. Charity sat on it, leaning her head against the wall in a state
of drowsy lassitude. He had guessed that she was hungry and thirsty,
and had brought her some tablets of chocolate from his bicycle-bag, and
filled his drinking-cup from a spring in the orchard; and now he sat at
her feet, smoking a cigarette, and looking up at her without speaking.
Outside, the afternoon shadows were lengthening across the grass, and
through the empty window-frame that faced her she saw the Mountain
thrusting its dark mass against a sultry sunset. It was time to go.

She stood up, and he sprang to his feet also, and passed 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 ever going 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 natural you should feel as you do. But it
doesn’t make any real difference: you can’t be hurt by such things.
You must try to forget. And you must try to understand that men... men
sometimes...”

“I know about men. That’s why.”

He coloured a little at the retort, as though it had touched him in a
way she did not suspect.

“Well, then... you must know one has to make allowances.... He’d been
drinking....”

“I know all that, too. I’ve seen him so before. But he wouldn’t have
dared speak to me that way if he hadn’t...”

“Hadn’t what? What do you mean?”

“Hadn’t wanted me to be like those other girls....” She lowered her
voice and looked away from him. “So’s ‘t he wouldn’t have to go out....”

Harney stared at her. For a moment he did not seem to seize her meaning;
then his face grew dark. “The damned hound! The villainous low
hound!” His wrath blazed up, crimsoning him to the temples. “I never
dreamed--good God, it’s too vile,” he broke off, as if his 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 she imagined that he
was searching her face for more light on what she had revealed to him;
and a flush of shame 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 he was no longer
listening. He came close and caught her to him as if he were snatching
her from some imminent peril: his impetuous eyes were in hers, and she
could feel the hard beat of his heart as he held her against it.

“Kiss me again--like last night,” he said, pushing her hair back as if
to draw her whole face up into his kiss.





XII


ONE afternoon toward the end of August a group of girls sat in a room at
Miss Hatchard’s in a gay confusion of flags, turkey-red, blue and white
paper muslin, harvest sheaves and illuminated scrolls.

North Dormer was preparing for its Old Home Week. That form of
sentimental decentralization was still in its early stages, and,
precedents being few, and the desire to set an example contagious, the
matter had become a subject of prolonged and passionate discussion under
Miss Hatchard’s roof. The incentive to the celebration had come rather
from those who had left North Dormer than from those who had been
obliged to stay there, and there was some difficulty in rousing the
village to the proper state of enthusiasm. But Miss Hatchard’s pale prim
drawing-room was the centre of constant comings and goings from Hepburn,
Nettleton, Springfield and even more distant cities; and whenever a
visitor arrived he was led across the hall, and treated to a glimpse of
the group of girls deep in their pretty preparations.

“All the old names... all the old names....” Miss Hatchard would be
heard, tapping across the hall on her crutches. “Targatt... Sollas...
Fry: this is Miss Orma Fry sewing the stars on the drapery for the
organ-loft. Don’t move, girls... and this is Miss Ally Hawes, our
cleverest needle-woman... and Miss Charity Royall making our garlands of
evergreen.... I like the idea of its all being homemade, don’t you? We
haven’t had to call in any foreign talent: my young cousin Lucius
Harney, the architect--you know he’s up here preparing a book on
Colonial houses--he’s taken the whole thing in hand so cleverly; but you
must come and see his sketch for the stage we’re going to put up in the
Town Hall.”

One of the first results of the Old Home Week agitation had, in fact,
been the reappearance of Lucius Harney in the village street. He had
been vaguely spoken of as being not far off, but for some weeks past no
one had seen him at North Dormer, and there was a recent report of his
having left Creston River, where he was said to have been staying, and
gone away from the neighbourhood for 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 the festivities. He
threw himself into the idea with extraordinary good-humour, and was so
prodigal of sketches, and so inexhaustible in devices, that he gave an
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 has roused us all to a
sense of our privileges,” Miss Hatchard would say, lingering on the last
word, which was a favourite one. And before leading her visitor back
to the drawing-room she would repeat, for the hundredth time, that she
supposed he thought it very bold of little North Dormer to start up and
have a Home Week of its own, when so many bigger places hadn’t thought
of it yet; but that, after all, Associations counted more than the size
of the population, didn’t they? And of course North Dormer was so full
of Associations... historic, literary (here a filial sigh for Honorius)
and ecclesiastical... he knew about the old pewter communion service
imported from England in 1769, she supposed? And it was so important, in
a wealthy materialistic age, to set the example of reverting to the old
ideals, the family and the homestead, and so on. This peroration usually
carried her half-way back across the hall, leaving the girls to return
to their interrupted activities.

The day on which Charity Royall was weaving hemlock garlands for the
procession was the last before the celebration. When Miss Hatchard
called upon the North Dormer maidenhood to collaborate in the festal
preparations Charity had at first held aloof; but it had been made
clear to her that her non-appearance might excite conjecture, and,
reluctantly, she had joined the other workers. The girls, at first shy
and embarrassed, and puzzled as to the exact nature of the projected
commemoration, had soon become interested in the amusing details of
their task, and excited by the notice they received. They would not for
the world have 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 the sewing-machine that Charity’s silence sheltered
itself unperceived under their chatter.

In spirit she was still almost unconscious of the pleasant stir about
her. Since her return to the red house, on the evening of the day when
Harney had overtaken her on her way to the Mountain, she had lived at
North Dormer as if she were suspended in the void. She had come back
there because Harney, after appearing to agree to the impossibility of
her doing so, had ended by persuading her that any other course would
be madness. She had nothing further to fear from Mr. Royall. Of this
she had declared herself sure, though she had failed to add, in his
exoneration, that he had twice offered to make her his wife. Her hatred
of him made it impossible, at the moment, for her to say anything that
might partly excuse him in Harney’s eyes.

Harney, however, once satisfied of her security, had found plenty of
reasons for urging her to return. The first, and the most unanswerable,
was that she had nowhere else to go. But the one on which he laid the
greatest stress was that flight would be equivalent to avowal. If--as
was almost inevitable--rumours of the scandalous scene at Nettleton
should reach North Dormer, how else would her disappearance be
interpreted? Her guardian had publicly taken away her character, and she
immediately vanished from his house. Seekers after motives could hardly
fail to draw an unkind conclusion. But if she came back at once, and
was seen leading her usual life, the incident was reduced to its true
proportions, as the outbreak of a drunken old man furious at being
surprised in disreputable company. People would say that Mr. Royall had
insulted his ward to justify himself, and the sordid tale would fall
into its place in the chronicle of his obscure debaucheries.

Charity saw the force of the argument; but if she acquiesced it was
not so much because of that as because it was Harney’s wish. Since that
evening in the deserted house she could imagine no reason for doing or
not doing anything except the fact that Harney wished or did not wish
it. All her tossing contradictory impulses were merged in a fatalistic
acceptance of his will. It was not that she felt in him any ascendancy
of character--there were moments already when she knew she was the
stronger--but that all the rest of life had become a mere cloudy rim
about the central glory of their passion. Whenever she stopped thinking
about that for a moment she felt as she sometimes did after lying on the
grass and staring up too long at the sky; her eyes were so full of light
that everything about her was a blur.

Each time that Miss Hatchard, in the course of her periodical incursions
into the work-room, dropped an allusion to her young cousin, the
architect, the effect was the same on Charity. The hemlock garland she
was wearing fell to her knees and she sat in a kind of trance. It was
so manifestly absurd that Miss Hatchard should talk of Harney in
that familiar possessive way, as if she had any claim on him, or knew
anything about him. She, Charity Royall, was the only being on earth
who really knew him, knew him from the soles of his feet to the rumpled
crest of his hair, knew the shifting lights in his eyes, and the
inflexions of his voice, and the things he liked and disliked,
and everything there was to know about him, as minutely and yet
unconsciously as a child knows the walls of the room it wakes up in
every morning. It was this fact, which nobody about her guessed,
or would have understood, that made her life something apart and
inviolable, as if nothing had any power to hurt or disturb her as long
as her secret was safe.

The room in which the girls sat was the one which had been Harney’s
bedroom. He had been sent upstairs, to make room for the Home Week
workers; but the furniture had not been moved, and as Charity sat there
she had perpetually before her the vision she had looked in on from the
midnight garden. The table at which Harney had sat was the one about
which the girls were gathered; and her own seat was near the bed on
which she had seen him lying. Sometimes, when the others were not
looking, she bent over as if to pick up something, and laid her cheek
for a moment against the pillow.

Toward sunset the girls disbanded. Their work was done, and the next
morning at daylight the draperies and garlands were to be nailed up, and
the illuminated scrolls put in place in the Town Hall. The first guests
were to drive over from Hepburn in time for the midday banquet under
a tent in Miss Hatchard’s field; and after that the ceremonies were
to begin. Miss Hatchard, pale with fatigue and excitement, thanked her
young assistants, and stood in the porch, leaning on her crutches and
waving a farewell as she watched them troop away down the street.

Charity had slipped off among the first; but at the gate she heard Ally
Hawes calling after her, and reluctantly turned.

“Will you come over now and try on your dress?” Ally asked, looking at
her with wistful admiration. “I want to be sure the sleeves don’t ruck
up the same as they did yesterday.”

Charity gazed at her with dazzled eyes. “Oh, it’s lovely,” she said, and
hastened away without listening to Ally’s protest. She wanted her dress
to be as pretty as the other girls’--wanted it, in fact, to outshine the
rest, since she was to take part in the “exercises”--but she had no time
just then to fix her mind on such matters....

She sped up the street to the library, of which she had the key about
her neck. From the passage at the back she dragged forth a bicycle, and
guided it to the edge of the street. She looked about to see if any of
the girls were approaching; but they had drifted away together toward
the Town Hall, and she sprang into the saddle and turned toward the
Creston road. There was an almost continual descent to Creston, and with
her feet against the pedals she floated through the still evening
air like one of the hawks she had often watched slanting downward on
motionless wings. Twenty minutes from the time when she had left Miss
Hatchard’s door she was turning up the wood-road on which Harney had
overtaken her on the day of her flight; and a few minutes afterward she
had jumped from her bicycle at the gate of the deserted house.

In the gold-powdered sunset it looked more than ever like some frail
shell dried and washed by many seasons; but at the back, whither Charity
advanced, drawing her bicycle after her, there were signs of recent
habitation. A rough door made of boards hung in the kitchen doorway,
and pushing it open she entered a room furnished in primitive camping
fashion. In the window was a table, also made of boards, with an
earthenware jar holding a big bunch of wild asters, two canvas chairs
stood near by, and in one corner was a mattress with a Mexican blanket
over it.

The room was empty, and leaning her bicycle against the house Charity
clambered up the slope and sat down on a rock under an old apple-tree.
The air was perfectly still, and from where she sat she would be able to
hear the tinkle of a bicycle-bell a long way down the road....

She was always glad when she got to the little house before Harney. She
liked to have time to take in every detail of its secret sweetness--the
shadows of the apple-trees swaying on the grass, the old walnuts
rounding their domes below the road, the meadows sloping westward in the
afternoon light--before his first kiss blotted it all out. Everything
unrelated to the hours spent in that tranquil place was as faint as the
remembrance of a dream. The only reality was the wondrous unfolding
of her new self, the reaching out to the light of all her contracted
tendrils. She had lived all her life among people whose sensibilities
seemed to have withered for lack of use; and more wonderful, at first,
than Harney’s endearments were the words that were a part of them. She
had always thought of love as something confused and furtive, and he
made it as bright and open as the summer air.

On the morrow of the day when she had shown him the way to the deserted
house he had packed up and left Creston River for Boston; but at the
first station he had jumped on the train with a hand-bag and scrambled
up into the hills. For two golden rainless August weeks he had camped in
the house, getting eggs and milk from the solitary farm in the valley,
where no one knew him, and doing his cooking over a spirit-lamp. He got
up every day with the sun, took a plunge in a brown pool he knew of, and
spent long hours lying in the scented hemlock-woods above the house, or
wandering along the yoke of the Eagle Ridge, far above the misty blue
valleys that swept away east and west between the endless hills. And in
the afternoon Charity came to him.

With part of what was left of her savings she had hired a bicycle for
a month, and every day after dinner, as soon as her guardian started to
his office, she hurried to the library, got out her bicycle, and flew
down the Creston road. She knew that Mr. Royall, like everyone else in
North Dormer, was perfectly aware of her acquisition: possibly he, as
well as the rest of the village, knew what use she made of it. She did
not care: she felt him to be so powerless that if he had questioned her
she would probably have told him the truth. But they had never spoken to
each other since the night on the wharf at Nettleton. He had returned to
North Dormer only on the third day after that encounter, arriving just
as Charity and Verena were sitting down to supper. He had drawn up his
chair, taken his napkin from the side-board drawer, pulled it out of its
ring, and seated himself as unconcernedly as if he had come in from
his usual afternoon session at Carrick Fry’s; and the long habit of the
household made it seem almost natural that Charity should not so much as
raise her eyes when he entered. She had simply let him understand that
her silence was not accidental by leaving the table while he was still
eating, and going up without a word to shut herself into her room.
After that he formed the habit of talking loudly and genially to Verena
whenever Charity was in the room; but otherwise there was no apparent
change in their relations.

She did not think connectedly of these things while she sat waiting for
Harney, but they remained in her mind as a sullen background against
which her short hours with him flamed out like forest fires. Nothing
else mattered, neither the good nor the bad, or what might have seemed
so before she knew him. He had caught her up and carried her away into
a new world, from which, at stated hours, the ghost of her came back to
perform certain customary acts, but all so thinly and insubstantially
that she sometimes wondered that the people she went about among could
see her....

Behind the swarthy Mountain the sun had gone down in waveless gold. From
a pasture up the slope a tinkle of cow-bells sounded; a puff of smoke
hung over the farm in the valley, trailed on the pure air and was gone.
For a few minutes, in the clear light that is all shadow, fields and
woods were outlined with an unreal precision; then the twilight blotted
them out, and the little house turned gray and spectral under its
wizened apple-branches.

Charity’s heart contracted. The first fall of night after a day of
radiance often gave her a sense of hidden menace: it was like looking
out over the world as it would be when love had gone from it. She
wondered if some day she would sit in that same place and watch in vain
for her lover....

His bicycle-bell sounded down the lane, and in a minute she was at the
gate and his eyes were laughing in hers. They walked back through the
long grass, and pushed open the door behind the house. The room at
first seemed quite dark and they had to grope their way in hand in hand.
Through the window-frame the sky looked light by contrast, and above the
black mass of asters in the earthen jar one white star glimmered like a
moth.

“There was such a lot to do at the last minute,” Harney was explaining,
“and I had to drive down to Creston to meet someone who has come to stay
with my cousin for the show.”

He had his arms about her, and his kisses were in her hair and on her
lips. Under his touch things deep down in her struggled to the light and
sprang up like flowers 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 his absence a thousand doubts tormented
her, but as soon as he appeared she ceased to wonder where he had come
from, what had delayed him, who had kept him from her. It seemed as if
the places he had been in, and the people he had been with, must cease
to exist when he left them, just as her own life was suspended in his
absence.

He continued, now, to talk to her volubly and gaily, deploring his
lateness, grumbling at the demands on his time, and good-humouredly
mimicking Miss Hatchard’s benevolent agitation. “She hurried off Miles
to ask Mr. Royall to speak at the Town Hall tomorrow: I didn’t know till
it was done.” Charity was silent, and he added: “After all, perhaps it’s
just as well. No one else could have done it.”

Charity made no answer: She did not care what part her guardian played
in the morrow’s ceremonies. Like all the other figures peopling her
meagre world he had grown non-existent to her. She had even put off
hating him.

“Tomorrow I shall only see you from far off,” Harney continued. “But in
the evening there’ll be the dance in the Town Hall. Do you want me to
promise not to dance with any other girl?”

Any other girl? Were there any others? She had forgotten even that
peril, so enclosed did he and she seem in their secret world. Her heart
gave a frightened jerk.

“Yes, promise.”

He laughed and took her in his arms. “You goose--not even if they’re
hideous?”

He pushed the hair from her forehead, bending her face back, as his way
was, and leaning over so that his head loomed black between her eyes and
the paleness of the sky, in which the white star floated...

Side by side they sped back along the dark wood-road to the village. A
late moon was rising, full orbed and fiery, turning the mountain ranges
from fluid gray to a massive blackness, and making the upper sky so
light that the stars looked as faint as their own reflections in water.
At the edge of the wood, half a mile from North Dormer, Harney jumped
from his bicycle, took Charity in his arms for a last kiss, and then
waited while she went on alone.

They were later than usual, and instead of taking the bicycle to the
library she propped it against the back of the wood-shed and entered the
kitchen of the red house. Verena sat there alone; when Charity came in
she looked at her with mild impenetrable eyes and then took a plate
and a glass of milk from the shelf and set them silently on the table.
Charity nodded her thanks, and sitting down, fell hungrily upon her
piece of pie and emptied the glass. Her face burned with her quick
flight through the night, and her eyes were dazzled by the twinkle of
the kitchen lamp. She felt like a night-bird suddenly caught and caged.

“He ain’t come back since supper,” Verena said. “He’s down to the Hall.”

Charity took no notice. Her soul was still winging through the forest.
She washed her plate and tumbler, and then felt her way up the dark
stairs. When she opened her door a wonder arrested her. Before going
out she had closed her shutters against the afternoon heat, but they had
swung partly open, and a bar of moonlight, crossing the room, rested
on her bed and showed a dress of China silk laid out on it in virgin
whiteness. Charity had spent more than she could afford on the dress,
which was to surpass those of all the other girls; she had wanted to let
North Dormer see that she was worthy of Harney’s admiration. Above the
dress, folded on the pillow, was the white veil which the young women
who took part in the exercises were to wear under a wreath of asters;
and beside the veil a pair of slim white satin shoes that Ally had
produced from an old trunk in which she stored mysterious treasures.

Charity stood gazing at all the outspread whiteness. It recalled a
vision that had come to her in the night after her first meeting with
Harney. She no longer had such visions... warmer splendours had displaced
them... but it was stupid of Ally to have paraded all those white things
on her bed, exactly as Hattie Targatt’s wedding dress from Springfield
had been spread out for the neighbours to see when she married Tom
Fry....

Charity took up the satin shoes and looked at them curiously. By day, no
doubt, they would appear a little worn, but in the moonlight they seemed
carved of ivory. She sat down on the floor to try them on, and they
fitted her perfectly, though when she stood up she lurched a little on
the high heels. She looked down at her feet, which the graceful mould
of the slippers had marvellously arched and narrowed. She had never
seen such shoes before, even in the shop-windows at Nettleton... never,
except... yes, once, she had noticed a pair of the same shape on Annabel
Balch.

A blush of mortification swept over her. Ally sometimes sewed for Miss
Balch when that brilliant being descended on North Dormer, and no
doubt she picked up presents of cast-off clothing: the treasures in the
mysterious trunk all came from the people she worked for; there could be
no doubt that the white slippers 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 signal as he passed on his way home. She stumbled to
the window on her high heels, flung open the shutters and leaned out. He
waved to her and sped by, his black shadow dancing merrily ahead of him
down the empty moonlit road; and she leaned there watching him till he
vanished under the Hatchard spruces.




XIII


THE Town Hall was crowded and exceedingly hot. As Charity marched into
it third in the white muslin file headed by Orma Fry, she was conscious
mainly of the brilliant effect of the wreathed columns framing the
green-carpeted stage toward which she was moving; and of the unfamiliar
faces turning from the front rows to watch the advance of the
procession.

But it was all a bewildering blur of eyes and colours till she found
herself standing at the back of the stage, her great bunch of asters and
goldenrod held well in front of her, and answering the nervous glance
of Lambert Sollas, the organist from Mr. Miles’s church, who had come up
from Nettleton to play the harmonium and sat behind it, his conductor’s
eye running over the fluttered girls.

A moment later Mr. Miles, pink and twinkling, emerged from the
background, as if buoyed up on his broad white gown, and briskly
dominated the bowed heads in the front rows. He prayed energetically and
briefly and then retired, and a fierce nod from Lambert Sollas warned
the girls that they were to follow at once with “Home, Sweet Home.” It
was a joy to Charity to sing: it seemed as though, for the first time,
her secret rapture might burst from her and flash its defiance at the
world. All the glow in her blood, the breath of the summer earth,
the rustle of the forest, the fresh call of birds at sunrise, and the
brooding midday languors, seemed to pass into her untrained voice,
lifted and led by the sustaining chorus.

And then suddenly the song was over, and after an uncertain 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 the stage and appeared behind the flower-wreathed desk. He
passed close to Charity, and she noticed that his gravely set face wore
the look of majesty that used to awe and fascinate her childhood. His
frock-coat had been carefully brushed and ironed, and the ends of his
narrow black tie were so nearly even that the tying must have cost him
a protracted struggle. His appearance struck her all the more because it
was the first time she had looked him full in the face since the night
at Nettleton, and nothing in his grave and impressive demeanour revealed
a trace of the lamentable figure on the wharf.

He stood a moment behind the desk, resting his finger-tips against it,
and bending slightly toward his audience; then he straightened himself
and began.

At first she paid no heed to what he was saying: only fragments of
sentences, sonorous quotations, allusions to illustrious men,
including the obligatory tribute to Honorius Hatchard, drifted past her
inattentive ears. She was trying to discover Harney among the notable
people in the front row; but he was nowhere near Miss Hatchard, who,
crowned by a pearl-grey hat that matched her gloves, sat just below the
desk, supported by Mrs. Miles and an important-looking unknown lady.
Charity was near one end of the stage, and from where she sat the other
end of the first row of seats was cut off by the screen of foliage
masking the harmonium. The effort to see Harney around the corner of the
screen, or through its interstices, made her unconscious of everything
else; but the effort was unsuccessful, and gradually she found her
attention arrested by her guardian’s discourse.

She had never heard him speak in public before, but she was familiar
with the rolling music of his voice when he read aloud, or held forth
to the selectmen about the stove at Carrick Fry’s. Today his inflections
were richer and graver than she had ever known them: he spoke slowly,
with pauses that seemed to invite his hearers to silent participation in
his thought; and Charity perceived a light of response in their faces.

He was nearing the end of his address... “Most of you,” he said, “most of
you who have returned here today, to take contact with this little place
for a brief hour, have come only on a pious pilgrimage, and will go back
presently to busy cities and lives full of larger duties. But that is
not the only way of coming back to North Dormer. Some of us, who went
out from here in our youth... went out, like you, to busy cities and
larger duties... have come back in another way--come back for good. I am
one of those, as many of you know....” He paused, and there was a sense
of suspense in the listening hall. “My history is without interest, but
it has its lesson: not so much for those of you who have already
made your lives in other places, as for the young men who are perhaps
planning even now to leave these quiet hills and go down into the
struggle. Things they cannot foresee may send some of those young men
back some day to the little township and the old homestead: they may
come back for good....” He looked about him, and repeated gravely: “For
GOOD. There’s the point I want to make... North Dormer is a poor little
place, almost lost in a mighty landscape: perhaps, by this time, it
might have been a bigger place, and more in scale with the landscape,
if those who had to come back had come with that feeling in their
minds--that they wanted to come back for GOOD... and not for bad... or
just for indifference....

“Gentlemen, let us look at things as they are. Some of us have come back
to our native town because we’d failed to get on elsewhere. One way or
other, things had gone wrong with us... what we’d dreamed of hadn’t come
true. But the fact that we had failed elsewhere is no reason why we
should fail here. Our very experiments in larger places, even if they
were unsuccessful, ought to have helped us to make North Dormer a larger
place... and you young men who are preparing even now to follow the call
of ambition, and turn your back on the old homes--well, let me say this
to you, that if ever you do come back to them it’s worth while to come
back to them for their good.... And to do that, you must keep on loving
them while you’re away from them; and even if you come back against your
will--and thinking it’s all a bitter mistake of Fate or Providence--you
must try to make the best of it, and to make the best of your old town;
and after a while--well, ladies and gentlemen, I give you my recipe for
what it’s worth; after a while, I believe you’ll be able to say, as I
can say today: ‘I’m glad I’m here.’ Believe me, all of you, the best way
to help the places we live in is to be glad we live there.”

He stopped, and a murmur of emotion and surprise ran through the
audience. It was not in the least what they had expected, but it moved
them more than what they had expected would have moved them. “Hear,
hear!” a voice cried out in the middle of the hall. An outburst of
cheers caught up the cry, and as they subsided Charity heard Mr. Miles
saying to someone near him: “That was a MAN talking----” He wiped his
spectacles.

Mr. Royall had stepped back from the desk, and taken his seat in the row
of chairs in front of the harmonium. A dapper white-haired gentleman--a
distant Hatchard--succeeded him behind the goldenrod, and began to
say beautiful things about the old oaken bucket, patient white-haired
mothers, and where the boys used to go nutting... and Charity began again
to search for Harney....

Suddenly Mr. Royall pushed back his seat, and one of the maple branches
in front of the harmonium collapsed with a crash. It uncovered the end
of the first row and in one of the seats Charity saw Harney, and in the
next a lady whose face was turned toward him, and almost hidden by the
brim of her drooping hat. Charity did not need to see the face. She knew
at a glance the slim figure, the fair hair heaped up under the hat-brim,
the long pale wrinkled gloves with bracelets slipping over them. At the
fall of the branch Miss Balch turned her head toward the stage, and in
her pretty thin-lipped smile there lingered the reflection of something
her neighbour had been whispering to her....

Someone came forward to replace the fallen branch, and Miss Balch and
Harney were once more hidden. But to Charity the vision of their two
faces had blotted out everything. In a flash they had shown her the
bare reality of her situation. Behind the frail screen of her lover’s
caresses was the whole inscrutable mystery of his life: his relations
with other people--with other women--his opinions, his prejudices, his
principles, the net of influences and interests and ambitions in which
every man’s life is entangled. Of all these she knew nothing, except
what he had told her of his architectural aspirations. She had always
dimly guessed him to be in touch with important people, involved in
complicated relations--but she felt it all to be so far beyond her
understanding that the whole subject hung like a luminous mist on the
farthest verge of her thoughts. In the foreground, hiding all else,
there was the glow of his presence, the light and shadow of his face,
the way his short-sighted eyes, at her approach, widened and deepened
as if to draw her down into them; and, above all, the flush of youth and
tenderness in which his words enclosed her.

Now she saw him detached from her, drawn back into the unknown, and
whispering to another girl things that provoked the same smile of
mischievous complicity he had so often called to her own lips. The
feeling possessing her was not one of jealousy: she was too sure of
his love. It was rather a terror of the unknown, of all the mysterious
attractions that must even now be dragging him away from her, and of her
own powerlessness to contend with them.

She had given him all she had--but what was it compared to the other
gifts life held for him? She understood now the case of girls like
herself to whom this kind of thing happened. They gave all they had, but
their all was not enough: it could not buy more than a few moments....

The heat had grown suffocating--she felt it descend on her in smothering
waves, and the faces in the crowded hall began to dance like the
pictures flashed on the screen at Nettleton. For an instant Mr. Royall’s
countenance detached itself from the general blur. He had resumed his
place in front of the harmonium, and sat close to her, his eyes on her
face; and his look seemed to pierce to the very centre of her confused
sensations.... A feeling of physical sickness rushed over her--and then
deadly apprehension. The light of the fiery hours in the little house
swept back on her in a glare of fear....

She forced herself to look away from her guardian, and became aware that
the oratory of the Hatchard cousin had ceased, and that Mr. Miles was
again flapping his wings. Fragments of his peroration floated through
her bewildered brain.... “A rich harvest of hallowed memories.... A
sanctified hour to which, in moments of trial, your thoughts will
prayerfully return.... And now, O Lord, let us humbly and fervently give
thanks for this blessed day of reunion, here in the old home to which we
have come back from so far. Preserve it to us, O Lord, in times to come,
in all its homely sweetness--in the kindliness and wisdom of its old
people, in the courage and industry of its young men, in the piety and
purity of this group of innocent girls----” He flapped a white wing in
their direction, and at the same moment Lambert Sollas, with his fierce
nod, struck the opening bars of “Auld Lang Syne.” ...Charity stared
straight ahead of her and then, dropping her flowers, fell face downward
at Mr. Royall’s feet.




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.




XV


That night, as usual, they said good-bye at the wood’s edge.

Harney was to leave the next morning early. He asked Charity to say
nothing of their plans till his return, and, strangely even to herself,
she was glad of the postponement. 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 reiterated promises to return seemed almost
wounding. She had no doubt that he intended to come back; her doubts
were far deeper and less definable.

Since the fanciful vision of the future that had flitted through her
imagination at their first meeting she had hardly ever thought of his
marrying her. She had not had to put the thought from her mind; it had
not been there. If ever she looked ahead she felt instinctively that the
gulf between them was too deep, and that the bridge their passion had
flung across it was as insubstantial as a rainbow. But she seldom
looked ahead; each day was so rich that it absorbed her.... Now her first
feeling was that everything would be different, and that she herself
would be a different being to Harney. Instead of remaining separate and
absolute, she would be compared with other people, and unknown things
would be expected of her. She was too proud to be afraid, but the
freedom of her spirit drooped....

Harney had not fixed any date for his return; he had said he would have
to look about first, and settle things. He had promised to write as soon
as there was anything definite to say, and had left her his address, and
asked her to write also. But the address frightened her. It was in New
York, at a club with a long name in Fifth Avenue: it seemed to raise an
insurmountable barrier between them. Once or twice, in the first days,
she got out a sheet of paper, and sat looking at it, and trying to think
what to say; but she had the feeling that her letter would never reach
its destination. She had never written to anyone farther away than
Hepburn.

Harney’s first letter came after he had been gone about ten days. It was
tender but grave, and bore no resemblance to the gay little notes he had
sent her by the freckled boy from Creston River. He spoke positively of
his intention of coming back, but named no date, and reminded Charity of
their agreement that their plans should not be divulged till he had had
time to “settle things.” When that would be he could not yet foresee;
but she could count on his returning as soon as the way was clear.

She read the letter with a strange sense of its coming from immeasurable
distances and having lost most of its meaning on the way; and in reply
she sent him a coloured postcard of Creston Falls, on which she wrote:
“With love from Charity.” She felt the pitiful inadequacy of this, and
understood, with a sense of despair, that in her inability to express
herself she must give him an impression of coldness and reluctance; but
she could not help it. She could not forget that he had never spoken
to her of marriage till Mr. Royall had forced the word from his lips;
though she had not had the strength to shake off the spell that bound
her to him she had lost all spontaneity of feeling, and seemed to
herself to be passively awaiting a fate she could not avert.

She had not seen Mr. Royall on her return to the red house. The morning
after her parting from Harney, when she came down from her room, Verena
told her that her guardian had gone off to Worcester and Portland. It
was the time of year when he usually reported to the insurance agencies
he represented, and there was nothing unusual in his departure except
its suddenness. She thought little about him, except to be glad he was
not there....

She kept to herself for the first days, while North Dormer was
recovering from its brief plunge into publicity, and the subsiding
agitation left her unnoticed. But the faithful Ally could not be long
avoided. For the first few days after the close of the Old Home Week
festivities Charity escaped her by roaming the hills all day when she
was not at her post in the library; but after that a period of rain set
in, and one pouring afternoon, Ally, sure that she would find her friend
indoors, came around to the red house with her sewing.

The two girls sat upstairs in Charity’s room. Charity, her idle hands in
her lap, was sunk in a kind of leaden dream, through which she was only
half-conscious of Ally, who sat opposite her in a low rush-bottomed
chair, her work pinned to her knee, and her thin lips pursed up as she
bent above it.

“It was my idea running a ribbon through the gauging,” she said proudly,
drawing back to contemplate the blouse she was trimming. “It’s for Miss
Balch: she was awfully pleased.” She paused and then added, with a queer
tremor in her piping voice: “I darsn’t have told her I got the idea from
one I saw on Julia.”

Charity raised her eyes listlessly. “Do you still see Julia sometimes?”

Ally reddened, as if the allusion had escaped her unintentionally. “Oh,
it was a long time ago I seen her with those gaugings....”

Silence fell again, and Ally presently continued: “Miss Balch left me a
whole lot of things to do over this time.”

“Why--has she gone?” Charity inquired with an inner start of
apprehension.

“Didn’t you know? She went off the morning after they had the
celebration at Hamblin. I seen her drive by early with Mr. Harney.”

There was another silence, measured by the steady tick of the rain
against the window, and, at intervals, by the snipping sound of Ally’s
scissors.

Ally gave a meditative laugh. “Do you know what she told me before she
went away? She told me she was going to send for me to come over to
Springfield and make some things for her wedding.”

Charity again lifted her heavy lids and stared at Ally’s pale pointed
face, which moved to and fro above her moving fingers.

“Is she going to get married?”

Ally let the blouse sink to her knee, and sat gazing at it. Her lips
seemed suddenly dry, and she moistened them a little with her tongue.

“Why, I presume so... from what she said.... Didn’t you know?”

“Why should I know?”

Ally did not answer. She bent above the blouse, and began picking out a
basting thread with the point of the scissors.

“Why should I know?” Charity repeated harshly.

“I didn’t know but what... folks here say she’s engaged to Mr. Harney.”

Charity stood up with a laugh, and stretched her arms lazily above her
head.

“If all the people got married that folks say are going 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 if I didn’t.”

“That’s so.... I only know I seen her crying the night of the party
because her dress didn’t set right. That was why she wouldn’t dance
any....”

Charity stood absently gazing down at the lacy garment on Ally’s knee.
Abruptly she stooped and snatched it up.

“Well, I guess she won’t dance in this either,” she said with sudden
violence; and grasping the blouse in her strong young hands she tore it
in two and flung the tattered bits to the floor.

“Oh, Charity----” Ally cried, springing up. For a long interval the two
girls faced each other across the ruined garment. Ally burst into tears.

“Oh, what’ll I say to her? What’ll I do? It was real lace!” she wailed
between her piping sobs.

Charity glared at her unrelentingly. “You’d oughtn’t to have brought it
here,” she said, breathing quickly. “I hate other people’s clothes--it’s
just as if they was there themselves.” The two stared at each other
again over this avowal, till Charity brought out, in a gasp of anguish:
“Oh, go--go--go--or I’ll hate you too....”

When Ally left her, she fell sobbing across her bed.

The long storm was followed by a north-west gale, and when it was over,
the hills took on their first umber tints, the sky grew more densely
blue, and the big white clouds lay against the hills like snow-banks.
The first crisp maple-leaves began to spin across Miss Hatchard’s lawn,
and the Virginia creeper on the Memorial splashed the white porch with
scarlet. It was a golden triumphant September. Day by day the flame of
the Virginia creeper spread to the hillsides in wider waves of carmine
and crimson, the larches glowed like the thin yellow halo about a fire,
the maples blazed and smouldered, and the black hemlocks turned to
indigo against the incandescence of the forest.

The nights were cold, with a dry glitter of stars so high up that they
seemed smaller and more vivid. Sometimes, as Charity lay sleepless on
her bed through the long hours, she felt as though she were bound to
those wheeling fires and swinging with them around the great black
vault. At night she planned many things... it was then she wrote to
Harney. But the letters were never put on paper, for she did not know
how to express what she wanted to tell him. So she waited. Since her
talk with Ally she had felt sure that Harney was engaged to Annabel
Balch, and that the process of “settling things” would involve the
breaking of this tie. Her first rage of jealousy over, she felt no fear
on this score. She was still sure that Harney would come back, and she
was equally sure that, for the moment at least, it was she whom he loved
and not Miss Balch. Yet the girl, no less, remained a rival, since she
represented all the things that Charity felt herself most incapable of
understanding or achieving. Annabel Balch was, if not the girl Harney
ought to marry, at least the kind of girl it would be natural for him to
marry. Charity had never been able to picture herself as his wife; had
never been able to arrest the vision and follow it out in its daily
consequences; but she could perfectly imagine Annabel Balch in that
relation to him.

The more she thought of these things the more the sense of fatality
weighed on her: she felt the uselessness of struggling against the
circumstances. She had never known how to adapt herself; she could only
break and tear and destroy. The scene with Ally had left her stricken
with shame at her own childish savagery. What would Harney have thought
if he had witnessed it? But when she turned the incident over in her
puzzled mind she could not imagine what a civilized person would have
done in her place. She felt herself too unequally pitted against unknown
forces....

At length this feeling moved her to sudden action. She took a sheet of
letter paper from Mr. Royall’s office, and sitting by the kitchen
lamp, one night after Verena had gone to bed, began her first letter to
Harney. It was very short:


I want you should marry Annabel Balch if you promised to. I think maybe
you were afraid I’d feel too bad about it. I feel I’d rather you acted
right. Your loving CHARITY.


She posted the letter early the next morning, and for a few days her
heart felt strangely light. Then she began to wonder why she received no
answer.

One day as she sat alone in the library pondering these things the walls
of books began to spin around her, and the rosewood desk to rock under
her elbows. The dizziness was followed by a wave of nausea like that she
had felt on the day of the exercises in the Town Hall. But the Town Hall
had been crowded and stiflingly hot, and the library was empty, and so
chilly that she had kept on her jacket. Five minutes before she had felt
perfectly well; and now it seemed as if she were going to die. The bit
of lace at which she still languidly worked dropped from her fingers,
and the steel crochet hook clattered to the floor. She pressed her
temples hard between her damp hands, steadying herself against the desk
while the wave of sickness swept over her. Little by little it subsided,
and after a few minutes she stood up, shaken and terrified, groped for
her hat, and stumbled out into the air. But the whole sunlit autumn
whirled, reeled and roared around her as she dragged herself along the
interminable length of the road home.

As she approached the red house she saw a buggy standing at the door,
and her heart gave a leap. But it was only Mr. Royall who got out, his
travelling-bag in 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
desperate effort at ease. Their eyes met, and she said: “You back?” as
if nothing had happened, and he answered: “Yes, I’m back,” and walked
in ahead of her, pushing open the door of his office. She climbed to
her room, every step of the stairs holding her fast as if her feet were
lined with glue.

Two days later, she descended from the train at Nettleton, and walked
out of the station into the dusty square. The brief interval of cold
weather was over, and the day was as soft, and almost as hot, as when
she and Harney had emerged on the same scene on the Fourth of July. In
the square the same broken-down hacks and carry-alls stood drawn up in
a despondent line, and the lank horses with fly-nets over their withers
swayed their heads drearily to and fro. She recognized the staring signs
over the eating-houses and billiard saloons, and the long lines of wires
on lofty poles tapering down the main street to the park at its other
end. Taking the way the wires pointed, she went on hastily, with bent
head, till she reached a wide transverse street with a brick building
at the corner. She crossed this street and glanced furtively up at
the front of the brick building; then she returned, and entered a door
opening on a flight of steep brass-rimmed stairs. On the second landing
she rang a bell, and a mulatto girl with a bushy head and a frilled
apron let her into a hall where a stuffed fox on his hind legs proffered
a brass card-tray to visitors. At the back of the hall was a glazed door
marked: “Office.” After waiting a few minutes in a handsomely furnished
room, with plush sofas surmounted by large gold-framed photographs of
showy young women, Charity was shown into the office....

When she came out of the glazed door Dr. Merkle followed, and led her
into another room, smaller, and still more crowded with plush and gold
frames. Dr. Merkle was a plump woman with small bright eyes, an immense
mass of black hair coming down low on her forehead, and unnaturally
white and even teeth. She wore a rich black dress, with gold chains
and charms hanging from her bosom. Her hands were large and smooth, and
quick in all their movements; and she smelt of musk and carbolic acid.

She smiled on Charity with all her faultless teeth. “Sit down, my
dear. Wouldn’t you like a little drop of something to pick you
up?... No.... Well, just lay back a minute then.... There’s nothing to
be done just yet; but in about a month, if you’ll step round again... I
could take you right into my own house for two or three days, and there
wouldn’t be a mite of trouble. Mercy me! The next time you’ll know
better’n to fret like this....”

Charity gazed at her with widening eyes. This woman with the false hair,
the false teeth, the false murderous smile--what was she offering her
but immunity from some unthinkable crime? Charity, till then, had
been conscious only of a vague self-disgust and a frightening physical
distress; now, of a sudden, there came to her the grave surprise of
motherhood. She had come to this dreadful place because she knew of no
other way of making sure that she was not mistaken about her state;
and the woman had taken her for a miserable creature like Julia.... The
thought was so horrible that she sprang up, white and shaking, one of
her great rushes of anger sweeping over her.

Dr. Merkle, still smiling, also rose. “Why do you run off in such a
hurry? You can stretch out right here on my sofa....” She paused, and
her smile grew more motherly. “Afterwards--if there’s been any talk at
home, and you want to get away for a while... I have a lady friend in
Boston who’s looking for a companion... you’re the very one to suit her,
my dear....”

Charity had reached the door. “I don’t want to stay. I don’t want to
come back here,” she stammered, her hand on the knob; but with a swift
movement, Dr. Merkle edged her from the threshold.

“Oh, very well. Five dollars, please.”

Charity looked helplessly at the doctor’s tight lips and rigid face.
Her last savings had gone in repaying Ally for the cost of Miss Balch’s
ruined blouse, and she had had to borrow four dollars from her friend
to pay for her railway ticket and cover the doctor’s fee. It had never
occurred to her that medical advice could cost more than two dollars.

“I didn’t know... I haven’t got that much...” she faltered, bursting into
tears.

Dr. Merkle gave a short laugh which did not show her teeth, and inquired
with concision if Charity supposed she ran the establishment for her own
amusement? She leaned her firm shoulders against the door as she spoke,
like a grim gaoler making terms with her captive.

“You say you’ll come round and settle later? I’ve heard that pretty
often too. Give me your address, and if you can’t pay me I’ll send the
bill to your folks.... What? I can’t understand what you say.... That
don’t suit you either? My, you’re pretty particular for a girl that
ain’t got enough to settle her own bills....” She paused, and fixed
her eyes on the brooch with a blue stone that Charity had pinned to her
blouse.

“Ain’t you ashamed to talk that way to a lady that’s got to earn her
living, when you go about with jewellery like that on you?... It ain’t
in my line, and I do it only as a favour... but if you’re a mind to leave
that brooch as a pledge, I don’t say no.... Yes, of course, you can get
it back when you bring me my money....”

On the way home, she felt an immense and unexpected quietude. It had
been horrible to have to leave Harney’s gift in the woman’s hands, but
even at that price the news she brought away had not been too dearly
bought. She sat with half-closed eyes as the train rushed through the
familiar landscape; and now the memories of her former journey, instead
of flying before her like dead leaves, seemed to be ripening in her
blood like sleeping grain. She would never again know what it was to
feel herself alone. Everything seemed to have grown suddenly clear
and simple. She no longer had any difficulty in picturing herself as
Harney’s wife now that she was the mother of his child; and compared to
her sovereign right Annabel Balch’s claim seemed no more than a girl’s
sentimental fancy.

That evening, at the gate of the red house, she found Ally waiting in
the dusk. “I was down at the post-office just as they were closing up,
and Will Targatt said there was a letter for you, so I brought it.”

Ally held out the letter, looking at Charity with piercing sympathy.
Since the scene of the torn blouse there had been a new and fearful
admiration in the eyes she bent on her friend.

Charity snatched the letter with a laugh. “Oh, thank you--good-night,”
 she called out over her shoulder as she ran up the path. If she had
lingered a moment she knew she would have had Ally at her heels.

She hurried upstairs and felt her way into her dark room. Her hands
trembled as she groped for the matches and lit her candle, and the flap
of the envelope was so closely stuck that she had to find her scissors
and slit it open. At length she read:


DEAR CHARITY:

I have your letter, and it touches me more than I can say. Won’t you
trust me, in return, to do my best? There are things it is hard to
explain, much less to justify; but your generosity makes everything
easier. All I can do now is to thank you from my soul for understanding.
Your telling me that you wanted me to do right has helped me beyond
expression. If ever there is a hope of realizing what we dreamed of you
will see me back on the instant; and I haven’t yet lost that hope.


She read the letter with a rush; then she went over and over it, each
time more slowly and painstakingly. It was so beautifully expressed
that she found it almost as difficult to understand as the gentleman’s
explanation of the Bible pictures at Nettleton; but gradually she became
aware that the gist of its meaning lay in the last few words. “If ever
there is a hope of realizing what we dreamed of...”

But then he wasn’t even sure of that? She understood now that every word
and every reticence was an avowal of Annabel Balch’s prior claim. It was
true that he was engaged to her, and that he had not yet found a way of
breaking his engagement.

As she read the letter over Charity understood what it must have cost
him to write it. He was not trying to evade an importunate claim; he was
honestly and contritely struggling between opposing duties. She did not
even reproach him in her thoughts for having concealed from her that
he was not free: she could not see anything more reprehensible in his
conduct than in her own. From the first she had needed him more than he
had wanted her, and the power that had swept them together had been
as far beyond resistance as a great gale loosening the leaves of the
forest.... Only, there stood between them, fixed and upright in the
general upheaval, the indestructible figure of Annabel Balch....

Face to face with his admission of the fact, she sat staring at the
letter. A cold tremor ran over her, and the hard sobs struggled up into
her throat and shook her from head to foot. For a while she was caught
and tossed on great waves of anguish that left her hardly conscious of
anything but the blind struggle against their assaults. Then, little by
little, she began to relive, with a dreadful poignancy, each separate
stage of her poor romance. Foolish things she had said came back to her,
gay answers Harney had made, his first kiss in the darkness between
the fireworks, their choosing the blue brooch together, the way he had
teased her about the letters she had dropped in her flight from the
evangelist. All these memories, and a thousand others, hummed through
her brain till his nearness grew so vivid that she felt his fingers in
her hair, and his warm breath on her cheek as he bent her head back like
a flower. These things were hers; they had passed into her blood, and
become a part of her, they were building the child in her womb; it was
impossible to tear asunder strands of life so interwoven.

The conviction gradually strengthened her, and she began to form in her
mind the first words of the letter she meant to write to Harney. She
wanted to write it at once, and with feverish hands she began to rummage
in her drawer for a sheet of letter paper. But there was none left; she
must go downstairs to get it. She had a superstitious feeling that the
letter must be written on the instant, that setting down her secret in
words would bring her reassurance and safety; and taking up her candle
she went down to Mr. Royall’s office.

At that hour she was not likely to find him there: he had probably had
his supper and walked over to Carrick Fry’s. She pushed open the door of
the unlit room, and the light of her lifted candle fell on his figure,
seated in the darkness in his high-backed chair. His arms lay along
the arms of the chair, and his head was bent a little; but he lifted
it quickly as Charity entered. She started back as their eyes met,
remembering that her own were red with weeping, and that her face was
livid with the fatigue and emotion of her journey. But it was too late
to escape, and she stood and looked at him in silence.

He had risen from his chair, and came toward her with outstretched
hands. The gesture was so unexpected that she let him take her hands in
his and they stood thus, without speaking, till Mr. Royall said gravely:
“Charity--was you looking for me?”

She freed herself abruptly and fell back. “Me? No----” She set down the
candle on his desk. “I wanted some letter-paper, that’s all.” His face
contracted, and the bushy brows jutted forward over his eyes. Without
answering he opened the drawer of the desk, took out a sheet of paper
and an envelope, and pushed them toward her. “Do you want a stamp too?”
 he asked.

She nodded, and he gave her the stamp. As he did so she felt that he was
looking at her intently, and she knew that the candle light flickering
up on her white face must be distorting her swollen features and
exaggerating the dark rings about her eyes. She snatched up the paper,
her reassurance dissolving under his pitiless gaze, in which she seemed
to read the grim perception of her state, and the ironic recollection
of the day when, in that very room, he had offered to compel Harney to
marry her. His look seemed to say that he knew she had taken the paper
to write to her lover, who had left her as he had warned her she would
be left. She remembered the scorn with which she had turned from him
that day, and knew, if he guessed the truth, what a list of old scores
it must settle. She turned and fled upstairs; but when she got back to
her room all the words that had been waiting had vanished....

If she could have gone to Harney it would have been different; she would
only have had to show herself to let his memories speak for her. But
she had no money left, and there was no one from whom she could have
borrowed enough for such a journey. There was nothing to do but to
write, and await his reply. For a long time she sat bent above the blank
page; but she found nothing to say that really expressed what she was
feeling....

Harney had written that she had made it easier for him, and she was glad
it was so; she did not want to make things hard. She knew she had it in
her power to do that; she held his fate in her hands. All she had to
do was to tell him the truth; but that was the very fact that held her
back.... Her five minutes face to face with Mr. Royall had stripped her
of her last illusion, and brought her back to North Dormer’s point of
view. Distinctly and pitilessly there rose before her the fate of the
girl who was married “to make things right.” She had seen too many
village love-stories end in that way. Poor Rose Coles’s miserable
marriage was of the number; and what good had come of it for her or
for Halston Skeff? They had hated each other from the day the minister
married them; and whenever old Mrs. Skeff had a fancy to humiliate her
daughter-in-law she had only to say: “Who’d ever think the baby’s only
two? And for a seven months’ child--ain’t it a wonder what a size he
is?” North Dormer had treasures of indulgence for brands in the burning,
but only derision for those who succeeded in getting snatched from
it; and Charity had always understood Julia Hawes’s refusal to be
snatched....

Only--was there no alternative but Julia’s? Her soul recoiled from the
vision of the white-faced woman among the plush sofas and gilt frames.
In the established order of things as she knew them she saw no place for
her individual adventure....

She sat in her chair without undressing till faint grey streaks began
to divide the black slats of the shutters. Then she stood up and pushed
them open, letting in the light. The coming of a new day brought a
sharper consciousness of ineluctable reality, and with it a sense of the
need of action. She looked at herself in the glass, and saw her face,
white in the autumn dawn, with pinched cheeks and dark-ringed eyes, and
all the marks of her state that she herself would never have noticed,
but that Dr. Merkle’s diagnosis had made plain to her. She could not
hope that those signs would escape the watchful village; even before her
figure lost its shape she knew her face would betray her.

Leaning from her window she looked out on the dark and empty scene; the
ashen houses with shuttered windows, the grey road climbing the slope to
the hemlock belt above the cemetery, and the heavy mass of the Mountain
black against a rainy sky. To the east a space of light was broadening
above the forest; but over that also the clouds hung. Slowly her gaze
travelled across the fields to the rugged curve of the hills. She had
looked out so often on that lifeless circle, and wondered if anything
could ever happen to anyone who was enclosed in it....

Almost without conscious thought her decision had been reached; as her
eyes had followed the circle of the hills her mind had also travelled
the old round. She supposed it was something in her blood that made the
Mountain the only answer to her questioning, the inevitable escape
from all that hemmed her in and beset her. At any rate it began to loom
against the rainy dawn; and the longer she looked at it the more clearly
she understood that now at last she was really going there.




XVI


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 bicycle to its owner at
Creston, and she was not sure of being able to walk all the way to the
Mountain. The deserted house was on the road; but the idea of spending
the night there was unendurable, and she meant to try to push on to
Hamblin, where she could sleep under a wood-shed if her strength should
fail her. Her preparations had been made with quiet forethought. Before
starting she had forced herself to swallow a glass of milk and eat a
piece of bread; and she had put in her canvas satchel a little packet of
the chocolate that Harney always carried in his bicycle bag. She wanted
above all to keep up her strength, and reach her destination without
attracting notice....

Mile by mile she retraced the road over which she had so often flown to
her lover. When she reached the turn where the wood-road branched off
from the Creston highway she remembered the Gospel tent--long since
folded up and transplanted--and her start of involuntary terror when
the fat evangelist had said: “Your Saviour knows everything. Come and
confess your guilt.” There was no sense of guilt in her now, but only
a desperate desire to defend her secret from irreverent eyes, and
begin life again among people to whom the harsh code of the village was
unknown. The impulse did not shape itself in thought: she only knew
she must save her baby, and hide herself with it somewhere where no one
would ever come to trouble them.

She walked on and on, growing more heavy-footed as the day advanced. It
seemed a cruel chance that compelled her to retrace every step of the
way to the deserted house; and when she came in sight of the orchard,
and the silver-gray roof slanting crookedly through the laden branches,
her strength failed her and she sat down by the road-side. She sat there
a long time, trying to gather the courage to start again, and walk past
the broken gate and the untrimmed rose-bushes strung with scarlet hips.
A few drops of rain were falling, and she thought of the warm evenings
when she and Harney had sat embraced in the shadowy room, and the noise
of summer showers on the roof had rustled through their kisses. At
length she understood that if she stayed any longer the rain might
compel her to take shelter in the house overnight, and she got up and
walked on, averting her eyes as she came abreast of the white 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 bread and an apple picked up from the
roadside. Her body seemed to grow heavier with every yard of the way,
and she wondered how she would be able to carry her child later, if
already he laid such a burden on her.... A fresh wind had sprung up,
scattering the rain and blowing down keenly from the mountain. Presently
the clouds lowered again, and a few white darts struck her in the face:
it was the first snow falling over Hamblin. The roofs of the lonely
village were only half a mile ahead, and she was resolved to push beyond
it, and try to reach the Mountain that night. She had no clear plan of
action, except that, once in the settlement, she meant to look for Liff
Hyatt, and get him to take her to her mother. She herself had been
born as her own baby was going to be born; and whatever her mother’s
subsequent life had been, she could hardly help remembering the past,
and receiving a daughter who was facing the trouble she had known.

Suddenly the deadly faintness came over her once more and she sat down
on the bank and leaned her head against a tree-trunk. The long road and
the cloudy landscape vanished from her eyes, and for a time she seemed
to be circling about in some terrible wheeling darkness. Then that too
faded.

She opened her eyes, and saw a buggy drawn up beside her, and a man
who had jumped down from it and was gazing at her with a puzzled face.
Slowly consciousness came back, and she saw that the man was Liff Hyatt.

She was dimly aware that he was asking her something, and she looked at
him in silence, trying to find strength to speak. At length her voice
stirred in her throat, and she said in a whisper: “I’m going up the
Mountain.”

“Up the Mountain?” he repeated, drawing aside a little; and as he
moved she saw behind him, in the buggy, a heavily coated figure with a
familiar pink face and gold spectacles on the bridge of a Grecian nose.

“Charity! What on earth are you doing here?” Mr. Miles exclaimed,
throwing the reins on the horse’s back and scrambling down from the
buggy.

She lifted her heavy eyes to his. “I’m going to see my mother.”

The two men glanced at each other, and for a moment neither of them
spoke.

Then Mr. Miles said: “You look ill, my dear, and it’s a long 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. I want to go to her.”

Mr. Miles was examining her thoughtfully. She fancied she saw a change
in his expression, and the blood rushed to her forehead. “I just want to
go to her,” she repeated.

He laid his hand on her arm. “My child, your mother is dying. Liff Hyatt
came down to fetch me.... Get in and come with us.”

He helped her up to the seat at his side, Liff Hyatt clambered in at
the back, and they drove off toward Hamblin. At first Charity had
hardly grasped what Mr. Miles was saying; the physical relief of finding
herself seated in the buggy, and securely on her road to the Mountain,
effaced the impression of his words. But as her head cleared she
began to understand. She knew the Mountain had but the most infrequent
intercourse with the valleys; she had often enough heard it said that no
one ever went up there except the minister, when someone was dying. And
now it was her mother who was dying... and she would find herself as
much alone on the Mountain as anywhere else in the world. The sense of
unescapable isolation was all she could feel for the moment; then
she began to wonder at the strangeness of its being Mr. Miles who had
undertaken to perform this grim errand. He did not seem in the least
like the kind of man who would care to go up the Mountain. But here he
was at her side, guiding the horse with a firm hand, and bending on her
the kindly gleam of his spectacles, as if there were nothing unusual in
their being together in such circumstances.

For a while she found it impossible to speak, and he seemed to
understand this, and made no attempt to question her. But presently she
felt her tears rise and flow down over her drawn cheeks; and he must
have seen them too, for he laid his hand on hers, and said in a low
voice: “Won’t you tell me what is troubling you?”

She shook her head, and he did not insist: but after a while he said, in
the same low tone, so that they should not be overheard: “Charity, what
do you know of your childhood, before you came down to North Dormer?”

She controlled herself, and answered: “Nothing only what I heard Mr.
Royall say one day. He said he brought 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 glad you’re coming with
me now. Perhaps we may find your mother alive, and she may know that you
have come.”

They had reached Hamblin, where the snow-flurry had left white patches
in the rough grass on the roadside, and in the angles of the roofs
facing north. It was a poor bleak village under the granite flank of the
Mountain, and as soon as they left it they began to climb. The road was
steep and full of ruts, and the horse settled down to a walk while they
mounted and mounted, the world dropping away below them in great mottled
stretches of forest and field, and stormy dark blue distances.

Charity had often had visions of this ascent of the Mountain but she
had not known it would reveal so wide a country, and the sight of
those strange lands reaching away on every side gave her a new sense of
Harney’s remoteness. She knew he must be miles and miles beyond the last
range of hills that seemed to be the outmost verge of things, and she
wondered how she had ever dreamed of going to New York to find him....

As the road mounted the country grew bleaker, and they drove across
fields of faded mountain grass bleached by long months beneath the snow.
In the hollows a few white birches trembled, or a mountain ash lit its
scarlet clusters; but only a scant growth of pines darkened the granite
ledges. The wind was blowing fiercely across the open slopes; the horse
faced it with bent head and straining flanks, and now and then the buggy
swayed so that Charity had to clutch its side.

Mr. Miles had not spoken again; he seemed to understand that she wanted
to be left alone. After a while the track they were following forked,
and he pulled up the horse, as if uncertain of the way. Liff Hyatt
craned his head around from the back, and shouted against the wind:
“Left----” and they turned into a stunted pine-wood and began to drive
down the other side of the Mountain.

A mile or two farther on they came out on a clearing where two or three
low houses lay in stony fields, crouching among the rocks as if to brace
themselves against the wind. They were hardly more than sheds, built of
logs and rough boards, with tin stove-pipes sticking out of their roofs.
The sun was setting, and dusk had already fallen on the lower world,
but a yellow glare still lay on the lonely hillside and the crouching
houses. The next moment it faded and left the landscape in dark autumn
twilight.

“Over there,” Liff called out, stretching his long arm over Mr. Miles’s
shoulder. The clergyman turned to the left, across a bit of bare ground
overgrown with docks and nettles, and stopped before the most ruinous of
the sheds. A stove-pipe reached its crooked arm out of one window, and
the broken panes of the other were stuffed with rags and paper.

In contrast to such a dwelling the brown house in the swamp might have
stood for the home of plenty.

As the buggy drew up two or three mongrel dogs jumped out of the
twilight with a great barking, and a young man slouched to the door and
stood there staring. In the twilight Charity saw that his face had the
same sodden look as Bash Hyatt’s, the day she had seen him sleeping
by the stove. He made no effort to silence the dogs, but leaned in the
door, as if roused from a drunken 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 a minute, my dear:
I’ll go in first,” he said, putting the reins in her hands. She took
them passively, and sat staring straight ahead of her at the darkening
scene while Mr. Miles and Liff Hyatt went up to the house. They stood
a few minutes talking with the man in the door, and then Mr. Miles came
back. As he came close, Charity saw that his smooth pink face wore a
frightened solemn look.

“Your mother is dead, Charity; you’d better come with me,” he said.

She got down and followed him while Liff led the horse away. As
she approached the door she said to herself: “This is where I was
born... this is where I belong....” She had said it to herself often
enough as she looked across the sunlit valleys at the Mountain; but it
had meant nothing then, and now it had become a reality. Mr. Miles took
her gently by the arm, and they entered what appeared to be the only
room in the house. It was so dark that she could just discern a group
of a dozen people sitting or sprawling about a table made of boards laid
across two barrels. They looked 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 turned to the young man
who had met them at the door.

“Is the body here?” he asked.

The young man, instead of answering, turned his head toward the group.
“Where’s the candle? I tole yer to bring a candle,” he said with sudden
harshness to a girl who was lolling against the table. She did not
answer, but another man got up and took from some corner a candle stuck
into a bottle.

“How’ll I light it? The stove’s out,” the girl grumbled.

Mr. Miles fumbled under his heavy wrappings and drew out a match-box.
He held a match to the candle, and in a moment or two a faint circle of
light fell on the pale aguish heads that started out of the shadow like
the 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 mattress on the floor in a corner of the room. A woman lay on
it, but she did not look like a dead woman; she seemed to have fallen
across her squalid bed in a drunken sleep, and to have been left lying
where she fell, in her ragged disordered clothes. One arm was flung
above her head, one leg drawn up under a torn skirt that left the other
bare to the knee: a swollen glistening leg with a ragged stocking rolled
down about the ankle. The woman lay on her back, her eyes staring up
unblinkingly at the candle that trembled in Mr. Miles’s hand.

“She jus’ dropped off,” a woman said, over the shoulder of the others;
and the young man added: “I jus’ come in and found her.”

An elderly man with lank hair and a feeble grin pushed between them. “It
was like this: I says to her on’y the night before: if you don’t take
and quit, I says to her...”

Someone pulled him back and sent him reeling against a bench along the
wall, where he dropped down muttering his unheeded narrative.

There was a silence; then the young woman who had been lolling against
the table suddenly parted the group, and stood in front of Charity.
She was healthier and robuster 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 had rebuked her for not having a
candle ready.

Mr. Miles spoke. “I brought her; she is Mary Hyatt’s daughter.”

“What? Her too?” the girl sneered; and the young man turned on her with
an oath. “Shut your mouth, damn you, or get out of here,” he said;
then he relapsed into 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 off his heavy coat.
He turned to Charity. “Come and help me,” he said.

He knelt down by the mattress, and pressed the lids over the dead
woman’s eyes. Charity, trembling and sick, knelt beside him, and tried
to compose her mother’s body. She drew the stocking over the dreadful
glistening leg, and pulled the skirt down to the battered upturned
boots. As she did so, she looked at her mother’s face, thin yet swollen,
with lips parted in a frozen gasp above the broken teeth. There was no
sign in it of anything human: she lay there like a dead dog in a ditch.
Charity’s hands grew cold as they touched her.

Mr. Miles drew the woman’s arms across her breast and laid his coat
over her. Then he covered her face with his handkerchief, and placed the
bottle with the candle in it at her head. Having done this he stood up.

“Is there no coffin?” he asked, turning to the group behind him.

There was a moment of bewildered silence; then the fierce girl spoke up.
“You’d oughter brought it with you. Where’d we get one here, I’d like
ter know?”

Mr. Miles, looking at the others, repeated: “Is it possible you have no
coffin ready?”

“That’s what I say: them that has it sleeps better,” an old woman
murmured. “But then she never 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 steps apart. He had
drawn a book from his pocket, and after a pause he opened it and began
to read, holding the book at arm’s length and low down, so that the
pages caught the feeble light. Charity had remained on her knees by the
mattress: now that her mother’s face was covered it was easier to stay
near her, and avoid the sight of the living faces which too horribly
showed by what 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, yet shall he live.... Though after
my skin worms destroy my body, yet in my flesh shall I see God....”

IN MY FLESH SHALL I SEE GOD! Charity thought of the gaping mouth and
stony eyes under the handkerchief, and of the glistening leg over which
she had drawn the stocking....

“We brought nothing into this world and we shall take nothing out of
it----”

There was a sudden muttering and a scuffle at the back of the group. “I
brought the stove,” said the elderly man with lank hair, pushing his
way between the others. “I wen’ down to Creston’n bought it... n’ I got a
right to take it outer here... n’ I’ll lick any feller says I ain’t....”

“Sit down, damn you!” shouted the tall youth who had been drowsing on
the bench against the wall.

“For man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain; he
heapeth up riches and cannot tell who shall gather them....”

“Well, it ARE his,” a woman in the background interjected in a
frightened whine.

The tall youth staggered to his feet. “If you don’t hold your mouths
I’ll turn you all out o’ here, the whole 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 the first-fruits of them
that slept.... Behold, I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but
we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at
the last trump.... For this corruptible must put on incorruption and this
mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruption shall have put
on incorruption, and when this mortal shall have put on immortality,
then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is
swallowed up in Victory....”

One by one the mighty words fell on Charity’s bowed head, soothing
the horror, subduing the tumult, mastering her as they mastered the
drink-dazed creatures at her back. Mr. Miles read to the last word, 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 the mattress. The young man on the bench
who seemed to assert some sort of right of kinship with the dead woman,
got to his feet again, and the proprietor of the stove joined him.
Between them they raised up the mattress; but their movements were
unsteady, and the coat slipped to the floor, revealing the poor body in
its helpless misery. Charity, picking up the coat, covered her mother
once more. Liff had brought a lantern, and the old woman who had already
spoken took it up, and opened the door to let the little procession
pass out. The wind had dropped, and the night was very dark and bitterly
cold. The old woman walked ahead, the lantern shaking in her hand and
spreading out before her a pale patch of dead grass and coarse-leaved
weeds enclosed in an immensity of blackness.

Mr. Miles took Charity by the arm, and side by side they walked behind
the mattress. At length the old woman with the lantern stopped, and
Charity saw the light fall on the stooping shoulders of the bearers and
on a ridge of upheaved earth over which they were bending. Mr. Miles
released her arm and approached the hollow on the other side of the
ridge; and while the men stooped down, lowering the mattress into the
grave, he began to speak again.

“Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full
of misery.... He cometh up and is cut down... he fleeth as it were a
shadow.... Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and
merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal
death....”

“Easy there... is she down?” piped the claimant to the stove; and the
young man called over his shoulder: “Lift the light there, can’t you?”

There was a pause, during which the light floated uncertainly over the
open grave. Someone bent over and pulled out Mr. Miles’s coat----(“No,
no--leave the handkerchief,” he interposed)--and then Liff Hyatt, coming
forward with a spade, began to shovel in the earth.

“Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to take
unto Himself the soul of our dear sister here departed, we therefore
commit her body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to
dust...” Liff’s gaunt shoulders rose and bent in the lantern light as he
dashed the clods of earth into the grave. “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 our vile body that it
may be like unto His glorious body, according to the mighty working,
whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Himself...” The last
spadeful of earth fell on the vile body of Mary Hyatt, and Liff rested
on his spade, his shoulder blades still heaving with 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’s hand and swept its light
across the circle of bleared faces. “Now kneel down, all of you,” he
commanded, in a voice of authority that Charity had never heard.
She knelt down at the edge of the grave, and the others, stiffly and
hesitatingly, got to their knees beside her. Mr. Miles knelt, too. “And
now pray with me--you know this prayer,” he said, and he began: “Our
Father which art in Heaven...” One or two of the women falteringly took
the words up, and when he ended, the lank-haired man flung himself on
the neck of the tall youth. “It was this way,” he said. “I tole her the
night before, I says to her...” The reminiscence ended in a sob.

Mr. Miles had been getting into his coat again. He came up to Charity,
who had remained passively kneeling by 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 out of 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 not possible--you don’t know what
you are doing. You can’t stay among these people: you must come with
me.”

She shook her head and rose from her knees. The group about the grave
had scattered in the darkness, but the old woman with the lantern stood
waiting. Her mournful withered face was not unkind, and Charity went up
to her.

“Have you got a place where I can lie down for the night?” she asked.
Liff came up, leading the buggy out of the night. He looked from one
to the other with his feeble smile. “She’s my mother. She’ll take you
home,” he said; and he added, raising his voice to speak to the
old woman: “It’s the girl from lawyer Royall’s--Mary’s girl... you
remember....”

The woman nodded and raised her sad old eyes to Charity’s. When Mr.
Miles and Liff clambered into the buggy she went ahead with the lantern
to show them the track they were to follow; then she turned back, and in
silence she and Charity walked away together through the night.




XVII


CHARITY lay on the floor on a mattress, as her dead mother’s body had
lain. The room in which she lay was cold and dark and low-ceilinged, and
even poorer and barer than the scene of Mary Hyatt’s earthly pilgrimage.
On the other side of the fireless stove Liff Hyatt’s mother slept on
a blanket, with two children--her grandchildren, she said--rolled up
against her like sleeping puppies. They had their thin clothes spread
over them, having given the only other blanket to their guest.

Through the small square of glass in the opposite wall Charity saw a
deep funnel of sky, so black, so remote, so palpitating with frosty
stars that her very soul seemed to be sucked into it. Up there
somewhere, she supposed, the God whom Mr. Miles had invoked was waiting
for Mary Hyatt to appear. What a long flight it was! And what would she
have to say when she reached Him?

Charity’s bewildered brain laboured with the attempt to picture her
mother’s past, and to relate it in any way to the designs of a just but
merciful God; but it was impossible to imagine any link between them.
She herself felt as remote from the poor creature she had seen lowered
into her hastily dug grave as if the height of the heavens divided them.
She had seen poverty and misfortune in her life; but in a community
where poor thrifty Mrs. Hawes and the industrious Ally represented the
nearest approach to destitution there was nothing to suggest the savage
misery of the Mountain farmers.

As she lay there, half-stunned by her tragic initiation, Charity vainly
tried to think herself into the life about her. But she could not even
make out what relationship these people bore to each other, or to her
dead mother; they seemed to be herded together in a sort of passive
promiscuity in which their common misery was the strongest link. She
tried to picture to herself what her life would have been if she had
grown up on the Mountain, running wild in rags, sleeping on the floor
curled up against her mother, like the pale-faced children huddled
against old Mrs. Hyatt, and turning into a fierce bewildered creature
like the girl who had apostrophized her in such strange words. She was
frightened by the secret affinity she had felt with this girl, and by
the light it threw on her own beginnings. Then she remembered what Mr.
Royall had said in telling her story to Lucius Harney: “Yes, there was
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 as destitute of all human feeling; now
she seemed merely pitiful. What mother would not want to save her child
from such a life? Charity thought of the future of her own child, and
tears welled into her aching eyes, and ran down over her face. If she
had been less exhausted, less burdened with his weight, she would have
sprung up then and there and fled away....

The grim hours of the night dragged themselves slowly by, and at last
the sky paled and dawn threw a cold blue beam into the room. She lay
in her corner staring at the dirty floor, the clothes-line hung with
decaying rags, the old woman huddled against the cold stove, and the
light gradually spreading across the wintry world, and bringing with it
a new day in which she would have to live, to choose, to act, to make
herself a place among these people--or to go back to the life she had
left. A mortal lassitude weighed on her. There were moments when she
felt that all she asked was to go on lying there unnoticed; then her
mind revolted at the thought of becoming one of the miserable herd from
which she sprang, and it seemed as though, to save her child from such
a fate, she would find strength to travel any distance, and bear any
burden life might put on her.

Vague thoughts of Nettleton flitted through her mind. She said to
herself that she would find some quiet place where she could bear her
child, and give it to decent people to keep; and then she would go out
like Julia Hawes and earn its living and hers. She knew that girls of
that kind sometimes made enough to have their children nicely cared for;
and every other consideration disappeared in the vision of her baby,
cleaned and combed and rosy, and hidden away somewhere where she could
run in and kiss it, and bring it pretty things to wear. Anything,
anything was better than to add another life to the nest of misery on
the Mountain....

The old woman and the children were still sleeping when Charity rose
from her mattress. Her body was stiff with cold and fatigue, and she
moved slowly lest her heavy steps should rouse them. She was faint with
hunger, and had nothing left in her satchel; but on the table she saw
the half of a stale loaf. No doubt it was to serve as the breakfast of
old Mrs. Hyatt and the children; but Charity did not care; she had her
own baby to think of. She broke off a piece of the bread and ate
it greedily; then her glance fell on the thin faces of the sleeping
children, and filled with compunction she rummaged in her satchel for
something with which to pay for what she had taken. She found one of
the pretty chemises that Ally had made for her, with a blue ribbon run
through its edging. It was one of the dainty things on which she had
squandered her savings, and as she looked at it the blood rushed to her
forehead. She laid the chemise on the table, and stealing across the
floor lifted the latch and went out....

The morning was icy cold and a pale sun was just rising above the
eastern shoulder of the Mountain. The houses scattered on the hillside
lay cold and smokeless under the sun-flecked clouds, and not a human
being was in sight. Charity paused on the threshold and tried to
discover the road by which she had come the night before. Across the
field surrounding Mrs. Hyatt’s shanty she saw the tumble-down house in
which she supposed the funeral service had taken place. The trail
ran across the ground between the two houses and disappeared in the
pine-wood on the flank of the Mountain; and a little way to the right,
under a wind-beaten thorn, a mound of fresh earth made a dark spot
on the fawn-coloured stubble. Charity walked across the field to the
ground. As she approached it she heard a bird’s note in the still air,
and looking up she saw a brown song-sparrow perched in an upper branch
of the thorn above the grave. She stood a minute listening to his small
solitary song; then she rejoined the trail and began to mount the hill
to the pine-wood.

Thus far she had been impelled by the blind instinct of flight; but each
step seemed to bring her nearer to the realities of which her feverish
vigil had given only a shadowy image. Now that she walked again in a
daylight world, on the way back to familiar things, her imagination
moved more soberly. On one point she was still 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 when she passed from
the shelter of the pines to the open grassy roof of the Mountain the
cold wind of the night before sprang out on her. She bent her shoulders
and struggled on against it for a while; but presently her breath
failed, and she sat down under a ledge of rock overhung by shivering
birches. From where she sat she saw the trail wandering across the
bleached grass in the direction of Hamblin, and the granite wall of the
Mountain falling away to infinite distances. On that side of the ridge
the valleys still lay in wintry shadow; but in the plain beyond the sun
was touching village roofs and steeples, and gilding the haze of smoke
over far-off invisible towns.

Charity felt herself a mere speck in the lonely circle of the sky. The
events of the last two days seemed to have divided her forever from
her short dream of bliss. Even Harney’s image had been blurred by that
crushing experience: she thought of him as so remote from her that he
seemed hardly more than a memory. In her fagged and floating mind only
one sensation had the weight of reality; it was the bodily burden of
her child. But for it she would have felt as rootless as the whiffs of
thistledown the wind blew past her. Her child was like a load that held
her down, and yet like a hand that pulled her to her feet. She said to
herself that she must get up and struggle on....

Her eyes turned back to the trail across the top of the Mountain, and
in the distance she saw a buggy against the sky. She knew its antique
outline, and the gaunt build of the old horse pressing forward with
lowered head; and after a moment she recognized the heavy bulk of the
man who held the reins. The buggy was following the trail and making
straight for the pine-wood through which she had climbed; and she knew
at once that the driver was in search of her. Her first impulse was
to crouch down under the ledge till he had passed; but the instinct of
concealment was overruled by the relief of feeling that someone was near
her in the awful emptiness. She stood up and walked toward the buggy.

Mr. Royall saw her, and touched the horse with the whip. A minute or two
later he was abreast of Charity; their eyes met, and without speaking he
leaned over and helped her up into the buggy.

She tried to speak, to stammer out some explanation, but no words came
to her; and as he drew the cover over her knees he simply said: “The
minister told me he’d left you up here, so I come up for you.”

He turned the horse’s head, and they began to jog back toward Hamblin.
Charity sat speechless, staring straight ahead of her, and Mr. Royall
occasionally uttered a word of encouragement to the horse: “Get along
there, Dan.... I gave him a rest at Hamblin; but I brought him along
pretty quick, and it’s a stiff pull up here against the wind.”

As he spoke it occurred to her for the first time that to reach the top
of the Mountain so early he must have left North Dormer at the coldest
hour of the night, and have travelled steadily but for the halt at
Hamblin; and she felt a softness at her heart which no act of his had
ever produced since he had brought her the Crimson Rambler because she
had given up boarding-school to stay with him.

After an interval he began again: “It was a day just like this, only
spitting snow, when I come up here for you the first time.” Then, as if
fearing that she might take his remark as a reminder of past benefits,
he added quickly: “I dunno’s you think it was such a good job, either.”

“Yes, I do,” she murmured, looking straight ahead of her.

“Well,” he said, “I tried----”

He did not finish the sentence, and she could think of nothing more to
say.

“Ho, there, Dan, step out,” he muttered, jerking the bridle. “We ain’t
home yet.--You cold?” he asked abruptly.

She shook her head, but he drew the cover higher up, and stooped to tuck
it in about the ankles. She continued to look straight ahead. Tears of
weariness and weakness were dimming her eyes and beginning to run over,
but she dared not wipe them away lest he should observe the gesture.

They drove in silence, following the long loops of the descent upon
Hamblin, and Mr. Royall did not speak again till they reached the
outskirts of the village. Then he let the reins droop on the dashboard
and drew out his watch.

“Charity,” he said, “you look fair done up, and North Dormer’s a goodish
way off. I’ve figured out that we’d do better to stop here long enough
for you to get a mouthful of breakfast and then drive down to Creston
and take the train.”

She roused herself from her apathetic musing. “The train--what train?”

Mr. Royall, without answering, let the horse jog on till they reached
the door of the first house in the village. “This is old Mrs. Hobart’s
place,” he said. “She’ll give us something hot to drink.”

Charity, half unconsciously, found herself getting out of the buggy and
following him in at the open door. They entered a decent kitchen with a
fire crackling in the stove. An old woman with a kindly face was setting
out cups and saucers on the table. She looked up and nodded as they
came in, and Mr. Royall advanced to the stove, clapping his numb hands
together.

“Well, Mrs. Hobart, you got any breakfast for this young lady? You can
see she’s cold and hungry.”

Mrs. Hobart smiled on Charity and took a tin coffee-pot from the fire.
“My, you do look pretty mean,” she said compassionately.

Charity reddened, and sat down at the table. A feeling of complete
passiveness had once more come over her, and she was conscious only of
the pleasant animal sensations of warmth and rest.

Mrs. Hobart put bread and milk on the table, and then went out of the
house: Charity saw her leading the horse away to the barn across the
yard. She did not come back, and Mr. Royall and Charity sat alone at the
table with the smoking coffee between them. He poured out a cup for her,
and put a piece of bread in the saucer, and she began to eat.

As the warmth of the coffee flowed through her veins her thoughts
cleared and she began to feel like a living being again; but the return
to life was so painful that the food choked in her throat and she sat
staring 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----” She did not move, and he continued:
“We can pick up the noon train for Nettleton if you say so.”

The words sent the blood rushing to her face, and she raised her
startled eyes to his. He was standing on the other side of the table
looking at her kindly and gravely; and suddenly she understood what he
was going to say. She continued to sit motionless, a leaden weight upon
her lips.

“You and me have spoke some hard things to each other in our time,
Charity; and there’s no good that I can see in any more talking now. But
I’ll never feel any way but one about you; and if you say so we’ll drive
down in time to catch that train, and go straight to the minister’s
house; and when you come back home you’ll come as Mrs. Royall.”

His voice had the grave persuasive accent that had moved his hearers at
the Home Week festival; she had a sense of depths of mournful tolerance
under that easy tone. Her whole body began to tremble with the dread of
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 was rejecting what he
offered, or already struggling against the temptation of taking what
she no longer had a right to. She stood up, shaking and bewildered, and
began to speak:

“I know I ain’t been fair to you always; but I want to be now.... I want
you to know... I want...” Her voice failed her and she stopped.

Mr. Royall leaned against the wall. He was paler than usual, but his
face was composed and kindly and 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. You want to be took home and took
care of. And I guess that’s all there is to say.”

“No... it’s not all....”

“Ain’t it?” He looked at his watch. “Well, I’ll tell you another thing.
All I want is to know if you’ll marry me. If there was anything else,
I’d tell you so; but there ain’t. Come to my age, a man knows the things
that matter and the things that don’t; that’s about the only good turn
life does us.”

His tone was so strong and resolute that it was like a supporting arm
about her. She felt her resistance melting, her strength slipping away
from her as he spoke.

“Don’t cry, Charity,” he exclaimed in a shaken voice. She looked up,
startled at his emotion, and their eyes met.

“See here,” he said gently, “old Dan’s come a long distance, and we’ve
got to let him take it easy the rest of the way....”

He picked up the cloak that had slipped to her chair and laid it about
her shoulders. She followed him out of the house, and then walked across
the 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 about her and shook out the reins with a cluck. When
they reached the end of the village he turned the horse’s head toward
Creston.




XVIII


They began to jog down the winding road to the valley at old Dan’s
languid pace. Charity felt herself sinking into deeper depths of
weariness, and as they descended through the bare woods there were
moments when she lost the exact sense of things, and seemed to be
sitting beside her lover with the leafy arch of summer bending over
them. But this illusion was faint and transitory. For the most part she
had only a confused sensation of slipping down a smooth irresistible
current; and she abandoned herself to the feeling as a refuge from the
torment of thought.

Mr. Royall seldom spoke, but his silent presence gave her, 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 to her....

In the train, during the short run from Creston to Nettleton, the warmth
aroused her, and the consciousness of being under strange eyes gave her
a momentary energy. She sat upright, facing Mr. Royall, and stared out
of the window at the denuded country. Forty-eight hours earlier, when
she had last traversed it, many of the trees still held their leaves;
but the high wind of the last two nights had stripped them, and the
lines of the landscape’ were as finely pencilled as in December. A
few days of autumn cold had wiped out all trace of the rich fields and
languid groves through which she had passed on the Fourth of July; and
with the fading of the landscape those fervid hours had faded, too. She
could no longer believe that she was the being who had lived them; she
was someone to whom something irreparable and overwhelming had happened,
but the traces of the steps leading up to it had almost vanished.

When the train reached Nettleton and she walked out into the square at
Mr. Royall’s side the sense of unreality grew more overpowering. The
physical strain of the night and day had left no room in her mind for
new sensations and she followed Mr. Royall as passively as a tired
child. As in a confused dream she presently found herself sitting with
him in a pleasant room, at a table with a red and white table-cloth
on which hot food and tea were placed. He filled her cup and plate and
whenever she lifted her eyes from them she found his resting on her with
the same steady tranquil gaze that had reassured and strengthened
her when they had faced each other in old Mrs. Hobart’s kitchen. As
everything else in her consciousness grew more and more confused
and immaterial, became more and more like the universal shimmer that
dissolves the world to failing eyes, Mr. Royall’s presence began to
detach itself with rocky firmness from this elusive background. She had
always thought of him--when she thought of him at all--as of someone
hateful and obstructive, but whom she could outwit and dominate when
she chose to make the effort. Only once, on the day of the Old Home Week
celebration, while the stray fragments of his address drifted across
her troubled mind, had she caught a glimpse of another being, a being so
different from the dull-witted enemy with whom she had supposed herself
to be living that even through the burning mist of her own dreams he
had stood out with startling distinctness. For a moment, then, what he
said--and something in his way of saying it--had made her see why he had
always struck her as such a lonely man. But the mist of her dreams had
hidden him again, and she had forgotten that fugitive impression.

It came back to her now, as they sat at the table, and gave her, through
her own immeasurable desolation, a sudden sense of their nearness to
each other. But all these feelings were only brief streaks of light in
the grey blur of her physical weakness. Through it she was aware that
Mr. Royall presently left her sitting by the table in the warm room, and
came back after an interval with a carriage from the station--a closed
“hack” with sun-burnt blue silk blinds--in which they drove together
to a house covered with creepers and standing next to a church with a
carpet of turf before it. They got out at this house, and the carriage
waited while they walked up the path and entered a wainscoted hall and
then a room full of books. In this room a clergyman whom Charity had
never seen received them pleasantly, and asked them to be seated for a
few minutes while witnesses were being summoned.

Charity sat down obediently, and Mr. Royall, his hands behind his back,
paced slowly up and down the room. As he turned and faced Charity, she
noticed that his lips were twitching a little; but the look in his eyes
was grave and calm. Once he paused before her and said timidly: “Your
hair’s got kinder loose with the wind,” and she lifted her hands and
tried to smooth back the locks that had escaped from her braid. There
was a looking-glass in a carved frame on the wall, but she was ashamed
to look at herself in it, and she sat with her hands folded on her knee
till the clergyman returned. Then they went out again, along a sort of
arcaded passage, and into a low vaulted room with a cross on an altar,
and rows of benches. The clergyman, who had left them at the door,
presently reappeared before the altar in a surplice, and a lady who was
probably his wife, and a man in a blue shirt who had been raking dead
leaves on the lawn, came in and sat on one of the benches.

The clergyman opened a book and signed to Charity and Mr. Royall to
approach. Mr. Royall advanced a few steps, and Charity followed him as
she had followed him to the buggy when they went out of Mrs. Hobart’s
kitchen; she had the feeling that if she ceased to keep close to him,
and do what he told her to do, the world would slip away from beneath
her feet.

The clergyman began to read, and on her dazed mind there rose the memory
of Mr. Miles, standing the night before in the desolate house of the
Mountain, and reading out of the same book words that had the same dread
sound of finality:

“I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day
of judgment when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if
either of you know any impediment whereby ye may not be lawfully joined
together...”

Charity raised her eyes and met Mr. Royall’s. They were still looking
at her kindly and steadily. “I will!” she heard him say a moment later,
after another interval of words that she had failed to catch. She was so
busy trying to understand the gestures that the clergyman was signalling
to her to make that she no longer heard what was being said. After
another interval the lady on the bench stood up, and taking her hand put
it in Mr. Royall’s. It lay enclosed in his strong palm and she felt
a ring that was too big for her being slipped on her thin finger. She
understood then that she was married....

Late that afternoon Charity sat alone in a bedroom of the fashionable
hotel where she and Harney had vainly sought a table on the Fourth of
July. She had never before been in so handsomely furnished a room. The
mirror above the dressing-table reflected the high head-board and fluted
pillow-slips of the double bed, and a bedspread so spotlessly white that
she had hesitated to lay her hat and jacket on it. The humming radiator
diffused an atmosphere of drowsy warmth, and through a half-open door
she saw the glitter of the nickel taps above twin marble basins.

For a while the long turmoil of the night and day had slipped away from
her and she sat with closed eyes, surrendering herself to the spell of
warmth and silence. But presently this merciful apathy was succeeded by
the sudden acuteness of vision with which sick people sometimes wake out
of a heavy sleep. As she opened her eyes they rested on the picture
that hung above the bed. It was a large engraving with a dazzling white
margin enclosed in a wide frame of bird’s-eye maple with an inner scroll
of gold. The engraving represented a young man in a boat on a lake
over-hung with trees. He was leaning over to gather water-lilies for the
girl in a light dress who lay among the cushions in the stern. The scene
was full of a drowsy midsummer radiance, and Charity averted 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 of plate glass looked
over the roofs of the town. Beyond them stretched a wooded landscape in
which the last fires of sunset were picking out a steely gleam. Charity
gazed at the gleam with startled eyes. Even through the gathering
twilight she recognized the contour of the soft hills encircling it, and
the way the meadows sloped to its edge. It was Nettleton Lake that she
was looking at.

She stood a long time in the window staring out at the fading water. The
sight of it had roused her for the first time to a realization of what
she had done. Even the feeling of the ring on her hand had not brought
her this sharp sense of the irretrievable. For an instant the old
impulse of flight swept through her; but it was only the lift of a
broken wing. She heard the door open behind her, and Mr. Royall came in.

He had gone to the barber’s to be shaved, and his shaggy grey hair had
been trimmed and smoothed. He moved strongly and quickly, squaring his
shoulders and carrying his head high, as if he did not want to pass
unnoticed.

“What are you doing in the dark?” he called out in a cheerful voice.
Charity made no answer. He went up to the window to draw the blind, and
putting his finger on the wall flooded the room with a blaze of light
from the central chandelier. In this unfamiliar illumination husband
and wife faced each other awkwardly for a moment; then Mr. Royall said:
“We’ll step down and have some supper, if you say so.”

The thought of food filled her with repugnance; but not daring to
confess it she smoothed her hair and followed him 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 corner counters, selected a cigar and bought an
evening paper. Men were lounging in rocking chairs under the blazing
chandeliers, travellers coming and going, bells ringing, porters
shuffling by with luggage. Over Mr. Royall’s shoulder, as he leaned
against the counter, a girl with her hair puffed high smirked and nodded
at a dapper drummer who was getting his key at the desk across the hall.

Charity stood among these cross-currents of life as motionless and inert
as if she had been one of the tables screwed to the marble floor. All
her soul was gathered up into one sick sense of coming doom, and she
watched Mr. Royall in fascinated terror while he pinched the cigars in
successive boxes and unfolded his evening paper with a steady hand.

Presently he turned and joined her. “You go right along up to bed--I’m
going to sit down here and have my smoke,” he said. He spoke as easily
and naturally as if they had been an old couple, long used to each
other’s ways, and her contracted heart gave a flutter of relief. She
followed him to the lift, and he put her in and enjoined the buttoned
and braided boy to show her to her room.

She groped her way in through the darkness, forgetting where the
electric button was, and not knowing how to manipulate it. But a white
autumn moon had risen, and the illuminated sky put a pale light in the
room. By it she undressed, and after folding up the ruffled pillow-slips
crept timidly under the spotless counterpane. She had never felt such
smooth sheets or such light warm blankets; but the softness of the bed
did not soothe her. She lay there trembling with a fear that ran through
her veins like ice. “What have I done? Oh, what have I done?” she
whispered, shuddering to her pillow; and pressing her face against it
to shut out the pale landscape beyond the window she lay in the darkness
straining her ears, and shaking at every footstep that approached....

Suddenly she sat up and pressed her hands against her frightened heart.
A faint sound had told her that someone was in the room; but she must
have slept in the interval, for she had heard no one enter. The moon was
setting beyond the opposite roofs, and in the darkness outlined
against the grey square of the window, she saw a figure seated in the
rocking-chair. The figure did not move: it was sunk deep in the chair,
with bowed head and folded arms, and she saw that it was Mr. Royall who
sat there. He had not undressed, but had taken the blanket from the
foot of the bed and laid it across his knees. Trembling and holding her
breath she watched him, fearing that he had been roused by her movement;
but he did not stir, and she concluded that he wished her to think he
was asleep.

As she continued to watch him ineffable relief stole slowly over her,
relaxing her strained nerves and exhausted body. He knew, then... he
knew... it was because he knew that he had married her, and that he
sat there in the darkness to show her she was safe with him. A stir
of something deeper than she had ever felt in thinking of him flitted
through her tired brain, and cautiously, noiselessly, she let her head
sink on the pillow....

When she woke the room was full of morning light, and her first glance
showed her that she was alone in it. She got up and dressed, and as
she was fastening her dress the door opened, and Mr. Royall came in. He
looked old and tired in the bright daylight, but his face wore the same
expression of grave friendliness that had reassured her on the Mountain.
It was as if all 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 insurance business to attend to. “I
guess while I’m doing it you’d better step out and buy yourself whatever
you need.” He smiled, and added with an embarrassed laugh: “You know I
always wanted you to beat all the other girls.” He drew something from
his pocket, and pushed it across the table to her; and she saw that he
had given her two twenty-dollar bills. “If it ain’t enough there’s more
where that come from--I want you to beat ’em all hollow,” he repeated.

She flushed and tried to stammer out her thanks, but he had pushed back
his chair and was leading the way out of the dining-room. In the hall he
paused a minute to say that if it suited her they would take the three
o’clock train back to North Dormer; then he took his hat and coat from
the rack and went out.

A few minutes later Charity went out, too. She had watched to see in
what direction he was going, and she took the opposite way and walked
quickly down the main street to the brick building on the corner of
Lake Avenue. There she paused to look cautiously up and down the
thoroughfare, and then climbed the brass-bound stairs to Dr. Merkle’s
door. The same bushy-headed mulatto girl admitted her, and after the
same interval of waiting in the red plush parlor she was once more
summoned to Dr. Merkle’s office. The doctor received her without
surprise, and led her into the inner plush sanctuary.

“I thought you’d be back, but you’ve come a mite too soon: I told you
to be patient and not fret,” she observed, after a pause of penetrating
scrutiny.

Charity drew the money from her breast. “I’ve come to get 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, my dear, you’ll have to wait while I get
it out of the safe. I don’t leave valuables like that laying round like
the noospaper.”

She disappeared for a moment, and returned with a bit of twisted-up
tissue paper from which she unwrapped the brooch.

Charity, as she looked at it, felt a stir of warmth at her heart. She
held out an eager hand.

“Have you got the change?” she asked a little breathlessly, laying one
of the twenty-dollar bills on the table.

“Change? What’d I want to have change for? I only see two twenties
there,” Dr. Merkle answered brightly.

Charity paused, disconcerted. “I thought... you said it was five dollars
a visit....”

“For YOU, as a favour--I did. But how about the responsibility and the
insurance? I don’t s’pose you ever thought of that? This pin’s worth a
hundred dollars easy. If it had got lost or stole, where’d I been when
you come to claim it?”

Charity remained silent, puzzled and half-convinced by the argument,
and Dr. Merkle promptly followed up her advantage. “I didn’t ask you for
your brooch, my dear. I’d a good deal ruther folks paid me my regular
charge than have ’em put me to all this trouble.”

She paused, and Charity, seized with a desperate longing to escape, rose
to her feet and held out one of the bills.

“Will you take that?” she asked.

“No, I won’t take that, my dear; but I’ll take it with its mate, and
hand you over a signed receipt if you don’t trust me.”

“Oh, but I can’t--it’s all I’ve got,” Charity exclaimed.

Dr. Merkle looked up at her pleasantly from the plush sofa. “It seems
you got married yesterday, up to the ‘Piscopal church; I heard all about
the wedding from the minister’s chore-man. It would be a pity, wouldn’t
it, to let Mr. Royall know you had an account running here? I just put
it to you as your own mother might.”

Anger flamed up in Charity, and for an instant she thought of abandoning
the brooch and letting Dr. Merkle do her worst. But how could she leave
her only treasure with that evil woman? She wanted it for her baby: she
meant it, in some mysterious way, to be a link between Harney’s child
and its unknown father. Trembling and hating herself while she did it,
she laid Mr. Royall’s money on the table, and catching up the brooch
fled out of the room and the house....

In the street she stood still, dazed by this last adventure. But the
brooch lay in her bosom like a talisman, and she felt a secret lightness
of heart. It gave her strength, after a moment, to walk on slowly in the
direction of the post office, and go in through the swinging doors. At
one of the windows she bought a sheet of letter-paper, an envelope and a
stamp; then she sat down at a table and dipped the rusty post office pen
in ink. She had come there possessed with a fear which had haunted her
ever since she had felt Mr. Royall’s ring on her finger: the fear that
Harney might, after all, free himself and come back to her. It was a
possibility which had never occurred to her during the dreadful hours
after she had received his letter; only when the decisive step she had
taken made longing turn to apprehension did such a contingency seem
conceivable. She addressed the envelope, and on the 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 meant to 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 was no chance of ever seeing Harney again, why should she not tell
him the truth?

When she had put the letter in the box she went out into the busy sunlit
street and began to walk to the hotel. Behind the plateglass windows of
the department stores she noticed the tempting display of dresses and
dress-materials that had fired her imagination on the day when she and
Harney had looked in at them together. They reminded her of Mr. Royall’s
injunction to go out and buy all she needed. She looked down at her
shabby dress, and wondered what she should say when he saw her coming
back empty-handed. As she drew near the hotel she saw him waiting on the
doorstep, and her heart began to beat with apprehension.

He nodded and waved his hand at her approach, and they walked through
the hall and went upstairs to collect their possessions, so that Mr.
Royall might give up the key of the room when they went down again for
their midday dinner. In the bedroom, while she was thrusting back into
the satchel the few things she had brought away with her, she suddenly
felt that his eyes were on her and that he was going to speak. She stood
still, her half-folded night-gown in her hand, while the blood rushed up
to her drawn cheeks.

“Well, did you rig yourself out handsomely? I haven’t seen any bundles
round,” he said jocosely.

“Oh, I’d rather let Ally Hawes make the few things I want,” she
answered.

“That so?” He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment and his eye-brows
projected in a scowl. Then his face grew friendly again. “Well, I wanted
you to go back looking stylisher than any of them; but I guess you’re
right. You’re a good girl, Charity.”

Their eyes met, and something rose in his that she had never seen there:
a look that made her feel ashamed and yet secure.

“I guess you’re good, too,” she said, shyly and quickly. He smiled
without answering, and they went out of the room together and dropped
down to the hall in the glittering lift.

Late that evening, in the cold autumn moonlight, they drove up to the
door of the red house.




BUNNER SISTERS

By Edith Wharton

Scribner’s Magazine 60 (Oct. 1916): 439-58; 60 (Nov. 1916): 575-96.




PART I




I

In the days when New York’s traffic moved at the pace of the drooping
horse-car, when society applauded Christine Nilsson at the Academy of
Music and basked in the sunsets of the Hudson River School on the walls
of the National Academy of Design, an inconspicuous shop with a
single show-window was intimately and favourably known to the feminine
population of the quarter bordering on Stuyvesant Square.

It was a very small shop, in a shabby basement, in a side-street
already doomed to decline; and from the miscellaneous display behind the
window-pane, and the brevity of the sign surmounting it (merely “Bunner
Sisters” in blotchy gold on a black ground) it would have been difficult
for the uninitiated to guess the precise nature of the business carried
on within. But that was of little consequence, since its fame was so
purely local that the customers on whom its existence depended were
almost congenitally aware of the exact range of “goods” to be found at
Bunner Sisters’.

The house of which Bunner Sisters had annexed the basement was a private
dwelling with a brick front, green shutters on weak hinges, and a
dress-maker’s sign in the window above the shop. On each side of its
modest three stories stood higher buildings, with fronts of brown stone,
cracked and blistered, cast-iron balconies and cat-haunted grass-patches
behind twisted railings. These houses too had once been private, but now
a cheap lunchroom filled the basement of one, while the other announced
itself, above the knotty wistaria that clasped its central balcony, as
the Mendoza Family Hotel. It was obvious from the chronic cluster
of refuse-barrels at its area-gate and the blurred surface of its
curtainless windows, that the families frequenting the Mendoza Hotel
were not exacting in their tastes; though they doubtless indulged in
as much fastidiousness as they could afford to pay for, and rather more
than their landlord thought they had a right to express.

These three houses fairly exemplified the general character of the
street, which, as it stretched eastward, rapidly fell from shabbiness to
squalor, with an increasing frequency of projecting sign-boards, and of
swinging doors that softly shut or opened at the touch of red-nosed men
and pale little girls with broken jugs. The middle of the street was
full of irregular depressions, well adapted to retain the long swirls of
dust and straw and twisted paper that the wind drove up and down its sad
untended length; and toward the end of the day, when traffic had been
active, the fissured pavement formed a mosaic of coloured hand-bills,
lids of tomato-cans, old shoes, cigar-stumps and banana skins, cemented
together by a layer of mud, or veiled in a powdering of dust, as the
state of the weather determined.

The sole refuge offered from the contemplation of this depressing waste
was the sight of the Bunner Sisters’ window. Its panes were always
well-washed, and though their display of artificial flowers, bands of
scalloped flannel, wire hat-frames, and jars of home-made preserves, had
the undefinable greyish tinge of objects long preserved in the show-case
of a museum, the window revealed a background of orderly counters and
white-washed walls in pleasant contrast to the adjoining dinginess.

The Bunner sisters were proud of the neatness of their shop and content
with its humble prosperity. It was not what they had once imagined it
would be, but though it presented but a shrunken image of their earlier
ambitions it enabled them to pay their rent and keep themselves alive
and out of debt; and it was long since their hopes had soared higher.

Now and then, however, among their greyer hours there came one not
bright enough to be called sunny, but rather of the silvery twilight hue
which sometimes ends a day of storm. It was such an hour that Ann Eliza,
the elder of the firm, was soberly enjoying as she sat one January
evening in the back room which served as bedroom, kitchen and parlour
to herself and her sister Evelina. In the shop the blinds had been drawn
down, the counters cleared and the wares in the window lightly covered
with an old sheet; but the shop-door remained unlocked till Evelina, who
had taken a parcel to the dyer’s, should come back.

In the back room a kettle bubbled on the stove, and Ann Eliza had laid a
cloth over one end of the centre table, and placed near the green-shaded
sewing lamp two tea-cups, two plates, a sugar-bowl and a piece of pie.
The rest of the room remained in a greenish shadow which discreetly
veiled the outline of an old-fashioned mahogany bedstead surmounted by a
chromo of a young lady in a night-gown who clung with eloquently-rolling
eyes to a crag described in illuminated letters as the Rock of Ages;
and against the unshaded windows two rocking-chairs and a sewing-machine
were silhouetted on the dusk.

Ann Eliza, her small and habitually anxious face smoothed to unusual
serenity, and the streaks of pale hair on her veined temples shining
glossily beneath the lamp, had seated herself at the table, and was
tying up, with her usual fumbling deliberation, a knobby object wrapped
in paper. Now and then, as she struggled with the string, which was too
short, she fancied she heard the click of the shop-door, and paused
to listen for her sister; then, as no one came, she straightened her
spectacles and entered into renewed conflict with the parcel. In honour
of some event of obvious importance, she had put on her double-dyed and
triple-turned black silk. Age, while bestowing on this garment a patine
worthy of a Renaissance bronze, had deprived it of whatever curves the
wearer’s pre-Raphaelite figure had once been able to impress on it;
but this stiffness of outline gave it an air of sacerdotal state which
seemed to emphasize the importance of the occasion.

Seen thus, in her sacramental black silk, a wisp of lace turned over
the collar and fastened by a mosaic brooch, and her face smoothed into
harmony with her apparel, Ann Eliza looked ten years younger than behind
the counter, in the heat and burden of the day. It would have been as
difficult to guess her approximate age as that of the black silk, for
she had the same worn and glossy aspect as her dress; but a faint tinge
of pink still lingered on her cheek-bones, like the reflection of sunset
which sometimes colours the west long after the day is over.

When she had tied the parcel to her satisfaction, and laid it with
furtive accuracy just opposite her sister’s plate, she sat down, with an
air of obviously-assumed indifference, in one of the rocking-chairs near
the window; and a moment later the shop-door opened and Evelina entered.

The younger Bunner sister, who was a little taller than her elder, had
a more pronounced nose, but a weaker slope of mouth and chin. She still
permitted herself the frivolity of waving her pale hair, and its
tight little ridges, stiff as the tresses of an Assyrian statue,
were flattened under a dotted veil which ended at the tip of her
cold-reddened nose. In her scant jacket and skirt of black cashmere she
looked singularly nipped and faded; but it seemed possible that under
happier conditions she might still warm into relative youth.

“Why, Ann Eliza,” she exclaimed, in a thin voice pitched to chronic
fretfulness, “what in the world you got your best silk on for?”

Ann Eliza had risen with a blush that made her steel-browed spectacles
incongruous.

“Why, Evelina, why shouldn’t I, I sh’ld like to know? Ain’t it your
birthday, dear?” She put out her arms with the awkwardness of habitually
repressed emotion.

Evelina, without seeming to notice the gesture, threw back the jacket
from her narrow shoulders.

“Oh, pshaw,” she said, less peevishly. “I guess we’d better give up
birthdays. Much as we can do to keep Christmas nowadays.”

“You hadn’t oughter say that, Evelina. We ain’t so badly off as all
that. I guess you’re cold and tired. Set down while I take the kettle
off: it’s right on the boil.”

She pushed Evelina toward the table, keeping a sideward eye on her
sister’s listless movements, while her own hands were busy with the
kettle. A moment later came the exclamation for which she waited.

“Why, Ann Eliza!” Evelina stood transfixed by the sight of the parcel
beside her plate.

Ann Eliza, tremulously engaged in filling the teapot, lifted a look of
hypocritical surprise.

“Sakes, Evelina! What’s the matter?”

The younger sister had rapidly untied the string, and drawn from
its wrappings a round nickel clock of the kind to be bought for a
dollar-seventy-five.

“Oh, Ann Eliza, how could you?” She set the clock down, and the sisters
exchanged agitated glances across the table.

“Well,” the elder retorted, “AIN’T it your birthday?”

“Yes, but--”

“Well, and ain’t you had to run round the corner to the Square every
morning, rain or shine, to see what time it was, ever since we had to
sell mother’s watch last July? Ain’t you, Evelina?”

“Yes, but--”

“There ain’t any buts. We’ve always wanted a clock and now we’ve got
one: that’s all there is about it. Ain’t she a beauty, Evelina?” Ann
Eliza, putting back the kettle on the stove, leaned over her sister’s
shoulder to pass an approving hand over the circular rim of the clock.
“Hear how loud she ticks. I was afraid you’d hear her soon as you come
in.”

“No. I wasn’t thinking,” murmured Evelina.

“Well, ain’t you glad now?” Ann Eliza gently reproached her. The rebuke
had no acerbity, for she knew that Evelina’s seeming indifference was
alive with unexpressed scruples.

“I’m real glad, sister; but you hadn’t oughter. We could have got on
well enough without.”

“Evelina Bunner, just you sit down to your tea. I guess I know what
I’d oughter and what I’d hadn’t oughter just as well as you do--I’m old
enough!”

“You’re real good, Ann Eliza; but I know you’ve given up something you
needed to get me this clock.”

“What do I need, I’d like to know? Ain’t I got a best black silk?” the
elder sister said with a laugh full of nervous pleasure.

She poured out Evelina’s tea, adding some condensed milk from the jug,
and cutting for her the largest slice of pie; then she drew up her own
chair to the table.

The two women ate in silence for a few moments before Evelina began to
speak again. “The clock is perfectly lovely and I don’t say it ain’t a
comfort to have it; but I hate to think what it must have cost you.”

“No, it didn’t, neither,” Ann Eliza retorted. “I got it dirt cheap, if
you want to know. And I paid for it out of a little extra work I did the
other night on the machine for Mrs. Hawkins.”

“The baby-waists?”

“Yes.”

“There, I knew it! You swore to me you’d buy a new pair of shoes with
that money.”

“Well, and s’posin’ I didn’t want ’em--what then? I’ve patched up the
old ones as good as new--and I do declare, Evelina Bunner, if you ask me
another question you’ll go and spoil all my pleasure.”

“Very well, I won’t,” said the younger sister.

They continued to eat without farther words. Evelina yielded to her
sister’s entreaty that she should finish the pie, and poured out a
second cup of tea, into which she put the last lump of sugar; and
between them, on the table, the clock kept up its sociable tick.

“Where’d you get it, Ann Eliza?” asked Evelina, fascinated.

“Where’d you s’pose? Why, right round here, over acrost the Square, in
the queerest little store you ever laid eyes on. I saw it in the window
as I was passing, and I stepped right in and asked how much it was, and
the store-keeper he was real pleasant about it. He was just the nicest
man. I guess he’s a German. I told him I couldn’t give much, and he
said, well, he knew what hard times was too. His name’s Ramy--Herman
Ramy: I saw it written up over the store. And he told me he used to work
at Tiff’ny’s, oh, for years, in the clock-department, and three years
ago he took sick with some kinder fever, and lost his place, and when
he got well they’d engaged somebody else and didn’t want him, and so he
started this little store by himself. I guess he’s real smart, and he
spoke quite like an educated man--but he looks sick.”

Evelina was listening with absorbed attention. In the narrow lives of
the two sisters such an episode was not to be under-rated.

“What you say his name was?” she asked as Ann Eliza paused.

“Herman Ramy.”

“How old is he?”

“Well, I couldn’t exactly tell you, he looked so sick--but I don’t
b’lieve he’s much over forty.”

By this time the plates had been cleared and the teapot emptied, and
the two sisters rose from the table. Ann Eliza, tying an apron over
her black silk, carefully removed all traces of the meal; then, after
washing the cups and plates, and putting them away in a cupboard, she
drew her rocking-chair to the lamp and sat down to a heap of mending.
Evelina, meanwhile, had been roaming about the room in search of
an abiding-place for the clock. A rosewood what-not with ornamental
fret-work hung on the wall beside the devout young lady in dishabille,
and after much weighing of alternatives the sisters decided to dethrone
a broken china vase filled with dried grasses which had long stood
on the top shelf, and to put the clock in its place; the vase, after
farther consideration, being relegated to a small table covered with
blue and white beadwork, which held a Bible and prayer-book, and an
illustrated copy of Longfellow’s poems given as a school-prize to their
father.

This change having been made, and the effect studied from every angle
of the room, Evelina languidly put her pinking-machine on the table,
and sat down to the monotonous work of pinking a heap of black silk
flounces. The strips of stuff slid slowly to the floor at her side, and
the clock, from its commanding altitude, kept time with the dispiriting
click of the instrument under her fingers.




II


The purchase of Evelina’s clock had been a more important event in the
life of Ann Eliza Bunner than her younger sister could divine. In the
first place, there had been the demoralizing satisfaction of finding
herself in possession of a sum of money which she need not put into the
common fund, but could spend as she chose, without consulting Evelina,
and then the excitement of her stealthy trips abroad, undertaken on the
rare occasions when she could trump up a pretext for leaving the shop;
since, as a rule, it was Evelina who took the bundles to the dyer’s,
and delivered the purchases of those among their customers who were too
genteel to be seen carrying home a bonnet or a bundle of pinking--so
that, had it not been for the excuse of having to see Mrs. Hawkins’s
teething baby, Ann Eliza would hardly have known what motive to allege
for deserting her usual seat behind the counter.

The infrequency of her walks made them the chief events of her life.
The mere act of going out from the monastic quiet of the shop into the
tumult of the streets filled her with a subdued excitement which grew
too intense for pleasure as she was swallowed by the engulfing roar
of Broadway or Third Avenue, and began to do timid battle with their
incessant cross-currents of humanity. After a glance or two into the
great show-windows she usually allowed herself to be swept back into the
shelter of a side-street, and finally regained her own roof in a state
of breathless bewilderment and fatigue; but gradually, as her nerves
were soothed by the familiar quiet of the little shop, and the click
of Evelina’s pinking-machine, certain sights and sounds would detach
themselves from the torrent along which she had been swept, and she
would devote the rest of the day to a mental reconstruction of the
different episodes of her walk, till finally it took shape in her
thought as a consecutive and highly-coloured experience, from which, for
weeks afterwards, she would detach some fragmentary recollection in the
course of her long dialogues with her sister.

But when, to the unwonted excitement of going out, was added the
intenser interest of looking for a present for Evelina, Ann Eliza’s
agitation, sharpened by concealment, actually preyed upon her rest;
and it was not till the present had been given, and she had unbosomed
herself of the experiences connected with its purchase, that she could
look back with anything like composure to that stirring moment of
her life. From that day forward, however, she began to take a certain
tranquil pleasure in thinking of Mr. Ramy’s small shop, not unlike her
own in its countrified obscurity, though the layer of dust which
covered its counter and shelves made the comparison only superficially
acceptable. Still, she did not judge the state of the shop severely, for
Mr. Ramy had told her that he was alone in the world, and lone men, she
was aware, did not know how to deal with dust. It gave her a good deal
of occupation to wonder why he had never married, or if, on the other
hand, he were a widower, and had lost all his dear little children;
and she scarcely knew which alternative seemed to make him the more
interesting. In either case, his life was assuredly a sad one; and she
passed many hours in speculating on the manner in which he probably
spent his evenings. She knew he lived at the back of his shop, for she
had caught, on entering, a glimpse of a dingy room with a tumbled bed;
and the pervading smell of cold fry suggested that he probably did his
own cooking. She wondered if he did not often make his tea with water
that had not boiled, and asked herself, almost jealously, who looked
after the shop while he went to market. Then it occurred to her as
likely that he bought his provisions at the same market as Evelina;
and she was fascinated by the thought that he and her sister might
constantly be meeting in total unconsciousness of the link between them.
Whenever she reached this stage in her reflexions she lifted a furtive
glance to the clock, whose loud staccato tick was becoming a part of her
inmost being.

The seed sown by these long hours of meditation germinated at last in
the secret wish to go to market some morning in Evelina’s stead. As
this purpose rose to the surface of Ann Eliza’s thoughts she shrank back
shyly from its contemplation. A plan so steeped in duplicity had never
before taken shape in her crystalline soul. How was it possible for her
to consider such a step? And, besides, (she did not possess sufficient
logic to mark the downward trend of this “besides”), what excuse could
she make that would not excite her sister’s curiosity? From this second
query it was an easy descent to the third: how soon could she manage to
go?

It was Evelina herself, who furnished the necessary pretext by awaking
with a sore throat on the day when she usually went to market. It was
a Saturday, and as they always had their bit of steak on Sunday the
expedition could not be postponed, and it seemed natural that Ann Eliza,
as she tied an old stocking around Evelina’s throat, should announce her
intention of stepping round to the butcher’s.

“Oh, Ann Eliza, they’ll cheat you so,” her sister wailed.

Ann Eliza brushed aside the imputation with a smile, and a few minutes
later, having set the room to rights, and cast a last glance at the
shop, she was tying on her bonnet with fumbling haste.

The morning was damp and cold, with a sky full of sulky clouds that
would not make room for the sun, but as yet dropped only an occasional
snow-flake. In the early light the street looked its meanest and most
neglected; but to Ann Eliza, never greatly troubled by any untidiness
for which she was not responsible, it seemed to wear a singularly
friendly aspect.

A few minutes’ walk brought her to the market where Evelina made her
purchases, and where, if he had any sense of topographical fitness, Mr.
Ramy must also deal.

Ann Eliza, making her way through the outskirts of potato-barrels and
flabby fish, found no one in the shop but the gory-aproned butcher who
stood in the background cutting chops.

As she approached him across the tesselation of fish-scales, blood and
saw-dust, he laid aside his cleaver and not unsympathetically asked:
“Sister sick?”

“Oh, not very--jest a cold,” she answered, as guiltily as if Evelina’s
illness had been feigned. “We want a steak as usual, please--and my
sister said you was to be sure to give me jest as good a cut as if it
was her,” she added with child-like candour.

“Oh, that’s all right.” The butcher picked up his weapon with a grin.
“Your sister knows a cut as well as any of us,” he remarked.

In another moment, Ann Eliza reflected, the steak would be cut and
wrapped up, and no choice left her but to turn her disappointed steps
toward home. She was too shy to try to delay the butcher by such
conversational arts as she possessed, but the approach of a deaf old
lady in an antiquated bonnet and mantle gave her her opportunity.

“Wait on her first, please,” Ann Eliza whispered. “I ain’t in any
hurry.”

The butcher advanced to his new customer, and Ann Eliza, palpitating in
the back of the shop, saw that the old lady’s hesitations between liver
and pork chops were likely to be indefinitely prolonged. They were still
unresolved when she was interrupted by the entrance of a blowsy
Irish girl with a basket on her arm. The newcomer caused a momentary
diversion, and when she had departed the old lady, who was evidently as
intolerant of interruption as a professional story-teller, insisted on
returning to the beginning of her complicated order, and weighing
anew, with an anxious appeal to the butcher’s arbitration, the relative
advantages of pork and liver. But even her hesitations, and the
intrusion on them of two or three other customers, were of no avail,
for Mr. Ramy was not among those who entered the shop; and at last Ann
Eliza, ashamed of staying longer, reluctantly claimed her steak, and
walked home through the thickening snow.

Even to her simple judgment the vanity of her hopes was plain, and in
the clear light that disappointment turns upon our actions she wondered
how she could have been foolish enough to suppose that, even if Mr. Ramy
did go to that particular market, he would hit on the same day and hour
as herself.


There followed a colourless week unmarked by farther incident. The old
stocking cured Evelina’s throat, and Mrs. Hawkins dropped in once or
twice to talk of her baby’s teeth; some new orders for pinking were
received, and Evelina sold a bonnet to the lady with puffed sleeves. The
lady with puffed sleeves--a resident of “the Square,” whose name they
had never learned, because she always carried her own parcels home--was
the most distinguished and interesting figure on their horizon. She was
youngish, she was elegant (as the title they had given her implied), and
she had a sweet sad smile about which they had woven many histories; but
even the news of her return to town--it was her first apparition
that year--failed to arouse Ann Eliza’s interest. All the small daily
happenings which had once sufficed to fill the hours now appeared to her
in their deadly insignificance; and for the first time in her long years
of drudgery she rebelled at the dullness of her life. With Evelina such
fits of discontent were habitual and openly proclaimed, and Ann Eliza
still excused them as one of the prerogatives of youth. Besides, Evelina
had not been intended by Providence to pine in such a narrow life: in
the original plan of things, she had been meant to marry and have a
baby, to wear silk on Sundays, and take a leading part in a Church
circle. Hitherto opportunity had played her false; and for all her
superior aspirations and carefully crimped hair she had remained as
obscure and unsought as Ann Eliza. But the elder sister, who had long
since accepted her own fate, had never accepted Evelina’s. Once a
pleasant young man who taught in Sunday-school had paid the younger
Miss Bunner a few shy visits. That was years since, and he had speedily
vanished from their view. Whether he had carried with him any of
Evelina’s illusions, Ann Eliza had never discovered; but his attentions
had clad her sister in a halo of exquisite possibilities.

Ann Eliza, in those days, had never dreamed of allowing herself the
luxury of self-pity: it seemed as much a personal right of Evelina’s as
her elaborately crinkled hair. But now she began to transfer to herself
a portion of the sympathy she had so long bestowed on Evelina. She had
at last recognized her right to set up some lost opportunities of her
own; and once that dangerous precedent established, they began to crowd
upon her memory.

It was at this stage of Ann Eliza’s transformation that Evelina, looking
up one evening from her work, said suddenly: “My! She’s stopped.”

Ann Eliza, raising her eyes from a brown merino seam, followed her
sister’s glance across the room. It was a Monday, and they always wound
the clock on Sundays.

“Are you sure you wound her yesterday, Evelina?”

“Jest as sure as I live. She must be broke. I’ll go and see.”

Evelina laid down the hat she was trimming, and took the clock from its
shelf.

“There--I knew it! She’s wound jest as TIGHT--what you suppose’s
happened to her, Ann Eliza?”

“I dunno, I’m sure,” said the elder sister, wiping her spectacles before
proceeding to a close examination of the clock.

With anxiously bent heads the two women shook and turned it, as though
they were trying to revive a living thing; but it remained unresponsive
to their touch, and at length Evelina laid it down with a sigh.

“Seems like somethin’ DEAD, don’t it, Ann Eliza? How still the room is!”

“Yes, ain’t it?”

“Well, I’ll put her back where she belongs,” Evelina continued, in the
tone of one about to perform the last offices for the departed. “And I
guess,” she added, “you’ll have to step round to Mr. Ramy’s to-morrow,
and see if he can fix her.”

Ann Eliza’s face burned. “I--yes, I guess I’ll have to,” she stammered,
stooping to pick up a spool of cotton which had rolled to the floor. A
sudden heart-throb stretched the seams of her flat alpaca bosom, and a
pulse leapt to life in each of her temples.

That night, long after Evelina slept, Ann Eliza lay awake in the
unfamiliar silence, more acutely conscious of the nearness of the
crippled clock than when it had volubly told out the minutes. The next
morning she woke from a troubled dream of having carried it to Mr.
Ramy’s, and found that he and his shop had vanished; and all through the
day’s occupations the memory of this dream oppressed her.

It had been agreed that Ann Eliza should take the clock to be repaired
as soon as they had dined; but while they were still at table a
weak-eyed little girl in a black apron stabbed with innumerable pins
burst in on them with the cry: “Oh, Miss Bunner, for mercy’s sake! Miss
Mellins has been took again.”

Miss Mellins was the dress-maker upstairs, and the weak-eyed child one
of her youthful apprentices.

Ann Eliza started from her seat. “I’ll come at once. Quick, Evelina, the
cordial!”

By this euphemistic name the sisters designated a bottle of cherry
brandy, the last of a dozen inherited from their grandmother, which they
kept locked in their cupboard against such emergencies. A moment later,
cordial in hand, Ann Eliza was hurrying upstairs behind the weak-eyed
child.

Miss Mellins’ “turn” was sufficiently serious to detain Ann Eliza for
nearly two hours, and dusk had fallen when she took up the depleted
bottle of cordial and descended again to the shop. It was empty, as
usual, and Evelina sat at her pinking-machine in the back room. Ann
Eliza was still agitated by her efforts to restore the dress-maker, but
in spite of her preoccupation she was struck, as soon as she entered, by
the loud tick of the clock, which still stood on the shelf where she had
left it.

“Why, she’s going!” she gasped, before Evelina could question her about
Miss Mellins. “Did she start up again by herself?”

“Oh, no; but I couldn’t stand not knowing what time it was, I’ve got so
accustomed to having her round; and just after you went upstairs Mrs.
Hawkins dropped in, so I asked her to tend the store for a minute, and
I clapped on my things and ran right round to Mr. Ramy’s. It turned out
there wasn’t anything the matter with her--nothin’ on’y a speck of dust
in the works--and he fixed her for me in a minute and I brought her
right back. Ain’t it lovely to hear her going again? But tell me about
Miss Mellins, quick!”

For a moment Ann Eliza found no words. Not till she learned that she had
missed her chance did she understand how many hopes had hung upon
it. Even now she did not know why she had wanted so much to see the
clock-maker again.

“I s’pose it’s because nothing’s ever happened to me,” she thought, with
a twinge of envy for the fate which gave Evelina every opportunity
that came their way. “She had the Sunday-school teacher too,” Ann
Eliza murmured to herself; but she was well-trained in the arts of
renunciation, and after a scarcely perceptible pause she plunged into a
detailed description of the dress-maker’s “turn.”

Evelina, when her curiosity was roused, was an insatiable questioner,
and it was supper-time before she had come to the end of her enquiries
about Miss Mellins; but when the two sisters had seated themselves at
their evening meal Ann Eliza at last found a chance to say: “So she on’y
had a speck of dust in her.”

Evelina understood at once that the reference was not to Miss Mellins.
“Yes--at least he thinks so,” she answered, helping herself as a matter
of course to the first cup of tea.

“On’y to think!” murmured Ann Eliza.

“But he isn’t SURE,” Evelina continued, absently pushing the teapot
toward her sister. “It may be something wrong with the--I forget what he
called it. Anyhow, he said he’d call round and see, day after to-morrow,
after supper.”

“Who said?” gasped Ann Eliza.

“Why, Mr. Ramy, of course. I think he’s real nice, Ann Eliza. And I
don’t believe he’s forty; but he DOES look sick. I guess he’s pretty
lonesome, all by himself in that store. He as much as told me so, and
somehow”--Evelina paused and bridled--“I kinder thought that maybe his
saying he’d call round about the clock was on’y just an excuse. He said
it just as I was going out of the store. What you think, Ann Eliza?”

“Oh, I don’t har’ly know.” To save herself, Ann Eliza could produce
nothing warmer.

“Well, I don’t pretend to be smarter than other folks,” said Evelina,
putting a conscious hand to her hair, “but I guess Mr. Herman Ramy
wouldn’t be sorry to pass an evening here, ’stead of spending it all
alone in that poky little place of his.”

Her self-consciousness irritated Ann Eliza.

“I guess he’s got plenty of friends of his own,” she said, almost
harshly.

“No, he ain’t, either. He’s got hardly any.”

“Did he tell you that too?” Even to her own ears there was a faint sneer
in the interrogation.

“Yes, he did,” said Evelina, dropping her lids with a smile. “He seemed
to be just crazy to talk to somebody--somebody agreeable, I mean. I
think the man’s unhappy, Ann Eliza.”

“So do I,” broke from the elder sister.

“He seems such an educated man, too. He was reading the paper when
I went in. Ain’t it sad to think of his being reduced to that little
store, after being years at Tiff’ny’s, and one of the head men in their
clock-department?”

“He told you all that?”

“Why, yes. I think he’d a’ told me everything ever happened to him if
I’d had the time to stay and listen. I tell you he’s dead lonely, Ann
Eliza.”

“Yes,” said Ann Eliza.




III


Two days afterward, Ann Eliza noticed that Evelina, before they sat down
to supper, pinned a crimson bow under her collar; and when the meal
was finished the younger sister, who seldom concerned herself with the
clearing of the table, set about with nervous haste to help Ann Eliza in
the removal of the dishes.

“I hate to see food mussing about,” she grumbled. “Ain’t it hateful
having to do everything in one room?”

“Oh, Evelina, I’ve always thought we was so comfortable,” Ann Eliza
protested.

“Well, so we are, comfortable enough; but I don’t suppose there’s any
harm in my saying I wisht we had a parlour, is there? Anyway, we might
manage to buy a screen to hide the bed.”

Ann Eliza coloured. There was something vaguely embarrassing in
Evelina’s suggestion.

“I always think if we ask for more what we have may be taken from us,”
 she ventured.

“Well, whoever took it wouldn’t get much,” Evelina retorted with a laugh
as she swept up the table-cloth.

A few moments later the back room was in its usual flawless order and
the two sisters had seated themselves near the lamp. Ann Eliza had taken
up her sewing, and Evelina was preparing to make artificial flowers.
The sisters usually relegated this more delicate business to the long
leisure of the summer months; but to-night Evelina had brought out the
box which lay all winter under the bed, and spread before her a bright
array of muslin petals, yellow stamens and green corollas, and a tray of
little implements curiously suggestive of the dental art. Ann Eliza made
no remark on this unusual proceeding; perhaps she guessed why, for that
evening her sister had chosen a graceful task.

Presently a knock on the outer door made them look up; but Evelina, the
first on her feet, said promptly: “Sit still. I’ll see who it is.”

Ann Eliza was glad to sit still: the baby’s petticoat that she was
stitching shook in her fingers.

“Sister, here’s Mr. Ramy come to look at the clock,” said Evelina, a
moment later, in the high drawl she cultivated before strangers; and
a shortish man with a pale bearded face and upturned coat-collar came
stiffly into the room.

Ann Eliza let her work fall as she stood up. “You’re very welcome, I’m
sure, Mr. Ramy. It’s real kind of you to call.”

“Nod ad all, ma’am.” A tendency to illustrate Grimm’s law in the
interchange of his consonants betrayed the clockmaker’s nationality, but
he was evidently used to speaking English, or at least the particular
branch of the vernacular with which the Bunner sisters were familiar.
“I don’t like to led any clock go out of my store without being sure it
gives satisfaction,” he added.

“Oh--but we were satisfied,” Ann Eliza assured him.

“But I wasn’t, you see, ma’am,” said Mr. Ramy looking slowly about the
room, “nor I won’t be, not till I see that clock’s going all right.”

“May I assist you off with your coat, Mr. Ramy?” Evelina interposed. She
could never trust Ann Eliza to remember these opening ceremonies.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he replied, and taking his thread-bare over-coat and
shabby hat she laid them on a chair with the gesture she imagined the
lady with the puffed sleeves might make use of on similar occasions.
Ann Eliza’s social sense was roused, and she felt that the next act
of hospitality must be hers. “Won’t you suit yourself to a seat?” she
suggested. “My sister will reach down the clock; but I’m sure she’s all
right again. She’s went beautiful ever since you fixed her.”

“Dat’s good,” said Mr. Ramy. His lips parted in a smile which showed a
row of yellowish teeth with one or two gaps in it; but in spite of this
disclosure Ann Eliza thought his smile extremely pleasant: there was
something wistful and conciliating in it which agreed with the pathos
of his sunken cheeks and prominent eyes. As he took the lamp, the light
fell on his bulging forehead and wide skull thinly covered with grayish
hair. His hands were pale and broad, with knotty joints and square
finger-tips rimmed with grime; but his touch was as light as a woman’s.

“Well, ladies, dat clock’s all right,” he pronounced.

“I’m sure we’re very much obliged to you,” said Evelina, throwing a
glance at her sister.

“Oh,” Ann Eliza murmured, involuntarily answering the admonition.
She selected a key from the bunch that hung at her waist with her
cutting-out scissors, and fitting it into the lock of the cupboard,
brought out the cherry brandy and three old-fashioned glasses engraved
with vine-wreaths.

“It’s a very cold night,” she said, “and maybe you’d like a sip of this
cordial. It was made a great while ago by our grandmother.”

“It looks fine,” said Mr. Ramy bowing, and Ann Eliza filled the glasses.
In her own and Evelina’s she poured only a few drops, but she filled
their guest’s to the brim. “My sister and I seldom take wine,” she
explained.

With another bow, which included both his hostesses, Mr. Ramy drank off
the cherry brandy and pronounced it excellent.

Evelina meanwhile, with an assumption of industry intended to put
their guest at ease, had taken up her instruments and was twisting a
rose-petal into shape.

“You make artificial flowers, I see, ma’am,” said Mr. Ramy with
interest. “It’s very pretty work. I had a lady-vriend in Shermany dat
used to make flowers.” He put out a square finger-tip to touch the
petal.

Evelina blushed a little. “You left Germany long ago, I suppose?”

“Dear me yes, a goot while ago. I was only ninedeen when I come to the
States.”

After this the conversation dragged on intermittently till Mr. Ramy,
peering about the room with the short-sighted glance of his race, said
with an air of interest: “You’re pleasantly fixed here; it looks real
cosy.” The note of wistfulness in his voice was obscurely moving to Ann
Eliza.

“Oh, we live very plainly,” said Evelina, with an affectation of
grandeur deeply impressive to her sister. “We have very simple tastes.”

“You look real comfortable, anyhow,” said Mr. Ramy. His bulging eyes
seemed to muster the details of the scene with a gentle envy. “I wisht
I had as good a store; but I guess no blace seems home-like when you’re
always alone in it.”

For some minutes longer the conversation moved on at this desultory
pace, and then Mr. Ramy, who had been obviously nerving himself for
the difficult act of departure, took his leave with an abruptness
which would have startled anyone used to the subtler gradations
of intercourse. But to Ann Eliza and her sister there was nothing
surprising in his abrupt retreat. The long-drawn agonies of preparing to
leave, and the subsequent dumb plunge through the door, were so usual in
their circle that they would have been as much embarrassed as Mr. Ramy
if he had tried to put any fluency into his adieux.

After he had left both sisters remained silent for a while; then
Evelina, laying aside her unfinished flower, said: “I’ll go and lock
up.”




IV


Intolerably monotonous seemed now to the Bunner sisters the treadmill
routine of the shop, colourless and long their evenings about the lamp,
aimless their habitual interchange of words to the weary accompaniment
of the sewing and pinking machines.

It was perhaps with the idea of relieving the tension of their mood
that Evelina, the following Sunday, suggested inviting Miss Mellins to
supper. The Bunner sisters were not in a position to be lavish of the
humblest hospitality, but two or three times in the year they shared
their evening meal with a friend; and Miss Mellins, still flushed with
the importance of her “turn,” seemed the most interesting guest they
could invite.

As the three women seated themselves at the supper-table, embellished by
the unwonted addition of pound cake and sweet pickles, the dress-maker’s
sharp swarthy person stood out vividly between the neutral-tinted
sisters. Miss Mellins was a small woman with a glossy yellow face and
a frizz of black hair bristling with imitation tortoise-shell pins. Her
sleeves had a fashionable cut, and half a dozen metal bangles rattled
on her wrists. Her voice rattled like her bangles as she poured forth a
stream of anecdote and ejaculation; and her round black eyes jumped with
acrobatic velocity from one face to another. Miss Mellins was always
having or hearing of amazing adventures. She had surprised a burglar in
her room at midnight (though how he got there, what he robbed her
of, and by what means he escaped had never been quite clear to her
auditors); she had been warned by anonymous letters that her grocer (a
rejected suitor) was putting poison in her tea; she had a customer who
was shadowed by detectives, and another (a very wealthy lady) who
had been arrested in a department store for kleptomania; she had been
present at a spiritualist seance where an old gentleman had died in a
fit on seeing a materialization of his mother-in-law; she had escaped
from two fires in her night-gown, and at the funeral of her first cousin
the horses attached to the hearse had run away and smashed the coffin,
precipitating her relative into an open man-hole before the eyes of his
distracted family.

A sceptical observer might have explained Miss Mellins’s proneness to
adventure by the fact that she derived her chief mental nourishment from
the Police Gazette and the Fireside Weekly; but her lot was cast in a
circle where such insinuations were not likely to be heard, and where
the title-role in blood-curdling drama had long been her recognized
right.

“Yes,” she was now saying, her emphatic eyes on Ann Eliza, “you may not
believe it, Miss Bunner, and I don’t know’s I should myself if anybody
else was to tell me, but over a year before ever I was born, my mother
she went to see a gypsy fortune-teller that was exhibited in a tent on
the Battery with the green-headed lady, though her father warned her
not to--and what you s’pose she told her? Why, she told her these very
words--says she: ‘Your next child’ll be a girl with jet-black curls, and
she’ll suffer from spasms.’”

“Mercy!” murmured Ann Eliza, a ripple of sympathy running down her
spine.

“D’you ever have spasms before, Miss Mellins?” Evelina asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” the dress-maker declared. “And where’d you suppose I had
’em? Why, at my cousin Emma McIntyre’s wedding, her that married the
apothecary over in Jersey City, though her mother appeared to her in a
dream and told her she’d rue the day she done it, but as Emma said,
she got more advice than she wanted from the living, and if she was to
listen to spectres too she’d never be sure what she’d ought to do and
what she’d oughtn’t; but I will say her husband took to drink, and she
never was the same woman after her fust baby--well, they had an elegant
church wedding, and what you s’pose I saw as I was walkin’ up the aisle
with the wedding percession?”

“Well?” Ann Eliza whispered, forgetting to thread her needle.

“Why, a coffin, to be sure, right on the top step of the chancel--Emma’s
folks is ’piscopalians and she would have a church wedding, though HIS
mother raised a terrible rumpus over it--well, there it set, right in
front of where the minister stood that was going to marry ’em, a coffin
covered with a black velvet pall with a gold fringe, and a ‘Gates Ajar’
in white camellias atop of it.”

“Goodness,” said Evelina, starting, “there’s a knock!”

“Who can it be?” shuddered Ann Eliza, still under the spell of Miss
Mellins’s hallucination.

Evelina rose and lit a candle to guide her through the shop. They heard
her turn the key of the outer door, and a gust of night air stirred the
close atmosphere of the back room; then there was a sound of vivacious
exclamations, and Evelina returned with Mr. Ramy.

Ann Eliza’s heart rocked like a boat in a heavy sea, and the
dress-maker’s eyes, distended with curiosity, sprang eagerly from face
to face.

“I just thought I’d call in again,” said Mr. Ramy, evidently somewhat
disconcerted by the presence of Miss Mellins. “Just to see how the
clock’s behaving,” he added with his hollow-cheeked smile.

“Oh, she’s behaving beautiful,” said Ann Eliza; “but we’re real glad to
see you all the same. Miss Mellins, let me make you acquainted with Mr.
Ramy.”

The dress-maker tossed back her head and dropped her lids in
condescending recognition of the stranger’s presence; and Mr. Ramy
responded by an awkward bow. After the first moment of constraint a
renewed sense of satisfaction filled the consciousness of the three
women. The Bunner sisters were not sorry to let Miss Mellins see that
they received an occasional evening visit, and Miss Mellins was clearly
enchanted at the opportunity of pouring her latest tale into a new ear.
As for Mr. Ramy, he adjusted himself to the situation with greater ease
than might have been expected, and Evelina, who had been sorry that he
should enter the room while the remains of supper still lingered on
the table, blushed with pleasure at his good-humored offer to help her
“glear away.”

The table cleared, Ann Eliza suggested a game of cards; and it was after
eleven o’clock when Mr. Ramy rose to take leave. His adieux were so much
less abrupt than on the occasion of his first visit that Evelina was
able to satisfy her sense of etiquette by escorting him, candle in hand,
to the outer door; and as the two disappeared into the shop Miss Mellins
playfully turned to Ann Eliza.

“Well, well, Miss Bunner,” she murmured, jerking her chin in the
direction of the retreating figures, “I’d no idea your sister was
keeping company. On’y to think!”

Ann Eliza, roused from a state of dreamy beatitude, turned her timid
eyes on the dress-maker.

“Oh, you’re mistaken, Miss Mellins. We don’t har’ly know Mr. Ramy.”

Miss Mellins smiled incredulously. “You go ’long, Miss Bunner. I guess
there’ll be a wedding somewheres round here before spring, and I’ll be
real offended if I ain’t asked to make the dress. I’ve always seen her
in a gored satin with rooshings.”

Ann Eliza made no answer. She had grown very pale, and her eyes lingered
searchingly on Evelina as the younger sister re-entered the room.
Evelina’s cheeks were pink, and her blue eyes glittered; but it seemed
to Ann Eliza that the coquettish tilt of her head regrettably emphasized
the weakness of her receding chin. It was the first time that Ann
Eliza had ever seen a flaw in her sister’s beauty, and her involuntary
criticism startled her like a secret disloyalty.

That night, after the light had been put out, the elder sister knelt
longer than usual at her prayers. In the silence of the darkened
room she was offering up certain dreams and aspirations whose brief
blossoming had lent a transient freshness to her days. She wondered
now how she could ever have supposed that Mr. Ramy’s visits had another
cause than the one Miss Mellins suggested. Had not the sight of Evelina
first inspired him with a sudden solicitude for the welfare of the
clock? And what charms but Evelina’s could have induced him to repeat
his visit? Grief held up its torch to the frail fabric of Ann Eliza’s
illusions, and with a firm heart she watched them shrivel into ashes;
then, rising from her knees full of the chill joy of renunciation, she
laid a kiss on the crimping pins of the sleeping Evelina and crept under
the bedspread at her side.




V


During the months that followed, Mr. Ramy visited the sisters with
increasing frequency. It became his habit to call on them every Sunday
evening, and occasionally during the week he would find an excuse for
dropping in unannounced as they were settling down to their work beside
the lamp. Ann Eliza noticed that Evelina now took the precaution of
putting on her crimson bow every evening before supper, and that she
had refurbished with a bit of carefully washed lace the black silk
which they still called new because it had been bought a year after Ann
Eliza’s.

Mr. Ramy, as he grew more intimate, became less conversational, and
after the sisters had blushingly accorded him the privilege of a pipe he
began to permit himself long stretches of meditative silence that
were not without charm to his hostesses. There was something at once
fortifying and pacific in the sense of that tranquil male presence in
an atmosphere which had so long quivered with little feminine doubts and
distresses; and the sisters fell into the habit of saying to each other,
in moments of uncertainty: “We’ll ask Mr. Ramy when he comes,” and of
accepting his verdict, whatever it might be, with a fatalistic readiness
that relieved them of all responsibility.

When Mr. Ramy drew the pipe from his mouth and became, in his turn,
confidential, the acuteness of their sympathy grew almost painful to the
sisters. With passionate participation they listened to the story of his
early struggles in Germany, and of the long illness which had been the
cause of his recent misfortunes. The name of the Mrs. Hochmuller (an old
comrade’s widow) who had nursed him through his fever was greeted with
reverential sighs and an inward pang of envy whenever it recurred in his
biographical monologues, and once when the sisters were alone Evelina
called a responsive flush to Ann Eliza’s brow by saying suddenly,
without the mention of any name: “I wonder what she’s like?”

One day toward spring Mr. Ramy, who had by this time become as much a
part of their lives as the letter-carrier or the milkman, ventured the
suggestion that the ladies should accompany him to an exhibition of
stereopticon views which was to take place at Chickering Hall on the
following evening.

After their first breathless “Oh!” of pleasure there was a silence
of mutual consultation, which Ann Eliza at last broke by saying: “You
better go with Mr. Ramy, Evelina. I guess we don’t both want to leave
the store at night.”

Evelina, with such protests as politeness demanded, acquiesced in this
opinion, and spent the next day in trimming a white chip bonnet with
forget-me-nots of her own making. Ann Eliza brought out her mosaic
brooch, a cashmere scarf of their mother’s was taken from its linen
cerements, and thus adorned Evelina blushingly departed with Mr. Ramy,
while the elder sister sat down in her place at the pinking-machine.

It seemed to Ann Eliza that she was alone for hours, and she was
surprised, when she heard Evelina tap on the door, to find that the
clock marked only half-past ten.

“It must have gone wrong again,” she reflected as she rose to let her
sister in.

The evening had been brilliantly interesting, and several striking
stereopticon views of Berlin had afforded Mr. Ramy the opportunity of
enlarging on the marvels of his native city.

“He said he’d love to show it all to me!” Evelina declared as Ann Eliza
conned her glowing face. “Did you ever hear anything so silly? I didn’t
know which way to look.”

Ann Eliza received this confidence with a sympathetic murmur.

“My bonnet IS becoming, isn’t it?” Evelina went on irrelevantly, smiling
at her reflection in the cracked glass above the chest of drawers.

“You’re jest lovely,” said Ann Eliza.


Spring was making itself unmistakably known to the distrustful New
Yorker by an increased harshness of wind and prevalence of dust, when
one day Evelina entered the back room at supper-time with a cluster of
jonquils in her hand.

“I was just that foolish,” she answered Ann Eliza’s wondering glance, “I
couldn’t help buyin’ ’em. I felt as if I must have something pretty to
look at right away.”

“Oh, sister,” said Ann Eliza, in trembling sympathy. She felt that
special indulgence must be conceded to those in Evelina’s state since
she had had her own fleeting vision of such mysterious longings as the
words betrayed.

Evelina, meanwhile, had taken the bundle of dried grasses out of the
broken china vase, and was putting the jonquils in their place with
touches that lingered down their smooth stems and blade-like leaves.

“Ain’t they pretty?” she kept repeating as she gathered the flowers into
a starry circle. “Seems as if spring was really here, don’t it?”

Ann Eliza remembered that it was Mr. Ramy’s evening.

When he came, the Teutonic eye for anything that blooms made him turn at
once to the jonquils.

“Ain’t dey pretty?” he said. “Seems like as if de spring was really
here.”

“Don’t it?” Evelina exclaimed, thrilled by the coincidence of their
thought. “It’s just what I was saying to my sister.”

Ann Eliza got up suddenly and moved away; she remembered that she had
not wound the clock the day before. Evelina was sitting at the table;
the jonquils rose slenderly between herself and Mr. Ramy.

“Oh,” she murmured with vague eyes, “how I’d love to get away somewheres
into the country this very minute--somewheres where it was green and
quiet. Seems as if I couldn’t stand the city another day.” But Ann Eliza
noticed that she was looking at Mr. Ramy, and not at the flowers.

“I guess we might go to Cendral Park some Sunday,” their visitor
suggested. “Do you ever go there, Miss Evelina?”

“No, we don’t very often; leastways we ain’t been for a good while.” She
sparkled at the prospect. “It would be lovely, wouldn’t it, Ann Eliza?”

“Why, yes,” said the elder sister, coming back to her seat.

“Well, why don’t we go next Sunday?” Mr. Ramy continued. “And we’ll
invite Miss Mellins too--that’ll make a gosy little party.”

That night when Evelina undressed she took a jonquil from the vase
and pressed it with a certain ostentation between the leaves of her
prayer-book. Ann Eliza, covertly observing her, felt that Evelina was
not sorry to be observed, and that her own acute consciousness of the
act was somehow regarded as magnifying its significance.

The following Sunday broke blue and warm. The Bunner sisters were
habitual church-goers, but for once they left their prayer-books on the
what-not, and ten o’clock found them, gloved and bonneted, awaiting Miss
Mellins’s knock. Miss Mellins presently appeared in a glitter of jet
sequins and spangles, with a tale of having seen a strange man prowling
under her windows till he was called off at dawn by a confederate’s
whistle; and shortly afterward came Mr. Ramy, his hair brushed with more
than usual care, his broad hands encased in gloves of olive-green kid.

The little party set out for the nearest street-car, and a flutter of
mingled gratification and embarrassment stirred Ann Eliza’s bosom when
it was found that Mr. Ramy intended to pay their fares. Nor did he fail
to live up to this opening liberality; for after guiding them through
the Mall and the Ramble he led the way to a rustic restaurant where,
also at his expense, they fared idyllically on milk and lemon-pie.

After this they resumed their walk, strolling on with the slowness of
unaccustomed holiday-makers from one path to another--through budding
shrubberies, past grass-banks sprinkled with lilac crocuses, and under
rocks on which the forsythia lay like sudden sunshine. Everything about
her seemed new and miraculously lovely to Ann Eliza; but she kept her
feelings to herself, leaving it to Evelina to exclaim at the hepaticas
under the shady ledges, and to Miss Mellins, less interested in the
vegetable than in the human world, to remark significantly on the
probable history of the persons they met. All the alleys were thronged
with promenaders and obstructed by perambulators; and Miss Mellins’s
running commentary threw a glare of lurid possibilities over the placid
family groups and their romping progeny.

Ann Eliza was in no mood for such interpretations of life; but, knowing
that Miss Mellins had been invited for the sole purpose of keeping her
company she continued to cling to the dress-maker’s side, letting
Mr. Ramy lead the way with Evelina. Miss Mellins, stimulated by the
excitement of the occasion, grew more and more discursive, and
her ceaseless talk, and the kaleidoscopic whirl of the crowd, were
unspeakably bewildering to Ann Eliza. Her feet, accustomed to the
slippered ease of the shop, ached with the unfamiliar effort of walking,
and her ears with the din of the dress-maker’s anecdotes; but every
nerve in her was aware of Evelina’s enjoyment, and she was determined
that no weariness of hers should curtail it. Yet even her heroism shrank
from the significant glances which Miss Mellins presently began to
cast at the couple in front of them: Ann Eliza could bear to connive at
Evelina’s bliss, but not to acknowledge it to others.

At length Evelina’s feet also failed her, and she turned to suggest
that they ought to be going home. Her flushed face had grown pale with
fatigue, but her eyes were radiant.

The return lived in Ann Eliza’s memory with the persistence of an evil
dream. The horse-cars were packed with the returning throng, and they
had to let a dozen go by before they could push their way into one that
was already crowded. Ann Eliza had never before felt so tired. Even Miss
Mellins’s flow of narrative ran dry, and they sat silent, wedged between
a negro woman and a pock-marked man with a bandaged head, while the car
rumbled slowly down a squalid avenue to their corner. Evelina and Mr.
Ramy sat together in the forward part of the car, and Ann Eliza could
catch only an occasional glimpse of the forget-me-not bonnet and the
clock-maker’s shiny coat-collar; but when the little party got out at
their corner the crowd swept them together again, and they walked back
in the effortless silence of tired children to the Bunner sisters’
basement. As Miss Mellins and Mr. Ramy turned to go their various ways
Evelina mustered a last display of smiles; but Ann Eliza crossed the
threshold in silence, feeling the stillness of the little shop reach out
to her like consoling arms.

That night she could not sleep; but as she lay cold and rigid at her
sister’s side, she suddenly felt the pressure of Evelina’s arms, and
heard her whisper: “Oh, Ann Eliza, warn’t it heavenly?”




VI


For four days after their Sunday in the Park the Bunner sisters had no
news of Mr. Ramy. At first neither one betrayed her disappointment and
anxiety to the other; but on the fifth morning Evelina, always the first
to yield to her feelings, said, as she turned from her untasted tea: “I
thought you’d oughter take that money out by now, Ann Eliza.”

Ann Eliza understood and reddened. The winter had been a fairly
prosperous one for the sisters, and their slowly accumulated savings
had now reached the handsome sum of two hundred dollars; but the
satisfaction they might have felt in this unwonted opulence had been
clouded by a suggestion of Miss Mellins’s that there were dark rumours
concerning the savings bank in which their funds were deposited. They
knew Miss Mellins was given to vain alarms; but her words, by the sheer
force of repetition, had so shaken Ann Eliza’s peace that after long
hours of midnight counsel the sisters had decided to advise with
Mr. Ramy; and on Ann Eliza, as the head of the house, this duty
had devolved. Mr. Ramy, when consulted, had not only confirmed the
dress-maker’s report, but had offered to find some safe investment which
should give the sisters a higher rate of interest than the suspected
savings bank; and Ann Eliza knew that Evelina alluded to the suggested
transfer.

“Why, yes, to be sure,” she agreed. “Mr. Ramy said if he was us he
wouldn’t want to leave his money there any longer’n he could help.”

“It was over a week ago he said it,” Evelina reminded her.

“I know; but he told me to wait till he’d found out for sure about that
other investment; and we ain’t seen him since then.”

Ann Eliza’s words released their secret fear. “I wonder what’s happened
to him,” Evelina said. “You don’t suppose he could be sick?”

“I was wondering too,” Ann Eliza rejoined; and the sisters looked down
at their plates.

“I should think you’d oughter do something about that money pretty
soon,” Evelina began again.

“Well, I know I’d oughter. What would you do if you was me?”

“If I was YOU,” said her sister, with perceptible emphasis and a rising
blush, “I’d go right round and see if Mr. Ramy was sick. YOU could.”

The words pierced Ann Eliza like a blade. “Yes, that’s so,” she said.

“It would only seem friendly, if he really IS sick. If I was you I’d go
to-day,” Evelina continued; and after dinner Ann Eliza went.

On the way she had to leave a parcel at the dyer’s, and having performed
that errand she turned toward Mr. Ramy’s shop. Never before had she felt
so old, so hopeless and humble. She knew she was bound on a love-errand
of Evelina’s, and the knowledge seemed to dry the last drop of young
blood in her veins. It took from her, too, all her faded virginal
shyness; and with a brisk composure she turned the handle of the
clock-maker’s door.

But as she entered her heart began to tremble, for she saw Mr. Ramy, his
face hidden in his hands, sitting behind the counter in an attitude of
strange dejection. At the click of the latch he looked up slowly, fixing
a lustreless stare on Ann Eliza. For a moment she thought he did not
know her.

“Oh, you’re sick!” she exclaimed; and the sound of her voice seemed to
recall his wandering senses.

“Why, if it ain’t Miss Bunner!” he said, in a low thick tone; but he
made no attempt to move, and she noticed that his face was the colour of
yellow ashes.

“You ARE sick,” she persisted, emboldened by his evident need of help.
“Mr. Ramy, it was real unfriendly of you not to let us know.”

He continued to look at her with dull eyes. “I ain’t been sick,” he
said. “Leastways not very: only one of my old turns.” He spoke in a slow
laboured way, as if he had difficulty in getting his words together.

“Rheumatism?” she ventured, seeing how unwillingly he seemed to move.

“Well--somethin’ like, maybe. I couldn’t hardly put a name to it.”

“If it WAS anything like rheumatism, my grandmother used to make a
tea--” Ann Eliza began: she had forgotten, in the warmth of the moment,
that she had only come as Evelina’s messenger.

At the mention of tea an expression of uncontrollable repugnance passed
over Mr. Ramy’s face. “Oh, I guess I’m getting on all right. I’ve just
got a headache to-day.”

Ann Eliza’s courage dropped at the note of refusal in his voice.

“I’m sorry,” she said gently. “My sister and me’d have been glad to do
anything we could for you.”

“Thank you kindly,” said Mr. Ramy wearily; then, as she turned to the
door, he added with an effort: “Maybe I’ll step round to-morrow.”

“We’ll be real glad,” Ann Eliza repeated. Her eyes were fixed on a dusty
bronze clock in the window. She was unaware of looking at it at
the time, but long afterward she remembered that it represented a
Newfoundland dog with his paw on an open book.

When she reached home there was a purchaser in the shop, turning over
hooks and eyes under Evelina’s absent-minded supervision. Ann Eliza
passed hastily into the back room, but in an instant she heard her
sister at her side.

“Quick! I told her I was goin’ to look for some smaller hooks--how is
he?” Evelina gasped.

“He ain’t been very well,” said Ann Eliza slowly, her eyes on Evelina’s
eager face; “but he says he’ll be sure to be round to-morrow night.”

“He will? Are you telling me the truth?”

“Why, Evelina Bunner!”

“Oh, I don’t care!” cried the younger recklessly, rushing back into the
shop.

Ann Eliza stood burning with the shame of Evelina’s self-exposure. She
was shocked that, even to her, Evelina should lay bare the nakedness of
her emotion; and she tried to turn her thoughts from it as though its
recollection made her a sharer in her sister’s debasement.

The next evening, Mr. Ramy reappeared, still somewhat sallow and
red-lidded, but otherwise his usual self. Ann Eliza consulted him about
the investment he had recommended, and after it had been settled that he
should attend to the matter for her he took up the illustrated volume of
Longfellow--for, as the sisters had learned, his culture soared beyond
the newspapers--and read aloud, with a fine confusion of consonants, the
poem on “Maidenhood.” Evelina lowered her lids while he read. It was a
very beautiful evening, and Ann Eliza thought afterward how different
life might have been with a companion who read poetry like Mr. Ramy.




VII


During the ensuing weeks Mr. Ramy, though his visits were as frequent as
ever, did not seem to regain his usual spirits. He complained frequently
of headache, but rejected Ann Eliza’s tentatively proffered remedies,
and seemed to shrink from any prolonged investigation of his symptoms.
July had come, with a sudden ardour of heat, and one evening, as the
three sat together by the open window in the back room, Evelina said:
“I dunno what I wouldn’t give, a night like this, for a breath of real
country air.”

“So would I,” said Mr. Ramy, knocking the ashes from his pipe. “I’d like
to be setting in an arbour dis very minute.”

“Oh, wouldn’t it be lovely?”

“I always think it’s real cool here--we’d be heaps hotter up where Miss
Mellins is,” said Ann Eliza.

“Oh, I daresay--but we’d be heaps cooler somewhere else,” her sister
snapped: she was not infrequently exasperated by Ann Eliza’s furtive
attempts to mollify Providence.

A few days later Mr. Ramy appeared with a suggestion which enchanted
Evelina. He had gone the day before to see his friend, Mrs. Hochmuller,
who lived in the outskirts of Hoboken, and Mrs. Hochmuller had proposed
that on the following Sunday he should bring the Bunner sisters to spend
the day with her.

“She’s got a real garden, you know,” Mr. Ramy explained, “wid trees and
a real summer-house to set in; and hens and chickens too. And it’s an
elegant sail over on de ferry-boat.”

The proposal drew no response from Ann Eliza. She was still oppressed by
the recollection of her interminable Sunday in the Park; but, obedient
to Evelina’s imperious glance, she finally faltered out an acceptance.

The Sunday was a very hot one, and once on the ferry-boat Ann Eliza
revived at the touch of the salt breeze, and the spectacle of the
crowded waters; but when they reached the other shore, and stepped out
on the dirty wharf, she began to ache with anticipated weariness. They
got into a street-car, and were jolted from one mean street to another,
till at length Mr. Ramy pulled the conductor’s sleeve and they got out
again; then they stood in the blazing sun, near the door of a crowded
beer-saloon, waiting for another car to come; and that carried them out
to a thinly settled district, past vacant lots and narrow brick houses
standing in unsupported solitude, till they finally reached an almost
rural region of scattered cottages and low wooden buildings that looked
like village “stores.” Here the car finally stopped of its own accord,
and they walked along a rutty road, past a stone-cutter’s yard with a
high fence tapestried with theatrical advertisements, to a little red
house with green blinds and a garden paling. Really, Mr. Ramy had not
deceived them. Clumps of dielytra and day-lilies bloomed behind the
paling, and a crooked elm hung romantically over the gable of the house.

At the gate Mrs. Hochmuller, a broad woman in brick-brown merino, met
them with nods and smiles, while her daughter Linda, a flaxen-haired
girl with mottled red cheeks and a sidelong stare, hovered inquisitively
behind her. Mrs. Hochmuller, leading the way into the house, conducted
the Bunner sisters the way to her bedroom. Here they were invited to
spread out on a mountainous white featherbed the cashmere mantles under
which the solemnity of the occasion had compelled them to swelter,
and when they had given their black silks the necessary twitch
of readjustment, and Evelina had fluffed out her hair before a
looking-glass framed in pink-shell work, their hostess led them to a
stuffy parlour smelling of gingerbread. After another ceremonial pause,
broken by polite enquiries and shy ejaculations, they were shown into
the kitchen, where the table was already spread with strange-looking
spice-cakes and stewed fruits, and where they presently found themselves
seated between Mrs. Hochmuller and Mr. Ramy, while the staring Linda
bumped back and forth from the stove with steaming dishes.

To Ann Eliza the dinner seemed endless, and the rich fare strangely
unappetizing. She was abashed by the easy intimacy of her hostess’s
voice and eye. With Mr. Ramy Mrs. Hochmuller was almost flippantly
familiar, and it was only when Ann Eliza pictured her generous form bent
above his sick-bed that she could forgive her for tersely addressing him
as “Ramy.” During one of the pauses of the meal Mrs. Hochmuller laid her
knife and fork against the edges of her plate, and, fixing her eyes
on the clock-maker’s face, said accusingly: “You hat one of dem turns
again, Ramy.”

“I dunno as I had,” he returned evasively.

Evelina glanced from one to the other. “Mr. Ramy HAS been sick,” she
said at length, as though to show that she also was in a position to
speak with authority. “He’s complained very frequently of headaches.”

“Ho!--I know him,” said Mrs. Hochmuller with a laugh, her eyes still on
the clock-maker. “Ain’t you ashamed of yourself, Ramy?”

Mr. Ramy, who was looking at his plate, said suddenly one word which the
sisters could not understand; it sounded to Ann Eliza like “Shwike.”

Mrs. Hochmuller laughed again. “My, my,” she said, “wouldn’t you think
he’d be ashamed to go and be sick and never dell me, me that nursed him
troo dat awful fever?”

“Yes, I SHOULD,” said Evelina, with a spirited glance at Ramy; but he
was looking at the sausages that Linda had just put on the table.

When dinner was over Mrs. Hochmuller invited her guests to step out of
the kitchen-door, and they found themselves in a green enclosure, half
garden, half orchard. Grey hens followed by golden broods clucked under
the twisted apple-boughs, a cat dozed on the edge of an old well, and
from tree to tree ran the network of clothes-line that denoted Mrs.
Hochmuller’s calling. Beyond the apple trees stood a yellow summer-house
festooned with scarlet runners; and below it, on the farther side of
a rough fence, the land dipped down, holding a bit of woodland in
its hollow. It was all strangely sweet and still on that hot Sunday
afternoon, and as she moved across the grass under the apple-boughs Ann
Eliza thought of quiet afternoons in church, and of the hymns her mother
had sung to her when she was a baby.

Evelina was more restless. She wandered from the well to the
summer-house and back, she tossed crumbs to the chickens and disturbed
the cat with arch caresses; and at last she expressed a desire to go
down into the wood.

“I guess you got to go round by the road, then,” said Mrs. Hochmuller.
“My Linda she goes troo a hole in de fence, but I guess you’d tear your
dress if you was to dry.”

“I’ll help you,” said Mr. Ramy; and guided by Linda the pair walked
along the fence till they reached a narrow gap in its boards. Through
this they disappeared, watched curiously in their descent by the
grinning Linda, while Mrs. Hochmuller and Ann Eliza were left alone in
the summer-house.

Mrs. Hochmuller looked at her guest with a confidential smile. “I guess
dey’ll be gone quite a while,” she remarked, jerking her double chin
toward the gap in the fence. “Folks like dat don’t never remember about
de dime.” And she drew out her knitting.

Ann Eliza could think of nothing to say.

“Your sister she thinks a great lot of him, don’t she?” her hostess
continued.

Ann Eliza’s cheeks grew hot. “Ain’t you a teeny bit lonesome away out
here sometimes?” she asked. “I should think you’d be scared nights, all
alone with your daughter.”

“Oh, no, I ain’t,” said Mrs. Hochmuller. “You see I take in
washing--dat’s my business--and it’s a lot cheaper doing it out here dan
in de city: where’d I get a drying-ground like dis in Hobucken? And den
it’s safer for Linda too; it geeps her outer de streets.”

“Oh,” said Ann Eliza, shrinking. She began to feel a distinct aversion
for her hostess, and her eyes turned with involuntary annoyance to the
square-backed form of Linda, still inquisitively suspended on the fence.
It seemed to Ann Eliza that Evelina and her companion would never return
from the wood; but they came at length, Mr. Ramy’s brow pearled with
perspiration, Evelina pink and conscious, a drooping bunch of ferns in
her hand; and it was clear that, to her at least, the moments had been
winged.

“D’you suppose they’ll revive?” she asked, holding up the ferns; but
Ann Eliza, rising at her approach, said stiffly: “We’d better be getting
home, Evelina.”

“Mercy me! Ain’t you going to take your coffee first?” Mrs. Hochmuller
protested; and Ann Eliza found to her dismay that another long
gastronomic ceremony must intervene before politeness permitted them
to leave. At length, however, they found themselves again on the
ferry-boat. Water and sky were grey, with a dividing gleam of sunset
that sent sleek opal waves in the boat’s wake. The wind had a cool tarry
breath, as though it had travelled over miles of shipping, and the hiss
of the water about the paddles was as delicious as though it had been
splashed into their tired faces.

Ann Eliza sat apart, looking away from the others. She had made up her
mind that Mr. Ramy had proposed to Evelina in the wood, and she was
silently preparing herself to receive her sister’s confidence that
evening.

But Evelina was apparently in no mood for confidences. When they reached
home she put her faded ferns in water, and after supper, when she had
laid aside her silk dress and the forget-me-not bonnet, she remained
silently seated in her rocking-chair near the open window. It was long
since Ann Eliza had seen her in so uncommunicative a mood.


The following Saturday Ann Eliza was sitting alone in the shop when the
door opened and Mr. Ramy entered. He had never before called at that
hour, and she wondered a little anxiously what had brought him.

“Has anything happened?” she asked, pushing aside the basketful of
buttons she had been sorting.

“Not’s I know of,” said Mr. Ramy tranquilly. “But I always close up the
store at two o’clock Saturdays at this season, so I thought I might as
well call round and see you.”

“I’m real glad, I’m sure,” said Ann Eliza; “but Evelina’s out.”

“I know dat,” Mr. Ramy answered. “I met her round de corner. She told me
she got to go to dat new dyer’s up in Forty-eighth Street. She won’t be
back for a couple of hours, har’ly, will she?”

Ann Eliza looked at him with rising bewilderment. “No, I guess not,” she
answered; her instinctive hospitality prompting her to add: “Won’t you
set down jest the same?”

Mr. Ramy sat down on the stool beside the counter, and Ann Eliza
returned to her place behind it.

“I can’t leave the store,” she explained.

“Well, I guess we’re very well here.” Ann Eliza had become suddenly
aware that Mr. Ramy was looking at her with unusual intentness.
Involuntarily her hand strayed to the thin streaks of hair on her
temples, and thence descended to straighten the brooch beneath her
collar.

“You’re looking very well to-day, Miss Bunner,” said Mr. Ramy, following
her gesture with a smile.

“Oh,” said Ann Eliza nervously. “I’m always well in health,” she added.

“I guess you’re healthier than your sister, even if you are less
sizeable.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Evelina’s a mite nervous sometimes, but she ain’t a
bit sickly.”

“She eats heartier than you do; but that don’t mean nothing,” said Mr.
Ramy.

Ann Eliza was silent. She could not follow the trend of his thought, and
she did not care to commit herself farther about Evelina before she
had ascertained if Mr. Ramy considered nervousness interesting or the
reverse.

But Mr. Ramy spared her all farther indecision.

“Well, Miss Bunner,” he said, drawing his stool closer to the counter,
“I guess I might as well tell you fust as last what I come here for
to-day. I want to get married.”

Ann Eliza, in many a prayerful midnight hour, had sought to strengthen
herself for the hearing of this avowal, but now that it had come she
felt pitifully frightened and unprepared. Mr. Ramy was leaning with both
elbows on the counter, and she noticed that his nails were clean and
that he had brushed his hat; yet even these signs had not prepared her!

At last she heard herself say, with a dry throat in which her heart was
hammering: “Mercy me, Mr. Ramy!”

“I want to get married,” he repeated. “I’m too lonesome. It ain’t good
for a man to live all alone, and eat noding but cold meat every day.”

“No,” said Ann Eliza softly.

“And the dust fairly beats me.”

“Oh, the dust--I know!”

Mr. Ramy stretched one of his blunt-fingered hands toward her. “I wisht
you’d take me.”

Still Ann Eliza did not understand. She rose hesitatingly from her seat,
pushing aside the basket of buttons which lay between them; then she
perceived that Mr. Ramy was trying to take her hand, and as their
fingers met a flood of joy swept over her. Never afterward, though
every other word of their interview was stamped on her memory beyond
all possible forgetting, could she recall what he said while their hands
touched; she only knew that she seemed to be floating on a summer sea,
and that all its waves were in her ears.

“Me--me?” she gasped.

“I guess so,” said her suitor placidly. “You suit me right down to the
ground, Miss Bunner. Dat’s the truth.”

A woman passing along the street paused to look at the shop-window, and
Ann Eliza half hoped she would come in; but after a desultory inspection
she went on.

“Maybe you don’t fancy me?” Mr. Ramy suggested, discountenanced by Ann
Eliza’s silence.

A word of assent was on her tongue, but her lips refused it. She must
find some other way of telling him.

“I don’t say that.”

“Well, I always kinder thought we was suited to one another,” Mr.
Ramy continued, eased of his momentary doubt. “I always liked de quiet
style--no fuss and airs, and not afraid of work.” He spoke as though
dispassionately cataloguing her charms.

Ann Eliza felt that she must make an end. “But, Mr. Ramy, you don’t
understand. I’ve never thought of marrying.”

Mr. Ramy looked at her in surprise. “Why not?”

“Well, I don’t know, har’ly.” She moistened her twitching lips. “The
fact is, I ain’t as active as I look. Maybe I couldn’t stand the care.
I ain’t as spry as Evelina--nor as young,” she added, with a last great
effort.

“But you do most of de work here, anyways,” said her suitor doubtfully.

“Oh, well, that’s because Evelina’s busy outside; and where there’s only
two women the work don’t amount to much. Besides, I’m the oldest; I have
to look after things,” she hastened on, half pained that her simple ruse
should so readily deceive him.

“Well, I guess you’re active enough for me,” he persisted. His calm
determination began to frighten her; she trembled lest her own should be
less staunch.

“No, no,” she repeated, feeling the tears on her lashes. “I couldn’t,
Mr. Ramy, I couldn’t marry. I’m so surprised. I always thought it
was Evelina--always. And so did everybody else. She’s so bright and
pretty--it seemed so natural.”

“Well, you was all mistaken,” said Mr. Ramy obstinately.

“I’m so sorry.”

He rose, pushing back his chair.

“You’d better think it over,” he said, in the large tone of a man who
feels he may safely wait.

“Oh, no, no. It ain’t any sorter use, Mr. Ramy. I don’t never mean to
marry. I get tired so easily--I’d be afraid of the work. And I have
such awful headaches.” She paused, racking her brain for more convincing
infirmities.

“Headaches, do you?” said Mr. Ramy, turning back.

“My, yes, awful ones, that I have to give right up to. Evelina has to do
everything when I have one of them headaches. She has to bring me my tea
in the mornings.”

“Well, I’m sorry to hear it,” said Mr. Ramy.

“Thank you kindly all the same,” Ann Eliza murmured. “And please
don’t--don’t--” She stopped suddenly, looking at him through her tears.

“Oh, that’s all right,” he answered. “Don’t you fret, Miss Gunner.
Folks have got to suit themselves.” She thought his tone had grown more
resigned since she had spoken of her headaches.

For some moments he stood looking at her with a hesitating eye, as
though uncertain how to end their conversation; and at length she found
courage to say (in the words of a novel she had once read): “I don’t
want this should make any difference between us.”

“Oh, my, no,” said Mr. Ramy, absently picking up his hat.

“You’ll come in just the same?” she continued, nerving herself to
the effort. “We’d miss you awfully if you didn’t. Evelina, she--” She
paused, torn between her desire to turn his thoughts to Evelina, and the
dread of prematurely disclosing her sister’s secret.

“Don’t Miss Evelina have no headaches?” Mr. Ramy suddenly asked.

“My, no, never--well, not to speak of, anyway. She ain’t had one for
ages, and when Evelina IS sick she won’t never give in to it,” Ann Eliza
declared, making some hurried adjustments with her conscience.

“I wouldn’t have thought that,” said Mr. Ramy.

“I guess you don’t know us as well as you thought you did.”

“Well, no, that’s so; maybe I don’t. I’ll wish you good day, Miss
Bunner”; and Mr. Ramy moved toward the door.

“Good day, Mr. Ramy,” Ann Eliza answered.

She felt unutterably thankful to be alone. She knew the crucial moment
of her life had passed, and she was glad that she had not fallen below
her own ideals. It had been a wonderful experience; and in spite of
the tears on her cheeks she was not sorry to have known it. Two facts,
however, took the edge from its perfection: that it had happened in the
shop, and that she had not had on her black silk.

She passed the next hour in a state of dreamy ecstasy. Something had
entered into her life of which no subsequent empoverishment could rob
it: she glowed with the same rich sense of possessorship that once, as
a little girl, she had felt when her mother had given her a gold locket
and she had sat up in bed in the dark to draw it from its hiding-place
beneath her night-gown.

At length a dread of Evelina’s return began to mingle with these
musings. How could she meet her younger sister’s eye without betraying
what had happened? She felt as though a visible glory lay on her, and
she was glad that dusk had fallen when Evelina entered. But her fears
were superfluous. Evelina, always self-absorbed, had of late lost all
interest in the simple happenings of the shop, and Ann Eliza, with
mingled mortification and relief, perceived that she was in no danger of
being cross-questioned as to the events of the afternoon. She was
glad of this; yet there was a touch of humiliation in finding that the
portentous secret in her bosom did not visibly shine forth. It struck
her as dull, and even slightly absurd, of Evelina not to know at last
that they were equals.




PART II




VIII

Mr. Ramy, after a decent interval, returned to the shop; and Ann Eliza,
when they met, was unable to detect whether the emotions which seethed
under her black alpaca found an echo in his bosom. Outwardly he made no
sign. He lit his pipe as placidly as ever and seemed to relapse without
effort into the unruffled intimacy of old. Yet to Ann Eliza’s initiated
eye a change became gradually perceptible. She saw that he was beginning
to look at her sister as he had looked at her on that momentous
afternoon: she even discerned a secret significance in the turn of his
talk with Evelina. Once he asked her abruptly if she should like
to travel, and Ann Eliza saw that the flush on Evelina’s cheek was
reflected from the same fire which had scorched her own.

So they drifted on through the sultry weeks of July. At that season the
business of the little shop almost ceased, and one Saturday morning Mr.
Ramy proposed that the sisters should lock up early and go with him for
a sail down the bay in one of the Coney Island boats.

Ann Eliza saw the light in Evelina’s eye and her resolve was instantly
taken.

“I guess I won’t go, thank you kindly; but I’m sure my sister will be
happy to.”

She was pained by the perfunctory phrase with which Evelina urged her to
accompany them; and still more by Mr. Ramy’s silence.

“No, I guess I won’t go,” she repeated, rather in answer to herself than
to them. “It’s dreadfully hot and I’ve got a kinder headache.”

“Oh, well, I wouldn’t then,” said her sister hurriedly. “You’d better
jest set here quietly and rest.”

“Yes, I’ll rest,” Ann Eliza assented.

At two o’clock Mr. Ramy returned, and a moment later he and Evelina left
the shop. Evelina had made herself another new bonnet for the occasion,
a bonnet, Ann Eliza thought, almost too youthful in shape and colour.
It was the first time it had ever occurred to her to criticize Evelina’s
taste, and she was frightened at the insidious change in her attitude
toward her sister.

When Ann Eliza, in later days, looked back on that afternoon she felt
that there had been something prophetic in the quality of its solitude;
it seemed to distill the triple essence of loneliness in which all her
after-life was to be lived. No purchasers came; not a hand fell on
the door-latch; and the tick of the clock in the back room ironically
emphasized the passing of the empty hours.

Evelina returned late and alone. Ann Eliza felt the coming crisis in the
sound of her footstep, which wavered along as if not knowing on what it
trod. The elder sister’s affection had so passionately projected itself
into her junior’s fate that at such moments she seemed to be living
two lives, her own and Evelina’s; and her private longings shrank into
silence at the sight of the other’s hungry bliss. But it was evident
that Evelina, never acutely alive to the emotional atmosphere about her,
had no idea that her secret was suspected; and with an assumption of
unconcern that would have made Ann Eliza smile if the pang had been less
piercing, the younger sister prepared to confess herself.

“What are you so busy about?” she said impatiently, as Ann Eliza,
beneath the gas-jet, fumbled for the matches. “Ain’t you even got time
to ask me if I’d had a pleasant day?”

Ann Eliza turned with a quiet smile. “I guess I don’t have to. Seems to
me it’s pretty plain you have.”

“Well, I don’t know. I don’t know HOW I feel--it’s all so queer. I
almost think I’d like to scream.”

“I guess you’re tired.”

“No, I ain’t. It’s not that. But it all happened so suddenly, and the
boat was so crowded I thought everybody’d hear what he was saying.--Ann
Eliza,” she broke out, “why on earth don’t you ask me what I’m talking
about?”

Ann Eliza, with a last effort of heroism, feigned a fond
incomprehension.

“What ARE you?”

“Why, I’m engaged to be married--so there! Now it’s out! And it happened
right on the boat; only to think of it! Of course I wasn’t exactly
surprised--I’ve known right along he was going to sooner or later--on’y
somehow I didn’t think of its happening to-day. I thought he’d never get
up his courage. He said he was so ’fraid I’d say no--that’s what kep’
him so long from asking me. Well, I ain’t said yes YET--leastways I told
him I’d have to think it over; but I guess he knows. Oh, Ann Eliza, I’m
so happy!” She hid the blinding brightness of her face.

Ann Eliza, just then, would only let herself feel that she was glad. She
drew down Evelina’s hands and kissed her, and they held each other. When
Evelina regained her voice she had a tale to tell which carried their
vigil far into the night. Not a syllable, not a glance or gesture of
Ramy’s, was the elder sister spared; and with unconscious irony she
found herself comparing the details of his proposal to her with those
which Evelina was imparting with merciless prolixity.

The next few days were taken up with the embarrassed adjustment of their
new relation to Mr. Ramy and to each other. Ann Eliza’s ardour carried
her to new heights of self-effacement, and she invented late duties in
the shop in order to leave Evelina and her suitor longer alone in the
back room. Later on, when she tried to remember the details of those
first days, few came back to her: she knew only that she got up each
morning with the sense of having to push the leaden hours up the same
long steep of pain.

Mr. Ramy came daily now. Every evening he and his betrothed went out
for a stroll around the Square, and when Evelina came in her cheeks were
always pink. “He’s kissed her under that tree at the corner, away from
the lamp-post,” Ann Eliza said to herself, with sudden insight into
unconjectured things. On Sundays they usually went for the whole
afternoon to the Central Park, and Ann Eliza, from her seat in the
mortal hush of the back room, followed step by step their long slow
beatific walk.

There had been, as yet, no allusion to their marriage, except that
Evelina had once told her sister that Mr. Ramy wished them to invite
Mrs. Hochmuller and Linda to the wedding. The mention of the laundress
raised a half-forgotten fear in Ann Eliza, and she said in a tone of
tentative appeal: “I guess if I was you I wouldn’t want to be very great
friends with Mrs. Hochmuller.”

Evelina glanced at her compassionately. “I guess if you was me you’d
want to do everything you could to please the man you loved. It’s
lucky,” she added with glacial irony, “that I’m not too grand for
Herman’s friends.”

“Oh,” Ann Eliza protested, “that ain’t what I mean--and you know it
ain’t. Only somehow the day we saw her I didn’t think she seemed like
the kinder person you’d want for a friend.”

“I guess a married woman’s the best judge of such matters,” Evelina
replied, as though she already walked in the light of her future state.

Ann Eliza, after that, kept her own counsel. She saw that Evelina wanted
her sympathy as little as her admonitions, and that already she counted
for nothing in her sister’s scheme of life. To Ann Eliza’s idolatrous
acceptance of the cruelties of fate this exclusion seemed both natural
and just; but it caused her the most lively pain. She could not divest
her love for Evelina of its passionate motherliness; no breath of reason
could lower it to the cool temperature of sisterly affection.

She was then passing, as she thought, through the novitiate of her pain;
preparing, in a hundred experimental ways, for the solitude awaiting her
when Evelina left. It was true that it would be a tempered loneliness.
They would not be far apart. Evelina would “run in” daily from the
clock-maker’s; they would doubtless take supper with her on Sundays. But
already Ann Eliza guessed with what growing perfunctoriness her sister
would fulfill these obligations; she even foresaw the day when, to get
news of Evelina, she should have to lock the shop at nightfall and go
herself to Mr. Ramy’s door. But on that contingency she would not dwell.
“They can come to me when they want to--they’ll always find me here,”
 she simply said to herself.

One evening Evelina came in flushed and agitated from her stroll around
the Square. Ann Eliza saw at once that something had happened; but the
new habit of reticence checked her question.

She had not long to wait. “Oh, Ann Eliza, on’y to think what he says--”
 (the pronoun stood exclusively for Mr. Ramy). “I declare I’m so upset I
thought the people in the Square would notice me. Don’t I look queer? He
wants to get married right off--this very next week.”

“Next week?”

“Yes. So’s we can move out to St. Louis right away.”

“Him and you--move out to St. Louis?”

“Well, I don’t know as it would be natural for him to want to go out
there without me,” Evelina simpered. “But it’s all so sudden I don’t
know what to think. He only got the letter this morning. Do I look
queer, Ann Eliza?” Her eye was roving for the mirror.

“No, you don’t,” said Ann Eliza almost harshly.

“Well, it’s a mercy,” Evelina pursued with a tinge of disappointment.
“It’s a regular miracle I didn’t faint right out there in the Square.
Herman’s so thoughtless--he just put the letter into my hand without a
word. It’s from a big firm out there--the Tiff’ny of St. Louis, he says
it is--offering him a place in their clock-department. Seems they heard
of him through a German friend of his that’s settled out there. It’s a
splendid opening, and if he gives satisfaction they’ll raise him at the
end of the year.”

She paused, flushed with the importance of the situation, which seemed
to lift her once for all above the dull level of her former life.

“Then you’ll have to go?” came at last from Ann Eliza.

Evelina stared. “You wouldn’t have me interfere with his prospects,
would you?”

“No--no. I on’y meant--has it got to be so soon?”

“Right away, I tell you--next week. Ain’t it awful?” blushed the bride.

Well, this was what happened to mothers. They bore it, Ann Eliza mused;
so why not she? Ah, but they had their own chance first; she had had no
chance at all. And now this life which she had made her own was going
from her forever; had gone, already, in the inner and deeper sense, and
was soon to vanish in even its outward nearness, its surface-communion
of voice and eye. At that moment even the thought of Evelina’s happiness
refused her its consolatory ray; or its light, if she saw it, was too
remote to warm her. The thirst for a personal and inalienable tie, for
pangs and problems of her own, was parching Ann Eliza’s soul: it seemed
to her that she could never again gather strength to look her loneliness
in the face.

The trivial obligations of the moment came to her aid. Nursed in
idleness her grief would have mastered her; but the needs of the shop
and the back room, and the preparations for Evelina’s marriage, kept the
tyrant under.

Miss Mellins, true to her anticipations, had been called on to aid in
the making of the wedding dress, and she and Ann Eliza were bending one
evening over the breadths of pearl-grey cashmere which in spite of the
dress-maker’s prophetic vision of gored satin, had been judged most
suitable, when Evelina came into the room alone.

Ann Eliza had already had occasion to notice that it was a bad sign when
Mr. Ramy left his affianced at the door. It generally meant that Evelina
had something disturbing to communicate, and Ann Eliza’s first glance
told her that this time the news was grave.

Miss Mellins, who sat with her back to the door and her head bent over
her sewing, started as Evelina came around to the opposite side of the
table.

“Mercy, Miss Evelina! I declare I thought you was a ghost, the way you
crep’ in. I had a customer once up in Forty-ninth Street--a lovely young
woman with a thirty-six bust and a waist you could ha’ put into her
wedding ring--and her husband, he crep’ up behind her that way jest for
a joke, and frightened her into a fit, and when she come to she was a
raving maniac, and had to be taken to Bloomingdale with two doctors and
a nurse to hold her in the carriage, and a lovely baby on’y six weeks
old--and there she is to this day, poor creature.”

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” said Evelina.

She sat down on the nearest chair, and as the lamp-light fell on her
face Ann Eliza saw that she had been crying.

“You do look dead-beat,” Miss Mellins resumed, after a pause of
soul-probing scrutiny. “I guess Mr. Ramy lugs you round that Square too
often. You’ll walk your legs off if you ain’t careful. Men don’t never
consider--they’re all alike. Why, I had a cousin once that was engaged
to a book-agent--”

“Maybe we’d better put away the work for to-night, Miss Mellins,” Ann
Eliza interposed. “I guess what Evelina wants is a good night’s rest.”

“That’s so,” assented the dress-maker. “Have you got the back breadths
run together, Miss Bunner? Here’s the sleeves. I’ll pin ’em together.”
 She drew a cluster of pins from her mouth, in which she seemed to
secrete them as squirrels stow away nuts. “There,” she said, rolling up
her work, “you go right away to bed, Miss Evelina, and we’ll set up a
little later to-morrow night. I guess you’re a mite nervous, ain’t you?
I know when my turn comes I’ll be scared to death.”

With this arch forecast she withdrew, and Ann Eliza, returning to the
back room, found Evelina still listlessly seated by the table. True to
her new policy of silence, the elder sister set about folding up the
bridal dress; but suddenly Evelina said in a harsh unnatural voice:
“There ain’t any use in going on with that.”

The folds slipped from Ann Eliza’s hands.

“Evelina Bunner--what you mean?”

“Jest what I say. It’s put off.”

“Put off--what’s put off?”

“Our getting married. He can’t take me to St. Louis. He ain’t got money
enough.” She brought the words out in the monotonous tone of a child
reciting a lesson.

Ann Eliza picked up another breadth of cashmere and began to smooth it
out. “I don’t understand,” she said at length.

“Well, it’s plain enough. The journey’s fearfully expensive, and we’ve
got to have something left to start with when we get out there. We’ve
counted up, and he ain’t got the money to do it--that’s all.”

“But I thought he was going right into a splendid place.”

“So he is; but the salary’s pretty low the first year, and board’s very
high in St. Louis. He’s jest got another letter from his German friend,
and he’s been figuring it out, and he’s afraid to chance it. He’ll have
to go alone.”

“But there’s your money--have you forgotten that? The hundred dollars in
the bank.”

Evelina made an impatient movement. “Of course I ain’t forgotten it.
On’y it ain’t enough. It would all have to go into buying furniture,
and if he was took sick and lost his place again we wouldn’t have a cent
left. He says he’s got to lay by another hundred dollars before he’ll be
willing to take me out there.”

For a while Ann Eliza pondered this surprising statement; then she
ventured: “Seems to me he might have thought of it before.”

In an instant Evelina was aflame. “I guess he knows what’s right as well
as you or me. I’d sooner die than be a burden to him.”

Ann Eliza made no answer. The clutch of an unformulated doubt had
checked the words on her lips. She had meant, on the day of her sister’s
marriage, to give Evelina the other half of their common savings; but
something warned her not to say so now.

The sisters undressed without farther words. After they had gone to bed,
and the light had been put out, the sound of Evelina’s weeping came to
Ann Eliza in the darkness, but she lay motionless on her own side of the
bed, out of contact with her sister’s shaken body. Never had she felt so
coldly remote from Evelina.

The hours of the night moved slowly, ticked off with wearisome
insistence by the clock which had played so prominent a part in their
lives. Evelina’s sobs still stirred the bed at gradually lengthening
intervals, till at length Ann Eliza thought she slept. But with the dawn
the eyes of the sisters met, and Ann Eliza’s courage failed her as she
looked in Evelina’s face.

She sat up in bed and put out a pleading hand.

“Don’t cry so, dearie. Don’t.”

“Oh, I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it,” Evelina moaned.

Ann Eliza stroked her quivering shoulder. “Don’t, don’t,” she repeated.
“If you take the other hundred, won’t that be enough? I always meant to
give it to you. On’y I didn’t want to tell you till your wedding day.”




IX


Evelina’s marriage took place on the appointed day. It was celebrated
in the evening, in the chantry of the church which the sisters attended,
and after it was over the few guests who had been present repaired to
the Bunner Sisters’ basement, where a wedding supper awaited them. Ann
Eliza, aided by Miss Mellins and Mrs. Hawkins, and consciously supported
by the sentimental interest of the whole street, had expended her utmost
energy on the decoration of the shop and the back room. On the table a
vase of white chrysanthemums stood between a dish of oranges and bananas
and an iced wedding-cake wreathed with orange-blossoms of the bride’s
own making. Autumn leaves studded with paper roses festooned the
what-not and the chromo of the Rock of Ages, and a wreath of yellow
immortelles was twined about the clock which Evelina revered as the
mysterious agent of her happiness.

At the table sat Miss Mellins, profusely spangled and bangled, her head
sewing-girl, a pale young thing who had helped with Evelina’s outfit,
Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins, with Johnny, their eldest boy, and Mrs. Hochmuller
and her daughter.

Mrs. Hochmuller’s large blonde personality seemed to pervade the room
to the effacement of the less amply-proportioned guests. It was rendered
more impressive by a dress of crimson poplin that stood out from her in
organ-like folds; and Linda, whom Ann Eliza had remembered as an
uncouth child with a sly look about the eyes, surprised her by a sudden
blossoming into feminine grace such as sometimes follows on a gawky
girlhood. The Hochmullers, in fact, struck the dominant note in the
entertainment. Beside them Evelina, unusually pale in her grey cashmere
and white bonnet, looked like a faintly washed sketch beside a brilliant
chromo; and Mr. Ramy, doomed to the traditional insignificance of the
bridegroom’s part, made no attempt to rise above his situation.
Even Miss Mellins sparkled and jingled in vain in the shadow of
Mrs. Hochmuller’s crimson bulk; and Ann Eliza, with a sense of vague
foreboding, saw that the wedding feast centred about the two guests she
had most wished to exclude from it. What was said or done while they
all sat about the table she never afterward recalled: the long hours
remained in her memory as a whirl of high colours and loud voices, from
which the pale presence of Evelina now and then emerged like a drowned
face on a sunset-dabbled sea.

The next morning Mr. Ramy and his wife started for St. Louis, and Ann
Eliza was left alone. Outwardly the first strain of parting was tempered
by the arrival of Miss Mellins, Mrs. Hawkins and Johnny, who dropped in
to help in the ungarlanding and tidying up of the back room. Ann Eliza
was duly grateful for their kindness, but the “talking over” on which
they had evidently counted was Dead Sea fruit on her lips; and just
beyond the familiar warmth of their presences she saw the form of
Solitude at her door.

Ann Eliza was but a small person to harbour so great a guest, and a
trembling sense of insufficiency possessed her. She had no high musings
to offer to the new companion of her hearth. Every one of her thoughts
had hitherto turned to Evelina and shaped itself in homely easy words;
of the mighty speech of silence she knew not the earliest syllable.

Everything in the back room and the shop, on the second day after
Evelina’s going, seemed to have grown coldly unfamiliar. The whole
aspect of the place had changed with the changed conditions of Ann
Eliza’s life. The first customer who opened the shop-door startled her
like a ghost; and all night she lay tossing on her side of the bed,
sinking now and then into an uncertain doze from which she would
suddenly wake to reach out her hand for Evelina. In the new silence
surrounding her the walls and furniture found voice, frightening her
at dusk and midnight with strange sighs and stealthy whispers. Ghostly
hands shook the window shutters or rattled at the outer latch, and once
she grew cold at the sound of a step like Evelina’s stealing through the
dark shop to die out on the threshold. In time, of course, she found
an explanation for these noises, telling herself that the bedstead was
warping, that Miss Mellins trod heavily overhead, or that the thunder of
passing beer-waggons shook the door-latch; but the hours leading up to
these conclusions were full of the floating terrors that harden into
fixed foreboding. Worst of all were the solitary meals, when she
absently continued to set aside the largest slice of pie for Evelina,
and to let the tea grow cold while she waited for her sister to help
herself to the first cup. Miss Mellins, coming in on one of these sad
repasts, suggested the acquisition of a cat; but Ann Eliza shook
her head. She had never been used to animals, and she felt the vague
shrinking of the pious from creatures divided from her by the abyss of
soullessness.

At length, after ten empty days, Evelina’s first letter came.

“My dear Sister,” she wrote, in her pinched Spencerian hand, “it seems
strange to be in this great City so far from home alone with him I have
chosen for life, but marriage has its solemn duties which those who are
not can never hope to understand, and happier perhaps for this reason,
life for them has only simple tasks and pleasures, but those who must
take thought for others must be prepared to do their duty in whatever
station it has pleased the Almighty to call them. Not that I have cause
to complain, my dear Husband is all love and devotion, but being absent
all day at his business how can I help but feel lonesome at times, as
the poet says it is hard for they that love to live apart, and I often
wonder, my dear Sister, how you are getting along alone in the store,
may you never experience the feelings of solitude I have underwent since
I came here. We are boarding now, but soon expect to find rooms and
change our place of Residence, then I shall have all the care of a
household to bear, but such is the fate of those who join their Lot with
others, they cannot hope to escape from the burdens of Life, nor would
I ask it, I would not live alway but while I live would always pray for
strength to do my duty. This city is not near as large or handsome as
New York, but had my lot been cast in a Wilderness I hope I should
not repine, such never was my nature, and they who exchange their
independence for the sweet name of Wife must be prepared to find all is
not gold that glitters, nor I would not expect like you to drift down
the stream of Life unfettered and serene as a Summer cloud, such is
not my fate, but come what may will always find in me a resigned and
prayerful Spirit, and hoping this finds you as well as it leaves me, I
remain, my dear Sister,

“Yours truly,

“EVELINA B. RAMY.”


Ann Eliza had always secretly admired the oratorical and impersonal tone
of Evelina’s letters; but the few she had previously read, having been
addressed to school-mates or distant relatives, had appeared in the
light of literary compositions rather than as records of personal
experience. Now she could not but wish that Evelina had laid aside her
swelling periods for a style more suited to the chronicling of homely
incidents. She read the letter again and again, seeking for a clue to
what her sister was really doing and thinking; but after each reading
she emerged impressed but unenlightened from the labyrinth of Evelina’s
eloquence.

During the early winter she received two or three more letters of the
same kind, each enclosing in its loose husk of rhetoric a smaller kernel
of fact. By dint of patient interlinear study, Ann Eliza gathered from
them that Evelina and her husband, after various costly experiments in
boarding, had been reduced to a tenement-house flat; that living in St.
Louis was more expensive than they had supposed, and that Mr. Ramy was
kept out late at night (why, at a jeweller’s, Ann Eliza wondered?) and
found his position less satisfactory than he had been led to expect.
Toward February the letters fell off; and finally they ceased to come.

At first Ann Eliza wrote, shyly but persistently, entreating for more
frequent news; then, as one appeal after another was swallowed up in the
mystery of Evelina’s protracted silence, vague fears began to assail the
elder sister. Perhaps Evelina was ill, and with no one to nurse her but
a man who could not even make himself a cup of tea! Ann Eliza recalled
the layer of dust in Mr. Ramy’s shop, and pictures of domestic disorder
mingled with the more poignant vision of her sister’s illness. But
surely if Evelina were ill Mr. Ramy would have written. He wrote a
small neat hand, and epistolary communication was not an insuperable
embarrassment to him. The too probable alternative was that both
the unhappy pair had been prostrated by some disease which left them
powerless to summon her--for summon her they surely would, Ann Eliza
with unconscious cynicism reflected, if she or her small economies could
be of use to them! The more she strained her eyes into the mystery, the
darker it grew; and her lack of initiative, her inability to imagine
what steps might be taken to trace the lost in distant places, left her
benumbed and helpless.

At last there floated up from some depth of troubled memory the name
of the firm of St. Louis jewellers by whom Mr. Ramy was employed. After
much hesitation, and considerable effort, she addressed to them a timid
request for news of her brother-in-law; and sooner than she could have
hoped the answer reached her.

“DEAR MADAM,

“In reply to yours of the 29th ult. we beg to state the party you refer
to was discharged from our employ a month ago. We are sorry we are
unable to furnish you wish his address.

“Yours Respectfully,

“LUDWIG AND HAMMERBUSCH.”


Ann Eliza read and re-read the curt statement in a stupor of distress.
She had lost her last trace of Evelina. All that night she lay awake,
revolving the stupendous project of going to St. Louis in search of her
sister; but though she pieced together her few financial possibilities
with the ingenuity of a brain used to fitting odd scraps into patch-work
quilts, she woke to the cold daylight fact that she could not raise the
money for her fare. Her wedding gift to Evelina had left her without any
resources beyond her daily earnings, and these had steadily dwindled as
the winter passed. She had long since renounced her weekly visit to the
butcher, and had reduced her other expenses to the narrowest measure;
but the most systematic frugality had not enabled her to put by any
money. In spite of her dogged efforts to maintain the prosperity of the
little shop, her sister’s absence had already told on its business.
Now that Ann Eliza had to carry the bundles to the dyer’s herself, the
customers who called in her absence, finding the shop locked, too often
went elsewhere. Moreover, after several stern but unavailing efforts,
she had had to give up the trimming of bonnets, which in Evelina’s hands
had been the most lucrative as well as the most interesting part of the
business. This change, to the passing female eye, robbed the shop window
of its chief attraction; and when painful experience had convinced the
regular customers of the Bunner Sisters of Ann Eliza’s lack of millinery
skill they began to lose faith in her ability to curl a feather or even
“freshen up” a bunch of flowers. The time came when Ann Eliza had almost
made up her mind to speak to the lady with puffed sleeves, who had
always looked at her so kindly, and had once ordered a hat of Evelina.
Perhaps the lady with puffed sleeves would be able to get her a little
plain sewing to do; or she might recommend the shop to friends. Ann
Eliza, with this possibility in view, rummaged out of a drawer the
fly-blown remainder of the business cards which the sisters had ordered
in the first flush of their commercial adventure; but when the lady with
puffed sleeves finally appeared she was in deep mourning, and wore
so sad a look that Ann Eliza dared not speak. She came in to buy some
spools of black thread and silk, and in the doorway she turned back to
say: “I am going away to-morrow for a long time. I hope you will have a
pleasant winter.” And the door shut on her.

One day not long after this it occurred to Ann Eliza to go to Hoboken in
quest of Mrs. Hochmuller. Much as she shrank from pouring her distress
into that particular ear, her anxiety had carried her beyond such
reluctance; but when she began to think the matter over she was faced by
a new difficulty. On the occasion of her only visit to Mrs. Hochmuller,
she and Evelina had suffered themselves to be led there by Mr. Ramy;
and Ann Eliza now perceived that she did not even know the name of the
laundress’s suburb, much less that of the street in which she lived.
But she must have news of Evelina, and no obstacle was great enough to
thwart her.

Though she longed to turn to some one for advice she disliked to expose
her situation to Miss Mellins’s searching eye, and at first she could
think of no other confidant. Then she remembered Mrs. Hawkins, or
rather her husband, who, though Ann Eliza had always thought him a
dull uneducated man, was probably gifted with the mysterious masculine
faculty of finding out people’s addresses. It went hard with Ann Eliza
to trust her secret even to the mild ear of Mrs. Hawkins, but at least
she was spared the cross-examination to which the dress-maker would
have subjected her. The accumulating pressure of domestic cares had so
crushed in Mrs. Hawkins any curiosity concerning the affairs of others
that she received her visitor’s confidence with an almost masculine
indifference, while she rocked her teething baby on one arm and with the
other tried to check the acrobatic impulses of the next in age.

“My, my,” she simply said as Ann Eliza ended. “Keep still now, Arthur:
Miss Bunner don’t want you to jump up and down on her foot to-day. And
what are you gaping at, Johnny? Run right off and play,” she added,
turning sternly to her eldest, who, because he was the least naughty,
usually bore the brunt of her wrath against the others.

“Well, perhaps Mr. Hawkins can help you,” Mrs. Hawkins continued
meditatively, while the children, after scattering at her bidding,
returned to their previous pursuits like flies settling down on the
spot from which an exasperated hand has swept them. “I’ll send him right
round the minute he comes in, and you can tell him the whole story. I
wouldn’t wonder but what he can find that Mrs. Hochmuller’s address in
the d’rectory. I know they’ve got one where he works.”

“I’d be real thankful if he could,” Ann Eliza murmured, rising from her
seat with the factitious sense of lightness that comes from imparting a
long-hidden dread.




X


Mr. Hawkins proved himself worthy of his wife’s faith in his capacity.
He learned from Ann Eliza as much as she could tell him about Mrs.
Hochmuller and returned the next evening with a scrap of paper bearing
her address, beneath which Johnny (the family scribe) had written in a
large round hand the names of the streets that led there from the ferry.

Ann Eliza lay awake all that night, repeating over and over again the
directions Mr. Hawkins had given her. He was a kind man, and she knew
he would willingly have gone with her to Hoboken; indeed she read in his
timid eye the half-formed intention of offering to accompany her--but on
such an errand she preferred to go alone.

The next Sunday, accordingly, she set out early, and without much
trouble found her way to the ferry. Nearly a year had passed since her
previous visit to Mrs. Hochmuller, and a chilly April breeze smote her
face as she stepped on the boat. Most of the passengers were huddled
together in the cabin, and Ann Eliza shrank into its obscurest corner,
shivering under the thin black mantle which had seemed so hot in July.
She began to feel a little bewildered as she stepped ashore, but a
paternal policeman put her into the right car, and as in a dream she
found herself retracing the way to Mrs. Hochmuller’s door. She had told
the conductor the name of the street at which she wished to get out,
and presently she stood in the biting wind at the corner near the
beer-saloon, where the sun had once beat down on her so fiercely. At
length an empty car appeared, its yellow flank emblazoned with the name
of Mrs. Hochmuller’s suburb, and Ann Eliza was presently jolting past
the narrow brick houses islanded between vacant lots like giant piles in
a desolate lagoon. When the car reached the end of its journey she got
out and stood for some time trying to remember which turn Mr. Ramy had
taken. She had just made up her mind to ask the car-driver when he shook
the reins on the backs of his lean horses, and the car, still empty,
jogged away toward Hoboken.

Ann Eliza, left alone by the roadside, began to move cautiously
forward, looking about for a small red house with a gable overhung by an
elm-tree; but everything about her seemed unfamiliar and forbidding. One
or two surly looking men slouched past with inquisitive glances, and she
could not make up her mind to stop and speak to them.

At length a tow-headed boy came out of a swinging door suggestive of
illicit conviviality, and to him Ann Eliza ventured to confide
her difficulty. The offer of five cents fired him with an instant
willingness to lead her to Mrs. Hochmuller, and he was soon trotting
past the stone-cutter’s yard with Ann Eliza in his wake.

Another turn in the road brought them to the little red house, and
having rewarded her guide Ann Eliza unlatched the gate and walked up to
the door. Her heart was beating violently, and she had to lean against
the door-post to compose her twitching lips: she had not known till that
moment how much it was going to hurt her to speak of Evelina to Mrs.
Hochmuller. As her agitation subsided she began to notice how much the
appearance of the house had changed. It was not only that winter had
stripped the elm, and blackened the flower-borders: the house itself had
a debased and deserted air. The window-panes were cracked and dirty, and
one or two shutters swung dismally on loosened hinges.

She rang several times before the door was opened. At length an Irish
woman with a shawl over her head and a baby in her arms appeared on the
threshold, and glancing past her into the narrow passage Ann Eliza saw
that Mrs. Hochmuller’s neat abode had deteriorated as much within as
without.

At the mention of the name the woman stared. “Mrs. who, did ye say?”

“Mrs. Hochmuller. This is surely her house?”

“No, it ain’t neither,” said the woman turning away.

“Oh, but wait, please,” Ann Eliza entreated. “I can’t be mistaken. I
mean the Mrs. Hochmuller who takes in washing. I came out to see her
last June.”

“Oh, the Dutch washerwoman is it--her that used to live here? She’s been
gone two months and more. It’s Mike McNulty lives here now. Whisht!” to
the baby, who had squared his mouth for a howl.

Ann Eliza’s knees grew weak. “Mrs. Hochmuller gone? But where has she
gone? She must be somewhere round here. Can’t you tell me?”

“Sure an’ I can’t,” said the woman. “She wint away before iver we come.”

“Dalia Geoghegan, will ye bring the choild in out av the cowld?” cried
an irate voice from within.

“Please wait--oh, please wait,” Ann Eliza insisted. “You see I must find
Mrs. Hochmuller.”

“Why don’t ye go and look for her thin?” the woman returned, slamming
the door in her face.

She stood motionless on the door-step, dazed by the immensity of her
disappointment, till a burst of loud voices inside the house drove her
down the path and out of the gate.

Even then she could not grasp what had happened, and pausing in the road
she looked back at the house, half hoping that Mrs. Hochmuller’s once
detested face might appear at one of the grimy windows.

She was roused by an icy wind that seemed to spring up suddenly from the
desolate scene, piercing her thin dress like gauze; and turning away she
began to retrace her steps. She thought of enquiring for Mrs. Hochmuller
at some of the neighbouring houses, but their look was so unfriendly
that she walked on without making up her mind at which door to ring.
When she reached the horse-car terminus a car was just moving off toward
Hoboken, and for nearly an hour she had to wait on the corner in the
bitter wind. Her hands and feet were stiff with cold when the car at
length loomed into sight again, and she thought of stopping somewhere
on the way to the ferry for a cup of tea; but before the region of
lunch-rooms was reached she had grown so sick and dizzy that the thought
of food was repulsive. At length she found herself on the ferry-boat, in
the soothing stuffiness of the crowded cabin; then came another interval
of shivering on a street-corner, another long jolting journey in a
“cross-town” car that smelt of damp straw and tobacco; and lastly, in
the cold spring dusk, she unlocked her door and groped her way through
the shop to her fireless bedroom.

The next morning Mrs. Hawkins, dropping in to hear the result of the
trip, found Ann Eliza sitting behind the counter wrapped in an old
shawl.

“Why, Miss Bunner, you’re sick! You must have fever--your face is just
as red!”

“It’s nothing. I guess I caught cold yesterday on the ferry-boat,” Ann
Eliza acknowledged.

“And it’s jest like a vault in here!” Mrs. Hawkins rebuked her. “Let me
feel your hand--it’s burning. Now, Miss Bunner, you’ve got to go right
to bed this very minute.”

“Oh, but I can’t, Mrs. Hawkins.” Ann Eliza attempted a wan smile. “You
forget there ain’t nobody but me to tend the store.”

“I guess you won’t tend it long neither, if you ain’t careful,” Mrs.
Hawkins grimly rejoined. Beneath her placid exterior she cherished
a morbid passion for disease and death, and the sight of Ann Eliza’s
suffering had roused her from her habitual indifference. “There ain’t
so many folks comes to the store anyhow,” she went on with unconscious
cruelty, “and I’ll go right up and see if Miss Mellins can’t spare one
of her girls.”

Ann Eliza, too weary to resist, allowed Mrs. Hawkins to put her to
bed and make a cup of tea over the stove, while Miss Mellins, always
good-naturedly responsive to any appeal for help, sent down the
weak-eyed little girl to deal with hypothetical customers.

Ann Eliza, having so far abdicated her independence, sank into sudden
apathy. As far as she could remember, it was the first time in her life
that she had been taken care of instead of taking care, and there was
a momentary relief in the surrender. She swallowed the tea like an
obedient child, allowed a poultice to be applied to her aching chest and
uttered no protest when a fire was kindled in the rarely used grate; but
as Mrs. Hawkins bent over to “settle” her pillows she raised herself on
her elbow to whisper: “Oh, Mrs. Hawkins, Mrs. Hochmuller warn’t there.”
 The tears rolled down her cheeks.

“She warn’t there? Has she moved?”

“Over two months ago--and they don’t know where she’s gone. Oh what’ll I
do, Mrs. Hawkins?”

“There, there, Miss Bunner. You lay still and don’t fret. I’ll ask Mr.
Hawkins soon as ever he comes home.”

Ann Eliza murmured her gratitude, and Mrs. Hawkins, bending down, kissed
her on the forehead. “Don’t you fret,” she repeated, in the voice with
which she soothed her children.

For over a week Ann Eliza lay in bed, faithfully nursed by her two
neighbours, while the weak-eyed child, and the pale sewing girl who
had helped to finish Evelina’s wedding dress, took turns in minding the
shop. Every morning, when her friends appeared, Ann Eliza lifted her
head to ask: “Is there a letter?” and at their gentle negative sank back
in silence. Mrs. Hawkins, for several days, spoke no more of her promise
to consult her husband as to the best way of tracing Mrs. Hochmuller;
and dread of fresh disappointment kept Ann Eliza from bringing up the
subject.

But the following Sunday evening, as she sat for the first time
bolstered up in her rocking-chair near the stove, while Miss Mellins
studied the Police Gazette beneath the lamp, there came a knock on the
shop-door and Mr. Hawkins entered.

Ann Eliza’s first glance at his plain friendly face showed her he had
news to give, but though she no longer attempted to hide her anxiety
from Miss Mellins, her lips trembled too much to let her speak.

“Good evening, Miss Bunner,” said Mr. Hawkins in his dragging voice.
“I’ve been over to Hoboken all day looking round for Mrs. Hochmuller.”

“Oh, Mr. Hawkins--you HAVE?”

“I made a thorough search, but I’m sorry to say it was no use. She’s
left Hoboken--moved clear away, and nobody seems to know where.”

“It was real good of you, Mr. Hawkins.” Ann Eliza’s voice struggled up
in a faint whisper through the submerging tide of her disappointment.

Mr. Hawkins, in his embarrassed sense of being the bringer of bad news,
stood before her uncertainly; then he turned to go. “No trouble at all,”
 he paused to assure her from the doorway.

She wanted to speak again, to detain him, to ask him to advise her; but
the words caught in her throat and she lay back silent.

The next day she got up early, and dressed and bonneted herself with
twitching fingers. She waited till the weak-eyed child appeared, and
having laid on her minute instructions as to the care of the shop, she
slipped out into the street. It had occurred to her in one of the weary
watches of the previous night that she might go to Tiffany’s and make
enquiries about Ramy’s past. Possibly in that way she might obtain some
information that would suggest a new way of reaching Evelina. She was
guiltily aware that Mrs. Hawkins and Miss Mellins would be angry with
her for venturing out of doors, but she knew she should never feel any
better till she had news of Evelina.

The morning air was sharp, and as she turned to face the wind she felt
so weak and unsteady that she wondered if she should ever get as far
as Union Square; but by walking very slowly, and standing still now and
then when she could do so without being noticed, she found herself at
last before the jeweller’s great glass doors.

It was still so early that there were no purchasers in the shop, and
she felt herself the centre of innumerable unemployed eyes as she moved
forward between long lines of show-cases glittering with diamonds and
silver.

She was glancing about in the hope of finding the clock-department
without having to approach one of the impressive gentlemen who paced
the empty aisles, when she attracted the attention of one of the most
impressive of the number.

The formidable benevolence with which he enquired what he could do
for her made her almost despair of explaining herself; but she finally
disentangled from a flurry of wrong beginnings the request to be shown
to the clock-department.

The gentleman considered her thoughtfully. “May I ask what style of
clock you are looking for? Would it be for a wedding-present, or--?”

The irony of the allusion filled Ann Eliza’s veins with sudden strength.
“I don’t want to buy a clock at all. I want to see the head of the
department.”

“Mr. Loomis?” His stare still weighed her--then he seemed to brush aside
the problem she presented as beneath his notice. “Oh, certainly. Take
the elevator to the second floor. Next aisle to the left.” He waved her
down the endless perspective of show-cases.

Ann Eliza followed the line of his lordly gesture, and a swift ascent
brought her to a great hall full of the buzzing and booming of thousands
of clocks. Whichever way she looked, clocks stretched away from her in
glittering interminable vistas: clocks of all sizes and voices, from the
bell-throated giant of the hallway to the chirping dressing-table toy;
tall clocks of mahogany and brass with cathedral chimes; clocks
of bronze, glass, porcelain, of every possible size, voice and
configuration; and between their serried ranks, along the polished
floor of the aisles, moved the languid forms of other gentlemanly
floor-walkers, waiting for their duties to begin.

One of them soon approached, and Ann Eliza repeated her request. He
received it affably.

“Mr. Loomis? Go right down to the office at the other end.” He pointed
to a kind of box of ground glass and highly polished panelling.

As she thanked him he turned to one of his companions and said something
in which she caught the name of Mr. Loomis, and which was received with
an appreciative chuckle. She suspected herself of being the object of
the pleasantry, and straightened her thin shoulders under her mantle.

The door of the office stood open, and within sat a gray-bearded man at
a desk. He looked up kindly, and again she asked for Mr. Loomis.

“I’m Mr. Loomis. What can I do for you?”

He was much less portentous than the others, though she guessed him
to be above them in authority; and encouraged by his tone she seated
herself on the edge of the chair he waved her to.

“I hope you’ll excuse my troubling you, sir. I came to ask if you could
tell me anything about Mr. Herman Ramy. He was employed here in the
clock-department two or three years ago.”

Mr. Loomis showed no recognition of the name.

“Ramy? When was he discharged?”

“I don’t har’ly know. He was very sick, and when he got well his place
had been filled. He married my sister last October and they went to St.
Louis, I ain’t had any news of them for over two months, and she’s my
only sister, and I’m most crazy worrying about her.”

“I see.” Mr. Loomis reflected. “In what capacity was Ramy employed
here?” he asked after a moment.

“He--he told us that he was one of the heads of the clock-department,”
 Ann Eliza stammered, overswept by a sudden doubt.

“That was probably a slight exaggeration. But I can tell you about him
by referring to our books. The name again?”

“Ramy--Herman Ramy.”

There ensued a long silence, broken only by the flutter of leaves as
Mr. Loomis turned over his ledgers. Presently he looked up, keeping his
finger between the pages.

“Here it is--Herman Ramy. He was one of our ordinary workmen, and left
us three years and a half ago last June.”

“On account of sickness?” Ann Eliza faltered.

Mr. Loomis appeared to hesitate; then he said: “I see no mention of
sickness.” Ann Eliza felt his compassionate eyes on her again. “Perhaps
I’d better tell you the truth. He was discharged for drug-taking. A
capable workman, but we couldn’t keep him straight. I’m sorry to have to
tell you this, but it seems fairer, since you say you’re anxious about
your sister.”

The polished sides of the office vanished from Ann Eliza’s sight, and
the cackle of the innumerable clocks came to her like the yell of waves
in a storm. She tried to speak but could not; tried to get to her feet,
but the floor was gone.

“I’m very sorry,” Mr. Loomis repeated, closing the ledger. “I remember
the man perfectly now. He used to disappear every now and then, and turn
up again in a state that made him useless for days.”

As she listened, Ann Eliza recalled the day when she had come on Mr.
Ramy sitting in abject dejection behind his counter. She saw again the
blurred unrecognizing eyes he had raised to her, the layer of dust
over everything in the shop, and the green bronze clock in the window
representing a Newfoundland dog with his paw on a book. She stood up
slowly.

“Thank you. I’m sorry to have troubled you.”

“It was no trouble. You say Ramy married your sister last October?”

“Yes, sir; and they went to St. Louis right afterward. I don’t know how
to find her. I thought maybe somebody here might know about him.”

“Well, possibly some of the workmen might. Leave me your name and I’ll
send you word if I get on his track.”

He handed her a pencil, and she wrote down her address; then she walked
away blindly between the clocks.




XI


Mr. Loomis, true to his word, wrote a few days later that he had
enquired in vain in the work-shop for any news of Ramy; and as she
folded this letter and laid it between the leaves of her Bible, Ann
Eliza felt that her last hope was gone. Miss Mellins, of course, had
long since suggested the mediation of the police, and cited from her
favourite literature convincing instances of the supernatural ability of
the Pinkerton detective; but Mr. Hawkins, when called in council, dashed
this project by remarking that detectives cost something like twenty
dollars a day; and a vague fear of the law, some half-formed vision of
Evelina in the clutch of a blue-coated “officer,” kept Ann Eliza from
invoking the aid of the police.

After the arrival of Mr. Loomis’s note the weeks followed each other
uneventfully. Ann Eliza’s cough clung to her till late in the spring,
the reflection in her looking-glass grew more bent and meagre, and her
forehead sloped back farther toward the twist of hair that was fastened
above her parting by a comb of black India-rubber.

Toward spring a lady who was expecting a baby took up her abode at the
Mendoza Family Hotel, and through the friendly intervention of Miss
Mellins the making of some of the baby-clothes was entrusted to Ann
Eliza. This eased her of anxiety for the immediate future; but she had
to rouse herself to feel any sense of relief. Her personal welfare was
what least concerned her. Sometimes she thought of giving up the shop
altogether; and only the fear that, if she changed her address, Evelina
might not be able to find her, kept her from carrying out this plan.

Since she had lost her last hope of tracing her sister, all the
activities of her lonely imagination had been concentrated on the
possibility of Evelina’s coming back to her. The discovery of Ramy’s
secret filled her with dreadful fears. In the solitude of the shop
and the back room she was tortured by vague pictures of Evelina’s
sufferings. What horrors might not be hidden beneath her silence? Ann
Eliza’s great dread was that Miss Mellins should worm out of her what
she had learned from Mr. Loomis. She was sure Miss Mellins must have
abominable things to tell about drug-fiends--things she did not have
the strength to hear. “Drug-fiend”--the very word was Satanic; she
could hear Miss Mellins roll it on her tongue. But Ann Eliza’s own
imagination, left to itself, had begun to people the long hours with
evil visions. Sometimes, in the night, she thought she heard herself
called: the voice was her sister’s, but faint with a nameless terror.
Her most peaceful moments were those in which she managed to convince
herself that Evelina was dead. She thought of her then, mournfully but
more calmly, as thrust away under the neglected mound of some unknown
cemetery, where no headstone marked her name, no mourner with flowers
for another grave paused in pity to lay a blossom on hers. But this
vision did not often give Ann Eliza its negative relief; and always,
beneath its hazy lines, lurked the dark conviction that Evelina was
alive, in misery and longing for her.

So the summer wore on. Ann Eliza was conscious that Mrs. Hawkins and
Miss Mellins were watching her with affectionate anxiety, but the
knowledge brought no comfort. She no longer cared what they felt or
thought about her. Her grief lay far beyond touch of human healing, and
after a while she became aware that they knew they could not help her.
They still came in as often as their busy lives permitted, but their
visits grew shorter, and Mrs. Hawkins always brought Arthur or the baby,
so that there should be something to talk about, and some one whom she
could scold.

The autumn came, and the winter. Business had fallen off again, and but
few purchasers came to the little shop in the basement. In January Ann
Eliza pawned her mother’s cashmere scarf, her mosaic brooch, and the
rosewood what-not on which the clock had always stood; she would
have sold the bedstead too, but for the persistent vision of Evelina
returning weak and weary, and not knowing where to lay her head.

The winter passed in its turn, and March reappeared with its galaxies of
yellow jonquils at the windy street corners, reminding Ann Eliza of the
spring day when Evelina had come home with a bunch of jonquils in her
hand. In spite of the flowers which lent such a premature brightness to
the streets the month was fierce and stormy, and Ann Eliza could get
no warmth into her bones. Nevertheless, she was insensibly beginning to
take up the healing routine of life. Little by little she had grown used
to being alone, she had begun to take a languid interest in the one or
two new purchasers the season had brought, and though the thought
of Evelina was as poignant as ever, it was less persistently in the
foreground of her mind.

Late one afternoon she was sitting behind the counter, wrapped in her
shawl, and wondering how soon she might draw down the blinds and retreat
into the comparative cosiness of the back room. She was not thinking of
anything in particular, except perhaps in a hazy way of the lady with
the puffed sleeves, who after her long eclipse had reappeared the day
before in sleeves of a new cut, and bought some tape and needles. The
lady still wore mourning, but she was evidently lightening it, and Ann
Eliza saw in this the hope of future orders. The lady had left the shop
about an hour before, walking away with her graceful step toward Fifth
Avenue. She had wished Ann Eliza good day in her usual affable way, and
Ann Eliza thought how odd it was that they should have been acquainted
so long, and yet that she should not know the lady’s name. From this
consideration her mind wandered to the cut of the lady’s new sleeves,
and she was vexed with herself for not having noted it more carefully.
She felt Miss Mellins might have liked to know about it. Ann Eliza’s
powers of observation had never been as keen as Evelina’s, when the
latter was not too self-absorbed to exert them. As Miss Mellins always
said, Evelina could “take patterns with her eyes”: she could have cut
that new sleeve out of a folded newspaper in a trice! Musing on these
things, Ann Eliza wished the lady would come back and give her another
look at the sleeve. It was not unlikely that she might pass that way,
for she certainly lived in or about the Square. Suddenly Ann Eliza
remarked a small neat handkerchief on the counter: it must have dropped
from the lady’s purse, and she would probably come back to get it. Ann
Eliza, pleased at the idea, sat on behind the counter and watched the
darkening street. She always lit the gas as late as possible, keeping
the box of matches at her elbow, so that if any one came she could apply
a quick flame to the gas-jet. At length through the deepening dusk she
distinguished a slim dark figure coming down the steps to the shop. With
a little warmth of pleasure about her heart she reached up to light the
gas. “I do believe I’ll ask her name this time,” she thought. She raised
the flame to its full height, and saw her sister standing in the door.

There she was at last, the poor pale shade of Evelina, her thin face
blanched of its faint pink, the stiff ripples gone from her hair, and a
mantle shabbier than Ann Eliza’s drawn about her narrow shoulders. The
glare of the gas beat full on her as she stood and looked at Ann Eliza.

“Sister--oh, Evelina! I knowed you’d come!”

Ann Eliza had caught her close with a long moan of triumph. Vague
words poured from her as she laid her cheek against Evelina’s--trivial
inarticulate endearments caught from Mrs. Hawkins’s long discourses to
her baby.

For a while Evelina let herself be passively held; then she drew back
from her sister’s clasp and looked about the shop. “I’m dead tired.
Ain’t there any fire?” she asked.

“Of course there is!” Ann Eliza, holding her hand fast, drew her into
the back room. She did not want to ask any questions yet: she simply
wanted to feel the emptiness of the room brimmed full again by the one
presence that was warmth and light to her.

She knelt down before the grate, scraped some bits of coal and kindling
from the bottom of the coal-scuttle, and drew one of the rocking-chairs
up to the weak flame. “There--that’ll blaze up in a minute,” she said.
She pressed Evelina down on the faded cushions of the rocking-chair,
and, kneeling beside her, began to rub her hands.

“You’re stone-cold, ain’t you? Just sit still and warm yourself while I
run and get the kettle. I’ve got something you always used to fancy for
supper.” She laid her hand on Evelina’s shoulder. “Don’t talk--oh, don’t
talk yet!” she implored. She wanted to keep that one frail second of
happiness between herself and what she knew must come.

Evelina, without a word, bent over the fire, stretching her thin hands
to the blaze and watching Ann Eliza fill the kettle and set the supper
table. Her gaze had the dreamy fixity of a half-awakened child’s.

Ann Eliza, with a smile of triumph, brought a slice of custard pie from
the cupboard and put it by her sister’s plate.

“You do like that, don’t you? Miss Mellins sent it down to me this
morning. She had her aunt from Brooklyn to dinner. Ain’t it funny it
just so happened?”

“I ain’t hungry,” said Evelina, rising to approach the table.

She sat down in her usual place, looked about her with the same
wondering stare, and then, as of old, poured herself out the first cup
of tea.

“Where’s the what-not gone to?” she suddenly asked.

Ann Eliza set down the teapot and rose to get a spoon from the cupboard.
With her back to the room she said: “The what-not? Why, you see, dearie,
living here all alone by myself it only made one more thing to dust; so
I sold it.”

Evelina’s eyes were still travelling about the familiar room. Though
it was against all the traditions of the Bunner family to sell any
household possession, she showed no surprise at her sister’s answer.

“And the clock? The clock’s gone too.”

“Oh, I gave that away--I gave it to Mrs. Hawkins. She’s kep’ awake so
nights with that last baby.”

“I wish you’d never bought it,” said Evelina harshly.

Ann Eliza’s heart grew faint with fear. Without answering, she crossed
over to her sister’s seat and poured her out a second cup of tea. Then
another thought struck her, and she went back to the cupboard and took
out the cordial. In Evelina’s absence considerable draughts had been
drawn from it by invalid neighbours; but a glassful of the precious
liquid still remained.

“Here, drink this right off--it’ll warm you up quicker than anything,”
 Ann Eliza said.

Evelina obeyed, and a slight spark of colour came into her cheeks.
She turned to the custard pie and began to eat with a silent voracity
distressing to watch. She did not even look to see what was left for Ann
Eliza.

“I ain’t hungry,” she said at last as she laid down her fork. “I’m only
so dead tired--that’s the trouble.”

“Then you’d better get right into bed. Here’s my old plaid
dressing-gown--you remember it, don’t you?” Ann Eliza laughed, recalling
Evelina’s ironies on the subject of the antiquated garment. With
trembling fingers she began to undo her sister’s cloak. The dress
beneath it told a tale of poverty that Ann Eliza dared not pause to
note. She drew it gently off, and as it slipped from Evelina’s shoulders
it revealed a tiny black bag hanging on a ribbon about her neck. Evelina
lifted her hand as though to screen the bag from Ann Eliza; and the
elder sister, seeing the gesture, continued her task with lowered eyes.
She undressed Evelina as quickly as she could, and wrapping her in the
plaid dressing-gown put her to bed, and spread her own shawl and her
sister’s cloak above the blanket.

“Where’s the old red comfortable?” Evelina asked, as she sank down on
the pillow.

“The comfortable? Oh, it was so hot and heavy I never used it after you
went--so I sold that too. I never could sleep under much clothes.”

She became aware that her sister was looking at her more attentively.

“I guess you’ve been in trouble too,” Evelina said.

“Me? In trouble? What do you mean, Evelina?”

“You’ve had to pawn the things, I suppose,” Evelina continued in a weary
unmoved tone. “Well, I’ve been through worse than that. I’ve been to
hell and back.”

“Oh, Evelina--don’t say it, sister!” Ann Eliza implored, shrinking
from the unholy word. She knelt down and began to rub her sister’s feet
beneath the bedclothes.

“I’ve been to hell and back--if I AM back,” Evelina repeated. She
lifted her head from the pillow and began to talk with a sudden feverish
volubility. “It began right away, less than a month after we were
married. I’ve been in hell all that time, Ann Eliza.” She fixed her eyes
with passionate intentness on Ann Eliza’s face. “He took opium. I didn’t
find it out till long afterward--at first, when he acted so strange, I
thought he drank. But it was worse, much worse than drinking.”

“Oh, sister, don’t say it--don’t say it yet! It’s so sweet just to have
you here with me again.”

“I must say it,” Evelina insisted, her flushed face burning with a kind
of bitter cruelty. “You don’t know what life’s like--you don’t know
anything about it--setting here safe all the while in this peaceful
place.”

“Oh, Evelina--why didn’t you write and send for me if it was like that?”

“That’s why I couldn’t write. Didn’t you guess I was ashamed?”

“How could you be? Ashamed to write to Ann Eliza?”

Evelina raised herself on her thin elbow, while Ann Eliza, bending over,
drew a corner of the shawl about her shoulder.

“Do lay down again. You’ll catch your death.”

“My death? That don’t frighten me! You don’t know what I’ve been
through.” And sitting upright in the old mahogany bed, with flushed
cheeks and chattering teeth, and Ann Eliza’s trembling arm clasping the
shawl about her neck, Evelina poured out her story. It was a tale
of misery and humiliation so remote from the elder sister’s innocent
experiences that much of it was hardly intelligible to her. Evelina’s
dreadful familiarity with it all, her fluency about things which Ann
Eliza half-guessed and quickly shuddered back from, seemed even more
alien and terrible than the actual tale she told. It was one thing--and
heaven knew it was bad enough!--to learn that one’s sister’s husband was
a drug-fiend; it was another, and much worse thing, to learn from that
sister’s pallid lips what vileness lay behind the word.

Evelina, unconscious of any distress but her own, sat upright, shivering
in Ann Eliza’s hold, while she piled up, detail by detail, her dreary
narrative.

“The minute we got out there, and he found the job wasn’t as good as he
expected, he changed. At first I thought he was sick--I used to try to
keep him home and nurse him. Then I saw it was something different.
He used to go off for hours at a time, and when he came back his eyes
kinder had a fog over them. Sometimes he didn’t har’ly know me, and
when he did he seemed to hate me. Once he hit me here.” She touched her
breast. “Do you remember, Ann Eliza, that time he didn’t come to see us
for a week--the time after we all went to Central Park together--and you
and I thought he must be sick?”

Ann Eliza nodded.

“Well, that was the trouble--he’d been at it then. But nothing like as
bad. After we’d been out there about a month he disappeared for a whole
week. They took him back at the store, and gave him another chance; but
the second time they discharged him, and he drifted round for ever so
long before he could get another job. We spent all our money and had to
move to a cheaper place. Then he got something to do, but they hardly
paid him anything, and he didn’t stay there long. When he found out
about the baby--”

“The baby?” Ann Eliza faltered.

“It’s dead--it only lived a day. When he found out about it, he got mad,
and said he hadn’t any money to pay doctors’ bills, and I’d better
write to you to help us. He had an idea you had money hidden away that
I didn’t know about.” She turned to her sister with remorseful eyes. “It
was him that made me get that hundred dollars out of you.”

“Hush, hush. I always meant it for you anyhow.”

“Yes, but I wouldn’t have taken it if he hadn’t been at me the whole
time. He used to make me do just what he wanted. Well, when I said I
wouldn’t write to you for more money he said I’d better try and earn
some myself. That was when he struck me.... Oh, you don’t know what I’m
talking about yet!... I tried to get work at a milliner’s, but I was so
sick I couldn’t stay. I was sick all the time. I wisht I’d ha’ died, Ann
Eliza.”

“No, no, Evelina.”

“Yes, I do. It kept getting worse and worse. We pawned the furniture,
and they turned us out because we couldn’t pay the rent; and so then we
went to board with Mrs. Hochmuller.”

Ann Eliza pressed her closer to dissemble her own tremor. “Mrs.
Hochmuller?”

“Didn’t you know she was out there? She moved out a month after we did.
She wasn’t bad to me, and I think she tried to keep him straight--but
Linda--”

“Linda--?”

“Well, when I kep’ getting worse, and he was always off, for days at a
time, the doctor had me sent to a hospital.”

“A hospital? Sister--sister!”

“It was better than being with him; and the doctors were real kind to
me. After the baby was born I was very sick and had to stay there a good
while. And one day when I was laying there Mrs. Hochmuller came in as
white as a sheet, and told me him and Linda had gone off together and
taken all her money. That’s the last I ever saw of him.” She broke off
with a laugh and began to cough again.

Ann Eliza tried to persuade her to lie down and sleep, but the rest of
her story had to be told before she could be soothed into consent. After
the news of Ramy’s flight she had had brain fever, and had been sent
to another hospital where she stayed a long time--how long she couldn’t
remember. Dates and days meant nothing to her in the shapeless ruin of
her life. When she left the hospital she found that Mrs. Hochmuller had
gone too. She was penniless, and had no one to turn to. A lady visitor
at the hospital was kind, and found her a place where she did housework;
but she was so weak they couldn’t keep her. Then she got a job as
waitress in a down-town lunch-room, but one day she fainted while she
was handing a dish, and that evening when they paid her they told her
she needn’t come again.

“After that I begged in the streets”--(Ann Eliza’s grasp again grew
tight)--“and one afternoon last week, when the matinees was coming out,
I met a man with a pleasant face, something like Mr. Hawkins, and he
stopped and asked me what the trouble was. I told him if he’d give me
five dollars I’d have money enough to buy a ticket back to New York, and
he took a good look at me and said, well, if that was what I wanted he’d
go straight to the station with me and give me the five dollars there.
So he did--and he bought the ticket, and put me in the cars.”

Evelina sank back, her face a sallow wedge in the white cleft of the
pillow. Ann Eliza leaned over her, and for a long time they held each
other without speaking.

They were still clasped in this dumb embrace when there was a step in
the shop and Ann Eliza, starting up, saw Miss Mellins in the doorway.

“My sakes, Miss Bunner! What in the land are you doing? Miss
Evelina--Mrs. Ramy--it ain’t you?”

Miss Mellins’s eyes, bursting from their sockets, sprang from Evelina’s
pallid face to the disordered supper table and the heap of worn clothes
on the floor; then they turned back to Ann Eliza, who had placed herself
on the defensive between her sister and the dress-maker.

“My sister Evelina has come back--come back on a visit. She was taken
sick in the cars on the way home--I guess she caught cold--so I made her
go right to bed as soon as ever she got here.”

Ann Eliza was surprised at the strength and steadiness of her voice.
Fortified by its sound she went on, her eyes on Miss Mellins’s baffled
countenance: “Mr. Ramy has gone west on a trip--a trip connected with
his business; and Evelina is going to stay with me till he comes back.”




XII


What measure of belief her explanation of Evelina’s return obtained
in the small circle of her friends Ann Eliza did not pause to enquire.
Though she could not remember ever having told a lie before, she adhered
with rigid tenacity to the consequences of her first lapse from truth,
and fortified her original statement with additional details whenever a
questioner sought to take her unawares.

But other and more serious burdens lay on her startled conscience. For
the first time in her life she dimly faced the awful problem of
the inutility of self-sacrifice. Hitherto she had never thought
of questioning the inherited principles which had guided her life.
Self-effacement for the good of others had always seemed to her both
natural and necessary; but then she had taken it for granted that it
implied the securing of that good. Now she perceived that to refuse the
gifts of life does not ensure their transmission to those for whom they
have been surrendered; and her familiar heaven was unpeopled. She felt
she could no longer trust in the goodness of God, and there was only a
black abyss above the roof of Bunner Sisters.

But there was little time to brood upon such problems. The care of
Evelina filled Ann Eliza’s days and nights. The hastily summoned doctor
had pronounced her to be suffering from pneumonia, and under his care
the first stress of the disease was relieved. But her recovery was only
partial, and long after the doctor’s visits had ceased she continued to
lie in bed, too weak to move, and seemingly indifferent to everything
about her.

At length one evening, about six weeks after her return, she said to her
sister: “I don’t feel’s if I’d ever get up again.”

Ann Eliza turned from the kettle she was placing on the stove. She was
startled by the echo the words woke in her own breast.

“Don’t you talk like that, Evelina! I guess you’re on’y tired out--and
disheartened.”

“Yes, I’m disheartened,” Evelina murmured.

A few months earlier Ann Eliza would have met the confession with a word
of pious admonition; now she accepted it in silence.

“Maybe you’ll brighten up when your cough gets better,” she suggested.

“Yes--or my cough’ll get better when I brighten up,” Evelina retorted
with a touch of her old tartness.

“Does your cough keep on hurting you jest as much?”

“I don’t see’s there’s much difference.”

“Well, I guess I’ll get the doctor to come round again,” Ann Eliza said,
trying for the matter-of-course tone in which one might speak of sending
for the plumber or the gas-fitter.

“It ain’t any use sending for the doctor--and who’s going to pay him?”

“I am,” answered the elder sister. “Here’s your tea, and a mite of
toast. Don’t that tempt you?”

Already, in the watches of the night, Ann Eliza had been tormented by
that same question--who was to pay the doctor?--and a few days before
she had temporarily silenced it by borrowing twenty dollars of Miss
Mellins. The transaction had cost her one of the bitterest struggles
of her life. She had never borrowed a penny of any one before, and the
possibility of having to do so had always been classed in her mind
among those shameful extremities to which Providence does not let
decent people come. But nowadays she no longer believed in the personal
supervision of Providence; and had she been compelled to steal the money
instead of borrowing it, she would have felt that her conscience was the
only tribunal before which she had to answer. Nevertheless, the actual
humiliation of having to ask for the money was no less bitter; and she
could hardly hope that Miss Mellins would view the case with the
same detachment as herself. Miss Mellins was very kind; but she not
unnaturally felt that her kindness should be rewarded by according
her the right to ask questions; and bit by bit Ann Eliza saw Evelina’s
miserable secret slipping into the dress-maker’s possession.

When the doctor came she left him alone with Evelina, busying herself in
the shop that she might have an opportunity of seeing him alone on his
way out. To steady herself she began to sort a trayful of buttons, and
when the doctor appeared she was reciting under her breath: “Twenty-four
horn, two and a half cards fancy pearl...” She saw at once that his look
was grave.

He sat down on the chair beside the counter, and her mind travelled
miles before he spoke.

“Miss Bunner, the best thing you can do is to let me get a bed for your
sister at St. Luke’s.”

“The hospital?”

“Come now, you’re above that sort of prejudice, aren’t you?” The doctor
spoke in the tone of one who coaxes a spoiled child. “I know how devoted
you are--but Mrs. Ramy can be much better cared for there than here.
You really haven’t time to look after her and attend to your business as
well. There’ll be no expense, you understand--”

Ann Eliza made no answer. “You think my sister’s going to be sick a good
while, then?” she asked.

“Well, yes--possibly.”

“You think she’s very sick?”

“Well, yes. She’s very sick.”

His face had grown still graver; he sat there as though he had never
known what it was to hurry.

Ann Eliza continued to separate the pearl and horn buttons. Suddenly she
lifted her eyes and looked at him. “Is she going to die?”

The doctor laid a kindly hand on hers. “We never say that, Miss Bunner.
Human skill works wonders--and at the hospital Mrs. Ramy would have
every chance.”

“What is it? What’s she dying of?”

The doctor hesitated, seeking to substitute a popular phrase for the
scientific terminology which rose to his lips.

“I want to know,” Ann Eliza persisted.

“Yes, of course; I understand. Well, your sister has had a hard
time lately, and there is a complication of causes, resulting in
consumption--rapid consumption. At the hospital--”

“I’ll keep her here,” said Ann Eliza quietly.

After the doctor had gone she went on for some time sorting the buttons;
then she slipped the tray into its place on a shelf behind the counter
and went into the back room. She found Evelina propped upright against
the pillows, a flush of agitation on her cheeks. Ann Eliza pulled up the
shawl which had slipped from her sister’s shoulders.

“How long you’ve been! What’s he been saying?”

“Oh, he went long ago--he on’y stopped to give me a prescription. I was
sorting out that tray of buttons. Miss Mellins’s girl got them all mixed
up.”

She felt Evelina’s eyes upon her.

“He must have said something: what was it?”

“Why, he said you’d have to be careful--and stay in bed--and take this
new medicine he’s given you.”

“Did he say I was going to get well?”

“Why, Evelina!”

“What’s the use, Ann Eliza? You can’t deceive me. I’ve just been up to
look at myself in the glass; and I saw plenty of ’em in the hospital
that looked like me. They didn’t get well, and I ain’t going to.” Her
head dropped back. “It don’t much matter--I’m about tired. On’y there’s
one thing--Ann Eliza--”

The elder sister drew near to the bed.

“There’s one thing I ain’t told you. I didn’t want to tell you yet
because I was afraid you might be sorry--but if he says I’m going to
die I’ve got to say it.” She stopped to cough, and to Ann Eliza it now
seemed as though every cough struck a minute from the hours remaining to
her.

“Don’t talk now--you’re tired.”

“I’ll be tireder to-morrow, I guess. And I want you should know. Sit
down close to me--there.”

Ann Eliza sat down in silence, stroking her shrunken hand.

“I’m a Roman Catholic, Ann Eliza.”

“Evelina--oh, Evelina Bunner! A Roman Catholic--YOU? Oh, Evelina, did HE
make you?”

Evelina shook her head. “I guess he didn’t have no religion; he never
spoke of it. But you see Mrs. Hochmuller was a Catholic, and so when I
was sick she got the doctor to send me to a Roman Catholic hospital,
and the sisters was so good to me there--and the priest used to come and
talk to me; and the things he said kep’ me from going crazy. He seemed
to make everything easier.”

“Oh, sister, how could you?” Ann Eliza wailed. She knew little of the
Catholic religion except that “Papists” believed in it--in itself a
sufficient indictment. Her spiritual rebellion had not freed her from
the formal part of her religious belief, and apostasy had always seemed
to her one of the sins from which the pure in mind avert their thoughts.

“And then when the baby was born,” Evelina continued, “he christened it
right away, so it could go to heaven; and after that, you see, I had to
be a Catholic.”

“I don’t see--”

“Don’t I have to be where the baby is? I couldn’t ever ha’ gone there if
I hadn’t been made a Catholic. Don’t you understand that?”

Ann Eliza sat speechless, drawing her hand away. Once more she
found herself shut out of Evelina’s heart, an exile from her closest
affections.

“I’ve got to go where the baby is,” Evelina feverishly insisted.

Ann Eliza could think of nothing to say; she could only feel that
Evelina was dying, and dying as a stranger in her arms. Ramy and the
day-old baby had parted her forever from her sister.

Evelina began again. “If I get worse I want you to send for a priest.
Miss Mellins’ll know where to send--she’s got an aunt that’s a Catholic.
Promise me faithful you will.”

“I promise,” said Ann Eliza.

After that they spoke no more of the matter; but Ann Eliza now
understood that the little black bag about her sister’s neck, which
she had innocently taken for a memento of Ramy, was some kind of
sacrilegious amulet, and her fingers shrank from its contact when she
bathed and dressed Evelina. It seemed to her the diabolical instrument
of their estrangement.




XIII


Spring had really come at last. There were leaves on the ailanthus-tree
that Evelina could see from her bed, gentle clouds floated over it in
the blue, and now and then the cry of a flower-seller sounded from the
street.

One day there was a shy knock on the back-room door, and Johnny Hawkins
came in with two yellow jonquils in his fist. He was getting bigger and
squarer, and his round freckled face was growing into a smaller copy of
his father’s. He walked up to Evelina and held out the flowers.

“They blew off the cart and the fellow said I could keep ’em. But you
can have ’em,” he announced.

Ann Eliza rose from her seat at the sewing-machine and tried to take the
flowers from him.

“They ain’t for you; they’re for her,” he sturdily objected; and Evelina
held out her hand for the jonquils.

After Johnny had gone she lay and looked at them without speaking. Ann
Eliza, who had gone back to the machine, bent her head over the seam she
was stitching; the click, click, click of the machine sounded in her ear
like the tick of Ramy’s clock, and it seemed to her that life had gone
backward, and that Evelina, radiant and foolish, had just come into the
room with the yellow flowers in her hand.

When at last she ventured to look up, she saw that her sister’s head
had drooped against the pillow, and that she was sleeping quietly. Her
relaxed hand still held the jonquils, but it was evident that they had
awakened no memories; she had dozed off almost as soon as Johnny had
given them to her. The discovery gave Ann Eliza a startled sense of the
ruins that must be piled upon her past. “I don’t believe I could have
forgotten that day, though,” she said to herself. But she was glad that
Evelina had forgotten.

Evelina’s disease moved on along the usual course, now lifting her on a
brief wave of elation, now sinking her to new depths of weakness.
There was little to be done, and the doctor came only at lengthening
intervals. On his way out he always repeated his first friendly
suggestion about sending Evelina to the hospital; and Ann Eliza always
answered: “I guess we can manage.”

The hours passed for her with the fierce rapidity that great joy or
anguish lends them. She went through the days with a sternly smiling
precision, but she hardly knew what was happening, and when night-fall
released her from the shop, and she could carry her work to Evelina’s
bedside, the same sense of unreality accompanied her, and she still
seemed to be accomplishing a task whose object had escaped her memory.

Once, when Evelina felt better, she expressed a desire to make some
artificial flowers, and Ann Eliza, deluded by this awakening interest,
got out the faded bundles of stems and petals and the little tools and
spools of wire. But after a few minutes the work dropped from Evelina’s
hands and she said: “I’ll wait until to-morrow.”

She never again spoke of the flower-making, but one day, after watching
Ann Eliza’s laboured attempt to trim a spring hat for Mrs. Hawkins, she
demanded impatiently that the hat should be brought to her, and in a
trice had galvanized the lifeless bow and given the brim the twist it
needed.

These were rare gleams; and more frequent were the days of speechless
lassitude, when she lay for hours silently staring at the window, shaken
only by the hard incessant cough that sounded to Ann Eliza like the
hammering of nails into a coffin.

At length one morning Ann Eliza, starting up from the mattress at the
foot of the bed, hastily called Miss Mellins down, and ran through the
smoky dawn for the doctor. He came back with her and did what he could
to give Evelina momentary relief; then he went away, promising to
look in again before night. Miss Mellins, her head still covered with
curl-papers, disappeared in his wake, and when the sisters were alone
Evelina beckoned to Ann Eliza.

“You promised,” she whispered, grasping her sister’s arm; and Ann Eliza
understood. She had not yet dared to tell Miss Mellins of Evelina’s
change of faith; it had seemed even more difficult than borrowing the
money; but now it had to be done. She ran upstairs after the dress-maker
and detained her on the landing.

“Miss Mellins, can you tell me where to send for a priest--a Roman
Catholic priest?”

“A priest, Miss Bunner?”

“Yes. My sister became a Roman Catholic while she was away. They were
kind to her in her sickness--and now she wants a priest.” Ann Eliza
faced Miss Mellins with unflinching eyes.

“My aunt Dugan’ll know. I’ll run right round to her the minute I get my
papers off,” the dress-maker promised; and Ann Eliza thanked her.

An hour or two later the priest appeared. Ann Eliza, who was watching,
saw him coming down the steps to the shop-door and went to meet him. His
expression was kind, but she shrank from his peculiar dress, and from
his pale face with its bluish chin and enigmatic smile. Ann Eliza
remained in the shop. Miss Mellins’s girl had mixed the buttons again
and she set herself to sort them. The priest stayed a long time with
Evelina. When he again carried his enigmatic smile past the counter, and
Ann Eliza rejoined her sister, Evelina was smiling with something of the
same mystery; but she did not tell her secret.

After that it seemed to Ann Eliza that the shop and the back room no
longer belonged to her. It was as though she were there on sufferance,
indulgently tolerated by the unseen power which hovered over Evelina
even in the absence of its minister. The priest came almost daily; and
at last a day arrived when he was called to administer some rite of
which Ann Eliza but dimly grasped the sacramental meaning. All she knew
was that it meant that Evelina was going, and going, under this alien
guidance, even farther from her than to the dark places of death.

When the priest came, with something covered in his hands, she crept
into the shop, closing the door of the back room to leave him alone with
Evelina.

It was a warm afternoon in May, and the crooked ailanthus-tree rooted in
a fissure of the opposite pavement was a fountain of tender green. Women
in light dresses passed with the languid step of spring; and presently
there came a man with a hand-cart full of pansy and geranium plants who
stopped outside the window, signalling to Ann Eliza to buy.

An hour went by before the door of the back room opened and the priest
reappeared with that mysterious covered something in his hands. Ann
Eliza had risen, drawing back as he passed. He had doubtless divined her
antipathy, for he had hitherto only bowed in going in and out; but to
day he paused and looked at her compassionately.

“I have left your sister in a very beautiful state of mind,” he said in
a low voice like a woman’s. “She is full of spiritual consolation.”

Ann Eliza was silent, and he bowed and went out. She hastened back to
Evelina’s bed, and knelt down beside it. Evelina’s eyes were very
large and bright; she turned them on Ann Eliza with a look of inner
illumination.

“I shall see the baby,” she said; then her eyelids fell and she dozed.

The doctor came again at nightfall, administering some last palliatives;
and after he had gone Ann Eliza, refusing to have her vigil shared by
Miss Mellins or Mrs. Hawkins, sat down to keep watch alone.

It was a very quiet night. Evelina never spoke or opened her eyes,
but in the still hour before dawn Ann Eliza saw that the restless hand
outside the bed-clothes had stopped its twitching. She stooped over and
felt no breath on her sister’s lips.


The funeral took place three days later. Evelina was buried in
Calvary Cemetery, the priest assuming the whole care of the necessary
arrangements, while Ann Eliza, a passive spectator, beheld with stony
indifference this last negation of her past.

A week afterward she stood in her bonnet and mantle in the doorway of
the little shop. Its whole aspect had changed. Counter and shelves were
bare, the window was stripped of its familiar miscellany of artificial
flowers, note-paper, wire hat-frames, and limp garments from the dyer’s;
and against the glass pane of the doorway hung a sign: “This store to
let.”

Ann Eliza turned her eyes from the sign as she went out and locked the
door behind her. Evelina’s funeral had been very expensive, and Ann
Eliza, having sold her stock-in-trade and the few articles of furniture
that remained to her, was leaving the shop for the last time. She had
not been able to buy any mourning, but Miss Mellins had sewed some crape
on her old black mantle and bonnet, and having no gloves she slipped her
bare hands under the folds of the mantle.

It was a beautiful morning, and the air was full of a warm sunshine that
had coaxed open nearly every window in the street, and summoned to the
window-sills the sickly plants nurtured indoors in winter. Ann Eliza’s
way lay westward, toward Broadway; but at the corner she paused and
looked back down the familiar length of the street. Her eyes rested a
moment on the blotched “Bunner Sisters” above the empty window of the
shop; then they travelled on to the overflowing foliage of the Square,
above which was the church tower with the dial that had marked the hours
for the sisters before Ann Eliza had bought the nickel clock. She looked
at it all as though it had been the scene of some unknown life, of which
the vague report had reached her: she felt for herself the only remote
pity that busy people accord to the misfortunes which come to them by
hearsay.

She walked to Broadway and down to the office of the house-agent to whom
she had entrusted the sub-letting of the shop. She left the key with
one of his clerks, who took it from her as if it had been any one of a
thousand others, and remarked that the weather looked as if spring
was really coming; then she turned and began to move up the great
thoroughfare, which was just beginning to wake to its multitudinous
activities.

She walked less rapidly now, studying each shop window as she passed,
but not with the desultory eye of enjoyment: the watchful fixity of her
gaze overlooked everything but the object of its quest. At length she
stopped before a small window wedged between two mammoth buildings,
and displaying, behind its shining plate-glass festooned with muslin,
a varied assortment of sofa-cushions, tea-cloths, pen-wipers, painted
calendars and other specimens of feminine industry. In a corner of
the window she had read, on a slip of paper pasted against the pane:
“Wanted, a Saleslady,” and after studying the display of fancy articles
beneath it, she gave her mantle a twitch, straightened her shoulders and
went in.

Behind a counter crowded with pin-cushions, watch-holders and other
needlework trifles, a plump young woman with smooth hair sat sewing bows
of ribbon on a scrap basket. The little shop was about the size of the
one on which Ann Eliza had just closed the door; and it looked as fresh
and gay and thriving as she and Evelina had once dreamed of making
Bunner Sisters. The friendly air of the place made her pluck up courage
to speak.

“Saleslady? Yes, we do want one. Have you any one to recommend?” the
young woman asked, not unkindly.

Ann Eliza hesitated, disconcerted by the unexpected question; and the
other, cocking her head on one side to study the effect of the bow she
had just sewed on the basket, continued: “We can’t afford more than
thirty dollars a month, but the work is light. She would be expected to
do a little fancy sewing between times. We want a bright girl: stylish,
and pleasant manners. You know what I mean. Not over thirty, anyhow; and
nice-looking. Will you write down the name?”

Ann Eliza looked at her confusedly. She opened her lips to explain, and
then, without speaking, turned toward the crisply-curtained door.

“Ain’t you going to leave the AD-dress?” the young woman called out
after her. Ann Eliza went out into the thronged street. The great city,
under the fair spring sky, seemed to throb with the stir of innumerable
beginnings. She walked on, looking for another shop window with a sign
in it.


THE END.