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CHAPTER 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.
Content of CHAPTER XV [Edith Wharton's novel: Summer]
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