VI
That evening after supper Charity sat alone in the kitchen and listenedto Mr. Royall and young Harney talking in the porch.
She had remained indoors after the table had been cleared and old Verenahad hobbled up to bed. The kitchen window was open, and Charity seatedherself near it, her idle hands on her knee. The evening was cool andstill. 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 alittle owl came through the dusk, and between its calls the men's voicesrose and fell.
Mr. Royall's was full of a sonorous satisfaction. It was a long timesince he had had anyone of Lucius Harney's quality to talk to: Charitydivined that the young man symbolized all his ruined and unforgottenpast. When Miss Hatchard had been called to Springfield by the illnessof a widowed sister, and young Harney, by that time seriously embarkedon his task of drawing and measuring all the old houses betweenNettleton and the New Hampshire border, had suggested the possibility ofboarding at the red house in his cousin's absence, Charity had trembledlest Mr. Royall should refuse. There had been no question of lodgingthe young man: there was no room for him. But it appeared that he couldstill live at Miss Hatchard's if Mr. Royall would let him take his mealsat the red house; and after a day's deliberation Mr. Royall consented.
Charity suspected him of being glad of the chance to make a littlemoney. He had the reputation of being an avaricious man; but she wasbeginning to think he was probably poorer than people knew. His practicehad become little more than a vague legend, revived only at lengtheningintervals by a summons to Hepburn or Nettleton and he appeared todepend for his living mainly on the scant produce of his farm, andon the commissions received from the few insurance agencies that herepresented in the neighbourhood. At any rate, he had been prompt inaccepting Harney's offer to hire the buggy at a dollar and a half aday; and his satisfaction with the bargain had manifested itself,unexpectedly enough, at the end of the first week, by his tossing aten-dollar bill into Charity's lap as she sat one day retrimming her oldhat.
"Here--go get yourself a Sunday bonnet that'll make all the other girlsmad," he said, looking at her with a sheepish twinkle in his deep-seteyes; and she immediately guessed that the unwonted present--the onlygift of money she had ever received from him--represented Harney's firstpayment.
But the young man's coming had brought Mr. Royall other thanpecuniary benefit. It gave him, for the first time in years, a man'scompanionship. Charity had only a dim understanding of her guardian'sneeds; but she knew he felt himself above the people among whom helived, and she saw that Lucius Harney thought him so. She was surprisedto find how well he seemed to talk now that he had a listener whounderstood him; and she was equally struck by young Harney's friendlydeference.
Their conversation was mostly about politics, and beyond her range; buttonight it had a peculiar interest for her, for they had begun to speakof the Mountain. She drew back a little, lest they should see she was inhearing.
"The Mountain? The Mountain?" she heard Mr. Royall say. "Why, theMountain's a blot--that's what it is, sir, a blot. That scum up thereought to have been run in long ago--and would have, if the people downhere hadn't been clean scared of them. The Mountain belongs to thistownship, and it's North Dormer's fault if there's a gang of thievesand outlaws living over there, in sight of us, defying the laws of theircountry. Why, there ain't a sheriff or a tax-collector or a coroner'ddurst go up there. When they hear of trouble on the Mountain theselectmen look the other way, and pass an appropriation to beautify thetown pump. The only man that ever goes up is the minister, and he goesbecause 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 heardof their having the minister up to marry them. And they never troublethe Justice of the Peace either. They just herd together like theheathen."
He went on, explaining in somewhat technical language how the littlecolony of squatters had contrived to keep the law at bay, and Charity,with burning eagerness, awaited young Harney's comment; but the youngman seemed more concerned to hear Mr. Royall's views than to express hisown.
"I suppose you've never been up there yourself?" he presently asked.
"Yes, I have," said Mr. Royall with a contemptuous laugh. "The wiseacresdown here told me I'd be done for before I got back; but nobody lifted afinger to hurt me. And I'd just had one of their gang sent up for sevenyears too."
"You went up after that?"
"Yes, sir: right after it. The fellow came down to Nettleton and ranamuck, the way they sometimes do. After they've done a wood-cuttingjob they come down and blow the money in; and this man ended up withmanslaughter. I got him convicted, though they were scared of theMountain even at Nettleton and then a queer thing happened. The fellowsent 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 allthe rest of it,' he says. 'I've got a job to be done for me up on theMountain, and you're the only man I seen in court that looks as if he'ddo it.' He told me he had a child up there--or thought he had--a littlegirl; and he wanted her brought down and reared like a Christian. I wassorry for the fellow, so I went up and got the child." He paused, andCharity listened with a throbbing heart. "That's the only time I everwent up the Mountain," he concluded.
There was a moment's silence; then Harney spoke. "And the child--had sheno 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 guessthe mother's dead by now, with the life she was leading. Anyhow, I'venever heard of her from that day to this."
"My God, how ghastly," Harney murmured; and Charity, choking withhumiliation, sprang to her feet and ran upstairs. She knew at last: knewthat 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 thishistory of her origin related to the one being in whose eyes she longedto appear superior to the people about her! She had noticed that Mr.Royall had not named her, had even avoided any allusion that mightidentify her with the child he had brought down from the Mountain; andshe knew it was out of regard for her that he had kept silent. Butof what use was his discretion, since only that afternoon, misled byHarney's interest in the out-law colony, she had boasted to him ofcoming from the Mountain? Now every word that had been spoken showed herhow such an origin must widen the distance between them.
During his ten days' sojourn at North Dormer Lucius Harney had notspoken a word of love to her. He had intervened in her behalf with hiscousin, 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 thatthose merits had been questioned. He had asked her to drive him aboutthe country when he hired lawyer Royall's buggy to go on his sketchingexpeditions; but that too was natural enough, since he was unfamiliarwith the region. Lastly, when his cousin was called to Springfield, hehad begged Mr. Royall to receive him as a boarder; but where else inNorth Dormer could he have boarded? Not with Carrick Fry, whose wife wasparalysed, and whose large family crowded his table to over-flowing; notwith 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 thestrength to cook her own meals while Ally picked up her living as aseamstress. Mr. Royall's was the only house where the young mancould have been offered a decent hospitality. There had been nothing,therefore, in the outward course of events to raise in Charity's breastthe hopes with which it trembled. But beneath the visible incidentsresulting from Lucius Harney's arrival there ran an undercurrent asmysterious and potent as the influence that makes the forest break intoleaf before the ice is off the pools.
The business on which Harney had come was authentic; Charity had seenthe letter from a New York publisher commissioning him to make a studyof the eighteenth century houses in the less familiar districts of NewEngland. But incomprehensible as the whole affair was to her, and hardas she foun
d it to understand why he paused enchanted before certainneglected and paintless houses, while others, refurbished and "improved"by the local builder, did not arrest a glance, she could not but suspectthat Eagle County was less rich in architecture than he averred, andthat the duration of his stay (which he had fixed at a month) was notunconnected with the look in his eyes when he had first paused beforeher in the library. Everything that had followed seemed to have grownout of that look: his way of speaking to her, his quickness in catchingher meaning, his evident eagerness to prolong their excursions and toseize on every chance of being with her.
The signs of his liking were manifest enough; but it was hard to guesshow much they meant, because his manner was so different from anythingNorth Dormer had ever shown her. He was at once simpler and moredeferential than any one she had known; and sometimes it was just whenhe was simplest that she most felt the distance between them. Educationand opportunity had divided them by a width that no effort of hers couldbridge, and even when his youth and his admiration brought him nearest,some chance word, some unconscious allusion, seemed to thrust her backacross the gulf.
Never had it yawned so wide as when she fled up to her room carryingwith her the echo of Mr. Royall's tale. Her first confused thoughtwas the prayer that she might never see young Harney again. It wastoo bitter to picture him as the detached impartial listener to sucha story. "I wish he'd go away: I wish he'd go tomorrow, and never comeback!" 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 soula tossing misery on which her hopes and dreams spun about like drowningstraws.
Of all this tumult only a vague heart-soreness was left when she openedher eyes the next morning. Her first thought was of the weather, forHarney 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 tostart at nine. The sun rose without a cloud, and earlier than usual shewas in the kitchen, making cheese sandwiches, decanting buttermilk intoa bottle, wrapping up slices of apple pie, and accusing Verena of havinggiven away a basket she needed, which had always hung on a hook in thepassage. When she came out into the porch, in her pink calico, which hadrun a little in the washing, but was still bright enough to set offher dark tints, she had such a triumphant sense of being a part of thesunlight and the morning that the last trace of her misery vanished.What did it matter where she came from, or whose child she was, whenlove was dancing in her veins, and down the road she saw young Harneycoming toward her?
Mr. Royall was in the porch too. He had said nothing at breakfast, butwhen she came out in her pink dress, the basket in her hand, he lookedat 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 horseyet?"
She made no answer, and he sat tilted back in his chair, drumming on therail of the porch. It was the first time he had ever spoken of the youngman in that tone, and Charity felt a faint chill of apprehension. Aftera moment he stood up and walked away toward the bit of ground behind thehouse, where the hired man was hoeing.
The air was cool and clear, with the autumnal sparkle that a north windbrings to the hills in early summer, and the night had been so stillthat the dew hung on everything, not as a lingering moisture, but inseparate beads that glittered like diamonds on the ferns and grasses. Itwas a long drive to the foot of Porcupine: first across the valley, withblue hills bounding the open slopes; then down into the beech-woods,following the course of the Creston, a brown brook leaping over velvetledges; then out again onto the farm-lands about Creston Lake, andgradually up the ridges of the Eagle Range. At last they reached theyoke of the hills, and before them opened another valley, green andwild, and beyond it more blue heights eddying away to the sky like thewaves of a receding tide.
Harney tied the horse to a tree-stump, and they unpacked their basketunder an aged walnut with a riven trunk out of which bumblebees darted.The sun had grown hot, and behind them was the noonday murmur ofthe forest. Summer insects danced on the air, and a flock of whitebutterflies fanned the mobile tips of the crimson fireweed. In thevalley below not a house was visible; it seemed as if Charity Royall andyoung Harney were the only living beings in the great hollow of earthand 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 underhis head, his eyes on the network of leaves above him, she wondered ifhe were musing on what Mr. Royall had told him, and if it had reallydebased her in his thoughts. She wished he had not asked her to take himthat day to the brown house; she did not want him to see the people shecame from while the story of her birth was fresh in his mind. More thanonce she had been on the point of suggesting that they should follow theridge and drive straight to Hamblin, where there was a little desertedhouse he wanted to see; but shyness and pride held her back. "He'dbetter know what kind of folks I belong to," she said to herself, witha somewhat forced defiance; for in reality it was shame that kept hersilent.
Suddenly she lifted her hand and pointed to the sky. "There's a stormcoming up."
He followed her glance and smiled. "Is it that scrap of cloud among thepines that frightens you?"
"It's over the Mountain; and a cloud over the Mountain always meanstrouble."
"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 theyturned into the road under the shaggy flank of Porcupine, and cameupon the brown house. It stood alone beside a swamp bordered with alderthickets and tall bulrushes. Not another dwelling was in sight, and itwas hard to guess what motive could have actuated the early settler whohad made his home in so unfriendly a spot.
Charity had picked up enough of her companion's erudition to understandwhat had attracted him to the house. She noticed the fan-shaped traceryof the broken light above the door, the flutings of the paintlesspilasters at the corners, and the round window set in the gable; and sheknew that, for reasons that still escaped her, these were things tobe admired and recorded. Still, they had seen other houses far more"typical" (the word was Harney's); and as he threw the reins on thehorse's neck he said with a slight shiver of repugnance: "We won't staylong."
Against the restless alders turning their white lining to the storm thehouse looked singularly desolate. The paint was almost gone from theclap-boards, the window-panes were broken and patched with rags, and thegarden was a poisonous tangle of nettles, burdocks and tall swamp-weedsover which big blue-bottles hummed.
At the sound of wheels a child with a tow-head and pale eyes like LiffHyatt'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 rainbroke on them. It came slant-wise, on a furious gale, laying shrubs andyoung trees flat, tearing off their leaves like an autumn storm, turningthe road into a river, and making hissing pools of every hollow. Thunderrolled incessantly through the roar of the rain, and a strange glitterof light ran along the ground under the increasing blackness.
"Lucky we're here after all," Harney laughed. He fastened the horseunder a half-roofless shed, and wrapping Charity in his coat ran withher to the house. The boy had not reappeared, and as there was noresponse to their knocks Harney turned the door-handle and they went in.
There were three people in the kitchen to which the door admittedthem. An old woman with a handkerchief over her head was sitting by thewindow. She held a sickly-looking kitten on her knees, and wheneverit jumped down and tried to limp away she stooped and lifted it backwithout any change of her aged, unnoticing face. Another woman, theunkempt creature that Charity had once noticed in driving by, stoodleaning against the window-frame and stared at them; and near the stovean unshaved man in a tattered shirt sat on a barrel asleep.
The
place was bare and miserable and the air heavy with the smell ofdirt and stale tobacco. Charity's heart sank. Old derided tales ofthe Mountain people came back to her, and the woman's stare was sodisconcerting, and the face of the sleeping man so sodden and bestial,that her disgust was tinged with a vague dread. She was not afraid forherself; she knew the Hyatts would not be likely to trouble her; but shewas not sure how they would treat a "city fellow."
Lucius Harney would certainly have laughed at her fears. He glancedabout the room, uttered a general "How are you?" to which no oneresponded, and then asked the younger woman if they might take sheltertill 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, asif asserting her right to the name in the very place where it might havebeen 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 stirringsomething.
Harney and Charity sat down on a bench made of a board resting on twostarch boxes. They faced a door hanging on a broken hinge, and throughthe crack they saw the eyes of the tow-headed boy and of a pale littlegirl with a scar across her cheek. Charity smiled, and signed to thechildren to come in; but as soon as they saw they were discovered theyslipped away on bare feet. It occurred to her that they were afraid ofrousing the sleeping man; and probably the woman shared their fear, forshe moved about as noiselessly and avoided going near the stove.
The rain continued to beat against the house, and in one or two placesit sent a stream through the patched panes and ran into pools on thefloor. Every now and then the kitten mewed and struggled down, and theold woman stooped and caught it, holding it tight in her bony hands; andonce or twice the man on the barrel half woke, changed his positionand dozed again, his head falling forward on his hairy breast. As theminutes passed, and the rain still streamed against the windows, aloathing of the place and the people came over Charity. The sight ofthe weak-minded old woman, of the cowed children, and the ragged mansleeping off his liquor, made the setting of her own life seem a visionof peace and plenty. She thought of the kitchen at Mr. Royall's, withits scrubbed floor and dresser full of china, and the peculiar smell ofyeast and coffee and soft-soap that she had always hated, but that nowseemed the very symbol of household order. She saw Mr. Royall's room,with the high-backed horsehair chair, the faded rag carpet, the row ofbooks on a shelf, the engraving of "The Surrender of Burgoyne" overthe stove, and the mat with a brown and white spaniel on a moss-greenborder. And then her mind travelled to Miss Hatchard's house, where allwas freshness, purity and fragrance, and compared to which the red househad always seemed so poor and plain.
"This is where I belong--this is where I belong," she kept repeating toherself; but the words had no meaning for her. Every instinct and habitmade her a stranger among these poor swamp-people living like vermin intheir lair. With all her soul she wished she had not yielded to Harney'scuriosity, and brought him there.
The rain had drenched her, and she began to shiver under the thin foldsof her dress. The younger woman must have noticed it, for she went outof the room and came back with a broken tea-cup which she offered toCharity. It was half full of whiskey, and Charity shook her head; butHarney took the cup and put his lips to it. When he had set it downCharity saw him feel in his pocket and draw out a dollar; he hesitateda moment, and then put it back, and she guessed that he did not wish herto 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. Theyrested vacantly for a moment on Charity and Harney, and then closedagain, and his head drooped; but a look of anxiety came into the woman'sface. She glanced out of the window and then came up to Harney. "I guessyou better go along now," she said. The young man understood and got tohis feet. "Thank you," he said, holding out his hand. She seemed not tonotice the gesture, and turned away as they opened the door.
The rain was still coming down, but they hardly noticed it: the pure airwas like balm in their faces. The clouds were rising and breaking, andbetween their edges the light streamed down from remote blue hollows.Harney untied the horse, and they drove off through the diminishingrain, which was already beaded with sunlight.
For a while Charity was silent, and her companion did not speak. Shelooked timidly at his profile: it was graver than usual, as though hetoo 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 bemy relations, for all I know." She did not want him to think that sheregretted having told him her story.
"Poor creatures," he rejoined. "I wonder why they came down to thatfever-hole."
She laughed ironically. "To better themselves! It's worse up on theMountain. Bash Hyatt married the daughter of the farmer that used to ownthe brown house. That was him by the stove, I suppose."
Harney seemed to find nothing to say and she went on: "I saw you takeout 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'sneck. "I wasn't sure----"
"Was it because you knew they were my folks, and thought I'd be ashamedto see you give them money?"
He turned to her with eyes full of reproach. "Oh, Charity----" It wasthe first time he had ever called her by her name. Her misery welledover.
"I ain't--I ain't ashamed. They're my people, and I ain't ashamed ofthem," she sobbed.
"My dear..." he murmured, putting his arm about her; and she leanedagainst him and wept out her pain.
It was too late to go around to Hamblin, and all the stars were out in aclear sky when they reached the North Dormer valley and drove up to thered house.