 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. A Girl Came Out of Lawyer Royal'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 spring-like 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 hatchered gate cast almost the only roadside shadow between Lawyer Royal'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 hatchered 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 Royal'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 Annabelle Balch, the girl who sometimes came from Springfield to spend a week with old Miss Hatchard, straightened the sunburn 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 hid the street to herself. North Dormer is at all times an empty place, and at three o'clock on a June afternoon its few abled-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 plowed 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-wagon driven over the hills to Hepburn, put into a way-train, and carried to Nettleton. In the course of that incredible day, Charity Royal had, for the first and only time, experienced railway travel, looked into shops with plate-glass fronts, tasted coconut pie, sat in a theater, 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 Royal'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 Royal 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. Royal 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 vapor 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 Annabelle 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. Halfway 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 in a series of papers called The Recluse of Eagle Range, enjoyed the acquaintance of Washington Irving and Fitz-Green Hallock, 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 Royal, every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, sat at her desk under a freckled steel engraving of the deceased author, and wondered if he felt any debtor 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 lamp-lighter. But there was no other way of getting any lace to trim her summer blouse, and since Allie 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-catalog?' 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 him 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 nettle'd 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 cobwebby 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 round 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 is my cousin, and I am staying there.' The young man answered, adding, as if to disarm a visible distrust, "'My name is Harnie. Lucia's Harnie. 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 weekly 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 neighbors. Dormer, Hamlin, 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 gray walls stood decaying by the stream, and Hamlin, 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 lain 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 passed out. CHAPTER II The hours of the Hatchard Memorial Librarian were from three to five, and Charity Royal'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 and 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, 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 light and air, perfume and color, every drop of blood in her responded. She loved the roughness of the dry mountain grass under her palms, the smell of the time 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 geography, and of books relating to trade and bookkeeping. But no one else asked for anything except intervals, Uncle Tom's cabin, or opening of a chestnut bur, 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-wave speaking, that was abrupt yet soft, just as his hands were sunburnt and sinewy, yet with smooth nails like a woman's. His hair was sunburnt looking too, or rather the colour of brakin after frost, his eyes grey, with the appealing look of the short-sighted, 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, were 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 Royal was the biggest man in North Dormer. So much too big for it, in fact, the outsiders, who didn't know, always wondered how it held him. In spite of everything, and in spite even of Miss Hatchard, lawyer Royal ruled in North Dormer, and charity ruled in lawyer Royal'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. It 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. Royal 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. Royal's bed, and opening her eyes on the cold neatness of the room that was afterward to be hers. Mrs. Royal died seven or eight years later, and by that time Charity had taken the measure of most things about her. She knew that Mrs. Royal was sad and timid and weak. She knew that lawyer Royal 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. Royal's disinterestedness in bringing her down, and to keep alive in her a becoming sense of her dependence. She knew that Mr. Royal was her guardian, but that he had not legally adopted her, though everybody spoke of her as Charity Royal, and she knew why he had come back to live at North Dormer instead of practicing at Nettleton, where he had begun his legal career. After Mrs. Royal's death, there was some talk of sending her to a boarding school. Ms. Hatchard suggested it, and had a long conference with Mr. Royal, 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. Royal'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 Edelton, 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. Royal's too lonesome. Miss Hatchard blinked perplexedly behind her eyeglasses. Her long, frail face was full of puzzled wrinkles, and she lent 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 adactic 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 blond cap. But she must have felt a vague relief at having her explanation cut short, for she concluded again, invoking her 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 Royal 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. Out of 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 had 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 Royal, 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 humor. 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 damp fool ever to leave Nettleton. It was Mrs. Royal 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 oil-cloth 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. Royal's voice, low in preemptory, 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 to-night.' "'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 a pointed 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. Royal give you all you require? No one is rich in North Dormer. I want to earn enough money to get away.' "'To get away?' Miss Hatchard's puzzled wrinkles deepened, and there was a distressful pause. "'You want to leave, Mr. Royal?' "'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 walls, and after a faint cough of indecision she brought out. "'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 clergymen, the select men of North Stormer, 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. Royal is trying at times, but his wife bore with him, and you must always remember, Charity, that it was Mr. Royal who brought you down from the mountain.' Charity went home and opened the door of Mr. Royal'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. Royal'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? So is 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 a lowered head he asked, Where'd you go to? Anywhere 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 select men to take me at the library, and I want a woman here in the house with me," she repeated. Mr. Royal 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 will 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. Royal 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 the 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 Royals and do the cooking. End of Chapter 2. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Robin Cotter. April 2007. Summer by Edith Wharton. Chapter 3. It was not in the room known at the Red House as Mr. Royals' 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. Royal, 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 charities 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 Royal 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 Yassirbidi, which two of them, Orma Frye and the eldest target 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 shiflus. Charity suspected that she came for her keep. Mr. Royal was too close a man to give a dollar a day to a smart girl when he could get a deaf popper 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. Royal 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 defence 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 accentuation. 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 discomforture. It's no use trying to be anything in this place. She muttered to her pillow, and she shriveled at the vision of vague metropolises, shining super nettletons, where girls in better clothes than bell-bolches talked fluently of architecture to young men, with hands like Lucy as Harnes. 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 wash-stand, 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 on bleach nightgown about the throat. She undid it, freed her thin shoulders, and saw herself a bride in low-necked satin walking down an aisle with Lucy as Harnie. 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. Royal'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 depatriated of him filled her heart. He became to her a horrible old man. The next day when Mr. Royal 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. Royal 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 horsehair 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 these 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 smoldering resentment broke into a blaze. I know, Orma Frye and that toad of a target girl, and Ben Frye like is not. He's going round with her. The lowdown sneaks. I always knew they'd try to have me out, as if anybody ever came to the library anyhow. But he did, yesterday, and you weren't there. Yesterday? She laughed at her happy recollection. And 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 Harnie'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 home? 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 things 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. Royal 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 shortcomings. 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. Royal'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 Royal, 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 pin-cushion, who said she wasn't careful, put on her hat, and swept down again and out into the street. If Mr. Royal 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 were out in the sun. She said aloud as the familiar chill took her. She looked with apporance 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 Hatcher to announce her 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 for Miss Hatcher came in whistling. 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 Hatcher's got no right to give her key to other folks, any more than I have. I'm the librarian, and I know the bylaws. 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 to-morrow. 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 Hatcher or to any one? The apparent evasiveness of the reply caused Charity's indignation to overflow. I don't know why you should. I could understand Ormer 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 I to target either, when she got a legacy from her stepbrother only 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 that have kept the books any better than I did, why Ormer 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 them. But I wouldn't let Bill Solis from over the hill hang round here waiting for the youngest target 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 Royal, 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. Something horny looked seriously 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 Hatcher 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 someone 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 mold her 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 than 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 some time. Do 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 in 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 draft 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 and 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 is 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 quarrelous 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 Royal, 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. Royal 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 colored, too. I give you my word that I won't do that. Only wait till to-morrow, will you? He looked straight into her eyes with his shy, gray 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. End of CHAPTER IV. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Robin Cotter April 2007. SUMMER by Edith Wharton CHAPTER 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 Royal 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 beaches 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 meadow-sweet and yellow flags in the pasture beyond. All this bubbling of sap and slipping of sheaths and bursting of calluses 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 pinesap prevailed over the spice of time 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. She 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 horse-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, lift-highet?' 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 target. Charity sank back on her heels and looked at him musingly. She was not in the least afraid of poor lift-highet, 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-royal's pasture. They won't any of them touch you up there, if you ever was to come up. But I don't suppose you will. He had added philosophically, looking at her new shoes, and at the red ribbon that Mrs. Royal had tied in her hair. Charity had, in truth, never felt any desire to visit her birth-place. She did not care to have it known that she was of the mountain, and was shy of being seen in talk with the lift-highet. 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-highet. 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 is 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-highet, for a while, considered her with surprise, then he scratched his head and shifted his weight from one tattered soul to the other. There is always the same folks in the brown house, he said, with his vague grin. They are from a pure way, ain't they? Their names 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-highet'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 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 Hyatt's 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 Hyatt's won't. What do you want to 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 were 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 been 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 Liv Hyatt knows who my mother was. She mused, and had 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 Liv Hyatt's 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 sketchbook 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 illusion, and plunged into a monologue on art and life. To avoid the awkwardness of listening with a blank face, and also to escape the surprise stare of the inhabitants of the houses before which he would abruptly pull up their horse and open his sketchbook, 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 royal. 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 flandering 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 solace 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 neighbor's suspecter 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. Royal. 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 to open a preference, Mr. Royal 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. Royal 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. Royal's intervention gave a sharpened joy to the hours she spent with young Harnie, 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 gypsy-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 time, 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 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 outlaws, 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 the hill, there should be a handful of people who don't give a damn for anybody. The words that 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 effected 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 gray clothes. What a good day! Where are you going to take me to-morrow? CHAPTER VI That evening, after supper, Charity sat alone in the kitchen and listened to Mr. Royal and young Harny 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. Royal's was full of a sonorious satisfaction. It was a long time since he had had any one of Lucia's Harny'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 Harny, 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. Royal 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. Royal would let him take his meals at the Red House. And after a day's deliberation Mr. Royal 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 neighborhood. At any rate he had been prompt in accepting Harny'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 unwanted present, the only gift of money she had ever received from him, represented Harny's first payment. But the young man's coming had brought Mr. Royal 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 Harny 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 Harny's friendly deference. Their conversation was mostly about politics and beyond her range, but tonight he'd 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. Royal say. Why, the mountain's a blot. That's what it is, sir, a blot. Let's scum up there ought to have been run in long ago, and would have, if the people down here hadn't been cleaned scared of them. The mountain belongs to this township, and its north dormer's fault if there's a gang of thieves and outlaws living over there, inside of us, defying the laws of their country. Why, there ain't a sheriff or a tax collector, or a coroner, derse to 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 troubled the justice of the peace, either. They just heard 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. Royal's views than to express his own. I suppose you've never been up there yourself, he presently asked. Yes, I have, said Mr. Royal with a contemptuous laugh. The wise acres down here told me I'd be done for before I got back, but nobody lifted a finger to hurt me, and I just had one of their gangs sent up for seven years, too. You went up after that? Yes, sir, right after it. The fellow came down to Nettleton and ran amok 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 the jail. 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 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. Royal had not named her, had even avoided any illusion 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 of the outlaw 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 at 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 Royals 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. Royal to receive him as a border, but where else in North Dormer could he have boarded? Not with Carrick Frye, whose wife was paralyzed, and whose large family crowded his table to overflowing. Not with the targets, 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 Allie picked up her living as a seamstress. Mr. Royals 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 is the whole affair was to her, and hard as she found it to understand why he paused enchanted before certain neglected and painless 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, as 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 admiration brought him nearest, some chance-word, some unconscious illusion 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 she'd go away. I wish she'd go to-morrow, 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 Hamlin, 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 in 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. Royal 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 are you going to? he asked. Why, Mr. Harney, 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 unto the farmlands about Creston Lake, and gradually up the ridges of the Eagle Range. At last they reached the oak 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. Many tied the horse to a tree-stump, and they unpacked their basket under an aged walnut, with a riven trunk out of which bumble-bees darted. The sun had grown hot, and behind them was the noon-day murmur of the forest. Summer insects danced on the air, and a flock of white butterflies fanned the mobile tips of the crimson fire-weed. In the valley below not a house was visible, it seemed as if charity royal and young horny were the only living beings in the great hollow of earth and sky. Charity spirits flagged, and disquieting thoughts stole back on her. Young horny 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. Royal 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 Hamlin, where there was a little deserted house he wanted to see. But shyness and pride held her back. He had better know what kind of folks I belonged 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 is a storm coming up. He followed her gaze 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 bullrushes. 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 Harnes, 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 clapboards, the window-panes were broken and patched with rags, and the garden was a poisonous tangle of nettles, burducks, and tall swamp-weeds over which big blue bottles hummed. At the sound of wheels a child with a toe-head and pale eyes like lift-hiats peered over the fence and then slipped away behind an outhouse. Harnes 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 in 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 were here after all, Harnes 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, Harnes 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 Hyatt's would not be likely to trouble her, but she was not sure how they would treat a city fellow. Lucy as Harnie 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 Royals, ain't you? The color rose in Charity's face. I'm Charity Royal, 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 can stay, she merely said. Then she turned away and stooped over a dish in which she was stirring something. Harnie 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 toe-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. Royals, 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. Royals' room with the high-backed horse-hair 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 traveled 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 fold of her dress. The younger woman must have noticed it, for she went out of the room, and came back with a broken teacup, 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 drag 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 at 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 bomb 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 it 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 giving 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 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 Hamlin, and all the stars were out in a clear sky when they reached the north dormer valley, and drove up to the red house. End of chapter 6