XVII
CHARITY lay on the floor on a mattress, as her dead mother's body hadlain. The room in which she lay was cold and dark and low-ceilinged, andeven poorer and barer than the scene of Mary Hyatt's earthly pilgrimage.On the other side of the fireless stove Liff Hyatt's mother slept ona blanket, with two children--her grandchildren, she said--rolled upagainst her like sleeping puppies. They had their thin clothes spreadover them, having given the only other blanket to their guest.
Through the small square of glass in the opposite wall Charity saw adeep funnel of sky, so black, so remote, so palpitating with frostystars that her very soul seemed to be sucked into it. Up theresomewhere, she supposed, the God whom Mr. Miles had invoked was waitingfor Mary Hyatt to appear. What a long flight it was! And what would shehave to say when she reached Him?
Charity's bewildered brain laboured with the attempt to picture hermother's past, and to relate it in any way to the designs of a just butmerciful God; but it was impossible to imagine any link between them.She herself felt as remote from the poor creature she had seen loweredinto her hastily dug grave as if the height of the heavens divided them.She had seen poverty and misfortune in her life; but in a communitywhere poor thrifty Mrs. Hawes and the industrious Ally represented thenearest approach to destitution there was nothing to suggest the savagemisery of the Mountain farmers.
As she lay there, half-stunned by her tragic initiation, Charity vainlytried to think herself into the life about her. But she could not evenmake out what relationship these people bore to each other, or to herdead mother; they seemed to be herded together in a sort of passivepromiscuity in which their common misery was the strongest link. Shetried to picture to herself what her life would have been if she hadgrown up on the Mountain, running wild in rags, sleeping on the floorcurled up against her mother, like the pale-faced children huddledagainst old Mrs. Hyatt, and turning into a fierce bewildered creaturelike the girl who had apostrophized her in such strange words. She wasfrightened by the secret affinity she had felt with this girl, and bythe light it threw on her own beginnings. Then she remembered what Mr.Royall had said in telling her story to Lucius Harney: "Yes, there wasa mother; but she was glad to have the child go. She'd have given her toanybody...."
Well! after all, was her mother so much to blame? Charity, since thatday, had always thought of her as destitute of all human feeling; nowshe seemed merely pitiful. What mother would not want to save her childfrom such a life? Charity thought of the future of her own child, andtears welled into her aching eyes, and ran down over her face. If shehad been less exhausted, less burdened with his weight, she would havesprung up then and there and fled away....
The grim hours of the night dragged themselves slowly by, and at lastthe sky paled and dawn threw a cold blue beam into the room. She layin her corner staring at the dirty floor, the clothes-line hung withdecaying rags, the old woman huddled against the cold stove, and thelight gradually spreading across the wintry world, and bringing with ita new day in which she would have to live, to choose, to act, to makeherself a place among these people--or to go back to the life she hadleft. A mortal lassitude weighed on her. There were moments when shefelt that all she asked was to go on lying there unnoticed; then hermind revolted at the thought of becoming one of the miserable herd fromwhich she sprang, and it seemed as though, to save her child from sucha fate, she would find strength to travel any distance, and bear anyburden life might put on her.
Vague thoughts of Nettleton flitted through her mind. She said toherself that she would find some quiet place where she could bear herchild, and give it to decent people to keep; and then she would go outlike Julia Hawes and earn its living and hers. She knew that girls ofthat kind sometimes made enough to have their children nicely cared for;and every other consideration disappeared in the vision of her baby,cleaned and combed and rosy, and hidden away somewhere where she couldrun in and kiss it, and bring it pretty things to wear. Anything,anything was better than to add another life to the nest of misery onthe Mountain....
The old woman and the children were still sleeping when Charity rosefrom her mattress. Her body was stiff with cold and fatigue, and shemoved slowly lest her heavy steps should rouse them. She was faint withhunger, and had nothing left in her satchel; but on the table she sawthe half of a stale loaf. No doubt it was to serve as the breakfast ofold Mrs. Hyatt and the children; but Charity did not care; she had herown baby to think of. She broke off a piece of the bread and ateit greedily; then her glance fell on the thin faces of the sleepingchildren, and filled with compunction she rummaged in her satchel forsomething with which to pay for what she had taken. She found one ofthe pretty chemises that Ally had made for her, with a blue ribbon runthrough its edging. It was one of the dainty things on which she hadsquandered her savings, and as she looked at it the blood rushed to herforehead. She laid the chemise on the table, and stealing across thefloor lifted the latch and went out....
The morning was icy cold and a pale sun was just rising above theeastern shoulder of the Mountain. The houses scattered on the hillsidelay cold and smokeless under the sun-flecked clouds, and not a humanbeing was in sight. Charity paused on the threshold and tried todiscover the road by which she had come the night before. Across thefield surrounding Mrs. Hyatt's shanty she saw the tumble-down house inwhich she supposed the funeral service had taken place. The trailran across the ground between the two houses and disappeared in thepine-wood on the flank of the Mountain; and a little way to the right,under a wind-beaten thorn, a mound of fresh earth made a dark spoton the fawn-coloured stubble. Charity walked across the field to theground. As she approached it she heard a bird's note in the still air,and looking up she saw a brown song-sparrow perched in an upper branchof the thorn above the grave. She stood a minute listening to his smallsolitary song; then she rejoined the trail and began to mount the hillto the pine-wood.
Thus far she had been impelled by the blind instinct of flight; but eachstep seemed to bring her nearer to the realities of which her feverishvigil had given only a shadowy image. Now that she walked again in adaylight world, on the way back to familiar things, her imaginationmoved more soberly. On one point she was still decided: she could notremain at North Dormer, and the sooner she got away from it the better.But everything beyond was darkness.
As she continued to climb the air grew keener, and when she passed fromthe shelter of the pines to the open grassy roof of the Mountain thecold wind of the night before sprang out on her. She bent her shouldersand struggled on against it for a while; but presently her breathfailed, and she sat down under a ledge of rock overhung by shiveringbirches. From where she sat she saw the trail wandering across thebleached grass in the direction of Hamblin, and the granite wall of theMountain falling away to infinite distances. On that side of the ridgethe valleys still lay in wintry shadow; but in the plain beyond the sunwas touching village roofs and steeples, and gilding the haze of smokeover far-off invisible towns.
Charity felt herself a mere speck in the lonely circle of the sky. Theevents of the last two days seemed to have divided her forever fromher short dream of bliss. Even Harney's image had been blurred by thatcrushing experience: she thought of him as so remote from her that heseemed hardly more than a memory. In her fagged and floating mind onlyone sensation had the weight of reality; it was the bodily burden ofher child. But for it she would have felt as rootless as the whiffs ofthistledown the wind blew past her. Her child was like a load that heldher down, and yet like a hand that pulled her to her feet. She said toherself that she must get up and struggle on....
Her eyes turned back to the trail across the top of the Mountain, andin the distance she saw a buggy against the sky. She knew its antiqueoutline, and the gaunt build of the old horse pressing forward withlowered head; and after a moment she recognized the heavy bulk of theman who held the reins. The buggy was following the trail and makingstraight for the pine-wood through which she had climbed; and she knewat once that the driver was in search of her. Her fi
rst impulse wasto crouch down under the ledge till he had passed; but the instinct ofconcealment was overruled by the relief of feeling that someone was nearher in the awful emptiness. She stood up and walked toward the buggy.
Mr. Royall saw her, and touched the horse with the whip. A minute or twolater he was abreast of Charity; their eyes met, and without speaking heleaned over and helped her up into the buggy.
She tried to speak, to stammer out some explanation, but no words cameto her; and as he drew the cover over her knees he simply said: "Theminister told me he'd left you up here, so I come up for you."
He turned the horse's head, and they began to jog back toward Hamblin.Charity sat speechless, staring straight ahead of her, and Mr. Royalloccasionally uttered a word of encouragement to the horse: "Get alongthere, Dan.... I gave him a rest at Hamblin; but I brought him alongpretty quick, and it's a stiff pull up here against the wind."
As he spoke it occurred to her for the first time that to reach the topof the Mountain so early he must have left North Dormer at the coldesthour of the night, and have travelled steadily but for the halt atHamblin; and she felt a softness at her heart which no act of his hadever produced since he had brought her the Crimson Rambler because shehad given up boarding-school to stay with him.
After an interval he began again: "It was a day just like this, onlyspitting snow, when I come up here for you the first time." Then, as iffearing that she might take his remark as a reminder of past benefits,he added quickly: "I dunno's you think it was such a good job, either."
"Yes, I do," she murmured, looking straight ahead of her.
"Well," he said, "I tried----"
He did not finish the sentence, and she could think of nothing more tosay.
"Ho, there, Dan, step out," he muttered, jerking the bridle. "We ain'thome yet.--You cold?" he asked abruptly.
She shook her head, but he drew the cover higher up, and stooped to tuckit in about the ankles. She continued to look straight ahead. Tears ofweariness and weakness were dimming her eyes and beginning to run over,but she dared not wipe them away lest he should observe the gesture.
They drove in silence, following the long loops of the descent uponHamblin, and Mr. Royall did not speak again till they reached theoutskirts of the village. Then he let the reins droop on the dashboardand drew out his watch.
"Charity," he said, "you look fair done up, and North Dormer's a goodishway off. I've figured out that we'd do better to stop here long enoughfor you to get a mouthful of breakfast and then drive down to Crestonand take the train."
She roused herself from her apathetic musing. "The train--what train?"
Mr. Royall, without answering, let the horse jog on till they reachedthe door of the first house in the village. "This is old Mrs. Hobart'splace," he said. "She'll give us something hot to drink."
Charity, half unconsciously, found herself getting out of the buggy andfollowing him in at the open door. They entered a decent kitchen with afire crackling in the stove. An old woman with a kindly face was settingout cups and saucers on the table. She looked up and nodded as theycame in, and Mr. Royall advanced to the stove, clapping his numb handstogether.
"Well, Mrs. Hobart, you got any breakfast for this young lady? You cansee she's cold and hungry."
Mrs. Hobart smiled on Charity and took a tin coffee-pot from the fire."My, you do look pretty mean," she said compassionately.
Charity reddened, and sat down at the table. A feeling of completepassiveness had once more come over her, and she was conscious only ofthe pleasant animal sensations of warmth and rest.
Mrs. Hobart put bread and milk on the table, and then went out of thehouse: Charity saw her leading the horse away to the barn across theyard. She did not come back, and Mr. Royall and Charity sat alone at thetable with the smoking coffee between them. He poured out a cup for her,and put a piece of bread in the saucer, and she began to eat.
As the warmth of the coffee flowed through her veins her thoughtscleared and she began to feel like a living being again; but the returnto life was so painful that the food choked in her throat and she satstaring down at the table in silent anguish.
After a while Mr. Royall pushed back his chair. "Now, then," he said,"if you're a mind to go along----" She did not move, and he continued:"We can pick up the noon train for Nettleton if you say so."
The words sent the blood rushing to her face, and she raised herstartled eyes to his. He was standing on the other side of the tablelooking at her kindly and gravely; and suddenly she understood what hewas going to say. She continued to sit motionless, a leaden weight uponher lips.
"You and me have spoke some hard things to each other in our time,Charity; and there's no good that I can see in any more talking now. ButI'll never feel any way but one about you; and if you say so we'll drivedown in time to catch that train, and go straight to the minister'shouse; and when you come back home you'll come as Mrs. Royall."
His voice had the grave persuasive accent that had moved his hearers atthe Home Week festival; she had a sense of depths of mournful toleranceunder that easy tone. Her whole body began to tremble with the dread ofher own weakness.
"Oh, I can't----" she burst out desperately.
"Can't what?"
She herself did not know: she was not sure if she was rejecting what heoffered, or already struggling against the temptation of taking whatshe no longer had a right to. She stood up, shaking and bewildered, andbegan to speak:
"I know I ain't been fair to you always; but I want to be now.... I wantyou to know... I want..." Her voice failed her and she stopped.
Mr. Royall leaned against the wall. He was paler than usual, but hisface was composed and kindly and her agitation did not appear to perturbhim.
"What's all this about wanting?" he said as she paused. "Do you knowwhat you really want? I'll tell you. You want to be took home and tookcare of. And I guess that's all there is to say."
"No... it's not all...."
"Ain't it?" He looked at his watch. "Well, I'll tell you another thing.All I want is to know if you'll marry me. If there was anything else,I'd tell you so; but there ain't. Come to my age, a man knows the thingsthat matter and the things that don't; that's about the only good turnlife does us."
His tone was so strong and resolute that it was like a supporting armabout her. She felt her resistance melting, her strength slipping awayfrom her as he spoke.
"Don't cry, Charity," he exclaimed in a shaken voice. She looked up,startled at his emotion, and their eyes met.
"See here," he said gently, "old Dan's come a long distance, and we'vegot to let him take it easy the rest of the way...."
He picked up the cloak that had slipped to her chair and laid it abouther shoulders. She followed him out of the house, and then walked acrossthe yard to the shed, where the horse was tied. Mr. Royall unblanketedhim and led him out into the road. Charity got into the buggy and hedrew the cover about her and shook out the reins with a cluck. Whenthey reached the end of the village he turned the horse's head towardCreston.
XVIII
They began to jog down the winding road to the valley at old Dan'slanguid pace. Charity felt herself sinking into deeper depths ofweariness, and as they descended through the bare woods there weremoments when she lost the exact sense of things, and seemed to besitting beside her lover with the leafy arch of summer bending overthem. But this illusion was faint and transitory. For the most part shehad only a confused sensation of slipping down a smooth irresistiblecurrent; and she abandoned herself to the feeling as a refuge from thetorment of thought.
Mr. Royall seldom spoke, but his silent presence gave her, for the firsttime, a sense of peace and security. She knew that where he was therewould be warmth, rest, silence; and for the moment they were all shewanted. She shut her eyes, and even these things grew dim to her....
In the train, during the short run from Creston to Nettleton, the warmtharoused her, and the consciousness of being under strange eyes gave hera momentary energy. She
sat upright, facing Mr. Royall, and stared outof the window at the denuded country. Forty-eight hours earlier, whenshe had last traversed it, many of the trees still held their leaves;but the high wind of the last two nights had stripped them, and thelines of the landscape' were as finely pencilled as in December. Afew days of autumn cold had wiped out all trace of the rich fields andlanguid groves through which she had passed on the Fourth of July; andwith the fading of the landscape those fervid hours had faded, too. Shecould no longer believe that she was the being who had lived them; shewas someone to whom something irreparable and overwhelming had happened,but the traces of the steps leading up to it had almost vanished.
When the train reached Nettleton and she walked out into the square atMr. Royall's side the sense of unreality grew more overpowering. Thephysical strain of the night and day had left no room in her mind fornew sensations and she followed Mr. Royall as passively as a tiredchild. As in a confused dream she presently found herself sitting withhim in a pleasant room, at a table with a red and white table-clothon which hot food and tea were placed. He filled her cup and plate andwhenever she lifted her eyes from them she found his resting on her withthe same steady tranquil gaze that had reassured and strengthenedher when they had faced each other in old Mrs. Hobart's kitchen. Aseverything else in her consciousness grew more and more confusedand immaterial, became more and more like the universal shimmer thatdissolves the world to failing eyes, Mr. Royall's presence began todetach itself with rocky firmness from this elusive background. She hadalways thought of him--when she thought of him at all--as of someonehateful and obstructive, but whom she could outwit and dominate whenshe chose to make the effort. Only once, on the day of the Old Home Weekcelebration, while the stray fragments of his address drifted acrossher troubled mind, had she caught a glimpse of another being, a being sodifferent from the dull-witted enemy with whom she had supposed herselfto be living that even through the burning mist of her own dreams hehad stood out with startling distinctness. For a moment, then, what hesaid--and something in his way of saying it--had made her see why he hadalways struck her as such a lonely man. But the mist of her dreams hadhidden him again, and she had forgotten that fugitive impression.
It came back to her now, as they sat at the table, and gave her, throughher own immeasurable desolation, a sudden sense of their nearness toeach other. But all these feelings were only brief streaks of light inthe grey blur of her physical weakness. Through it she was aware thatMr. Royall presently left her sitting by the table in the warm room, andcame back after an interval with a carriage from the station--a closed"hack" with sun-burnt blue silk blinds--in which they drove togetherto a house covered with creepers and standing next to a church with acarpet of turf before it. They got out at this house, and the carriagewaited while they walked up the path and entered a wainscoted hall andthen a room full of books. In this room a clergyman whom Charity hadnever seen received them pleasantly, and asked them to be seated for afew minutes while witnesses were being summoned.
Charity sat down obediently, and Mr. Royall, his hands behind his back,paced slowly up and down the room. As he turned and faced Charity, shenoticed that his lips were twitching a little; but the look in his eyeswas grave and calm. Once he paused before her and said timidly: "Yourhair's got kinder loose with the wind," and she lifted her hands andtried to smooth back the locks that had escaped from her braid. Therewas a looking-glass in a carved frame on the wall, but she was ashamedto look at herself in it, and she sat with her hands folded on her kneetill the clergyman returned. Then they went out again, along a sort ofarcaded passage, and into a low vaulted room with a cross on an altar,and rows of benches. The clergyman, who had left them at the door,presently reappeared before the altar in a surplice, and a lady who wasprobably his wife, and a man in a blue shirt who had been raking deadleaves on the lawn, came in and sat on one of the benches.
The clergyman opened a book and signed to Charity and Mr. Royall toapproach. Mr. Royall advanced a few steps, and Charity followed him asshe had followed him to the buggy when they went out of Mrs. Hobart'skitchen; she had the feeling that if she ceased to keep close to him,and do what he told her to do, the world would slip away from beneathher feet.
The clergyman began to read, and on her dazed mind there rose the memoryof Mr. Miles, standing the night before in the desolate house of theMountain, and reading out of the same book words that had the same dreadsound of finality:
"I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful dayof judgment when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that ifeither of you know any impediment whereby ye may not be lawfully joinedtogether..."
Charity raised her eyes and met Mr. Royall's. They were still lookingat her kindly and steadily. "I will!" she heard him say a moment later,after another interval of words that she had failed to catch. She was sobusy trying to understand the gestures that the clergyman was signallingto her to make that she no longer heard what was being said. Afteranother interval the lady on the bench stood up, and taking her hand putit in Mr. Royall's. It lay enclosed in his strong palm and she felta ring that was too big for her being slipped on her thin finger. Sheunderstood then that she was married....
Late that afternoon Charity sat alone in a bedroom of the fashionablehotel where she and Harney had vainly sought a table on the Fourth ofJuly. She had never before been in so handsomely furnished a room. Themirror above the dressing-table reflected the high head-board and flutedpillow-slips of the double bed, and a bedspread so spotlessly white thatshe had hesitated to lay her hat and jacket on it. The humming radiatordiffused an atmosphere of drowsy warmth, and through a half-open doorshe saw the glitter of the nickel taps above twin marble basins.
For a while the long turmoil of the night and day had slipped away fromher and she sat with closed eyes, surrendering herself to the spell ofwarmth and silence. But presently this merciful apathy was succeeded bythe sudden acuteness of vision with which sick people sometimes wake outof a heavy sleep. As she opened her eyes they rested on the picturethat hung above the bed. It was a large engraving with a dazzling whitemargin enclosed in a wide frame of bird's-eye maple with an inner scrollof gold. The engraving represented a young man in a boat on a lakeover-hung with trees. He was leaning over to gather water-lilies for thegirl in a light dress who lay among the cushions in the stern. The scenewas full of a drowsy midsummer radiance, and Charity averted her eyesfrom it and, rising from her chair, began to wander restlessly about theroom.
It was on the fifth floor, and its broad window of plate glass lookedover the roofs of the town. Beyond them stretched a wooded landscape inwhich the last fires of sunset were picking out a steely gleam. Charitygazed at the gleam with startled eyes. Even through the gatheringtwilight she recognized the contour of the soft hills encircling it, andthe way the meadows sloped to its edge. It was Nettleton Lake that shewas looking at.
She stood a long time in the window staring out at the fading water. Thesight of it had roused her for the first time to a realization of whatshe had done. Even the feeling of the ring on her hand had not broughther this sharp sense of the irretrievable. For an instant the oldimpulse of flight swept through her; but it was only the lift of abroken wing. She heard the door open behind her, and Mr. Royall came in.
He had gone to the barber's to be shaved, and his shaggy grey hair hadbeen trimmed and smoothed. He moved strongly and quickly, squaring hisshoulders and carrying his head high, as if he did not want to passunnoticed.
"What are you doing in the dark?" he called out in a cheerful voice.Charity made no answer. He went up to the window to draw the blind, andputting his finger on the wall flooded the room with a blaze of lightfrom the central chandelier. In this unfamiliar illumination husbandand wife faced each other awkwardly for a moment; then Mr. Royall said:"We'll step down and have some supper, if you say so."
The thought of food filled her with repugnance; but not daring toconfess it she smoothed her hair and followed him to the lift.
&nbs
p; An hour later, coming out of the glare of the dining-room, she waited inthe marble-panelled hall while Mr. Royall, before the brass latticeof one of the corner counters, selected a cigar and bought anevening paper. Men were lounging in rocking chairs under the blazingchandeliers, travellers coming and going, bells ringing, portersshuffling by with luggage. Over Mr. Royall's shoulder, as he leanedagainst the counter, a girl with her hair puffed high smirked and noddedat a dapper drummer who was getting his key at the desk across the hall.
Charity stood among these cross-currents of life as motionless and inertas if she had been one of the tables screwed to the marble floor. Allher soul was gathered up into one sick sense of coming doom, and shewatched Mr. Royall in fascinated terror while he pinched the cigars insuccessive boxes and unfolded his evening paper with a steady hand.
Presently he turned and joined her. "You go right along up to bed--I'mgoing to sit down here and have my smoke," he said. He spoke as easilyand naturally as if they had been an old couple, long used to eachother's ways, and her contracted heart gave a flutter of relief. Shefollowed him to the lift, and he put her in and enjoined the buttonedand braided boy to show her to her room.
She groped her way in through the darkness, forgetting where theelectric button was, and not knowing how to manipulate it. But a whiteautumn moon had risen, and the illuminated sky put a pale light in theroom. By it she undressed, and after folding up the ruffled pillow-slipscrept timidly under the spotless counterpane. She had never felt suchsmooth sheets or such light warm blankets; but the softness of the beddid not soothe her. She lay there trembling with a fear that ran throughher veins like ice. "What have I done? Oh, what have I done?" shewhispered, shuddering to her pillow; and pressing her face against itto shut out the pale landscape beyond the window she lay in the darknessstraining her ears, and shaking at every footstep that approached....
Suddenly she sat up and pressed her hands against her frightened heart.A faint sound had told her that someone was in the room; but she musthave slept in the interval, for she had heard no one enter. The moon wassetting beyond the opposite roofs, and in the darkness outlinedagainst the grey square of the window, she saw a figure seated in therocking-chair. The figure did not move: it was sunk deep in the chair,with bowed head and folded arms, and she saw that it was Mr. Royall whosat there. He had not undressed, but had taken the blanket from thefoot of the bed and laid it across his knees. Trembling and holding herbreath she watched him, fearing that he had been roused by her movement;but he did not stir, and she concluded that he wished her to think hewas asleep.
As she continued to watch him ineffable relief stole slowly over her,relaxing her strained nerves and exhausted body. He knew, then... heknew... it was because he knew that he had married her, and that hesat there in the darkness to show her she was safe with him. A stirof something deeper than she had ever felt in thinking of him flittedthrough her tired brain, and cautiously, noiselessly, she let her headsink on the pillow....
When she woke the room was full of morning light, and her first glanceshowed her that she was alone in it. She got up and dressed, and asshe was fastening her dress the door opened, and Mr. Royall came in. Helooked old and tired in the bright daylight, but his face wore the sameexpression of grave friendliness that had reassured her on the Mountain.It was as if all the dark spirits had gone out of him.
They went downstairs to the dining-room for breakfast, and afterbreakfast he told her he had some insurance business to attend to. "Iguess while I'm doing it you'd better step out and buy yourself whateveryou need." He smiled, and added with an embarrassed laugh: "You know Ialways wanted you to beat all the other girls." He drew something fromhis pocket, and pushed it across the table to her; and she saw that hehad given her two twenty-dollar bills. "If it ain't enough there's morewhere that come from--I want you to beat 'em all hollow," he repeated.
She flushed and tried to stammer out her thanks, but he had pushed backhis chair and was leading the way out of the dining-room. In the hall hepaused a minute to say that if it suited her they would take the threeo'clock train back to North Dormer; then he took his hat and coat fromthe rack and went out.
A few minutes later Charity went out, too. She had watched to see inwhat direction he was going, and she took the opposite way and walkedquickly down the main street to the brick building on the corner ofLake Avenue. There she paused to look cautiously up and down thethoroughfare, and then climbed the brass-bound stairs to Dr. Merkle'sdoor. The same bushy-headed mulatto girl admitted her, and after thesame interval of waiting in the red plush parlor she was once moresummoned to Dr. Merkle's office. The doctor received her withoutsurprise, and led her into the inner plush sanctuary.
"I thought you'd be back, but you've come a mite too soon: I told youto be patient and not fret," she observed, after a pause of penetratingscrutiny.
Charity drew the money from her breast. "I've come to get my bluebrooch," she said, flushing.
"Your brooch?" Dr. Merkle appeared not to remember. "My, yes--I get somany things of that kind. Well, my dear, you'll have to wait while I getit out of the safe. I don't leave valuables like that laying round likethe noospaper."
She disappeared for a moment, and returned with a bit of twisted-uptissue paper from which she unwrapped the brooch.
Charity, as she looked at it, felt a stir of warmth at her heart. Sheheld out an eager hand.
"Have you got the change?" she asked a little breathlessly, laying oneof the twenty-dollar bills on the table.
"Change? What'd I want to have change for? I only see two twentiesthere," Dr. Merkle answered brightly.
Charity paused, disconcerted. "I thought... you said it was five dollarsa visit...."
"For YOU, as a favour--I did. But how about the responsibility and theinsurance? I don't s'pose you ever thought of that? This pin's worth ahundred dollars easy. If it had got lost or stole, where'd I been whenyou come to claim it?"
Charity remained silent, puzzled and half-convinced by the argument,and Dr. Merkle promptly followed up her advantage. "I didn't ask you foryour brooch, my dear. I'd a good deal ruther folks paid me my regularcharge than have 'em put me to all this trouble."
She paused, and Charity, seized with a desperate longing to escape, roseto her feet and held out one of the bills.
"Will you take that?" she asked.
"No, I won't take that, my dear; but I'll take it with its mate, andhand you over a signed receipt if you don't trust me."
"Oh, but I can't--it's all I've got," Charity exclaimed.
Dr. Merkle looked up at her pleasantly from the plush sofa. "It seemsyou got married yesterday, up to the 'Piscopal church; I heard all aboutthe wedding from the minister's chore-man. It would be a pity, wouldn'tit, to let Mr. Royall know you had an account running here? I just putit to you as your own mother might."
Anger flamed up in Charity, and for an instant she thought of abandoningthe brooch and letting Dr. Merkle do her worst. But how could she leaveher only treasure with that evil woman? She wanted it for her baby: shemeant it, in some mysterious way, to be a link between Harney's childand its unknown father. Trembling and hating herself while she did it,she laid Mr. Royall's money on the table, and catching up the broochfled out of the room and the house....
In the street she stood still, dazed by this last adventure. But thebrooch lay in her bosom like a talisman, and she felt a secret lightnessof heart. It gave her strength, after a moment, to walk on slowly in thedirection of the post office, and go in through the swinging doors. Atone of the windows she bought a sheet of letter-paper, an envelope and astamp; then she sat down at a table and dipped the rusty post office penin ink. She had come there possessed with a fear which had haunted herever since she had felt Mr. Royall's ring on her finger: the fear thatHarney might, after all, free himself and come back to her. It was apossibility which had never occurred to her during the dreadful hoursafter she had received his letter; only when the decisive step she hadtaken made longing turn to apprehension did
such a contingency seemconceivable. She addressed the envelope, and on the sheet of paper shewrote:
I'm married to Mr. Royall. I'll always remember you. CHARITY.
The last words were not in the least what she had meant to write; theyhad flowed from her pen irresistibly. She had not had the strength tocomplete her sacrifice; but, after all, what did it matter? Now thatthere was no chance of ever seeing Harney again, why should she not tellhim the truth?
When she had put the letter in the box she went out into the busy sunlitstreet and began to walk to the hotel. Behind the plateglass windows ofthe department stores she noticed the tempting display of dresses anddress-materials that had fired her imagination on the day when she andHarney had looked in at them together. They reminded her of Mr. Royall'sinjunction to go out and buy all she needed. She looked down at hershabby dress, and wondered what she should say when he saw her comingback empty-handed. As she drew near the hotel she saw him waiting on thedoorstep, and her heart began to beat with apprehension.
He nodded and waved his hand at her approach, and they walked throughthe hall and went upstairs to collect their possessions, so that Mr.Royall might give up the key of the room when they went down again fortheir midday dinner. In the bedroom, while she was thrusting back intothe satchel the few things she had brought away with her, she suddenlyfelt that his eyes were on her and that he was going to speak. She stoodstill, her half-folded night-gown in her hand, while the blood rushed upto her drawn cheeks.
"Well, did you rig yourself out handsomely? I haven't seen any bundlesround," he said jocosely.
"Oh, I'd rather let Ally Hawes make the few things I want," sheanswered.
"That so?" He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment and his eye-browsprojected in a scowl. Then his face grew friendly again. "Well, I wantedyou to go back looking stylisher than any of them; but I guess you'reright. You're a good girl, Charity."
Their eyes met, and something rose in his that she had never seen there:a look that made her feel ashamed and yet secure.
"I guess you're good, too," she said, shyly and quickly. He smiledwithout answering, and they went out of the room together and droppeddown to the hall in the glittering lift.
Late that evening, in the cold autumn moonlight, they drove up to thedoor of the red house.
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