Charity knew that what had happened on that hateful night would not happen again. She understood that, profoundly as she had despised Mr Royall ever since, he despised himself still more profoundly. If she had asked for a woman in the house it was far less for her own defense than for his humiliation. She needed no one to defend her: his humbled pride was her surest protection. He had never spoken a word of excuse or extenuation; the incident was as if it had never been. Yet its consequences were latent in every word that he and she exchanged, in every glance they instinctively turned from each other. Nothing now would ever shake her rule in the red house.
On the night of her meeting with Miss Hatchard’s cousin Charity lay in bed, her bare arms clasped under her rough head, and continued to think of him. She supposed that he meant to spend some time in North Dormer. He had said he was looking up the old houses in the neighbourhood; and though she was not very clear as to his purpose, or as to why anyone should look for old houses, when they lay in wait for one on every roadside, she understood that he needed the help of books, and resolved to hunt up the next day the volume she had failed to find, and any others that seemed related to the subject.
Never had her ignorance of life and literature so weighed on her as in reliving the short scene of her discomfiture. ‘It’s no use trying to be anything in this place,’ she muttered to her pillow; and she shrivelled at the vision of vague metropolises, shining super-Nettletons, where girls in better clothes than Belle Balch’s talked fluently of architecture to young men with hands like Lucius Harney’s. Then she remembered his sudden pause when he had come close to the desk and had his first look at her. The sight had made him forget what he was going to say; she recalled the change in his face, and jumping up she ran over the bare boards to her washstand, found the matches, lit a candle, and lifted it to the square of looking-glass on the white-washed wall. Her small face, usually so darkly pale, glowed like a rose in the faint orb of light, and under her rumpled hair her eyes seemed deeper and larger than by day. Perhaps after all it was a mistake to wish they were blue. A clumsy band and button fastened her unbleached night-gown about the throat. She undid it, freed her thin shoulders, and saw herself a bride in low-necked satin, walking down an aisle with Lucius Harney. He would kiss her as they left the church.… She put down the candle and covered her face with her hands as if to imprison the kiss. At that moment she heard Mr Royall’s step as he came up the stairs to bed, and a fierce revulsion of feeling swept over her. Until then she had merely despised him; now deep hatred of him filled her heart. He became to her a horrible old man.…
The next day, when Mr Royall came back to dinner, they faced each other in silence as usual. Verena’s presence at the table was an excuse for their not talking, though her deafness would have permitted the freest interchange of confidences. But when the meal was over, and Mr Royall rose from the table, he looked back at Charity, who had stayed to help the old woman clear away the dishes.
‘I want to speak to you a minute,’ he said; and she followed him across the passage, wondering.
He seated himself in his black horse-hair armchair, and she leaned against the window, indifferently. She was impatient to be gone to the library, to hunt for the book on North Dormer.
‘See here,’ he said, ‘why ain’t you at the library the days you’re supposed to be there?’
The question, breaking in on her mood of blissful abstraction, deprived her of speech, and she stared at him for a moment without answering.
‘Who says I ain’t?’
‘There’s been some complaints made, it appears. Miss Hatchard sent for me this morning—’
Charity’s smouldering resentment broke into a blaze. ‘I know! Orma Fry, and that toad of a Targatt girl – and Ben Fry, like as not. He’s going round with her. The low-down sneaks – I always knew they’d try to have me out! As if anybody ever came to the library, anyhow!’
‘Somebody did yesterday, and you weren’t there.’
‘Yesterday?’ she laughed at her happy recollection. ‘At what time wasn’t I there yesterday, I’d like to know?’
‘Round about four o’clock.’
Charity was silent. She had been so steeped in the dreamy remembrance of young Harney’s visit that she had forgotten having deserted her post as soon as he had left the library.
‘Who came at four o’clock?’
‘Miss Hatchard did.’
‘Miss Hatchard? Why, she ain’t ever been near the place since she’s been lame. She couldn’t get up the steps if she tried.’
‘She can be helped up, I guess. She was yesterday, anyhow, by the young fellow that’s staying with her. He found you there, I understand, earlier in the afternoon; and he went back and told Miss Hatchard the books were in bad shape and needed attending to. She got excited, and had herself wheeled straight round; and when she got there the place was locked. So she sent for me, and told me about that, and about the other complaints. She claims you’ve neglected things, and that she’s going to get a trained librarian.’
Charity had not moved while he spoke. She stood with her head thrown back against the window-frame, her arms hanging against her sides, and her hands so tightly clenched that she felt, without knowing what hurt her, the sharp edge of her nails against her palms.
Of all Mr Royall had said she had retained only the phrase: ‘He told Miss Hatchard the books were in bad shape.’ What did she care for the other charges against her? Malice or truth, she despised them as she despised her detractors. But that the stranger to whom she had felt herself so mysteriously drawn should have betrayed her! That at the very moment when she had fled up the hillside to think of him more deliciously he should have been hastening home to denounce her 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 Royall’s voice.
‘Why, out of their old library: straight out, and never set foot in it again. They needn’t think I’m going to wait round and let them say they’ve discharged me!’
‘Charity – Charity Royall, you listen—’ he began, getting heavily out of his chair; but she waved him aside, and walked out of the room.
Upstairs she took the library key from the place where she always hid it under her pincushion – who said she wasn’t careful? – put on her hat, and swept down again and out into the street. If Mr Royall heard her go he made no motion to detain her: his sudden rages probably made him understand the uselessness of reasoning with hers.
She reached the brick temple, unlocked the door and entered into the glacial twilight. ‘I’m glad I’ll never have to sit in this old vault again when other folks are out in the sun!’ she said aloud as the familiar chill took her. She looked with abhorrence at the long dingy rows of books, the sheep-nosed Minerva on her black pedestal, and the mild-faced young man in a high stock whose effigy pined above her desk. She meant to take out of the drawer her roll of lace and the library register, and go straight to Miss Hatchard to announce her resignation. But suddenly a great desolation overcame her, and she sat down and laid her face against the desk. Her heart was ravaged by life’s cruellest discovery: the first creature who had come toward her out of the wilderness had brought her anguish instead of joy. She did not cry; tears came hard to her, and the storms of her heart spent themselves inwardly. But as she sat there in her dumb woe she felt her life to be too desolate, too ugly and intolerable.
‘What have I ever done to it, that it should hurt me so?’ she groaned, and pressed her fists against her lids, which were beginning to swell with weeping.
‘I won’t – I won’t go there looking like a horror!’ she muttered, springing up and pushing back her hair as if it stifled her. She opened the drawer, dragged out the register, and turned toward the door. As she did so it opened, and the
young man from Miss Hatchard’s came in whistling.
IV
He stopped and lifted his hat with a shy smile. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘I thought there was no one here.’
Charity stood before him, barring his way. ‘You can’t come in. The library ain’t open to the public Wednesdays.’
‘I know it’s not; but my cousin gave me her key.’
‘Miss Hatchard’s got no right to give her key to other folks, any more’n I have. I’m the librarian and I know the by-laws.
This is my library.’
The young man looked profoundly surprised.
‘Why, I know it is; I’m so sorry if you mind my coming.’
‘I suppose you came to see what more you could say to set her against me? But you needn’t trouble: it’s my library today, but it won’t be this time tomorrow. I’m on the way now to take her back the key and the register.’
Young Harney’s face grew grave, but without betraying the consciousness of guilt she had looked for.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘There must be some mistake. Why should I say things against you to Miss Hatchard – or to anyone?’
The apparent evasiveness of the reply caused Charity’s indignation to overflow. ‘I don’t know why you should. I could understand Orma Fry’s doing it, because she’s always wanted to get me out of here ever since the first day. I can’t see why, when she’s got her own home, and her father to work for her; nor Ida Targatt, neither, when she got a legacy from her stepbrother on’y last year. But anyway we all live in the same place, and when it’s a place like North Dormer it’s enough to make people hate each other just to have to walk down the same street every day. But you don’t live here, and you don’t know anything about any of us, so what did you have to meddle for? Do you suppose the other girls’d have kept the books any better’n I did? Why, Orma Fry don’t hardly know a book from a flat-iron! And what if I don’t always sit round here doing nothing till it strikes five up at the church? Who cares if the library’s open or shut? Do you suppose anybody ever comes here for books? What they’d like to come for is to meet the fellows they’re going with – if I’d let ’em. But I wouldn’t let Bill Sollas from over the hill hang round here waiting for the youngest Targatt girl, because I know him … that’s all … even if I don’t know about books all I ought to.…’
She stopped with a choking in her throat. Tremors of rage were running through her, and she steadied herself against the edge of the desk lest he should see her weakness.
What he saw seemed to affect him deeply, for he grew red under his sunburn, and stammered out: ‘But, Miss Royall, I assure you … I assure you …’
His distress inflamed her anger, and she regained her voice to fling back: ‘If I was you I’d have the nerve to stick to what I said!’
The taunt seemed to restore his presence of mind. ‘I hope I should if I knew; but I don’t. Apparently something disagreeable has happened, for which you think I’m to blame. But I don’t know what it is, because I’ve been up on Eagle Ridge ever since the early morning.’
‘I don’t know where you’ve been this morning, but I know you were here in this library yesterday; and it was you that went home and told your cousin the books were in bad shape, and brought her round to see how I’d neglected them.’
Young Harney looked sincerely concerned. ‘Was that what you were told? I don’t wonder you’re angry. The books are in bad shape, and as some are interesting it’s a pity. I told Miss Hatchard they were suffering from dampness and lack of air; and I brought her here to show her how easily the place could be ventilated. I also told her you ought to have some one to help you do the dusting and airing. If you were given a wrong version of what I said I’m sorry; but I’m so fond of old books that I’d rather see them made into a bonfire than left to moulder away like these.’
Charity felt her sobs rising and tried to stifle them in words. ‘I don’t care what you say you told her. All I know is she thinks it’s all my fault, and I’m going to lose my job, and I wanted it more’n anyone in the village, because I haven’t got anybody belonging to me, the way other folks have. All I wanted was to put aside money enough to get away from here sometime. D’you suppose if it hadn’t been for that I’d have kept on sitting day after day in this old vault?’
Of this appeal her hearer took up only the last question. ‘It is an old vault; but need it be? That’s the point. And it’s my putting the question to my cousin that seems to have been the cause of the trouble.’ His glance explored the melancholy penumbra of the long narrow room, resting on the blotched walls, the discoloured rows of books, and the stern rosewood desk surmounted by the portrait of the young Honorius. ‘Of course it’s a bad job to do anything with a building jammed against a hill like this ridiculous mausoleum: you couldn’t get a good draught through it without blowing a hole in the mountain. But it can be ventilated after a fashion, and the sun can be let in: I’ll show you how if you like.’ The architect’s passion for improvement had already made him lose sight of her grievance, and he lifted his stick instructively toward the cornice. But her silence seemed to tell him that she took no interest in the ventilation of the library, and turning back to her abruptly he held out both hands. ‘Look here – you don’t mean what you said? You don’t really think I’d do anything to hurt you?’
A new note in his voice disarmed her: no one had ever spoken to her in that tone.
‘Oh, what did you do it for then?’ she wailed. He had her hands in his, and she was feeling the smooth touch that she had imagined the day before on the hillside.
He pressed her hands lightly and let them go. ‘Why, to make things pleasanter for you here; and better for the books. I’m sorry if my cousin twisted around what I said. She’s excitable, and she lives on trifles: I ought to have remembered that. Don’t punish me by letting her think you take her seriously.’
It was wonderful to hear him speak of Miss Hatchard as if she were a querulous baby: in spite of his shyness he had the air of power that the experience of cities probably gave. It was the fact of having lived in Nettleton that made lawyer Royall, in spite of his infirmities, the strongest man in North Dormer; and Charity was sure that this young man had lived in bigger places than Nettleton.
She felt that if she kept up her denunciatory tone he would secretly class her with Miss Hatchard; and the thought made her suddenly simple.
‘It don’t matter to Miss Hatchard how I take her. Mr Royall says she’s going to get a trained librarian; and I’d sooner resign than have the village say she sent me away.’
‘Naturally you would. But I’m sure she doesn’t mean to send you away. At any rate, won’t you give me the chance to find out first and let you know? It will be time enough to resign if I’m mistaken.’
Her pride flamed into her cheeks at the suggestion of his intervening. ‘I don’t want anybody should coax her to keep me if I don’t suit.’
He coloured too. ‘I give you my word I won’t do that. Only wait till tomorrow, will you?’ He looked straight into her eyes with his shy grey glance. ‘You can trust me, you know – you really can.’
All the old frozen woes seemed to melt in her, and she murmured awkwardly, looking away from him: ‘Oh, I’ll wait.’
V
There had never been such a June in Eagle County. Usually it was a month of moods, with abrupt alternations of belated frost and midsummer heat; this year, day followed day in a sequence of temperate beauty. Every morning a breeze blew steadily from the hills. Toward noon it built up great canopies of white cloud that threw a cool shadow over fields and woods; then before sunset the clouds dissolved again, and the western light rained its unobstructed brightness on the valley.
On such an afternoon Charity Royall lay on a ridge above a sunlit hollow, her face pressed to the earth and the warm currents of the grass running through her. Directly in her line of vision a blackberry branch laid its frail white flowers and blue-green leaves against the sky. Just beyo
nd, a tuft of sweet-fern uncurled between the beaded shoots of the grass, and a small yellow butterfly vibrated over them like a fleck of sunshine. This was all she saw; but she felt, above her and about her, the strong growth of the beeches clothing the ridge, the rounding of pale green cones on countless spruce-branches, the push of myriads of sweet-fern fronds in the cracks of the stony slope below the wood, and the crowding shoots of meadowsweet and yellow flags in the pasture beyond. All this bubbling of sap and slipping of sheaths and bursting of calyxes was carried to her on mingled currents of fragrance. Every leaf and bud and blade seemed to contribute its exhalation to the pervading sweetness in which the pungency of pine-sap prevailed over the spice of thyme and the subtle perfume of fern, and all were merged in a moist earth-smell that was like the breath of some huge sun-warmed animal.
Charity had lain there a long time, passive and sun-warmed as the slope on which she lay, when there came between her eyes and the dancing butterfly the sight of a man’s foot in a large worn boot covered with red mud.
‘Oh, don’t!’ she exclaimed, raising herself on her elbow and stretching out a warning hand.
‘Don’t what?’ a hoarse voice asked above her head.
‘Don’t stamp on those bramble flowers, you dolt!’ she retorted, springing to her knees. The foot paused and then descended clumsily on the frail branch, and raising her eyes she saw above her the bewildered face of a slouching man with a thin sunburnt beard, and white arms showing through his ragged shirt.
Ethan Frome, Summer, Bunner Sisters Page 17