III
It was not in the room known at the red house as Mr. Royall's "office"that he received his infrequent clients. Professional dignity andmasculine independence made it necessary that he should have a realoffice, under a different roof; and his standing as the only lawyer ofNorth Dormer required that the roof should be the same as that whichsheltered the Town Hall and the post-office.
It was his habit to walk to this office twice a day, morning andafternoon. It was on the ground floor of the building, with a separateentrance, and a weathered name-plate on the door. Before going inhe stepped in to the post-office for his mail--usually an emptyceremony--said a word or two to the town-clerk, who sat across thepassage in idle state, and then went over to the store on the oppositecorner, 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 longcounter, in an atmosphere of rope, leather, tar and coffee-beans. Mr.Royall, though monosyllabic at home, was not averse, in certain moods,to imparting his views to his fellow-townsmen; perhaps, also, he wasunwilling that his rare clients should surprise him sitting, clerklessand unoccupied, in his dusty office. At any rate, his hours there werenot much longer or more regular than Charity's at the library; the restof the time he spent either at the store or in driving about the countryon business connected with the insurance companies that he represented,or in sitting at home reading Bancroft's History of the United Statesand the speeches of Daniel Webster.
Since the day when Charity had told him that she wished to succeedto Eudora Skeff's post their relations had undefinably but definitelychanged. Lawyer Royall had kept his word. He had obtained the place forher at the cost of considerable maneuvering, as she guessed from thenumber of rival candidates, and from the acerbity with which two ofthem, Orma Fry and the eldest Targatt girl, treated her for nearly ayear afterward. And he had engaged Verena Marsh to come up fromCreston and do the cooking. Verena was a poor old widow, doddering andshiftless: Charity suspected that she came for her keep. Mr. Royall wastoo close a man to give a dollar a day to a smart girl when he couldget a deaf pauper for nothing. But at any rate, Verena was there, in theattic just over Charity, and the fact that she was deaf did not greatlytrouble the young girl.
Charity knew that what had happened on that hateful night would nothappen again. She understood that, profoundly as she had despised Mr.Royall ever since, he despised himself still more profoundly. If she hadasked for a woman in the house it was far less for her own defense thanfor his humiliation. She needed no one to defend her: his humbled pridewas her surest protection. He had never spoken a word of excuseor extenuation the incident was as if it had never been. Yet itsconsequences were latent in every word that he and she exchanged, inevery glance they instinctively turned from each other. Nothing nowwould ever shake her rule in the red house.
On the night of her meeting with Miss Hatchard's cousin Charity lay inbed, her bare arms clasped under her rough head, and continued to thinkof 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; andthough she was not very clear as to his purpose, or as to why anyoneshould look for old houses, when they lay in wait for one on everyroadside, she understood that he needed the help of books, and resolvedto hunt up the next day the volume she had failed to find, and anyothers that seemed related to the subject.
Never had her ignorance of life and literature so weighed on her as inreliving the short scene of her discomfiture. "It's no use trying to beanything in this place," she muttered to her pillow; and she shrivelledat the vision of vague metropolises, shining super-Nettletons,where girls in better clothes than Belle Balch's talked fluently ofarchitecture to young men with hands like Lucius Harney's. Then sheremembered his sudden pause when he had come close to the desk and hadhis first look at her. The sight had made him forget what he was goingto say; she recalled the change in his face, and jumping up she ran overthe bare boards to her washstand, found the matches, lit a candle, andlifted it to the square of looking-glass on the white-washed wall. Hersmall face, usually so darkly pale, glowed like a rose in the faint orbof light, and under her rumpled hair her eyes seemed deeper and largerthan 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 thethroat. She undid it, freed her thin shoulders, and saw herself a bridein low-necked satin, walking down an aisle with Lucius Harney. He wouldkiss her as they left the church.... She put down the candle and coveredher face with her hands as if to imprison the kiss. At that moment sheheard Mr. Royall's step as he came up the stairs to bed, and a fiercerevulsion of feeling swept over her. Until then she had merely despisedhim; now deep hatred of him filled her heart. He became to her ahorrible old man....
The next day, when Mr. Royall came back to dinner, they faced each otherin silence as usual. Verena's presence at the table was an excuse fortheir not talking, though her deafness would have permitted the freestinterchange of confidences. But when the meal was over, and Mr. Royallrose from the table, he looked back at Charity, who had stayed to helpthe old woman clear away the dishes.
"I want to speak to you a minute," he said; and she followed him acrossthe passage, wondering.
He seated himself in his black horse-hair armchair, and she leanedagainst the window, indifferently. She was impatient to be gone to thelibrary, to hunt for the book on North Dormer.
"See here," he said, "why ain't you at the library the days you'resupposed to be there?"
The question, breaking in on her mood of blissful abstraction, deprivedher 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 forme 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 goinground with her. The low-down sneaks--I always knew they'd try to have meout! 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'tI there yesterday, I'd like to know?"
"Round about four o'clock."
Charity was silent. She had been so steeped in the dreamy remembrance ofyoung Harney's visit that she had forgotten having deserted her post assoon 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 beenlame. She couldn't get up the steps if she tried."
"She can be helped up, I guess. She was yesterday, anyhow, by theyoung fellow that's staying with her. He found you there, I understand,earlier in the afternoon and he went back and told Miss Hatchard thebooks were in bad shape and needed attending to. She got excited, andhad herself wheeled straight round; and when she got there the place waslocked. So she sent for me, and told me about that, and about the othercomplaints. She claims you've neglected things, and that she's going toget a trained librarian."
Charity had not moved while he spoke. She stood with her head thrownback against the window-frame, her arms hanging against her sides, andher hands so tightly clenched that she felt, without knowing what hurther, the sharp edge of her nails against her palms.
Of all Mr. Royall had said she had retained only the phrase: "He toldMiss Hatchard the books were in bad shape." What did she care for theother charges against her? Malice or truth, she despised them as shedespised her detractors. But that the stranger to whom she had feltherself so mysteriously drawn should have betrayed her! That at thevery moment when she had fled up the hillside to think of him moredeliciously he should have been hastening home to denounce hershort-comings! She remembered how, in the darkness of her room, she hadcovered her face to press his imagined kiss closer; and her heart ragedagainst 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 init again. They needn't think I'm going to wait round and let them saythey've discharged me!"
"Charity--Charity Royall, you listen----" he began, getting heavily outof 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 itunder her pincushion--who said she wasn't careful?--put on her hat, andswept down again and out into the street. If Mr. Royall heard her gohe made no motion to detain her: his sudden rages probably made himunderstand the uselessness of reasoning with hers.
She reached the brick temple, unlocked the door and entered into theglacial twilight. "I'm glad I'll never have to sit in this old vaultagain when other folks are out in the sun!" she said aloud as thefamiliar chill took her. She looked with abhorrence at the long dingyrows of books, the sheep-nosed Minerva on her black pedestal, and themild-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 libraryregister, and go straight to Miss Hatchard to announce her resignation.But suddenly a great desolation overcame her, and she sat down and laidher face against the desk. Her heart was ravaged by life's cruelestdiscovery: the first creature who had come toward her out of thewilderness had brought her anguish instead of joy. She did not cry;tears came hard to her, and the storms of her heart spent themselvesinwardly. But as she sat there in her dumb woe she felt her life to betoo 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 swellwith 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 openedthe drawer, dragged out the register, and turned toward the door. Asshe did so it opened, and the young man from Miss Hatchard's came inwhistling.