IX
CHARITY sat before the mirror trying on a hat which Ally Hawes, withmuch secrecy, had trimmed for her. It was of white straw, with adrooping brim and cherry-coloured lining that made her face glow likethe inside of the shell on the parlour mantelpiece.
She propped the square of looking-glass against Mr. Royall's blackleather Bible, steadying it in front with a white stone on which a viewof the Brooklyn Bridge was painted; and she sat before her reflection,bending the brim this way and that, while Ally Hawes's pale face lookedover her shoulder like the ghost of wasted opportunities.
"I look awful, don't I?" she said at last with a happy sigh.
Ally smiled and took back the hat. "I'll stitch the roses on right here,so's you can put it away at once."
Charity laughed, and ran her fingers through her rough dark hair.She knew that Harney liked to see its reddish edges ruffled about herforehead and breaking into little rings at the nape. She sat down on herbed and watched Ally stoop over the hat with a careful frown.
"Don't you ever feel like going down to Nettleton for a day?" she asked.
Ally shook her head without looking up. "No, I always remember thatawful time I went down with Julia--to that doctor's."
"Oh, Ally----"
"I can't help it. The house is on the corner of Wing Street and LakeAvenue. The trolley from the station goes right by it, and the day theminister took us down to see those pictures I recognized it right off,and couldn't seem to see anything else. There's a big black sign withgold letters all across the front--'Private Consultations.' She came asnear as anything to dying...."
"Poor Julia!" Charity sighed from the height of her purity and hersecurity. She had a friend whom she trusted and who respected her.She was going with him to spend the next day--the Fourth of July--atNettleton. Whose business was it but hers, and what was the harm? Thepity of it was that girls like Julia did not know how to choose, and tokeep bad fellows at a distance.... Charity slipped down from the bed, andstretched out her hands.
"Is it sewed? Let me try it on again." She put the hat on, and smiled ather image. The thought of Julia had vanished....
The next morning she was up before dawn, and saw the yellow sunrisebroaden behind the hills, and the silvery luster preceding a hot daytremble across the sleeping fields.
Her plans had been made with great care. She had announced that she wasgoing down to the Band of Hope picnic at Hepburn, and as no one elsefrom North Dormer intended to venture so far it was not likely that herabsence from the festivity would be reported. Besides, if it were shewould not greatly care. She was determined to assert her independence,and if she stooped to fib about the Hepburn picnic it was chieflyfrom the secretive instinct that made her dread the profanation of herhappiness. Whenever she was with Lucius Harney she would have liked someimpenetrable mountain mist to hide her.
It was arranged that she should walk to a point of the Creston roadwhere Harney was to pick her up and drive her across the hills toHepburn in time for the nine-thirty train to Nettleton. Harney at firsthad been rather lukewarm about the trip. He declared himself ready totake her to Nettleton, but urged her not to go on the Fourth of July,on account of the crowds, the probable lateness of the trains,the difficulty of her getting back before night; but her evidentdisappointment caused him to give way, and even to affect a faintenthusiasm for the adventure. She understood why he was not more eager:he must have seen sights beside which even a Fourth of July at Nettletonwould seem tame. But she had never seen anything; and a great longingpossessed her to walk the streets of a big town on a holiday, clingingto his arm and jostled by idle crowds in their best clothes. The onlycloud on the prospect was the fact that the shops would be closed; butshe hoped he would take her back another day, when they were open.
She started out unnoticed in the early sunlight, slipping through thekitchen while Verena bent above the stove. To avoid attracting notice,she carried her new hat carefully wrapped up, and had thrown a longgrey veil of Mrs. Royall's over the new white muslin dress which Ally'sclever fingers had made for her. All of the ten dollars Mr. Royall hadgiven her, and a part of her own savings as well, had been spent onrenewing her wardrobe; and when Harney jumped out of the buggy to meether she read her reward in his eyes.
The freckled boy who had brought her the note two weeks earlier wasto wait with the buggy at Hepburn till their return. He perched atCharity's feet, his legs dangling between the wheels, and they couldnot say much because of his presence. But it did not greatly matter, fortheir past was now rich enough to have given them a private language;and with the long day stretching before them like the blue distancebeyond the hills there was a delicate pleasure in postponement.
When Charity, in response to Harney's message, had gone to meet him atthe Creston pool her heart had been so full of mortification and angerthat his first words might easily have estranged her. But it happenedthat he had found the right word, which was one of simple friendship.His tone had instantly justified her, and put her guardian in thewrong. He had made no allusion to what had passed between Mr. Royall andhimself, but had simply let it appear that he had left because means ofconveyance were hard to find at North Dormer, and because Creston Riverwas a more convenient centre. He told her that he had hired by the weekthe buggy of the freckled boy's father, who served as livery-stablekeeper to one or two melancholy summer boarding-houses on Creston Lake,and had discovered, within driving distance, a number of houses worthyof his pencil; and he said that he could not, while he was in theneighbourhood, give up the pleasure of seeing her as often as possible.
When they took leave of each other she promised to continue to be hisguide; and during the fortnight which followed they roamed the hills inhappy comradeship. In most of the village friendships between youths andmaidens lack of conversation was made up for by tentative fondling; butHarney, except when he had tried to comfort her in her trouble on theirway back from the Hyatts', had never put his arm about her, or soughtto betray her into any sudden caress. It seemed to be enough for him tobreathe her nearness like a flower's; and since his pleasure at beingwith her, and his sense of her youth and her grace, perpetually shone inhis eyes and softened the inflection of his voice, his reserve did notsuggest coldness, but the deference due to a girl of his own class.
The buggy was drawn by an old trotter who whirled them along so brisklythat the pace created a little breeze; but when they reached Hepburnthe full heat of the airless morning descended on them. At the railwaystation the platform was packed with a sweltering throng, and they tookrefuge in the waiting-room, where there was another throng, alreadydejected by the heat and the long waiting for retarded trains. Palemothers were struggling with fretful babies, or trying to keep theirolder offspring from the fascination of the track; girls and their"fellows" were giggling and shoving, and passing about candy in stickybags, and older men, collarless and perspiring, were shifting heavychildren from one arm to the other, and keeping a haggard eye on thescattered members of their families.
At last the train rumbled in, and engulfed the waiting multitude. Harneyswept Charity up on to the first car and they captured a bench fortwo, and sat in happy isolation while the train swayed and roared alongthrough rich fields and languid tree-clumps. The haze of the morninghad become a sort of clear tremor over everything, like the colourlessvibration about a flame; and the opulent landscape seemed to droop underit. But to Charity the heat was a stimulant: it enveloped the wholeworld in the same glow that burned at her heart. Now and then a lurch ofthe train flung her against Harney, and through her thin muslin she feltthe touch of his sleeve. She steadied herself, their eyes met, and theflaming breath of the day seemed to enclose them.
The train roared into the Nettleton station, the descending mob caughtthem on its tide, and they were swept out into a vague dusty squarethronged with seedy "hacks" and long curtained omnibuses drawn by horseswith tasselled fly-nets over their withers, who stood swinging theirdepressed heads drearily from side to side.
A mob of 'bus and hack drivers were shouting "To the Eagle House,""To the Washington House," "This way to the Lake," "Just starting forGreytop;" and through their yells came the popping of fire-crackers,the explosion of torpedoes, the banging of toy-guns, and the crash ofa firemen's band trying to play the Merry Widow while they were beingpacked into a waggonette streaming with bunting.
The ramshackle wooden hotels about the square were all hung with flagsand paper lanterns, and as Harney and Charity turned into the mainstreet, with its brick and granite business blocks crowding out the oldlow-storied shops, and its towering poles strung with innumerable wiresthat seemed to tremble and buzz in the heat, they saw the double line offlags and lanterns tapering away gaily to the park at the other end ofthe perspective. The noise and colour of this holiday vision seemed totransform Nettleton into a metropolis. Charity could not believethat Springfield or even Boston had anything grander to show, andshe wondered if, at this very moment, Annabel Balch, on the arm ofas brilliant a young man, were threading her way through scenes asresplendent.
"Where shall we go first?" Harney asked; but as she turned her happyeyes on him he guessed the answer and said: "We'll take a look round,shall we?"
The street swarmed with their fellow-travellers, with otherexcursionists arriving from other directions, with Nettleton's ownpopulation, and with the mill-hands trooping in from the factories onthe Creston. The shops were closed, but one would scarcely have noticedit, so numerous were the glass doors swinging open on saloons, onrestaurants, on drug-stores gushing from every soda-water tap, on fruitand confectionery shops stacked with strawberry-cake, cocoanut drops,trays of glistening molasses candy, boxes of caramels and chewing-gum,baskets of sodden strawberries, and dangling branches of bananas.Outside of some of the doors were trestles with banked-up oranges andapples, spotted pears and dusty raspberries; and the air reeked withthe smell of fruit and stale coffee, beer and sarsaparilla and friedpotatoes.
Even the shops that were closed offered, through wide expanses ofplate-glass, hints of hidden riches. In some, waves of silk and ribbonbroke over shores of imitation moss from which ravishing hats rose liketropical orchids. In others, the pink throats of gramophones openedtheir giant convolutions in a soundless chorus; or bicycles shining inneat ranks seemed to await the signal of an invisible starter; or tiersof fancy-goods in leatherette and paste and celluloid dangled theirinsidious graces; and, in one vast bay that seemed to project them intoexciting contact with the public, wax ladies in daring dresses chattedelegantly, or, with gestures intimate yet blameless, pointed to theirpink corsets and transparent hosiery.
Presently Harney found that his watch had stopped, and turned in at asmall jeweller's shop which chanced to still be open. While the watchwas being examined Charity leaned over the glass counter where, on abackground of dark blue velvet, pins, rings, and brooches glitteredlike the moon and stars. She had never seen jewellry so near by, andshe longed to lift the glass lid and plunge her hand among the shiningtreasures. But already Harney's watch was repaired, and he laid his handon her arm and drew her from her dream.
"Which do you like best?" he asked leaning over the counter at her side.
"I don't know...." She pointed to a gold lily-of-the-valley with whiteflowers.
"Don't you think the blue pin's better?" he suggested, and immediatelyshe saw that the lily of the valley was mere trumpery compared to thesmall round stone, blue as a mountain lake, with little sparks of lightall round it. She coloured at her want of discrimination.
"It's so lovely I guess I was afraid to look at it," she said.
He laughed, and they went out of the shop; but a few steps away heexclaimed: "Oh, by Jove, I forgot something," and turned back andleft her in the crowd. She stood staring down a row of pink gramophonethroats till he rejoined her and slipped his arm through hers.
"You mustn't be afraid of looking at the blue pin any longer, because itbelongs to you," he said; and she felt a little box being pressed intoher hand. Her heart gave a leap of joy, but it reached her lips only ina shy stammer. She remembered other girls whom she had heard planning toextract presents from their fellows, and was seized with a sudden dreadlest Harney should have imagined that she had leaned over the prettythings in the glass case in the hope of having one given to her....
A little farther down the street they turned in at a glass doorwayopening on a shining hall with a mahogany staircase, and brass cages inits corners. "We must have something to eat," Harney said; and the nextmoment Charity found herself in a dressing-room all looking-glass andlustrous surfaces, where a party of showy-looking girls were dabbingon powder and straightening immense plumed hats. When they had gone shetook courage to bathe her hot face in one of the marble basins, andto straighten her own hat-brim, which the parasols of the crowd hadindented. The dresses in the shops had so impressed her that shescarcely dared look at her reflection but when she did so, the glowof her face under her cherry-coloured hat, and the curve of her youngshoulders through the transparent muslin, restored her courage; and whenshe had taken the blue brooch from its box and pinned it on her bosomshe walked toward the restaurant with her head high, as if she hadalways strolled through tessellated halls beside young men in flannels.
Her spirit sank a little at the sight of the slim-waisted waitresses inblack, with bewitching mob-caps on their haughty heads, who were movingdisdainfully between the tables. "Not f'r another hour," one of themdropped to Harney in passing; and he stood doubtfully glancing abouthim.
"Oh, well, we can't stay sweltering here," he decided; "let's trysomewhere else--" and with a sense of relief Charity followed him fromthat scene of inhospitable splendour.
That "somewhere else" turned out--after more hot tramping, and severalfailures--to be, of all things, a little open-air place in a back streetthat called itself a French restaurant, and consisted in two or threerickety tables under a scarlet-runner, between a patch of zinniasand petunias and a big elm bending over from the next yard. Here theylunched on queerly flavoured things, while Harney, leaning back in acrippled rocking-chair, smoked cigarettes between the courses and pouredinto Charity's glass a pale yellow wine which he said was the very sameone drank in just such jolly places in France.
Charity did not think the wine as good as sarsaparilla, but she sipped amouthful for the pleasure of doing what he did, and of fancying herselfalone with him in foreign countries. The illusion was increased by theirbeing served by a deep-bosomed woman with smooth hair and a pleasantlaugh, who talked to Harney in unintelligible words, and seemed amazedand overjoyed at his answering her in kind. At the other tables otherpeople sat, mill-hands probably, homely but pleasant looking, who spokethe same shrill jargon, and looked at Harney and Charity with friendlyeyes; and between the table-legs a poodle with bald patches and pinkeyes nosed about for scraps, and sat up on his hind legs absurdly.
Harney showed no inclination to move, for hot as their corner was, itwas at least shaded and quiet; and, from the main thoroughfares came theclanging of trolleys, the incessant popping of torpedoes, the jingleof street-organs, the bawling of megaphone men and the loud murmur ofincreasing crowds. He leaned back, smoking his cigar, patting the dog,and stirring the coffee that steamed in their chipped cups. "It's thereal thing, you know," he explained; and Charity hastily revised herprevious conception of the beverage.
They had made no plans for the rest of the day, and when Harneyasked her what she wanted to do next she was too bewildered by richpossibilities to find an answer. Finally she confessed that she longedto go to the Lake, where she had not been taken on her former visit,and when he answered, "Oh, there's time for that--it will be pleasanterlater," she suggested seeing some pictures like the ones Mr. Miles hadtaken her to. She thought Harney looked a little disconcerted; buthe passed his fine handkerchief over his warm brow, said gaily, "Comealong, then," and rose with a last pat for the pink-eyed dog.
Mr. Miles's pictures had been shown in an austere Y.M.C.A. hall,with white walls and an organ; but Harney led C
harity to a glitteringplace--everything she saw seemed to glitter--where they passed, betweenimmense pictures of yellow-haired beauties stabbing villains in eveningdress, into a velvet-curtained auditorium packed with spectators tothe last limit of compression. After that, for a while, everythingwas merged in her brain in swimming circles of heat and blindingalternations of light and darkness. All the world has to show seemedto pass before her in a chaos of palms and minarets, charging cavalryregiments, roaring lions, comic policemen and scowling murderers; andthe crowd around her, the hundreds of hot sallow candy-munching faces,young, old, middle-aged, but all kindled with the same contagiousexcitement, became part of the spectacle, and danced on the screen withthe rest.
Presently the thought of the cool trolley-run to the Lake grewirresistible, and they struggled out of the theatre. As they stoodon the pavement, Harney pale with the heat, and even Charity a littleconfused by it, a young man drove by in an electric run-about with acalico band bearing the words: "Ten dollars to take you round the Lake."Before Charity knew what was happening, Harney had waved a hand, andthey were climbing in. "Say, for twenny-five I'll run you out to see theball-game and back," the driver proposed with an insinuating grin; butCharity said quickly: "Oh, I'd rather go rowing on the Lake." The streetwas so thronged that progress was slow; but the glory of sitting in thelittle carriage while it wriggled its way between laden omnibuses andtrolleys made the moments seem too short. "Next turn is Lake Avenue,"the young man called out over his shoulder; and as they paused in thewake of a big omnibus groaning with Knights of Pythias in cocked hatsand swords, Charity looked up and saw on the corner a brick house witha conspicuous black and gold sign across its front. "Dr. Merkle; PrivateConsultations at all hours. Lady Attendants," she read; and suddenlyshe remembered Ally Hawes's words: "The house was at the corner of WingStreet and Lake Avenue... there's a big black sign across the front...."Through all the heat and the rapture a shiver of cold ran over her.