CHARITY sat before the mirror trying on a hat whichAlly Hawes, with much secrecy, had trimmed for her. Itwas of white straw, with a drooping brim and cherry-coloured lining that made her face glow like the insideof the shell on the parlour mantelpiece.
She propped the square of looking-glass against Mr.
Royall's black leather Bible, steadying it in frontwith a white stone on which a view of the BrooklynBridge was painted; and she sat before her reflection,bending the brim this way and that, while Ally Hawes'spale face looked over her shoulder like the ghost ofwasted opportunities.
"I look awful, don't I?" she said at last with a happysigh.
Ally smiled and took back the hat. "I'll stitch theroses on right here, so's you can put it away at once."Charity laughed, and ran her fingers through her roughdark hair. She knew that Harney liked to see itsreddish edges ruffled about her forehead and breakinginto little rings at the nape. She sat down on her bedand watched Ally stoop over the hat with a carefulfrown.
"Don't you ever feel like going down to Nettleton for aday?" she asked.
Ally shook her head without looking up. "No, I alwaysremember that awful time I went down with Julia--tothat doctor's.""Oh, Ally----""I can't help it. The house is on the corner of WingStreet and Lake Avenue. The trolley from the stationgoes right by it, and the day the minister took us downto see those pictures I recognized it right off, andcouldn't seem to see anything else. There's a bigblack sign with gold letters all across the front--'Private Consultations.' She came as near as anythingto dying....""Poor Julia!" Charity sighed from the height of herpurity and her security. She had a friend whom shetrusted and who respected her. She was going with himto spend the next day--the Fourth of July--atNettleton. Whose business was it but hers, and whatwas the harm? The pity of it was that girls like Juliadid not know how to choose, and to keep badfellows at a distance....Charity slipped down from thebed, and stretched out her hands.
"Is it sewed? Let me try it on again." She put the haton, and smiled at her image. The thought of Julia hadvanished....
The next morning she was up before dawn, and saw theyellow sunrise broaden behind the hills, and thesilvery luster preceding a hot day tremble across thesleeping fields.
Her plans had been made with great care. She hadannounced that she was going down to the Band of Hopepicnic at Hepburn, and as no one else from North Dormerintended to venture so far it was not likely that herabsence from the festivity would be reported. Besides,if it were she would not greatly care. She wasdetermined to assert her independence, and if shestooped to fib about the Hepburn picnic it was chieflyfrom the secretive instinct that made her dread theprofanation of her happiness. Whenever she was withLucius Harney she would have liked some impenetrablemountain mist to hide her.
It was arranged that she should walk to a point ofthe Creston road where Harney was to pick her up anddrive her across the hills to Hepburn in time for thenine-thirty train to Nettleton. Harney at first hadbeen rather lukewarm about the trip. He declaredhimself ready to take her to Nettleton, but urged hernot to go on the Fourth of July, on account of thecrowds, the probable lateness of the trains, thedifficulty of her getting back before night; but herevident disappointment caused him to give way, and evento affect a faint enthusiasm for the adventure. Sheunderstood why he was not more eager: he must have seensights beside which even a Fourth of July at Nettletonwould seem tame. But she had never seen anything; anda great longing possessed her to walk the streets of abig town on a holiday, clinging to his arm and jostledby idle crowds in their best clothes. The only cloudon the prospect was the fact that the shops would beclosed; but she hoped he would take her back anotherday, when they were open.
She started out unnoticed in the early sunlight,slipping through the kitchen while Verena bent abovethe stove. To avoid attracting notice, she carried hernew hat carefully wrapped up, and had thrown a longgrey veil of Mrs. Royall's over the new whitemuslin dress which Ally's clever fingers had made forher. All of the ten dollars Mr. Royall had given her,and a part of her own savings as well, had been spenton renewing her wardrobe; and when Harney jumped out ofthe buggy to meet her she read her reward in his eyes.
The freckled boy who had brought her the note two weeksearlier was to wait with the buggy at Hepburn tilltheir return. He perched at Charity's feet, his legsdangling between the wheels, and they could not saymuch because of his presence. But it did not greatlymatter, for their past was now rich enough to havegiven them a private language; and with the long daystretching before them like the blue distance beyondthe hills there was a delicate pleasure inpostponement.
When Charity, in response to Harney's message, had goneto meet him at the Creston pool her heart had been sofull of mortification and anger that his first wordsmight easily have estranged her. But it happened thathe had found the right word, which was one of simplefriendship. His tone had instantly justified her, andput her guardian in the wrong. He had made no allusionto what had passed between Mr. Royall and himself, buthad simply let it appear that he had left becausemeans of conveyance were hard to find at North Dormer,and because Creston River was a more convenient centre.
He told her that he had hired by the week the buggy ofthe freckled boy's father, who served as livery-stablekeeper to one or two melancholy summer boarding-houseson Creston Lake, and had discovered, within drivingdistance, a number of houses worthy of his pencil; andhe said that he could not, while he was in theneighbourhood, give up the pleasure of seeing her asoften as possible.
When they took leave of each other she promised tocontinue to be his guide; and during the fortnightwhich followed they roamed the hills in happycomradeship. In most of the village friendshipsbetween youths and maidens lack of conversation wasmade up for by tentative fondling; but Harney, exceptwhen he had tried to comfort her in her trouble ontheir way back from the Hyatts', had never put his armabout her, or sought to betray her into any suddencaress. It seemed to be enough for him to breathe hernearness like a flower's; and since his pleasure atbeing with her, and his sense of her youth and hergrace, perpetually shone in his eyes and softenedthe inflection of his voice, his reserve did notsuggest coldness, but the deference due to a girl ofhis own class.
The buggy was drawn by an old trotter who whirled themalong so briskly that the pace created a little breeze;but when they reached Hepburn the full heat of theairless morning descended on them. At the railwaystation the platform was packed with a swelteringthrong, and they took refuge in the waiting-room, wherethere was another throng, already dejected by the heatand the long waiting for retarded trains. Pale motherswere struggling with fretful babies, or trying to keeptheir older offspring from the fascination of thetrack; girls and their "fellows" were giggling andshoving, and passing about candy in sticky bags, andolder men, collarless and perspiring, were shiftingheavy children from one arm to the other, and keeping ahaggard eye on the scattered members of their families.
At last the train rumbled in, and engulfed the waitingmultitude. Harney swept Charity up on to the first carand they captured a bench for two, and sat in happyisolation while the train swayed and roared alongthrough rich fields and languid tree-clumps. Thehaze of the morning had become a sort of clear tremorover everything, like the colourless vibration about aflame; and the opulent landscape seemed to droop underit. But to Charity the heat was a stimulant: itenveloped the whole world in the same glow that burnedat her heart. Now and then a lurch of the train flungher against Harney, and through her thin muslin shefelt the touch of his sleeve. She steadied herself,their eyes met, and the flaming breath of the dayseemed to enclose them.
The train roared into the Nettleton station, thedescending mob caught them on its tide, and they wereswept out into a vague dusty square thronged with seedy"hacks" and long curtained omnibuses drawn by horseswith tasselled fly-nets over their withers, who stoodswinging their depressed heads drearily from side toside.
A mob of 'bus and hack drivers were shouting "To theEagle House," "To the Washington House," "This way tothe Lake," "Just starting for Greytop;" and throughtheir yells came the popping of fire-crackers, theexplosion of torpedoes, the banging of toy-guns, andthe crash of a firemen's band trying to play the MerryWidow while they were being packed into awaggonette streaming with bunting.
The ramshackle wooden hotels about the square were allhung with flags and paper lanterns, and as Harney andCharity turned into the main street, with its brick andgranite business blocks crowding out the old low-storied shops, and its towering poles strung withinnumerable wires that seemed to tremble and buzz inthe heat, they saw the double line of flags andlanterns tapering away gaily to the park at the otherend of the perspective. The noise and colour of thisholiday vision seemed to transform Nettleton into ametropolis. Charity could not believe that Springfieldor even Boston had anything grander to show, and shewondered if, at this very moment, Annabel Balch, on thearm of as brilliant a young man, were threading her waythrough scenes as resplendent.
............