sun-bleached to a ghostly gray—stood in an orchard above the road. The garden palings had fallen, but the broken gate dangled between its posts, and the path to the house was marked by rose-bushes run wild and hanging their small pale blossoms above the crowding grasses. Slender pilasters and an intricate fan-light framed the opening where the door had hung; and the door itself lay rotting in the grass, with an old apple-tree fallen across it.
Inside, also, wind and weather had blanched everything to the same wan silvery tint; the house was as dry and pure as the interior of a long-empty shell. But it must have been exceptionally well built, for the little rooms had kept something of their human aspect: the wooden mantels with their neat classic ornaments were in place, and the corners of one ceiling retained a light film of plaster tracery.
Harney had found an old bench at the back door and dragged it into the house. Charity sat on it, leaning her head against the wall in a state of drowsy lassitude. He had guessed that she was hungry and thirsty, and had brought her some tablets of chocolate from his bicycle-bag, and filled his drinking-cup from a spring in the orchard; and now he sat at her feet, smoking a cigarette, and looking up at her without speaking. Outside, the afternoon shadows were lengthening across the grass, and through the empty window-frame that faced her she saw the Mountain thrusting its dark mass against a sultry sunset. It was time to go.
She stood up, and he sprang to his feet also, and passed his arm through hers with an air of authority. “Now, Charity, you’re coming back with me.”
She looked at him and shook her head. “I ain’t ever going back. You don’t know.”
“What don’t I know?” She was silent, and he continued: “What happened on the wharf was horrible—it’s natural you should feel as you do. But it doesn’t make any real difference: you can’t be hurt by such things. You must try to forget. And you must try to understand that men…men sometimes…”
“I know about men. That’s why.”
He coloured a little at the retort, as though it had touched him in a way she did not suspect.
“Well, then…you must know one has to make allowances….He’d been drinking….”
“I know all that, too. I’ve seen him so before. But he wouldn’t have dared speak to me that way if he hadn’t…”
“Hadn’t what? What do you mean?”
“Hadn’t wanted me to be like those other girls….” She lowered her voice and looked away from him. “So’s ‘t he wouldn’t have to go out….”
Harney stared at her. For a moment he did not seem to seize her meaning; then his face grew dark. “The damned hound! The villainous low hound!” His wrath blazed up, crimsoning him to the temples. “I never dreamed —good God, it’s too vile,” he broke off, as if his thoughts recoiled from the discovery.
“I won’t never go back there,” she repeated doggedly.
“No–-” he assented.
There was a long interval of silence, during which she imagined that he was searching her face for more light on what she had revealed to him; and a flush of shame swept over her.
“I know the way you must feel about me,” she broke out, “…telling you such things….”
But once more, as she spoke, she became aware that he was no longer listening. He came close and caught her to him as if he were snatching her from some imminent peril: his impetuous eyes were in hers, and she could feel the hard beat of his heart as he held her against it.
“Kiss me again—like last night,” he said, pushing her hair back as if to draw her whole face up into his kiss.
XII
ONE afternoon toward the end of August a group of girls sat in a room at Miss Hatchard’s in a gay confusion of flags, turkey-red, blue and white paper muslin, harvest sheaves and illuminated scrolls.
North Dormer was preparing for its Old Home Week. That form of sentimental decentralization was still in its early stages, and, precedents being few, and the desire to set an example contagious, the matter had become a subject of prolonged and passionate discussion under Miss Hatchard’s roof. The incentive to the celebration had come rather from those who had left North Dormer than from those who had been obliged to stay there, and there was some difficulty in rousing the village to the proper state of enthusiasm. But Miss Hatchard’s pale prim drawing- room was the centre of constant comings and goings from Hepburn, Nettleton, Springfield and even more distant cities; and whenever a visitor arrived he was led across the hall, and treated to a glimpse of the group of girls deep in their pretty preparations.
“All the old names…all the old names….” Miss Hatchard would be heard, tapping across the hall on her crutches. “Targatt…Sollas…Fry: this is Miss Orma Fry sewing the stars on the drapery for the organ-loft. Don’t move, girls….and this is Miss Ally Hawes, our cleverest needle-woman…and Miss Charity Royall making our garlands of evergreen….I like the idea of its all being homemade, don’t you? We haven’t had to call in any foreign talent: my young cousin Lucius Harney, the architect—you know he’s up here preparing a book on Colonial houses—he’s taken the whole thing in hand so cleverly; but you must come and see his sketch for the stage we’re going to put up in the Town Hall.”
One of the first results of the Old Home Week agitation had, in fact, been the reappearance of Lucius Harney in the village street. He had been vaguely spoken of as being not far off, but for some weeks past no one had seen him at North Dormer, and there was a recent report of his having left Creston River, where he was said to have been staying, and gone away from the neighbourhood for good. Soon after Miss Hatchard’s return, however, he came back to his old quarters in her house, and began to take a leading part in the planning of the festivities. He threw himself into the idea with extraordinary good-humour, and was so prodigal of sketches, and so inexhaustible in devices, that he gave an immediate impetus to the rather languid movement, and infected the whole village with his enthusiasm.
“Lucius has such a feeling for the past that he has roused us all to a sense of our privileges,” Miss Hatchard would say, lingering on the last word, which was a favourite one. And before leading her visitor back to the drawing-room she would repeat, for the hundredth time, that she supposed he thought it very bold of little North Dormer to start up and have a Home Week of its own, when so many bigger places hadn’t thought of it yet; but that, after all, Associations counted more than the size of the population, didn’t they? And of course North Dormer was so full of Associations…historic, literary (here a filial sigh for Honorius) and ecclesiastical…he knew about the old pewter communion service imported from England in 1769, she supposed? And it was so important, in a wealthy materialistic age, to set the example of reverting to the old ideals, the family and the homestead, and so on. This
