“For YOU, as a favour—I did. But how about the responsibility and the insurance? I don’t s’pose you ever thought of that? This pin’s worth a hundred dollars easy. If it had got lost or stole, where’d I been when you come to claim it?”
Charity remained silent, puzzled and half-convinced by the argument, and Dr. Merkle promptly followed up her advantage. “I didn’t ask you for your brooch, my dear. I’d a good deal ruther folks paid me my regular charge than have ‘em put me to all this trouble.”
She paused, and Charity, seized with a desperate longing to escape, rose to her feet and held out one of the bills.
“Will you take that?” she asked.
“No, I won’t take that, my dear; but I’ll take it with its mate, and hand you over a signed receipt if you don’t trust me.”
“Oh, but I can’t—it’s all I’ve got,” Charity exclaimed.
Dr. Merkle looked up at her pleasantly from the plush sofa. “It seems you got married yesterday, up to the ‘Piscopal church; I heard all about the wedding from the minister’s chore-man. It would be a pity, wouldn’t it, to let Mr. Royall know you had an account running here? I just put it to you as your own mother might.”
Anger flamed up in Charity, and for an instant she thought of abandoning the brooch and letting Dr. Merkle do her worst. But how could she leave her only treasure with that evil woman? She wanted it for her baby: she meant it, in some mysterious way, to be a link between Harney’s child and its unknown father. Trembling and hating herself while she did it, she laid Mr. Royall’s money on the table, and catching up the brooch fled out of the room and the house….
In the street she stood still, dazed by this last adventure. But the brooch lay in her bosom like a talisman, and she felt a secret lightness of heart. It gave her strength, after a moment, to walk on slowly in the direction of the post office, and go in through the swinging doors. At one of the windows she bought a sheet of letter-paper, an envelope and a stamp; then she sat down at a table and dipped the rusty post office pen in ink. She had come there possessed with a fear which had haunted her ever since she had felt Mr. Royall’s ring on her finger: the fear that Harney might, after all, free himself and come back to her. It was a possibility which had never occurred to her during the dreadful hours after she had received his letter; only when the decisive step she had taken made longing turn to apprehension did such a contingency seem conceivable. She addressed the envelope, and on the sheet of paper she wrote:
I’m married to Mr. Royall. I’ll always remember you. CHARITY.
The last words were not in the least what she had meant to write; they had flowed from her pen irresistibly. She had not had the strength to complete her sacrifice; but, after all, what did it matter? Now that there was no chance of ever seeing Harney again, why should she not tell him the truth?
When she had put the letter in the box she went out into the busy sunlit street and began to walk to the hotel. Behind the plateglass windows of the department stores she noticed the tempting display of dresses and dress- materials that had fired her imagination on the day when she and Harney had looked in at them together. They reminded her of Mr. Royall’s injunction to go out and buy all she needed. She looked down at her shabby dress, and wondered what she should say when he saw her coming back empty-handed. As she drew near the hotel she saw him waiting on the doorstep, and her heart began to beat with apprehension.
He nodded and waved his hand at her approach, and they walked through the hall and went upstairs to collect their possessions, so that Mr. Royall might give up the key of the room when they went down again for their midday dinner. In the bedroom, while she was thrusting back into the satchel the few things she had brought away with her, she suddenly felt that his eyes were on her and that he was going to speak. She stood still, her half-folded night-gown in her hand, while the blood rushed up to her drawn cheeks.
“Well, did you rig yourself out handsomely? I haven’t seen any bundles round,” he said jocosely.
“Oh, I’d rather let Ally Hawes make the few things I want,” she answered.
“That so?” He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment and his eyebrows projected in a scowl. Then his face grew friendly again. “Well, I wanted you to go back looking stylisher than any of them; but I guess you’re right. You’re a good girl, Charity.”
Their eyes met, and something rose in his that she had never seen there: a look that made her feel ashamed and yet secure.
“I guess you’re good, too,” she said, shyly and quickly. He smiled without answering, and they went out of the room together and dropped down to the hall in the glittering lift.
Late that evening, in the cold autumn moonlight, they drove up to the door of the red house.
