第36章

Harney, however, once satisfied of her security, had found plenty of reasons for urging her to return.The first, and the most unanswerable, was that she had nowhere else to go.But the one on which he laid the greatest stress was that flight would be equivalent to avowal.If--as was almost inevitable--rumours of the scandalous scene at Nettleton should reach North Dormer, how else would her disappearance be interpreted? Her guardian had publicly taken away her character, and she immediately vanished from his house.Seekers after motives could hardly fail to draw an unkind conclusion.But if she came back at once, and was seen leading her usual life, the incident was reduced to its true proportions, as the outbreak of a drunken old man furious at being surprised in disreputable company.People would say that Mr.Royall had insulted his ward to justify himself, and the sordid tale would fall into its place in the chronicle of his obscure debaucheries.

Charity saw the force of the argument; but if she acquiesced it was not so much because of that as because it was Harney's wish.Since that evening in the deserted house she could imagine no reason for doing or not doing anything except the fact that Harney wished or did not wish it.All her tossing contradictory impulses were merged in a fatalistic acceptance of his will.It was not that she felt in him any ascendancy of character--there were moments already when she knew she was the stronger--but that all the rest of life had become a mere cloudy rim about the central glory of their passion.Whenever she stopped thinking about that for a moment she felt as she sometimes did after lying on the grass and staring up too long at the sky; her eyes were so full of light that everything about her was a blur.

Each time that Miss Hatchard, in the course of her periodical incursions into the work-room, dropped an allusion to her young cousin, the architect, the effect was the same on Charity.The hemlock garland she was wearing fell to her knees and she sat in a kind of trance.It was so manifestly absurd that Miss Hatchard should talk of Harney in that familiar possessive way, as if she had any claim on him, or knew anything about him.She, Charity Royall, was the only being on earth who really knew him, knew him from the soles of his feet to the rumpled crest of his hair, knew the shifting lights in his eyes, and the inflexions of his voice, and the things he liked and disliked, and everything there was to know about him, as minutely and yet unconsciously as a child knows the walls of the room it wakes up in every morning.It was this fact, which nobody about her guessed, or would have understood, that made her life something apart and inviolable, as if nothing had any power to hurt or disturb her as long as her secret was safe.

The room in which the girls sat was the one which had been Harney's bedroom.He had been sent upstairs, to make room for the Home Week workers; but the furniture had not been moved, and as Charity sat there she had perpetually before her the vision she had looked in on from the midnight garden.The table at which Harney had sat was the one about which the girls were gathered; and her own seat was near the bed on which she had seen him lying.Sometimes, when the others were not looking, she bent over as if to pick up something, and laid her cheek for a moment against the pillow.

Toward sunset the girls disbanded.Their work was done, and the next morning at daylight the draperies and garlands were to be nailed up, and the illuminated scrolls put in place in the Town Hall.The first guests were to drive over from Hepburn in time for the midday banquet under a tent in Miss Hatchard's field;and after that the ceremonies were to begin.Miss Hatchard, pale with fatigue and excitement, thanked her young assistants, and stood in the porch, leaning on her crutches and waving a farewell as she watched them troop away down the street.

Charity had slipped off among the first; but at the gate she heard Ally Hawes calling after her, and reluctantly turned.

"Will you come over now and try on your dress?"Ally asked, looking at her with wistful admiration."Iwant to be sure the sleeves don't ruck up the same as they did yesterday."Charity gazed at her with dazzled eyes."Oh, it's lovely," she said, and hastened away without listening to Ally's protest.She wanted her dress to be as pretty as the other girls'--wanted it, in fact, to outshine the rest, since she was to take part in the "exercises"--but she had no time just then to fix her mind on such matters....

She sped up the street to the library, of which she had the key about her neck.From the passage at the back she dragged forth a bicycle, and guided it to the edge of the street.She looked about to see if any of the girls were approaching; but they had drifted away together toward the Town Hall, and she sprang into the saddle and turned toward the Creston road.There was an almost continual descent to Creston, and with her feet against the pedals she floated through the still evening air like one of the hawks she had often watched slanting downward on motionless wings.Twenty minutes from the time when she had left Miss Hatchard's door she was turning up the wood-road on which Harney had overtaken her on the day of her flight; and a few minutes afterward she had jumped from her bicycle at the gate of the deserted house.

In the gold-powdered sunset it looked more than ever like some frail shell dried and washed by many seasons;but at the back, whither Charity advanced, drawing her bicycle after her, there were signs of recent habitation.A rough door made of boards hung in the kitchen doorway, and pushing it open she entered a room furnished in primitive camping fashion.In the window was a table, also made of boards, with an earthenware jar holding a big bunch of wild asters, two canvas chairs stood near by, and in one corner was a mattress with a Mexican blanket over it.