第6章

A day or two later poor Eudora Skeff, who for twenty years had been the custodian of the Hatchard library, died suddenly of pneumonia; and the day after the funeral Charity went to see Miss Hatchard, and asked to be appointed librarian.The request seemed to surprise Miss Hatchard: she evidently questioned the new candidate's qualifications.

"Why, I don't know, my dear.Aren't you rather too young?" she hesitated.

"I want to earn some money," Charity merely answered.

"Doesn't Mr.Royall give you all you require? No one is rich in North Dormer.""I want to earn money enough to get away."

"To get away?" Miss Hatchard's puzzled wrinkles deepened, and there was a distressful pause."You want to leave Mr.Royall?""Yes: or I want another woman in the house with me,"said Charity resolutely.

Miss Hatchard clasped her nervous hands about the arms of her chair.Her eyes invoked the faded countenances on the wall, and after a faint cough of indecision she brought out: "The...the housework's too hard for you, Isuppose?"

Charity's heart grew cold.She understood that Miss Hatchard had no help to give her and that she would have to fight her way out of her difficulty alone.Adeeper sense of isolation overcame her; she felt incalculably old."She's got to be talked to like a baby," she thought, with a feeling of compassion for Miss Hatchard's long immaturity."Yes, that's it," she said aloud."The housework's too hard for me: I've been coughing a good deal this fall."She noted the immediate effect of this suggestion.Miss Hatchard paled at the memory of poor Eudora's taking-off, and promised to do what she could.But of course there were people she must consult: the clergyman, the selectmen of North Dormer, and a distant Hatchard relative at Springfield."If you'd only gone to school!" she sighed.She followed Charity to the door, and there, in the security of the threshold, said with a glance of evasive appeal: "I know Mr.Royall is...trying at times; but his wife bore with him; and you must always remember, Charity, that it was Mr.

Royall who brought you down from the Mountain." Charity went home and opened the door of Mr.Royall's "office."He was sitting there by the stove reading Daniel Webster's speeches.They had met at meals during the five days that had elapsed since he had come to her door, and she had walked at his side at Eudora's funeral; but they had not spoken a word to each other.

He glanced up in surprise as she entered, and she noticed that he was unshaved, and that he looked unusually old; but as she had always thought of him as an old man the change in his appearance did not move her.She told him she had been to see Miss Hatchard, and with what object.She saw that he was astonished;but he made no comment.

"I told her the housework was too hard for me, and Iwanted to earn the money to pay for a hired girl.But I ain't going to pay for her: you've got to.I want to have some money of my own."Mr.Royall's bushy black eyebrows were drawn together in a frown, and he sat drumming with ink-stained nails on the edge of his desk.

"What do you want to earn money for?" he asked.

"So's to get away when I want to."

"Why do you want to get away?"

Her contempt flashed out."Do you suppose anybody'd stay at North Dormer if they could help it? You wouldn't, folks say!"With lowered head he asked: "Where'd you go to?""Anywhere where I can earn my living.I'll try here first, and if I can't do it here I'll go somewhere else.I'll go up the Mountain if I have to." She paused on this threat, and saw that it had taken effect."I want you should get Miss Hatchard and the selectmen to take me at the library: and I want a woman here in the house with me," she repeated.

Mr.Royall had grown exceedingly pale.When she ended he stood up ponderously, leaning against the desk; and for a second or two they looked at each other.

"See here," he said at length as though utterance were difficult, "there's something I've been wanting to say to you; I'd ought to have said it before.I want you to marry me."The girl still stared at him without moving."I want you to marry me," he repeated, clearing his throat.

"The minister'll be up here next Sunday and we can fix it up then.Or I'll drive you down to Hepburn to the Justice, and get it done there.I'll do whatever you say." His eyes fell under the merciless stare she continued to fix on him, and he shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other.As he stood there before her, unwieldy, shabby, disordered, the purple veins distorting the hands he pressed against the desk, and his long orator's jaw trembling with the effort of his avowal, he seemed like a hideous parody of the fatherly old man she had always known.

"Marry you? Me?" she burst out with a scornful laugh.

"Was that what you came to ask me the other night?

What's come over you, I wonder? How long is it since you've looked at yourself in the glass?" She straightened herself, insolently conscious of her youth and strength."I suppose you think it would be cheaper to marry me than to keep a hired girl.Everybody knows you're the closest man in Eagle County; but I guess you're not going to get your mending done for you that way twice."Mr.Royall did not move while she spoke.His face was ash-coloured and his black eyebrows quivered as though the blaze of her scorn had blinded him.When she ceased he held up his hand.

"That'll do--that'll about do," he said.He turned to the door and took his hat from the hat-peg.On the threshold he paused."People ain't been fair to me--from the first they ain't been fair to me," he said.

Then he went out.

A few days later North Dormer learned with surprise that Charity had been appointed librarian of the Hatchard Memorial at a salary of eight dollars a month, and that old Verena Marsh, from the Creston Almshouse, was coming to live at lawyer Royall's and do the cooking.