Summer

A girl came out of lawyer Royall’s house, at the end of the one street of North Dormer, and stood on the doorstep.

It was the beginning of a June afternoon. The springlike transparent sky shed a rain of silver sunshine on the roofs of the village, and on the pastures and larchwoods surrounding it. A little wind moved among the round white clouds on the shoulders of the hills, driving their shadows across the fields and down the grassy road that takes the name of street when it passes through North Dormer. The place lies high and in the open, and lacks the lavish shade of the more protected New England villages. The clump of weeping-willows about the duck pond, and the Norway spruces in front of the Hatchard gate, cast almost the only roadside shadow between lawyer Royall’s house and the point where, at the other end of the village, the road rises above the church and skirts the black hemlock wall enclosing the cemetery.

The little June wind, frisking down the street, shook the doleful fringes of the Hatchard spruces, caught the straw hat of a young man just passing under them, and spun it clean across the road into the duck-pond.

As he ran to fish it out the girl on lawyer Royall’s doorstep noticed that he was a stranger, that he wore city clothes, and that he was laughing with all his teeth, as the young and careless laugh at such mishaps.

Suddenly the door opened, and before she had raised her eyes she knew that the young man she had seen going in at the Hatchard gate had entered the library.

Without taking any notice of her he began to move slowly about the long vault-like room, his hands behind his back, his shortsighted eyes peering up and down the rows of rusty bindings. At length he reached the desk and stood before her.

“Have you a card-catalogue?” he asked in a pleasant abrupt voice; and the oddness of the question caused her to drop her work.

“A what?”

“Why, you know⁠—” He broke off, and she became conscious that he was looking at her for the first time, having apparently, on his entrance, included her in his general shortsighted survey as part of the furniture of the library.

The fact that, in discovering her, he lost the thread of his remark, did not escape her attention, and she looked down and smiled. He smiled also.

“No, I don’t suppose you do know,” he corrected himself. “In fact, it would be almost a pity⁠—”

She thought she detected a slight condescension in his tone, and asked sharply: “Why?”

“Because it’s so much pleasanter, in a small library like this, to poke about by one’s self⁠—with the help of the librarian.”

He added the last phrase so respectfully that she was mollified, and rejoined with a sigh: “I’m afraid I can’t help you much.”

“Why?” he questioned in his turn; and she replied that there weren’t many books anyhow, and that she’d hardly read any of them. “The worms are getting at them,” she added gloomily.

She was awakened by a rattling at her door and jumped out of bed. She heard Mr. Royall’s voice, low and peremptory, and opened the door, fearing an accident. No other thought had occurred to her; but when she saw him in the doorway, a ray from the autumn moon falling on his discomposed face, she understood.

For a moment they looked at each other in silence; then, as he put his foot across the threshold, she stretched out her arm and stopped him.

“You go right back from here,” she said, in a shrill voice that startled her; “you ain’t going to have that key tonight.”

“Charity, let me in. I don’t want the key. I’m a lonesome man,” he began, in the deep voice that sometimes moved her.

Her heart gave a startled plunge, but she continued to hold him back contemptuously. “Well, I guess you made a mistake, then. This ain’t your wife’s room any longer.”

She was not frightened, she simply felt a deep disgust; and perhaps he divined it or read it in her face, for after staring at her a moment he drew back and turned slowly away from the door. With her ear to her keyhole she heard him feel his way down the dark stairs, and toward the kitchen; and she listened for the crash of the cupboard panel,

They pushed their way back to the edge of the water just as the gangplank lowered from the white side of the boat. The electric light at the end of the wharf flashed full on the descending passengers, and among them Charity caught sight of Julia Hawes, her white feather askew, and the face under it flushed with coarse laughter. As she stepped from the gangplank she stopped short, her dark-ringed eyes darting malice.

“Hullo, Charity Royall!” she called out; and then, looking back over her shoulder: “Didn’t I tell you it was a family party? Here’s grandpa’s little daughter come to take him home!”

A snigger ran through the group; and then, towering above them, and steadying himself by the handrail in a desperate effort at erectness, Mr. Royall stepped stiffly ashore. Like the young men of the party, he wore a secret society emblem in the buttonhole of his black frock-coat. His head was covered by a new Panama hat, and his narrow black tie, half undone, dangled down on his rumpled shirtfront. His face, a livid brown, with red blotches of anger and lips sunken in like an old man’s, was a lamentable ruin in the searching glare.

He was just behind Julia Hawes, and had one hand on her arm; but as he left the gangplank he freed himself, and moved a step or two away from his companions. He had seen Charity at once, and his glance passed slowly from her to Harney, whose arm was still about her.

“I didn’t know but what⁠ ⁠… folks here say she’s engaged to Mr. Harney.”

Charity stood up with a laugh, and stretched her arms lazily above her head.

“If all the people got married that folks say are going to you’d have your time full making wedding-dresses,” she said ironically.

“Why⁠—don’t you believe it?” Ally ventured.

“It would not make it true if I did⁠—nor prevent it if I didn’t.”

“That’s so.⁠ ⁠… I only know I seen her crying the night of the party because her dress didn’t set right. That was why she wouldn’t dance any.⁠ ⁠…”

Charity stood absently gazing down at the lacy garment on Ally’s knee. Abruptly she stooped and snatched it up.

“Well, I guess she won’t dance in this either,” she said with sudden violence; and grasping the blouse in her strong young hands she tore it in two and flung the tattered bits to the floor.

“Oh, Charity⁠—” Ally cried, springing up. For a long interval the two girls faced each other across the ruined garment. Ally burst into tears.

“Oh, what’ll I say to her? What’ll I do? It was real lace!” she wailed between her piping sobs.

Charity glared at her unrelentingly. “You’d oughtn’t to have brought it here,” she said, breathing quickly. “I hate other people’s clothes⁠—it’s just as if they was there themselves.” The two stared at each other again over this avowal, till Charity brought out, in a gasp of anguish: “Oh, go⁠—go⁠—go⁠—or I’ll hate you too.⁠ ⁠…”

When Ally left her, she fell sobbing across her bed.