Ethan Frome, Summer, Bunner Sisters (27 page)

Charity did not speak. It seemed to her that nothing could exceed the bitterness of hearing such words from such lips.

Mr Royall rose from his seat. ‘See here, Charity Royall: I had a shameful thought once, and you’ve made me pay for it. Isn’t that score pretty near wiped out?… There’s a streak in me I ain’t always master of, but I’ve always acted straight to you but that once. And you’ve known I would – you’ve trusted me. For all your sneers and your mockery you’ve always known I loved you the way a man loves a decent woman. I’m a good many years older than you, but I’m head and shoulders above this place and everybody in it, and you know that too. I slipped up once, but that’s no reason for not starting again. If you’ll come with me I’ll do it. If you’ll marry me we’ll leave here and settle in some big town, where there’s men, and business, and things doing. It’s not too late for me to find an opening.… I can see it by the way folks treat me when I go down to Hepburn or Nettleton.…’

Charity made no movement. Nothing in his appeal reached
her heart, and she thought only of words to wound and wither. But a growing lassitude restrained her. What did anything matter that he was saying? She saw the old life closing in on her, and hardly heeded his fanciful picture of renewal.

‘Charity – Charity – say you’ll do it,’ she heard him urge, all his lost years and wasted passion in his voice.

‘Oh, what’s the use of all this? When I leave here it won’t be with you.’

She moved toward the door as she spoke, and he stood up and placed himself between her and the threshold. He seemed suddenly tall and strong, as though the extremity of his humiliation had given him new vigour.

‘That’s all, is it? It’s not much.’ He leaned against the door, so towering and powerful that he seemed to fill the narrow room. ‘Well, then – look here.… You’re right: I’ve no claim on you – why should you look at a broken man like me? You want the other fellow … and I don’t blame you. You picked out the best when you seen it … well, that was always my way.’ He fixed his stern eyes on her, and she had the sense that the struggle within him was at its highest. ‘Do you want him to marry you?’ he asked.

They stood and looked at each other for a long moment, eye to eye, with the terrible equality of courage that sometimes made her feel as if she had his blood in her veins.

‘Do you want him to – say? I’ll have him here in an hour if you do. I ain’t been in the law thirty years for nothing. He’s hired Carrick Fry’s team to take him to Hepburn, but he ain’t going to start for another hour. And I can put things to him so he won’t be long deciding.… He’s soft: I could see that. I don’t say you won’t be sorry afterward – but, by God, I’ll give you the chance to be, if you say so.’

She heard him out in silence, too remote from all he was feeling and saying for any sally of scorn to relieve her. As she listened, there flitted through her mind the vision of Liff Hyatt’s muddy boot coming down on the white bramble-flowers. The same thing had happened now; something transient and exquisite had flowered in her, and she had stood by
and seen it trampled to earth. While the thought passed through her she was aware of Mr Royall, still leaning against the door, but crestfallen, diminished, as though her silence were the answer he most dreaded.

‘I don’t want any chance you can give me: I’m glad he’s going away,’ she said.

He kept his place a moment longer, his hand on the door-knob. ‘Charity!’ he pleaded. She made no answer, and he turned the knob and went out. She heard him fumble with the latch of the front door, and saw him walk down the steps. He passed out of the gate, and his figure, stooping and heavy, receded slowly up the street.

For a while she remained where he had left her. She was still trembling with the humiliation of his last words, which rang so loud in her ears that it seemed as though they must echo through the village, proclaiming her a creature to lend herself to such vile suggestions. Her shame weighed on her like a physical oppression: the roof and walls seemed to be closing in on her, and she was seized by the impulse to get away, under the open sky, where there would be room to breathe. She went to the front door, and as she did so Lucius Harney opened it.

He looked graver and less confident than usual, and for a moment or two neither of them spoke. Then he held out his hand. ‘Are you going out?’ he asked. ‘May I come in?’

Her heart was beating so violently that she was afraid to speak, and stood looking at him with tear-dilated eyes; then she became aware of what her silence must betray, and said quickly: ‘Yes: come in.’

She led the way into the dining-room, and they sat down on opposite sides of the table, the cruet-stand and japanned bread-basket between them. Harney had laid his straw hat on the table, and as he sat there, in his easy-looking summer clothes, a brown tie knotted under his flannel collar, and his smooth brown hair brushed back from his forehead, she pictured him as she had seen him the night before, lying on his bed, with the tossed locks falling into his eyes, and his bare throat rising out of his unbuttoned shirt. He had never seemed
so remote as at the moment when that vision flashed through her mind.

‘I’m so sorry it’s good-bye: I suppose you know I’m leaving,’ he began, abruptly and awkwardly; she guessed that he was wondering how much she knew of his reasons for going.

‘I presume you found your work was over quicker than what you expected,’ she said.

‘Well, yes – that is, no: there are plenty of things I should have liked to do. But my holiday’s limited; and now that Mr Royall needs the horse for himself it’s rather difficult to find means of getting about.’

‘There ain’t any too many teams for hire around here,’ she acquiesced; and there was another silence.

‘These days here have been – awfully pleasant: I wanted to thank you for making them so,’ he continued, his colour rising.

She could not think of any reply, and he went on: ‘You’ve been wonderfully kind to me, and I wanted to tell you.… I wish I could think of you as happier, less lonely.… Things are sure to change for you by and by.…’

‘Things don’t change at North Dormer: people just get used to them.’

The answer seemed to break up the order of his prearranged consolations, and he sat looking at her uncertainly. Then he said, with his sweet smile: ‘That’s not true of you. It can’t be.’

The smile was like a knife-thrust through her heart: everything in her began to tremble and break loose. She felt her tears run over, and stood up.

‘Well, good-bye,’ she said.

She was aware of his taking her hand, and of feeling that his touch was lifeless.

‘Good-bye.’ He turned away, and stopped on the threshold. ‘You’ll say good-bye for me to Verena?’

She heard the closing of the outer door and the sound of his quick tread along the path. The latch of the gate clicked after him.

The next morning when she arose in the cold dawn and
opened her shutters she saw a freckled boy standing on the other side of the road and looking up at her. He was a boy from a farm three or four miles down the Creston road, and she wondered what he was doing there at that hour, and why he looked so hard at her window. When he saw her he crossed over and leaned against the gate unconcernedly. There was no one stirring in the house, and she threw a shawl over her nightgown and ran down and let herself out. By the time she reached the gate the boy was sauntering down the road, whistling carelessly; but she saw that a letter had been thrust between the slats and the crossbar of the gate. She took it out and hastened back to her room.

The envelope bore her name, and inside was a leaf torn from a pocket-diary.

D
EAR
C
HARITY
:

I can’t go away like this. I am staying for a few days at Creston River. Will you come down and meet me at Creston pool? I will wait for you till evening.

C
harity sat before the mirror trying on a hat which Ally Hawes, with much secrecy, had trimmed for her. It was of white straw, with a drooping brim and a cherry-coloured lining that made her face glow like the inside of the shell on the parlour mantelpiece.

She propped the square of looking-glass against Mr Royall’s black leather Bible, steadying it in front with a white stone on which a view of the Brooklyn Bridge was painted; and she sat before her reflection, bending the brim this way and that, while Ally Hawes’s pale face looked over her shoulder like the ghost of wasted opportunities.

‘I look awful, don’t I?’ she said at last with a happy sigh.

Ally smiled and took back the hat. ‘I’ll stitch the roses on right here, so’s you can put it away at once.’

Charity laughed, and ran her fingers through her rough dark hair. She knew that Harney liked to see its reddish edges ruffled about her forehead and breaking into little rings at the nape. She sat down on her bed and watched Ally stoop over the hat with a careful frown.

‘Don’t you ever feel like going down to Nettleton for a day?’ she asked.

Ally shook her head without looking up. ‘No, I always remember that awful time I went down with Julia – to that doctor’s.’

‘Oh, Ally—’

‘I can’t help it. The house is on the corner of Wing Street and Lake Avenue. The trolley from the station goes right by it, and the day the minister took us down to see those pictures I recognized it right off, and couldn’t seem to see anything
else. There’s a big black sign with gold letters all across the front – ‘Private Consultations’. She came as near as anything to dying.…’

‘Poor Julia!’ Charity sighed from the height of her purity and her security. She had a friend whom she trusted and who respected her. She was going with him to spend the next day – the Fourth of July – at Nettleton. Whose business was it but hers, and what was the harm? The pity of it was that girls like Julia did not know how to choose, and to keep bad fellows at a distance.… Charity slipped down from the bed, and stretched out her hands.

‘Is it sewed? Let me try it on again.’ She put the hat on, and smiled at her image. The thought of Julia had vanished …

The next morning she was up before dawn, and saw the yellow sunrise broaden behind the hills, and the silvery lustre preceding a hot day tremble across the sleeping fields.

Her plans had been made with great care. She had announced that she was going down to the Band of Hope picnic at Hepburn, and as no one else from North Dormer intended to venture so far it was not likely that her absence from the festivity would be reported. Besides, if it were she would not greatly care. She was determined to assert her independence, and if she stooped to fib about the Hepburn picnic it was chiefly from the secretive instinct that made her dread the profanation of her happiness. Whenever she was with Lucius Harney she would have liked some impenetrable mountain mist to hide her.

It was arranged that she should walk to a point of the Creston road where Harney was to pick her up and drive her across the hills to Hepburn in time for the nine-thirty train to Nettleton. Harney at first had been rather lukewarm about the trip. He declared himself ready to take her to Nettleton, but urged her not to go on the Fourth of July, on account of the crowds, the probable lateness of the trains, the difficulty of her getting back before night; but her evident disappointment caused him to give way, and even to affect a faint enthusiasm
for the adventure. She understood why he was not more eager: he must have seen sights beside which even a Fourth of July at Nettleton would seem tame. But she had never seen anything; and a great longing possessed her to walk the streets of a big town on a holiday, clinging to his arm and jostled by idle crowds in their best clothes. The only cloud on the prospect was the fact that the shops would be closed; but she hoped he would take her back another day, when they were open.

She started out unnoticed in the early sunlight, slipping through the kitchen while Verena bent above the stove. To avoid attracting notice, she carried her new hat carefully wrapped up, and had thrown a long grey veil of Mrs Royall’s over the new white muslin dress which Ally’s clever fingers had made for her. All of the ten dollars Mr Royall had given her, and a part of her own savings as well, had been spent on renewing her wardrobe; and when Harney jumped out of the buggy to meet her she read her reward in his eyes.

The freckled boy who had brought her the note two weeks earlier was to wait with the buggy at Hepburn till their return. He perched at Charity’s feet, his legs dangling between the wheels, and they could not say much because of his presence. But it did not greatly matter, for their past was now rich enough to have given them a private language; and with the long day stretching before them like the blue distance beyond the hills there was a delicate pleasure in postponement.

When Charity, in response to Harney’s message, had gone to meet him at the Creston pool her heart had been so full of mortification and anger that his first words might easily have estranged her. But it happened that he had found the right word, which was one of simple friendship. His tone had instantly justified her, and put her guardian in the wrong. He had made no allusion to what had passed between Mr Royall and himself, but had simply let it appear that he had left because means of conveyance were hard to find at North Dormer, and because Creston River was a more convenient centre. He told her that he had hired by the week the buggy of the freckled boy’s father, who served as livery-stable keeper to one or two
melancholy summer boarding-houses on Creston Lake, and had discovered, within driving distance, a number of houses worthy of his pencil; and he said that he could not, while he was in the neighbourhood, give up the pleasure of seeing her as often as possible.

When they took leave of each other she promised to continue to be his guide; and during the fortnight which followed they roamed the hills in happy comradeship. In most of the village friendships between youths and maidens lack of conversation was made up for by tentative fondling; but Harney, except when he had tried to comfort her in her trouble on their way back from the Hyatts’, had never put his arm about her, or sought to betray her into any sudden caress. It seemed to be enough for him to breathe her nearness like a flower’s; and since his pleasure at being with her, and his sense of her youth and her grace, perpetually shone in his eyes and softened the inflections of his voice, his reserve did not suggest coldness, but the deference due to a girl of his own class.