Ethan Frome, Summer, Bunner Sisters (26 page)

Charity had often noticed Harney’s loving care of his drawings, and the neatness and method with which he carried on and concluded each task. The impatient sweeping aside of the drawing-board seemed to reveal a new mood. The gesture suggested sudden discouragement, or distaste for his work, and she wondered if he too were agitated by secret perplexities. Her impulse of flight was checked; she stepped up on the verandah and looked into the room.

Harney had put his elbows on the table and was resting his chin on his locked hands. He had taken off his coat and waistcoat, and unbuttoned the low collar of his flannel shirt; she saw the vigorous lines of his young throat, and the root of the muscles where they joined the chest. He sat staring straight
ahead of him, a look of weariness and self-disgust on his face: it was almost as if he had been gazing at a distorted reflection of his own features. For a moment Charity looked at him with a kind of terror, as if he had been a stranger under familiar lineaments; then she glanced past him and saw on the floor an open portmanteau half full of clothes. She understood that he was preparing to leave, and that he had probably decided to go without seeing her. She saw that the decision, from whatever cause it was taken, had disturbed him deeply; and she immediately concluded that his change of plan was due to some surreptitious interference of Mr Royall’s. All her old resentments and rebellions flamed up, confusedly mingled with the yearning roused by Harney’s nearness. Only a few hours earlier she had felt secure in his comprehending pity; now she was flung back on herself, doubly alone after that moment of communion.

Harney was still unaware of her presence. He sat without moving, moodily staring before him at the same spot in the wall-paper. He had not even had the energy to finish his packing, and his clothes and papers lay on the floor about the portmanteau. Presently he unlocked his clasped hands and stood up; and Charity, drawing back hastily, sank down on the step of the verandah. The night was so dark that there was not much chance of his seeing her unless he opened the window, and before that she would have time to slip away and be lost in the shadow of the trees. He stood for a minute or two looking around the room with the same expression of self-disgust, as if he hated himself and everything about him; then he sat down again at the table, drew a few more strokes, and threw his pencil aside. Finally he walked across the floor, kicking the portmanteau out of his way, and lay down on the bed, folding his arms under his head, and staring up morosely at the ceiling. Just so, Charity had seen him at her side, on the grass or the pine-needles, his eyes fixed on the sky, and pleasure flashing over his face like the flickers of sun the branches shed on it. But now the face was so changed that she hardly knew it; and grief at his grief gathered in her throat, rose to her eyes and ran over.

She continued to crouch on the steps, holding her breath and stiffening herself into complete immobility. One motion of her hand, one tap on the pane, and she could picture the sudden change in his face. In every pulse of her rigid body she was aware of the welcome his eyes and lips would give her; but something kept her from moving. It was not the fear of any sanction, human or heavenly; she had never in her life been afraid. It was simply that she had suddenly understood what would happen if she went in. It was the thing that
did
happen between young men and girls, and that North Dormer ignored in public and snickered over on the sly. It was what Miss Hatchard was still ignorant of, but every girl of Charity’s class knew about before she left school. It was what had happened to Ally Hawes’s sister Julia, and had ended in her going to Nettleton, and in people’s never mentioning her name.

It did not, of course, always end so sensationally; nor, perhaps, on the whole, so untragically. Charity had always suspected that the shunned Julia’s fate might have its compensations. There were other worse endings that the village knew of, mean, miserable, unconfessed; other lives that went on drearily, without visible change, in the same cramped setting of hypocrisy. But these were not the reasons that held her back. Since the day before, she had known exactly what she would feel if Harney should take her in his arms: the melting of palm into palm and mouth on mouth, and the long flame burning her from head to foot. But mixed with this feeling was another: the wondering pride in his liking for her, the startled softness that his sympathy had put into her heart. Sometimes, when her youth flushed up in her, she had imagined yielding like other girls to furtive caresses in the twilight; but she could not so cheapen herself to Harney. She did not know why he was going; but since he was going she felt she must do nothing to deface the image of her that he carried away. If he wanted her he must seek her: he must not be surprised into taking her as girls like Julia Hawes were taken.…

No sound came from the sleeping village, and in the deep darkness of the garden she heard now and then a secret rustle
of branches, as though some night-bird brushed them. Once a footfall passed the gate, and she shrank back into her corner; but the steps died away and left a profounder quiet. Her eyes were still on Harney’s tormented face: she felt she could not move till he moved. But she was beginning to grow numb from her constrained position, and at times her thoughts were so indistinct that she seemed to be held there only by a vague weight of weariness.

A long time passed in this strange vigil. Harney still lay on the bed, motionless and with fixed eyes, as though following his vision to its bitter end. At last he stirred and changed his attitude slightly, and Charity’s heart began to tremble. But he only flung out his arms and sank back into his former position. With a deep sigh he tossed the hair from his forehead; then his whole body relaxed, his head turned sideways on the pillow, and she saw that he had fallen asleep. The sweet expression came back to his lips, and the haggardness faded from his face, leaving it as fresh as a boy’s.

She rose and crept away.

S
he had lost the sense of time, and did not know how late it was till she came out into the street and saw that all the windows were dark between Miss Hatchard’s and the Royall house.

As she passed from under the black pall of the Norway spruces she fancied she saw two figures in the shade about the duck-pond. She drew back and watched; but nothing moved, and she had stared so long into the lamp-lit room that the darkness confused her, and she thought she must have been mistaken.

She walked on, wondering whether Mr Royall was still in the porch. In her exalted mood she did not greatly care whether he was waiting for her or not: she seemed to be floating high over life, on a great cloud of misery beneath which everyday realities had dwindled to mere specks in space. But the porch was empty, Mr Royall’s hat hung on its peg in the passage, and the kitchen lamp had been left to light her to bed. She took it and went up.

The morning hours of the next day dragged by without incident. Charity had imagined that, in some way or other, she would learn whether Harney had already left; but Verena’s deafness prevented her being a source of news, and no one came to the house who could bring enlightenment.

Mr Royall went out early, and did not return till Verena had set the table for the midday meal. When he came in he went straight to the kitchen and shouted to the old woman: ‘Ready for dinner—’ then he turned into the dining-room, where Charity was already seated. Harney’s plate was in its usual place, but Mr Royall offered no explanation of his absence,
and Charity asked none. The feverish exaltation of the night before had dropped, and she said to herself that he had gone away, indifferently, almost callously, and that now her life would lapse again into the narrow rut out of which he had lifted it. For a moment she was inclined to sneer at herself for not having used the arts that might have kept him.

She sat at table till the meal was over, lest Mr Royall should remark on her leaving; but when he stood up she rose also, without waiting to help Verena. She had her foot on the stairs when he called to her to come back.

‘I’ve got a headache. I’m going up to lie down.’

‘I want you should come in here first; I’ve got something to say to you.’

She was sure from his tone that in a moment she would learn what every nerve in her ached to know; but as she turned back she made a last effort of indifference.

Mr Royall stood in the middle of the office, his thick eyebrows beetling, his lower jaw trembling a little. At first she thought he had been drinking; then she saw that he was sober, but stirred by a deep and stern emotion totally unlike his usual transient angers. And suddenly she understood that, until then, she had never really noticed him or thought about him. Except on the occasion of his one offense he had been to her merely the person who is always there, the unquestioned central fact of life, as inevitable but as uninteresting as North Dormer itself, or any of the other conditions fate had laid on her. Even then she had regarded him only in relation to herself, and had never speculated as to his own feelings, beyond instinctively concluding that he would not trouble her again in the same way. But now she began to wonder what he was really like.

He had grasped the back of his chair with both hands, and stood looking hard at her. At length he said: ‘Charity, for once let’s you and me talk together like friends.’

Instantly she felt that something had happened, and that he held her in his hand.

‘Where is Mr Harney? Why hasn’t he come back? Have you
sent him away?’ she broke out, without knowing what she was saying.

The change in Mr Royall frightened her. All the blood seemed to leave his veins and against his swarthy pallor the deep lines in his face looked black.

‘Didn’t he have time to answer some of those questions last night? You was with him long enough!’ he said.

Charity stood speechless. The taunt was so unrelated to what had been happening in her soul that she hardly understood it. But the instinct of self-defense awoke in her.

‘Who says I was with him last night?’

‘The whole place is saying it by now.’

‘Then it was you that put the lie into their mouths. – Oh, how I’ve always hated you!’ she cried.

She had expected a retort in kind, and it startled her to hear her exclamation sounding on through silence.

‘Yes, I know,’ Mr Royall said slowly. ‘But that ain’t going to help us much now.’

‘It helps me not to care a straw what lies you tell about me!’

‘If they’re lies, they’re not my lies: my Bible oath on that, Charity. I didn’t know where you were: I wasn’t out of this house last night.’

She made no answer and he went on: ‘Is it a lie that you were seen coming out of Miss Hatchard’s nigh onto midnight?’

She straightened herself with a laugh, all her reckless insolence recovered. ‘I didn’t look to see what time it was.’

‘You lost girl … you … you … Oh, my God, why did you tell me?’ he broke out, dropping into his chair, his head bowed down like an old man’s.

Charity’s self-possession had returned with the sense of her danger. ‘Do you suppose I’d take the trouble to lie to
you
? Who are you, anyhow, to ask me where I go to when I go out at night?’

Mr Royall lifted his head and looked at her. His face had grown quiet and almost gentle, as she remembered seeing it sometimes when she was a little girl, before Mrs Royall died.

‘Don’t let’s go on like this, Charity. It can’t do any good to
either of us. You were seen going into that fellow’s house … you were seen coming out of it.… I’ve watched this thing coming, and I’ve tried to stop it. As God sees me, I have.…’

‘Ah, it
was
you, then? I knew it was you that sent him away!’

He looked at her in surprise. ‘Didn’t he tell you so? I thought he understood.’ He spoke slowly, with difficult pauses, ‘I didn’t name you to him: I’d have cut my hand off sooner. I just told him I couldn’t spare the horse any longer; and that the cooking was getting too heavy for Verena. I guess he’s the kind that’s heard the same thing before. Anyhow, he took it quietly enough. He said his job here was about done, anyhow; and there didn’t another word pass between us.… If he told you otherwise he told you an untruth.’

Charity listened in a cold trance of anger. It was nothing to her what the village said … but all this fingering of her dreams!

‘I’ve told you he didn’t tell me anything. I didn’t speak with him last night.’

‘You didn’t speak with him?’

‘No … It’s not that I care what any of you say … but you may as well know. Things ain’t between us the way you think … and the other people in this place. He was kind to me; he was my friend; and all of a sudden he stopped coming, and I knew it was you that done it –
you!
’ All her unreconciled memory of the past flamed out at him. ‘So I went there last night to find out what you’d said to him: that’s all.’

Mr Royall drew a heavy breath. ‘But, then – if he wasn’t there, what were you doing there all that time? – Charity, for pity’s sake, tell me. I’ve got to know, to stop their talking.’

This pathetic abdication of all authority over her did not move her: she could feel only the outrage of his interference.

‘Can’t you see that I don’t care what anybody says? It’s true I went there to see him; and he was in his room, and I stood outside for ever so long and watched him; but I dursn’t go in for fear he’d think I’d come after him.…’ She felt her voice breaking, and gathered it up in a last defiance. ‘As long as I live I’ll never forgive you!’ she cried.

Mr Royall made no answer. He sat and pondered with
sunken head, his veined hands clasped about the arms of his chair. Age seemed to have come down on him as winter comes on the hills after a storm. At length he looked up.

‘Charity, you say you don’t care; but you’re the proudest girl I know, and the last to want people to talk against you. You know there’s always eyes watching you: you’re handsomer and smarter than the rest, and that’s enough. But till lately you’ve never given them a chance. Now they’ve got it, and they’re going to use it. I believe what you say, but they won’t.… It was Mrs Tom Fry seen you going in … and two or three of them watched for you to come out again.… You’ve been with the fellow all day long every day since he come here … and I’m a lawyer, and I know how hard slander dies.’ He paused, but she stood motionless, without giving him any sign of acquiescence or even of attention. ‘He’s a pleasant fellow to talk to – I liked having him here myself. The young men up here ain’t had his chances. But there’s one thing as old as the hills and as plain as daylight: if he’d wanted you the right way he’d have said so.’