Summer, Edith Wharton [urban books to read .TXT] 📗

it known to all the countryside how many hours of the long June days she spent with him. What she most feared was that the inevitable comments should reach Mr. Royall. Charity was instinctively aware that few things concerning her escaped the eyes of the silent man under whose roof she lived; and in spite of the latitude which North Dormer accorded to courting couples she had always felt that, on the day when she showed too open a preference, Mr. Royall might, as she phrased it, make her “pay for it.” How, she did not know; and her fear was the greater because it was undefinable. If she had been accepting the attentions of one of the village youths she would have been less apprehensive: Mr. Royall could not prevent her marrying when she chose to. But everybody knew that “going with a city fellow” was a different and less straightforward affair: almost every village could show a victim of the perilous venture. And her dread of Mr. Royall’s intervention gave a sharpened joy to the hours she spent with young Harney, and made her, at the same time, shy of being too generally seen with him.

As he approached she rose to her knees, stretching her arms above her head with the indolent gesture that was her way of expressing a profound well-being.

“I’m going to take you to that house up under Porcupine,” she announced.

“What house? Oh, yes; that ramshackle place near the swamp, with the gipsy-looking people hanging about. It’s curious that a house with traces of real architecture should have been built in such a place. But the people were a sulky-looking lot⁠—do you suppose they’ll let us in?”

“They’ll do whatever I tell them,” she said with assurance.

He threw himself down beside her. “Will they?” he rejoined with a smile. “Well, I should like to see what’s left inside the house. And I should like to have a talk with the people. Who was it who was telling me the other day that they had come down from the Mountain?”

Charity shot a sideward look at him. It was the first time he had spoken of the Mountain except as a feature of the landscape. What else did he know about it, and about her relation to it? Her heart began to beat with the fierce impulse of resistance which she instinctively opposed to every imagined slight.

“The Mountain? I ain’t afraid of the Mountain!”

Her tone of defiance seemed to escape him. He lay breast-down on the grass, breaking off sprigs of thyme and pressing them against his lips. Far off, above the folds of the nearer hills, the Mountain thrust itself up menacingly against a yellow sunset.

“I must go up there some day: I want to see it,” he continued.

Her heartbeats slackened and she turned again to examine his profile. It was innocent of all unfriendly intention.

“What’d you want to go up the Mountain for?”

“Why, it must be rather a curious place. There’s a queer colony up there, you know: sort of outlaws, a little independent kingdom. Of course you’ve heard them spoken of; but I’m told they have nothing to do with the people in the valleys⁠—rather look down on them, in fact. I suppose they’re rough customers; but they must have a good deal of character.”

She did not quite know what he meant by having a good deal of character; but his tone was expressive of admiration, and deepened her dawning curiosity. It struck her now as strange that she knew so little about the Mountain. She had never asked, and no one had ever offered to enlighten her. North Dormer took the Mountain for granted, and implied its disparagement by an intonation rather than by explicit criticism.

“It’s queer, you know,” he continued, “that, just over there, on top of that hill, there should be a handful of people who don’t give a damn for anybody.”

The words thrilled her. They seemed the clue to her own revolts and defiances, and she longed to have him tell her more.

“I don’t know much about them. Have they always been there?”

“Nobody seems to know exactly how long. Down at Creston they told me that the first colonists are supposed to have been men who worked on the railway that was built forty or fifty years ago between Springfield and Nettleton. Some of them took to drink, or got into trouble with the police, and went off⁠—disappeared into the woods. A year or two later there was a report that they were living up on the Mountain. Then I suppose others joined them⁠—and children were born. Now they say there are over a hundred people up there. They seem to be quite outside the jurisdiction of the valleys. No school, no church⁠—and no sheriff ever goes up to see what they’re about. But don’t people ever talk of them at North Dormer?”

“I don’t know. They say they’re bad.”

He laughed. “Do they? We’ll go and see, shall we?”

She flushed at the suggestion, and turned her face to his. “You never heard, I suppose⁠—I come from there. They brought me down when I was little.”

“You?” He raised himself on his elbow, looking at her with sudden interest. “You’re from the Mountain? How curious! I suppose that’s why you’re so different.⁠ ⁠…”

Her happy blood bathed her to the forehead. He was praising her⁠—and praising her because she came from the Mountain!

“Am I⁠ ⁠… different?” she triumphed, with affected wonder.

“Oh, awfully!” He picked up her hand and laid a kiss on the sunburnt knuckles.

“Come,” he said, “let’s be off.” He stood up and shook the grass from his loose grey clothes. “What a good day! Where are you going to take me tomorrow?”

VI

That evening after supper Charity sat alone in the kitchen and listened to Mr. Royall and young Harney talking in the porch.

She had remained indoors after the table had been cleared and old Verena had hobbled up to bed. The kitchen window was open, and Charity seated herself near it, her idle hands