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

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 doorknob. “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 breadbasket 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 goodbye: 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, goodbye,” she said.

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

“Goodbye.” He turned away, and stopped on the threshold. “You’ll say goodbye 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