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

the stand at Nettleton. He was the new Harney again, the Harney abruptly revealed in that embrace, who seemed so penetrated with the joy of her presence that he was utterly careless of what she was thinking or feeling.

He caught her hands with a laugh. “How do you suppose I found you?” he said gaily. He drew out the little packet of his letters and flourished them before her bewildered eyes.

“You dropped them, you imprudent young person⁠—dropped them in the middle of the road, not far from here; and the young man who is running the Gospel tent picked them up just as I was riding by.” He drew back, holding her at arm’s length, and scrutinizing her troubled face with the minute searching gaze of his shortsighted eyes.

“Did you really think you could run away from me? You see you weren’t meant to,” he said; and before she could answer he had kissed her again, not vehemently, but tenderly, almost fraternally, as if he had guessed her confused pain, and wanted her to know he understood it. He wound his fingers through hers.

“Come⁠—let’s walk a little. I want to talk to you. There’s so much to say.”

He spoke with a boy’s gaiety, carelessly and confidently, as if nothing had happened that could shame or embarrass them; and for a moment, in the sudden relief of her release from lonely pain, she felt herself yielding to his mood. But he had turned, and was drawing her back along the road by which she had come. She stiffened herself and stopped short.

“I won’t go back,” she said.

They looked at each other a moment in silence; then he answered gently: “Very well: let’s go the other way, then.”

She remained motionless, gazing silently at the ground, and he went on: “Isn’t there a house up here somewhere⁠—a little abandoned house⁠—you meant to show me some day?” Still she made no answer, and he continued, in the same tone of tender reassurance: “Let us go there now and sit down and talk quietly.” He took one of the hands that hung by her side and pressed his lips to the palm. “Do you suppose I’m going to let you send me away? Do you suppose I don’t understand?”

The little old house⁠—its wooden walls sun-bleached to a ghostly gray⁠—stood in an orchard above the road. The garden palings had fallen, but the broken gate dangled between its posts, and the path to the house was marked by rosebushes run wild and hanging their small pale blossoms above the crowding grasses. Slender pilasters and an intricate fanlight framed the opening where the door had hung; and the door itself lay rotting in the grass, with an old apple-tree fallen across it.

Inside, also, wind and weather had blanched everything to the same wan silvery tint; the house was as dry and pure as the interior of a long-empty shell. But it must have been exceptionally well built, for the little rooms had kept something of their human aspect: the wooden mantels with their neat classic ornaments were in place, and the corners of one ceiling retained a light film of plaster tracery.

Harney had found an old bench at the back door and dragged it into the house. Charity sat on it, leaning her head against the wall in a state of drowsy lassitude. He had guessed that she was hungry and thirsty, and had brought her some tablets of chocolate from his bicycle-bag, and filled his drinking-cup from a spring in the orchard; and now he sat at her feet, smoking a cigarette, and looking up at her without speaking. Outside, the afternoon shadows were lengthening across the grass, and through the empty window-frame that faced her she saw the Mountain thrusting its dark mass against a sultry sunset. It was time to go.

She stood up, and he sprang to his feet also, and passed his arm through hers with an air of authority. “Now, Charity, you’re coming back with me.”

She looked at him and shook her head. “I ain’t ever going back. You don’t know.”

“What don’t I know?” She was silent, and he continued: “What happened on the wharf was horrible⁠—it’s natural you should feel as you do. But it doesn’t make any real difference: you can’t be hurt by such things. You must try to forget. And you must try to understand that men⁠ ⁠… men sometimes⁠ ⁠…”

“I know about men. That’s why.”

He coloured a little at the retort, as though it had touched him in a way she did not suspect.

“Well, then⁠ ⁠… you must know one has to make allowances.⁠ ⁠… He’d been drinking.⁠ ⁠…”

“I know all that, too. I’ve seen him so before. But he wouldn’t have dared speak to me that way if he hadn’t⁠ ⁠…”

“Hadn’t what? What do you mean?”

“Hadn’t wanted me to be like those other girls.⁠ ⁠…” She lowered her voice and looked away from him. “So’s ’t he wouldn’t have to go out.⁠ ⁠…”

Harney stared at her. For a moment he did not seem to seize her meaning; then his face grew dark. “The damned hound! The villainous low hound!” His wrath blazed up, crimsoning him to the temples. “I never dreamed⁠—good God, it’s too vile,” he broke off, as if his thoughts recoiled from the discovery.

“I won’t never go back there,” she repeated doggedly.

“No⁠—” he assented.

There was a long interval of silence, during which she imagined that he was searching her face for more light on what she had revealed to him; and a flush of shame swept over her.

“I know the way you must feel about me,” she broke out, “… telling you such things.⁠ ⁠…”

But once more, as she spoke, she became aware that he was no longer listening. He came close and caught her to him as if he were snatching her from some imminent peril: his impetuous eyes were in hers, and she could feel the hard beat of his heart as he held her against it.

“Kiss me again⁠—like last night,” he said, pushing her hair back as if to draw her