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

left her unnoticed. But the faithful Ally could not be long avoided. For the first few days after the close of the Old Home Week festivities Charity escaped her by roaming the hills all day when she was not at her post in the library; but after that a period of rain set in, and one pouring afternoon, Ally, sure that she would find her friend indoors, came around to the red house with her sewing.

The two girls sat upstairs in Charity’s room. Charity, her idle hands in her lap, was sunk in a kind of leaden dream, through which she was only half-conscious of Ally, who sat opposite her in a low rush-bottomed chair, her work pinned to her knee, and her thin lips pursed up as she bent above it.

“It was my idea running a ribbon through the gauging,” she said proudly, drawing back to contemplate the blouse she was trimming. “It’s for Miss Balch: she was awfully pleased.” She paused and then added, with a queer tremor in her piping voice: “I darsn’t have told her I got the idea from one I saw on Julia.”

Charity raised her eyes listlessly. “Do you still see Julia sometimes?”

Ally reddened, as if the allusion had escaped her unintentionally. “Oh, it was a long time ago I seen her with those gaugings.⁠ ⁠…”

Silence fell again, and Ally presently continued: “Miss Balch left me a whole lot of things to do over this time.”

“Why⁠—has she gone?” Charity inquired with an inner start of apprehension.

“Didn’t you know? She went off the morning after they had the celebration at Hamblin. I seen her drive by early with Mr. Harney.”

There was another silence, measured by the steady tick of the rain against the window, and, at intervals, by the snipping sound of Ally’s scissors.

Ally gave a meditative laugh. “Do you know what she told me before she went away? She told me she was going to send for me to come over to Springfield and make some things for her wedding.”

Charity again lifted her heavy lids and stared at Ally’s pale pointed face, which moved to and fro above her moving fingers.

“Is she going to get married?”

Ally let the blouse sink to her knee, and sat gazing at it. Her lips seemed suddenly dry, and she moistened them a little with her tongue.

“Why, I presume so⁠ ⁠… from what she said.⁠ ⁠… Didn’t you know?”

“Why should I know?”

Ally did not answer. She bent above the blouse, and began picking out a basting thread with the point of the scissors.

“Why should I know?” Charity repeated harshly.

“I didn’t know but what⁠ ⁠… folks here say she’s engaged to Mr. Harney.”

Charity stood up with a laugh, and stretched her arms lazily above her head.

“If all the people got married that folks say are going to you’d have your time full making wedding-dresses,” she said ironically.

“Why⁠—don’t you believe it?” Ally ventured.

“It would not make it true if I did⁠—nor prevent it if I didn’t.”

“That’s so.⁠ ⁠… I only know I seen her crying the night of the party because her dress didn’t set right. That was why she wouldn’t dance any.⁠ ⁠…”

Charity stood absently gazing down at the lacy garment on Ally’s knee. Abruptly she stooped and snatched it up.

“Well, I guess she won’t dance in this either,” she said with sudden violence; and grasping the blouse in her strong young hands she tore it in two and flung the tattered bits to the floor.

“Oh, Charity⁠—” Ally cried, springing up. For a long interval the two girls faced each other across the ruined garment. Ally burst into tears.

“Oh, what’ll I say to her? What’ll I do? It was real lace!” she wailed between her piping sobs.

Charity glared at her unrelentingly. “You’d oughtn’t to have brought it here,” she said, breathing quickly. “I hate other people’s clothes⁠—it’s just as if they was there themselves.” The two stared at each other again over this avowal, till Charity brought out, in a gasp of anguish: “Oh, go⁠—go⁠—go⁠—or I’ll hate you too.⁠ ⁠…”

When Ally left her, she fell sobbing across her bed.

The long storm was followed by a northwest gale, and when it was over, the hills took on their first umber tints, the sky grew more densely blue, and the big white clouds lay against the hills like snowbanks. The first crisp maple-leaves began to spin across Miss Hatchard’s lawn, and the Virginia creeper on the Memorial splashed the white porch with scarlet. It was a golden triumphant September. Day by day the flame of the Virginia creeper spread to the hillsides in wider waves of carmine and crimson, the larches glowed like the thin yellow halo about a fire, the maples blazed and smouldered, and the black hemlocks turned to indigo against the incandescence of the forest.

The nights were cold, with a dry glitter of stars so high up that they seemed smaller and more vivid. Sometimes, as Charity lay sleepless on her bed through the long hours, she felt as though she were bound to those wheeling fires and swinging with them around the great black vault. At night she planned many things⁠ ⁠… it was then she wrote to Harney. But the letters were never put on paper, for she did not know how to express what she wanted to tell him. So she waited. Since her talk with Ally she had felt sure that Harney was engaged to Annabel Balch, and that the process of “settling things” would involve the breaking of this tie. Her first rage of jealousy over, she felt no fear on this score. She was still sure that Harney would come back, and she was equally sure that, for the moment at least, it was she whom he loved and not Miss Balch. Yet the girl, no less, remained a rival, since she represented all the things that Charity felt herself most incapable of understanding or achieving. Annabel Balch was, if not the girl Harney ought to marry, at least the kind of girl it would be natural for him to marry. Charity had