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

The question, breaking in on her mood of blissful abstraction, deprived her of speech, and she stared at him for a moment without answering.

“Who says I ain’t?”

“There’s been some complaints made, it appears. Miss Hatchard sent for me this morning⁠—”

Charity’s smouldering resentment broke into a blaze. “I know! Orma Fry, and that toad of a Targatt girl and Ben Fry, like as not. He’s going round with her. The low-down sneaks⁠—I always knew they’d try to have me out! As if anybody ever came to the library, anyhow!”

“Somebody did yesterday, and you weren’t there.”

“Yesterday?” she laughed at her happy recollection. “At what time wasn’t I there yesterday, I’d like to know?”

“Round about four o’clock.”

Charity was silent. She had been so steeped in the dreamy remembrance of young Harney’s visit that she had forgotten having deserted her post as soon as he had left the library.

“Who came at four o’clock?”

“Miss Hatchard did.”

“Miss Hatchard? Why, she ain’t ever been near the place since she’s been lame. She couldn’t get up the steps if she tried.”

“She can be helped up, I guess. She was yesterday, anyhow, by the young fellow that’s staying with her. He found you there, I understand, earlier in the afternoon; and he went back and told Miss Hatchard the books were in bad shape and needed attending to. She got excited, and had herself wheeled straight round; and when she got there the place was locked. So she sent for me, and told me about that, and about the other complaints. She claims you’ve neglected things, and that she’s going to get a trained librarian.”

Charity had not moved while he spoke. She stood with her head thrown back against the window-frame, her arms hanging against her sides, and her hands so tightly clenched that she felt, without knowing what hurt her, the sharp edge of her nails against her palms.

Of all Mr. Royall had said she had retained only the phrase: “He told Miss Hatchard the books were in bad shape.” What did she care for the other charges against her? Malice or truth, she despised them as she despised her detractors. But that the stranger to whom she had felt herself so mysteriously drawn should have betrayed her! That at the very moment when she had fled up the hillside to think of him more deliciously he should have been hastening home to denounce her shortcomings! She remembered how, in the darkness of her room, she had covered her face to press his imagined kiss closer; and her heart raged against him for the liberty he had not taken.

“Well, I’ll go,” she said suddenly. “I’ll go right off.”

“Go where?” She heard the startled note in Mr. Royall’s voice.

“Why, out of their old library: straight out, and never set foot in it again. They needn’t think I’m going to wait round and let them say they’ve discharged me!”

“Charity⁠—Charity Royall, you listen⁠—” he began, getting heavily out of his chair; but she waved him aside, and walked out of the room.

Upstairs she took the library key from the place where she always hid it under her pincushion⁠—who said she wasn’t careful?⁠—put on her hat, and swept down again and out into the street. If Mr. Royall heard her go he made no motion to detain her: his sudden rages probably made him understand the uselessness of reasoning with hers.

She reached the brick temple, unlocked the door and entered into the glacial twilight. “I’m glad I’ll never have to sit in this old vault again when other folks are out in the sun!” she said aloud as the familiar chill took her. She looked with abhorrence at the long dingy rows of books, the sheep-nosed Minerva on her black pedestal, and the mild-faced young man in a high stock whose effigy pined above her desk. She meant to take out of the drawer her roll of lace and the library register, and go straight to Miss Hatchard to announce her resignation. But suddenly a great desolation overcame her, and she sat down and laid her face against the desk. Her heart was ravaged by life’s cruelest discovery: the first creature who had come toward her out of the wilderness had brought her anguish instead of joy. She did not cry; tears came hard to her, and the storms of her heart spent themselves inwardly. But as she sat there in her dumb woe she felt her life to be too desolate, too ugly and intolerable.

“What have I ever done to it, that it should hurt me so?” she groaned, and pressed her fists against her lids, which were beginning to swell with weeping.

“I won’t⁠—I won’t go there looking like a horror!” she muttered, springing up and pushing back her hair as if it stifled her. She opened the drawer, dragged out the register, and turned toward the door. As she did so it opened, and the young man from Miss Hatchard’s came in whistling.

He stopped and lifted his hat with a shy smile. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I thought there was no one here.”

Charity stood before him, barring his way. “You can’t come in. The library ain’t open to the public Wednesdays.”

“I know it’s not; but my cousin gave me her key.”

“Miss Hatchard’s got no right to give her key to other folks, any more’n I have. I’m the librarian and I know the bylaws. This is my library.”

The young man looked profoundly surprised.

“Why, I know it is; I’m so sorry if you mind my coming.”

“I suppose you came to see what more you could say to set her against me? But you needn’t trouble: it’s my library today, but it won’t be this time tomorrow. I’m on the way now to take her back the key and the register.”

Young Harney’s face grew grave, but without betraying the consciousness of guilt she had looked for.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “There must be some mistake. Why should I say things against you to Miss Hatchard⁠—or to anyone?”

The