第19章

"Ah, the Coopersons...yes, you know them, of course,"she heard."That's a fine old house! And Ned Cooperson has collected some really remarkable impressionist pictures...." The names he cited were unknown to Charity."Yes; yes; the Schaefer quartette played at Lyric Hall on Saturday evening; and on Monday I had the privilege of hearing them again at the Towers.

Beautifully done...Bach and Beethoven...a lawn-party first...I saw Miss Balch several times, by the way...looking extremely handsome...."Charity dropped her pencil and forgot to listen to the Targatt girl's sing-song.Why had Mr.Miles suddenly brought up Annabel Balch's name?

"Oh, really?" she heard Harney rejoin; and, raising his stick, he pursued: "You see, my plan is to move these shelves away, and open a round window in this wall, on the axis of the one under the pediment.""I suppose she'll be coming up here later to stay with Miss Hatchard?" Mr.Miles went on, following on his train of thought; then, spinning about and tilting his head back: "Yes, yes, I see--I understand: that will give a draught without materially altering the look of things.I can see no objection."The discussion went on for some minutes, and gradually the two men moved back toward the desk.Mr.Miles stopped again and looked thoughtfully at Charity.

"Aren't you a little pale, my dear? Not overworking?

Mr.Harney tells me you and Mamie are giving the library a thorough overhauling." He was always careful to remember his parishioners' Christian names, and at the right moment he bent his benignant spectacles on the Targatt girl.

Then he turned to Charity."Don't take things hard, my dear; don't take things hard.Come down and see Mrs.

Miles and me some day at Hepburn," he said, pressing her hand and waving a farewell to Mamie Targatt.He went out of the library, and Harney followed him.

Charity thought she detected a look of constraint in Harney's eyes.She fancied he did not want to be alone with her; and with a sudden pang she wondered if he repented the tender things he had said to her the night before.His words had been more fraternal than lover-like; but she had lost their exact sense in the caressing warmth of his voice.He had made her feel that the fact of her being a waif from the Mountain was only another reason for holding her close and soothing her with consolatory murmurs; and when the drive was over, and she got out of the buggy, tired, cold, and aching with emotion, she stepped as if the ground were a sunlit wave and she the spray on its crest.

Why, then, had his manner suddenly changed, and why did he leave the library with Mr.Miles? Her restless imagination fastened on the name of Annabel Balch: from the moment it had been mentioned she fancied that Harney's expression had altered.Annabel Balch at a garden-party at Springfield, looking "extremely handsome"...perhaps Mr.Miles had seen her there at the very moment when Charity and Harney were sitting in the Hyatts' hovel, between a drunkard and a half-witted old woman! Charity did not know exactly what a garden-party was, but her glimpse of the flower-edged lawns of Nettleton helped her to visualize the scene, and envious recollections of the "old things" which Miss Balch avowedly "wore out" when she came to North Dormer made it only too easy to picture her in her splendour.

Charity understood what associations the name must have called up, and felt the uselessness of struggling against the unseen influences in Harney's life.

When she came down from her room for supper he was not there; and while she waited in the porch she recalled the tone in which Mr.Royall had commented the day before on their early start.Mr.Royall sat at her side, his chair tilted back, his broad black boots with side-elastics resting against the lower bar of the railings.His rumpled grey hair stood up above his forehead like the crest of an angry bird, and the leather-brown of his veined cheeks was blotched with red.Charity knew that those red spots were the signs of a coming explosion.

Suddenly he said: "Where's supper? Has Verena Marsh slipped up again on her soda-biscuits?"Charity threw a startled glance at him."I presume she's waiting for Mr.Harney.""Mr.Harney, is she? She'd better dish up, then.He ain't coming." He stood up, walked to the door, and called out, in the pitch necessary to penetrate the old woman's tympanum: "Get along with the supper, Verena."Charity was trembling with apprehension.Something had happened--she was sure of it now--and Mr.Royall knew what it was.But not for the world would she have gratified him by showing her anxiety.She took her usual place, and he seated himself opposite, and poured out a strong cup of tea before passing her the tea-pot.

Verena brought some scrambled eggs, and he piled his plate with them."Ain't you going to take any?" he asked.Charity roused herself and began to eat.

The tone with which Mr.Royall had said "He's not coming" seemed to her full of an ominous satisfaction.

She saw that he had suddenly begun to hate Lucius Harney, and guessed herself to be the cause of this change of feeling.But she had no means of finding out whether some act of hostility on his part had made the young man stay away, or whether he simply wished to avoid seeing her again after their drive back from the brown house.She ate her supper with a studied show of indifference, but she knew that Mr.Royall was watching her and that her agitation did not escape him.

After supper she went up to her room.She heard Mr.

Royall cross the passage, and presently the sounds below her window showed that he had returned to the porch.She seated herself on her bed and began to struggle against the desire to go down and ask him what had happened."I'd rather die than do it," she muttered to herself.With a word he could have relieved her uncertainty: but never would she gratify him by saying it.