The morning hours of the next day dragged by without incident. Charity had imagined that, in some way or other, she would learn whether Harney had already left; but Verena’s deafness prevented her being a source of news, and no one came to the house who could bring enlightenment.
Mr. Royall went out early, and did not return till Verena had set the table for the midday meal. When he came in he went straight to the kitchen and shouted to the old woman: “Ready for dinner–-” then he turned into the dining-room, where Charity was already seated. Harney’s plate was in its usual place, but Mr. Royall offered no explanation of his absence, and Charity asked none. The feverish exaltation of the night before had dropped, and she said to herself that he had gone away, indifferently, almost callously, and that now her life would lapse again into the narrow rut out of which he had lifted it. For a moment she was inclined to sneer at herself for not having used the arts that might have kept him.
She sat at table till the meal was over, lest Mr. Royall should remark on her leaving; but when he stood up she rose also, without waiting to help Verena. She had her foot on the stairs when he called to her to come back.
“I’ve got a headache. I’m going up to lie down.”
“I want you should come in here first; I’ve got something to say to you.”
She was sure from his tone that in a moment she would learn what every nerve in her ached to know; but as she turned back she made a last effort of indifference.
Mr. Royall stood in the middle of the office, his thick eyebrows beetling, his lower jaw trembling a little. At first she thought he had been drinking; then she saw that he was sober, but stirred by a deep and stern emotion totally unlike his usual transient angers. And suddenly she understood that, until then, she had never really noticed him or thought about him. Except on the occasion of his one offense he had been to her merely the person who is always there, the unquestioned central fact of life, as inevitable but as uninteresting as North Dormer itself, or any of the other conditions fate had laid on her. Even then she had regarded him only in relation to herself, and had never speculated as to his own feelings, beyond instinctively concluding that he would not trouble her again in the same way. But now she began to wonder what he was really like.
He had grasped the back of his chair with both hands, and stood looking hard at her. At length he said: “Charity, for once let’s you and me talk together like friends.”
Instantly she felt that something had happened, and that he held her in his hand.
“Where is Mr. Harney? Why hasn’t he come back? Have you sent him away?” she broke out, without knowing what she was saying.
The change in Mr. Royall frightened her. All the blood seemed to leave his veins and against his swarthy pallor the deep lines in his face looked black.
“Didn’t he have time to answer some of those questions last night? You was with him long enough!” he said.
Charity stood speechless. The taunt was so unrelated to what had been happening in her soul that she hardly understood it. But the instinct of self-defense awoke in her.
“Who says I was with him last night?”
“The whole place is saying it by now.”
“Then it was you that put the lie into their mouths.—Oh, how I’ve always hated you!” she cried.
She had expected a retort in kind, and it startled her to hear her exclamation sounding on through silence.
“Yes, I know,” Mr. Royall said slowly. “But that ain’t going to help us much now.”
“It helps me not to care a straw what lies you tell about me!”
“If they’re lies, they’re not my lies: my Bible oath on that, Charity. I didn’t know where you were: I wasn’t out of this house last night.”
She made no answer and he went on: “Is it a lie that you were seen coming out of Miss Hatchard’s nigh onto midnight?”
She straightened herself with a laugh, all her reckless insolence recovered. “I didn’t look to see what time it was.”
“You lost girl…you…you…Oh, my God, why did you tell me?” he broke out, dropping into his chair, his head bowed down like an old man’s.
Charity’s self-possession had returned with the sense of her danger. “Do you suppose I’d take the trouble to lie to YOU? Who are you, anyhow, to ask me where I go to when I go out at night?”
Mr. Royall lifted his head and looked at her. His face had grown quiet and almost gentle, as she remembered seeing it sometimes when she was a little girl, before Mrs. Royall died.
“Don’t let’s go on like this, Charity. It can’t do any good to either of us. You were seen going into that fellow’s house…you were seen coming out of it….I’ve watched this thing coming, and I’ve tried to stop it. As God sees me, I have….”
“Ah, it WAS you, then? I knew it was you that sent him away!”
He looked at her in surprise. “Didn’t he tell you so? I thought he understood.” He spoke slowly, with difficult pauses, “I didn’t name you to him: I’d have cut my hand off sooner. I just told him I couldn’t spare the horse any longer; and that the cooking was getting too heavy for Verena. I guess he’s the kind that’s heard the same thing before. Anyhow, he took it quietly enough. He said his job here was about done, anyhow; and there didn’t another word pass between us….If he told you otherwise he told you an untruth.”
Charity listened in a cold trance of anger. It was nothing to her what the village said…but all this fingering of her dreams!
“I’ve told you he didn’t tell me anything. I didn’t speak with him last night.”
“You didn’t speak with him?”
“No….It’s not that I care what any of you say…but you may as well know. Things ain’t between us the way you think…and the other people in this place. He was kind to me; he was my friend; and all of a sudden he stopped coming, and I knew it was you that done it— YOU!” All her unreconciled memory of the past flamed out at him. “So I went there last night to find out what you’d said to him: that’s all.”
Mr. Royall drew a heavy breath. “But, then—if he wasn’t there, what were you doing there all that time?— Charity, for pity’s sake, tell me. I’ve got to know, to stop their talking.”
This pathetic abdication of all authority over her did not move her: she could feel only the outrage of his interference.
“Can’t you see that I don’t care what anybody says? It’s true I went there to see him; and he was in his room, and I stood outside for ever so long and watched him; but I dursn’t go in for fear he’d think I’d come after him….” She felt her voice breaking, and gathered it up in a last defiance. “As long as I live I’ll never forgive you!” she cried.
Mr. Royall made no answer. He sat and pondered with sunken head, his veined hands clasped about the arms of his chair. Age seemed to have come down on him as winter comes on the hills after a storm. At length he looked up.
“Charity, you say you don’t care; but you’re the proudest girl I know, and the last to want people to talk against you. You know there’s always eyes watching you: you’re handsomer and smarter than the rest, and that’s enough. But till lately you’ve never given them a chance. Now they’ve got it, and they’re going to use it. I believe what you say, but they won’t….It was Mrs. Tom Fry seen you going in…and two or three of them watched for you to come out again….You’ve been with the fellow all day long every day since he come here…and I’m a lawyer, and I know how hard slander dies.” He paused, but she stood motionless, without giving him any sign of acquiescence or even of attention. “He’s a pleasant fellow to talk to—I liked having him here myself. The young men up here ain’t had his chances. But there’s one thing as old as the hills and as plain as daylight: if he’d wanted you the right way he’d have said so.”
Charity did not speak. It seemed to her that nothing could exceed the bitterness of hearing such words from such lips.