Suddenly the door opened, and before she had raised her eyes she knew that the young man she had seen going in at the Hatchard gate had entered the library.
Without taking any notice of her he began to move slowly about the long vault-like room, his hands behind his back, his shortsighted eyes peering up and down the rows of rusty bindings. At length he reached the desk and stood before her.
“Have you a card-catalogue?” he asked in a pleasant abrupt voice; and the oddness of the question caused her to drop her work.
“A WHAT?”
“Why, you know–-” He broke off, and she became conscious that he was looking at her for the first time, having apparently, on his entrance, included her in his general shortsighted survey as part of the furniture of the library.
The fact that, in discovering her, he lost the thread of his remark, did not escape her attention, and she looked down and smiled. He smiled also.
“No, I don’t suppose you do know,” he corrected himself. “In fact, it would be almost a pity–-“
She thought she detected a slight condescension in his tone, and asked sharply: “Why?”
“Because it’s so much pleasanter, in a small library like this, to poke about by one’s self—with the help of the librarian.”
He added the last phrase so respectfully that she was mollified, and rejoined with a sigh: “I’m afraid I can’t help you much.”
“Why?” he questioned in his turn; and she replied that there weren’t many books anyhow, and that she’d hardly read any of them. “The worms are getting at them,” she added gloomily.
“Are they? That’s a pity, for I see there are some good ones.” He seemed to have lost interest in their conversation, and strolled away again, apparently forgetting her. His indifference nettled her, and she picked up her work, resolved not to offer him the least assistance. Apparently he did not need it, for he spent a long time with his back to her, lifting down, one after another, the tall cob-webby volumes from a distant shelf.
“Oh, I say!” he exclaimed; and looking up she saw that he had drawn out his handkerchief and was carefully wiping the edges of the book in his hand. The action struck her as an unwarranted criticism on her care of the books, and she said irritably: “It’s not my fault if they’re dirty.”
He turned around and looked at her with reviving interest. “Ah—then you’re not the librarian?”
“Of course I am; but I can’t dust all these books. Besides, nobody ever looks at them, now Miss Hatchard’s too lame to come round.”
“No, I suppose not.” He laid down the book he had been wiping, and stood considering her in silence. She wondered if Miss Hatchard had sent him round to pry into the way the library was looked after, and the suspicion increased her resentment. “I saw you going into her house just now, didn’t I?” she asked, with the New England avoidance of the proper name. She was determined to find out why he was poking about among her books.
“Miss Hatchard’s house? Yes—she’s my cousin and I’m staying there,” the young man answered; adding, as if to disarm a visible distrust: “My name is Harney— Lucius Harney. She may have spoken of me.”
“No, she hasn’t,” said Charity, wishing she could have said: “Yes, she has.”
“Oh, well–-” said Miss Hatchard’s cousin with a laugh; and after another pause, during which it occurred to Charity that her answer had not been encouraging, he remarked: “You don’t seem strong on architecture.”
Her bewilderment was complete: the more she wished to appear to understand him the more unintelligible his remarks became. He reminded her of the gentleman who had “explained” the pictures at Nettleton, and the weight of her ignorance settled down on her again like a pall.
“I mean, I can’t see that you have any books on the old houses about here. I suppose, for that matter, this part of the country hasn’t been much explored. They all go on doing Plymouth and Salem. So stupid. My cousin’s house, now, is remarkable. This place must have had a past—it must have been more of a place once.” He stopped short, with the blush of a shy man who overhears himself, and fears he has been voluble. “I’m an architect, you see, and I’m hunting up old houses in these parts.”
She stared. “Old houses? Everything’s old in North Dormer, isn’t it? The folks are, anyhow.”
He laughed, and wandered away again.
“Haven’t you any kind of a history of the place? I think there was one written about 1840: a book or pamphlet about its first settlement,” he presently said from the farther end of the room.
She pressed her crochet hook against her lip and pondered. There was such a work, she knew: “North Dormer and the Early Townships of Eagle County.” She had a special grudge against it because it was a limp weakly book that was always either falling off the shelf or slipping back and disappearing if one squeezed it in between sustaining volumes. She remembered, the last time she had picked it up, wondering how anyone could have taken the trouble to write a book about North Dormer and its neighbours: Dormer, Hamblin, Creston and Creston River. She knew them all, mere lost clusters of houses in the folds of the desolate ridges: Dormer, where North Dormer went for its apples; Creston River, where there used to be a paper-mill, and its grey walls stood decaying by the stream; and Hamblin, where the first snow always fell. Such were their titles to fame.
She got up and began to move about vaguely before the shelves. But she had no idea where she had last put the book, and something told her that it was going to play her its usual trick and remain invisible. It was not one of her lucky days.
“I guess it’s somewhere,” she said, to prove her zeal; but she spoke without conviction, and felt that her words conveyed none.
“Oh, well–-” he said again. She knew he was going, and wished more than ever to find the book.
“It will be for next time,” he added; and picking up the volume he had laid on the desk he handed it to her. “By the way, a little air and sun would do this good; it’s rather valuable.”
He gave her a nod and smile, and passed out.
II
The hours of the Hatchard Memorial librarian were from three to five; and Charity Royall’s sense of duty usually kept her at her desk until nearly half-past four.
But she had never perceived that any practical advantage thereby accrued either to North Dormer or to herself; and she had no scruple in decreeing, when it suited her, that the library should close an hour earlier. A few minutes after Mr. Harney’s departure she formed this decision, put away her lace, fastened the shutters, and turned the key in the door of the temple of knowledge.
The street upon which she emerged was still empty: and after glancing up and down it she began to walk toward her house. But instead of entering she passed on, turned into a field-path and mounted to a pasture on the hillside. She let down the bars of the gate, followed a trail along the crumbling wall of the pasture, and walked on till she reached a knoll where a clump of larches shook out their fresh tassels to the wind. There she lay down on the slope, tossed off her hat and hid her face in the grass.
She was blind and insensible to many things, and dimly knew it; but to all that was light and air, perfume and colour, every drop of blood in her responded. She loved the roughness of the dry mountain grass under her palms, the smell of the thyme into which she crushed her face, the fingering of the wind in her hair and through her cotton blouse, and the creak of the larches as they swayed to it.