She did not think these things out clearly; she simply followed the blind propulsion of her wretchedness. She did not want, ever again, to see anyone she had known; above all, she did not want to see Harney….
She climbed the hill-path behind the house and struck through the woods by a short-cut leading to the Creston road. A lead-coloured sky hung heavily over the fields, and in the forest the motionless air was stifling; but she pushed on, impatient to reach the road which was the shortest way to the Mountain.
To do so, she had to follow the Creston road for a mile or two, and go within half a mile of the village; and she walked quickly, fearing to meet Harney. But there was no sign of him, and she had almost reached the branch road when she saw the flanks of a large white tent projecting through the trees by the roadside. She supposed that it sheltered a travelling circus which had come there for the Fourth; but as she drew nearer she saw, over the folded-back flap, a large sign bearing the inscription, “Gospel Tent.” The interior seemed to be empty; but a young man in a black alpaca coat, his lank hair parted over a round white face, stepped from under the flap and advanced toward her with a smile.
“Sister, your Saviour knows everything. Won’t you come in and lay your guilt before Him?” he asked insinuatingly, putting his hand on her arm.
Charity started back and flushed. For a moment she thought the evangelist must have heard a report of the scene at Nettleton; then she saw the absurdity of the supposition.
“I on’y wish’t I had any to lay!” she retorted, with one of her fierce flashes of self-derision; and the young man murmured, aghast: “Oh, Sister, don’t speak blasphemy….”
But she had jerked her arm out of his hold, and was running up the branch road, trembling with the fear of meeting a familiar face. Presently she was out of sight of the village, and climbing into the heart of the forest. She could not hope to do the fifteen miles to the Mountain that afternoon; but she knew of a place half-way to Hamblin where she could sleep, and where no one would think of looking for her. It was a little deserted house on a slope in one of the lonely rifts of the hills. She had seen it once, years before, when she had gone on a nutting expedition to the grove of walnuts below it. The party had taken refuge in the house from a sudden mountain storm, and she remembered that Ben Sollas, who liked frightening girls, had told them that it was said to be haunted.
She was growing faint and tired, for she had eaten nothing since morning, and was not used to walking so far. Her head felt light and she sat down for a moment by the roadside. As she sat there she heard the click of a bicycle-bell, and started up to plunge back into the forest; but before she could move the bicycle had swept around the curve of the road, and Harney, jumping off, was approaching her with outstretched arms.
“Charity! What on earth are you doing here?”
She stared as if he were a vision, so startled by the unexpectedness of his being there that no words came to her.
“Where were you going? Had you forgotten that I was coming?” he continued, trying to draw her to him; but she shrank from his embrace.
“I was going away—I don’t want to see you—I want you should leave me alone,” she broke out wildly.
He looked at her and his face grew grave, as though the shadow of a premonition brushed it.
“Going away—from me, Charity?”
“From everybody. I want you should leave me.”
He stood glancing doubtfully up and down the lonely forest road that stretched away into sun-flecked distances.
“Where were you going?’
“Home.”
“Home—this way?”
She threw her head back defiantly. “To my home—up yonder: to the Mountain.”
As she spoke she became aware of a change in his face. He was no longer listening to her, he was only looking at her, with the passionate absorbed expression she had seen in his eyes after they had kissed on the stand at Nettleton. He was the new Harney again, the Harney abruptly revealed in that embrace, who seemed so penetrated with the joy of her presence that he was utterly careless of what she was thinking or feeling.
He caught her hands with a laugh. “How do you suppose I found you?” he said gaily. He drew out the little packet of his letters and flourished them before her bewildered eyes.
“You dropped them, you imprudent young person—dropped them in the middle of the road, not far from here; and the young man who is running the Gospel tent picked them up just as I was riding by.” He drew back, holding her at arm’s length, and scrutinizing her troubled face with the minute searching gaze of his shortsighted eyes.
“Did you really think you could run away from me? You see you weren’t meant to,” he said; and before she could answer he had kissed her again, not vehemently, but tenderly, almost fraternally, as if he had guessed her confused pain, and wanted her to know he understood it. He wound his fingers through hers.
“Come let’s walk a little. I want to talk to you. There’s so much to say.”
He spoke with a boy’s gaiety, carelessly and confidently, as if nothing had happened that could shame or embarrass them; and for a moment, in the sudden relief of her release from lonely pain, she felt herself yielding to his mood. But he had turned, and was drawing her back along the road by which she had come. She stiffened herself and stopped short.
“I won’t go back,” she said.
They looked at each other a moment in silence; then he answered gently: “Very welclass="underline" let’s go the other way, then.”
She remained motionless, gazing silently at the ground, and he went on: “Isn’t there a house up here somewhere— a little abandoned house—you meant to show me some day?” Still she made no answer, and he continued, in the same tone of tender reassurance: “Let us go there now and sit down and talk quietly.” He took one of the hands that hung by her side and pressed his lips to the palm. “Do you suppose I’m going to let you send me away? Do you suppose I don’t understand?”
The little old house—its wooden walls sun-bleached to a ghostly gray—stood in an orchard above the road. The garden palings had fallen, but the broken gate dangled between its posts, and the path to the house was marked by rose-bushes run wild and hanging their small pale blossoms above the crowding grasses. Slender pilasters and an intricate fan-light framed the opening where the door had hung; and the door itself lay rotting in the grass, with an old apple-tree fallen across it.
Inside, also, wind and weather had blanched everything to the same wan silvery tint; the house was as dry and pure as the interior of a long-empty shell. But it must have been exceptionally well built, for the little rooms had kept something of their human aspect: the wooden mantels with their neat classic ornaments were in place, and the corners of one ceiling retained a light film of plaster tracery.
Harney had found an old bench at the back door and dragged it into the house. Charity sat on it, leaning her head against the wall in a state of drowsy lassitude. He had guessed that she was hungry and thirsty, and had brought her some tablets of chocolate from his bicycle-bag, and filled his drinking-cup from a spring in the orchard; and now he sat at her feet, smoking a cigarette, and looking up at her without speaking. Outside, the afternoon shadows were lengthening across the grass, and through the empty window-frame that faced her she saw the Mountain thrusting its dark mass against a sultry sunset. It was time to go.
She stood up, and he sprang to his feet also, and passed his arm through hers with an air of authority. “Now, Charity, you’re coming back with me.”
She looked at him and shook her head. “I ain’t ever going back. You don’t know.”
“What don’t I know?” She was silent, and he continued: “What happened on the wharf was horrible—it’s natural you should feel as you do. But it doesn’t make any real difference: you can’t be hurt by such things. You must try to forget. And you must try to understand that men…men sometimes…”