The more she thought of these things the more the sense of fatality weighed on her: she felt the uselessness of struggling against the circumstances. She had never known how to adapt herself; she could only break and tear and destroy. The scene with Ally had left her stricken with shame at her own childish savagery. What would Harney have thought if he had witnessed it? But when she turned the incident over in her puzzled mind she could not imagine what a civilized person would have done in her place. She felt herself too unequally pitted against unknown forces….
At length this feeling moved her to sudden action. She took a sheet of letter paper from Mr. Royall’s office, and sitting by the kitchen lamp, one night after Verena had gone to bed, began her first letter to Harney. It was very short:
I want you should marry Annabel Balch if you promised to. I think maybe you were afraid I’d feel too bad about it. I feel I’d rather you acted right. Your loving CHARITY.
She posted the letter early the next morning, and for a few days her heart felt strangely light. Then she began to wonder why she received no answer.
One day as she sat alone in the library pondering these things the walls of books began to spin around her, and the rosewood desk to rock under her elbows. The dizziness was followed by a wave of nausea like that she had felt on the day of the exercises in the Town Hall. But the Town Hall had been crowded and stiflingly hot, and the library was empty, and so chilly that she had kept on her jacket. Five minutes before she had felt perfectly well; and now it seemed as if she were going to die. The bit of lace at which she still languidly worked dropped from her fingers, and the steel crochet hook clattered to the floor. She pressed her temples hard between her damp hands, steadying herself against the desk while the wave of sickness swept over her. Little by little it subsided, and after a few minutes she stood up, shaken and terrified, groped for her hat, and stumbled out into the air. But the whole sunlit autumn whirled, reeled and roared around her as she dragged herself along the interminable length of the road home.
As she approached the red house she saw a buggy standing at the door, and her heart gave a leap. But it was only Mr. Royall who got out, his travelling-bag in hand. He saw her coming, and waited in the porch. She was conscious that he was looking at her intently, as if there was something strange in her appearance, and she threw back her head with a desperate effort at ease. Their eyes met, and she said: “You back?” as if nothing had happened, and he answered: “Yes, I’m back,” and walked in ahead of her, pushing open the door of his office. She climbed to her room, every step of the stairs holding her fast as if her feet were lined with glue.
Two days later, she descended from the train at Nettleton, and walked out of the station into the dusty square. The brief interval of cold weather was over, and the day was as soft, and almost as hot, as when she and Harney had emerged on the same scene on the Fourth of July. In the square the same broken-down hacks and carry-alls stood drawn up in a despondent line, and the lank horses with fly-nets over their withers swayed their heads drearily to and fro. She recognized the staring signs over the eating-houses and billiard saloons, and the long lines of wires on lofty poles tapering down the main street to the park at its other end. Taking the way the wires pointed, she went on hastily, with bent head, till she reached a wide transverse street with a brick building at the corner. She crossed this street and glanced furtively up at the front of the brick building; then she returned, and entered a door opening on a flight of steep brass-rimmed stairs. On the second landing she rang a bell, and a mulatto girl with a bushy head and a frilled apron let her into a hall where a stuffed fox on his hind legs proffered a brass card-tray to visitors. At the back of the hall was a glazed door marked: “Office.” After waiting a few minutes in a handsomely furnished room, with plush sofas surmounted by large gold-framed photographs of showy young women, Charity was shown into the office….
When she came out of the glazed door Dr. Merkle followed, and led her into another room, smaller, and still more crowded with plush and gold frames. Dr. Merkle was a plump woman with small bright eyes, an immense mass of black hair coming down low on her forehead, and unnaturally white and even teeth. She wore a rich black dress, with gold chains and charms hanging from her bosom. Her hands were large and smooth, and quick in all their movements; and she smelt of musk and carbolic acid.
She smiled on Charity with all her faultless teeth. “Sit down, my dear. Wouldn’t you like a little drop of something to pick you up?…No….Well, just lay back a minute then….There’s nothing to be done just yet; but in about a month, if you’ll step round again…I could take you right into my own house for two or three days, and there wouldn’t be a mite of trouble. Mercy me! The next time you’ll know better’n to fret like this….”
Charity gazed at her with widening eyes. This woman with the false hair, the false teeth, the false murderous smile—what was she offering her but immunity from some unthinkable crime? Charity, till then, had been conscious only of a vague self-disgust and a frightening physical distress; now, of a sudden, there came to her the grave surprise of motherhood. She had come to this dreadful place because she knew of no other way of making sure that she was not mistaken about her state; and the woman had taken her for a miserable creature like Julia….The thought was so horrible that she sprang up, white and shaking, one of her great rushes of anger sweeping over her.
Dr. Merkle, still smiling, also rose. “Why do you run off in such a hurry? You can stretch out right here on my sofa….” She paused, and her smile grew more motherly. “Afterwards—if there’s been any talk at home, and you want to get away for a while…I have a lady friend in Boston who’s looking for a companion…you’re the very one to suit her, my dear….”
Charity had reached the door. “I don’t want to stay. I don’t want to come back here,” she stammered, her hand on the knob; but with a swift movement, Dr. Merkle edged her from the threshold.
“Oh, very well. Five dollars, please.”
Charity looked helplessly at the doctor’s tight lips and rigid face. Her last savings had gone in repaying Ally for the cost of Miss Balch’s ruined blouse, and she had had to borrow four dollars from her friend to pay for her railway ticket and cover the doctor’s fee. It had never occurred to her that medical advice could cost more than two dollars.
“I didn’t know…I haven’t got that much…” she faltered, bursting into tears.
Dr. Merkle gave a short laugh which did not show her teeth, and inquired with concision if Charity supposed she ran the establishment for her own amusement? She leaned her firm shoulders against the door as she spoke, like a grim gaoler making terms with her captive.