CHARITY lay on the floor on a mattress, as her deadmother's body had lain. The room in which she lay wascold and dark and low-ceilinged, and even poorer andbarer than the scene of Mary Hyatt's earthlypilgrimage. On the other side of the fireless stoveLiff Hyatt's mother slept on a blanket, with twochildren--her grandchildren, she said--rolled upagainst her like sleeping puppies. They had their thinclothes spread over them, having given the only otherblanket to their guest.
Through the small square of glass in the opposite wallCharity saw a deep funnel of sky, so black, so remote,so palpitating with frosty stars that her very soulseemed to be sucked into it. Up there somewhere, shesupposed, the God whom Mr. Miles had invoked waswaiting for Mary Hyatt to appear. What a long flightit was! And what would she have to say when she reachedHim?
Charity's bewildered brain laboured with the attempt topicture her mother's past, and to relate it in anyway to the designs of a just but merciful God; but itwas impossible to imagine any link between them. Sheherself felt as remote from the poor creature she hadseen lowered into her hastily dug grave as if theheight of the heavens divided them. She had seenpoverty and misfortune in her life; but in a communitywhere poor thrifty Mrs. Hawes and the industrious Allyrepresented the nearest approach to destitution therewas nothing to suggest the savage misery of theMountain farmers.
As she lay there, half-stunned by her tragicinitiation, Charity vainly tried to think herself intothe life about her. But she could not even make outwhat relationship these people bore to each other, orto her dead mother; they seemed to be herded togetherin a sort of passive promiscuity in which their commonmisery was the strongest link. She tried to picture toherself what her life would have been if she had grownup on the Mountain, running wild in rags, sleeping onthe floor curled up against her mother, like the pale-faced children huddled against old Mrs. Hyatt, andturning into a fierce bewildered creature like the girlwho had apostrophized her in such strange words. Shewas frightened by the secret affinity she had feltwith this girl, and by the light it threw on her ownbeginnings. Then she remembered what Mr. Royall hadsaid in telling her story to Lucius Harney: "Yes, therewas a mother; but she was glad to have the child go.
She'd have given her to anybody...."Well! after all, was her mother so much to blame?
Charity, since that day, had always thought of her asdestitute of all human feeling; now she seemed merelypitiful. What mother would not want to save her childfrom such a life? Charity thought of the future of herown child, and tears welled into her aching eyes, andran down over her face. If she had been lessexhausted, less burdened with his weight, she wouldhave sprung up then and there and fled away....
The grim hours of the night dragged themselves slowlyby, and at last the sky paled and dawn threw a coldblue beam into the room. She lay in her corner staringat the dirty floor, the clothes-line hung with decayingrags, the old woman huddled against the cold stove, andthe light gradually spreading across the wintry world,and bringing with it a new day in which she would haveto live, to choose, to act, to make herself aplace among these people--or to go back to the life shehad left. A mortal lassitude weighed on her. Therewere moments when she felt that all she asked was to goon lying there unnoticed; then her mind revolted at thethought of becoming one of the miserable herd fromwhich she sprang, and it seemed as though, to save herchild from such a fate, she would find strength totravel any distance, and bear any burden life might puton her.
Vague thoughts of Nettleton flitted through her mind.
She said to herself that she would find some quietplace where she could bear her child, and give it todecent people to keep; and then she would go out likeJulia Hawes and earn its living and hers. She knewthat girls of that kind sometimes made enough to havetheir children nicely cared for; and every otherconsideration disappeared in the vision of her baby,cleaned and combed and rosy, and hidden away somewherewhere she could run in and kiss it, and bring it prettythings to wear. Anything, anything was better than toadd another life to the nest of misery on theMountain....
The old woman and the children were still sleepingwhen Charity rose from her mattress. Her body wasstiff with cold and fatigue, and she moved slowly lesther heavy steps should rouse them. She was faint withhunger, and had nothing left in her satchel; but on thetable she saw the half of a stale loaf. No doubt itwas to serve as the breakfast of old Mrs. Hyatt and thechildren; but Charity did not care; she had her ownbaby to think of. She broke off a piece of the breadand ate it greedily; then her glance fell on the thinfaces of the sleeping children, and filled withcompunction she rummaged in her satchel for somethingwith which to pay for what she had taken. She foundone of the pretty chemises that Ally had made for her,with a blue ribbon run through its edging. It was oneof the dainty things on which she had squandered hersavings, and as she looked at it the blood rushed toher forehead. She laid the chemise on the table, andstealing across the floor lifted the latch and wentout....
The morning was icy cold and a pale sun was just risingabove the eastern shoulder of the Mountain. The housesscattered on the hillside lay cold and smokeless underthe sun-flecked clouds, and not a human being was insight. Charity paused on the threshold and triedto discover the road by which she had come the nightbefore. Across the field surrounding Mrs. Hyatt'sshanty she saw the tumble-down house in which shesupposed the funeral service had taken place. Thetrail ran across the ground between the two houses anddisappeared in the pine-wood on the flank of theMountain; and a little way to the right, under a wind-beaten thorn, a mound of fresh earth made a dark spoton the fawn-coloured stubble. Charity walked acrossthe field to the ground. As she approached it sheheard a bird's note in the still air, and looking upshe saw a brown song-sparrow perched in an upper branchof the thorn above the grave. She stood a minutelistening to his small solitary song; then she rejoinedthe trail and began to mount the hill to the pine-wood.
Thus far she had been impelled by the blind instinct offlight; but each step seemed to bring her nearer to therealities of which her feverish vigil had given only ashadowy image. Now that she walked again in a daylightworld, on the way back to familiar things, herimagination moved more soberly. On one point she wasstill decided: she could not remain at North Dormer,and the sooner she got away from it the better.
But everything beyond was darkness.
As she continued to climb the air grew keener, and whenshe passed from the shelter of the pines to the opengrassy roof of the Mountain the cold wind of the nightbefore sprang out on her. She bent her shoulders andstruggled on against it for a while; but presently herbreath failed, and she sat down under a ledge of rockoverhung by shivering birches. From where she sat shesaw the trail wandering across the bleached grass inthe direction of Hamblin, and the granite wall of theMountain falling away to infinite distances. On thatside of the ridge the valleys still lay in wintryshadow; but in the plain beyond the sun was touchingvillage roofs and steeples, and gilding the haze ofsmoke over far-off invisible towns.
Charity felt herself a mere speck in the lonely circleof the sky. The events of the last two days seemed tohave divided her forever from her short dream of bliss.
Even Harney's image had been blurred by that crushingexperience: she thought of him as so remote from herthat he seemed hardly more than a memory. In herfagged and floating mind only one sensation had theweight of reality; it was the bodily burden of herchild. But for it she would have felt as rootless asthe whiffs of thistledown the wind blew past her. Herchild was like a load that held her down, and yet likea hand that pulled her to her feet. She said toh............