Summer

by Edith Wharton

  X

  THE Lake at last--a sheet of shining metal brooded over by droopingtrees. Charity and Harney had secured a boat and, getting away from thewharves and the refreshment-booths, they drifted idly along, hugging theshadow of the shore. Where the sun struck the water its shafts flamedback blindingly at the heat-veiled sky; and the least shade was black bycontrast. The Lake was so smooth that the reflection of the trees onits edge seemed enamelled on a solid surface; but gradually, as the sundeclined, the water grew transparent, and Charity, leaning over, plungedher fascinated gaze into depths so clear that she saw the invertedtree-tops interwoven with the green growths of the bottom.

  They rounded a point at the farther end of the Lake, and entering aninlet pushed their bow against a protruding tree-trunk. A green veil ofwillows overhung them. Beyond the trees, wheat-fields sparkled in thesun; and all along the horizon the clear hills throbbed with light.Charity leaned back in the stern, and Harney unshipped the oars and layin the bottom of the boat without speaking.

  Ever since their meeting at the Creston pool he had been subject tothese brooding silences, which were as different as possible from thepauses when they ceased to speak because words were needless. At suchtimes his face wore the expression she had seen on it when she hadlooked in at him from the darkness and again there came over her asense of the mysterious distance between them; but usually his fitsof abstraction were followed by bursts of gaiety that chased away theshadow before it chilled her.

  She was still thinking of the ten dollars he had handed to the driverof the run-about. It had given them twenty minutes of pleasure, and itseemed unimaginable that anyone should be able to buy amusement at thatrate. With ten dollars he might have bought her an engagement ring; sheknew that Mrs. Tom Fry's, which came from Springfield, and had a diamondin it, had cost only eight seventy-five. But she did not know why thethought had occurred to her. Harney would never buy her an engagementring: they were friends and comrades, but no more. He had been perfectlyfair to her: he had never said a word to mislead her. She wondered whatthe girl was like whose hand was waiting for his ring....

  Boats were beginning to thicken on the Lake and the clang of incessantlyarriving trolleys announced the return of the crowds from theball-field. The shadows lengthened across the pearl-grey water and twowhite clouds near the sun were turning golden. On the opposite shore menwere hammering hastily at a wooden scaffolding in a field. Charity askedwhat it was for.

  "Why, the fireworks. I suppose there'll be a big show." Harney looked ather and a smile crept into his moody eyes. "Have you never seen any goodfireworks?"

  "Miss Hatchard always sends up lovely rockets on the Fourth," sheanswered doubtfully.

  "Oh----" his contempt was unbounded. "I mean a big performance likethis, illuminated boats, and all the rest."

  She flushed at the picture. "Do they send them up from the Lake, too?"

  "Rather. Didn't you notice that big raft we passed? It's wonderful tosee the rockets completing their orbits down under one's feet." She saidnothing, and he put the oars into the rowlocks. "If we stay we'd bettergo and pick up something to eat."

  "But how can we get back afterwards?" she ventured, feeling it wouldbreak her heart if she missed it.

  He consulted a time-table, found a ten o'clock train and reassured her."The moon rises so late that it will be dark by eight, and we'll haveover an hour of it."

  Twilight fell, and lights began to show along the shore. The trolleysroaring out from Nettleton became great luminous serpents coiling in andout among the trees. The wooden eating-houses at the Lake's edge dancedwith lanterns, and the dusk echoed with laughter and shouts and theclumsy splashing of oars.

  Harney and Charity had found a table in the corner of a balcony builtover the Lake, and were patiently awaiting an unattainable chowder.Close under them the water lapped the piles, agitated by the evolutionsof a little white steamboat trellised with coloured globes which was torun passengers up and down the Lake. It was already black with them asit sheered off on its first trip.

  Suddenly Charity heard a woman's laugh behind her. The sound wasfamiliar, and she turned to look. A band of showily dressed girls anddapper young men wearing badges of secret societies, with new straw hatstilted far back on their square-clipped hair, had invaded the balconyand were loudly clamouring for a table. The girl in the lead was theone who had laughed. She wore a large hat with a long white feather,and from under its brim her painted eyes looked at Charity with amusedrecognition.

  "Say! if this ain't like Old Home Week," she remarked to the girl at herelbow; and giggles and glances passed between them. Charity knew at oncethat the girl with the white feather was Julia Hawes. She had lost herfreshness, and the paint under her eyes made her face seem thinner; buther lips had the same lovely curve, and the same cold mocking smile, asif there were some secret absurdity in the person she was looking at,and she had instantly detected it.

  Charity flushed to the forehead and looked away. She felt herselfhumiliated by Julia's sneer, and vexed that the mockery of such acreature should affect her. She trembled lest Harney should notice thatthe noisy troop had recognized her; but they found no table free, andpassed on tumultuously.

  Presently there was a soft rush through the air and a shower of silverfell from the blue evening sky. In another direction, pale Roman candlesshot up singly through the trees, and a fire-haired rocket swept thehorizon like a portent. Between these intermittent flashes the velvetcurtains of the darkness were descending, and in the intervals ofeclipse the voices of the crowds seemed to sink to smothered murmurs.

  Charity and Harney, dispossessed by newcomers, were at length obligedto give up their table and struggle through the throng about theboat-landings. For a while there seemed no escape from the tide of latearrivals; but finally Harney secured the last two places on the standfrom which the more privileged were to see the fireworks. The seats wereat the end of a row, one above the other. Charity had taken off her hatto have an uninterrupted view; and whenever she leaned back to followthe curve of some dishevelled rocket she could feel Harney's kneesagainst her head.

  After a while the scattered fireworks ceased. A longer interval ofdarkness followed, and then the whole night broke into flower. Fromevery point of the horizon, gold and silver arches sprang up and crossedeach other, sky-orchards broke into blossom, shed their flaming petalsand hung their branches with golden fruit; and all the while the air wasfilled with a soft supernatural hum, as though great birds were buildingtheir nests in those invisible tree-tops.

  Now and then there came a lull, and a wave of moonlight swept the Lake.In a flash it revealed hundreds of boats, steel-dark against lustrousripples; then it withdrew as if with a furling of vast translucentwings. Charity's heart throbbed with delight. It was as if all thelatent beauty of things had been unveiled to her. She could not imaginethat the world held anything more wonderful; but near her she heardsomeone say, "You wait till you see the set piece," and instantly herhopes took a fresh flight. At last, just as it was beginning to seem asthough the whole arch of the sky were one great lid pressed against herdazzled eye-balls, and striking out of them continuous jets ofjewelled light, the velvet darkness settled down again, and a murmur ofexpectation ran through the crowd.

  "Now--now!" the same voice said excitedly; and Charity, grasping the haton her knee, crushed it tight in the effort to restrain her rapture.

  For a moment the night seemed to grow more impenetrably black; thena great picture stood out against it like a constellation. It wassurmounted by a golden scroll bearing the inscription, "Washingtoncrossing the Delaware," and across a flood of motionless golden ripplesthe National Hero passed, erect, solemn and gigantic, standing withfolded arms in the stern of a slowly moving golden boat.

  A long "Oh-h-h" burst from the spectators: the stand creaked and shookwith their blissful trepidations. "Oh-h-h," Charity gasped: she hadforgotten where she was, had at last forgotten even Harney's nearness.She seemed to have been caught up into the st
ars....

  The picture vanished and darkness came down. In the obscurity she felther head clasped by two hands: her face was drawn backward, and Harney'slips were pressed on hers. With sudden vehemence he wound his arms abouther, holding her head against his breast while she gave him back hiskisses. An unknown Harney had revealed himself, a Harney who dominatedher and yet over whom she felt herself possessed of a new mysteriouspower.

  But the crowd was beginning to move, and he had to release her. "Come,"he said in a confused voice. He scrambled over the side of the stand,and holding up his arm caught her as she sprang to the ground. He passedhis arm about her waist, steadying her against the descending rushof people; and she clung to him, speechless, exultant, as if all thecrowding and confusion about them were a mere vain stirring of the air.

  "Come," he repeated, "we must try to make the trolley." He drew heralong, and she followed, still in her dream. They walked as if they wereone, so isolated in ecstasy that the people jostling them on every sideseemed impalpable. But when they reached the terminus the illuminatedtrolley was already clanging on its way, its platforms black withpassengers. The cars waiting behind it were as thickly packed; andthe throng about the terminus was so dense that it seemed hopeless tostruggle for a place.

  "Last trip up the Lake," a megaphone bellowed from the wharf; and thelights of the little steam-boat came dancing out of the darkness.

  "No use waiting here; shall we run up the Lake?" Harney suggested.

  They pushed their way back to the edge of the water just as thegang-plank lowered from the white side of the boat. The electric lightat the end of the wharf flashed full on the descending passengers, andamong them Charity caught sight of Julia Hawes, her white feather askew,and the face under it flushed with coarse laughter. As she stepped fromthe gang-plank she stopped short, her dark-ringed eyes darting malice.

  "Hullo, Charity Royall!" she called out; and then, looking back overher shoulder: "Didn't I tell you it was a family party? Here's grandpa'slittle daughter come to take him home!"

  A snigger ran through the group; and then, towering above them, andsteadying himself by the hand-rail in a desperate effort at erectness,Mr. Royall stepped stiffly ashore. Like the young men of the party, hewore a secret society emblem in the buttonhole of his black frock-coat.His head was covered by a new Panama hat, and his narrow black tie,half undone, dangled down on his rumpled shirt-front. His face, a lividbrown, with red blotches of anger and lips sunken in like an old man's,was a lamentable ruin in the searching glare.

  He was just behind Julia Hawes, and had one hand on her arm; but as heleft the gang-plank he freed himself, and moved a step or two awayfrom his companions. He had seen Charity at once, and his glance passedslowly from her to Harney, whose arm was still about her. He stoodstaring at them, and trying to master the senile quiver of his lips;then he drew himself up with the tremulous majesty of drunkenness, andstretched out his arm.

  "You whore--you damn--bare-headed whore, you!" he enunciated slowly.

  There was a scream of tipsy laughter from the party, and Charityinvoluntarily put her hands to her head. She remembered that her hat hadfallen from her lap when she jumped up to leave the stand; and suddenlyshe had a vision of herself, hatless, dishevelled, with a man's armabout her, confronting that drunken crew, headed by her guardian'spitiable figure. The picture filled her with shame. She had known sincechildhood about Mr. Royall's "habits": had seen him, as she went up tobed, sitting morosely in his office, a bottle at his elbow; or cominghome, heavy and quarrelsome, from his business expeditions to Hepburnor Springfield; but the idea of his associating himself publicly with aband of disreputable girls and bar-room loafers was new and dreadful toher.

  "Oh----" she said in a gasp of misery; and releasing herself fromHarney's arm she went straight up to Mr. Royall.

  "You come home with me--you come right home with me," she said in alow stern voice, as if she had not heard his apostrophe; and one of thegirls called out: "Say, how many fellers does she want?"

  There was another laugh, followed by a pause of curiosity, during whichMr. Royall continued to glare at Charity. At length his twitchinglips parted. "I said, 'You--damn--whore!'" he repeated with precision,steadying himself on Julia's shoulder.

  Laughs and jeers were beginning to spring up from the circle of peoplebeyond their group; and a voice called out from the gangway: "Now,then, step lively there--all ABOARD!" The pressure of approaching anddeparting passengers forced the actors in the rapid scene apart, andpushed them back into the throng. Charity found herself clinging toHarney's arm and sobbing desperately. Mr. Royall had disappeared, and inthe distance she heard the receding sound of Julia's laugh.

  The boat, laden to the taffrail, was puffing away on her last trip.