Charlotte never knew quite how it began, but her father suddenly flung out a dangerous topic like a long-argued bone of contention, and he and Barnabas were upon it. Barnabas was a Democrat, and Cephas was a Whig, and neither ever forgot it of the other. None of the women fairly understood the point at issue; it was as if they drew back their feminine skirts and listened amazed and trembling to this male hubbub over something outside their province. Charlotte grew paler and paler. She looked piteously at her mother.
“Now, father, don't,” Sarah ventured once or twice, but it was like a sparrow piping against the north wind.
Charlotte laid her hand on her lover's arm and kept it there, but he did not seem to heed her. “Don't,” she said; “don't, Barnabas. I think there's going to be a frost to-night; don't you?” But nobody heard her. Sylvia Crane, in the background, clutched the arms of her rocking-chair with her thin hands.
Suddenly both men began hurling insulting epithets at each other. Cephas sprang up, waving his right arm fiercely, and Barnabas shook off Charlotte's hand and was on his feet.
“Get out of here!” shouted Cephas, in a hoarse voice—“get out of here! Get out of this house, an' don't you ever darse darken these doors again while the Lord Almighty reigns!” The old man was almost inarticulate; he waved his arms, wagged his head, and stamped; he looked like a white blur with rage.
“I never will, by the Lord Almighty!” returned Barnabas, in an awful voice; then the door slammed after him. Charlotte sprang up.
“Set down!” shouted Cephas. Charlotte rushed forward. “You set down!” her father repeated; her mother caught hold of her dress.
“Charlotte, do set down,” she whispered, glancing at her husband in terror. But Charlotte pulled her dress away.
“Don't you stop me, mother. I am not going to have him turned out this way,” she said. Her father advanced threateningly, but she set her young, strong shoulders against him and pushed past out of the door. The door was slammed to after her and the bolt shot, but she did not heed that. She ran across the yard, calling: “Barney! Barney! Barney! Come back!” Barnabas was already out in the road; he never turned his head, and kept on. Charlotte hurried after him. “Barney,” she cried, her voice breaking with sobs—“Barney, do come back. You aren't mad at me, are you?” Barney never turned his head; the distance between them widened as Charlotte followed, calling. She stopped suddenly, and stood watching her lover's dim retreating back, straining with his rapid strides.
“Barney Thayer,” she called out, in an angry, imperious tone, “if you're ever coming back, you come now!”
But Barney kept on as if he did not hear. Charlotte gasped for breath as she watched him; she could scarcely help her feet running after him, but she would not follow him any farther. She did not call him again; in a minute she turned around and went back to the house, holding her head high in the dim light.
She did not try to open the door; she was sure it was locked, and she was too proud. She sat down on the flat, cool door-stone, and remained there as dusky and motionless against the old gray panel of the door as the shadow of some inanimate object that had never moved.
The wind began to rise, and at the same time the full moon, impelled softly upward by force as unseen as thought. Charlotte's fair head gleamed out abruptly in the moonlight like a pale flower, but the folds of her mottled purple skirt were as vaguely dark as the foliage on the lilac-bush beside her. All at once the flowering branches on a wide-spreading apple-tree cut the gloom like great silvery wings of a brooding bird. The grass in the yard was like a shaggy silver fleece. Charlotte paid no more attention to it all than to her own breath, or a clock tick which she would have to withdraw from herself to hear.
A low voice, which was scarcely more than a whisper, called her, a slender figure twisted itself around the front corner of the house like a vine. “Charlotte, you there?” Charlotte did not hear. Then the whisper came again. “Charlotte!”
Charlotte looked around then.
A slender white hand reached out in the gloom around the corner and beckoned. “Charlotte, come; come quick.”
Charlotte did not stir.
“Charlotte, do come. Your mother's dreadful afraid you'll catch cold. The front door is open.”
Charlotte sat quite rigid. The slender figure began moving towards her stealthily, keeping close to the house, advancing with frequent pauses like a wary bird. When she got close to Charlotte she reached down and touched her shoulder timidly. “Oh, Charlotte, don't you feel bad? He'd ought to know your father by this time; he'll get over it and come back,” she whispered.
“I don't want him to come back,” Charlotte whispered fiercely in return.
Sylvia stared at her helplessly. Charlotte's face looked strange and hard in the moonlight. “Your mother's dreadful worried,” she whispered again, presently. “She thinks you'll catch cold. I come out of the front door on purpose so you can go in that way. Your father's asleep in his chair. He told your mother not to unbolt this door to-night, and she didn't darse to. But we went past him real still to the front one, an' you can slip in there and get up to your chamber without his seeing you. Oh, Charlotte, do come!”
Charlotte arose, and she and Sylvia went around to the front door. Sylvia crept close to the house as before, but Charlotte walked boldly along in the moonlight. “Charlotte, I'm dreadful afraid he'll see you,” Sylvia pleaded, but Charlotte would not change her course.
Just as they reached the front door it was slammed with a quick puff of wind in their faces. They heard Mrs. Barnard's voice calling piteously. “Oh, father, do let her in!” it implored.
“Don't you worry, mother,” Charlotte called out. “I'll go home with Aunt Sylvia.”
“Oh, Charlotte!” her mother's voice broke in sobs.
“Don't you worry, mother,” Charlotte repeated, with an unrelenting tone in the comforting words. “I'll go right home with Aunt Sylvia. Come,” she said, imperatively to her aunt, “I am not going to stand here any longer,” and she went out into the road, and hastened down it, as Barnabas had done.
“I'll take her right home with me,” Sylvia called to her sister in a trembling voice (nobody knew how afraid she was of Cephas); and she followed Charlotte.
Sylvia lived on an old road that led from the main one a short distance beyond the new house, so the way led past it. Charlotte went on at such a pace that Sylvia could scarcely keep up with her. She slid along in her wake, panting softly, and lifting her skirts out of the evening dew. She was trembling with sympathy for Charlotte, and she had also a worry of her own. When they reached the new house she fairly sobbed outright, but Charlotte went past in her stately haste without a murmur.
“Oh, Charlotte, don't feel so bad,” mourned her aunt. “I know it will all come right.” But Charlotte made no reply. Her dusky skirts swept around the bushes at the corner of the road, and Sylvia hurried tremulously after her.
Neither of them dreamed that Barnabas watched them, standing in one of the front rooms of his new house. He had gone in there when he fled from Cephas Barnard's, and had not yet been home. He recognized Charlotte's motions as quickly as her face, and knew Sylvia's voice, although he could not distinguish what she said. He watched them turn the corner of the other road, and thought that Charlotte was going to spend the night with her aunt—he did not dream why. He had resolved to stay where he was in his desolate new house, and not go home himself.
A great grief and resentment against the whole world and life itself swelled high within him. It was as if he lost sight of individual antagonists, and burned to dash life