“You whore--you damn--bare-headed whore, you!” he enunciated slowly.
There was a scream of tipsy laughter from the party, and Charity involuntarily put her hands to her head. She remembered that her hat had fallen from her lap when she jumped up to leave the stand; and suddenly she had a vision of herself, hatless, dishevelled, with a man's arm about her, confronting that drunken crew, headed by her guardian's pitiable figure. The picture filled her with shame. She had known since childhood about Mr. Royall's “habits”: had seen him, as she went up to bed, sitting morosely in his office, a bottle at his elbow; or coming home, heavy and quarrelsome, from his business expeditions to Hepburn or Springfield; but the idea of his associating himself publicly with a band of disreputable girls and bar-room loafers was new and dreadful to her.
“Oh----” she said in a gasp of misery; and releasing herself from Harney's arm she went straight up to Mr. Royall.
“You come home with me--you come right home with me,” she said in a low stern voice, as if she had not heard his apostrophe; and one of the girls called out: “Say, how many fellers does she want?”
There was another laugh, followed by a pause of curiosity, during which Mr. Royall continued to glare at Charity. At length his twitching lips 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 people beyond their group; and a voice called out from the gangway: “Now, then, step lively there--all ABOARD!” The pressure of approaching and departing passengers forced the actors in the rapid scene apart, and pushed them back into the throng. Charity found herself clinging to Harney's arm and sobbing desperately. Mr. Royall had disappeared, and in the distance she heard the receding sound of Julia's laugh.
The boat, laden to the taffrail, was puffing away on her last trip.
AT two o'clock in the morning the freckled boy from Creston stopped his sleepy horse at the door of the red house, and Charity got out. Harney had taken leave of her at Creston River, charging the boy to drive her home. Her mind was still in a fog of misery, and she did not remember very clearly what had happened, or what they said to each other, during the interminable interval since their departure from Nettleton; but the secretive instinct of the animal in pain was so strong in her that she had a sense of relief when Harney got out and she drove on alone.