Edith Wharton - Penn State University

Summer“The Mountain? I ain’t afraid of the Mountain!”Her tone of defiance seemed to escape him. He lay breastdownon the grass, breaking off sprigs of thyme and pressingthem against his lips. Far off, above the folds of thenearer hills, the Mountain thrust itself up menacinglyagainst a yellow sunset.“I must go up there some day: I want to see it,” he continued.Her heart-beats slackened and she turned again to examinehis profile. It was innocent of all unfriendly intention.“What’d you want to go up the Mountain for?”“Why, it must be rather a curious place. There’s a queercolony up there, you know: sort of out-laws, a little independentkingdom. Of course you’ve heard them spoken of;but I’m told they have nothing to do with the people in thevalleys—rather look down on them, in fact. I suppose they’rerough customers; but they must have a good deal of character.”She did not quite know what he meant by having a gooddeal of character; but his tone was expressive of admiration,and deepened her dawning curiosity. It struck her nowas strange that she knew so little about the Mountain. Shehad never asked, and no one had ever offered to enlightenher. North Dormer took the Mountain for granted, and impliedits disparagement by an intonation rather than by explicitcriticism.“It’s queer, you know,” he continued, “that, just overthere, on top of that hill, there should be a handful of peoplewho don’t give a damn for anybody.”The words thrilled her. They seemed the clue to her ownrevolts and defiances, and she longed to have him tell hermore.“I don’t know much about them. Have they always beenthere?”“Nobody seems to know exactly how long. Down atCreston they told me that the first colonists are supposedto have been men who worked on the railway that wasbuilt forty or fifty years ago between Springfield andNettleton. Some of them took to drink, or got into troublewith the police, and went off—disappeared into the woods.A year or two later there was a report that they were living32