Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - The Debtor

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The Debtor

A Novel

By

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

Author of
"The Portion of Labor" "Jerome"
"A New England Nun" Etc.

Illustrations by
W. D. Stevens

New York and London
Harper & Brothers Publishers
1905

To Annie Fields Alden and Harriet Alden

Chapter I

Banbridge lies near enough to the great City to perceive after
nightfall, along the southern horizon, the amalgamated glow of its
multitudinous eyes of electric fire. In the daytime the smoke of its
mighty breathing, in its race of progress and civilization, darkens
the southern sky. The trains of great railroad systems speed between
Banbridge and the City. Half the male population of Banbridge and a
goodly proportion of the female have for years wrestled for their
daily bread in the City, which the little village has long echoed,
more or less feebly, though still quite accurately, with its own
particular little suburban note.

Banbridge had its own "season," beginning shortly after Thanksgiving,
and warming gradually until about two weeks before Lent, when it
reached its high-water mark. All winter long there were luncheons and
teas and dances. There was a whist club, and a flourishing woman's
club, of course. It was the women who were thrown with the most
entirety upon the provincial resources. But they were a resolved set,
and they kept up the gait of progress of their sex with a good deal
of success. They improved their minds and their bodies, having even a
physical-culture club and a teacher coming weekly from the City. That
there were links and a golf club goes without saying.

It was spring, and golf had recommenced for some little time. Mrs.
Henry Lee and Mrs. William Van Dorn passed the links that afternoon.

The two ladies were being driven about Banbridge by Samson Rawdy, the
best liveryman in Banbridge, in his best coach, with his two best
horses. The horses, indeed, two fat bays, were considered as rather
sacred to fashionable calls, as was the coach, quite a resplendent
affair, with very few worn places in the cloth lining.

Banbridge ladies never walked to make fashionable calls. They had a
coach even for calls within a radius of a quarter of a mile, where
they could easily have walked, and did walk on any other occasion. It
would have shocked the whole village if a Banbridge woman had gone
out in her best array, with her card-case, making calls on foot.
Therefore, in this respect the ladies who were better off in this
world's goods often displayed a friendly regard for those who could
ill afford the necessary expense of state calls. Often one would
invite another to call with her, defraying all the expenses of the
trip, and Mrs. Van Dorn had so invited Mrs. Lee to-day. Mrs. Lee, who
was a small, elderly woman, was full of deprecating gratitude and a
sense of obligation which made it appear incumbent upon her not to
differ with her companion in any opinion which she might advance,
and, as a rule, to give her the initiative in conversation during
their calls, and the precedence in entry and retreat.

Mrs. Van Dorn was as small as her companion, but with a confidence of
manner which seemed to push her forward in the field of vision
farther than her size warranted.

She was also highly corseted, and much trimmed over her shoulders,
which gave an effect of superior size and weight; her face, too, was
very full and rosy, while the other's was narrow and pinched at the
chin and delicately transparent.

Mrs. Van Dorn sat quite erect on the very edge of the seat, and so
did Mrs. Lee. Each held her card-case in her two hands encased in
nicely cleaned, white kid gloves. Each wore her best gown and her
best bonnet. The coach was full of black velvet streamers, and lace
frills and silken lights over precise knees, and the nodding of
flowers and feathers.

There was, moreover, in the carriage a strong odor of Russian violet,
which diffused itself around both the ladies. Russian violet was the
calling perfume in vogue in Banbridge. It nearly overcame the more
legitimate fragrance of the spring day which floated in through the
open windows of the coach.

It was a wonderful day in May. The cherry-trees were in full bloom,
and tremulous with the winged jostling of bees, and the ladies
inhaled the sweetness intermingled with their own Russian violet in a
bouquet of fragrance. It was warm, but there was the life of youth in
the air; one felt the bound of the pulse of the spring, not its
lassitude of passive yielding to the forces of growth.

The yards of the village homes, or the grounds, as they were commonly
designated, were gay with the earlier flowering shrubs, almond and
bridal wreath and Japanese quince. The deep scarlet of the
quince-bushes was evident a long distance ahead, like floral torches.
Constantly tiny wings flashed in and out the field of vision with
insistences of sweet flutings. The day was at once redolent and
vociferous.

"It is a beautiful day," said Mrs. Van Dorn.

"Yes, it is beautiful," echoed Mrs. Lee, with fervor.

Her faded blue eyes, under the net-work of ingratiating wrinkles,
looked aside, from self-consciousness, out of the coach window at a
velvet lawn with a cherry-tree and a dark fir side by side, and a
Japanese quince in the foreground.

After passing the house, both ladies began pluming themselves,
carefully rubbing on their white gloves and asking each other if
their bonnets were on straight.

"Your bonnet is so pretty," said Mrs. Lee, admiringly.

"It's a bonnet I have had two years, with a little bunch of violets
and new strings," said Mrs. Van Dorn, with conscious virtue.

"It looks as if it had just come out of the store," said Mrs. Lee.
She was vainly conscious of her own headgear, which was quite new
that spring, and distinctly prettier than the other woman's. She
hoped that Mrs. Van Dorn would remark upon its beauty, but she did
not. Mrs. Van Dorn was a good woman, but she had her limitations when
it came to admiring in another something that she had not herself.

Mrs. Lee's superior bonnet had been a jarring note for her all the
way. She felt in her inmost soul, though she would have been loath to
admit the fact to herself, that a woman whom she had invited to make
calls with her at her expense had really no right to wear a finer
bonnet--that it was, to say the least, indelicate and tactless.
Therefore she remarked, rather dryly, upon the beauty of a new
pansy-bed beside the drive into which they now turned. The bed looked
like a bit of fairy carpet in royal purples and gold.

"I call that beautiful," said Mrs. Van Dorn, with a slight emphasis
on the that, as if bonnets were nothing; and Mrs. Lee appreciated her
meaning.

"Yes, it is lovely," she said, meekly, as they rolled past and quite
up to the front-door of the house upon whose mistress they were about
to call.

"I wonder if Mrs. Morris is at home," said Mrs. Van Dorn, as she got
a card from her case.

"I think it is doubtful, it is such a lovely day," said Mrs. Lee,
also taking out a card.

Samson Rawdy threw open the coach door with a flourish and assisted
the ladies to alight. He had a sensation of distinct reverence as the
odor of Russian violet came into his nostrils.

"When them ladies go out makin' fashionable calls they have the best
perfumery I ever seen," he was fond of remarking to his wife.

Sometimes he insisted upon her going out to the stable and sniffing
in the coach by way of evidence, and she would sniff admiringly and
unenviously. She knew her place. The social status of every one in
Banbridge was defined quite clearly. Those who were in society wore
their honors easily and unquestioned, and those who were not went
their uncomplaining ways in their own humble spheres.

Mrs. Van Dorn and Mrs. Henry Lee, gathering up their silken raiment
genteelly, holding their visiting-cards daintily, went up the
front-door steps, and Mrs. Lee, taking that duty upon herself, since
she was Mrs. Van Dorn's guest, pulled the door-bell, having first
folded her handkerchief around her white glove.

"It takes so little to soil white gloves," said she, "and I think it
is considerable trouble to send them in and out to be cleaned."

"I clean mine with gasolene myself," said Mrs. Van Dorn, with the
superiority of a woman who has no need for such economies, yet
practises them, over a woman who has need but does not.

"I never had much luck cleaning them myself," said Mrs. Lee,
apologetically.

"It is a knack," admitted Mrs. Van Dorn. Then they waited in silence,
listening for an approaching footstep.

"If she isn't at home," whispered Mrs. Van Dorn, "We can make another
call before the two hours are up." Mr. Rawdy was hired by the hour.

"Yes, we can," assented Mrs. Lee.

Then they waited, and neither spoke. Mrs. Lee had occasion to sneeze,
but she pinched her nose energetically and repressed it.

Suddenly both straightened themselves and held their cards in
readiness.

"How does my bonnet look?" whispered Mrs. Lee.

Mrs. Van Dorn paid no attention, for then the door was opened and
Mrs. Morris's maid appeared, with cap awry and her white apron over a
blue-checked gingham which was plainly in evidence at the sides.

The ladies gave her their cards, and followed her into the best
parlor, which was commonly designated in Banbridge as the
reception-room. The best parlor was furnished with a sort of
luxurious severity. There were a few pieces of staid old furniture of
a much earlier period than the others, but they were rather in the
background in the gloomy corners, and the new pieces were thrust
firmly forward into greater evidence.

Mrs. Van Dorn sat down on the corner of a fine velvet divan, and Mrs.
Lee near her on the edge of a gold chair. Then they waited, while the
maid retired with their cards. "It's a pretty room, isn't it?"
whispered Mrs. Lee, looking about.

"Beautiful."

"She kept a few pieces of the old furniture that she had in her old
house when this new one was built, didn't she?"

"Yes. I suppose she didn't feel as if she could buy all new."

The ladies studied all the furnishings of the room, keeping their
faces in readiness to assume their calling expression at an instant's
notice when the hostess should appear.

"Did she have those vases on the mantel-shelf in the old house?"
whispered Mrs. Lee, after a while; but Mrs. Van Dorn made a warning
gesture, and instantly both ladies straightened themselves and looked
pleasantly expectant, and Mrs. Morris appeared.

She was a short and florid woman, and her face was flushed a deep
rose; beads of perspiration glistened on her forehead, her black hair
clung to it in wet strands. In her expression polite greeting and
irritation and intense discomfort struggled for mastery. She had been
house-cleaning when the door-bell rang, and had hastened into her
black skirt and black-and-white silk blouse. The blouse was buttoned
wrong, and it did not meet the skirt in the back; and she had quite
overlooked her neckgear, but of that she was pleasantly unconscious,
also of the fact that there was a large black smooch beside her nose,
giving her both a rakish and a sinister air.

"I am so glad to find you in," said Mrs. Van Dorn.

"I was telling Mrs. Van Dorn that I was so afraid you would be out,
it is such a lovely day," said Mrs. Lee.

"I am so glad I was in," responded Mrs. Morris, with effusion. "I
should have been so disappointed to miss your call."

Then the ladies seated themselves, and the conversation went on.
Overhead the maid could be heard heavily tramping. The carpet of that
room was up, and the mistress and maid had planned to replace it
before night; but the mistress held fast to her effusive air of
welcome. It had never been fashionable or even allowable not to be at
home when one was at home in Banbridge. When Banbridge ladies went
abroad calling, in the coach, much was exacted. Mrs. Morris could
never have held up her social head again had she fibbed, or bidden
the maid fib--that is, if it had been discovered.

"How lovely your house is, Mrs. Morris!" said Mrs. Van Dorn, affably.
The Morris house was only a year old, and had not yet been nearly
exhausted as a topic of polite conversation.

"Thank you," said Mrs. Morris. "Of course there are things about the
furnishings, but one cannot do everything in a minute."

"Now, my dear Mrs. Morris," said Mrs. Lee, "I think everything is
sweet." Mrs. Lee said sweet with an effect as if she stamped hard to
emphasize it. She made it long and extremely sibilant. Mrs. Lee
always said sweet after that fashion.

"Oh, of course you would rather have all your furniture new, than
part new and part old," said Mrs. Van Dorn; "but, as you say, you
can't do everything at once."

Mrs. Van Dorn was inclined at times to be pugnaciously truthful, when
she heard any one else lie. Her hostess looked uneasily at an old red
velvet sofa in a dark corner, which was not so dark that a worn place
along the front edge did not seem to glare at her. Nobody by any
chance sat on that sofa and looked at the resplendent new one. They
always sat on the new and faced the old. Mrs. Morris began absently
calculating, while the conversation went on to other topics, if she
could possibly manage a new sofa before summer.

Mrs. Lee asked if she knew if the new people in the Ranger place,
"Willow Lake," were very rich? She said she had heard they were
almost millionaires.

"Yes," said Mrs. Morris. "Very rich indeed. Mr. Morris says he thinks
they must be, from everything he hears."

"Of course it does not matter in one way or another whether they are
rich or not," said Mrs. Lee.

"Well, I don't know," said Mrs. Van Dorn. "Of course nobody is going
to say that money is everything, and of course everybody knows that
good character is worth more than anything else, and yet I do feel as
if folks with money can do so much if they have the will."

"I think that these new people are very generous with their money,"
said Mrs. Morris. "I heard they about supported the church in
Hillfield, New York, where they used to live, and Captain Carroll has
joined the Village Improvement Society, and he says he is very much
averse to trading with any but the local tradesmen."

"What is he captain of?" inquired Mrs. Lee, who had at times a
fashion of putting a question in a most fatuously simple and childish
manner.

"Oh, I don't suppose he is really captain of anything now," replied
Mrs. Morris. "I don't know how he happened to be captain, but I
suppose he must have been a captain in the regular army."

"I suppose he hasn't any business, he is so very rich?"

"Oh yes; he has something in the City. I dare say he does not do very
much at it, but I presume he is an active man and does not want to be
idle."

"Why didn't he stay in the army, then?" asked Mrs. Lee, clasping her
small white kid hands and puckering her face inquiringly.

"I don't know. Perhaps that was too hard, or took him away too far. I
suppose some of those army posts are pretty desolate places to live
in, and perhaps his wife was afraid of the Indians."

"He's got a wife and family, I hear," said Mrs. Van Dorn.

Both calling ladies were leaning farther and farther towards Mrs.
Morris with an absorption of delight. It was as if the three had
their heads together over a honey-pot.

"Mr. Lee said he heard they had a fine turnout," said Mrs. Lee.

"Mrs. Peel told me that Mr. Peel said the horses never cost less than
a thousand," said Mrs. Van Dorn.

"A thousand!" repeated Mrs. Morris. "Mr. Morris said horses like
those were never bought under twenty-five hundred, and Mr. Morris is
a pretty good judge of horse-flesh."

"Mr. Van Dorn said Dr. Jerrolds told him that Captain Carroll told
him he expected to keep an automobile, and was afraid the Ranger
stable wouldn't be large enough," said Mrs. Van Dorn.

"So I heard," said Mrs. Lee.

"I hear he pays a very large rent to Mr. Ranger--the largest rent he
has ever got for that house," said Mrs. Morris.

"Well, I hear he pays fifty dollars a month."

"Why, he never got more than forty before!" said Mrs. Lee. "That is,
I don't believe he ever did."

"I know he didn't," said Mrs. Morris, positively.

"Well, it is a handsome place," said Mrs. Lee.

"Yes, it is, but these new people aren't satisfied. They must have
been used to pretty grand things where they came from. They want the
stable enlarged, as I said before, and a box-stall. Mr. Carroll owns
a famous trotter that he hasn't brought here yet, because he is
afraid the stable isn't warm enough. I heard he wanted steam-heat out
there, and a room finished for the coachman, and hard-wood floors all
over the house. They say he has two five-thousand-dollar rugs."

"The house is let furnished, I thought," said Mrs. Van Dorn.

"Yes, it is, and the furniture is still there. The Carrolls don't
want to bring on many of their own things till they are sure the
house is in better order. I heard they talk of buying it."

"Do you know how much--" inquired Mrs. Van Dorn, breathlessly, while
Mrs. Lee leaned nearer, her eyes protruding, her small thin mouth
open, and her white kid fingers interlacing.

"Well, I heard fifteen thousand."

Both callers gasped.

"Well, it is a great thing for Banbridge to have such people come
here and buy real estate and settle, if they are the right sort,"
said Mrs. Van Dorn, rising to go; and Mrs. Lee followed her example,
with a murmur of assent to the remark.

"Must you go?" said Mrs. Morris, with an undertone of joy, thinking
of her carpet up-stairs, and rising with thinly veiled alacrity.

"Have you called?" asked Mrs. Van Dorn, moving towards the door, and
gathering up her skirts delicately with her white kid fingers,
preparatory to going down the steps. Mrs. Lee followed, also
gathering up her skirts.

"No, I have not yet," replied Mrs. Morris, preceding them to the door
and opening it for them, "but I intend to do so very soon. I have
been pretty busy house-cleaning since they came, and that is only two
weeks ago, but I am going to call."

"I think it is one's duty to call on new-comers, with a view to their
church-going, if nothing else," said Mrs. Van Dorn, with a virtuous
air.

"So do I," said Mrs. Lee.

"Good-afternoon," said Mrs. Van Dorn. "What a beautiful day it is!"

Both ladies bade Mrs. Morris good-afternoon and she returned the
salutation with unction. Both ladies looked fascinatedly to the last
at the black smooch on her cheek as they backed out.

"I thought I should burst right out laughing every time I looked at
her, in spite of myself," whispered Mrs. Lee, as they passed down the
walk.

"So did I."

"And no collar on!"

"Yes. She must have been house-cleaning."

"Yes. Well, I don't want to say disagreeable things, but really it
doesn't seem to me that I would have been house-cleaning such an
afternoon as this, when people were likely to be out calling."

"Well, I know I would not," said Mrs. Van Dorn, decidedly. "I should
have done what I could in the morning, and left what I couldn't do
till next day."

"So should I."

Samson Rawdy stood at the coach-door, and both ladies stepped in.
Then he stood waiting expectantly for orders. The ladies looked at
each other.

"Where shall we go next?" asked Mrs. Lee.

"Well, I don't know," said Mrs. Van Dorn, hesitatingly. "We were
going to Mrs. Fairfield's next, but I am afraid there won't be time
if--"

"It really seems to me that we ought to go to call on those new
people," said Mrs. Lee.

"Well, I think so too. I suppose there would be time if Mrs.
Fairfield wasn't at home, and it is such a lovely day I doubt if she
is, and it is on the way to the Carrolls'." She spoke with sudden
decision to Samson Rawdy. "Drive to Mr. Andrew Fairfield's, and as
fast as you can, please." Then she and Mrs. Lee leaned back as the
coach whirled out of the Morris grounds.

It was only a short time before they wound swiftly around the small
curve of drive before the Fairfield house. "There is no need of both
of us getting out," said Mrs. Van Dorn.

Mrs. Van Dorn alighted and went swiftly with a tiptoeing effect upon
the piazza-steps. She was seen to touch the bell. She waited a short
space, and then she did not touch it again. She tucked the cards
under the door-step, and hurried back to the carriage.

"I knew she wasn't at home," said she, in a whisper, "it is such a
lovely day." She turned to Samson Rawdy, who stood holding open the
coach-door. "Now you may drive to those new people who have moved
into the Ranger place," said she, "Mrs. Carroll's."

Chapter II

There are days in spring wherein advance seems as passive as is the
progress of a log down the race of a spring freshet. Then there are
other days wherein it seems that every mote must feel to the full its
sentient life, and its swelling towards development or fulfilment. On
a day like the latter, everything and everybody bestirs. The dust
motes spin in whirling columns, the gnats dance for their lives their
dance of death before the wayfarer. The gardeners and the
grave-diggers turn up the earth with energy, making the clods fly
like water. The rich play, or work that they may play, as do the
poor. Everybody is up and wide awake and doing. The earth and the
habitations thereof are rubbed, cleaned, and swept, or skylarked
over; the boy plays with his marbles on the sidewalk or whoops over
the fields; the housewives fling wide open their house windows, and
the dust of the winter flies out like smoke; the tradesmen set out
their new wares to public view, the bees make honey, the birds repeat
their world-old nesting songs, the cocks crow straight through the
day; nothing stops till the sun sets, and even then it is hard for
such an ardent clock of life to quite run down.

It was that spirit of unrest which had sent the two ladies out making
calls. There was not one where, if the womenkind were at home at all
and not afield, but they had been possessed of the spring activity,
until they reached the Ranger place, where the new-comers to
Banbridge lived. The Ranger place was, in some respects the most
imposing house in Banbridge. It stood well back from the road, in
grounds which deserved the name. They were extensive, dotted with
stately groups of spruces and pines, and there was in the rear of the
house a pond with a rustic bridge, fringed with willows, which gave
the place its name, "Willow Lake." The house had formerly been owned
by two maiden women with much sentiment, the sisters of the present
owner. The place was "Willow Lake." The pond was the "Willow Mere,"
in defiance of the name of the place. The little rustic bridge was
the "Bridge of Sighs," for some obscure reason, perhaps buried in the
sentimental past of the sisters. And the little hollow which was
profusely sprinkled with violets in the spring was "Idlewild." It was
in "Idlewild" that the new family, perverse to the spirit of the day,
idled when the callers drove up the road in the best coach.

There was in the little violet-sprinkled hollow a small building with
many peaks as to its roof, and diamond-paned windows which had been
fitted out with colored glass in a hideous checker-work of orange and
crimson and blue, which the departed sisters had called, none but
themselves knew why, "The Temple." On the south side grew a rose-bush
of the kind which flourished most easily in the village, taking most
kindly to the soil. It was an ordinary kind of rose. The sisters had
called it an eglantine, but it was not an eglantine. They had been
very fond, when the weather permitted, of sitting in this edifice
with their work. The place was fitted up with a rustic table and two
quite uncomfortable rustic chairs, particularly uncomfortable for the
sisters, who were of a thin habit of body.

When James Ranger, who was himself not a man of sentiment, showed the
new aspirant for the renting of the place this fantastic building, he
spoke of it with a species of apology.

"My sisters had this built," said he, "and it cost considerable," for
he did not wish to disparage the money value of anything.

When the family were established in their new home, one of the first
things which they did--they signifying Mrs. Carroll, Miss Anna
Carroll, the daughters Miss Ina and Miss Charlotte Carroll, and the
son Edward Carroll, called Eddy by the family--was to march in a body
upon the little "Temple," and, armed with stones, proceed with shouts
of merriment to smash out every spear of the crimson and orange and
blue glass in the windows. They then demolished the rustic furniture
and made of that a noble bonfire. Mrs. Carroll had indeed wondered,
between fits of laughter, in her sweet drawl, if they ought to
destroy the furniture, as it could not be said, strictly speaking, to
belong to them to destroy, but she was promptly vetoed by all the
others in merry chorus.

"They are too hideous to live," said Ina; "they ought to be burned.
It is our plain duty to burn them."

Therefore they burned them, and brought out some of the parlor chairs
to replace them. Then Eddy was sent to Rosenstein's, the village
dry-goods store of Banbridge, for yards of green mosquito netting,
which, the Carroll credit being newly established with a blare of
trumpets, he purchased. Then they had tacked up the green mosquito
netting over the window and door gaps, for they had forcibly wrenched
the ornate door from its hinges and added it to the bonfire, and the
temple of the Muses stood in a film of gently undulating green under
the green willows, and was rather a thing of beauty.

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