Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - The Debtor

M >> Mary E. Wilkins Freeman >> The Debtor

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"Well, I guess it's all right," said Day. "I'm goin' to take the
girls to Madison Square Garden to-night. I'm pretty short of cash,
but you may as well live while you do live. I wonder if the boss is
married."

"I don't know."

"I guess he is," said Day, "and I guess he's all right and above
board. Good-bye, Allbright. See you Monday."

But Monday, when the two stenographers, the book-keeper, and the
clerk met at the office, they found it still locked, and a sign "To
let" upon the door.

"Mr. Carroll gave up his office last Saturday," said the man in the
elevator. "The janitor said so, and they have taken his safe out for
rent. Guess he bust in the Wall Street shindy last week."

Out on the sidewalk the four looked at one another. The pretty
stenographer began to cry in a pocket-handkerchief edged with wide,
cheap lace.

"I call it a shame," she said, "and here I am owing for board, and--"

"Don't cry, May," said Day, with a caressing gesture towards her in
spite of the place. "I guess it will be all right. He has all our
addresses, and we shall hear, and you won't have a mite of trouble
getting another place."

"I think I am justified in telling you all not to worry in the least,
that you will be paid every dollar," said Allbright; but he looked
perplexed and troubled.

"It looks mighty black, his not sending us word he was going to close
the office," said Day; and then appeared the tall, lean man who
wanted his two thousand odd dollars. He did not notice them at all,
but started to enter the office-building.

"Come along quick before he comes back," whispered Day. He seized the
astonished girls each by an arm and hustled them up the street, and
Allbright, after a second's hesitation, followed them just as the
irate man emerged from the door.

Chapter XXVII

Arthur Carroll, when he had started on his drive with his wife and
sister that afternoon, was in one of those strenuous moods which seem
to make one's whole being tick with the clock-work of destiny and
cause everything else, all the environment, and the minor happenings
of life, to appear utterly idle. Even when he talked, and apparently
with earnestness, it was always with that realization of depths,
which made his own voice ring empty and strange in his ears. He heard
his wife and sister chatter with the sense of aloofness of the
inhabitant of another planet; he thought even of the financial
difficulties which harassed him, and had caused this very mood, with
that same sense of aloofness. When Anna wondered where Charlotte had
gone to walk, and Mrs. Carroll remarked on the possibility of their
overtaking her, his mind made an actual effort to grasp that simple
idea. He was running so deep, and with such awful swiftness, in his
own groove of personal tragedy, that the daughter whom he loved, and
had seen only a few moments ago, seemed almost left out of sight of
his memory. However, all the while the usual trivialities of his life
and the lives of those who belonged to him went on with the same
regularity and reality as tragedy, and with as certain a trend to a
catastrophe of joy or misery.

On that day when Charlotte had her fright from the tramp, she
remained at the Anderson's to supper. Eddy had also remained. When
Charlotte had waked from her nap, he followed Anderson into the
sitting-room, where was Charlotte in Mrs. Anderson's voluminous,
white frilly wrapper, a slight young figure scalloped about by soft,
white draperies, like a white flower, seated comfortably in the
largest, easiest chair in the room. Mrs. Anderson was standing over
her with another glass of wine, and a china plate containing two
great squares of sponge-cake.

"Do eat this and drink the wine, dear," she urged. "It is nearly an
hour before supper now."

"Then I really must go home, if it is so late," Charlotte cried. She
made a weak effort to rise. She was still curiously faint when she
essayed to move.

"You are going to stay here and have supper, and after supper my son
shall take you home. If you are not able to walk, we shall have a
carriage."

"I think I must go home, thank you," Charlotte repeated, in a sort of
bewildered and grateful dismay.

"If you think your mother will feel anxious, I will send and inform
her where you are," said Mrs. Anderson, "but you must stay, my dear."
There was about her a soft, but incontrovertible authority. It was
all gentleness, like the overlap of feathers, but it was compelling.
It was while Mrs. Anderson was insisting and the girl protesting that
Anderson, with Eddy at his heels, had entered the room.

"Why, Eddy dear, is that you?" cried Charlotte.

Eddy stood before her and surveyed her with commiseration and a
strong sense of personal grievance and reproach. "Yes, it's me," said
he. "Papa told me to go to walk with you, and I didn't know which way
you went, and I couldn't find out for a long time. Then I saw Mr.
Anderson taking you here, and I ran, but I couldn't catch up. He's
got awful long legs." Eddy looked accusingly at Anderson's legs.

"It was too bad," said Charlotte.

"You were awful silly to get so scared at nothing," Eddy pursued. "I
saw that tramp. He looked to me like a real nice man. Girls are
always imagining things. You'd better eat that cake, Charlotte. You
look awful. That looks like real nice cake."

"Bless your heart, you shall have some," Mrs. Anderson said, and Eddy
accepted with alacrity the golden block of cake which was offered him.

"Why, Eddy!" Charlotte said.

"Now, Charlotte, you know we never have cake like this at home," Eddy
said, biting into the cake. "Not since the egg-man won't trust us any
more. I know this kind of cake takes lots of eggs. I heard Marie say
so when Amy asked her to make it."

Charlotte colored pitifully, and made another effort to rise.
"Indeed, I think we must go now," said she. "Come, Eddy."

Mrs. Anderson turned to her son for support. "I tell her she must not
think of going until after tea," she said. "Then if she is not able
to walk, we will get a carriage."

Eddy removed the fast-diminishing square of cake from his mouth and
regarded his sister with an expression of the most open
ingenuousness. "Now, Charlotte, I'll tell you something," he said.

"What, dear?"

"You might just as well stay, and I'll tell you why. Papa and Amy and
Anna won't be home until after seven."

"Until after seven?"

"No. They are going to Addison."

"To Addison?"

Addison was a large town some fifteen miles from Banbridge.

"Yes; and they are going to get dinner there."

"Eddy, are you sure?"

"Yes, of course I am sure," replied Eddy, with the wide-open eyes of
virtue upon his sister's face. "Amy told me to tell you."

"Now, Eddy."

Eddy took another bite of his cake. "I think you are pretty mean to
speak that way. I never spoke to you so," he said. "When you say a
thing is so, I never say 'Now, Charlotte!'" Eddy, having imitated his
sister's doubtful tone exactly, took another bite of cake.

"Well, if Amy really said so," Charlotte returned, and still with a
faint accent of incredulity. It was very seldom that the Carrolls
took the drive to Addison. However, it was an exceedingly pleasant
day, and it did seem possible.

"Well, she did," Eddy declared, stoutly; and there was in his
declaration a slight trace of truth, for Mrs. Carroll had mentioned,
on starting, that it was such a lovely day, that if they had got an
earlier start they might have driven to Addison; and Anna had replied
that it was too late now, for they would not get home in time for
dinner if they went there. The rest Eddy had manufactured to serve
his own small ends--which a stay at the Andersons' to tea, for which
he had, remembering his dinner there, the pleasantest anticipations.
"You had better stay, Charlotte," Eddy urged, furthermore, "for you
do look awful pale, and as if you ought to have something nourishing
to eat, and you know we won't get much home. The mutton all went this
noon, and you know, unless papa got some in Addison, we wouldn't be
likely to get any here. I heard Anna talking about the butcher only
this morning. Papa hasn't been able to pay him for a very long time,
you know, Charlotte."

Then Charlotte raised herself hastily. "We must go home," she said,
with a fierce emphasis; but the effort was too much. She sank back,
and Mrs. Anderson sent her son for the camphor-bottle.

"Now," said she to Anderson, "you had better take him out and show
him the dog. I'll fix it up." She nodded assuringly towards the
little pale face against the rose-patterned chintz.

"Come along, son," said Anderson to the boy, and led him out in the
garden. "You must not talk quite so much, young man," he said to him,
when they were on their way to the dog-kennel, which was backed up
against the terrace at the rear of the house, and before which stood
chained fast a large dog with a bad reputation. "You had better not
touch him," charged Anderson, as they approached. Then he repeated,
"No, you must not talk quite so much."

"Why not?" demanded Eddy. "He don't look very cross."

"Because," said the man, "there are certain things in every family
which it is better for a member of the family not to repeat outside
his home."

"What did I say?" asked Eddy, wonderingly. "He is wagging his tail.
He shakes all over. He wouldn't do that unless his tail was wagging.
I can't see his tail, but it must be wagging. What did I say?"

"When it comes to the family's household affairs--" Anderson said.

"Oh, you mean what I said about the butcher, huh? Oh, that don't do
any harm. Everybody in Banbridge knows about those things. I don't
see what difference that makes. Folks have to have things, don't
they? I don't believe that dog would bite me. He is wagging just as
hard as he can. Don't they?"

"Yes, of course," agreed Anderson, "but--"

"And if they don't have the money to pay for things, what are they
going to do? You wouldn't want all us Carrolls to die, would you?"

Anderson smiled, and stood between the boy and the kennel.

"I ain't afraid of him," said Eddy. "You wouldn't, would you?"

"Oh, of course not," replied Anderson.

"I shouldn't think you would, especially Charlotte. Say, I think
Charlotte is a real pretty girl, if she is my sister. Say, why can't
I pat him?"

"You had better not. He bit a boy about your size once."

"Hm! I ain't afraid he'll bite me. Don't you think she is? I don't
think you are very polite not to say right off."

"Very pretty, indeed," replied Anderson, laughing. Then he spoke to
the dog, a large mongrel with a masterly air, and an evident strain
of good blood under his white and yellow hide.

"How much did you pay for that dog?" inquired Eddy.

"I didn't pay anything," replied Anderson. "Somebody left him in the
street in front of my office when he was a puppy, or he strayed
there. I never knew which."

"So you took him in?"

"Yes."

"Do you always keep him shut up here?"

"A great part of the time. Sometimes he stays in my store nights. He
is a very good watch-dog."

"You keep him shut up because he bit a boy?"

"Most of the time. He is a little uncertain in his temper, I am
afraid."

"Didn't he bite any one but that one boy?"

"No, not that I know of. But he has sprang at a good many people and
frightened them, and I have either to keep him tied or shoot him."

"He didn't kill the boy?"

Anderson laughed. "Oh no! He was not very badly bitten."

"Well, I know one thing," said Eddy, with conviction. "I would not
like a nice dog like that shut up all his life because he had bitten
me."

Before Anderson knew what he was about to do, Eddy had made a spring,
leaping up sideways in the air like a kitten, and was close to the
dog. And the dog, upon whom there was no reliance to be placed,
except in the case of Anderson himself, hardly stopping for a
premonitory growl, had seized upon the boy's little arm. Having a
strain of pure bulldog in him, it was considerable trouble to make
him let go, and Anderson had to use a good deal of force at his
collar and a thick stick.

Eddy, meanwhile, made not a whimper, but kept his whitening lips
close shut. Luckily he had on a thick jacket, although the day was so
warm, and when Anderson drew away at last from the furious, straining
animal, and examined the injured member, he found only a slight
wound. The marks of the dog's teeth were plainly visible, and there
were several breaks of the surface and a little blood, but it was
certainly not alarming, and the animal's usual temper made it
improbable that any ultra consequences need be feared.

Eddy was trembling and very pale, but he still made not a whimper, as
Anderson examined his arm.

"Well, my son," said Anderson, who was as white as the boy, "I think
there is not much harm done. But it is lucky you had on such a thick
sleeve. I can tell you that."

"That was because we have not paid the Chinaman, and he wouldn't send
home my blouses this week. It was so warm I wanted to wear a blouse,
but they were all at the Chinaman's." Eddy's teeth chattered as he
spoke, his childish lips quivered, and tears were in his eyes. He
continued to tremble violently, but he did not for a moment give way.
He even shook off the protecting arm which Anderson placed around his
little shoulders.

"Come, we will go in the house and have this tied up," said Anderson.

But Eddy rebelled. "I don't want a lot of women fussing over a little
thing like this," said he, stoutly. "It isn't anything at all."

"No, it is not very serious, but all the same it had better be tied
up, and I have something I want to put on it. I tell you what we will
do. We will go around the back way. I will take you in the kitchen
door and up the backstairs to my room, and doctor it unknown to
anybody."

"I don't want Charlotte to know anything about it; she will be just
silly enough to faint away again. Girls always do make such an awful
fuss over nothing," said Eddy.

"All right," said Anderson. "Come along, my boy."

Anderson started, and the boy followed, but suddenly he stopped and
ran back before Anderson dreamed what he was about. He stopped in
front of the kennel, and danced on obviously trembling legs a dance
of defiance before the frantic dog.

Anderson grabbed him by the shoulders.

"Come at once," he said, quite sternly.

Eddy obeyed at once. "All right," he said. "I just wanted him to see
I wasn't afraid of him, that was all."

Eddy and Anderson entered the house through the kitchen door,
ascended the backstairs noiselessly, and gained Anderson's room,
where the wound was bound up after an application of a stinging
remedy which the boy bore without flinching, although it was
considerably more painful than the bite itself. He looked soberly
down at his arm, now turning black and blue from the bruise of the
dog's teeth, beside the inflamed spots where they had actually
entered, while Anderson applied the violent remedy.

"Well," he said, "I suppose I was to blame. I ought to have minded
you."

"Yes, I suppose you ought, my son," assented Anderson, continuing to
handle the wound gently.

"And I suppose that is an exclusive dog. He doesn't like everybody
going right up to him. Say, I guess he is a pretty smart dog, but I
guess I should rather be his master than anybody else. He never bit
you, did he?"

"No."

"I should think he would be an awful nice watch-dog," said Eddy.

Anderson bound the arm tightly and smoothly with a bandage. When the
arm was finally dressed the jacket-sleeve could go over it, much to
Eddy's satisfaction.

"Say, this jacket ain't paid for," he said. "Isn't it lucky that the
man where Amy bought it didn't know we didn't have much money to pay
for things lately and trusted us. If I had on my old jacket, the
sleeves were so short and tight, because I had outgrown it, you know,
I'd been hurt a good deal worse, and it was lucky we hadn't paid the
Chinaman, too. It was real-- What do you call it?"

"I don't know what you mean?" said Anderson, smiling.

"It was real-- Oh, shucks! you know. What is it folks say when they
don't go on a railroad train, and there's an accident, and everybody
that did go is killed. You know."

"Oh, providential?"

"Yes, it was real providential."

"Suppose we go down."

"All right. Say, you mind you don't say a word about this to your
mother or Charlotte."

"Yes, I promise."

"Your mother is an awful nice lady," said Eddy, in a whisper,
descending the stairs behind Anderson, "but I don't want her fussing
over me as if I was a girl, 'cause I ain't."

When the two entered the sitting-room, Charlotte started and looked
at her brother.

"Eddy Carroll, what is the matter?" she cried.

"Nothing," declared the little boy, stoutly, but he manifestly
tottered.

"Why, the dear child is ill!" cried Mrs. Anderson. "Randolph, what
has happened?"

"Nothing!" cried Eddy, holding on to his consciousness like a hero.
"Nothing; and I ain't a dear child."

"It is nothing, mother," said Anderson, quickly coming to his rescue.

Charlotte was eying wisely the knee of Eddy's knickerbockers. "Eddy
Carroll," said she, with tender severity, "your knee must be paining
you terribly."

Eddy quickly grasped at the lesser evil. "It ain't worth talking
about," he responded, stoutly.

"I can see blood on your knee, dear. It must be bad to make you turn
so pale as that."

With a soft swoop like a mother hen, Mrs. Anderson descended upon the
boy, who did not dare resist that gentle authority. She tenderly
rolled up the leg of the little knickerbockers and examined the
bruised, childish knee. Then she got some witch-hazel and bound it
up. While she was doing so, Eddy gazed over her head at Anderson with
the knowing and confidential twinkle which one man gives another when
tolerant of womanly delusion. He even indulged in an apparently
insane chuckle when Mrs. Anderson finished, and smoothed his little,
dark head, and told him that now she was sure it would feel better.

"Eddy," cried Charlotte, "what are you doing so for?"

"Nothing," replied Eddy. "I was thinking how funny I looked when I
tumbled down." But he rolled his eyes, comically around at Anderson.
His arm was paining him frightfully, and it struck him as the most
altogether exquisite joke that Mrs. Anderson should be treating his
knee, which did not pain him at all, so sympathetically.

Chapter XXVIII

During the progress of the tea at the Andersons' Eddy kept furtively
glancing at his sister with an expression which signified
congratulation.

"Ain't you glad you stayed?" the expression said, quite plainly.

"Did you ever have such nice things to eat? And only think what a
snippy meal we should have had at home!"

Charlotte met the first of the glances with a covertly chiding look
and an imperceptible shake of her head; then she refused to meet
them, keeping her eyes away from her exultant brother. She herself
was actually hungry, poor child, for the truth was that for the last
few days it had been somewhat short commons at the Carrolls', and
Charlotte was one of the sort who, under such circumstances, are
seized with a sudden loss of appetite. She had really eaten very
little for some hours, and now, in spite of a curious embarrassment
and agitation, which under ordinary circumstances would have lessened
her desire for food, she herself ate eagerly. The meal was both
dainty and abundant. Mrs. Anderson had always prided herself upon the
meals she set before guests. There was always in the house a store of
sweets to be drawn from on such occasions, and while Anderson had
been binding up Eddy's wound, the maid had been sent to the market
for a chicken to supplement the beefsteak which had been intended for
the family supper. So there was fried chicken and celery salad, and
the most wonderful cream biscuits, and fruit and pound cake, and
quince preserves--quarters of delectable, long-drawn-out flavor in a
rosy jelly--and tea and thick cream and loaf-sugar in the old, solid
service with its squat pieces finished with beading. Eddy gloated
over it all openly. He fairly forgot his manners, for, after all, he
was, although in a desultory sort of way, a well-bred boy. The
Carrolls, as far as their manners went, were gentlefolk, and came of
a long line of gentlefolk. But it happened that the china which had
come to them from their forebears had for the most part been broken
in the course of their wanderings from place to place, and in its
place was an ornate and rather costly, and unpaid-for, set. Eddy now
quite openly lifted the saucer of thin, pink-and-gold china, in which
his teacup rested, and held it to the light.

"Whew, ain't it thin?" he ejaculated.

"Why, Eddy!" Charlotte cried, flushing with dismay.

"I don't care. It is awful thin," persisted the boy. He held the
saucer before his eyes. "I can see you through it; yes, I can," said
he.

But Mrs. Anderson, although her old-fashioned ideas of the decorous
behavior due from children at table were somewhat offended, and she
later told her son that it did seem to her that the boy must have
been somewhat neglected, was yet very susceptible to flattery of
those teacups, which had descended to her from her own mother, and
which she had always regarded as superior to any of the Anderson
family china, of which there was quite a store. So she merely smiled
and remarked gently that the china was very old, and she believed
quite rare, and it was, indeed, unusually thin, yet not a piece of
the original set had been broken.

"Why didn't we have china like this instead of that we have?"
demanded Eddy of Charlotte.

"Hush, dear," said Charlotte. "This china is so very old and
valuable, you know, that not every one could--that we could not-- I
believe we had some very pretty china in our family, but it all got
broken," she added.

"It didn't begin to be so pretty as this," said Eddy. "I remember it.
The cups were like bowls, and there were black wreaths around them.
There weren't any handles, either. I don't see why we couldn't have
got some china as pretty as this. Suppose it was valuable. Why, I
don't believe that we have now is paid for. What difference would it
make?"

Charlotte blushed so that Mrs. Anderson felt an impulse to draw the
poor, little, troubled head upon her shoulder and tell her not to
mind.

"Let me give you some more of the quince preserve, dear," she said,
in the softest voice; and Charlotte, who did not want it, passed her
little glass dish to take advantage of the opportunity afforded her
to cover her confusion.

"What difference would it make, say, Charlotte?" persisted Eddy.

"Hush, dear," said Charlotte, painfully.

"Here, son, pass your plate for this chicken," said Anderson; and
Eddy, with a shrewd glance of half-comprehension from one to the
other, passed his plate and subsided, after a muttered remark that he
didn't see why Charlotte minded.

"Wasn't that a bully supper?" he whispered, pressing close to his
sister when they entered the sitting-room after the meal was finished.

"Hush, dear," she whispered back.

"Ain't you glad you stayed? You wouldn't, if it hadn't been for me."

Charlotte turned and looked at him sharply. Mrs. Anderson had
lingered in the dining-room to give some directions to the maid, and
Anderson had stepped out on the porch for a second's puff at a cigar.

"Eddy Carroll," said she, in a whisper, "you didn't?"

Eddy faced her defiantly. "Didn't what?"

"You didn't tell a lie about that?"

Eddy lowered his eyes, frowned, and scraped one foot in a way he had
when embarrassed. "Amy did say something about it was such a pleasant
day and Addison," he replied, doggedly.

"But did she say they were really going there, and would not be back?"

"Anna said if they went there they could not get back."

"But did she say they were going? Tell me the truth, Eddy Carroll."

Eddy scraped.

"I see they did not," said Charlotte, severely.

"Eddy, I don't know what papa will say."

"I know," said Eddy, simply, with a curious mixture of ruefulness and
defiance. Then he added: "If you want to be mean enough to tell on a
feller, after he's been the means of your having such a supper as
that (and you were hungry, too; you needn't say you wasn't; you ate
an awful lot yourself), you can."

"I am not going to tell unless I am asked, when I certainly shall not
tell a lie," replied Charlotte; "but papa will find it out himself, I
am afraid, Eddy."

"I shouldn't wonder if he did," admitted Eddy.

"And then, you know--"

"Yes, I know; but I don't care. I have had that bully supper, anyhow.
He can't alter that. And, say, Charlotte."

"What?" asked Charlotte, severely. "I am ashamed of you, Eddy."

"I don't see why papa don't get a store, like him"--he jerked an
expressive shoulder towards the scent of the cigar smoke--"and then
we could have things as good as they do."

But then Charlotte turned on him with fierceness none the less
intense, although necessarily subdued. "Eddy Carroll," she whispered,
with a long-drawn sibilance, "to turn on your father, a man like
papa! Eddy Carroll! Poor papa does the best he can, always, always."

"I suppose he does," said Eddy, quite loudly. "My, Charlotte, you
needn't act as if you were going to bite a feller. I've had enough
of--"

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