Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - The Debtor

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"Be you Eddy Carroll's father?" asked the little voice.

Carroll looked down from his height at the small creature beside him.
The little, upturned face looked very far down. The little cap was
pushed back and the fair hair clung to the innocent forehead damply
like a baby's.

"Yes, my little man," said he, affably. "Who are you?"

"I go to school with him," said the little boy.

"Oh!" said Carroll.

"Has he went?" further inquired the little boy, wistfully. He was a
little scholar, but he had not learned as yet the practical
application of English. It was "has gone" in the book and "has went"
on the tongue.

"Yes; this morning," replied Carroll.

"I was in his classes," said the little voice.

"Why, you are younger than he is!" said Carroll.

"I guess I got my lessons better," admitted the little voice, but
with no conceit, rather with a measure of apology.

Carroll laughed. "You must have," said he. The boy had, undoubtedly,
a rather intellectual head, a full forehead, and eyes full of thought
and question.

"You go to school in Banbridge?" said Carroll, walking along the
street by the boy's side.

"Yes. I live here. My papa is dead and my mother dressmakes."

"Oh!" said Carroll. Suddenly, to his utter amazement, the small hand
which was free from the books was slid into his, and he was walking
up the street with the strange small boy clinging to his hand.
Carroll was conscious of a feeling of grotesque amusement, of
annoyance, and at the same time of pleasure and of exquisite
flattery. There was, strangely enough, in the child, nothing which
savored of the presuming or the forward. There was no more offence to
be taken than if an exceedingly small, timidly ingratiating, and
pretty dog had followed one. There was the same subtle compliment
implied, that the dog and the child considered him a man desirable to
be followed, a man to be trusted by such helplessness and ignorance
and loving admiration.

Carroll asked no more questions, but walked up the street with the
boy clinging to his hand. He thought of Eddy, but the touch of this
child was very different; the hand was softer, not so nervous.
Carroll, walking up the street, became forgetful of the child, who
remained silent, only glancing up at him now and then, timidly and
delightedly and admiringly. It was, in fact, to the boy, almost as if
he were walking hand in hand with a god. But to the man had returned
in full force the abnormal passion which had sent him thither. He
looked for a drug-store where he could buy chloroform. His mind was
as set upon that one end as a hunting-dog's upon his quarry. He could
not seem to grasp anything very intelligently but that one idea,
which crowded out every other for the time. The two passed store
after store, markets, beer-saloons, fruit-stalls, and dry-goods.
There were several blocks before the first drug-store was reached.
Carroll saw the red, green, and blue bottles in the windows, and
turned towards the door.

"Mr. Willard keeps this store; he's a nice man," volunteered the boy,
in his sweet treble.

Carroll looked down and smiled mechanically. "Is he?" he said.

"Yes. My mamma makes Mis' Willard's dresses. She's real good pay."

Carroll entered the store, the boy still keeping close hold of his
hand.

There was no one behind the counter, on which stood an ornate
soda-fountain with the usual appliances for hot and cold beverages. A
thought struck Carroll. He put his hand in his pocket and looked down
at the boy.

"Do you like chocolate?" he asked.

The boy blushed and hung his head.

"Do you?" persisted Carroll.

"I didn't ask for any," the boy said, in an exceedingly shamefaced
voice.

Carroll laughed as a man came from the rear of the store and paused
inquiringly behind the counter. "Give this little boy a cup of hot
chocolate, and make it pretty sweet," he said.

When the boy was seated, blissfully sipping his chocolate, Carroll
asked calmly for his chloroform. The druggist himself gave it to him
without any demur. There was that about Carroll's whole appearance
which completely allayed suspicion. It seemed inconceivable that a
man of such appearance, benevolently and genially treating a pretty
little boy to a cup of chocolate, should be essaying to purchase
poison for any nefarious purpose. The druggist put up the chloroform
in a bottle marked poison in red letters, changed the bill which
Carroll gave him in payment, and remarked that it was a cold day and
looked like snow. The boy was hurrying to finish his chocolate, that
he might follow again this object of his admiration, but Carroll
caught sight of the Banbridge car coming up the street, after having
made an unusually long wait at the terminus of the line.

"Take your time, my boy. I have to go," he said, and hurried out to
the car, leaving the boy staring wistfully after him with the
chocolate sweet upon his tongue.

Carroll, with his chloroform in his pocket, boarded the car, and
speeded again over the road to Banbridge. The way home seemed to him
like a dream. He was not conscious of much about him; his mind now
seemed concentrated on that small bottle in his pocket. He noticed
nobody in the car, but sat in his corner, with eyes fixed absently on
the flying landscape. The conductor had to speak twice before he
realized that he was asking for his fare. When the car reached the
end of the line in Banbridge, he sat still for a few seconds before
he collected himself enough to understand that the end of his journey
was reached, and it was time for him to get off the car and walk home.

Walking along the familiar way, his apathy began to fail and his
nervous excitement returned. He began to realize everything, this
hideous end to his failure of a life which was so rapidly
approaching. He realized that he was walking alone to his deserted
home, cold and cheerless, dark and silent. It was already dusk, the
days were short and the sky heavily clouded. The raw wind from the
northeast smote him hard in the face like a diffused flail of wrath.
He thought of his wife and children and sister speeding along to
their old home in the cheerful Pullman-car. He reflected that about
this time they would be thinking of going to the dining-car for their
dinner. He reflected that after the chloroform had done its work,
they would be well cared for in Kentucky, much better off than they
had ever been under his doubtful protection; that Eddy might grow up
to be a better man than his father, that Charlotte would marry down
there, that they would all be comfortable, and in the intense and
abnormal self-centredness of the mood which was upon him, that mood
which leads a man to escape from his own agony of life by the first
exit, that awful hunger for the beyond of his own soul, he never gave
a thought to the possible sufferings of his family, to their possible
grief at the loss of him. He actually hugged himself with the
contemplation of their comfort and happiness, which would follow upon
his demise, as he hugged himself upon the prospective ecstasy and
oblivion in the bottle in his pocket.

He came in sight of his house, and a bright light shone in the
dining-room window. He looked at it in bewilderment. His first
thought was an unreasoning one that some of his creditors had in some
unforeseen way taken possession. He went wearily around to the side
door. There was a light also behind the drawn curtain of the kitchen.
He opened the door and smelled broiling beefsteak and tea. Then
Charlotte, warm and rosy, laughing and almost weeping at the same
time, ran towards him with her arms held out.

"I have come back, papa," said she.

Chapter XXXIII

For the first time in his life Arthur Carroll had a perfect sense of
the staying power, of the impregnable support, of love and the
natural ties of humanity. Charlotte's slender arms closed around his
neck; she stood, half-weeping, half-laughing, leaning against him,
but in reality he leaned against her, the soul of the man against the
soul of the girl, and he got from it a strength which was stronger
than life or death. He felt that it bent not one whit before his
terrible weight of misery and perplexity. He was stayed.

"I came back, papa," Charlotte repeated. She was herself a little
terrified by what seemed to her a daring action; then, too, she dimly
perceived something beneath the surface which made her tremble. She
felt the despairing weight of the other soul against her own. She
stood still, clinging to her father, saying in her little, quivering
voice that she had come back, and he was quite still, until at last
he made a little sound like a dry sob, and Charlotte straightened
herself and took his hand firmly in her little, soft one. The girl
became all in a second a woman, with the full-fledged instincts of
one. She knew just what to do for a man in a moment of weakness. She
towered, by virtue of the maternal instinct within her, high above
her father in spiritual strength.

"Papa, come into the house," said she, and her voice seemed no longer
Charlotte's, but echoed from the man's far-off childhood. "Come into
the house, papa," she said; "come." And Carroll followed her into the
house, like a child, his hands clasped firmly and commandingly by the
little, soft one of his daughter.

Charlotte led her father into the dining-room, which was warm and
light. There was a Franklin stove in there, and a bright fire burned
in it.

"The furnace fire had gone out, and I could not do anything with
that, so I made a fire in this stove," Charlotte explained. "I made
it burn very easily." She spoke with a childish pride. It was, in
fact, the first time she had ever made a fire. "The fire in the
kitchen-range was low, too," she said, "but I put some coal on and I
poked it, and there is a beautiful bed of coals to cook the
beefsteak." Then Charlotte caught herself up short. "Oh, the
beefsteak will burn!" she cried, anxiously. "Do sit down, papa, and
wait a minute. I must see to the beefsteak."

With that Charlotte ran into the kitchen, and Carroll dropped into
the nearest chair. He felt dazed and happy, with the happiness of a
man waking to consciousness from an awful incubus of nightmare, and
yet a deadly sense of guilt and shame was beginning to steal over
him. That bottle of chloroform in his pocket stung his soul like the
worm, which gnaweth the conscience unceasingly, of the Scriptures. He
thought vaguely of removing it, of concealing it somewhere. He looked
at the china-closet, the door of which stood ajar; he looked at the
sideboard with its glitter of cut glass and silver; but reflected
that Charlotte might directly go to either and discover it, and make
inquiries. He kept it in his pocket.

He heard Charlotte running about in the kitchen. He continued to
smell the broiling beefsteak and tea, and also toast. He became
conscious of a healthy hunger. He had eaten nothing since morning,
and very little then. Then he gathered his faculties together enough
to wonder how this had come about; how and why Charlotte had
returned. But he sat still in the chair beside the Franklin stove. He
gazed steadily into the red glow of the coals, and a strange dimness
came over his vision. A species of counter-hypnotism seemed to
overcome him. He had been in an abnormal state, superinduced by
unhealthy suggestions of the imagination acting upon a mind ill at
ease; now his natural state gradually asserted itself. His mind swung
slowly back to its normal poise. When Charlotte entered, bearing a
platter of beefsteak, he turned to her quite naturally.

"How did it happen, darling?" he asked.

Charlotte looked at him, and her face, which had been anxious and
puzzled, lightened. She laughed. "I had my mind all made up, papa,"
she replied, in a triumphant little voice.

"That you would come back?"

"Yes, papa. I knew there was no use in saying I would not go. I knew
if I did, Amy would directly declare that she would not go either,
and I should spoil everything. So I decided that I would start with
the rest, and come back."

"How far did you go?"

"I went to Lancaster. I did not mean to go so far. I meant to get off
at New Sanderson, but I could not manage it. Amy wanted to play
pinochle, and I could not get away. But when we got to Lancaster, we
stopped awhile, and Amy was having a nap, and Anna was reading, and
the train made a long stop, and Eddy and I got out, and I told Eddy
what I was going to do, and gave him a little note. I had it all
written before I started. I said in the note that I was coming back,
that I did not want to go to Kentucky; that I was coming back and
would stay with you a little while, and then we would both go to
Kentucky and join the others. I said they were not to worry about me."

"What did you tell Eddy?"

"I told Eddy that you could not be left alone with nobody to cook for
you, and he must get on the train and not make any fuss, and tell the
others, and be a good boy, and he said he would. I saw him safely on
the train."

"How did you get here from Lancaster, child?"

"I took the trolley," Charlotte said. "There is a trolley from
Lancaster to New Sanderson, you know, papa."

Charlotte did not explain that the trolley from Lancaster to New
Sanderson was not running, and that she had walked six miles before
connecting with the trolley to Banbridge. "I got the meat in New
Sanderson," said she. "I got some other things, too. You will see. We
have a beautiful supper, papa."

Carroll looked at her, and she answered the question he was ashamed
to ask. "Aunt Catherine sent me a little money," she said. "She sent
me twenty-five dollars in a post-office order. She wrote me a letter
and sent me the money for myself. She said the shops were not very
good down there--you know they are not, papa--and I might like to buy
some little things for myself in New York before coming. I said
nothing about the money to Amy or the others, because I had this
plan. I even let Amy take that extra money and buy me the hat. I was
afraid I was mean, but I could not tell her I had the money, because
I wanted to carry out this plan, and I did not see how I could get
back or do anything unless I kept it, for I had no money at all
before. I have written a letter to Aunt Catherine, and she will get
it as soon as they get there. I don't think she will be angry; and if
she is, I don't care." Charlotte's voice had a ring of charming
defiance. She looked gayly at her father. "Come, papa," said she,
"the beefsteak is hot. Sit right up, and I will bring in the tea and
toast. There are some cakes, too, and a salad. I have got a beautiful
supper, papa. I never cooked any beefsteak before, but just look how
nice that is. Come, papa."

Carroll obediently drew his chair up to the table. It was daintily
set; there was even a little vase of flowers, rusty red
chrysanthemums, in the centre on the embroidered centrepiece.
Charlotte spoke of them when she brought in the tea and toast. "I
suppose I was extravagant, papa," she said, "but I stopped at a
florist's in New Sanderson and bought these. They did not cost
much--only ten cents for all these." She took her seat opposite her
father, and poured the tea. She put in the lumps of sugar daintily
with the silver tongs. Her face was beaming; she was lovely; she was
a darling. She looked over at her father as she extended his cup of
tea, and there was not a trace of self-love in the little face; it
was all love for and tender care of him. "Oh, I am so glad to be
home!" she said, with a deep sigh.

Carroll looked across at her with a sort of adoration and dependence
which were painful, coming from a father towards a child. His face
had lightened, but he still looked worn and pale and old. He was
become more and more conscious of the chloroform in his pocket, and
the shame and guilt of it.

"Why did you come back, honey?" he asked.

"I didn't want to go," Charlotte said, simply. "I wasn't happy going
away and leaving you alone, papa. I want to stay here with you, and
if you have to leave Banbridge I will go with you. I don't mind at
all not having much to get along with. I can get along with very
little."

"You would have been more comfortable with the others, dear," said
Carroll. He did not begin to eat his supper, but looked over it at
the girl's face.

"You are not eating anything, papa," said Charlotte. "Isn't the
beefsteak cooked right?"

"It is cooked beautifully, honey; just right. All is. I am glad to
see you come back. You don't just know what it means to me, dear, but
I am afraid--"

Charlotte laughed gayly. "I am not," said she. "Talk about
comfort--isn't this comfort? Please _do_ eat the beefsteak, papa."

Carroll began obediently to eat his supper. When he had fairly begun
he realized that he was nearly famished. In spite of his stress of
mind, the needs of the flesh reasserted themselves. He could not
remember anything tasting so good since his boyhood. He ate his
beefsteak and potatoes and toast; then Charlotte brought forward with
triumph a little dish of salad, and finally a charlotte-russe.

"I got these at the baker's in New Sanderson," said she. She was
dimpling with delight. She looked very young, and yet the man
continued to have that sense of dependence upon her. She exulted
openly over her supper, her cooking, and her return. "I don't know
but I was very deceitful, papa," she said, but with glee rather than
compunction. "Amy and Anna had no idea that I did not mean to go with
them to Aunt Catherine's, and oh, papa, what do you think I did? What
do you?"

"What, dear?"

"My trunk was packed with, with--some old sheets and blankets and
newspapers--and all my clothes are hanging in my closet up-stairs."
Charlotte laughed a long ring of laughter. "I knew I was deceitful,"
she said again, and laughed again.

Carroll did not laugh. He was thinking of the Hungarian girl in
Charlotte's red dress, but Charlotte thought he was sober on account
of her deceit.

"Do you think it was very wrong, papa?" she asked, with sudden
seriousness, eying him wistfully. "I will write and tell Amy to-night
all about it. I couldn't think of any other way to do, papa."

"I met Marie as I was coming home from the station this morning,"
Carroll said, irrelevantly.

Charlotte looked at him quickly, blushed, and raised her teacup.

"I thought at first, though I knew it could not be, that I saw you
coming," said he; "something about her dress--"

"Papa," said Charlotte, setting down her cup, and she was
half-crying--"papa, I had to. Marie was so shabby, and she said that
her lover had deserted her because she was so poorly dressed; and
though of course he could not be a very good man, nor very loyal to
desert her for such a reason as that, yet those people are different,
perhaps, and don't look at things as we do; and Marie has got another
place; but--but she--didn't have any money, you know, and she didn't
really have a dress fit to be seen, and that dress I gave her I did
not need at all--I really did not, papa. I have plenty besides, and
so I gave it to her, and my little Eton jacket, and I told her she
would certainly have every cent we owed her, and she seemed very
happy. She is going to a party to-night and will wear that dress. She
thinks she will get her lover back. Those Hungarian men must be queer
lovers. Marie said he would not marry her, anyway, until she had some
money for her dowry, but she thinks she may be able to keep him until
then with my red silk dress, and I told her she should certainly have
it all in time." Charlotte's voice, in making the last statement, was
full of pride and confidence without a trace of interrogation.

"She shall if I live, dear," said Carroll. All at once there came
over him, stimulated with food for heart and body, such a rush of the
natural instinct for life as to completely possess him. It seemed to
him that as a short time before he had hungered for death, he now
hungered for life. Even the desire to live and pay that miserable
little Hungarian servant-maid was a tremendous thing. The desire to
live for the smallest virtues, ambitions, and pleasures of life was
compelling force.

"I have something beautiful for breakfast to-morrow morning, papa,"
said Charlotte, "and I know how to make coffee." And he felt that it
was worth while living for to-morrow morning's breakfast alone. No
doubt this state of mind, as abnormal in its way as the other had
been, was largely due to physical causes, to the unprosaic quantity
of food in a stomach which had been cheated of its needs for a number
of days. The blood rushed through his veins with the added force of
reaction, supplying his brain. He was not happier--that could
scarcely be said--but he was swinging in the opposite direction.
Whereas he had wanted to die, because of his misery and failures, he
now wanted to live, to repair them, and the thought was dawning upon
him, to take revenge because of them. In this mood the consideration
of the bottle of chloroform in his pocket became more and more
humiliating and condemning. The sight of the girl's innocent,
triumphant, loving little face opposite overwhelmed him with a
stinging consciousness of it all. He felt at one minute a terrible
fear lest those clear young eyes of hers could penetrate his
miserable secret, lest she should say, suddenly: "Papa, what did you
go to Port Willis for? What have you in your pocket?"

Charlotte went to bed early, after she had cleared away the table and
washed the dishes, unwonted tasks for her, but which she performed
with a delight intensified by a feeling of daring.

"Papa, I have washed the dishes beautifully; I know I have," she
said, and she looked at him for praise, her head on one side, her
look half-whimsical, half-childishly earnest. "I don't see why it is
at all hard work to be a maid," said she.

"There are other things to do, dear, I suppose," Carroll said.

"I think I could easily learn to do the other things," said she. "I
don't quite know about the washing and ironing, and possibly the
scrubbing and sweeping." Charlotte surveyed, as she spoke, her hands.
She looked at the little, pink palms, made pinker and slightly
wrinkled by the dish-water; she turned them and surveyed the backs
with the slightly scalloping joints, and the thin-nailed fingers. She
shook her head. "I don't know," said she, again.

"I know," Carroll said, quickly. "Your father is going to take care
of you, Charlotte. It has not yet come to that pass that he is quite
helpless."

Charlotte did not seem to notice his hurt, indignant tone. She went
on reflectively. "It does seem," said she, "as if there were a great
many ways of being crippled besides not having all your arms and
legs; as if it were really being very much crippled if you are in a
place where there is work to be done, and your hands are not rightly
made for doing it. Now here I am, and I can't do Marie's work as well
as Marie did it, because she was really born with hands for washing
and ironing and scrubbing and sweeping, and I wasn't. A person is
really crippled when she is born unfitted to do the things that come
her way to be done, isn't she, papa?"

"There is no question of your doing such things, Charlotte," Carroll
said again, and Charlotte looked at him quickly.

"Why, papa!" said she, and went up to him and kissed him. She rubbed
her cheek caressingly against his, and his cheek felt wet. She
realized that with a sort of terror. "Why, papa, I did not mean any
harm!" she said.

"I will get a servant for you to-morrow, Charlotte," he said,
brokenly. "It has not yet come to pass that you have to do such
work." He spoke brokenly. He did not trust himself to look at the
girl, who was now looking at him intently and seriously.

"Papa, listen to me," said she. "Really, there is no scrubbing nor
sweeping nor washing nor ironing to be done here for quite a time.
Marie has left the house in very good condition. There is enough
money to pay for the laundry for some time, and as for the cooking,
you can see that I shall love to do that. You know Aunt Catherine
used to let me cook, that I always like to."

Carroll made no reply.

"Papa, you are not well; you are all worn out," Charlotte said. "Let
us go into the den, and you smoke a cigar and I will read to you."

Carroll shook his head. "No, dear, not to-night," he said.

"We will have a game of cribbage."

"No, dear, not to-night. You are tired, and you must go to bed. Take
a book and go to bed and read. You are tired."

"I am not very tired," said Charlotte, but therein she did not speak
the entire truth. Her spirit was leaping with happy buoyancy, but she
could scarcely stand on her feet, she was so fatigued with her
unaccustomed labor and the excitement of it all. There was a ringing
in her ears, and her eyelids felt stiff; she was also a little
hoarse. "Will you go to bed, too, papa?" said she, anxiously.

"I will go very soon, dear."

"Won't you want anything else before you go?"

"No, darling."

Charlotte stood regarding him with the sweetest expression of
protection and worshipful affection, and withal the naivete of a
child pleased with herself and what she has done for the beloved one.
"You _did_ have a good supper, didn't you, papa?" she asked.

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