Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - The Debtor

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

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"She is a very sweet girl," she said, presently, in an inscrutable
voice. "I don't like her family, and I must say I think her father,
from what I hear, almost ought to be in prison, but I don't think
that child is to blame."

"Of course not," said Anderson. He turned his paper with an air of
pretended abstraction.

"She says she thinks her father will leave Banbridge before long,"
said Mrs. Anderson, further.

Her son made no response. She sat thinking how, if Carroll did leave
Banbridge and the rest of the family were in Kentucky, why, the girl
could be judged separately; and if Randolph should fancy her--she was
not at all sure that he did--of Charlotte she had not a doubt. She
had never had a doubt of any woman's attitude of readiness to grasp
the sceptre, if it were only held out by her son. And she herself was
conscious of something which was almost infatuation for the girl.
Something about her appealed to her. She had an almost fierce impulse
of protection, of partisanship.

Anderson himself had not the least realization of his mother's actual
sentiments in the matter. It was the consequence in inconsequence of
a woman, which a man can seldom grasp. From what he had known of his
mother's character heretofore, a girl coming from such a family would
have been the last one to appeal to her for a daughter-in-law. She
had been plainly hostile to young women with much superior
matrimonial assets. He had often surmised that she did not wish him
to marry at all. He did not understand the possibility there is in
some women's natures of themselves falling in love, both individually
and vicariously, with the woman who loves their sons, or who is
supposed to love their sons.

"Captain Carroll came into the yard just as I drove out," said Mrs.
Anderson. "He is a very fine-looking man. It is a pity." Then she
added again, with an obscure accent of congratulation, "Well, if he
goes away nobody need say anything more against him."

Anderson reflected, without expressing it aloud, that it was doubtful
if Carroll's exit was possible, and, if possible, would be conducive
to silence from his creditors, but he apparently continued to read.

"He is a very handsome man," said his mother again, "and he has the
air of a gentleman. He bowed to me like a prince. He is a very
fine-looking man, isn't he?"

Before Anderson could reply the door-bell rang.

"I wonder who it is," Mrs. Anderson said, in a hushed voice.

"Somebody on business, probably," replied Anderson, rising. The maid
had gone out. As he went into the front hall his mother rustled
softly into the dining-room. She was always averse to being in the
room when men came on business. Sometimes commercial travellers
infringed upon Anderson's home hours, and she was always covertly
indignant. She was constantly in a state of armed humility with
regard to the details of business. She felt the incongruity of
herself, the elderly gentlewoman in the soft, rich, black silk, with
the scarf of real lace fastened with a brooch of real pearls at the
throat, with the cap of real lace, with the knots of lavender ribbon,
on her fluff of white curls, remaining in the room while the
discussion as to the rates of tea and coffee or sugar or soap went
on. So she slipped with her knitting-work into the dining-room, but
she dropped her ball of white wool, which remained beside the chair
which she had occupied in the sitting-room. She was knitting a white
shawl. She sat beside the dining-table, and continued to knit,
however, pulling furtively on the recreant ball, while her son
ushered somebody into the sitting-room, asked him politely to be
seated, and then closed the door. That prevented her from knitting
anymore, as the wool was held taut. So she finally laid her work on
the table and went out into the hall on her way up-stairs. The door
leading from the hall into the sitting-room was closed, and she
stopped and eyed curiously the hat and coat on the old-fashioned
mahogany table in the hall. She stood looking at them from a distance
of a few feet; then she wrapped her silk draperies closely around her
and slid closer. She passed her hand over the fine texture of the
coat, which was redolent of cigar smoke. She took up the hat. Then
she spied the top card on the little china card-basket on the table,
and took it up. It was Arthur Carroll's. She nodded her head,
remained standing a moment listening to the inaudible murmur of
conversation from the next room, then went up-stairs, to sit down in
her old winged arm-chair, covered with a peacock-pattern chintz, and
read until the visitor should be gone. She was fairly quivering with
astonishment and curiosity. But she was no more astonished than her
son had been when he had opened the front-door and seen Arthur
Carroll standing there. He had almost doubted the evidence of his
eyes, especially when Carroll had accepted his invitation to enter,
and had removed his coat and hat and followed him into the
sitting-room.

"It is a cold night," Anderson said, feeling that he must say
something.

"Very, for the season," replied Carroll, "and I have not yet, in
spite of my long residence North, grown sufficiently accustomed to
the heated houses and unheated out-of-doors to keep my top-coat on
inside, even if I remain only a few minutes."

The sumptuous lining of the coat gleamed as he laid it on the
hall-table; there was something unconquerable, sumptuous, genial,
undaunted yet about the man. He had the courtesy of a prince, this
poor American who had lived by the exercise of his sharper wits on
his neighbor's dull ones, if report said rightly. And yet Anderson,
as he sat opposite Carroll, and they were both smoking in a
comrade-like fashion, doubted. There was something in the man's face
which seemed to belie the theory that he was a calculating knave. His
face was keen, but not cunning, and, moreover, there was a strange,
almost boyish, sanguineness about it which brought Eddy forcibly to
mind. It was the face of a man who might dupe himself as well as
others, and do it with generous enthusiasm and self-trust. It was the
face of a man who might have bitter awakenings, as well as his dupes,
but who might take the same fatuous, happy leaps to disaster again.
And yet there was a certain strength, even nobility, in the face, and
it was distinctly lovable, and in no weak sense. He looked very like
Eddy as he sat there, and, curiously enough, he spoke almost at once
of him.

"I believe you were a friend of my son, Mr. Anderson," he remarked,
with his pleasant, compelling smile.

Anderson smiled in response. "I believe I had that honor," he
replied. Then he said something about his having gone, and how much
his father must miss him. "He is a fine little fellow," he added, and
was almost surprised at the expression of positive gratitude which
came into Carroll's eyes in response. He spoke, however, with a kind
of proud deprecation.

"Oh, well, he is a boy yet, of course," he said, "but there is a man
in him if fate doesn't put too many stumbling-blocks in his way."

"There is such a thing," said Anderson.

"Undoubtedly," said Carroll. "Moral hurdles for the strengthening of
the spirit are all very well, but occasionally there is a spirit
ruined by them."

"I think you are right," said Anderson; "still, when the spirit does
make the hurdles--"

"Oh yes, it is a very superior sort, after that," said Carroll,
laughing; "but when it doesn't-- Well, I hope the boy will have tasks
proportioned to his strength, and I hope he will have a try at them
all, anyhow."

"He seems to me like a boy that would," Anderson said. "What do you
think of making of him?"

"I hardly know. It depends. His mother has always talked a good deal
about Eddy's studying law, but I don't know. Somehow the law has
always seemed to me the road of success for the few and a slippery
maze to nowhere for the many."

A sudden thought seemed to strike Carroll; he looked a little
disturbed. "By-the-way," he said, "I forgot. You yourself--"

Anderson smiled. "Yes, I studied law," said he.

"And gave it up?"

"Yes. I could not make a living with it."

Carroll regarded the other man with a curious, wistful scrutiny. He
looked more and more like Eddy. His next question was as full of
naivete as if the boy himself had asked it, and yet the charming,
almost courtly state of the man never for one instant failed. "And
so," he said, "you tried selling butter and eggs instead of legal
wisdom?" The question might have been insolent from its purport, but
it was not.

Anderson laughed. "Yes," he replied. "People must eat to live, but
they can live without legal wisdom. I found butter and eggs were more
salable."

Carroll continued to regard him with that pathetic, wondering
curiosity. "And you have never regretted the change?" he asked.

"I don't say that, but, regret or not, I had to make it, and--I am
not exactly sure that I do regret it."

"But this--this new occupation of yours cannot be--precisely
congenial."

"That does not disturb me," Anderson said, a little impatiently.

Carroll looked at him with understanding. "I see you feel as I do
about that," he said. "It is rather proving one's self of the common
to hold back too strenuously from it, and yet"--he hesitated a
moment--"it takes courage, though," he said. Suddenly his eyes upon
the other man became full of admiration. "My daughter tells me, or,
rather, my son told me principally, that you are interested in
entomology?" he said.

"Oh, I dabble a little in it," Anderson replied, smiling.

Carroll's eyes upon him continued to hold their wistful questioning,
admiring expression. Anderson began to wonder what he had come for.
He was puzzled by the whole affair. Carroll, too, seemed to present
himself to him under a new guise. He wondered if his reverses had
brought about the change.

"I do not wish," said Carroll, "to display curiosity about affairs
which do not concern me, and I trust you will pardon me and give me
information, or not, as you choose; but may I ask how you happened,
when you became convinced that you were not to make a success in law,
why you chose your present business?"

"I have not the slightest objection to answering," said Anderson,
although he began to wonder if the other had called simply for the
purpose of gratifying his curiosity about his affairs--"not the
slightest. I simply tried to think of something which I should be
sure to sell, because people would be sure to buy, and I thought
of--butter and cheese. It all seems exceedingly simple to me, the
principle of obtaining enough money wherewith to live and buy the
necessaries of life. It is only to look about and possibly within and
see what wares you can command, for which people will be willing to
give their own earnings. It is all a question of supply and demand.
First you must study the demand, and then your own power of supply.
If you can interpret law like Rufus Choate, why, sell that; if you
can edit like Horace Greeley, sell that; if you can act like Booth or
sing like Patti, sell that; if you can dance like Carmencita, sell
that. It all remains with you, what you can do, sing or dance, or
sway a multitude, or sell butter and eggs; or possibly, rather, it
remains with the public and what it decides you can do--that is
better for one's vanity."

"Decidedly," agreed Carroll, with an odd, reflective expression.

"If the public want your song or your novel or your speech, they will
buy it, or your dance, and if they don't they won't, and you cannot
make them. You have to sell what the public want to buy, for you
yourself are only a unit in a goodly number of millions."

"And yet how extremely all-pervading that unit can feel sometimes,"
Carroll said, with a laugh.

He was silent again, puffing at his cigar, and again Anderson,
leaning back opposite and also smoking, wondered why he was there.
Then Carroll removed his cigar and spoke. His voice was a little
constrained, but he looked at Anderson full in the face.

"Mr. Anderson," he said, "I want to know if you will kindly tell me
how much I owe you, for I am one of the consumers of butter and eggs."

Anderson continued to smoke a second before answering. "I cannot
possibly tell you here, Mr. Carroll," he replied then.

"Of course I know I should have written and asked for the bill,"
Carroll said, "but I knew some had been paid, and--you have been most
kind, and--"

Anderson waited.

"In short," said Carroll, speaking quickly and brusquely, "I am under
a cloud here, and--your mother called to see my daughter this
afternoon, and I thought that possibly you would pardon me if I put
it all on a little different basis."

Carroll stopped, and again Anderson waited. He was becoming more and
more puzzled.

Then Carroll spoke quite to the point. "I could have sent for the
bill which you have so generously not sent, which you have so
generously allowed my poor, little daughter to think was settled,"
said he, "but if you had sent it I simply could not have paid it. I
could have written you what I wished to say, but I thought I could
say it better. I wish to say to you that I shall be obliged if you
will let me know the extent of my indebtedness to you, and if you
will accept my note for six months."

"Very well," said Anderson, gravely.

"If you will have the bill made out and sent me to-morrow, I will
send you my note by return mail," said Carroll.

"Very well, Mr. Carroll," replied Anderson.

Carroll arose to go. "You have a pleasant home here, Mr. Anderson,"
he said, looking around the room with its air of old-fashioned
comfort, even state.

"It has always seemed pleasant to me," said Anderson. An odd, kindly
feeling for Carroll overcame him. He extended his hand. "I am glad
you called, Captain Carroll," he said. He hesitated a moment. Then he
added: "You will necessarily be lonely with your family away. If you
would come in again--"

"I cannot leave my daughter alone much," Carroll answered, "but
otherwise I should be glad to. Thank you." He looked at Anderson with
evident hesitation. There was something apparently which he was about
to say, but doubted the wisdom of saying it.

"Your daughter is still with you?" Anderson said.

"Yes."

Then Anderson hesitated a second. Then he spoke. "Would you allow me
to call upon your daughter, Captain Carroll?" he asked, bluntly.

Carroll's face paled as he looked at him. "On my daughter?"

"Yes. Captain Carroll, will you be seated again for a few minutes. I
have something I would like to say to you."

Anderson was pale, but his voice was quite firm. He had a strange
sensation as of a man who had begun a dreaded leap, and felt that in
reality the worst was over, that the landing could in no way equal
the shock of the start. Carroll followed him back into the
sitting-room and sat down.

Anderson began at once with no preface. "I should like to marry your
daughter, if she can love me well enough," he said, simply.

"Does she know you at all, Mr. Anderson?" Carroll said, in a dazed
sort of fashion.

"She knows me a little. I have, of course, seen her in my store."

"Yes."

"And once, as you may remember, she came here."

"Yes, when she had the fright from the tramp."

"She cannot know me very well, I admit."

"I don't see that you know her very well, either, for that matter."

"I know her well enough," said Anderson. "I have no doubt as far as I
am concerned. My only doubt is for her, not only whether she can care
sufficiently for me, but whether, if she should care, it would be the
best thing for her. I am much older than she. I can support her in
comfort, but not in luxury, probably never in luxury; and you know my
position, that I have been forced to abandon a profession which would
give my wife a better social standing. You know all that; there is no
need of my dwelling upon it."

Anderson said that with an indescribable pride, and yet with a
perfect acquiescence in the situation. He looked at Carroll, who
remained quite pale, looking at him with an inscrutable expression of
astonishment. Finally he smiled a little.

"As they say in the comic column, this is so sudden, Mr. Anderson,"
he said.

"I can well imagine so," Anderson replied, smiling in his turn. "It
is rather sudden to me. Nothing was further from my intention than to
say this to-night."

Carroll looked at him soberly. "Mr. Anderson, it all depends upon the
child," he said. "If Charlotte likes you, that is all there is to be
said about it. You are a good man and you can take care of her. As
far as the other goes, I have no right to say anything. Frankly, I
should prefer that you had succeeded in your profession than in your
present business, on her account."

"So should I," said Anderson, gloomily.

"But it is all for her to decide. Come and call, and let matters take
their course. But--I shall say nothing to her about this. A girl like
Charlotte is a sensitive thing. Call and see. As far as I am
concerned--" Carroll paused a second. Then he rose and held out his
hand. "I have no reason whatever to object to you as a husband for my
daughter, and my son-in-law," he said.

"Thank you," said Anderson.

Carroll had gone out of the door, and Anderson was just about to
close it after him, when he turned back. "By-the-way, Mr. Anderson,"
he said, and Anderson understood that he was about to say what had
been on his mind before and he had refrained from expressing. "I want
to inquire if you have any acquaintance with the large grocery house
of Kidder & Ladd, in the City?" he asked.

"A slight business acquaintance," replied Anderson, wonderingly.

"I saw," said Carroll, in an odd, breathless sort of voice, "an
advertisement for a--floor-walker in that house. I wondered, in the
event of my applying for it, if you would be willing to give me a
letter of introduction to one of the firm, if you were sufficiently
acquainted."

"Certainly," said Anderson, but he was aware that he almost gasped
out the answer.

"I saw the advertisement," said Carroll again. "I have to make some
change in my business, and"--he essayed a laugh--"I have to think, as
we have agreed is the thing to do, of some salable wares in my
possession. It did occur to me that I might make a passable
floor-walker. I have even thought of a drum-major, but there seems no
vacancy in that line. If you would."

"Certainly," said Anderson again. "Would you like it now?"

"If it is not too much trouble."

Anderson hastened to the old-fashioned secretary in the sitting-room
and wrote a line of introduction on a card while Carroll waited.

"Thank you," Carroll said, taking it and placing it carefully in his
pocket-book. The two men shook hands again; Carroll went with his
stately stride down the street. It was snowing a little. Anderson
thought idly how he had not offered him an umbrella, as he saw the
flakes driving past the electric light outside as he pulled down the
window-curtains, but he was as yet too dazed to fully appreciate
anything. He was dazed both by his own procedure and by that of the
other man. It was as if two knights in a mock tourney had met, both
riding at full speed. He had his own momentum and that of the other
in the shock of meeting.

His mother's door opened as he went up-stairs with his night-lamp,
and her head in a white lace-trimmed cap, for she still clung to the
night-gear of her early youth, peered out at him.

"Who was it?" she asked, softly, as if the guest were still within
hearing.

"Captain Carroll."

"Oh!"

"He came on business."

"He stayed quite awhile. You had a little call with him?"

"Yes, mother."

She still looked at him, her face, of gentle, wistful curiosity,
dimly visible between the lace ruffles of her nightcap, in the door.

"He spoke of your calling there this afternoon, and he seemed much
pleased," Anderson said.

"Did he?"

"Yes."

"Well, good-night, dear," said Mrs. Anderson, with an odd,
half-troubled but rather enjoyable sigh. Her son kissed her, and she
disappeared. She got back into bed, and put her lamp out. The
electric light outside streamed into her room and brought back to her
mind moonlight reveries of her early maidenhood. She remembered how
she used, before she ever had a lover, to lie awake and dream of one.
Then she fell to planning how, in the event of Randolph's marrying,
the front chamber could be refurnished, and the furniture in that
room put in the northwest chamber, which was sparsely furnished and
little used except for storage purposes. Then the northwest room
could be the guest-chamber, and Randolph's present room would answer
very well for his books, and would be a study when the bed was taken
down.

She had the front chamber completely refurnished when she fell
asleep, and besides had some exciting and entirely victorious
feminine tilts with sundry women friends who had ventured to intimate
that her son had made an odd matrimonial choice. It was quite a cold
night, and she wondered if that child had sufficient clothing on her
bed. She was in reality, in her own way, as much in love with the
girl as her son.

Chapter XXXVI

Carroll, in the ensuing weeks, living alone with Charlotte, endured
a species of mental and spiritual torture which might have been
compared with the rack and wheel of the Inquisition. It seemed
to Arthur Carroll in those days as if torture was as truly one
of the elements incumbent upon man's existence as fire, water,
or air. He got an uncanny fancy that if it ceased he would cease.
He had all his life, except in violent stresses, that happy,
contented-with-the-sweet-of-the-moment temperament popularly supposed
to be a characteristic of the butterfly over the rose. But deprive
the butterfly of the rose and he might easily become a more tragic
thing than any in existence. Now Carroll was deprived of his rose, he
could get absolutely none of the sweets out of existence from whence
his own individuality manufactured its honey. Even Charlotte's
presence became an additional torment to him, dearly as he loved her
and as thoroughly as he realized what her coming back had done for
him, from what it had saved him. She had given him the impetus which
placed him back in his normal condition, but, back there, he suffered
even more, as a man will suffer less under a surgical operation
than when the influence of the anesthetics has ceased. There was
absolutely no ready money in the house during those weeks except the
sum which Charlotte's aunt had sent her, which was fast diminishing,
and a few scattering dollars, or rather, pennies, which Carroll
picked up in ways which almost unhinged his brain when he reflected
upon them afterwards. Whatever he had done before, the man tried in
those days every means to obtain an honest livelihood, except the one
which he knew was always open, and from which he shrank with such
repugnance that it seemed he could not even contemplate it and his
mind retain his balance. In his uneasy sleep at night he often had a
dream of that experience which had yielded him money, which might
yield him money again. He saw before him the sea of faces, of the
commonest American type, of the type whose praise and applause mean
always a certain disparagement. He saw his own face, his proud, white
face with the skin and lineaments of a proud family, stained into the
likeness of a despised race; he heard his own tongue forsaking the
pure English of his fathers for the soft thickness of the negro,
roaring the absurd sentimental songs; he saw his own stately limbs
contorted in the rollicking, barbaric dance--and awoke with a cold
sweat over him. He knew all the time that that was all was left to
him, but he snatched at everything. He could not obtain the
floor-walker position of which he had spoken to Anderson. He thought
that possibly his fine presence and urbane manner might recommend him
for a place of that sort, but it was already filled. He went to
several of the great department stores and inquired if there was a
vacancy. He felt that the superintendents to whom he applied regarded
his good points as he might have regarded the good points of a horse.
One of them told him that if he would give his address, he would be
given the preference whenever a vacancy occurred. Carroll knew that
he was mentally appraised as a promising person to direct ladies to
ribbon and muslin counters. He looked at another floor-walker
strutting up and down the aisle, and felt sure that he could do
better, and all this amused contempt for himself deepened and bored
its way into his very soul. He always asked himself, with the demand
of an unpitying judge, if he could not have done better for himself
if he had begun at once; if he had not at the first failure drifted
with no resistance, with the pleasant, easy, devil-may-careness which
was in his nature along with the sterner stuff which was now
upheaving and asserting itself, and taken what he could, how he
could. He had not, after all, had an absolutely unhappy home,
although it had been founded on the sands, and although that iron of
hatred of the man who had done him the wrong had been always in his
soul. The life he had led had been not one of active and voluntary
preying upon his fellow-men; it had been only the life of one who
must have the sweets of existence for himself and those he loved, and
he had gotten them, even if the flowers and the fruit hung over the
garden-walls of others. Now it suddenly seemed to him that he could
no longer do it, as he had done, even if the owners of the fruit and
flowers should be still unawares. Curiously enough, the old Pilgrim's
Progress which he had read as a child was very forcibly in his mind
in these days. He remembered the child that ate the fruit that hung
over the wall, and how the gripes, in consequence, seized him.
Something very like the conviction of sin was over the man, or,
rather, a complete consciousness of himself and his deeds, which is,
maybe, after all, the true meaning of the term. It was true that the
self-knowledge had seemed to come, perforce, because it was
temporarily out of his power to transgress farther; in other words,
because he was completely found out; but all the same, the knowledge
was there. He saw himself just as he was, had been--a great man
goaded on always by the small, never-ceasing prick of hatred, with
the sense of injury always stinging his soul, living as he chose,
having all that he could procure, utterly careless whether at the
expense and suffering of others or not. Now, for the first time, he
began to adjust himself in the place of others, and the adjusting
produced torment from the realization of their miseries, and worse
torment from realization of his own contemptibility. It really seemed
as if all positions which might have been in some keeping with the
man and his antecedents were absolutely out of his reach. Not a night
but he read the advertising columns until he was blind and dizzy.
Every morning he went to New York and hunted. The first morning he
had taken the train, he had actually to assure some of his watchful
creditors that he was going to return. Then all day he wandered about
the streets, making one of long lines of applicants for the vacant
positions. One morning he found himself in the line with William
Allbright. He recognized unmistakably the meek, bent back of the old
clerk three ahead of him in the line. A book-keeper had been
advertised for in a large wholesale house, and there were perhaps
forty applicants all awaiting their turn. His first impulse, when he
caught sight of his old clerk, was to leave the line himself; then
the nobility which was struggling for life within him asserted itself
and made him ashamed of his shame. He stood still with his head a
little higher, and moved on with the slowly moving line of men which
crawled towards the desk like a caterpillar. He saw Allbright turn
away rejected with a feeling of pity; the old man looked dejected.
Carroll reflected with a sensation of pride that at least he did not
owe him. He himself was rejected promptly after he had owned to his
age. The man four behind him was chosen. He was a very young man,
scarcely more than a boy, unless his looks belied him. He was
distinctly handsome, with the boy-doll style of beauty--curly, dark
hair, rosy cheeks, and a small, very carefully tended mustache. He
wore a very long and fashionable coat, and was evidently pleasantly
conscious of its flop around his ankles. His handsome face wore an
expression of pert triumph as he passed on into the inner office....
Carroll, who had lingered with an idle curiosity to ascertain who
was the successful applicant, heard a voice so near his ear that it
whistled. The voice was exceedingly bitter, even malignant.

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