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Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - The Debtor

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




"That's the way it goes, these times; that's the way it always goes,"
said the voice.

Carroll turned and gazed at the speaker, a man probably older than
himself; if not, he looked older, since his hair was quite white and
his carriage not so good.

"The employers nowadays are a pack of fools, a pack of fools!" said
the man. His long, rather handsome face, a face which should have
been mild in its natural state was twisted into a thousand sardonic
wrinkles. "A pack of fools!" he repeated. "Here they'll go and hire a
little whippersnapper like that every time, instead of a man who has
had experience and knows how to do the work, just because he's young.
Young! What's that? You'd think what they wanted was a man to keep
their books straight. I can keep books if I do say so, and that young
snip can't. Lord! He was in Avin & Mann's with me. Why, I tell you he
can't add up a column of figures three inches long straight, to save
his neck. The books will be in a pretty state. I'll give him just ten
days before they'll have to get an expert in to straighten out
things. Hope they will; serve 'em right. Here I am, can't get a job
to save my life, because my hair has turned and I've got a few more
years over my head, and I can keep books better than I ever could in
my life. Good Lord! You'd think it was what was inside a man's head
they'd be after, instead of the outside." He looked at Carroll.
"Guess I've got a little the advantage of you in age," he said, "but
I suppose that's the matter why you were given the cold shoulder."

"I shouldn't be surprised if you were right, sir," replied Carroll,
rather apathetically. He was going through all this without the
slightest hope, but only for the sake of feeling that he had done his
utmost before he took up with the alternative which so dismayed his
very soul. He himself looked old that morning. He had retained his
youthful appearance much longer than men usually do, but as he had
viewed his reflection in the glass that morning he had said to
himself that he at last was showing his years. His hair had turned
visibly gray in the last few weeks; lines had deepened; and not only
that, but the youthful fire had given place to the apathy and weary
resignation of age.

"But you look as if you could do more and better work in an hour than
that young bob-squirt could in a month," said the man at his side.

"Very likely," replied Carroll, indifferently.

"You don't seem to care much about it," the other man said. The two
had gone out of the building, and were walking slowly down the street.

"If they want young men, they do, I suppose," Carroll said.

"Been trying long?"

"Quite a time."

"Well, the employers are a set of G. D. fools!" said the other man.
An oath sounded horribly incongruous coming from his long, thin,
benevolent mouth.

"I don't see what you are going to do about it if they are," Carroll
replied, still with that odd patience. It seemed to him as if he was
getting a sort of fellow-feeling and intense personal knowledge of
his fellow-beings, which united him to them with ties stronger than
those of love. He felt as if he more than loved this rebellious
wretch beside him, as if he were one with him, only possessed of that
patience which gave him a certain power to aid him. "I suppose men
have the right to employ whom they choose," said Carroll. "If they
prefer young men who don't know how to do the work, to old men who
do, I suppose they have a right to engage them. And they may have
some show of reason for it. I don't see what can be done, anyway."

"I'll tell you what has got to be done, sir, and how we can help
ourselves," returned the other, with a ranting voice which made
people turn and stare at him. "I'll tell you. We've got to form a
union. There are unions for everything else. We have got to have a
union of older men qualified to work, who are shouldered out of it by
boys. Once that is done, we are all right. To-day in this country a
man can't hire whom he pleases in most things. The unions have put it
out of his power. The people have risen. We belong to a part of the
people who haven't risen. Now we must rise. Let us form a union, I
say. If they engage young men before us, there are ways of making
them smart for it, the employers as well as the employes. I tell you
that has got to be done."

Suddenly the men heard a laugh behind them. It was a woman's laugh,
shrill and not altogether pleasant--not the laugh of a young woman,
but the woman who came up with and immediately began to speak looked
quite young. She was undeniably pretty. Her blond pompadour drooped
coquettishly over one eye, her cheeks were pink, her face smooth, her
figure was really superb, and she was very well dressed, in a
tailor-made gown, smart furs, and a hat evidently of the
English-tailor make.

"Excuse me," she said, with perfect assurance, and yet with nothing
of offensive boldness, rather with an air of _camaraderie_, "but I
heard you talking, you two, and I thought I would give you a few
points. I don't know whether you know it or not, but I have recently
secured the position of cashier there, in Adkins & Somers's." She
motioned with one nicely gloved hand back towards the place they had
just left. "I got it in preference to about a dozen young girls,
too," she said, with triumph, "but I shouldn't have if--" She
hesitated a minute. The color on her cheeks deepened under the
floating veil, and there was, in consequence, a curious effect of two
shades of rose on her cheeks. "See here," she said, walking along
with them, "I don't know you two men from Adam, and I needn't take
the trouble, and if you don't like it you can lump it, but I'm going
to say something. I know I look young. I ain't fishing for a
compliment. I know it. I've got a looking-glass in a good light, and
I've got my eyes in my head, and, what's more, I'm spunky enough to
own it to myself if I don't look young; but I ain't young. I ain't
going to say how old I am, but I will say this much, I ain't young.
I've been married twice and I've had three children. My first husband
died, the second went off and left me. I've got a daughter fourteen
years old I'm keeping in school. She ain't going into a department
store, if I work my fingers to the bone." She said the last with a
fierce air that made her for a second really look younger. "Well,"
she went on. "I'll tell you, too. I had a good place for a number of
years, but the man died in September, and the man that took the
business put his sister in my place. Then I was out of a job. I
hadn't saved a cent, and I didn't know what I was going to do.
Mildred--that's my daughter--is big of her age and good-looking, and
she wanted to leave school and go to work, but I wouldn't let her.
Well, I studied up all the advertisements and I tried, and I couldn't
do a thing. Then I set my wits to work. I ain't one to give up in a
hurry; I never was. As I said before, I didn't have much money, but I
hire our little flat of a woman, and she's a good sort, and she's
willing to wait, and a month ago I took every cent I could raise and
I went through a course of treatment with a beauty-doctor. I had my
hair (it was turned some) dyed, and I was massaged until I felt like
a currant-bun, but I always had a good skin, and there was something
to work on, and I took my figure in hand; that wasn't very bad,
anyway, but I got new corsets, awful expensive ones, and had a tailor
suit made. I had to raise some money on a little jewelry I had, but I
made up my mind it was neck or nothing, and, sir, a month ago I got
that place in Adkins & Somers's at a thousand a year. They are good
men, too. You needn't think there's anything wrong." She looked at
them with an expression as if she was ready to spring at the
slightest intimation of distrust on their part. "It is only just that
people think they want young help and they are going to have it. I've
got the place and I'm in clover, and it's worth something looking so
much better, though it don't make much difference to me. All I care
about nowadays is my daughter."

The two men looked at the woman, Carroll with a courteous sympathy,
and the interest of an observer of human nature. She was of a
pronounced American type, coarse, vulgar, strident-voiced, smart,
with a shrewdly working brain and of an unimpeachable heart. She was
generosity and honesty itself, as she looked at the two men in a
similar strait to the one from which she had extricated herself.

The other man, who had a bitter, possibly a dangerous strain
developed by his misfortunes, laughed sardonically. "How long do you
think you can keep it up?" said he. "Hm?" Had he been less worn and
weary, and apparently even starved, his laugh and question would have
evoked a sharper response. As it was, the woman replied with the
utmost good-nature.

"Any old time," said she. "Lord! I ain't setting up for a kid. I
ain't fool enough to put on short skirts and pigtails, but I am
setting up for a young lady, and I can keep it up, anyhow. Lord! I
ain't so very old, anyhow. If I didn't look the way I do now, I
couldn't get a position, because they'd put me down for a
back-number; but I had something left for that beauty-doctor to work
on." Then she gazed critically at the two men. "It wouldn't take much
to make you into a regular dude," said she to Carroll. "You are
dressed to beat the band as it is. Say!" She gave him a confidential
wink.

"Well?" said Carroll.

"You are dressed most too well. It's all very well to look stylish,
to look as if you had been earning twenty-five hundred a year, but,
Lord! you look as if you had been getting ten! The bosses might be a
little afraid of you. They might say they didn't see how a man could
have dressed like you do, unless he had helped himself to some of the
firm's cash. See? I don't mean any offence. You look to me like a
real gentleman."

"Thank you," replied Carroll.

"If I was you I'd put on a pair of pants not quite so nicely creased,
and I'd sell that overcoat and get a good-style ready-made one. Your
chances would be a heap better--honest."

"Thank you," said Carroll, again. He was conscious of amusement and a
curious sense of a mental tonic from this loud-voiced, eagerly
helpful female.

"I'm right, you bet," said she. "But otherwise it wouldn't take much.
You go and have a little something put on your hair, and have your
face massaged a little, and if I was you I'd buy a red tie. You can
get a dandy red tie at Steele & Esterbrook's for a quarter. That one
you have on makes you look kinder pale. Then a red tie is younger.
Say, I'll tell you, if you would only have your mustache trimmed, and
wax the ends, it would make no end of difference."

"What are you going to do when you are asked how old you are? Lie?"
inquired the other man, in his bitter, sardonic voice.

This time the woman regarded him with slight indignation. "Say," said
she, "you'll never get a place if you don't act pleasanter. Places
ain't to be got that way, I can tell you. You've got to act as if
you'd eat nothin' but butter an' honey for a fortnight. If you feel
mad, you'd better keep it in your insides." Then she answered his
questions. "No, I ain't goin' to lie, and I ain't goin' to tell
anybody else to lie," said she. "Lying ain't my style. But it ain't
anybody's business how old you are, anyhow. I don't know what right a
man that I go to get a place from has got to ask how old I be. All he
has any right to know is whether I ain't too old to do my work. I
don't lie; no, siree. All I say is, and kinder laugh, 'Well, call it
twenty-five,' or you might call it thirty, and with some, again, you
might call it thirty-two or three. That ain't lyin' if I know what
lyin' is." As the woman spoke her face assumed precisely the
mischievous, challenging smile with which she had replied to similar
questions. Carroll laughed, and the other man also, although
grudgingly.

"Well," he said, "there's different ways of looking at a lie."

"It wouldn't be any manner of use for you to say you wouldn't see
twenty-eight again, no matter how much you got fixed up," the woman
retorted. "But I guess you can get something, if it ain't quite so
good. I have a gentleman friend who is over fifty and who said he was
thirty-seven, and he got a dandy place last week. But I tell you
you'll have to hustle more'n this other gentleman. You're bald, ain't
you?"

"I don't know what that has got to do with it," growled the man, and
he tried to quicken his pace; but she kept up with him.

"It's got a good deal to do with it," said she. "I know a place on
Sixth Avenue where you can get an elegant front-piece that nobody
could ever tell, for three dollars and forty-nine cents. Another
gentleman friend of mine--he's a sort of relation of mine; my sister
was his first wife--got one there. Yes, sir, you'll have to get one,
and you'll have to get your face massaged and your eyebrows blacked,
and, Lord! you'll have to have that beard shaved off and have a
mustache, if you get anything at all. Lord! you look as if you'd come
right out of the Old Testament. I don't see why you're wasting your
time hanging around offices for, without you see to that, first of
all. I should think your wife would tell you, but I suppose she's the
same sort. Now as for you," she added, turning again to Carroll, "if
you just get polished up a little bit--say, here's the card of my
beauty-doctor" (she produced a card from an ornate wrist-bag)--"you'll
look dandy."

Suddenly the woman, with a quick good-bye, turned to cross Broadway,
but her good-nature and sympathy had something fine and
inexhaustible, for even then she turned back to look encouragingly
upon the older, soured, bitter, ungrateful man with Carroll, and she
said: "You go 'long with him, and I guess you'll get a place, too.
Good-bye."

With that she was gone, passing as straight as if she owned an
unassailable right of way through the press of vehicles. Just as she
gained the opposite sidewalk a fire-engine thundered up.

"She had a close call from that," Carroll said. His face had altered.
He still looked amused.

"That woman couldn't get run over if she tried," said the other man.

"There ain't nothing made in the country that can run over her. It's
women like her that's keeping men out of the places that belong to
them by right."

"I am afraid there was some truth in her theory and her advice,"
Carroll said, laughing, and looking after the second engine clanging
through the scattering crowd.

"Well, I guess when I go to buying women's frizzes to wear to get a
place, she'll know it," said the other man. "Good lord! if it's the
outside of the head they want, why don't they get dummies and done
with it? I tell you what is needed is a new union."

Just at that moment they reached a restaurant from which came an odor
of soup. Carroll turned to his companion. "I am going in here to get
some lunch," he said. "I don't know what kind of a place it is, but
if you will go with me, I shall take pleasure in--"

But the man turned upon him fiercely. "I 'ain't got quite so low yet
that I have to eat at another man's expense," he said. "You needn't
think, because you wear a better coat than I do, that--" The man
stopped and nodded his head, speechless, and went on, and was out of
sight, but Carroll had seen tears in the angry eyes.

He went into the restaurant, took a seat at a table, and ordered a
bowl of tomato-soup. As he was sipping it he heard a voice pronounce
his name, and, glancing up, saw two pretty girls and a young man at a
near-by table. He recognized the young man as the one who had been
lately in his employ. About the girls he was not so sure, but he
thought they were the same who had come to Banbridge to plead for
their payment. They all bowed to him, and he returned the salutation.
They all had a severe and, at the same time, curious expression. One
of the girls whispered to the other, and although the words were not
audible, the sharp hiss reached Carroll's ears.

"Wonder what he's doing in this place," she said.

The other girl, the elder, craned her neck and observed what Carroll
was eating. "He hasn't got anything but a bowl of tomato-soup," she
replied.

"S'pose he's goin' through the whole bill," said the young man. The
three were themselves lunching frugally. One of the girls had also a
bowl of tomato-soup, the other a large piece of squash-pie. The young
man had a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee. Smoking was allowed in
the place, and the atmosphere was thick with cigarette smoke, and a
warm, greasy scent of boiling and frying. Carroll continued to eat
his soup. The three at the other table had nearly finished their
luncheons when he entered. Presently they rose and passed him. The
young man stopped. He paled a little. His old awe of Carroll was over
him. In spite of himself, the worshipful admiration he had had for
the man still influenced him. The poor young fellow, whose very
pertness and braggadocio were simple and childlike, really felt
towards the older man who had been his employer much as a faithful
retainer towards a feudal baron. His feeling towards him was
something between love and an enormous mental worship. His little,
ordinary soul seemed to flatten itself like an Oriental before his
emperor when he spoke to Carroll sipping his bowl of tomato-soup in
the cheap restaurant. He had, after all, that nobility of soul which
altered circumstances could not affect. He was just as deferential as
if Carroll had been seated at a table in Delmonico's, but the fact
remained that he was about to ask him again for his money. He was
horribly pressed. He had obtained another position in one of the
department stores, which paid him very little, and he was in debt,
while his clothes were in such a degree of shabbiness that they were
fairly precarious. The very night before he had sat up until midnight
mending a rent in his trousers, which he afterwards inked; and as for
his overcoat, he always removed that with a sleight-of-hand lest its
ragged lining become evident, and when ladies were about he put it on
in an agony lest his arms catch in the rents. He had even meditated
cutting out the lining altogether, although he had a cold. He was so
in debt that he had stopped eating breakfast; and the leaving off of
breakfast for other than hygienic reasons, and when it has not been
preceded by a heavy dinner the night before, is not conducive to
comfort. So he bent low over Carroll and asked him in a small voice
of the most delicate consideration, if he could let him have a little
on account.

Carroll had turned quite white when he approached him, but his regard
of him was unswerving. "It is impossible for me to-day, Mr. Day," he
replied, "but I assure you that you shall have every cent in the end."

The tears actually sprang into the young fellow's nervously winking
eyes. "It would be a great accommodation," he said, in the same low
tone.

"You shall have every cent as soon as I can possibly manage it,"
Carroll repeated.

"I have a position, but it does not pay me very much yet," said the
young fellow, "and--and--I am owing considerable, and--I need some
things."

His involuntary shrug of his narrow shoulders in his poor coat spoke
as loudly as words.

Carroll was directly conscious in an odd, angry, contemptuous sort of
fashion, and whether because of himself, or of that other man, or of
an overruling Providence, he would have been puzzled to say, of his
own outer garment of the finest cloth and most irreproachable make.
"As soon as I can manage it, every cent," he repeated, almost
mechanically, and took another sip of his soup. The young fellow's
winking eyes, full of tears, were putting him to an ignominious
torture.

The two girls had stood close behind the young man, waiting their
turns. Now the younger stepped forward, and she spoke quite audibly
in her high-pitched voice.

"Good-morning, Mr. Carroll," said she, with a strained pertness of
manner.

"Good-morning," Carroll returned, politely. He half arose from the
table.

The girl giggled nervously. Her pretty, even beautiful face, under
her crest of blond hair and the scoop of a bright red hat, paled and
flushed. "Oh, don't stop your luncheon," said she. "Go right on. I
just wanted to ask if you could possibly--"

"I am very sorry," Carroll replied, "but to-day it is impossible; but
in the end you shall not lose one dollar."

The girl pouted. Her beauty gave her some power of self-assertion,
although in reality she was of an exceedingly mild and gentle sort.

"That is very well," said she, "but how long do you think it will be
before we get to the end, Mr. Carroll?"

"I hope not very long," Carroll said, with a miserable patience.

"It had better not be very long," said she, and suddenly her high
voice pitched to tragedy. "If--if--I can't get another place that's
decent for a girl to take," said she, "and if I don't get what's
owing me before long, I shall either have to take one of them places
or get a dose." She said the last word with an indescribably hideous
significance. Her blue eyes seemed to blaze at Carroll.

Then the other girl pressed closer. "You needn't talk that way," said
she to the girl. "You know that I--"

"I ain't goin' to live on you," returned the other girl, violently.
People were beginning to look at the group.

"Now, you know, May," said the other girl, "my room is plenty big
enough for two, and I'm earning plenty to give you a bite till you
get a place yourself, and you know you may get that place you went to
see about yesterday."

"No, I won't," said May. "It seems to me it's pretty hard lines that
a poor girl can't get the money she's worked as hard for as I have."

The other girl pushed herself in front of May and spoke to Carroll,
and there was something womanly and beautiful in her face. "I have a
real good place," she said, in a low voice, and she enunciated like a
lady. "A real good place, and I'll look out for May till she gets
one, and I can wait until you are able to pay me."

"I will pay you all as soon as possible. I give you all my word I
will pay you in the end," said Carroll.

He seemed to see the three go out in a sort of dream. It did not
really seem to him that it was he, Arthur Carroll, who was sitting
there in that smoking, greasy atmosphere, before that table covered
with a stained cloth, over which the waiter had ostentatiously spread
a damp napkin, with that bowl of canned tomato-soup before him, and
that thick cup of coffee, with those three unhappy young creditors,
who had reviled and, worse than reviled, pitied him, passing out,
with the open glances of amused curiosity fastened upon him on every
side.

"Guess that dude is down on his luck," he heard a young man at his
left say.

"Guess he put the money he'd ought to have paid that young lady with
into his overcoat," his companion, a girl with a picture-hat, and a
wide lace collar over her coat, responded.

Carroll felt that he was overwhelmed, beaten, at bay before utter
ignominy. The thought flashed across him, as he tried to swallow some
more of the soup, that in some respects, if he had been a murderer or
a great bank defaulter with detectives on his track, the situation
would at least have been more endurable. The horrible pettiness of it
all, constituted the maddening sting of it. While he was thinking
this the girl they called May came flying back, her blond crest
bobbing, her cheeks blazing. She looked like a beautiful and
exceedingly vulgar little fury. She came close to Carroll, while the
other girl's voice was heard at the door pleading with her to come
back.

"I won't come back till I have said my say, so there!" she called
back. Then she addressed Carroll very loudly. She was transformed for
the time. Hysteria had her in its clutch. She was half-fed,
half-clothed, made desperate by repeated failures. There was also a
love affair in the background. She was, in reality, not so very far
removed from the carbolic-acid crisis. "I say," said she. "I say,
you! You'd better look out! You'd better pony up pretty quickly or
you'll get into trouble you don't count on. There was a man at the
office that morning after you quit, and if he should happen to walk
in here and see you, you'd have a policeman after you. You'd better
look out!"

Carroll felt his face flush hot. For the first time in his life he
was conscious of being actually down. He realized the sensation of
the under dog, and he realized his utter helplessness, his utter lack
of defence against this small, pretty girl who was attacking him.
Everybody in the place seemed listening. Some of the people at the
farther tables came nearer, other's were craning their necks. The
girl gave her head an indescribable toss, at once vicious,
coquettish, and triumphant. Her blond crest tossed, the scoop of her
red hat rocked.

"I thought I'd just tell you," said she. Then she marched, holding
her skirts tightly around her, with a disclosure of embroidered
ruffles and the contour of pretty hips, and there was a shout of
laughter in the place. Carroll pushed away his bowl of soup and
turned to a grinning waiter near him.

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