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Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - The Debtor

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




After she had gone out in the dining-room and seen that it was
eight-seventeen, the time when the train was due in Banbridge, she
watched for the train. She knew that she could hear the rush of the
train after it left the station; she could even catch a glimpse of
the rosy fire of the locomotive through the trees, since the track
was elevated. She therefore watched for that, but it was very late.
That was unmistakably a great solace for her. She actually had a
prayerful mood of thankfulness for the lateness of the train. It was
that much longer that she need not give up hope. There was a few
minutes that she felt quite easy. Suddenly she remembered how foolish
she had been to watch for her father, anyway, before she heard the
arrival of the train. She realized that her head was overstrained,
her reason failing her. "How could papa come before the train?" she
asked herself. But after a few minutes her fears reasserted
themselves. She watched for something inimical to appear crossing the
lawn instead of her father. And then she heard a train, and she felt
faint, but in a second she became aware that it was a long freight.
No passenger-train ever moved thus with the veritable chu-chu of the
children, the heavy panting of two engines. Then after that she
started again, for she heard a train, but it was as if she had been
let fall by some wanton hand from a cruel height, for that train was
clearly a fast express which did not stop at Banbridge. Then she
heard a faint rumble of another freight on the Lehigh Valley road.
Then at last came the train for which she had been looking, the train
on which her father might come, the train on which he surely would
come unless some terrible thing had happened. She heard distinctly,
with her sharpened ears, the stop of the train at the station, the
letting off of steam. She heard the engine-bell. She heard it resume
its advance with slowly gathering motion. She saw a rosy flash of
fire in the distance from the engine. Then she waited for
carriage-wheels, or for the sight of her father coming up the road.
It was quite soon that she heard carriage-wheels on the frozen
ground, and she ran to the door and opened it, but the carriage
passed. Samson Rawdy was taking home the next neighbor. "It will take
papa considerably longer if he walks," she told herself, and she
locked the door and returned to her station at the window. She saw
again a dark figure approaching on the road outside, and she thought
with a great throb of joy that he had surely come, but the figure did
not enter the grounds. She allowed twenty-five minutes for him to
walk from the station. She said to herself if, when twenty-five
minutes had elapsed, he had not come, she should certainly know that
he had not come on that train. She did not dare look at the clock,
but after a while, when she did so, she found it was twenty-seven
minutes after eight. Still that clock often gained. She ran out in
the kitchen and looked at the clock there, but that had stopped at
half-past seven. It was very seldom that anybody remembered to wind
up the kitchen-clock since Marie went. Her own little watch was at
the jeweller's in New Sanderson for repairs. She had nothing to
depend on except the dining-room clock, which, to her great comfort,
so often gained. She decided that she might wait until ten minutes of
nine by that clock before she gave up hope, but the next time she
went trembling out to look at it it was only three minutes before
nine. Then it occurred to her that her father might easily have had
an errand at one of the stores before coming home. The post-office
would be closed; she had no hope for that, but he might have had some
business. She thought that she might allow until half-past nine
before she entirely gave up her father having come on the
eight-seventeen train. It was then that she began running out on the
lawn to the entrance of the drive to watch for him. She put a Roman
blanket, which was kept on the divan in the den, over her head, and
she continually ran out across the lawn, and stood close to a tree,
staring down the road for some sign of her father. Curiously enough,
she was not nearly so terrified out-of-doors as in the house. The
strain of returning to that vacant house was much worse for her than
going across the lawn in the lonely night. She watched and watched,
and at last when she returned to the house and looked at the
dining-room clock, it was half-past nine, and she completely gave up
all hope of her father having come on that train.

A species of stupor, of terror and anxiety, seemed to overcome her.
She sat by the parlor window, still staring out from mere force of
habit. She knew that the next and last train that night was not due
until one-thirty, presumably nearly two o'clock. She knew that there
was not the slightest chance of her father's coming until then, but
her mind now centred on the telegram. It did seem as if there must be
a telegram, at least. All at once a figure appeared in the road and
swiftly turned into the drive. She thought at once that the boy in
the drug-store was bringing the telegram; still, she resolved not to
open the door until she was sure who it was. She peered closely from
the window, and it was unmistakably the drug-store boy who emerged
from the tree shadows and came up on the stoop. She ran to the door
and unfastened it, not waiting for him to ring. She held out her
trembling little hand for the telegram, but he kept his at his side.
He looked at her, grinning half-sympathetically, half-sheepishly. He
was an overgrown boy, perhaps three years younger than she, whom a
pretty girl overwhelmed with an enormous self-consciousness and
admiration.

"Where is it?" asked Charlotte, impatiently.

"I 'ain't got nothing'," said the boy.

"Then why--"

"I was going home from the store, and I thought I'd jest stop an' let
you know there wa'n't no telegrams yet. It wa'n't much out of my way."

Charlotte gasped.

"I thought it might be a relief to your mind to know," said the boy.
"I thought you might be watchin'. I saw your father didn't come on
that other train. I was up at the station on an errand."

"Thank you," said Charlotte, feebly.

The boy lingered a second with bashful eyes on her face, then he said
again that he thought he would just stop in and let her know. He was
going down the path, and she was just closing the door, when he
called back that she might have a telegram if her father sent it by
the postal-telegraph system.

"You won't get none from our place after now," he said, "for Mr.
Drake won't bring up none so late; but if your father sends that way,
you could get one, mebbe."

"Thank you," replied Charlotte, and the boy went away.

When Charlotte re-entered the house and locked the door, a loneliness
which was like a positive chill struck over her. It was much worse
now since she had been in communication with another human being.

"If he had only been a girl I would have gone down on my knees to him
to stay all night with me," she thought.

She tried to think if there was anybody in Banbridge whom she could
ask to stay with her, but she could think of none. She thought of
Marie, but she did not even know where she was. There was no woman
whom she could call upon. She resumed her seat beside the window. She
did not dream of going to bed. She had now to watch for the possible
postal telegram; it would not be time for the last train for hours
yet. She had the telegraph-messenger and some possible marauder to
watch for. She kept her eyes glued to the expanse of the lawn and
small stretch of road visible between the leafless trees. Now and
then a carriage passed; very seldom a walking shadow. She always
started at the sight of these, thinking the telegram might be about
to arrive. If the telegram should arrive she expected fully that it
would be of some terrible import. A thought struck her, something
that she might do. If her father was injured, if she were to be sent
for from the City, she resolved that she would have everything in
readiness for instant departure. There was a train which Banbridge
flagged after the arrival of the last train from New York. She lit a
lamp, went up-stairs, and packed a little travelling-bag with
necessaries, and made some changes in her dress, and felt a certain
relief in so doing. She had very little money, and a book with two or
three railroad tickets. She felt that she could start at a moment's
notice should the telegram arrive. All the time she was packing she
was listening for the door-bell. It became quite firmly fixed in her
mind what the telegram would be: that her father was terribly injured
and had been carried to a hospital, that she should at once go to the
hospital. It sometimes occurred to her that he might be even dead,
but that idea did not so take hold on her fancy as the other.

She left the lamp burning up-stairs, thinking suddenly that it would
be well to have the house present the appearance of being well
inhabited. She took her hat and coat and her little travelling-bag,
and she went back to the place by the parlor window and stared out at
the lawn again. It was growing very late. Soon it would be time for
her to watch for the last train. It really seemed to the girl an
incredible supposition of disaster that that train could pass by and
her father not appear, and that in the face of her morbid and
pessimistic conclusions. She was a mass of inconsistencies, of
incoherencies. She at once despaired and hoped with a hope that was
conviction. At last, when she saw by the clock that it only wanted a
few minutes before the time when the last train was due, her spirits
arose as if winged. She even went out in the kitchen and examined the
wretched dinner to make sure it was still hot. She put more coal on
the range. The house was growing very cold, and she knew that the
furnace fire needed attention, but she absolutely dared not go down
cellar alone at that time. They had very little coal, also, and had
been in the habit of letting the furnace fire die down at night. She
put on her coat when she returned from the kitchen, and sat again by
the window. She felt now an absolute certainty that her father would
arrive on this train. She felt that it was monstrous to assume that
her father would not come home all night and leave her alone with no
message. She felt even quite radiantly happy sitting there. She said
to herself what a little goose she had been. Even a noise made by
some coal falling in the kitchen-range failed to startle her. She now
hoped that the train would not be late, and it was, in fact, very
nearly on time. Then she watched for her father with not the
slightest doubt that he would come. It had come to that pass that her
credulity as to disaster had failed her. It was simply out of her
power to credit the possibility of his not coming on this train when
he had sent no telegram. She knew that there would be no carriage at
the station at that hour, unless he had telegraphed for one from New
York, and she questioned, in the state of their finances, if he would
do that. She was therefore sure of seeing his figure appear, coming,
with the stately stride which she knew so well, into view on the road
below the lawn.

She allowed twenty-five minutes for his appearance after she had seen
the train pass. She knew nothing could detain him in the village at
that time of night, and she was sure he would come within that time.
She looked at the dining-room clock and found that she had, if she
allowed that twenty-five minutes, just fifteen minutes to wait. She
sat shrugged up in her little fur-trimmed coat, for the house was
growing very cold, and stared intently at the pale glimmer of the
road. After the twenty-five minutes had passed, she went out in the
dining-room and looked at the clock. The time was more than passed;
there was no doubt. Her father had not come. The panic seized her.

She was now dashed from the heights of hope, and the shock was
double. She realized that her father had not come, would not come
that night; that she would probably have no telegram. She realized
that she was all alone in the house. Now again unreasoning fear as
well as the anxiety for her father seized her. Again the conviction
of the awful population of the empty rooms was upon her. She sat down
again by the window, and she tried to make her reasoning powers
reassert themselves.

"If anything comes this way, I shall see it in time, and I can run
out the back door and across to the neighbors," she told herself. "If
anything comes in the back way, I shall hear and have time to run out
the front door; and I know there is nothing in the house." But she
could not reassure herself, since what terrified her, and even
temporarily unbalanced her, was fear itself.

Fear multiplied, growing upon itself, spreading out new tentacles
with every throb of her imagination, filling the whole house. All her
life she had thought what a frightful thing it would be if ever she
were left alone by herself in a house, all night; and now worse than
that had come to pass, for she was not alone; the house was peopled
by fear and the creatures of fear. She heard noises constantly that
she could not account for, and she also saw things which she could
not account for. Again the small and trivial, acutely stinging horror
of some ordinary object in a new and awful guise possessed her. She
was almost paralyzed at the sudden glimpse of something on the divan
across the room. It was a long time before she could possibly totter
to investigate, and ascertain it was one of her own gloves. But it
did not strike her as at all funny. There was still something
frightful to her about the glove. She went back to the window, and
soon she distinctly heard a noise up-stairs, and then a shadow
crossed the ceiling. A new horror seized her--a horror of herself.
She felt that in another moment she might herself become a very part
and substance of the fear that was oppressing her. She had an
imagination of jumping up, of running about and screaming, of
breaking something. Then with that clutch at life and reason which is
life itself, which all dying and despairing things have at the last,
she thought again that there must be somebody, somebody in the whole
place to whom she could turn, somebody who would help her, who would
pity her. She had heretofore only thought of the possibility of
somebody who would come and stay with her; it now occurred to her
that she herself might be the one to go, and that she might escape
from this house of fear. It was suddenly to her as to a prisoner who
realizes that all the time his prison doors have been unbarred.

"What am I staying here for in this awful house by myself?" she
suddenly thought. When that idea came to her, the idea of escape, the
action of her mind became involuntary. There was only one to whom she
could run for aid. She remembered so vividly that the experience
seemed to repeat itself, her terror of the tramp in the woods, and
how she had seen Anderson. She sprang up. It became sure to her that
she must get away from that house, that she must not remain. The
imaginative girl, whom anxiety and want of food had weakened, as well
as fear, was fairly at the point of madness, or that hysteria which
is the border-land of it. She distinctly heard herself laugh as she
ran out of the room and out of the house. Her head was bare, but she
did not think of that. She had on her coat which she had worn because
of the coldness of the house. She fled across the lawn to the street.
Once on the road, she was saner, she felt only the natural impulse of
flight of any hunted thing. She fled down the road past the quiet
village houses, in which the people slept in their beds. The electric
lights were out, the moon was low. It was quite dark. Nobody except
herself was abroad in the night. A great pity for herself, a pity
that she might have felt for a little lonely child out by herself at
night, when everybody else was safe in their homes, came over her.
She sobbed as she ran; she even sobbed quite loudly. She did not feel
so afraid, as wild for somebody to take her in and comfort her. She
ran down the main street and turned up the one on which the Andersons
lived. When she reached the house it was quite dark, except for a
very faint glimmer in one of the upper front rooms. It was from the
little night-lamp which Mrs. Anderson always kept burning. The sight
of that light seemed to give Charlotte strength to get up the steps.
She had run so weakly that all the way she had a thought of the
terraces of steps leading to the Anderson house, if she could climb
them. She went up the steps, and then she pressed hard the electric
button on the door; she also raised the superfluous old brass knocker
which Mrs. Anderson cherished because it was a relic from her
husband's time; then she clanged that. Then she sank down on the step
in front of the door.



Chapter XXXIX


Almost at once a light flashed from an upper window in response to
Charlotte's knock and ring. Anderson himself had been in New York
that night with Henry Edgecomb to the theatre. A celebrated play was
on, in which a celebrated actress figured, and the two had taken one
of their rather infrequent excursions. Consequently, Anderson had not
been in the house more than an hour, and during that hour had been
writing some letters which he wished to get off in the early mail.
His room was at the back of the house, a long room extending nearly
the whole width, consequently his own brightly shining light had not
been visible to Charlotte coming up the street.

As he was not undressed, he lost no time in opening his door and
entering with his lamp the front hall. As he did so his mother's door
opened, and her delicate, alarmed old face, frilled with white
cambric, appeared.

"Oh, who is it at this time of night, do you suppose, Randolph?" she
whispered.

"I don't know, mother dear; don't be frightened."

But she came quite out in her white night draperies, which made her
appear singularly massive. "Oh, do you suppose there are burglars in
the store?" she said.

"No. Don't worry, mother."

"Do you suppose it is fire?"

"No; there is no alarm."

"Randolph, you won't open the door until you have asked who it is.
Promise me."

"It is nobody to be afraid of, mother."

"Promise me."

"It is probably Henry come back for something. Harriet may have
locked him out, and he forgotten his night-key." That was actually
what had flashed through Randolph's mind when he heard the knock and
ring.

"Well, I shouldn't wonder if it was," said Mrs. Anderson, in a
relieved tone.

"Go back to bed, mother, or you will catch your death of cold."

"But you will ask?"

"Yes, yes."

Anderson hurried down-stairs, and in consideration of his mother's
listening ears of alarm, he did call out, "Who is there?" at the same
time unlocking the door. It was manifest to his masculine
intelligence, unhampered by nerves, that no one with evil intent
would thus strive to enter a house with a clang of knocker and peal
of bell. He, therefore, having set the lamp on the hall-table, at
once unlocked the door, and Charlotte pulled herself to her feet and
her little, pretty, woe-begone face, in which was a new look for him
and herself, confronted him. Anderson did not say a word. He
somehow--he never remembered how--laid hold of the little thing, and
she was in the house, in the sitting-room, and in his arms, clinging
to him.

"Papa didn't come. Papa didn't come home," she sobbed, but so softly
that Mrs. Anderson, who was listening, did not hear.

Anderson laid his cheek down against the girl's soft, wet one, as if
it were the most natural thing in the world, as if he had been used
to so doing ever since he could remember anything. There was no
strangeness for either of them in it. He patted her poor little head,
which felt cold from the frosty night air.

"There, there, dear," he said.

"He didn't come home," she repeated, piteously, against his breast,
and it was almost as if she were accusing him because of it.

"Poor little girl!"

"Not on the last train. Papa didn't come on the last train,
and--there was no telegram, and I--I was all alone in the house,
and--and--I came." She sobbed convulsively.

Anderson kissed her cheek softly, he continued to smooth the little,
dark, damp head. "You did quite right," he whispered--"quite right,
dear. You are safe now. Don't!"

"Papa!"

"Oh, some business detained him in the City."

"What has happened to papa?" demanded Charlotte, in a shrill voice,
and it was again as if she were unconsciously accusing Anderson. When
a heart becomes confident of love, it is filled with wonder at any
evil mischance permitted, and accuses love, even the love of God.
"What has happened to papa? Where is he?" she demanded again. And it
was then that Mrs. Anderson, unseen by either of them, stood in the
doorway with an enormous purple-flowered wrapper surging over her
nightgown.

"Hush, dear!" whispered Anderson. "I am sure nothing has happened."

"Why are you sure?"

"If anything had happened I should have heard of it. I came out on
the last train myself. If there had been an accident I should
certainly have heard."

"Would you?"

"I surely should have. Don't, dear. Your father has just been
detained by business."

"Then why didn't papa telegraph?"

"He did not get it in the office in season. The office closes at
half-past eight," said Anderson, lying cheerfully.

"Does it?"

"Of course! There is nothing for you to worry about. Now I'll tell
you what we will do. My mother is awake. I will speak to her, and you
must go straight to bed, and go to sleep, and in the morning your
father will be along on the first train. He must have been as much
worried as you."

"Poor papa," said Charlotte.

"So you were all alone in the house, and you came down here all alone
at this time," said Anderson, in a tone which his mother had never
heard. But it was then that she spoke.

"Didn't her father come home?" she asked.

When the girl turned like a flash and saw her she seemed to realize
for the first time that she had been, and was, doing something out of
the wonted. A great, burning blush surged all over her. She shrank
away from the man who held her. She cowered before the other woman.

"No, papa didn't come," she stammered, "and--I didn't know what to
do, and I came here."

"You did quite right, you precious child," said Mrs. Anderson,
suddenly, in a voice of the tenderest authority. She held out her
arms and Charlotte fled to them. Mrs. Anderson looked over the girl's
head at her son with the oddest and most inexplicable reproach. "You
go up and see if the heat is turned on in that little room out of
mine," she commanded, "and then you go into the kitchen and see if you
can't find the milk, and set some on the stove to warm. You can pour
a little hot water in it to hurry it. If the fire isn't good, open
the dampers. And, Randolph, you get my hot-water bag out of my bed,
and fill it from the tea-kettle--that water will be hotter than the
bath-room, this time of night--and you bring it right up; be as quick
as you can." Then all in the same breath she was comforting
Charlotte. "Your father is all right, dear child. Don't you worry one
mite--not one mite. I remember once, when I was a girl, my father
didn't come home, and mother and I were almost crazy, and he came in
laughing the next morning. He had lost his last train because there
was a block on account of the ice. The river was frozen over. There
is nothing for you to worry about. Now come right up-stairs and go to
bed. There is a little room out of mine, as warm as toast, and you
won't be a bit afraid. There you were all alone in that great house,
you poor, blessed child."

Charlotte sobbed, but now with a certain comfort.

"I should have been so afraid, I should have lost my senses, all
alone in a house at your age," said Mrs. Anderson, all the time
gently impelling the girl along with her. "Of course there is nothing
to be afraid of, but one imagines things; and you came here all alone
at this time of the night!"

"Yes," responded Charlotte, with a gasp of the intensest self-pity,
sure of an echo.

Randolph ran up-stairs before his mother and Charlotte and snatched
the hot-water bottle out of his mother's bed, and was out the
opposite door, which connected with the back stairs leading to the
kitchen. As he went out he heard his mother say: "All that way alone
this time of night, you poor, precious child!" and Charlotte's
little, piteous, yet comforted sob in response, exactly as a hurt
baby might respond to commiserations. He felt his own knees tremble
as he went down-stairs, carrying the hot-water bottle, which had
always struck him as a rather absurd article, to be regarded with the
concessions which a man should make to the little, foolish devices
for the comfort of a softer and slighter sex. He hunted up the milk
in the ice-box, and warmed it with solicitude in a china cup, which,
luckily, did not break. The fire was still very good, and the water
in the tea-kettle quite boiling. It was not long before he knocked at
his mother's door, bearing the water-bottle dangling on one wrist,
and carrying the cup of milk. His mother opened the door just wide
enough to receive the articles.

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