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




"Mr. Price," said Anderson to him, "may I ask that you will tell this
gentleman if a little boy went into my office a short time ago?"

The clerk looked blankly at Anderson, who patiently repeated his
question.

"A little boy," repeated the clerk.

"Yes," said Anderson.

Price gazed reflectively and in something of a troubled fashion at
Anderson, then at Carroll. His mind was in the throes of displacing a
barrel of sugar and a half-peck of pease by a little boy. Then his
face brightened. He spoke quickly and decidedly.

"Yes," said he, "just before this gentleman came in, a little boy,
running, yes."

"You did not see him come out while we were talking?" asked Anderson.

"No, oh no."

Carroll asked no further and left, with a good-day to Anderson, who
scarcely returned it. He jumped into his carriage, and the swift tap
of the horse's feet died away on the macadam.

"Sugar ought to bring about two cents on a pound more," said the
clerk to Anderson, returning to the office, and then he stopped short
as Anderson started staring at an enormous advertisement picture
which was stationed, partly for business reasons, partly for
ornament, in a corner near the office door. It was a figure of a
gayly dressed damsel, nearly life-size, and was supposed by its
blooming appearance to settle finally the merit of a new health food.
The other clerk, who was a young fellow, hardly more than a boy, had
placed it there. He had reached the first fever-stage of admiration
of the other sex, and this gaudy beauty had resembled in his eyes a
fair damsel of Banbridge whom he secretly adored.

Therefore he had ensconced it carefully in the corner near the office
door, and often glanced at it with reverent and sheepish eyes of
delight. Anderson never paid any attention to the thing, but now for
some reason he glanced at it in passing, and to his astonishment it
moved. He made one stride towards it, and thrust it aside, and behind
it stood the boy, with a face of impudent innocence.

Anderson stood looking at him for a second. The boy's eyes did not
fall, but his expression changed.

"So you ran away from your father and hid from him?" Anderson
observed, with a subtle emphasis of scorn. "So you are afraid?"

The boy's face flashed into red, his eyes blazed.

"You bet I ain't," he declared.

"Looks very much like it," said Anderson, coolly.

"You let me go," shouted the boy, and pushed rudely past Anderson and
raced out of the store. Anderson and the old clerk looked at each
other across the great advertisement which had fallen face downward
on the floor.

"Must have come in from the office whilst our back was turned, and
slipped in behind that picture," said the clerk, slowly.

Anderson nodded.

"He is a queer feller," said the clerk, further.

"He certainly is," agreed Anderson.

"As queer as ever I seen. Guess his father 'll give it to him when he
gits home."

"Well, he deserves it," replied Anderson, and added, in the silence
of his mind, "and his father deserves it, too," and imagined vaguely
to himself a chastening providence for the eternal good of the father
even as the father might be for the eternal good of his son. The
man's fancy was always more or less in leash to his early training.

Just then the younger clerk, Sam Riggs, commonly called Sammy,
entered, and espying at once with jealous eyes the fallen state of
his idol in the corner, took the first opportunity to pick her up and
straighten her to her former position.



Chapter IX


Little Eddy Carroll, running on his slim legs like a hound, raced
down the homeward road, and came in sight of his father's carriage
just before it turned the corner. Carroll had stopped once on the
way, and so the boy overtook him. When Carroll stopped to make an
inquiry, he caught a glimpse of the small, flying figure in the rear;
in fact, the man to whom he spoke pointed this out.

"Why, there's your boy, now, Cap'n Carroll," he said, "runnin' as
fast after you as you be after him." The man was an old fellow of a
facetious turn of mind who had done some work on Carroll's garden.

Carroll, after that one rapid, comprehensive glance, said not another
word. He nodded curtly and sprang into the carriage; but the old man,
pressing close to the wheel, so that it could not move without
throwing him, said something in a half-whisper, as if he were ashamed
of it.

"Certainly, certainly, very soon," replied Carroll, with some
impatience.

"I need it pooty bad," the old man said, abashedly.

"Very soon, I tell you," repeated Carroll. "I cannot stop now."

The old man fell back, with a pull at his ancient cap. He trembled a
little nervously, his face was flushed, but he glanced back with a
grin at Eddy racing to catch up.

"Drive on, Martin," Carroll said to the coachman.

The old gardener waited until Eddy came alongside, then he called out
to him. "Hi!" he said, "better hurry up. Guess your pa is goin' to
have a reckonin' with ye."

"You shut up!" cried the boy, breathlessly, racing past. When finally
he reached the carriage, he promptly caught hold of the rear, doubled
up his legs, and hung on until it rolled into the grounds of the
Carroll place and drew up in the semicircle opposite the front-door.
Then he dropped lightly to the ground and ran around to the front of
the carriage as his father got out. Eddy without a word stood before
his father, who towered over him grandly, confronting him with a
really majestic reproach, not untinctured with love. The man's
handsome face was quite pale; he did not look so angry as severe and
unhappy, but the boy knew well enough what the expression boded. He
had seen it before. He looked back at his father, and his small,
pink-and-white face never quivered, and his black eyes never fell.

"Well?" said Carroll.

"Where have you been?" asked Carroll.

The anxious faces of the boy's mother and his aunt became visible at
a front window, a flutter of white skirts appeared at the entrance of
the grounds. The girls were returning from their search.

"Answer me," commanded Carroll.

"Teacher sent me on an errand," he replied then, with a kind of
doggedness.

"The truth," said Carroll.

"I went out catching butterflies, after I had dined with Mr. Anderson
and his mother."

"You dined with Mr. Anderson and his mother?"

"Yes, sir. You needn't think he was to blame. He wasn't. I made him
ask me."

"I understand. Then you did not go to school this afternoon, but out
in the field?"

"Yes, sir."

Carroll eyed sharply the boy's right-hand pocket, which bulged
enormously. The girls had by this time come up and stood behind Eddy,
holding to each other, their pretty faces pale and concerned.

"What is that in your pocket?" asked Carroll.

"Marbles."

"Let me see the marbles."

"It ain't marbles, it's candy."

"Where did you get it?"

"Mr. Anderson gave it to me."

Carroll continued to look his son squarely in the eyes.

"I stole it when they wasn't looking," said the boy; "there was a
glass jar--"

"Go into the house and up to your own room," said Carroll.

The boy turned as squarely about-face as a soldier at the word of
command, and marched before his father into the house. The four
women, the two at the window, the two on the lawn, watched them go
without a word. Ina, the elder of the two girls, put her handkerchief
to her eyes and began to cry softly. Charlotte put her arm around her
and drew her towards the door.

"Don't, Ina," she whispered, "don't, darling."

"Papa will whip him very hard," sobbed Ina. "It seems to me I cannot
bear it, he is such a little boy."

"Papa ought to whip him," said Charlotte, quite firmly, although she
herself was winking back the tears.

"He will whip him so hard," sobbed Ina. "I quite gave up when papa
found the candy. Stealing is what he never will forgive him for, you
know."

"Yes, I know. Don't let poor Amy see you cry, Ina."

"Wait a minute before we go in. You remember that the time papa
whipped me, the only time he ever did, when--"

"Yes, I remember. You never did again, honey."

"Yes, it cured me, but I fear it will not cure Eddy. A boy is
different."

"Stop crying, Ina dear, before we go in."

"Yes--I--will. Are my eyes very red?"

"No; Amy will not notice it if you keep your eyes turned away."

But Mrs. Carroll turned sharply upon Ina the moment she saw her. The
two elder ladies had left the parlor and retreated to a small
apartment on the right of the hall, called the den, and fitted up
with some Eastern hangings and a divan. Upon this divan Anna Carroll
had thrown herself, and lay quite still upon her back, her slender
length extended, staring out of the window directly opposite at the
spread of a great oak just lately putting forth its leaves. Mrs.
Carroll was standing beside her, and she looked at the two girls
entering with a hard expression in her usually soft eyes.

"Why have you been crying?" she asked, directly, of Ina. Her hair was
in disorder, as if she had thrust her fingers through it. It was
pushed far off from her temples, making her look much older. Red
spots blazed on her cheeks, her mouth widened in a curious, tense
smile. "Why have you been crying?" she demanded again when Ina did
not reply at once to her question.

"Because papa is going to whip Eddy," Ina said then, with directness,
"and I know he will whip him very hard, because he has been stealing."

"Well, what is that to cry about?" asked Mrs. Carroll, ruffling with
indignation. "Don't you think the boy's father knows what is best for
his own son? He won't hurt him any more than he ought to be hurt."

"I only hope he will hurt himself as much as he ought to be hurt,"
muttered Anna Carroll on the divan. Mrs. Carroll gave her
sister-in-law one look, then swept out of the room. The tail of her
rose-colored silk curled around the door-sill, and she was gone. She
passed through the hall, and out of the front-door to the lawn,
whence she strolled around the house, keeping on the side farthest
from the room occupied by her son.

"Hark!" whispered Ina, a moment after her mother had gone.

They all listened, and a swishing sound was distinctly audible. It
was the sound of regular, carefully measured blows.

"Amy went out so she should not hear," whispered Ina. "Oh, Dear!"

"It is harder for her than for anybody else because she has to uphold
Arthur for doing what she knows is wrong," said Anna Carroll on the
divan. She spoke as if to herself, pressing her hands to her ears.

"Papa is doing just right," cried Charlotte, indignantly. "How dare
you speak so about papa, Anna?"

"There is no use in speaking at all," said Anna, wearily. "There
never was. I am tired of this life and everything connected with it."

Ina was weeping again convulsively. She also had put her hands to her
ears, and her piteous little wet, quivering face was revealed.

"There is no need of either of you stopping up your ears," said
Charlotte. "You won't hear anything except the--blows. Eddy never
makes a whimper. You know that."

She spoke with a certain pride. She felt in her heart that a whimper
from her little brother would be more than she herself could bear,
and would also be more culpable than the offence for which he was
being chastised. She said that her brother never whimpered, and yet
she listened with a little fear that he might. But she need have had
no apprehension. Up in his bedroom, standing before his father in his
little thin linen blouse, for he had pulled off his jacket without
being told, directly when he had first entered the room, the little
boy endured the storm of blows, not only without a whimper, but
without a quiver.

Eddy stood quite erect. His pretty face was white, his little hands
hanging at his sides were clinched tightly, but he made not one sound
or motion which betrayed pain or fear. He was counting the blows as
they fell. He knew how many to expect. There were so many for running
away and playing truant, and so many for lying, more for stealing, so
many for all three. This time it was all three. Eddy counted while
his father laid on the blows as regularly as a machine. When at last
he stopped, Eddy did not move. He spoke without moving his head.

"There are two more, papa," he said. "You have stopped too soon."

Carroll's face contracted, but he gave the two additional blows. "Now
undress yourself and go to bed," he told the boy, in an even tone. "I
will have some bread and milk sent up for your supper. To-morrow
morning you will take that candy back to the store, and tell the man
you stole it, and ask his pardon."

"Yes, sir," said Eddy. He at once began unfastening his little blouse
preparatory to retiring.

Carroll went out of the room and closed the door behind him. His
sister met him at the head of the stairs and accosted him in a sort
of fury.

"Arthur Carroll," said she, tersely, "I wish you would tell me one
thing. Did you whip that child for his faults or your own?"

Carroll looked at her. He was very pale, and his face seemed to have
lengthened out and aged. "For both, Anna," he replied.

"What right have you to punish him for your faults, I should like to
know?"

"The right of the man who gave them to him."

"You have the right to punish him for your faults--_your_ faults?"

"I could kill him for my faults, if necessary."

"Who is going to punish you for your faults? Tell me that, Arthur
Carroll."

"The Lord Almighty in His own good time," replied Carroll, and passed
her and went down-stairs.



Chapter X


The next morning, just before nine o'clock, Anderson was sitting in
his office, reading the morning paper. The wind had changed in the
night and was blowing from the northwest. The atmosphere was full of
a wonderful clearness and freshness. Anderson was conscious of
exhilaration. Life assumed a new aspect. New ambitions pressed upon
his fancy, new joys seemed to crowd upon his straining vision in
culminating vistas of the future. Without fairly admitting it to
himself, it had seemed to him as if he had already in a great measure
exhausted the possibilities of his own life, as if he had begun to
see the bare threads of the warp, as if he had worn out the first
glory of the pattern design. Now it was suddenly all different. It
looked to him as if he had scarcely begun to live, as if he had not
had his first taste of existence. He felt himself a youth. His senses
were sharpened, and he got a keen delight from them, which stimulated
his spirit like wine. He perceived for the first time a perfume from
the green plants in his window-box, which seemed to grow before his
eyes and give an odor like the breath of a runner. He heard whole
flocks of birds in the sky outside. He distinguished quite clearly
one bird-song which he had never heard before. His newspaper rustled
with astonishing loudness when he turned the pages, his cigar tasted
to an extreme which he had never before noticed. The leaves of the
plants and the tree-boughs outside cut the air crisply. His
window-shade rattled so loudly that he could not believe it was
simply that. A great onslaught of the splendid wind filled the room,
and everything waved and sprang as if gaining life. Then suddenly,
without the slightest warning, came a shower of the confection known
as molasses-peppermints through the door of the office. They are a
small, hard candy, and being thrown with vicious emphasis, they
rattled upon the bare floor like bullets. One even hit Anderson
stingingly upon the cheek. He sprang to his feet and looked out.
Nothing was to be seen except the young clerk, standing, gaping and
half frightened, yet with a lurking grin. Anderson regarded him with
amazement. An idea that he had gone mad flashed through his mind.

"What did you do that for, Sam?" he demanded.

"I didn't do it."

"Who did?"

"That kid that was in here last night. That Carroll boy. He run in
here and flung that candy, and out again, before I could more 'n' see
him. Didn't know what were comin'."

Anderson returned to his office, and as he crossed the threshold
heard a duet of laughter from Sam and the older clerk. His feet
crushed some of the candy as he resumed his seat. He took up his
newspaper, but before he had fairly commenced to read he heard the
imperious sound of a girl's voice outside, a quick step, and a
dragging one.

"Come right along!" the girl's voice ordered.

"You lemme be!" came a sulky boy's voice in response.

"Not another word!" said the girl's. "Come right along!"

Anderson looked up. Charlotte Carroll was entering, dragging her
unwilling little brother after her.

"Come," said she again. She did not seem to regard Anderson at all.
She held her brother's arm with a firm grip of her little, nervous
white hand. "Now," said she to him, "you pick up every one of those
molasses-peppermint drops, every single one."

The boy wriggled defiantly, but she held to him with wonderful
strength.

"Right away," she repeated, "every single one."

"Let me go, then," growled the boy, angrily. "How can I pick them up
when you are holding me this way?"

The girl with a swift motion swung to the office door in the faces of
the two clerks, the grinning roundness of the younger, and the
half-abstracted bewilderment of the elder. Then she placed her back
against it, and took her hand from her brother's arm. "Now, then,
pick them up, every one," said she.

Without another word the boy got down on his hands and knees and
began gathering up the scattered sweets. Anderson had risen to his
feet, and stood looking on with a dazed and helpless feeling. Now he
spoke, and he realized that his voice sounded weak.

"Really, Miss Carroll," he said, "I beg-- It is of no consequence--"
Then he stopped. He did not know what it was all about; he had only a
faint idea of not putting any one to the trouble to pick up the
debris on his office floor.

Charlotte regarded him as sternly as she had her brother. "Yes, it is
of consequence. Papa told him to bring them back and apologize."

Anderson stared at her, bewildered, while the little boy crawled like
a nervous spider around his feet.

"Why bring them back to me?" he queried. For the moment the ex-lawyer
forgot that molasses-peppermint balls yielded a part of his revenue,
and were offered by him to the public from a glass jar on his shelf.
He cast about in his mind as to what he could possibly have to do
with those small, hard, brown lollipops rolling about on his office
floor.

"You had them in a glass jar," said Charlotte, in an accusing voice,
"right in his way, and--when he came home last night he had them in
his pocket, and--papa whipped him very hard. He always does when-- My
brother is never allowed to take anything that does not belong to
him, however unimportant," she concluded, proudly.

Anderson continued to look at her in a sort of daze.

"No," she added, severely, "he is not. No matter if he is so young,
no more than a child, and a child is very fond of sweets, and--they
were left right in his way."

Anderson looked at her with the vague idea floating through his mind
that he owed this sweet, reproachful creature an abject pardon for
keeping his molasses-peppermint balls in a glass jar on his own shelf
and not locking them away from the lustful eyes of small boys.

"Papa told Eddy that he must bring them back this morning and ask
your pardon," said Charlotte, "and when he came running out of the
store I suspected what he had done; and when I found out, I made him
come back. Pick up every one, Eddy."

"Here is one he stepped on his own self and smashed all to nothing,"
said Eddy, in an aggrieved tone. "I can't pick that up, anyhow."

"Pick up what you can of it, and put it in the paper bag."

"I shouldn't think he could sell this to anybody without cheating
them," remarked Eddy, in a lofty tone, in spite of his abject
position.

"Never you mind what he does with it. You pick up every single
speck," ordered the girl; and the boy scraped the floor with his
sharp finger-nails, and crammed the candy and dust into a small paper
bag. The girl stood watchfully over him; not the smallest particle
escaped her eyes. "There's some more over there," said she, sharply,
when the boy was about to rise; and Eddy loped like some small animal
on all-fours towards a tiny heap of crushed peppermint-drops.

"He must have stepped on this, too," he muttered, with a reproachful
glare at Anderson, who had never in his life felt so at a loss. He
was divided between consternation and an almost paralyzing sense of
the ridiculous. He was conscious that a laugh would be regarded as an
insult by this very angry and earnest young girl. But at last Eddy
tendered him the bag with the rescued peppermint-drops.

"I shouldn't think you would ask more than half-price for candy like
this, anyway," said Eddy, admonishingly, and that was too much for
the man. He shouted with laughter; not even Charlotte's face, which
suddenly flushed with wrath, could sober him. She looked at him a
moment while he laughed, and her face of severe judgment and anger
intensified.

"Very well," said she, "if you see anything funny about this, I am
glad, Mr. Anderson."

But the boy, who had viewed with doubt and suspicion this abrupt
change of aspect on the part of the man, suddenly grinned in
response; his black eyes twinkled charmingly with delight and fun.
"Say, _you're_ all right," he said to Anderson, with a confidential
nod.

"Eddy!" cried Charlotte.

"Now, Charlotte, you don't see how funny it is, because you are a
girl," said Eddy, soothingly, and he continued to grin at the man,
half-elfishly, half-innocently. He looked very small and young.

The girl caught hold of his arm. "Come away immediately," she said,
in a choking voice. "Immediately."

"It's just like a girl to act that way about my going, as if I wanted
to come myself at all," said the boy, following his sister's pulling
hand, and still grinning understandingly at Anderson over his
shoulder.

Charlotte turned in the doorway and looked majestically at Anderson.
"I thought, when I obliged my brother to return here and pick up the
candy, that I was dealing with a gentleman," said she. "Otherwise I
might not have considered it necessary."

Even then Anderson could scarcely restrain his laughter, although he
was conscious that he was mortally offending her. He managed to gasp
out something about his surprise and the triviality of the whole
affair of the candy.

"I regret that you should consider the taking anything without leave,
however worthless, as trivial," said she. "I have not been so brought
up, and neither has my brother." She said this with an indescribable
air of offended rectitude. She regarded him like a small, incarnate
truth and honesty. Then she turned, and her brother was following
with a reluctant backward pull at her leading hand, when suddenly he
burst forth with a shout of malicious glee.

"Say, you are making me go away, when I haven't given him back his
old candy, after all! He didn't take it."

Charlotte promptly caught the paper bag from her brother's hand,
advanced upon Anderson, and thrust it in his face as if it had been a
hostile weapon. Anderson took it perforce.

"Here is your property," said she, proudly, but she seemed almost as
childish as her brother.

"I ain't said any apology, either," said Eddy.

"The coming here and returning it is apology enough," said Anderson.

He looked foolishly at the ridiculous paper bag, sticky with
lollipops. For the first time he felt distinctly ashamed of his
business. It seemed to him, as he realized its concentration upon the
petty details of existence, its strenuous dwelling upon the small,
inane sweets and absurdities of daily life which ought to be
scattered with a free hand, not made subjects of trade and barter, to
be entirely below a gentleman. He gave the paper bag an impatient
toss out of the open window over the back of the sleeping cat, which
started a little, then stretched himself luxuriously and slept again.

"There, he's thrown it out of the window!" proclaimed Eddy. He looked
accusingly at Charlotte. "I might just as well have kept it as had it
thrown out of the window," said he. "What good is it to anybody now,
I'd like to know?"

"Never mind what he has done with it," said Charlotte. "Come at once."

"Papa told me I must apologize. He will ask me if I did."

"Apologize, then. Be quick."

"It is not--" began Anderson, who was sober enough now, and becoming
more and more annoyed, but Charlotte interrupted him.

"Eddy!" said she.

"I am very sorry I took your candy," piped Eddy, in a loud,
declamatory voice which was not the tone of humble repentance. The
boy, as he spoke, eyed the man with defiance. It was as if he blamed
him, for some occult reason, for having his own property stolen. The
child's face became, under the forced humiliation of the apology,
revolutionary, anarchistic, rebellious. He might have been the
representative, the walking delegate, of some small cult of rebels
against the established order of regard for the property-rights of
others. The sinner, the covetous one of another's sweets, became the
accuser. Just as he was going out of the door, following the pink
flutter of his sister's muslin gown, he turned and spoke his whole
mind.

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