Carroll took his cigar from his mouth and looked at her. His face was quite pale and rigid. Even Tappan stopped, watching the two. Madame Griggs held up, with almost a sublimity of accusation, her tiny, nervous, veinous hands. The fingers were long and the knuckles were slightly enlarged with strenuous pullings of needles and handling of scissors; the forefinger was calloused. “Look at my hands,” said she. “See how thin they be. I've worked them 'most to the bone for your folks. I took a lot of pride in havin' your daughter look nice when she was married. If I was a man an' goin' to steal, I'd steal from somebody besides a woman with no more strength than I have, all alone in the world, and that's been knocked hard ever since she can remember.” Then she brought a stiffly starched little handkerchief from the folds of a small purse, and she wept with a low, querulous wail like a baby. Standing before Carroll, “Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Oh—dear!” she wailed.
Carroll laid a hand on her shaking shoulder. It felt to him like a vibrating bone, so meagre it was. He bent over her and said something that the others did not hear, but her wild rejoinder gave them the key. She was fairly desperate; all her obsequiousness had disappeared. She was burning with her wrongs; she even took a certain pleasure in letting herself loose. She shook her shoulder free from his touch. She turned on him, her tearful, convulsed face uncovered, her frizzes tossing, as bold and unrestrained in her wrath as was Minna Eddy, who came forward to her side as she spoke.
“You needn't come wheedlin' around me,” she cried. “I don't believe a word of it, not a word. I'll believe it when I see the color of your cash. You're dreadful soft-spoken, an' so is your wife an' your sister an' your daughters. Dreadful soft-spoken! Plenty of soft soap runnin' all over every time you open your mouth. I don't want soft soap. Soft soap won't buy me bread an' butter, nor pay my debts. Folks won't take any soft soap from me instead of money. They want dollars an' cents, an' that's what I want every time, dollars an' cents, an' not soft soap. Yes, it's dollars an'—cents—and not so-ft soa-p.” Suddenly the dress-maker, borne high on a wave of hysteria, disclosing the innate coarseness which underlay all her veneer of harmless gentility and fine manners, raised a loud, shrill laugh, ending in a multitude of reverberations like a bell. There was about this unnatural metallic laughter something fairly blood-curdling in its disclosure of overstrained emotion. She laughed and laughed, while the room was silent except for that, and every eye was fixed upon her. Poor, little Estella Griggs, of all that accusing company of Arthur Carroll's petty creditors, had the floor. She laughed and laughed. She threw back her head. Her plumed hat was tilted rakishly one side; her frizzes tossed high above her forehead, revealing the meagre temples; her skinny throat seemed to elongate above her ribboned collar; her thin cheeks, folded into a multitude of lines by her distorting mirth, glowed with a hard red; her eyes gleamed with a glassy brilliance. Then, suddenly, that long, skinny throat seemed to swell visibly. She choked and gurgled, then came a wild burst of sobbing. Hysteria had reached its second stage. It was frightful.
“Good God!” said one of the horsemen, under his breath.
“That's so,” said the other. “Let's git out of this.”
They elbowed their way out of the room. “See you again,” one of them said, curtly, to Carroll as he passed.
“See you to-morrow about that little affair of ours, an' by G—, you've got to pony up, you can take your oath on that, an' don't you forget it,” whispered the other in Carroll's ear, with a fierce emphasis, and yet he half grinned with a masculine sympathy in this ultra crisis.
“It's gitting too thick,” said the other horseman. “See you to-morrow, and, by G—, you've got to do somethin' or there'll be trouble.”
Carroll nodded. He was ashy white. He had strong nerves, but he was delicately organized, man though he was, and with unusual self-control. He felt now a set of sensations verging on those displayed by the laughing, sobbing woman before him. He was conscious of an insane desire to join in that laugh, in those sobbing shrieks. His throat became constricted, his hands became as ice. The tragic absurdity of the situation filled him at once with a monstrous mirth and grief. The antitheses of emotion struggled together within him. He looked at the little, frantic creature before him, and opened his mouth to speak, but he said nothing. Anna Carroll caught his elbow.
“Come away, Arthur,” she whispered.
She was trembling herself, but she had been braced to something of this kind from being a woman herself, and was not so intimidated. Carroll strove to speak again. Minna Eddy suddenly joined in her torrent of vituperation with the dress-maker's. She caught up the soft-soap idea with a peal of laughter more sustained than that of Madame Griggs, for she had a better poise of mentality, and her wrath was untempered with the grief and self-pity of a small, helpless woman who was fitted by nature for petting rather than for warfare.
“Soft soap!” shouted Minna Eddy, while her small husband vainly clutched at her petticoats. “Soft soap! Lord! I makes my own soft soap. I has plenty to clean with. I don't want no soft soap. I want money.” She laughed loud and long, a ringing, mocking peal. Madame Griggs's loud sobbing united with it. The dissonance of unnatural mirth and grief was ghastly.
“Good God! Hear them!” whispered Sigsbee Ray to the druggist.
“I'd rather owe fifty men than one woman,” the druggist whispered back.
Lee edged nearer the women and strove to speak. He had a purpose.
Carroll, gazing at the women in a fascinated way, again opened his mouth in vain, and again Anna dragged backward at his arm.
“For Heaven's sake, Arthur, come out of this,” she whispered, and he yielded for the second. He let himself be impelled to the door, then suddenly he recovered himself and stepped forward with an accession of dignity and authority which carried weight even in the face of hysterical unreason. He raised his hand and spoke, and there was a hush. Madame Griggs and Minna Eddy remained quiet, like petrified furies, regarding the man's pale face of assertive will.
“I beg you to be quiet a moment and listen to me,” he said. “I can do nothing for any of you to-night, and, what is more, I will not do anything to-night. It is impossible for me to deal with you in such an unexpected fashion as this, in such numbers. I have not gone into bankruptcy; no meeting of my creditors had been called. I have and you have no legal representative here. Now I am going, and I advise you all to do likewise. I beg you to excuse me. I know you all, I know the amount of my indebtedness to you all, and I promise you all, if I live, the very last dollar I owe you shall be paid. You must, however, give me a little time, or nobody will get anything. I will communicate with you all later on. Nobody shall lose anything, I say. Now you must excuse me.”
“Look at him; he's sick,” whispered the pretty stenographer to the other, whose soft, little sob of response alone broke the hush as Carroll went out with his sister at his side. Their shadows moved across the room as they ascended the stairs in the hall. The creditors, left alone, regarded one another in a hesitating fashion. The two women, Minna Eddy and Estella Griggs, remained quiet. Presently the two butchers and the dry-goods merchant, standing about the Oriental rug, quite a fine Bokhara, resumed their whispered colloquy regarding it, then they went out. Lee began talking to the druggist and the postmaster, with Willie Eddy at his elbow listening eagerly.
“Carroll's sick,” said Lee, with a curious effect of partisanship towards himself, as well as Carroll. “He's sick, and it is too bad. His nerves are a wreck.”
“Well, our nerves are becoming wrecks,” the postmaster rejoined, dryly.
“That's so,” said the druggist, with a worried look. “I don't know but I'll have to mortgage my stock. I've lost more than I can afford in that United Fuel.”
“I don't like to own up I've been bit,” said the postmaster, “but when it comes to being sick, and nerves being wrecks, there are others with full as much reason as Carroll.”
“He'll pay up every cent,” said Lee, eagerly.
“Maybe he will pay his debts,” said the postmaster. “I am not going to say he won't. I suppose he means to. But when it comes to making things good, when he has simply led you by the nose into disastrous speculations, I don't know. Bigger men than Arthur Carroll don't do it.”
“That's so,” said Drew. “It's one thing to pay your butcher's bill in the long run, and be above stealing goods off the counter, but a man can cheat his fellow-men in a stock trade and think pretty well of himself, and other folks think well of him.”
“That's so,” said Sigsbee Ray.
“I haven't any doubt that he will arrange that,” said Lee. “And, for that matter, the United Fuel may look up yet. I had a prospectus—”
“Prospectus be damned!” said the postmaster. He seldom used an oath, and his tongue made a vicious lurch over it.
The druggist gave an enormous sigh. “Well, it won't come up to-night, and I've left my little boy alone in the store,” said he. “I've got to be going.”
“So have I,” said the postmaster. “My wife is alone.”
“My wife always stands up for Carroll,” said Lee, trotting nervously after the other men as they left the room. “Says she guesses he will end up by paying his bills as well as other men that are blaming him.”
“Hope to God he will,” said the postmaster.
The clerk and the two stenographers from Carroll's office had been having their heads together over a time-table. They also slipped out after the three men. The elder one still sniffed softly in her handkerchief.
The young man looked around at the stair up which Carroll had disappeared, and winked as he went out. There were left Carroll's coachman, the Hungarian girl, Madame Estella Griggs, Willy Eddy, and his wife. The coachman heard a noise of pounding in the stable and ran out. Marie remained in the doorway looking at the others with her piteous red eyes; Minna Eddy advanced towards her.
“They owe you your wages, don't they?” said she, with no sympathy, but rather a menace.
Little Marie shrank back. “Yis,” said she, pursing her lips.
“You're a fool!” said Minna Eddy.
Marie smiled feebly at her.
Minna Eddy stood glaring around the room. Her husband was at her elbow, watching her anxiously.
“Come home now, Minna,” he pleaded.
But she stamped her foot suddenly. “I ain't goin' to stand it!” she declared. “I'm goin' to take what I can get, I be.” Her eyes rested first upon one thing, then another, then she looked hard at the Oriental rug, which the three tradesmen had discussed. Then she swooped upon it and began gathering it up from the floor.
“Oh, Minna! Oh, Minna!” gasped little Willy Eddy.
“You lemme be,” she said, fiercely. “I see'd them men lookin' at this. It ain't handsome, but it's worth good money. I heard something they said. I ain't goin' to lose all that money. I'm goin' to take what I can git, I be.”
“Minna, you—”
“Lemme be.”
“It ain't accordin' to law, Minna.”
“What do you s'pose I care about the law?” She turned to Estella Griggs, who was watching her eagerly, with a gathering light of fierce greed in her eyes. “If you take my advice you'll help yourself to something while you have the chance,” said she.
“Oh, Minna, it's stealin'! You'll be liable—”
“Liable to nothin'. Stealin'! If folks don't steal no more 'n I do, I'll risk 'em. I'm a-takin' my lawful pay, I be. If you take my advice, you'll take somethin', too.”
Minna Eddy moved from the room with the rug gathered up in a roll in her arms, but Marie had been gradually recovering herself. Now she came forward.
“You must not take that; that iss not your rug,” said she. “You must not take that.”
“Git out,” said Minna Eddy. She thrust at the Hungarian with her rug-laden arms, but the little peasant was as strong as she. Marie caught hold of the rug and pulled; Minna also pulled.
“You lemme go,” said Minna, with a vicious voice, but lowered, for obvious reason.
“You must not take that,” said Marie. She was, however, rather fainter-hearted than the other woman.
Minna suddenly got the mastery. The Hungarian almost tumbled backward. Minna, with the rug, was out of the room, her trembling, almost whimpering husband at her heels. Madame Griggs looked at Marie. Her distorted face was at once greedy, anguished, and cunning. She began to gasp softly.
“Oh! Oh!” said she. “Oh!”
Marie regarded her in wondering agitation.
“Water! water! quick! Oh, get some water!” moaned Madame Griggs. “I am faint! Water!” She sank into a chair, her head fell back. She rolled her eyes at the terrified girl; she gasped feebly between her parted lips.
Marie ran. Then up rose Madame Estella Griggs. She swept the tea-table of its little Dresden service and some small, silver spoons. She gathered them up in a little, lace-trimmed table-cover, and she fled with that booty and a sofa-pillow which she caught from the divan on her way out.
When Marie returned she stood gaping with the glass of water. She was not over-shrewd, but she took in at once the situation. She understood that the second lady had fled like the first, with the teacups, the spoons, the table-cover, and the sofa-pillow. She stood looking desolately around the room, and her simple heart tasted its own bitterness.
Charlotte had followed her father and aunt up-stairs that night, starting up softly like a shadow from her place in the hall. She went silently behind them until they reached the open door of Anna's room; then her father turned and saw her.
“You here, Charlotte?” he said.
“Yes, papa,” replied Charlotte, turning a pitiful but altogether stanch little face up to his.
He put his arm around her, drew her head against his shoulder, tipped up her face, and kissed her. “Go to bed now, darling,” he whispered.
“Papa, I can't; I—”
“There is nothing you can do, sweetheart; there is nothing for you to worry about. Papa will take care of you always, whatever happens. Go to bed now, and go to sleep, honey.”
“But, papa, I can't sleep. Let me stay and—”
“No, dear. There is nothing you can do. It will only worry me to have you stay. Go to bed, and put all this out of your mind. It will all come right in the end.”
Carroll kissed Charlotte again, and put her gently from him, and she disappeared in her own room with a suppressed sob.
“I am glad Ina is out of the way,” Anna said, but with no bitterness.
“So am I,” Carroll agreed, simply.
“I wish Charlotte had as good a man to look out for her,” said Anna.
Carroll straightened himself with quick pride. “I shall look out for her,” he said. “You need not think I am quite out of the running yet, when it comes to looking out for my own flesh and blood.”
“No, of course you are not, Arthur. I did not mean to imply any such thing,” Anna rejoined, hastily. “I was only— Come into my room. Amy is fast asleep by this time, and if she is not she has a headache, and you might as well try to consult with an infant in arms as Amy with a headache. And something has to be done.”
“Yes, you are right, Anna,” Carroll replied, with a heavy sigh.
“Those people will all go when they get tired of waiting. There is no use in our bothering with them any more to-night. Come in.”
Anna led the way into her room, and closed the door. A lamp burned dimly on the dresser amid a confusion of laces and ribbons. The whole room looked in a soft foam of dainty disorder. Anna did not turn the light up. She stood looking at her brother in the half-light, and her face was at once angry and tender.
“Well?” said she, with a sigh of desperate inquiry.
“Well?” rejoined Carroll.
“What next?”
“The Lord knows!”
“Something has to be done. We are up against a dead wall again. And for some reason it strikes me as a deader wall than ever before.”
Carroll nodded.
“We cannot stay in Banbridge any longer?” Anna said, interrogatively.
“We may have to,” Carroll replied, curtly.
“You mean?”
“There may be a little difficulty about getting out. We could not leave the State, anyhow, and—”
“And what? We can go somewhere else in the State, I suppose. I am not particularly in love with this section of the union, but it all makes little difference after one reaches a certain point.”
“Poor old girl!” said Carroll.
Anna looked at him, and her eyes suffused and her mouth quivered. Then she smiled her usual smile of mocking courage, even bravado. “Oh, well,” said she, “I have faced the situation and chewed my cud of experience for a good many years now, and I am used to it. I may even end up by tasting the sweet in the bitter.”
“You had as hard an experience in another line as I had. I don't know but it was harder.”
“No harder, I reckon,” Anna replied, almost indifferently. “It was the same thing—the doll stuffed with sawdust, and all that; you with a friend, and I with a lover. Well, it is all over now.”
“It isn't; that is the worst of it,” Carroll said, gloomily.
“I don't see why.”
“A sequence is never over. There is even all eternity for it.”
“Well, the first of the sequence is over, anyhow. All we have to consider is the succeeding stages.”
“That is about enough.”
Anna laughed. “I agree with you there, dear. Well, I suppose the stage of the sequence for immediate consideration is the feasibility of emerging into the next stage. You think it is likely to be more difficult for the wandering tribe of Carroll to make their exodus with grace and dignity than usual?”
“It rather looks that way now.”
“I suppose that promoting business, that business transacted in the New York office, got you into rather hotter waters than usual.”
Carroll nodded.
“Therewasan office, I suppose.”
Carroll nodded again, laughing a little. Anna laughed too. “One never knows,” said she. “I suppose that was a delegation from the office, to-night, the two pretty girls and the winking young man.”
“Yes,” said Carroll.
Anna had flung herself into an easy-chair beside him. Carroll remained standing. She leaned her head back and crossed her hands behind her neck in a way she had. She was a thing of lithe grace in her soft red silk. The dim light obliterated all the worn lines in her face. Carroll regarded her even in the midst of the distressful stress of affairs with a look of admiration. It was an absent-minded regard, very much as a mourner might notice a stained-glass window in a church while a funeral was in progress. It was the side-light of grace on affliction involuntarily comprehended, from long training, by the exterior faculties. Carroll even said, half perfunctorily:
“You look well to-night. That red gown suits you, honey.”
“The gown that that poor little beggar of a dress-maker is not paid for,” said Anna.
Carroll frowned. “I did not have enough for that,” he said. “It was impossible. I paid the other bills.”
“All dressmakers have to be cheated,” said Anna. “I never knew one that wasn't. I may as well reap the benefit of a universal law of cause and result, as some other woman.” Her voice rang hard, but she looked up affectionately at her brother. Suddenly she reached out her hand, caught his, and kissed it. “There is one thing we Carrolls pay in full, and never run in debt for, and that is our affection for and belief in one another,” said she. “We have our hearts full of one coin, anyway.”
“I suppose the world at large would prefer our pockets full of the coin of the realm,” answered Carroll, but he looked fondly down at his sister.
“I suppose so. If I had not worn this dress, I should send it back to that dressmaker.”
“But you have worn it.”
“Oh yes. Of course it is out of the question now. It is very pretty. Well, Arthur, if we go back far enough we are not responsible for this dress. We are responsible for none of the disasters which follow in our wake. That man down in Kentucky precipitated the whole thing. Arthur, you do look like a fiend whenever I mention that man!”
“I feel like one,” Carroll replied, coolly.
“Well, that man was directly responsible for the whole wreck—the general wreck, I mean. My own wreck is an individual matter, and, after all, I never fairly lowered my sails for that especial gale. I never will own to it.”
“You were a brave girl, Anna.”
“But the other wreck, the whole wreck, that man of yours is responsible for. And we were not half a bad lot, Arthur.”
“Maybe not; but when the ship breaks up, it does not make so much difference what the timbers were, nor how she was built.”
“I suppose you are right. Well, what is to be done with the old masts and sails and things?”
“I know what is to be done with a part of it.”
“What part of it?”
“Well, to depart from similes, the female contingency.”
“The female contingency?”
“Yes, and the juvenile. You and Amy and Charlotte and Eddy.”
“What do you mean, Arthur?”
“You are going down to Kentucky to the old place, to spend the winter with Aunt Catherine.”
“Aunt Catherine wrote you?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“I got the letter day before yesterday.”
“She invited us?”
“Yes, honey.”
“Not you?”
“There was no reason why she should invite me.”
“Aunt Catherine never had any feeling for you.”
“Perhaps she has had as much as I deserve. You know I have, to put it frankly, rather broken the record of an honorable family for—”
“For what?”
“For honor, dear.”
Then Anna broke out, passionately. “I don't care! I don't care!” she cried. “I don't care what she thinks; I don't care what anybody thinks! I don't care what you do or don't do, you are the best man that ever lived, Arthur.” She began to weep suddenly, feeling blindly for her handkerchief.
Carroll pulled her head against his shoulder. “Dear,” he whispered, “don't; you must not, darling, you are worn out. You are not well.”
“Arthur, are you sure—are you sure that you have not rendered yourself liable? Arthur, are you sure that they cannot arrest you for anything you have done this time?”
“Quite sure, Anna.”
“You have looked out for that?”
“Yes.”
“They can't arrest you?”
“No. Anna, you are nervous.”
“Martin was impudent yesterday, when you were out, about his pay. He talked about going to a lawyer.”
Carroll made an impatient movement. “If he does not stop coming to you about it—”
“He is afraid of you. Then Maria came and cried. She says she has lost her lover, because she did not have decent clothes to wear.”
“Anna, they shall not trouble you again. Don't, dear. Why, I never knew you to fret so before!”
“I never did. I never minded it all so much before. I think I am ill. There is a dull pain all the time in the back of my neck, and I do not sleep at all well. Then my mental attitude seems suddenly to have changed. I was capable of defiance always, of seeing the humor in the situation, even if it was such an oft-repeated joke, and such a mighty poor one; but now, even if I start with a glimpse of the funny side of it, suddenly I collapse, and all at once I am beaten.”
Carroll stroked her graceful, dark head. “There is nothing for it but you must go, honey.”
“Arthur, I will not. It may be better for the others, but as for me, I will not.”
“Yes, you will, Anna, honey.”
“Arthur Carroll!”
“You must, dear. Frankly, Anna, you know how I shall feel about parting with you all, but it will be a load off my mind. If a man is not able to care for his own, it is better for him and for them that they should go where they will be cared for.”
“You need not speak in that way, Arthur. You have done all you could. All this would never have been if it had not been for us, and your wanting us to have everything. We have been a helpless lot. None of us have ever blamed you or complained, not even Amy, baby as she is.”
“I know it, dear, but it is better for you all to go.”
“You have done all you could, always,” Anna repeated, in a curious, sullen fashion.
“Well, we will leave that. If Aunt Catherine takes you all this winter, it will go hard if I do not pay her in some way later on; but the point is now, you must all go.”
Anna shook her head obstinately.
Carroll bent down and kissed her. “Good-night, dear,” he said. “Try to sleep.”
“I wonder if those people are all gone.”
“Yes, I think so. I heard Marie lock the door. Good-night.”
Anna rose and threw her arms around her brother's neck. “Whatever happens, you have got your old sister left,” she said, with a soft sob.
“Nobody is going to attach her for my debts,” Carroll said, laughing, but stroking her head fondly.
“No, she is not an available asset. I never will go, Arthur. The others may do as they think best. I will not go.”
“Not to-night, Anna, honey,” Carroll said, as he went out of the room.
Anna Carroll, left alone, rose languidly, unfastened her red silk gown, and let it fall in a rustling circle around her. She let down her soft, misty lengths of hair, in which was a slight shimmer of white, and brushed it. Standing before her dresser, using her ivory-backed brush with long, even strokes, her reflected face showed absolutely devoid of radiance. The light was out of it—the light of youth, and, more than the light of youth, the light of that which survives youth, even the soul itself. And yet there was in this face, so unexpectant and quiescent that it gave almost the effect of dulness, a great strength and charm which were the result of an enduring grace of attitude towards all the stresses of life. Anna Carroll carried about with her always, not for the furbishing of her hair nor the embellishment of her complexion, but for the maintenance of the grace and dignity of her bearing towards a hard and inscrutable fate, a species of mental looking-glass. She never for a minute lost sight of herself as reflected in it. She had not been a happy woman, but she had worn her unhappiness like a robe of state. She had had a most miserable love-affair in her late youth, but no one except her brother could have affirmed with any certainty that it had occasioned her a moment's pang.
She was hopeless as regarded any happiness for herself in a strictly personal sense. She knew that her destiny as a woman had been unfulfilled, but she would rather have killed herself than pitied herself. She was as hard to herself and her own possible weakness as she was to anybody on earth, possibly harder. She cheated the dressmaker, she ate at the expense of others, as she would have cheated herself had she known how. It did not occur to her to go without anything which she could by any means get; not because she wanted it so keenly, as from another phase of the same feeling which had led Minna Eddy to appropriate the rug, and Estella Griggs the paraphernalia of the tea-table and the sofa-pillow. She had herself been duped in a larger sense; she was a creditor of Providence. She considered that she had a right to her hard wages of mere existence, when they came in her way, were they in the form of red silk gowns or anything else. She would admit no wrong in her brother, for the same reason, reserving only the right to condemn him at times on the boy's account. She began thinking about the boy as she went on with her preparations for bed. Her face lit up a little as she reflected upon the benefit it might be to Eddy to be in Kentucky. She thought of the dire possibility of serious complications for Arthur in this culminating crisis of his affairs.
“Better for the child to be out of it,” she said to herself, and that singular anger with Arthur for the sake of the boy, which was like anger with him for his own sake, came over her. She identified the two. She saw in Eddy the epitome of his father, the inheritor of his virtues and faults, and his retribution, his heir-at-large by the inscrutable and merciless law of heredity. “Yes, it is better for Eddy to be out of it,” she repeated to herself, with the same reasoning that she might have used had she been proposing to separate her brother's better self from his worse. But she resolved more firmly that she would not go herself. She would urge the others' going, but she would remain.
But in spite of Anna Carroll's resolve, she went to Kentucky with the others in two weeks' time. She had had quite a severe attack of illness after that night, and it had left her so weakened in body that she had not strength to stand against her brother's urging. Then, too, Mrs. Carroll had displayed an unexpected reluctance to leave. She had evinced a totally new phase of her character, as people who are unconquerable children always will when least expected to do so. Instead of clinging to her husband and declaring that she could not leave, with an underlying submission at hand, she straightened herself and said positively that she would not go. She was quite pale, her sweet face looked as firm as her husband's.
“I am not going to leave you, Arthur,” she said. “If your sister stays with you, your wife can. Your sister can go, and take Eddy, but your wife stays. I don't care what happens. I don't care if Marie and Martin do go. Marie is not cooking so well lately, anyway, and I never did like the way Martin went around corners. We can get new servants I shall like much better. I shall go into the City myself next week to the intelligence office. I am not afraid to go. I don't like to cross Broadway, but I can take a cab from the station. I will sit there in a row all day with those other women, until I get a good maid, if it is necessary. I don't care in the least if Marie and Martin do go. You can get another man who will turn the corners more carefully. And I don't mind because somebody took that rug—somebody—who was not paid. I think it was a very rude thing to do. I think when you take things that way it is no better than burglary, but I should not make any fuss about it. Let the woman have the rug. Although it does seem as if anybody had the rug, it ought to be that man we bought it of in Hillfield. You know he did not seem to like it at all, because he was not paid for it. But maybe he did not come by it honestly himself. He was a singular-looking man—a Syrian or Armenian or a Turk, and one never knows about people like that. I don't mind in the least; it is all right. And I don't care about the teacups and things. One of the cups was nicked, and I really like Sèvres much better than Dresden. I should have got Sèvres when I bought them, only the man who had the Sèvres I wanted would not give us credit. We had no charge account there. I don't mind in the least; but I think that dressmaker was very impolite to take the things, because, of course, we shall never feel that we can conscientiously give her any more of our custom; and we have given her a great deal of work, with dear Ina's wedding and everything, more than anybody in Banbridge. No, I don't mind in the least about these things. I can rise above that when it is a question of my husband. And when you talk of having to leave Banbridge, that does not daunt me at all. On the whole, I would rather leave Banbridge. I should like to live a little nearer the City, and I should like more grounds, and a house with more conveniences. For one thing, we have no butler's pantry here, and that is really a great inconvenience. Take it altogether, the house, and the distance from New York, I shall not be at all sorry to move. And” (Mrs. Carroll's sweet face looked hard and set, her gently pouting mouth widened into a straight line; she had that uncanny expression of docile and yielding people when they assume a firm attitude), “I shall not go away and leave you, Arthur,” she repeated; “Anna shall not stay here with you and I go to Aunt Catherine's. If any one stays, I stay. I am your wife, and I am the one to stay. I know my duty.”
“Amy, dear,” said Carroll, “it will really make me happier to know that you are more comfortable and happy than I can make you this winter.”
“I shall not be comfortable and happy,” said she. “No, Arthur, you need not pet me; I am quite in earnest. You treat me always as if I were a child. You do, and all the rest, even my own children. And I think myself that two-thirds of me is a child, but one-third is not, and now it is the one-third that is talking, and quite seriously. It is I who am going to stay with you, and not Anna.”
“Anna is not going to stay either, sweetheart,” Carroll said.
A quick change came over Mrs. Carroll's face. She looked inquiringly at her sister-in-law. “Anna said she would not go,” she said.
“She has thought better of it,” Carroll said, quietly.
“Yes, Amy, I am going,” Anna said, wearily, “and I don't think you had better decide positively to-night whether you will go or not. Leave it until to-morrow.”
“But how could you get along without anybody to keep house for you all winter, Arthur?” asked Mrs. Carroll.
“As thousands of men get along,” Carroll replied. “I can take my meals at the inn, and somebody could be got to come by the day and see to the furnace and the house.”
“I suppose somebody could,” Mrs. Carroll agreed, a frown of reflection on her smooth forehead.
She wept piteously when it came to parting, two weeks later, but she went.
They all started early in the morning. Carroll accompanied them to the station, and was well aware of an unusual number of persons being present to see the train start. He knew the reason: a rumor had gotten about that he as well as his family was to leave Banbridge and the State. He knew that if he had made a motion to get on the train, there might have been a scene, and he bade his family good-bye on the platform, before his covert audience of creditors. Lee was there, ostentatiously shaking hands with the ladies, but secretly watchful. Tappan was surlily attentive, leaving his milk-wagon tied in front of the station. Minna Eddy and Willy had driven down in their wagon from their little farm. Four children were huddled in behind. Minna had gotten out and stood on the platform. Willy sat on the seat holding the baby and the reins. There had been a thaw; the roads outside were heavy, and their old mule was harnessed up with their old horse. Willy had been somewhat afraid to come.
“Suppose he should make a fuss about that,” he said, pointing to the Bokhara rug which adorned their little sitting-room.
“I ain't afraid of his making any fuss about that old mat,” said Minna; “I guess he knows what he's about. It's him that's afraid, an' not me. An old mat that's worth about fifty cents! It ain't half so pretty as one that Frank Olsen's wife got in New Sanderson for four dollars and ninety-eight cents. I'm goin' to have some more of them things, an' he ain't goin' to git out of Banbridge, if I have to hang on to his coat-tails. You lemme go, Willy Eddy.”
Therefore they came, starting before daylight in the frosty morning. Carroll was conscious of them all, of the druggist and the postmaster; of the two horsemen with whom he had had a half-settlement, and who were now about to force the remainder; of the two butchers and the dry-goods merchant, who had been exceedingly nasty about the rug, and persisted in thinking that the Carrolls were responsible for its disappearance. They had now other chattels in view, and were only delayed from taking prompt measures by the uncertainty as to what belonged to Carroll, or to his wife, or to the owner of the house. There was also lurking around the corner of the station, but quite ready for immediate action should it be necessary, another man, who represented the arm of the local law. There was also Madame Estelle Griggs, and, curiously enough, the sight of that little, meagre-bedecked figure and that small, rasped, piteous face of nervous suspicion affected Carroll more forcibly than did any of the others. He was conscious of a sensation of actual fear as he caught sight of the waving plume, of the wiry frizzes, of the sharp, frost-reddened face, of those watchful, unhappy eyes. He realized that if she should make a scene there, if he should hear again that laugh and those wailing sobs, he could not answer for what he might do. There even flashed across his mind a mental picture of the on-rush of the train, and of a man hurling himself before it, to get for once and all out of sight and sound of the unspeakable, grotesque, unmanning shame of the thing. It was when he saw her that he resolved that he would not put his foot on the train, lest she might think he meant to go. However, she would probably have made no manifestation. She was herself in mortal terror of retribution because of the things which she had confiscated in payment of her debt. She had little of Minna Eddy's strength of confidence in her own proceedings. She had, however, consoled herself by the reflection that possibly nobody knew that she had taken them. She had hidden them away under her mattress, and slept uneasily on the edge of the bed, lest she break the cups and saucers. If it had not been so early in the morning, presumably too early for visitors from the City, she would not have dared show herself at the station. In these days she sewed behind closed doors, with her curtains down. She went to her customer's houses for tryings-on, instead of having her patrons come to her. She was always ready, working with her eyes at the parting of the curtains, to flee down a certain pair of outside back-stairs, and cut across the fields, should men be sent out from the City to collect money. Rosenstein's store was under her little apartment, and she knew she could trust him not to betray her. The dressmaker was in these days fairly tragic in appearance, with a small and undignified, but none the less real, tragedy. It was the despair of a small nature over small issues, but none the less despair. Carroll would have paid that bill first of all, had he had the money, but none but himself knew how little money he had. Had the aunt in Kentucky not sent the wherewithal for the railway fares, it was hard to be seen how the journey could have been taken at all. It had even occurred to Carroll that some jewelry must needs be sacrificed. He had made up his mind, in that case, that Anna would be the one to make the sacrifice. She had an old set of cameos from her grandmother, which he knew were valuable if taken to the right place. Anna had considered the matter, and would have spared him the suggestion had not the check come from the aunt to cover all the expenses of the trip, with even some to spare. With the extra, Mrs. Carroll insisted upon buying a new hat for Charlotte. Charlotte that morning showed little emotion. She was looking exceedingly pretty in the new hat and her little, blue travelling-gown. Madame Griggs eyed that and reflected that she had not made it herself, that it must have been a last winter's one, although it had kept well in style, and she wondered if the dressmaker who made it had been paid. Charlotte in parting from her father showed no emotion. He kissed her, and she turned away directly and entered the train. There was an odd expression on her face. She had not spoken a word all the morning except to whisper to Eddy to be still, when he remarked, loudly, on the number of people present at the station.
“All this crowd isn't going, is it?” he demanded.
“Hush!” Charlotte whispered, peremptorily, and he looked curiously at her.
“What is the matter with you this morning, anyhow?” he inquired, loudly. Eddy had in a leash a small and violently squirming puppy, which had lately strayed to the Carroll place, and been found wagging and whining ingratiatingly around the stable. Eddy had adopted it, and even meditated riding in the baggage-car to relieve its loneliness should the conductor prove intractable concerning its remaining in the passenger-coach. Eddy, of the whole party of travellers, was the only one who presented an absolutely undisturbed and joyously expectant countenance. He had the innocent selfishness of childhood. He could still be single-eyed as to the future, and yet blameless. He loved his father, but had no pangs at parting, when the wonders of the journey and the new country were before him. His heart also delighted in the puppy, leaping and abortively barking at his side. He kissed his father good-bye as the train approached, and was following the others, with the little dog straining at his leash, when his onward progress was suddenly arrested, another grimy little hand tugged at the leash.
“Say, what you goin' off with my dog for?” demanded the owner of the hand, another boy, somewhat older than Eddy, and one of his schoolmates.
Eddy, belligerent at once, faced about. He caught up the wriggling puppy with such a quick motion that he was successful and wrenched the other boy's hand from the leash.
“It isn't your dog. It's my dog. What you talking about?” he growled back.
“You lie!”
“Lie yourself!”
“Gimme that dog!”
“It's my dog!”
“Where'd ye git it?” sneered the other, making clutches at the puppy.
“My papa bought him for me in New York.”
“Hm! All the way your father could git a dog like that is to steal him. Your father 'ain't got no money. You stole him. You steal jest like your father. Gimme the dog.”
The claimant boy laid such insistent hands on the puppy, and Eddy so resisted, that the little animal yelped loudly.
Carroll stepped up. His lips were ashy. This last idiotic episode was unnerving him more than all that had gone before. “Give that boy his dog,” he commanded Eddy, sternly.
Eddy clung more tightly to the little dog, and began to whimper. “But, papa—”
“Do as I tell you.”
“He came to our stable, and he didn't have any collar on, and a dog without any collar on—”
“Do as I tell you.”
But Eddy had found an unexpected ally. Anderson had come on the platform as the train approached. He was going on business to New Sanderson, and he had furtively collared the owner of the puppy, thrust something into his hand, whispered something, and given him a violent push. The boy fled. When Carroll turned, the boy who had been imperiously aggressive at his elbow was nowhere to be seen. Several of the by-standers were grinning. Anderson was moving along to be at the side of his car, as the train approached. It had all happened in a very few seconds. Eddy clung fast to the puppy. There was no time for anything, and the female Carrolls were pressing softly about for the last words.
“I don't think the puppy belonged to that boy,” Mrs. Carroll said. “He was just a little, stray dog.”
She had seen nothing of what Anderson had done, and neither had the others. There was manifestly nothing more to be done. It was an absurdity for Carroll to load himself up with that squirming puppy, when the ownership seemed so problematic. He bade them all good-bye again, and they got on the train. The women's pretty, wistfully smiling faces appeared at windows, also Eddy's, and the innocently wondering visage of the puppy. Anderson was in the smoking-car. As the train passed, Carroll saw his face at a window, and bowed, raising his hat half-mechanically. Anderson was conscious of a distinct sensation of pity for him, the more so that he was helpless and rebelliously depressed himself. He meditated upon the advisability of going into the other car, the Pullman, before the arrival of the train at New Sanderson, and bidding Charlotte farewell. He finally decided not to do so. He had no reason to think that she would care especially to have him, and while his self-respect, in spite of his perfect cognizance of the disadvantages of his position, was sufficient not to make him hesitate on that account, he had had a feeling against intruding upon the possible sadness of the ladies when making what they must recognize as a forced exit from their home under humiliating circumstances. It did not occur to him that they might possibly not feel so.
Carroll, left on the platform while the train steamed out of sight, in its backward trail of smoke full of rainbow lights in the frosty air, turned to go home. He was going to walk. Martin had driven the family to the station, and had himself gotten on the rear car of the train. He was about seeking employment in New Sanderson. One of the horsemen had driven off with the rig; the other was waiting for a word with Carroll. The discussion was short, heated, and profane on one side; calm, low, and imperturbable on the other.
“You'll have it in the end,” Carroll said, as he turned to go.
“The end has got to come pretty darned quick,” the other retorted, jumping into his little trotting-gig and spinning off.
The others of the crowd had melted away rather quickly. Minna Eddy had clambered into the wagon and gathered up the reins, while her husband retained the wailing baby. In truth, in spite of her bravado, she had some little doubts as to the wisdom of her confiscation of the rug. Madame Griggs, actuated by a similar doubt, also fluttered away swiftly down the street. The men also, upon making sure that Carroll was not intending to abscond, retreated. Carroll was quite alone when the horseman spun away in his gig, with its swift spokes flashing in blinding rings of light as he disappeared around the curve. It was one of those mornings in the fall when the air is so clear that the sunlight seems intensified. There had been a hard frost the night before, and a delicate rime was still over the ground, only melting in the sunniest spots. Only the oak leaves, a brownish-red shag mostly on the lower branches, were left on the trees. The door-yards were full of dried chrysanthemums, the windows gay with green-house plants. The air was full of the smell of smoke and coffee and frying things, for it was Banbridge's breakfast-hour. Men met Carroll on their way to the next train to the City, walking briskly with shoulders slightly shrugged before the keen wind. They bowed to him with a certain reserve. He met one young girl carrying a music-roll, who wore on her face an expression of joy so extreme that it gave the effect of a light. Carroll noticed it absently, this alien joy with which he had no concern. As the girl passed him, he perceived a strong odor of violet from her dainty attire, and it directly, although he was unaware of the connection, caused him to remember the episode of his discovering the two women, Mrs. Van Dorn and Mrs. Lee, spying out the secrets in his house. That same odor had smote his nostrils when he entered the door. He reviewed from that starting-point the succeeding stages of his stay in Banbridge, the whole miserable, ignominious descent from a fictitious prosperity to plain, evident disgrace and want. He was returning to his desolate house. Martin had gone, wretchedly and plainly incredulous of Carroll's promise to finally pay him every cent he owed him. Maria had packed her box, and tied two gay foreign handkerchiefs into bags to contain her ragged possessions. He was to be entirely alone. He could remain in the house probably only for a short time, until the owner should find a new tenant. He walked along with his head up, retaining his old stately carriage. As he turned the street corner on which his house stood, he saw a figure advancing, and his heart stood still. He thought he recognized Charlotte, incredible although it was, since he had just seen her depart on the train. But surely that was Charlotte approaching, although she carried strange parcels. The girl was just her height, she even seemed to walk like her, and she surely wore a dress of which Charlotte was very fond. It was of a dusky red color, the skirt hanging in soft pleats. The hat was also red with a white wing. There was fur on the coat, and Carroll could see the fluff of it over the girlish shoulders. He could see the stiff white gleam of the wing. Then he saw who it was—Marie, with a yellow handkerchief gathered into a bag in one hand, and a little kitten which she had cherished, in a paper bag in the other. The kitten's black head protruded, and it was mewing shrilly. Marie was radiant with smiles, and she wore Charlotte's dress. She had stolen up-stairs and viewed herself in the mirror in Mrs. Carroll's room, and she had hopes of herself in that costume even without any money in her pocket. She was dreaming her humble little love-dream again. She smiled up at Carroll in a charming fashion as they met.
“Good-bye,” said she, with her pretty little purse of the mouth. They had already had an interview concerning her wages that morning.
Carroll said good-bye with a stiff motion of his mouth. He realized that Charlotte had given Marie her dress. Somehow the sight of Marie in that dress almost made a child of the man.
Carroll, when he reached his house, went up to the front door, unlocked it, and entered. At once there smote upon his consciousness that strange shock of emptiness and loneliness which has the effect, for a sensitive soul entering a deserted house, of a menacing roar of sound. He went through the hall to the little smoking-room or den on the right, opposite the dining-room, and the first thing which he saw on the divan was Charlotte's little chinchilla muff which she had forgotten. He regarded it with the concern of a woman, reflecting that she would miss it; and he must send it to her, and was wondering vaguely about a suitable box, when he became aware of a noise of insistent knocking mounting in a gradual crescendo from propitiatory timidity to confidence. The knocking was on the kitchen door, and Carroll went hurriedly through the house. When he reached the door it was open, and a tramp was just entering, with head cautiously thrust forward. When he saw Carroll, the unshaven, surly face manifestly became dismayed. He turned to go, with a mutter which savored of appeal, excuse, and defiance, but Carroll viciously accelerated his exit with a thrust between the shoulders.
“What the devil are you doing here?” demanded Carroll.
The man, rolling surly yet intimidated eyes over his shoulder, after a staggering recovery from a fall, muttered something in an unintelligiblepatois, the grovelling, slurring whine of his kind.
“Well, get out of this!” shouted Carroll.
The man went, shuffling along with a degree of speed, lifting his clumsily shod feet with a sort of painful alacrity as if they were unduly heavy. His back, in its greenish-brown coat, was bent. He was not a very young man, although vigorous. Carroll stood looking at the inglorious exit of this Ishmael, and he was conscious of a feeling of exhilaration. He felt an agreeable tingling in his fists, which were still clinched. The using of them upon a legitimate antagonist in whose debt he was not, and never had been, acted like a tonic. Then suddenly something pathetic in that miserable retreating back struck the other man, who also had reason to turn his back on and retreat from his kind; a strange understanding came over him. He seemed to know exactly how that other man, slinking away from his door, felt.
“Hullo, you!” he called out.
The man apparently did not hear, or did not think the shout meant for him. He kept on.
Carroll shouted again. “Hullo, you! Come back here!”
Then the man turned, and his half-scared, half-defiant face fronted Carroll. He growled an inarticulate inquiry.
“Come back here!” repeated Carroll.
The tramp came slowly, suspiciously, one hand slyly lifted as one sees a wary animal with a paw ready for possible attack.
“Wait here,” said Carroll, indicating the stoop with a gesture, “and I will see if I can find something for you to eat.”
The man reached the door and paused, and remained standing, still with that wary lift of hand and foot in readiness for defence or flight, while Carroll rummaged in the pantry, which was a lean larder. At last he emerged with half a pie and a piece of cake. He extended them to the tramp, who viewed them critically and mumbled something about meat.
“Take these and clear out, or leave them and clear out!” shouted Carroll, and again the sense of exhilaration was over him.
The man took the proffered food and slunk rapidly out of the yard.
Carroll laughed, and closed and bolted the kitchen door, which Marie had left unlocked. Then he returned to the den and sat down with the morning paper and a cigar. He skimmed over the contents, the rumors of wars, and cruelties, the Wall Street items, the burglaries, the fires, the defalcations, the suicides, the stresses of the world, creation old, enduring in their fluctuations and recurrences like the sea, beating with the same force upon the hearts of every new generation. Carroll, as he sat there idly smoking, fell to thinking abstractedly in that vein. He had a conception of a possible ocean of elemental emotion, of joy and passion, of crime and agony and greed, ever swelling and ebbing upon the shores of humanity. He had a mind of psychological cast, although it had been turned of a necessity into other channels. Finally he turned wholly to himself and his own difficulties, which had reached possibly the worst crisis of his life. He had never been in such a hard place as this. He had heretofore seen a loop-hole out, into another labyrinth in the end, it is true, still a way out. Now he saw none except one; that was into a fiery torture, and whether it was or was not the torture of beneficial sacrifice he could not tell.
As he sat there his face grew older with the laboring of his mind over the track of his failures and over the certain difficulties of the future. He sat there all the morning. Noon came, but he did not think of food, although he had eaten little that morning. He lit another cigar and took up the paper again, and read an account of the suicide of a bank defaulter by shooting himself through the brain. He fell to thinking of suicide in his own case, as a means of egress from his own difficulties, but he thought idly, rather as a means of amusement, and not with the slightest seriousness. He had a well-balanced brain naturally, and maintained the balance even in the midst of misfortune. However, a balance, however perfect, indicates by its very name something which may be disturbed. He thought over, idly, various means of unlawful exit from the world, and applied them to his own case. He decided against the means employed by the desperate bank cashier; he decided against the fiery draught of acid swallowed by a love-distracted girl; he decided against the leap from a ferry-boat taken by an unknown man, whose body lay unidentified in the morgue; he decided against illuminating gas, which had released from the woes of life a man and his three children; he thought rather favorably of charcoal; he thought also rather favorably of morphine; he thought more favorably still of the opening of a vein, employed by fastidious old Romans who had enough of feast and gladiators and life generally and wished for a chance to leave the entertainment. All this was the merest idleness of suggestion, a species of rather ghastly amusement, it is true, but none the less amusement, of an unemployed and melancholy mind. But suddenly, something new and hitherto unexperienced was over him, a mood which he had never imagined, a possibility which he had never grasped. His brain, tried to the extreme by genuine misery, tried in addition by dangerous suggestion, lost its perfect poise for the time. A mighty hunger and thirst—a more than hunger and thirst—a ravening appetite, a passion beyond all passions which he had ever known, was upon him, had him in its clutches. He knew for the first time the most monstrous and irresistible passion of the race, the passion for release from mortal existence, the passion for death. At that moment he felt, and probably felt truly, that had he been in dire peril, he would not have lifted a finger in self-preservation. He turned his eyes inward upon himself with greed for his own life, for his own blood, and back of that was the ravening thirst for release from the world and the flesh and the miseries which appertained to them, as one suffocating might thirst for air. He realized suddenly himself, stifling and agonizing, behind a window which he had no need to wait for an overruling Providence to open, which was not too heavy for his own mortal strength, which he could open himself. He realized that whatever lay outsidewasoutside; it was air outside this air, misery outside this particular phase which was driving him mad. His imagination dwelling upon the different means of suicide, now became judicial. He thought seriously upon the drawbacks to one, the advantages of another. Then since the man was essentially unselfish and fond of his own flesh and blood, he began to reflect upon the horror of a confessed suicide to them. He began to study the feasibility of a suicide forever undiscovered. He began to plan how the thing might distress his family as little as possible. His cigar went out as he sat and studied. The furnace fire was low and the room grew cold. He never noticed it. He studied and studied the best means of suicide, the best means of concealing it, and all the time the greed for it was increasing until his veins seemed to run with a liquid fire of monstrous passion, the passion of a mortal man for his own immolation upon fate, and all the time that sense of intolerable suffocation by existence itself, by the air of the world, increased.
He had now arrived at a state of mind where every new phase was produced by suggestion. He was, in a sense, hypnotized. Everything served to swing him this way or that, up or down. The sight of a little perfume-bottle on the table, a dainty glass thing traced over with silver, set him thinking eagerly of another little bottle, of glass with a silver stopper, his wife's vinaigrette which she was fond of using when her head ached. From that, the contemplation of inhaling aromatic salts, he went naturally enough to the inhaling of more potent things which assuage pain, and could assuage, if taken in sufficient quantities, the pain of life itself. He remembered the exaltation which he had experienced once when given chloroform for a slight operation. Directly the idea of repeating that blissful sensation seized upon him he was mad for it. To go out of life like that, to take that way of opening the window into eternity, into another phase of existence or into oblivion, what ecstasy! He remembered that when under the chloroform, a wonderful certainty, a comprehension, seemingly, of the true import of life and death and of the hereafter, had seized him. He remembered a tremendous assurance which he had received under the influence of the drug, of the ultimate joy beyond this present existence, of the ultimate end in bliss of all misery, of the tending of death to the fulness of life. He remembered a rapture beyond words, an enthusiasm of gratitude for such an immortal delight for the power which he had sometimes rebelled against and reviled for placing him in the scale of existence. He remembered how all his past troubles seemed as only stepping-stones to supernal heights, how he could have kissed them for thankfulness that he had been forced by an all-wise Providence over the agony of the ascent to such rapture. Immediately his thoughts centred upon chloroform. He looked across at the divan with its heaped-up pillows, and his mind, acting always from suggestion, became filled with the picture of his peaceful bed up-stairs, and himself lying thereon, oblivious to all his miserable cares and worries, passing out of reach of them on an ecstatic flight propelled by the force of the winged drug. He began to consider the possibility of obtaining chloroform. At once the instinct of secrecy asserted itself. He decided that he could not, under the circumstances, go into the drug-store in Banbridge and ask for a quantity of the drug sufficient for his purposes. He realized that to do so would be to incur suspicion. He doubted if he could maintain a perfectly unmoved countenance while asking for it. He felt that his face would bear evidence to his wild greed. He heard, as he sat there, the whistle, then the rumble of a heavy freight-train a quarter of a mile distant, and at once he thought of the feasibility of going to New York for the chloroform. He looked at his watch and reflected that he had lost the noon train. He also reflected as to the possible suspicion which he might awaken of going to join his family, and making his final exodus from the town and his creditors. He placed his watch in his pocket, and his eyes fell on the electric-light fixture, with a red silk shade over the bulb, and at once his mind conceived the idea of his going somewhere on the trolley-cars. He thought of going to New Sanderson; then dismissed that as not feasible. He knew too many people in that place, and had too many creditors. Then he thought of going to Port Willis, which was also connected with Banbridge by a trolley-line, and was about the same distance. Again he looked at his watch. It was nearly two o'clock. He wondered absently where the day had gone, that it was so late. He had not the least idea as to the times and seasons of the Port Willis trolley-cars, but he directly arose to make ready. As he did so he heard a distressful mew, and the black kitten which Marie had essayed to carry with her that morning made a leap to the window-sill. The little animal looked in, fixed his golden, jewel-like eyes on the man, and again uttered an appealing, accusatory wail. Then she rubbed her head with a pretty, caressing motion against the window-glass. She had evidently escaped from the Hungarian and sped home. Carroll opened the window, and the cat arched her back and purred, hesitating. Carroll waited patiently. Finally she stepped across the sill, and he closed the window. Then he called the cat into the kitchen, but he could find no milk for her, nothing except a tiny scrap of beefsteak. The cat followed him around the kitchen, slinking with her furry stomach sweeping the floor, and mewed loudly, with alert eyes of watchful fear, exactly as if she were in a strange place. The strangeness in the house intimidated her. She missed the wonted element of the human, and the very corners of her familiar kitchen looked strange to her. She would not even eat her meat, but ran under the table and wailed loudly, with wild eyes of terror on Carroll. He went out, shutting the door behind him, and her loud inquiring wail floated after him.
Carroll brushed his overcoat and hat carefully, and put them on. He went out of the house and took the road to the trolley-line. It was still very cold, and the rime of the morning lay yet on the shaded places. In the road, in the full glare of the sun, were a few dark, damp places. The sky was very clear, with a brisk wind from the northwest. It was at Carroll's back and urged him along. He walked quite rapidly. He had a curious singleness of purpose, as unreasoning and unreflective as an animal in search of food. He was going to Port Willis for chloroform to satisfy a hunger keener than any animal's, to satisfy the keenest hunger of which man, body and soul together, is capable, a hunger keener than that of love or revenge, the hunger for the open beyond the suffocating fastnesses of life. He met several people whom he knew, and bowed perfunctorily. One or two turned and looked after him. Two ladies, starting on a round of calls, Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Van Dorn, again looked forth from the window of Samson Rawdy's best coach, and at the intent man hurrying along the sidewalk.
“I wonder where's he going,” Mrs. Lee said, in a hushed tone. She was just approaching a house where they meditated calling, and she was rubbing on her violet-scented white gloves. Mrs. Lee looked worn and considerably thinner than usual, and she was uncomfortably conscious of her last season's bonnet. “My bonnet doesn't look very well to make calls,” she had remarked, when she entered the coach, hired, as usual, at her companion's expense.
“It looks very well indeed,” said Mrs. Van Dorn, in a covertly triumphant voice. She herself wore a most gorgeous new bonnet with a clump of winter roses crowning her gray pompadour. “It isn't the one you wore last winter, is it?” asked she.
“Yes,” admitted Mrs. Lee.
“You don't mean it! I thought it was new,” said Mrs. Van Dorn, lying comfortably.
“No, it's my old bonnet. I thought maybe it would do a while longer,” said Mrs. Lee, meekly.
“I heard yesterday that a good many folks in Banbridge had been losing money through Captain Carroll,” said Mrs. Van Dorn, with appositeness.
Mrs. Lee colored. “Have they?” said she.
“I heard so.”
“Who is that man coming?” said Mrs. Lee, quickly, striving to turn the conversation. Then she directly saw that the man was Carroll himself.
“Why, it's Captain Carroll himself!” said Mrs. Van Dorn, and then Mrs. Lee wondered, in her small, hushed voice, where he was going.
Samson Rawdy, driving, looked sharply at him. He even leaned far out from the seat after he had passed, and watched to make sure he did not take the road to the railroad station. Then he began, for the hundredth time mentally, calculating the amount that was still owing him. It was not much, only a matter of two dollars and some cents, but his mind dwelt upon it.
“Seems to me he looked queer,” Mrs. Lee remarked, thoughtfully, after Carroll had passed.
“How do you mean?”
“I don't know. There was something about the way he was walking made me think so. I suppose he doesn't know what way to turn.”
“Well, I don't pity him,” said Mrs. Van Dorn, with subdued vindictiveness. “I don't see what a man is thinking of to come into a place and conduct himself as he has done. They say he is in debt everywhere, and has cheated everybody who didn't know any better than to be cheated.”
Mrs. Van Dorn spoke with point. She had heard on very good authority that Mrs. Lee's husband had lost heavily through his misplaced confidence in Carroll. Mr. Lee knew that she knew, but she stood up bravely for the maligned man hurrying towards the Port Willis trolley-car.
“Well, I don't know,” said she. “You can't always tell by what people say. It always seems to me that Banbridge folks are pretty ready to talk, anyway. We don't know how much temptation the poor man has had, and maybe he never meant to cheat anybody.”
“Never meant!” repeated Mrs. Van Dorn, sarcastically. “Why, that is the way he has been doing right along everywhere he has lived. Why, I had it straight from a lady I met who had visited in Hillfield, New York, where they used to live before they came here. Never meant!”
“Maybe he didn't,” persisted Mrs. Lee. She was a grateful soul, and, even if capable of small and petty acts, was of fine grain enough to bear no rancor towards the discoverer of them; but the other woman was built on a different plan.
“I don't take any stock in him at all,” she said, with a species of delight. She looked out of the small, rear window of the coach as she spoke. “He's going to Port Willis,” she said. “He's getting in the trolley-car.”
Samson Rawdy also turned his head and saw with a strained side glance Carroll getting into the Port Willis trolley-car. Then he said: “G'lang!” to his horses, and they turned a corner with a fine sweep, while the ladies began getting their cards ready.
“I wonder what he's going to Port Willis for,” said Mrs. Van Dorn, reflectively and malignantly. “I suppose he's looking out for somebody to cheat over there.”
“Well, I pity him, poor man!” said Mrs. Lee. “If a man does cheat other folks, he can't do it without cheating himself worst of all, and it always turns out so in the end.”
As is often the way with a simple tongue, hers spoke more wisdom that it wot of. It was indeed quite true that poor Arthur Carroll, seating himself in the Port Willis trolley-car, had in the bitter end cheated himself worse than he had any of his creditors. He was more largely in his own debt than in that of any other man; he had, in reality, less of that of which he had cheated than had any of his victims. Hardly one of them all was in such sore straits as he, for in addition to his immediate personal necessities there was always the incubus of the debts. And he was starting forth upon this trip with the purpose in his overstrained, distorted brain of spending his last reserve, and incurring a debt to himself which should never be paid to all eternity.
Carroll seated himself in the car, which was already quite well filled; there was not much time to spare before its scheduled departure. He found a corner seat empty, and settled himself into it with a bitter little sense of self-gratulation for at least that minor alleviation of the situation. The corner seat in a Port Willis trolley-car had distinct advantages aside from the physical comfort, owing to the frequent crowding and the uncertain nature of the component elements of the crowd.