“You had a whole big glass jar of them, anyhow,” said he, “and I didn't have a single one. You might have given me some, and then I shouldn't have stolen them. It's your own fault. You ought not to have things that anybody else wants, when they haven't got money to pay for them. It's a good deal wickeder than stealing. It was your own fault.”
But Eddy had then to deal with his sister. She towered over him, pinker than her pink muslin. The ruffles seemed agitated all over her slender, girlish figure, like the plumage of an angry bird. She caught her small brother by the shoulders, and shook him violently, until the dark hair which he wore rather long waved and his whole head wagged.
“Eddy Carroll,” she cried, “aren't you ashamed of yourself? Oh, aren't you ashamed of yourself? Begging, yes,beggingfor candy! If you want candy, you will buy it. You will not beg it nor take it without permission. If you cannot buy it, you will go without, if you are a brother of mine.”
The boy for the first time quailed somewhat. He looked at her, and raised a hand childishly as if to ward off something.
“I didn't ask, Charlotte,” he half whimpered. “If he was to offer me any now, I would not take it. I would just fling it in his face. I would, Charlotte; I would, honest.”
“I heard you,” said Charlotte.
“I didn't ask him. I said if he had given me a little of that candy, I wouldn't have been obliged to take any. I said—”
“I heard what you said. Now you must come at once.”
Anderson said good-morning rather feebly. Charlotte made a distant inclination of her head in response, and they were gone, but he heard Eddy cry out, in a tone of reproachful glee:
“There! you've made me late at school, Charlotte. Look at that clock; it's after nine. You've made me late at school with all that fussing over a few old peppermint-drops.”
Anderson, after they were gone, sat staring out of the window at the green spray of the spring boughs. His mouth was twitching, but his forehead was contracted. This problem of feminity and childhood which he had confronted was too much for him. The boy did not perplex him quite so much—he did not think so much about him—but the girl, the pure and sweet unreason of her proceedings, was beyond his mental grasp. The attitude of reproach which this delicate and altogether lovely young blossom of a thing had adopted towards him filled him with dismay and a ludicrous sense of guilt. He had a keen sense of the unreason and contrariness of her whole attitude, but he had no contempt towards her on account of it. He felt as if he were facing some new system of things, some higher order of creature for whom unreason was the finest reason. He bowed before the pure, unordered, untempered feminine, and his masculine mind reeled. And all the time, deeper within himself than he had ever reached with the furthest finger of his emotions, whether for pain or joy, he felt this tenderness, which was like the quickening of another soul, so alive was it. He felt the wonder and mystery of the awakening of love in his heart, this reaching out with all the best of him for the protection and happiness of another than himself. He saw before him, with no dimming because of absence, the girl's little, innocent, fair face, and such a tenderness for her was over him that he felt as if he actually clasped her and enfolded her, but only for her protection and good, never for himself.
“The little thing,” he thought over and over—“the little, innocent, beautiful thing! What kind of a place is she in, among what kind of people? What does this all mean?”
Suspicions which had been in his mind all the time had developed. He had had proof in divers ways. He said to himself, “That man is a scoundrel, a common swindler, if I know one when I see him.” But suspicions as to the girl had never for one minute dwelt in his furthest fancy. He had thought speculatively of the possible complicity of the other women of the household, but never of hers. They were all very constant in their church attendance; indeed, Carroll had given quite a sum towards the Sunday-school library, and he had even heard suggestions as to the advisability of making him superintendent and displacing the present incumbent, who was superannuated. Sometimes in church Anderson had glanced keenly from under the quiet droop of languid lids at the Carrolls sitting in their gay fluff and flutter of silks and muslins and laces, and wondered, especially concerning Mrs. Carroll and her sister-in-law. It seemed almost inconceivable that they were ignorant, and if not, how entirely innocent! And then the expressions of their pretty, childish faces disarmed him as they sat there, their dark, graceful heads drooping before the divine teaching with gentle acquiescence like a row of flowers. But there was something about the fearless lift to Charlotte's head and the clear regard of her dark eyes which separated her from the others. She bloomed by herself, individual, marked by her own characteristics. He thought of her passionate assertion of the principles of her home training with pity and worshipful admiration. It was innocence incarnate pleading for guilt which she believed like herself, because of the blinding power of her own light. “She thinks them all like herself,” he said to himself. “She reasons from her knowledge of herself.” Then reflecting how Carroll had undoubtedly sent his son to return his pilfered sweets, he began to wonder if he could possibly have been mistaken in his estimate of the man's character, if he had reasoned from wrong premises, and from that circumstantial evidence which his experience as a lawyer should have led him to distrust.
Suddenly a shadow flung out across the office floor and a man stood in the doorway. He was tall and elderly, with a shag of gray beard and a shining dome of forehead over a nervous, blue-eyed face. He was the druggist, Andrew Drew, who had his little pharmacy on the opposite side of the street, a little below Anderson's grocery. He united with his drug business a local and long-distance telephone and the Western Union telegraph-office, and he rented and sold commutation-books of railroad tickets to the City.
“Good-day,” he said. Then, before Anderson could respond, he plunged at once into the subject on his mind, a subject that was wrinkling his forehead. However, he first closed the office door and glanced around furtively. “See here,” he whispered, mysteriously; “you know those new folks, the Carrolls?” With a motion of his lank shoulder he indicated the direction of the Carroll house.
Anderson's expression changed subtly. He nodded.
“Well, what I want to know is—what do you think of him?”
“I don't quite understand what you mean,” Anderson replied, stiffly.
“Well, I mean— Well, what I mean is just this”—the druggist made a nervous, imperative gesture with a long forefinger—“this, if you want to know—is hegood?”
“You mean?”
“Yes, is he good?”
“He has paid his bills here,” Anderson said. He offered the other man a chair, which was declined with a shake of the head.
“No, thank you, can't stop. I've left my little boy in the store all alone. So he has paid you?”
“Yes, he has paid his bills here,” Anderson replied, with a guilty sense of evasion, remembering the check.
“Well, maybe he is all right. I'll tell you, if you won't speak of it. Of course he may be all right; and I don't want to quarrel with a good customer. All there is—he came rushing in three weeks ago to-day and said he was late for the train, and he had used up his commutation and had come off without his pocket-book, and of course could not get credit at the station office, and if I had a book he would take it and write me a check. While he was talking he was scratching a check on a New York bank like lightning. He made a mistake and drew it for ten dollars too much; and I hadn't a full book anyway, only one with thirty-five tickets in it, and I let him have that and gave him the difference in cash—fifteen dollars and forty-two cents. And—well—the long and short of it is, the check came back from the bank, no good.”
“Did you tell him?”
“Haven't seen him since. I went to his house twice, but he wasn't home. I tried to catch him at the station, but he has been going on different trains lately; and once when I got a glimpse of him the train was in and he had just time to swing on and I couldn't stop him then, of course. Then I dropped him a line, and got a mighty smooth note back. He said there was a mistake; he was very sorry; he would explain at once and settle; and that's over a week ago, and—”
“Probably he will settle it, if he said so,” said Anderson, with the memory of the little boy who had been sent to return the stolen candy in his mind.
“Well, I hope he will, but—” The druggist hesitated. Then he went on: “There is something else, to tell the truth. One of his girls came in just now and asked me to cash a check for twenty-five dollars—her father's check, but on another bank—and—I refused.”
Anderson flushed. A great gust of wind made the window rattle, and he pulled it down with an irritated jerk.
“Do you think I did right?” asked the druggist, who had a nervous appeal of manner. “Maybe the check was good. I hated to refuse, of course. I said I was short of ready money. I don't think she suspected anything. She is a nice-spoken girl. I don't suppose she knew if the check wasn't good.”
“Any man who thinks so ought to be kicked,” declared Anderson, with sudden fury, and the other man started.
“I told you I didn't think so,” he retorted, eying him with some wonder and a little timidity. “But I declare I didn't know what to do. There was that other check not accounted for yet; and I can't afford to lose any more, and that's a fact. Then you think I ought to have cashed it?”
Anderson's face twitched a little. Then he said, as if it were wrung out of him, “On general principles, I should not call it good business to repeat a transaction of that kind until the first was made right.”
The druggist looked relieved. “Well, I am glad to hear you say so. I hated to—”
“But Captain Carroll may be as good pay in the end as I am,” interrupted Anderson. “He seems to me to have good principles about things of that kind.”
“Well, I'll cash the next check,” said Drew, with a laugh. “I must go back, for I left my little boy alone in the store.”
The druggist had scarcely gone before the old clerk came to the office door. “That young lady who was here a little while ago wants to speak to you, Mr. Anderson,” he said, with an odd look.
“I will come out directly,” replied Anderson, and passed out into the store, where Charlotte Carroll stood waiting with a heightened color on her cheeks and a look of mingled appeal and annoyance in her eyes.
“I beg your pardon,” she said, “but can you cash a check for me for twenty-five dollars? It will be a great favor.”
“Certainly,” replied Anderson, without the slightest hesitation. He was conscious that both clerks, the man and the boy, were watching him with furtive curiosity, and he was aware that Carroll's unreliability in the matter of his drafts had become widely known. He passed around the counter to the money-drawer.
“Money seems to be very scarce in Banbridge this morning,” remarked Charlotte, in a sweet, slightly petulant voice. She was both angry and ashamed that she had been forced to apply to Anderson to cash the check. “I have been everywhere, and nobody had as much as twenty-five dollars,” she added.
Anderson heard a very faint chuckle, immediately covered by a cough, from Sam Riggs. He began counting out the notes, being conscious that the man and the boy were regarding each other with meaning, that the boy's elbow dug the man's ribs. He handed the money to Charlotte with a courteous bow, and she gave him in return the check, which was payable to her mother, and which had been indorsed by her.
“Thank you very much indeed,” she said, but still in a piqued rather than very grateful voice. She really had no suspicion that any particular gratitude was called for towards any one who cashed one of her father's checks.
“You are quite welcome,” Anderson replied.
“It is a great inconvenience not having a bank in Banbridge,” she remarked, accusingly, as she went out of the door with a slight nod of her pretty head. Then suddenly she turned and looked back. “I am very much obliged,” she said, in an entirely different voice. Her natural gentleness and courtesy had all at once reasserted themselves. “I trust I have not inconvenienced you,” she added, very sweetly. “I would have waited until papa came home to-night and got him to cash the check. He was a little short this morning, and had to use some money before he could go to the bank, but my sister and I are very anxious to take the eleven-thirty train to New York, and we had only a dollar and six cents between us.” She laughed as she said the last, and Anderson echoed her.
“That is not a very large amount, certainly, to equip two ladies to visit the shopping district,” he said.
“I am very glad to accommodate you, and it is not the slightest inconvenience, I assure you.”
“Well, I am very much obliged, very much,” she repeated, with a pretty smile and nod, and she was gone with a little fluttering hop like a bird down the steps.
“He's got stuck,” the boy motioned with his lips to the old clerk as Anderson re-entered the office, and the man nodded in assent. Neither of them ventured to express the opinion to Anderson. Both stood in a certain awe of him. The former lawyer still held familiarity somewhat at bay.
However, there followed a whispered consultation between the two clerks, and both chuckled, and finally Sam Riggs advanced with bravado to the office door.
“Mr. Anderson,” he said, with mischief in his tone, and Anderson turned and looked at him inquiringly. “Oh, it is nothing, not worth speaking of, I suppose,” said Sammy Riggs, “but that kid, the Carroll boy, swiped an apple off that basket beside the door when he went out with his sister. I saw him.”
Anderson was in the state of mind of a man who dreams and is quite aware all the time that he is dreaming. He deliberately indulged himself in this habit of mind. “When I am ready, I shall put all this away,” he continually assured his inner consciousness. Then into the delicious charm of his air-castle he leaped again, mind and body. In those days he grew perceptibly younger. The fire of youth lit his eyes. He fed on the stimulants of sweet dreams, and for the time they nourished as well as exhilarated. Everybody whom he met told him how well he looked and that he was growing younger every day. He was shrewd enough to understand fully the fact that they considered him far from youth, or they would not have thus expressed themselves, but the triumph which he felt when he saw himself in his looking-glass, and in his own realization of himself, caused him to laugh at the innuendo. He felt that hewasyoung, as young as man could wish to be. He, as before said, had never been vain, but mortal man could not have helped exultation at the sight of that victorious visage of himself looking back at him. He did not admit it to himself, but he took more pains with his dress, although he had always been rather punctilious in that direction. All unknown to himself, and, had he known it, the knowledge would have aroused in him rebellion and shame, he was carrying out the instinct of the love-smitten male of all species. In lieu of the gorgeous feathers he put on a new coat and tie, he trimmed his mustache carefully. He smoothed and lighted his face with the beauty of joy and hope and of pleasant dreams. But there was, since he was a man at the head of creation, something more subtle and noble in his preening. In those days he became curiously careful—although, being naturally clean-hearted, he had little need for care—of his very thoughts. Naturally fastidious in his soul habits, he became even more so. The very books he read were, although he was unconscious of it, such as contributed to his spiritual adornment, to fit himself for his constant dwelling in his country of dreams. Certain people he avoided, certain he courted. One woman, who was innately coarse, although her life had hedged her in safely from impropriety, was calling upon his mother one afternoon about this time. She was the wife of the old Presbyterian clergyman, Dr. Gregg. She was a small, solidly built woman, in late middle life, tightly hooked up in black silk as to her body, and as to her soul by the prescribed boundaries of her position in life. Anderson, returning rather earlier than usual, found her with his mother, and retreated with actual rudeness, the woman became all at once so repellent to him.
“My son gets very tired,” Mrs. Anderson said, softly, as she passed the pound-cake again to her caller. “Quite often, when he comes in, he goes by himself and has a quiet smoke before he says much even to me.”
Mrs. Gregg was eating the pound-cake with such extreme relish that Mrs. Anderson, who was herself fastidious, looked away, and as she did so heard distinctly a smack of the other woman's lips.
“He grows handsomer and younger every time I see him,” remarked Mrs. Gregg when she had swallowed her mouthful of cake and before she took another.
Mrs. Anderson repeated the caller's compliment to her son later on when the two were at the supper-table. “Yes, she paid you a great compliment,” said she; “but, dear, why did you run out in that way? It was almost rude, and she the minister's wife, too.”
“I don't see how Dr. Gregg keeps up his necessary quota of saving grace, living with her,” said Anderson.
“Why, my dear, I think she is a good woman.”
“She is a bottled-up vessel of wrath,” said Anderson.
“My son, I never heard you speak so before, and about a lady, too.”
Anderson fairly blushed before his mother's mild eyes of surprise. “Mother, you are right,” he said, penitently. “I ought to be ashamed of myself, and I am. I know I was rude, but I did not feel like seeing her to-day. Of course she is a good woman.”
Mrs. Anderson looked a little reflective. Now that her son had taken a proper attitude with regard to her sister-woman, she began to feel a little critical license herself. “I will admit that she has little mannerisms which are not exactly agreeable and must grate on Dr. Gregg,” said she. As she spoke she seemed to hear again the smacking of the lips over the pound-cake. Then she looked scrutinizingly at her son. “But,” she said, “I do believe she was right, Randolph, about your looks.”
“Nonsense,” said Randolph, laughing.
It was a warm night. After supper they both went out on the front porch. Mrs. Anderson sat gazing at her son from between the folds of a little, white lace kerchief which she wore over her head, to guard against possible dampness.
“Randolph,” said she, after a while.
“What is it, mother, dear?”
“Do you feel well?”
“Of course I feel well. Why?”
“You look too well to be natural,” said she, slowly.
“Mother, what an absurdity!”
“It is so,” said she. “I had not noticed it until Mrs. Gregg spoke, but I see it now. I don't know where my eyes have been. You look too well.”
Randolph laughed. “Now, mother, don't you think that sounds foolish?”
Mrs. Anderson continued to regard him with an expression of maternal love and severity, which pierced externals more keenly than an X-ray. “No,” said she, “I do not think it is foolish. You look too well to be natural. You look this minute as young in your face as you did when I had you in petticoats.”
Randolph laughed loudly at that, but his mother was quite earnest.
She was not satisfied, and continued arguing the matter until she became afraid of the increasing dampness and went into the house, and the son drew a breath of relief. The mother little dreamed, with all her astuteness, of what was really transpiring. She did not know that when she had seated herself beside her son on the porch she had displaced with her gentle, elderly materiality the sweetest phantom of a beloved young girl. She did not know that when she entered the house the delicate, evanescent thing returned swifter than thought itself, and filled with the sweet presence that vacuum in her son's heart which she herself had never filled, and nestled there through a delicious hour of the summer night. She did not dream, as she sat by the window, staring out drowsily into the soft shadows and heard no murmur from her son on the porch, that in reality the silence of his soul was broken by words and tones which she had never heard from his lips, although she had brought him into the world.
Anderson never admitted to himself the possibility of his dreams coming true. While his self-respect never wavered, while he viewed himself with no unworthy disparagement, he still saw himself as he was: verging towards middle age, unsuccessful according to the standard of the world. He was one of those inglorious failures, a man who has failed to follow out his chosen course of life. He was one who had turned back, overcome confessedly by odds. He told himself proudly and simply that his earning of money was, to one simple and honest end—the prolonging of existence on the earth for the good of one's fellow-beings, and one's own growth; that he was attaining that end more completely in his little grocery store than he had ever done in his law-office. Yet always he saw himself, in a measure, as others saw him, and the humility of his position in the eyes of the world asserted itself. While he felt not the slightest bend in the erectness of his own soul because of it, while it even amused him, he never forgot the supercilious courtesy of the girls' father towards him. He recognized, even while feeling himself on superior heights, the downward vision of the man who robbed him. It was true that he paid scorn for scorn, but he was forced to take as well as give.
He also was not in the slightest doubt as to Charlotte's own attitude towards him. He understood to the full the signification of the word grocer for her. He was, to her mind, hardly a man at all, rather a mechanical dispenser of butter and eggs for the needs of a superior race. But he understood also the childish innocence and involuntariness of this view of hers. He recognized even the ludicrousness of the situation which perverted tragedy to comedy, almost Cyrano fashion. He compared himself to Cyrano.
“As well consider the possibility of marriage with a girl of her training, even although it is on a false basis, with a monstrosity of nose on my face, as with the legend of retail grocery across my scutcheon,” he told himself. He even laughed over it.
Therefore, being of a turn of mind which can rear for itself airy towers of delight over the values of insufficiency of life, and having an access of spirituality which enabled him to get a certain reality from them, he dreamed on, and let his new love irradiate his own life, like a man carrying a lantern on a dark path. There are those that are born to sunlit paths, and there are those whom a beneficient Providence has supplied with lanterns of compensation, and the latter are not always the unhappier nor the less progressive. Never admitting to himself the possibility of the actual presence of the girl in the house as his wife, he yet peopled the rooms with her. He rose up in spirit before her entering a door. There were especial nooks wherein his fancy could project her with such illusion that his heart would leap as if at the actual sight of her. In particular was there one window in the sitting-room which, being in a little projection of the house, overlooked a special little view of its own. From this window between the folds of the muslin curtains could be seen a file of blooming hollyhocks. Behind them a grassy expanse arose with a long ascent, and the rosette—like blossoms of pink and pale-gold, with gray-green bosses of leaves, lay against the green field like the design on a shield.
In this window was an old-fashioned rocking-chair cushioned softly with faded, rose-patterned chintz, and before it stood always a small footstool covered with dim-brown canvas on which was a wreath of roses done in cross-stitch by his mother in her girlhood. Anderson loved to see Charlotte sitting in this chair with her feet on the footstool, her pretty head leaning back against the faded roses of the chintz, the delicate curve of her cheek towards him, as she swayed gently back and forth and seemed to gaze peacefully out of the window at the hollyhocks blooming against the green hill. It was characteristic of the man's dreams that the girl's face in them was turned a little from him. She never saw him when he entered, she never broke the sweet silence of her own dreams within dreams, for him, and he never, even in dreams, touched the soft curve of that averted cheek, or even one of the little hands lying as lightly as flowers in her muslin lap. Anderson, the commonplace man in the grocery business, in the commonplace present, dreamed as reverently and spiritually of the lady of his love as Dante of his Beatrice, or Petrarch of his Laura. He would go down to the grave with his songs all unsung; but the man was a poet, as are all who worship the god, and not the likeness of themselves in him. As Anderson sat on the porch that summer night, to his fancy Charlotte Carroll sat on the step above him. Without fairly looking he could see the sweep of her white draperies and the mild fairness, producing the effect of luminosity, of her face in the dusk.
Then suddenly Charlotte herself dispelled the illusion. She passed by with her sister Ina and a young man. Anderson heard the low, sweet babble of girls' tongues and a hearty, boyish laugh before they came opposite the porch. He knew at once that Charlotte was one of the girls. He could not see them very plainly when they passed, for the moon had not yet risen and the shadows of the trees were dense. He had glimpses of pale contours and ruffling white draperies floating around the young man, who walked on the outside. He towered above them both with stately tenderness. He was smoking, and Anderson noted that with a throb of anger. He had an old-fashioned conviction that a man should not smoke when walking with ladies. He was sitting perfectly motionless when they came alongside, and all at once one of the girls, Ina, the eldest, perceived him, and started violently with an exclamation. All three laughed, and the young man said, raising his hat, “Good-evening, Mr. Anderson.”
Anderson returned the salutation. He thought, but was not quite sure, that Charlotte nodded. He heard, quite distinctly, Ina remark, when they were scarcely past, in a voice of girlish scorn and merry ridicule:
“Is the grocer a friend of yours, Mr. Eastman?”
Anderson was sure that he heard a “Hush! he will hear you!” from Charlotte, before young Frank Eastman replied, like a man:
“Yes, every time, Miss Carroll, if he will do me the honor to let me call him one. Mr. Anderson is a mighty fine gentleman.”
The girl's voice said something in response with a slightly abashed but still jibing inflection, but Anderson could not catch it. They passed out of sight, the cigar-smoke lingering in their wake. Anderson inhaled it with no longer any feeling of disapprobation. He slowly lit a cigar himself, and smoked and meditated. The presence on the step above him was for the time dispelled by her own materiality. The dream eluded the substance. Anderson thought of the young man who had walked past with a curious feeling of something akin to gratitude. “Frank Eastman is a fine young fellow,” he thought. He had known him ever since he had been a child. He had been one of the boys whom everybody knew and liked. He had grown up a village favorite. The thought flashed through Anderson's mind that here was a possible husband for Charlotte, and probably a good husband.
“He is an only son,” he told himself; “he will have a little money. He is as good as and better than young men average, and he is charming, a man to attract any girl.”
Anderson, when he had finished his cigar and one more, and had gone into the house to read a little before going to bed, quite decided that Charlotte Carroll was to marry young Frank Eastman. He walked remorselessly over the step where his fancy had placed her, and when he glanced at her pretty little nook in the sitting-room, as he passed through with his lamp and his book, it was vacant. Anderson felt a rigid acquiescence, and read his book with interest until after midnight.
In the mean time Charlotte, her sister Ina, and young Eastman sauntered slowly along through the shadowy streets of Banbridge. The girls held up their white gowns over their lace petticoats. They wore no hats, and their pretty, soft, dark locks floated like mist around their faces. The young man pressed Ina's arm as closely and lovingly as he dared. He was yet young enough and innocent enough to be in his heart of hearts as afraid of a girl as, when a child, he had been afraid of his mother. He thought Ina Carroll something wonderful; Charlotte he scarcely thought of at all except with vague approbation because she was Ina's sister. He took the girls into Andrew Drew's drug store for ice-cream soda. He watched, with happy proprietorship, the girls dally daintily with the long spoons in the sweet, cold mixture. Seen in the electric light of the store, they had a bewildering and fairly dazzling splendor of youth and bloom. Their faces, freshened to exquisite tints by the damp night air, shone forth from the floating film of dark hair with the unquestioning delight of the passing moment. There was in these young faces at the moment no shadow of the past or future. They were pure light. Young Eastman, eating his ice-cream, looked over his glass at Ina Carroll and realized the dazzle of her in his soul. She felt his look and smiled at him pleasantly, yet with a certain gay defiance. Charlotte caught both looks. She stirred her ice-cream briskly into the liquid and drank it.
“Come, honey,” she said to Ina. “It is time to go home.”
A man stood near the door as they passed and raised his hat eagerly.
“Who is that man?” Ina said to young Eastman when they were on the sidewalk.
“His name is Lee.”
When the party had gone out, Lee turned with his self-conscious, consequential air. Ray, the postmaster, was standing at the counter. Little Willy Eddy also was there. He lingered about the soda-fountain. Nobody knew how badly he wanted a drink of soda. He was like a child about it, but he was afraid lest his Minna should call him to account for the five cents.
“Pretty fine-looking girls,” observed Lee to Ray and Drew.
“Yes,” assented Ray. “You know them?”
“Well, no, not directly, but Captain Carroll and I are quite intimate in a business way.”
The druggist looked up eagerly. “You think he is good?” he asked.
“I have heard some queer things lately,” said the postmaster.
Lee faced them both. “Good?” he cried. “Good? Arthur Carroll good? Why, I'd be willing to risk every dollar I have in the world, or ever hope to have. He's the smartest business man I ever saw in my life. I tell you he's A No. 1. He's got a business head equal to any on the Street, I don't care who it is. Well, all I have to say,Iam not afraid of him! No, sir!”
“I heard he had some pretty promising stock to sell,” said the postmaster.
“Promising? No, it is not promising! Promising is not the word for it. It is sure, dead sure.”
Little Willy Eddy drew very near.
“What is it selling at?” asked Ray.
“One dollar and sixty cents,” replied Lee, with an intonation of pride and triumph.
“Cheap enough,” said Ray.
“Yes, sir, one dollar and sixty cents, and it will be up to five in six months and paying dividends, and up to fifty, with ten-per-cent. dividends, in a year and a half.”
Little Willy Eddy had in the savings-bank a little money. Before he left he had arranged with Henry Lee to invest it through his influence with the great man, Carroll, and say nothing about it to any one outside. Willy hoped fondly that his Minna might know nothing about it until he should surprise her with the proceeds of his great venture. Then Willy Eddy marched boldly upon the soda-fountain.
“Give me a chocolate ice-cream soda,” he said, like a man.
Three days later, at dinner, Charlotte Carroll said something about the difficulty she had had about getting the check cashed.
“It is the queerest thing,” said she, in a lull of the conversation, pausing with her soup-spoon lifted, “how very difficult it is to get a check for even a small amount cashed in Banbridge.”
Carroll's spoon clattered against his plate. “What do you mean?” he asked, sharply.
Charlotte looked at him surprised. “Why, nothing,” said she, “only I went to every store in town to get your check for twenty-five dollars cashed, and then I had to go to Anderson's finally. I should think they must be very poor here. Are they, papa?”
Carroll went on with his soup. “Who gave you the check to cash?” he said, in a low voice.
“Aunt Anna,” replied Charlotte. “Why?”
Anna spoke quite eagerly, and it seemed apologetically. “Arthur,” said she, “the girls were very anxious to go to the City.”
“Yes,” said Ina, “I really had to go that day. I wanted to get that silk. I had that charged; there wasn't money enough; but it has not come yet. I don't see where it is.”
“I let Charlotte take the check,” Anna Carroll said again, still with an air of nervous apology, “but I saw no reason why— I thought—”
“You thought what?” said Carroll. His voice was exceedingly low and gentle, but Anna Carroll started.
“Nothing,” said she, hastily. “Nothing, Arthur.”
“Well, I just went everywhere with it,” Charlotte said again; “then I had to go to Anderson, after all. I just hated to. I don't like him. He laughed when Eddy and I went there to take back the candy.”
“He laughed because we took it back—a little thing like that,” said Eddy.
Carroll looked at him, and the boy cast his eyes down and took a spoonful of soup with an abashed air.
“He was the only one in Banbridge that seemed to have as much as twenty-five dollars in his money-drawer,” said Charlotte. “I began to think that Ina and I should have to give up going to New York.”
“Don't take any more checks around the shops here to cash, honey,” said Carroll. “Come to me; I'll fix it up some way. Amy, dear, are you all ready for the drive?”
“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Carroll. She looked unusually pretty that night in a mauve gown of some thin, soft, wool material, with her old amethysts. Even her dark hair seemed to get amethystine shadows, and her eyes, too.
Carroll regarded her admiringly.
“Amy, darling, you do get lovelier every day,” he said.
The others laughed and echoed him with fond merriment.
“Doesn't she?” said Ina.
“Amy's the prettiest girl in this old town,” said Eddy, and all the Carrolls laughed like children.
“Well, I'm glad you all admire me so much,” Mrs. Carroll said, in her sweet drawl, “because—”
“Because what, honey?” said Carroll. The boy and the two girls looked inquiringly, but Anna Carroll smiled with slightly vexed knowledge.
“Well,” said Mrs. Carroll, “you must all look at me in my purple gown and get all the comfort you can out of it; you must nourish yourselves through your æsthetic sense, because this soup is all you will get for dinner, except dessert. There is a little dessert.”
Poor little Eddy Carroll made a slight, half-smothered exclamation. “Oh, shucks!” he said, then he laughed with the others. None of them looked surprised. They all laughed, though somewhat ruefully.
“Anna came this forenoon and asked me what she should do,” Mrs. Carroll said, in her soft tone of childlike glee, as if she really enjoyed the situation. “Poor Anna looked annoyed. This country air makes Anna hungry. Now, as for me, I am not hungry at all. If I can have fruit and salad I am quite satisfied. It is so fortunate that we have those raspberries and those early pears. Those little pears are quite delicious, and they are nourishing, I am sure. And then it is providential that we have lettuce in our own garden. And the grocer did not object in the least to letting last week's bill run and letting us have olive-oil and vinegar. I have plenty, so I can regard it all quite cheerfully; but Anna, poor darling, is hungry like a pussy-cat for real, solid meat. Well, Anna comes, face so long”—Mrs. Carroll drew down her lovely face, to a chorus of admiring laughter, Anna Carroll herself joining. Mrs. Carroll continued. “Yes, so long,” and made her face long again by way of encore. “And I said, ‘Why, Anna, honey, what is the matter?’ ‘Amy,’ said she, ‘this is serious, very serious. Why, neither the butcher nor the egg-man will trust us. We have only money enough to part pay one of them, just to keep them going,’ says she, ‘and what shall I do, Amy?’ ‘It's either to go without meat or eggs,’ says I. ‘Yes, Amy, honey,’ says she. ‘And you can't pay them each a little?’ says I, ‘for I am real wise about that way of doing, you know.’” Mrs. Carroll said the last with the air of a precocious child; she looked askance for admiration as she said it, and laughed herself with the others. “‘No,’ says poor Anna—‘no, Amy, there is not enough money for two littles, only enough for one little. What shall we do, Amy?’ ‘Well,’ says Amy, ‘we had chops for lunch.’ ‘Those aren't paid for, and that is the reason we can't have beef for dinner,’ says Anna. ‘Well,’ says Amy, ‘we had those chops, didn't we? And the butcher can't alter that, anyway; and we are all nourished by those chops, and dear Arthur has had his good luncheon in the City, and there is soup-stock in the house, and things to make one of those delicious raspberry-puddings, and we cannot starve, we poor but honest Carrolls, on those things; and eggs are cheaper, are they not, honey, dear?’ ‘Yes,’ says Anna, with that sort of groan she has when her mind is on economy—‘yes, Amy, dear.’ ‘And,’ says I, ‘Arthur always wants his eggs for breakfast, and he does not like cold meat in the morning, and if he went to business without his eggs, and there was an accident on his empty stomach, only think how we would feel, Anna. So we will have,’ says Amy, ‘soup and pudding for dinner, and eggs for breakfast, and we will part pay the egg-man and not the butcher.’ And then Amy puts on her new gown and does all she can for her family, to make up for the lack of the roast.”
“Did you say it was raspberry-pudding, Amy?” asked Eddy, anxiously.
“Yes, honey, with plenty of sauce, and you may have some twice if you want it.”
“Ring the bell, dear,” said Carroll.
“You don't mind, Arthur, do you?” Mrs. Carroll asked, with a confident look at him.
Carroll smiled. “No, darling, only I hope none of you are really going hungry.”
They all laughed at him. “Soup and pudding are all one ought to eat in such hot weather,” Charlotte said, conclusively.
She even jumped up, ran to her father, and threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, to reassure him. “You darling papa,” she whispered in his ear, and when he looked at her tears shone in her beautiful eyes.
Carroll's own face turned strangely sober for a second, then he laughed. “Run back to your seat and get your pudding, sweetheart,” he said, with a loving push, as the maid entered.
People thought it rather singular that the Carrolls should have but one maid, but there were reasons. Carroll himself, when he first organized his Banbridge establishment, had expressed some dissent as to the solitary servant.
“Why not have more?” he asked, but Anna Carroll was unusually decided in her response.
“Amy and I have been talking it over, Arthur,” said she, “and we have decided that we would prefer only Marie.”
“Why, Anna?” Carroll had asked, with a frown.
“Now, Arthur, dear, don't look cross,” his wife had cried. “It is only that when the truce is over with the butcher and baker—and after a while the truce always is over, you know, you poor, dear boy, ever since you—ever since you were so badly treated about your business, you know, and when the butcher and the baker turn on us, Anna and I have decided it would be better not to have a trust in the kitchen. You know there has always been a trust in the kitchen, and two or even three maids saying they will not make bread and roast and wash the dishes, and having a council of war on the back stoop with the baker and grocer, are so much worse than one maid, don't you know, precious?”
“The long and the short of it is, Arthur,” Anna Carroll said, quite bluntly, “it is much less wearing to get on with one maid who has not had her wages, and much easier to induce her to remain or forfeit all hope of ever receiving them, than with more than one.”
Only the one maid was engaged, and now Anna's prophecy had come to pass, and she was remaining for the sake of her unpaid wages. She was a young girl, and pretty for one of her sisterhood, who perpetuate, as a rule, the hard and strenuous lineaments and forms held to hard labor, until they have attained a squat solidity of ungraceful muscle. This little Hungarian Marie was still not overdeveloped muscularly, although one saw her hands with a certain shock after her little, smiling face, which still smiled, despite her wrongs. Nothing could exceed the sweetness of the girl's disposition, although she came of a fierce peasant line, quick to resort to the knife as a redresser of injuries, and quick to perceive injuries.
Marie still danced assiduously about her tasks, which were manifold, for not one of the Carroll women had the slightest idea of any accountability in the matter of household labor. It never occurred to one of them to make her bed, or even hang up her dress, but, instead, to wonder why Marie did not do it. However, if Marie really had an ill day, or, as sometimes happened, was up all night at a ball, they never rebelled or spoke an impatient word. The beds simply remained unmade and the dresses where they had fallen. The ladies always had a kindly, ever-caressing smile or word for little Marie. They were actually, in a way, fond of her, as people are fond of a pretty little domestic beast of burden, and Marie herself adored them. She loved them from afar, and one of her great reasons for wishing to stay for her wages was to buy some finery after the fashion of Charlotte's and Ina's. Marie had not asked for her wages many times, and never of Captain Carroll, but to-night she took courage. There was a ball that week, Thursday, and her poor, little, cheap muslin of last season was bedraggled and faded until it was no longer wearable. Marie waylaid Captain Carroll as he was returning from the stable, whither he had been to see a lame foot of one of the horses. Marie stood in her kitchen door, around which was growing lustily a wild cucumber-vine. She put her two coarse hands on her hips, which were large with the full gathers of her cotton skirt. Around her neck was one of the garish-colored kerchiefs which had come with her from her own country. It was an ugly thing, but gave a picturesque bit of color to her otherwise dingy garb.
“Mr. Captain,” said Marie, in a very small, sweet, almost infantile voice. It was frightened, yet with a certain coquetry in it. This small Hungarian girl had met with very few looks and words in her whole life which were not admiring. In spite of her poor estate she had the power of the eternal feminine, and she used it knowingly, but quite artlessly. She knew exactly how to speak to her “Mr. Captain,” in such a way that a smile in response would be inevitable.
Carroll stopped. “Well, Marie?” he said, and he smiled down into the little face precisely after the manner of her calculation.
“Mr. Captain,” said she again, and again came the feeler after a smile, the expression of droll sweetness and appeal which forced it.
“Well, Marie,” said Carroll, “what is it? What do you want?”
Marie went straight to the point. “Mine vages,” said she, and a bit of the coquetry faded, and her small smile waxed rather piteous. She wanted that new dress for the ball sadly.
Carroll's face changed; he compressed his mouth. Marie shrank a little with frightened eyes on his face.
“How much is it, Marie?” asked Carroll.
“Tree mont vage, Mr. Captain,” answered Marie, eagerly, “I haf not had.”
Carroll took out his pocket-book and gave her a ten-dollar note.
Marie reached out for it eagerly, but her face fell a little. “It is tree mont, Mr. Captain,” she ventured.
“That is all I can spare to-night, Marie,” said Carroll, quite sternly. “That will have to answer to-night.”
Marie smiled again, eying him timidly. “Yes, it will my dress get for the ball, Mr. Captain.”
Marie stood framed in her wild cucumber-vine, regarding the captain with her pretty ingratiation, but not another smile she got. Carroll strolled around to the front of the house, and in a second the carriage rolled around from the stable. Marie nodded to the coachman; there was never a man of her acquaintance but she had a pretty, artless salutation always ready for him. She shook her ten-dollar note triumphantly at him, and laughed with delight.
“Got money,” said she. Marie had a way of ending up her words, especially those ending in y, as if she finished them up with a kiss. She pursed up her lips, and gave a most fascinating little nip to her vowels, which, as a rule, she sounded short. “Money,” said she again, and the ten-dollar note fluttered like a green leaf from between the large thumb and forefinger of her coarse right hand.
The coachman laughed back in sympathy. He was still smiling when he drove up beside his employer at the front-door. He leaned from his seat just as the flutter of the ladies' dresses appeared at the front-door, and said something to Carroll, with a look of pleased expectation. That money in Marie's hand had cheered him on his own account.
Carroll looked at him gently imperturbable. “I am sorry, Martin. I shall be obliged to ask you to wait a few days,” he said, with the utmost courtesy.
The man's honest, confident face fell. “You said—” he began.
“What did I say?” Carroll asked, calmly.
“You said you would let me have some to-night.”
“Yes, I remember,” Carroll said, “but I have had an unexpected demand since I returned from the City, and it has taken every cent of ready money. I must ask you to wait a few days longer. You are not in serious need of anything, Martin?”
“No, sir,” said the man, hesitatingly.
“I was going to say that if you were needing any little thing you might make use of my credit,” said Carroll. As the ladies, Mrs. Carroll and Miss Carroll, came up to the carriage, Carroll thrust his hand in his pocket and drew forth a couple of cigars, which he handed to the coachman with a winning expression. “Here are a couple of cigars for you, Martin,” he said.
“Thank you, sir,” replied the coachman.
He put the cigars in his pocket and took up the lines. As he drove down the drive and along the shady Banbridge road he was wondering hard if Marie had got the money which Carroll had intended to pay him. He did not mind so much if she had it. Marie was Hungarian, and Martin had not much use for outlandish folk on general principles, but he had a sneaking admiration for little Marie. “Now she can go to her ball,” thought he. Marie said the word as if it had one l and a short a—bal. Martin smiled inwardly at the recollection, though he did not allow his face of important dignity to relax.
He thought, further, that, after all, he need not worry about his own pay. Carroll had paid Marie and would pay him. He thought comfortably of the cigars, which were sure to be good. His original respect and admiration for his employer swelled high in his heart. He felt quite happy driving his high-stepping horses over the good road. The conversation of the ladies at his back, and of Carroll at his side, passed his ears, trained not to hear, as unintelligibly as the babble of the birds. Martin had no curiosity.
While their elders were driving, the Carroll sisters and the brother were all out on the front porch. Ina was rocking in a rattan chair, Charlotte sat on the highest step of the porch leaning against a fluted white pillar, the boy sprawled miserably on the lowest step.
“It's awful dull,” he complained.
Charlotte looked down at him commiseratingly from her semicircle of white muslin flounces. “I'll play ball with you awhile, Eddy, dear,” said she.
The boy sniffed. “Don't want to play ball with a girl,” he replied.
Charlotte said nothing.
Eddy twitched with his face averted. Then suddenly he looked up at his sister. “Charlotte, I love to play ball with you,” said he, sweetly, “only, you see, I can't pitch hard enough, your hands are so awful soft, and I feel like I could pitch awful hard to-night.”
“Well, I tell you what you may do, dear,” said Ina.
“What?”
“Go down to the post-office and get the last mail.”
Eddy started up with alacrity. “All right,” said he.
“And you may run up-stairs to my room,” said Charlotte, “and hunt round till you find my purse, and get out ten cents and buy yourself an ice-cream.”
Eddy was up and out with a whoop.
“Are you expecting a letter, honey?” asked Charlotte of her sister.
Ina laughed evasively. “I thought Eddy would like to go,” said she.
“Now, Ina, I know whom you are expecting a letter from; you can't cheat me.”
Ina laughed rather foolishly; her face was pink.
Charlotte continued to regard her with a curious expression. It was at once sad, awed, and withal confused, in sympathy with the other girl. “Ina,” said she.
“Well, honey?”
“I think you ought to tell me, your own sister, if you are—”
“What—”
“Ina, I really think—”
“Oh, hush, dear!” Ina whispered. “Here comes Mr. Eastman.”
Young Frank Eastman, in his light summer clothes, came jauntily around the curve of the drive, his straw hat in hand, and the sisters fluttered to their feet to greet him. Then Eddy reappeared with the dime securely clutched, and inquired anxiously of Charlotte if she cared whether he bought soda or candy with it. Young Eastman ran after him down the walk and had a whispered conference. When the boy returned, which was speedily, he had a letter for his sister Ina and a box of the most extravagant candy which Banbridge afforded. The young people sat chatting and laughing and nibbling sweets until nearly ten o'clock. Then young Eastman took his leave.
He was rather desirous to be gone before Captain Carroll returned. Although Carroll always treated him with the most punctilious courtesy, even going out of his way to speak to him, the young man always felt a curious discomfort, as if he realized some covert disapprobation on the elder's part.
“They are late,” Ina said, after the caller's light coat had disappeared behind the shrubbery.
“I suppose they waited for the moon to rise,” Charlotte replied. “You know Amy dearly loves to drive by moonlight.”
“Well, let's go to bed, and not wait,” Ina said, with a yawn. “I'm so sleepy.” She had sat with her letter unopened in her lap all evening.
“All right,” assented Charlotte.
“I'm going to sit here till they come,” said Eddy.
“Very well,” said Charlotte, “but mind you don't stir off the porch.”
The two girls went up to their own rooms. They occupied adjoining ones. Charlotte slept in a small room out of the larger one which was Ina's.
Charlotte came in from her room brushing out her hair, and Ina was reading her letter. She looked up with a blushing confusion and crumpled the paper involuntarily.
“Oh, you needn't start so,” said Charlotte. “I know whom the letter is from. It's that old Major Arms.”
“He is not old. He is no older than papa, and you don't call him old,” Ina retorted, resentfully.
“I don't call him old for a father, but I would for—”
“Well, he isn't a—yet.”
“Ina, you ought to tell me.”
“Well, I'm going to marry Major Arms, so there!”
“Oh, Ina!”
The two girls stood staring at each other for a moment, then they ran to each other. “Oh, Charlotte! oh, Charlotte!” sobbed Ina, convulsively.
“Oh, Ina! oh, honey!”
“I'm going to, Charlotte. Oh, I am going to!”
“Ina, do you, do you—”
“What?”
“Love that old Major Arms?” Charlotte spoke out, in a tone of almost horror.
“I don't know. Oh, I don't know,” sobbed Ina.
“Ina, you don't love—Mr. Eastman better?”
“No, I don't,” replied Ina, in a tone of utter conviction. “Charlotte, do you know what would happen if I married Mr. Eastman? Do you?”
“No, I don't.”
“All my life long I would be at war with the butcher and baker, just as—just as we always are.”
“Ina Carroll, you aren't getting married just for that? Oh, that is dreadful!”
“No, I am not,” said Ina. “You call Major Arms old, and you don't see—you don't see how a girl can ever fall in love with him, but—I think he's splendid. Yes, I do. You can laugh, Charlotte, but I do. And it is a good deal to marry a man you can honestly say you think is splendid! But you can do a thing, for a very good, even a noble reason, and all the time know there is another reason not quite so noble, that you can't help but take some comfort in. And that is the way I do with this. Charlotte, poor papa does just the best he can, and there never was a man like him; Major Arms isn't anything in comparison with papa. I never thought he was, but there is one thing I am very tired of in this world, and I can't help thinking with a good deal of pleasure that when I am married I will be free from it.”
“What is that, honey?” The two girls had sat down on Ina's window-seat, and were nestling close together, with their arms around each other's waist, and the two streams of dark hair intermingling.
“I am heartily tired,” said Ina, in a tone of impatient scorn, “of this everlasting annoyance to which we are subjected from the people who want us to pay them money for the necessaries of life. We must have a certain amount of things in order to live at all, and if people must have the money for them, I want them to have it, and not have to endure such continual persecution.”
“Ina,” said Charlotte, in a piteous, low voice, “do you think papa is very poor?”
“Yes, honey, I am afraid he is very poor.”
Charlotte began to weep softly against her sister's shoulder.
“Don't cry, honey,” soothed Ina. “You can come and stay with me a great deal, you know.”
“Ina Carroll, do you think I would leave papa?” demanded Charlotte, suddenly erect. “Do you think—I would? You can, if you want to, but I will not.”
“It costs something to support us, dear,” said Ina. “Don't be angry, precious.”
“I will never have another new dress in all my life,” said Charlotte. “I won't eat anything. I tell you I never will leave papa, Ina Carroll.”
It was about a week later when Anderson, going into the drug store one evening, found young Eastman in the line in front of the soda-fountain. A girl in white was with him, and Anderson thought at first glance that she was Charlotte Carroll, as a matter of course—he had so accustomed himself to think of the two in union by this time. Then he looked again and saw that the girl was much larger and fair-haired, and recognized her as Bessy Van Dorn, William Van Dorn's daughter. The girl's semi-German parentage showed in her complexion and high-bosomed, matronly figure, although she was so young. She had a large but charming face, full of the sweetest placidity; her eyes, as blue as the sky, looked out upon the world with amiable assent to all its conditions. It required no acuteness to predict this as an ideal spouse for a man of a nervous and irritable temperament; that there was in her nature that which could supply cushioned fulnesses to all the exactions of his. She sat on a high stool and sipped her ice-cream soda with simple absorption in the pleasant sensation. She paid no attention whatever to her escort beside her, who took his soda with his eyes fixed on her. Her chin overlapping in pink curves like a rose, was sunken in the lace at her neck as she sipped. She did not sit straight, but rested in her corsets with an awkward lassitude of enjoyment. It was a very warm night, but she paid no attention to that. She was without a hat, and the beads of perspiration stood all over her pink forehead, and her thin white muslin clung to her plump neck and arms. There was something almost indecent about the girl's enjoyment of her soda. Hardly a man in the shop but was watching her. Anderson gazed at her also, but with covert disgust and a resentment which was absurd. He scowled at the young fellow with her. He felt like a father whose daughter has been flouted by the man of her choice. “What the devil does the boy mean, taking soda here with that Van Dorn girl?” he asked himself. He felt like a reckoning with him, and chafed at the impossibility of it. When the couple rose to go Anderson met the young man's salutation with such a surly response and such a stern glance that he fairly started. The men stared as the two went out, their shoulders touching as they passed through the door. The girl was round-shouldered from careless standing, but she moved with a palpitating grace of yielding, and the smooth, fair braids which bound her head shone like silver.
“Guess that's a go,” a man said, with a chuckle; “a narrower door would have suited them just as well.”
“Mighty good-looking girl,” said Amidon.
“Healthy girl,” said another. “If more young fellows had the horse-sense to marry girls like that, I'd give up medicine and go on a ranch.” The Banbridge doctor said that. He was rather young, and had been in the village about five years. He had taken the practice of an old physician, a distant relative who had died six months before. Dr. Wilson was called a remarkably able man in his profession. He had been having several prescriptions filled, and kept several waiting. He was a large man with a coarsely handsome physique and a brutal humor with women. He was not liked personally, but the people rather bragged about their great physician and were proud when he was called to the towns round about.
“There's no getting Dr. Wilson, for a certainty, he has such an enormous practice!” they said, with pride.
“That girl is as handsome and healthy as an Alderney cow,” he added, now, and the men laughed.
“She's a stunner,” said Amidon.
Anderson went out abruptly without waiting to make his purchase. He felt as repelled as only a man of his temperament can feel. No woman could equal his sense of utter disgust, first with the quite innocent girl herself, next with the young physician for his insistence upon the subject. His wrath against young Eastman, his unreasoning and ridiculous wrath, swelled high as he dwelt upon the outrage of his desertion of a girl like his little Charlotte, that little creature of fire and dew, for this full-blown rose of a woman—the outrage to her and to himself. When he got home, his mother inquired anxiously what the matter was.
“Nothing, dear,” he replied, brusquely.
“You look as if something worried you,” said she. She had been taking a little evening toddle on her tiny, slippered feet out in the old-fashioned flower-garden beside the house, and she had a little bunch of sweet herbs, which she dearly loved, in her hand. She fastened a sprig of thyme in his coat as she stood talking to him, and the insistent odor seemed as real as a presence when he breathed. “nothing has gone wrong with your business, has there?” she inquired, lovingly.
“No, mother,” he replied, and moved away from her gently, with the fragrance of the thyme strong in his consciousness.
His mother put her sweet nosegay in water. Then she went to bed, and Anderson sat on the stoop. Young Eastman and the Van Dorn girl passed after he sat there, and he thought with a loving passion of protection of poor little Charlotte alone at home. “I'll warrant the poor child is watching for that good-for-nothing scoundrel this minute,” he told himself. He would have liked to knock young Eastman down; it would have delighted his soul to kick him; he would have given a good deal to have had him at the top of the steps.
The weather was intensely warm. He heard his mother fling her bedroom blinds wide open to catch all the air. The sky was clear, but all along the northwest horizon was a play of lightning from a far-distant storm.
Anderson lit another cigar. The night seemed to grow more and more oppressive. When a breath of wind came, it was like a hot breath of some fierce sentiency. A disagreeable odor from something was also borne upon it. The odors of the flowers seemed in abeyance. The play of blue-and-rosy light along the northwest horizon continued. Anderson got a certain pleasure from watching it. Nature's spectacularity diverted him, as if he had been a child, from his own affairs, which seemed to give him a dull pain. Between the flashes he asked himself why.
“It is just right,” he told himself; “just what I desired. Why do I feel this way?”
Presently he decided with self-deception that it was because of the recent scene in the drug store. He remembered quite distinctly the young man's gaze at the stout, blue-eyed girl. “What right had the fellow to look at another girl after that fashion?” he said to himself. Then it struck him suddenly as being perhaps impossible for him ever to look at Charlotte in just that fashion. He thought with a thrill of indignant pride that there was a maiden who would have the best of love as her right. Then sitting there he heard a quick tread and a trill of whistle as meaningless as that of a robin, and young Eastman himself came alongside. He stopped before the gate.
“Hullo!” he said, suddenly.
“Hullo!” responded Anderson.
“Got a match?” said Eastman.
“Sure.”
Eastman sprang up the steps until he came in reach of Anderson's proffered handful of matches. “Hotter 'n blazes,” he remarked, as he scratched a match on his trousers leg.
“Hottest night of the season so far, I think,” responded Anderson.
“I'm about beat out with it,” said Eastman, lighting his cigar with no difficulty in the dead atmosphere. He threw himself sprawling on the step at Anderson's feet, without any invitation. “Whew!” he sighed.
“It 'll be hotter than hades in the City to-morrow,” he remarked, after a moment's silence.
Anderson muttered an assent. He was considering as nervously as a woman whether he should say anything to this boy. While he was hesitating, young Eastman himself led up to it.
“Saw you in the drug store just now,” he remarked.
“Yes; you were with—”
“Bessy Van Dorn—yes. Pretty girl?” Eastman spoke with the insufferable air of patronizing criticism of extreme masculine youth towards the opposite sex.
“Very,” replied Anderson, dryly.
The young fellow gave a furious puff at his cigar. The smoke came full in Anderson's face. “Passed here the other evening with two other young ladies while you were sitting here,” young Eastman remarked, in a curious tone. It was full of pain, but it had a reckless, devil-may-care defiance in it also.
“Yes,” said Anderson, “I think you did. About a week ago, wasn't it?”
“Week ago yesterday. Well, I suppose you've heard the news. It's all over town.”
“You mean—”
“She's engaged.”
Anderson felt bewildered. “Yes?” he replied, questioningly.
“She's engaged,” the young fellow repeated, with a sobbing sigh, which he ended in a laugh. “They all do it, sir.”
Anderson was too puzzled to say anything.
“Suppose you've heard about the man?” said Eastman, in a nonchalant voice. He inhaled the smoke from his cigar with an air of abstract enjoyment.
Anderson unassumedly stared at him. “Why, I thought it was—”
“Who?” asked the young fellow, eagerly.
Anderson hesitated.
“Who did you think it was?” Eastman persisted. He had a pitiful wistfulness in his face upturned to the older man. It became quite evident that he had a desire to hear himself named as the accepted suitor.
“Why, I thought that you were the man!” Anderson answered.
“Everybody thought so, I guess,” the young fellow said, with an absurd and childlike pride in the semblance in the midst of his grief over the reality. “But—” He hesitated, and Anderson waited, looking above at the play of lightning in the sky and smoking. “She's gone and got engaged to a man old enough to be her father. Lord! I guess he's older than her father—old enough to be her grandfather!” cried the young fellow, with a burst of grief and rage and shame. “Yes, sir, old enough to be her grandfather,” he repeated. His voice shook. His cigar had gone out. He struck a match and the head flew off. He swore softly and struck another. Sometimes a match refusing to ignite changes mourning to wrath and rebellion. The third match broke short in two and the burning head flew down on the sidewalk. “Wish I had hold of the man that made 'em,” young Eastman said, viciously; and in the same breath: “What can the girl be thinking of, that she flings herself away like that? Hang it all, is a woman a devil or a fool?”
Anderson removed his cigar long enough to ask a question, then replaced it. “Who is the man?” he inquired, in a slow, odd voice.
“Oh, he is an old army officer, a major—Major Arms, I believe his name is. He's somebody they've known a long time. He lives in Kentucky, I believe, in the same place where the Carrolls used to live and where she went to school. Oh, it's a good match. They're just tickled to death over it. Her sister feels rather bad, I guess, but, Lord! she'd do the same thing herself, if she got the chance. They're all alike.” The boy said the last with a cynical bitterness beyond his years. He sneered effectively. He crossed one leg over the other and puffed his relighted cigar. The last match had ignited. Anderson said nothing. He was accommodating his ideas to the change of situation. Presently young Eastman spoke again. “Well,” he said, in a tone of wretched conceit, “girls are as thick as flowers, after all, and a lot alike. Bessy Van Dorn is a beauty, isn't she?”
“I don't think she's much like the other,” said Anderson, shortly.
“She's full as pretty.”
Anderson made no reply.
“I don't believe Bessy would go and marry a man old enough to be her grandfather,” said the boy, with a burst of piteous challenge. Then suddenly he tossed his cigar into the street and flung up his hands to his head with a despairing gesture. “Oh, my God!” he groaned.
“Be a man,” Anderson said, in a kind voice.
“I am a man, ain't I? What do you suppose I care about it? I don't want to marry and settle down yet, anyway. I like to fool with the girls, but as for anything else— I am a—man. If you think I am broken up over this, if anybody thinks I am— Lord—” The young fellow rose and squared his shoulders. He looked down at Anderson. “There's one thing I want to say,” he added. “I don't want you to think—I don't want to give the impression that she—that she has been flirting, or anything like that. She hasn't. Of course she might have been a little franker, I will admit that, for I have been there a good deal, but I don't suppose she thought it was anything serious, and it wasn't. She was right. But she did not flirt. Those girls are not that sort. Great Scott! I should like to see a man venture on any little familiarities with them—holding hands, or a kiss, or anything. They respect themselves, those girls do. They have been brought up better than the Banbridge girls. Oh no, she hasn't treated me badly or anything, and of course I don't care a damn about her getting married, only I'll be hanged if I like, on general principles, to see a pretty young girl throwing herself away on a man old enough to be her father. It's wrong—it's indecent, you know.” Again the boy's voice seemed bursting with wrath and grief and shame.