Anna, packing the drawer, began to laugh, and Charlotte, after frowning a second, laughed also.
“My hat with the roses looks very nice yet, Amy, dear,” said she, sweetly and consolingly.
“But it is getting so late for roses,” Mrs. Carroll returned.
“The milliner in New York where Ina got her hats has been paid; maybe she will trust Charlotte for a hat. Don't worry, Amy,” said Anna, coolly.
Mrs. Carroll brightened up. “Sure enough, Anna,” said she. “She was paid because she wouldn't trust us, and maybe now she will be willing to again. I will go in to-morrow, and I think I can get a hat for myself.”
“I saw the dress-maker looking out of the window,” said Charlotte.
“She did very well,” said Mrs. Carroll.
“I suppose there is no money to pay her?” said Charlotte.
“No, honey, I suppose not, but dear Ina has the dresses and you have your new one.”
“That makes me think. I think her bill is on the table. It came two or three days ago. I haven't opened it, because it looked like a bill. Eddy brought it in when I was in here. Yes, there it is.” Charlotte, near the table, took up the envelope and opened it. “It is only one hundred and fifty-eight dollars,” said she.
“That is very cheap for so many pretty dresses,” said Mrs. Carroll, “but I suppose it is all clear profit. I should think dress-makers would get rich very easily.”
That night Charlotte was the last to go to her room—that is, the last except her father. He was still smoking in the little room on the left of the hall. They had been playing whist in there; then they had had some sherry and crackers and olives. Major Arms had sent out a case of sherry before the wedding, and it was not all gone. Now Carroll was smoking a last cigar before retiring, and the others except Charlotte had gone. She lingered after she had kissed her father good-night.
“Papa,” said she, tentatively. She looked very slim and young in her little white muslin frock, with her pretty hair braided in her neck.
“Well, sweetheart, what is it?” asked Carroll, with a tender look of admiration.
Charlotte hesitated. Then she spoke with such desire not to offend that her voice rang harsh. “Papa,” said she, “do you think—”
“Think what, honey?”
“Do you think you can pay the dress-maker's bill?”
“Pretty soon, dear,” said Carroll, his face changing.
“To-morrow?”
“I am afraid not to-morrow, Charlotte.”
“She worked very hard over those dresses, and she bought the things, and it is quite a while. I think she ought to be paid, papa.”
“Pretty soon, dear,” said Carroll again.
Charlotte turned without another word and went out of the room. Her silence and her retreat were full of innocent condemnation. Carroll smoked, his face set and tense. Then there was a flutter and Charlotte was back. She did not speak this time, but she ran to her father, threw her slight arms around his neck, and kissed him, and it was the kiss of love which follows the judgment of love. Then she was gone again.
Carroll removed his cigar and sat staring straight ahead for a moment. Then he gave the cigar a fling into a brass bowl and put his head on his arms on the table.
Charlotte, before her sister was married, had been in the habit of taking long walks with her. Now she went alone.
The elder women of the family never walked when they could avoid doing so. Mrs. Carroll was, in consequence, putting on a soft roundness of flesh like a baby, and was daily becoming a creature of more curves and dimples. Anna did not gain flesh, but she moved more languidly, and her languor of movement was at curious odds with the subdued eagerness of her eyes. In these days Anna Carroll was not well; her nerves were giving way. She slept little and ate little.
“You are losing your appetite, Anna, dear,” Mrs. Carroll said once at the dinner-table.
“A fortunate thing, perhaps,” retorted Anna, with her little, veiled sting of manner, and at that Carroll rose abruptly and left the table.
“What is the matter, Arthur?” his wife called after him. “I don't see what ails Arthur lately,” she said, with a soft tone of complaint, when the door had closed behind him and he had made no response.
Charlotte adored her Aunt Anna, and seldom took any exception to anything which she said or did, but then she turned upon her.
“Poor papa is hurt by what Aunt Anna said,” she declared, severely, “and I don't wonder. Here he cannot afford to buy as much to eat as he would like, and hasn't enough to pay the butcher, and Aunt Anna says things like that. I don't wonder he is hurt. It is cruel.” Tears flashed into Charlotte's eyes. She looked accusingly at her aunt, who laughed.
“I think as much of your father as you do,” said she, “and I know him better. Don't fret, honey.”
“Your aunt is ill, dear,” said Mrs. Carroll, who always veered to the side of the attacked party, and who, moreover, seldom grasped sarcasm, “and besides, sweetheart,” she added, “I don't see what she said that could have hurt Arthur's feelings.” Just then Carroll passed the window towards the stable. “There,” she cried, triumphantly, “he is just going around to order the carriage. He had finished his luncheon. He never did care much for that kind of pudding. You are making too much of it, Charlotte, dear.”
“No, I am not,” said Charlotte, firmly. “Papa did not like the way Anna spoke; he was hurt. It was cruel.” She got up and left the table also, and a soft sob was heard as she closed the dining-room door behind her.
“That dear child is so sensitive and nervous, and she thinks so much of Arthur,” Mrs. Carroll said. “Give me the pudding sauce, Marie.”
Eddy, who had been busily eating his pudding, looked up from his empty plate. “Aunt Anna did mean it was fortunate she had lost her appetite, because there wasn't enough to eat,” he declared, in his sweet treble. “You ain't very sharp, Amy. She did mean that, and that was the reason papa went out. But it was true, too. There isn't enough to eat. I haven't had near enough pudding, and it is all gone. The dish is scraped. There is none left for Marie and Martin, either.”
“I want no pudding,” said Marie, unexpectedly, from behind Mrs. Carroll's chair. She spoke with a certain sullenness, and her eyes were red. She had a large, worn place in the sleeve of her white shirt-waist, and she was given to lifting her arm and surveying it with an air of covert injury and indignation.
“The omelet is all gone, too,” said Eddy. “Marie and Martin haven't got anything to eat.”
“Oh, hush, dear!” said Mrs. Carroll. “Marie can cook another omelet.” The Hungarian girl opened her mouth as if to speak, then she shut it again. An indescribable expression was on her pretty, peasant face, the face of a down-trodden race, who yet retained in spirit a spark of rebellion and resentment. Marie, in her ragged blouse, with her countenance of inscrutable silence, standing behind her mistress's chair, surveying the denuded table, was the embodiment of a folk-lore song. She had been in America only a year and a half, and the Lord only knew what she had expected in that land of promise, and what bright visions had been dispelled, and how roughly she had been forced back upon her old point of view of the world. The girl was actually hungry. She had no money; her clothes were worn. Her naïve coquetry of expression had quite faded from her face. Her cheek-bones showed high, her mouth was wide and set, her eyes fixed with a sort of stolid and despairing acquiescence. The salient points of the Slav were to the surface, the little wings of her hope and youth folded away. She had fallen in love, moreover, and been prevented from attending a wedding-feast where she would have met him that day, on account of a lack of money for a new waist, and car fare. She knew another girl who was gay in a new gown, and at whom the desired one had often looked with wavering eyes. Her heart was broken as she stood there. She was one of the weariest of the wheels within wheels of Arthur Carroll's miserable system of life.
“I don't believe there are any more eggs to make an omelet,” said Eddy.
“The grocer still trusts us,” said Mrs. Carroll; “besides, he has been paid. Eddy, dear, you must not speak so to your aunt. Run out, if you have finished your luncheon, and ask your father when he is going to drive.”
Carroll had not gone, as usual, to the City that day.
Mrs. Carroll and Anna rose from the table and went into the den on the left of the hall.
“You must not mind the children speaking so, Anna, dear,” Mrs. Carroll said. “They would fly at me just the same if they thought I had said anything to hurt Arthur.”
“I don't mind, Amy,” Anna replied, dully. She threw herself upon the divan with its Oriental rug, lying flat on her back, with her hands under her head and her eyes fixed upon a golden maple bough which waved past the window opposite. She looked very ill. She was quite pale, and her eyes had a strange, earnest depth in dark hollows.
Mrs. Carroll looked a little more serious than was her wont as she sat in the willow rocker and swayed slowly back and forth. “I suppose,” she said, after a pause, “that it will end in our moving away from Banbridge.”
“I suppose so,” Anna replied, listlessly.
“You don't mind going, do you, Anna, dear?”
“I mind nothing,” Anna Carroll said. “I am past minding.”
Mrs. Carroll looked at her with a bewildered sympathy. “Why, Anna, dear, what is the matter?” she said.
“Nothing, Amy.”
“You are feeling ill, aren't you?”
“Perhaps so, a little. It is nothing worth talking about.”
“Are you troubled about anything, honey?”
Anna did not reply.
“I can't imagine what you have to trouble you, Anna. Everything is as it has been for a long time. When we move away from Banbridge there will be more for a while. I can't see anything to worry about.”
“For God's sake, keep your eyes shut, then, Amy, as long as you can,” cried Anna, suddenly, with a tone which the other woman had never heard before. She gazed at her sister-in-law a minute, and her expression of childish sweetness and contentment changed. Tears came in her eyes, her mouth quivered.
“I don't know what you mean, Anna,” she said, pitifully, like a puzzled child.
Anna sprang up from the divan and went over to her and kissed her and laughed. “I mean nothing, dear,” she said. “There is no more to worry about now than there has been all along. People get on somehow. We are in the world, and we have our right here, and if we knock over a few people to keep our footholds, I don't know that we are to blame. It is nothing, Amy. I have felt wretched for a few days, and it has affected my spirits. Don't mind anything I have said. We shall leave Banbridge before long, and, as you say, we shall get on better.”
Mrs. Carroll gave two or three little whimpers on her sister-in-law's shoulder, then she smiled up at her. “I guess it is because you don't feel well that you are looking on the dark side of things so,” said she. “You will feel better to go out and have a drive.”
“Perhaps I shall,” replied Anna.
“We shall go for a long drive. There will be plenty of time, it is so early. How lovely it would be if we had our automobile, wouldn't it, Anna? Then we could go any distance. Wouldn't it be lovely?”
“Very,” replied Anna.
Then Eddy burst into the room. “Say, Amy,” he cried, “there's a great circus out in the stable. Papa and Martin are having a scrap.”
“Eddy, dear,” cried Mrs. Carroll, “you must not say scrap.”
“A shindy, then. What difference does it make? Martin he won't harness, because he hasn't been paid. He just sits on a chair in the door and whittles a stick, and don't say anything, and he won't harness.”
“We have simply got to have an automobile,” said Mrs. Carroll.
“How do you know it is because he hasn't been paid, Eddy?” asked Anna.
“Because he said so; before he wouldn't say anything, and began whittling. Papa stands there talking to him, but it don't make any difference.”
“With an automobile it wouldn't make any difference,” said Mrs. Carroll. “An automobile doesn't have to be harnessed. I don't see why Arthur doesn't get one.”
Anna Carroll sat down on the nearest chair and laughed hysterically.
Mrs. Carroll stared at her. “What are you laughing at, Anna?” said she, with a little tone of injury. “I don't see anything very funny. It is a lovely day, and I wanted to go to drive, and it would do you good. I don't see why people act so because they are not paid. I didn't think it of Martin.”
“I'll go out and see if he has stirred yet,” cried Eddy, and was off, with a countenance expressive of the keenest enjoyment of the situation.
Out in the stable, beside the great door through which was a view of the early autumn landscape—a cluster of golden trailing elms, with one rosy maple on a green lawn intersected by the broad sweep of drive—sat the man in a chair, and whittled with a face as imperturbable as fate. Carroll stood beside him, talking in a low tone. He was quite pale. Suddenly, just as the boy arrived, the man spoke.
“Why in thunder, sir,” said he, with a certain respect in spite of the insolence of the words—“why in thunder don't you haul in, shut up shop, sell out, pay your debts, and go it small?”
“Perhaps I will,” Carroll replied, in a tone of rage. His face flushed, he raised his right arm as if with an impulse to strike the other man, then he let it drop.
“Sell the horses, papa?” cried Eddy, at his elbow, with a tone of dismay.
Carroll turned and saw the boy. “Go into the house; this is nothing that concerns you,” he said, sternly.
“Are the horses paid for, papa?” asked Eddy.
“I believe they ain't,” said the man in the chair, with a curious ruminating impudence. Carroll towered over him with an expression of ignoble majesty. But Eddy had made a dart into a stall, and the tramp of iron hoofs was suddenly heard.
“I can harness as well as he can,” a small voice cried.
Then Martin rose. “I'll harness,” he said, sullenly. “You'll get hurt”—to the boy. “She don't like children round her.” He took hold of the boy's small shoulders and pushed him away from the restive horse, and grasped the bridle. Carroll strode out of the stable.
“Say,” said Eddy, to the man.
“Well, what? I've got to have my pay. I've worked here long enough for nothin'.”
“When I'm a man I'll pay you,” said Eddy, with dignity and severity. “You must not speak to papa that way again, Martin.”
Martin looked from the tall horse to the small boy, and began to laugh.
“I'll pay you with interest,” repeated the boy, and the man laughed again.
“Much obleeged,” said he.
“I don't see, now, why you need to worry just because papa hasn't paid you,” said Eddy, and walked out of the stable with a gait exactly like his father.
The man threw the harness over the horse and whistled.
“He's harnessing,” Eddy proclaimed when he went in.
His mother was pinning on her veil before the mirror over the hall settle. Anna was just coming down-stairs in a long, red coat, with a black feather curling against her black hair under her hat.
“Where is Charlotte?” asked Mrs. Carroll.
“She has gone off to walk,” said Eddy.
“Well,” said Mrs. Carroll, “you must go after her and walk with her, Eddy.”
“I don't want to, Amy,” said Eddy. “I want to go to drive.”
Then Carroll came down-stairs and repeated his wife's orders. “Yes, Eddy, you must go to walk with your sister. I don't wish her to go alone,” said he peremptorily. He still looked pale; he had grown thin during the last month.
“I don't see why Charlotte don't get married, too, and have her husband to go with her,” said Eddy, as he went out of the door. “Tagging round after a girl all the time! It ain't fair.”
“Eddy!” called Carroll, in a stern voice; but the boy had suddenly accelerated his pace with his last words, and was a flying streak at the end of the drive.
“Where 'm I goin' to find her?” he complained to himself. He hung about a little until he saw the carriage emerge from the grounds and turn in the other direction, then he went straight down to the main street. Just as he turned the corner he met a small woman, carefully dressed and frizzed, who stopped him.
“Is your mother at home, little boy?” she asked, in a nervous voice. There were red spots on her thin cheeks; she was manifestly trembling.
The boy eyed her with a supercilious scorn and pity. He characterized her in his own mind of extreme youth and brutal truth as an ugly old woman, and yet he noted the trembling and felt like reassuring her. He took off his little cap. “No, ma'am,” said he. “Amy has gone to drive.”
“I wanted to see your mother,” said the woman, wonderingly.
“Amy is my mother,” replied the boy.
“Oh!” said the woman.
“They have all gone,” said Eddy.
“Then I shall have to call another time,” said the woman, with a mixture of ingratiation and despair.
The boy eyed her sharply. “Say,” he said, “are you the dressmaker that made my sister Ina's clothes for her to be married?”
“Yes, I be,” replied Madame Griggs.
“Then,” said Eddy, “I can tell you one thing, there isn't any use for you to go to my house now to get any money. I suppose you haven't been paid.”
“No, I haven't,” said Madame Griggs. Then she loosened the flood-gates of her grievance upon the boy. “No, I haven't been paid,” said she, “and I've worked like a dog, and I'm owing for the things I bought in New York, and I'm owing my girls, and if I don't get paid before long, I'm ruined, and that's all there is to it. I 'ain't been paid, and it's a month since your sister was married, and they'll send out to collect the bills from the stores, if I don't pay them. It's a cruel thing, and I don't care if I do say it.” The woman was flouncing along the street beside the boy, and she spoke in a loud, shrill voice. “It's a cruel thing,” she repeated. “If I couldn't pay for my wedding fix I'd never get married, before I'd go and cheat a poor dress-maker. She'd ought to be ashamed of herself, and so had all your folks. I don't care if I do say it. They are nuthin' but a pack of swindlers, that's what they be.”
Suddenly the boy danced in front of the furious little woman, and stood there, barring her progress. “They ain't!” said he.
“They be.”
“They ain't! You can't pay folks if you 'ain't got any money.”
“You needn't have the things, then,” sniffed Madame Griggs.
“My sister had to have the things to get married, didn't she? A girl can't get married without the clothes.”
“Let her pay for 'em, then.”
“I'll tell you what to do!” cried Eddy, looking at her with a sudden inspiration. “You are in debt, ain't you?”
“Yes, I be,” replied Madame Griggs, hopping nervously along by the boy's side, poor little dressmaker, aping French gentility, holding her skirts high, with a disclosure of a papery silk petticoat and a meagre ankle. Even in her distress she felt of her frizzes to see if they were in order after a breeze had struck her in the sharp, eager face. “Yes, I be.”
“Well,” said the boy, delightedly, “I can tell you just what to do, you know.”
“What, I'd like to know?” Madame Griggs said, in a snapping tone.
“Move away from Banbridge,” said the boy.
“What for, I'd like to know?”
“Why, then, don't you see,” explained Eddy Carroll, “you would get away from the folks that you owe, and other folks that you didn't owe would trust you for things. You'd get along fine. That's the way we always do.”
“Well, I never!” said Madame Griggs. Then she turned on him with sudden fury. “So that's what your folks are goin' to do, be they?” said she. “Go off and leave me without payin' my bill! That's the dodge, is it?”
Eddy was immediately on the alert. He was young and innocent, but he had a certain sharpness. He was quite well aware that a knowledge on the part of the creditors of his family's flittings was not desirable. “I 'ain't heard them say a word about moving away from Banbridge,” declared he. “What you getting so mad about, Missis?”
“I guess I've got some reason to be mad, if that's your folks' game. The way I've worked, slavin' all them hot days and nights on your sister's wedding fix. I guess—”
“We ain't going to move away from Banbridge as long as we live, for all I know,” said Eddy, looking at the bundle of feminine nerves beside him with a mixture of terror and scorn. “You don't need to holler so, Missis.”
“I don't care how loud I holler, I can tell you that.”
“We ain't going to move; and if we did, I don't see why you couldn't. I was just telling you what you could do, if you owed folks and didn't have any money to pay 'em, and you turn on a feller that way. I'm going to tell my sister and mother, and they won't have you make any more dresses for 'em.” With that Eddy Carroll made a dart into Anderson's grocery store, which he had reached by that time. The dressmaker remained standing on the sidewalk, staring after him. She looked breathless; red spots were on her thin cheeks.
Eddy went straight through the store to the office. The door stood open, and the little place was empty except for the cat, which cast a lazy glance at him from under a half-closed lid, stretched, displaying his claws, and began to purr loudly. Eddy went over to the cat and took him up in his arms and carried him out into the main store, where William Price stood behind the counter. He was alone in the store.
“Say,” said Eddy, “where's Mr. Anderson?”
“He's gone out,” replied the clerk, with a kind look at the boy. He had lost one of his own years ago, and Eddy, in spite of his innocent superciliousness, appealed to him.
“Where?” asked Eddy. The cat wriggled in his arms and jumped down. Then he rolled over ingratiatingly at his feet. Eddy stooped down and rubbed the shining, furry stomach.
“He took the net he catches butterflies with,” replied the old clerk, “and I guess he's gone to walk in the fields somewhere.”
“I should think it was pretty late for butterflies,” said Eddy. He straightened himself and looked very hard at the glass jar of molasses-balls on the shelf behind the clerk.
“There might be a stray one,” said William Price. “It's a warm day.”
“Shucks!” said Eddy. “Say, how much are those a pound?”
The clerk glanced around at the jar of molasses-balls. “Twenty-five cents,” replied he.
“Guess I'll take a pound,” said Eddy. “I 'ain't got any money with me, but I'll pay you the next time I come in.”
The old clerk's common face turned suddenly grave, and acquired thereby a certain distinction. He turned about, took off the cover of the glass jar, and gathered up a handful of the molasses-balls and put them in a little paper bag. Then he came forth from behind the counter and approached the boy. He thrust the paper bag into a little grasping hand, then he took hold of the small shoulders and looked down at him steadily. The blue eyes in the ordinary face of an ordinary man, unfitted for any work in life except that of an underling, were full of affection and reproof. Eddy looked into them, then he hitched uneasily.
“What you doing so for?” said he; then he looked into the eyes again and was still.
“It's jest this,” said William Price. “Here's a little bag of them molasses-balls, I'll give 'em to ye; but don't you never, as long as you live, buy anything you 'ain't either got the money to pay for in your fist, ready, or know jest where it's comin' from. It's stealin', and it's the wust kind of stealin', 'cause it ain't out an' out. I had a boy once about your size.”
“Where's he now?” asked Eddy, in a half-resentful, half-wondering fashion.
“He's dead; died years ago of scarlet-fever, and I'd a good deal rather have it so, much as I thought of him—as much as your father thinks of you—than to have him grow up and steal and cheat folks.”
“Didn't he ever take anything that didn't belong to him?” asked Eddy.
“Never. I guess he didn't. John wasn't that kind of a boy. I'd have trusted him with anythin'.”
“Then he must have gone to heaven, I suppose,” said Eddy. He looked soberly into the old clerk's eyes. “Thank you for the molasses-balls,” he said. “I meant to pay for 'em, but I don't know just when I'd have the money, so I guess it's better for you to give them to me. Mr. Anderson won't mind, will he?”
“No, he won't, for I shall put fives cents into the cash-drawer for them,” replied the old clerk, with dignity.
“I wouldn't want to have you take anything that Mr. Anderson wouldn't like,” said Eddy.
“I shouldn't,” replied the old clerk, going back to his place behind the counter, as a woman entered the store.
Eddy looked back as he went out, with a very sweet expression. “The first five-cent piece I get I'll pay you,” he said. He had popped a molasses-ball into his mouth, and his utterance was somewhat impeded. “I thank you very much, indeed,” he said, “and I'm sorry your boy died.”
“Have you just lost a boy?” asked the woman at the counter.
“Twenty years ago,” replied the clerk.
“Land!” said the woman. She looked at him, then she turned and looked after Eddy, who was visible on the sidewalk talking with Madame Griggs, and her face showed her mind. Madame Griggs had waited on the sidewalk until Eddy came out of the store. Now she seized him by the arm, which he promptly jerked away from her.
“When will your folks be home? That's what I want to know!” said she, sharply.
“They'll be home to-night, I guess,” replied Eddy.
“Then I'll be up after supper,” said Madame Griggs.
“All right,” said Eddy.
“You tell 'em I'm comin'. I've got to see your ma and your pa.”
“Yes, ma'am,” replied Eddy. He raised his little cap as the dressmaker flirted away, then he started on a run down the street, sucking a molasses-ball, which is a staying sweet, and soon he left the travelled road and was hastening far afield.
It was September, but a very warm day. Charlotte had walked along the highway for some distance; then when she came to a considerable grove of oak-trees, she hesitated a moment, and finally left the road, entered the grove, and sat down on a rock at only a little distance from the road, yet out of sight of it. She was quite effectually screened by the trees and some undergrowth. Here and there the oaks showed shades of russet-and-gold and deep crimson; the leaves had not fallen. In the sunlit spaces between the trees grew clumps of blue asters. She saw a squirrel sitting quite motionless on a bough over her head, with bright eyes of inquisitive fear upon her. She felt a sense of delight, and withal a slight tinge of loneliness and risk. There was no doubt that it was not altogether wise, perhaps not safe, for a girl to leave the highway, or even to walk upon it if it were not thickly bordered by dwellings, in this state. Charlotte was fearless, yet her imagination was a lively one. She looked about her with keen enjoyment, yet there was a sharp wariness in her glance akin to that of the squirrel. When she heard on the road the rattle of wheels, and caught the flash of revolving spokes in the sun, she had a sensation of relief. There was not a house in sight, except far to the left, where she could just discern the slant of a barn roof through the trees. Everything was very still. While there was no wind, it was cool in the shade, though hot in the sunlight. She pulled her jacket over her shoulders. She leaned against a tree and remained perfectly quiet. She had on a muslin gown of an indeterminate green color, and it shaded perfectly into the coloring of the tree-trunk, which was slightly mossy. Her dark head, too, was almost indistinguishable against the tree, which at that height was nearly black. In fact, she became almost invisible from that most curious system of concealment in the world, that of assimilation with nature. She was gathered so closely into the arms of the great mother that she seemed one with her. And she was not alone in the shelter of those mighty arms; there was the squirrel, as indistinguishable as she. And there was another.
Charlotte with her bright, wary eyes, and the little animal with his, in the tree, became aware of another sentient thing besides themselves. Possibly the squirrel had been aware of it all the time.
Suddenly the girl looked downward at her right and saw within a stone's-throw a man asleep. He was dressed in an ancient, greenish-brown suit, and was practically invisible. His arm was thrown over his weather-beaten face and he was sleeping soundly, lying in a position as grotesquely distorted as some old tree-root. He was, in fact, distorted by the storms of life within and without. He was evidently a tramp, and possibly worse. His sleeping face could be read like a page of evil lore.
When Charlotte perceived him she turned pale and her heart seemed to stop. Her first impulse was to rise and make a mad rush for the road. Then she became afraid to do that. The road was lonely. She heard no sound of wheels thereon. It was true that she had entered the grove and seated herself without awakening the man; he might quite possibly be in a drunken sleep, difficult to disturb, but she might not be so fortunate a second time. Her slightest motion might awaken him now. So she sat perfectly still; she did not move a finger; it seemed to her she did not breathe. When a slight breeze rustled the tree-boughs over her head, and ruffled the skirt of her dress, her terror made her sick. When the breeze struck him, the sleeping tramp made an uneasy motion, and she felt overwhelmed. Soon, however, he began to breathe heavily. Before his breathing had been inaudible. He was evidently quite soundly asleep, yet if a breeze could disturb him, what might not her rise and flight do? It seemed to her that she must remain there forever. But the time would come when that sleeping terror would awake, whether she disturbed him or not, when that distorted caricature of man, as grotesque as a gargoyle on the temple of life, would stretch those twisted legs and arms, and open his eyes and see her; and then? She became sure, the longer she looked, that this was not one of the harmless wanderers over the earth, one of the Ishmaels, whose hand is turned only against himself. The great dark, bloated face had a meaning that could not be mistaken even by eyes for whom its meaning was written in a strange language. Innocence read guilt by a strange insight of heredity which came to her from the old beginning of things. She dared not stir. She felt petrified. She realized that her one hope was in the passing of some one on the road. She made up her mind that if she heard wheels she would risk everything. She would spring up and run for her life and scream. Then she wondered how loudly she could scream. Charlotte was not one of the screaming kind of girls who lifts up her voice of panic at everything. She tried to remember if she had ever screamed, and how loudly. She kept her ears strained for the sound of wheels, her eyes on the sleeping tramp. She dared not look away from him. Even the squirrel remained motionless, with his round eyes of wariness fixed. It was as if he too were afraid to stir. He retained his attitude of alert grace, sitting erect on his little haunches, an acorn in his paws, his bushy tail arching over his back like a plume.
Then slowly the man opened his eyes with a dazed expression, at first a blur of consciousness. Then gradually the recognition of himself, of his surroundings, of his life, came into them, and that self-knowledge was unmistakable. There was no doubt about the man with his twisted limbs and his twisted soul. He lay quite still a while longer, staring. Charlotte, with her eyes upon him, and the squirrel with his eyes upon him, never stirred. Charlotte heard her heart beat, and wished for some way to stifle it, but that she could not do. It seemed to her that the beating of her heart was like a drum, as if it could be heard through all the grove. She realized that she could not hear the sound of passing wheels on the road, because of this terrible beating of her heart. It seemed inevitable that the man would hear it. She felt then that she should take her one little chance, that she should scream on the possibility of some one passing on the road, and run, but she realized the futility of it. Before she could move a step the man would be upon her. She felt, moreover, paralyzed. She remained as perfectly motionless as the tree against which she leaned, with her eyes full of utmost terror and horror upon the waking man. He still looked straight ahead, and his eyes were still retrospective, fixed inward rather than outward. He still saw only himself and his own concerns.
Then he yawned audibly and spoke. “Damn it all!” he said, in a curious voice, of rather passive rage. It was the voice of one at variance with all creation, his hand against every man and every man against him, and yet the zest of rebellion was not in it. In fact, the man had been so long at odds with life that a certain indifference was upon him. He had become sullen. As he lay there he thrust a hand in his pocket, and again he spoke his oath against all outside, against all creation. He had thought absently that he might find a dime for a drink. Now that he had waked, he was thirsty, but there was none. Then he yawned, stretched out his stiff, twisted limbs with a sort of muffled groan, rested his weight upon one elbow, and shambled up as awkwardly as a camel. The girl sat still in the clutch of her awful fear. She no longer heard her heart beat. She was casting about in her mind for a weapon. A great impulse of fight was stirring in her. She felt suddenly that her little fingers were like steel. She felt that she should kill that man if he touched her. The fear never let go its clutch on her heart, but a fierceness as of any wild thing at bay was over her. She realized that in another minute, when he should see her, she would gather herself up, and spring, spring as she had read of a tarantula springing; that she would be first before the man, that she would kill him. Something which was almost insanity was firing her brain.
The man, when he had stood up, it seemed to Charlotte, looked directly at her. She was always sure that he did. But if he did, it was with unseeing eyes. His brain did not compass the image of her sitting there, leaning against the tree, a creature of incarnate terror and insane fury. He seemed to keep his eyes fixed upon her for a full second. Charlotte's nerves and muscles were tense with the restrained impulse to spring. Then he slowly shuffled away. As he passed, the squirrel slid like swiftness itself down the tree, and across an open space to another. The girl sank limply upon herself in a dead faint, and the tramp gained the road and trudged sullenly on towards Ludbury.
When Charlotte came to herself she was still sitting there limply. She could not realize all at once what had happened. Then she remembered. She looked at the place where the tramp had lain, and so forcibly did her terrified fancy project images that it was difficult to convince herself that he was really gone. She seemed to still see that gross thing lying there. Then she remembered distinctly that he had gone.
She got up, but she could scarcely stand. She had never fainted before, and she wondered at her own sensations. “What ails me?” she thought. She strained her eyes around, but there was no sign of the terrible man. She was quite sure that he had gone, and yet how could she be sure? He might have gone out to the road and be sitting beside it. A vivid recollection of tramps sitting beside that very road, as she had been driving past, came over her. She became quite positive that he was out on the road, and a terror of the road was over her. She looked behind her, and the sunny gleam of an open field came through the trees. The field was shaggy with blue asters and golden-rod gone to seed, and white tufts of immortelles. Charlotte stared through the trees at the field, and suddenly a man crossed the little sunny opening. A great joy swept over her; he was Randolph Anderson. Now she was sure that she was safe. She stumbled again to her feet, and ran weakly out of the oak grove. There was a low fence between the grove and the field, and when she reached that she stopped. She felt this to be insurmountable for her trembling limbs. “Oh, dear!” she said, aloud, and although the man was holding his butterfly-net cautiously over the top of a clump of asters so far away that it did not seem possible that he could hear her, he immediately looked up. Then he hastened towards her. As he drew near a look of concern deepened on his face. He had had an inkling at the first glimpse of her that something was wrong. He reached the fence and stood looking at her on the other side.
“I am afraid I can't get over,” Charlotte said, faintly. She never knew quite how she was over, lifted in some fashion, and Anderson stood close to her, looking at her with his face as white as hers.
“What is it?” he asked. “Are you ill, Miss Carroll? What is it?”
“I have been frightened,” said she. Without quite knowing what she did, she caught hold of his arm and clung to him tightly.
“What frightened you?” asked Anderson, fairly trembling himself and looking down at her.
“There was a man asleep in the grove, in there,” explained Charlotte, falteringly—she still felt faint and strange—“and—and—I sat down there, and did not see him, and then he—he woke up and—”
Anderson seized her arm in a fierce clutch. “What?” he cried. “Where is he? What? For God's sake!”
“He went away out in the road and did not seem to see—me. I sat still,” said Charlotte. Then she was very faint again, for he, too, frightened her a little.
Anderson caught her, supporting her, while he tore off his coat. Then he half carried her over to a ledge of rocks cropping out of the furzy gold-and-blue undergrowth, and sat down beside her there. Charlotte sat weakly where she was placed. She was deadly white and trembling. Anderson hesitated a moment, then he put an arm around her, removed her hat, and drew her head down on his shoulder.
“Now keep quiet a little while until you are better,” he said. “You are perfectly safe now. You say the man did not see you?”
Charlotte shook her head against his shoulder. She closed her eyes; she was really very near a complete swoon, and scarcely knew where she was or what was happening; only a vague sense of another will thrust under her sinking spirit for a support was over her.
As for the man, he looked down at the little, pale face, with the dark lashes sweeping the soft cheeks, at the mouth still trembling to a sob of terror and grief, and a mighty wave of emotion was over him. He realized that he held in his arms not only the girl whom he loved, towards whom his whole being went out in protection and tenderness, but himself, his whole future, even in some subtle sense his past. He was like one on some height of the spirit, from which he overlooked all that was, all that had gone before, and all that would come. He was on the Delectable Mountain. Within himself he comprehended the widest vision of earth, that which is given through love. The man's face, looking at the woman's on his shoulder, became transfigured. It was full of uttermost tenderness, of protection as perfect as that of a father for his child. His heart, as he looked at her, was at once that of a lover and a father. He unconsciously held her closer, and bent his face down over hers softly, as if she had been indeed a child.
“Poor little soul!” he whispered, and his lips almost touched her cheek.
Then a wave of color came over the girl's face. “I am better,” she said, and raised herself abruptly. Anderson drew back and removed his arm. He feared she was offended, and perhaps afraid of him. But she looked piteously up in his face, and, to his dismay, began to cry. Her nerves were completely unstrung. She was not a strong girl, and she had, in fact, been through a period of mental torture which might have befitted the Inquisition. She could still see the man's evil face; her brain seemed stamped with the sight; terror had mastered her. She was for the time being scarcely sane. The terrible imagination of ill which had possessed her, as she sat there gazing at the sleeping terror, still held her in sway. She was not naturally hysterical, but now hysterics threatened her.
Anderson put his arm around her again and drew her head to his shoulder. “You must not mind,” he said, in a grave, authoritative voice. “You are ill and frightened. You must not mind. Keep your head on my shoulder until you feel better. You are quite safe now.” Anderson's voice was rather admonishing than caressing. Charlotte sobbed wildly against his shoulder, and clung to him with her little, nervous hands. Anderson sat looking down at her gravely. “Is your mother at home?” he asked, presently.
“No,” sobbed Charlotte; “they have all gone to drive.”
“Nobody in the house?”
“Only Marie.”
Anderson reflected. He was much nearer his own home than hers, and there was a short-cut across the field; they would not need to strike the road at all. He rose, with a sudden resolution, and raised the weeping girl to her feet.
“Come,” said he, in the same authoritative voice, and Charlotte stumbled blindly along, his arm still around her. She had an under-consciousness that she was ashamed of herself for showing so little bravery, that she wondered what this man would think of her, but her self-control was gone, because of the too tense strain which had been put upon it. It was like a spring too tightly compressed, suddenly released; the vibrations of her nerves seemed endless. She tried to hush her sobs as she was hurried along, and succeeded in some measure, but she was still utterly incapable of her usual mental balance. Once she started, and clutched Anderson's arm with a gasp of fear.
“Look, look!” she whispered.
“What is it?” he asked, soothingly.
“The man is there. See him?”
“There is nothing there, child,” he said, and hurried her over the place where her distorted vision had seen again the object of her terror, in his twisted sleep in the grass.
Anderson began to be seriously alarmed about the girl. He did not know what consequences might come from such a severe mental strain upon such a nervous temperament. He hurried as fast as he dared, almost carrying her at times, and finally they emerged upon the garden at the right of his own house. The flowers were thinning out fast, but the place was still gay with marigolds and other late blossoms. As he passed the kitchen door he was aware of the maid's gaping face of stupid surprise, and he called out curtly to her: “Is my mother in the house?”
“Yes, sir. She's in the sitting-room,” replied the maid, with round eyes of curiosity upon the pair. Charlotte was making a desperate effort to walk by herself, to recover herself, but Anderson was still almost carrying her bodily. She wondered dimly at the strange trembling of her limbs, at the way the bright orange and red of the marigolds and nasturtiums swam before her eyes, and once again she saw quite distinctly the evil face of the man peer out at her from among them; but this time she said nothing, for her subconsciousness of delusion was growing stronger.
Anderson went around to the front of the house, and his mother's wondering face gazed from a window, then quickly disappeared. When he reached the door she was there, filling it up with her large figure in its voluminous white draperies.
“What—” she began, but Randolph interrupted her.
“Mother, this is Miss Carroll,” he said. “She is not hurt, but she has had a terrible fright and shock. Her people are all away from home, and I brought her here; it was nearer. I want her to have some wine, and rest, and get over it before she goes home.”
Mrs. Anderson hesitated one second. It was a pause for the gathering together of wits suddenly summoned for new and surprising emergencies; then she rose to the occasion. She had her faults and her weaknesses, but she was one of the women in whom the maternal instinct is a power, and this girl appealed to it. She stretched forth her white-clad arms, and she drew her away almost forcibly from her son.
“You poor child!” said she, in a voice which harked back to her son's babyhood. “Come right in. You go and get a glass of that port-wine,” said she to Randolph, and she gave him a little push. She enveloped and pervaded the girl in a voluminous embrace.
Charlotte felt the soft panting of a mother's bosom under her head as she was led into the house. “You poor, blessed child,” a soft voice cooed in her ear, a soft voice and yet a voice of strength. Charlotte's own mother had never been in the fullest sense a mother to her; a large part of the spiritual element of maternity had been lacking; but here was a woman who could mother a race, if once her heart of maternal love was awakened.
Charlotte was not led; that did not seem to be the action. She felt as if she were borne along by sustaining wings spread under her weakness into a large, cool bedroom opening out of the sitting-room. Then her dress was taken off, in what wise she scarcely knew; she was enrobed in one of Mrs. Anderson's large, white wrappers, and was laid tenderly in a white bed, where presently she was sipping a glass of port-wine, with Mrs. Anderson sitting behind her and supporting her head.
“No, you can't come in, Randolph,” she heard her say to her son, and her voice sounded almost angry. After Charlotte had swallowed the wine, she lay back on the pillow, and she heard Mrs. Anderson talking softly to her in a sort of delicious dream, caused partly by the wine, which had mounted at once to her head, and partly by the sense of powerful protection and perfect peace and safety.
“Poor lamb!” Mrs. Anderson said, and her voice sounded like the song of a mother bird. “Poor lamb; poor, blessed child! It was a shame she was so frightened, but she is safe now. Now go to sleep if you can, dear child; it will do you good.”
Charlotte smiled helplessly and gratefully, and after a happy stare around the room, with its scroll-work of green on the walls, reflecting green gloom from closed blinds, and another look of childish wonder into the loving eyes bent over her, she closed her own. Presently Mrs. Anderson tiptoed out into the sitting-room, where Randolph was waiting, standing bolt-upright in the middle of the room staring at the bedroom door. She beckoned him across the hall into the opposite room, the parlor. The parlor had a musty smell which was not unpleasant; in fact, slightly aromatic. There were wooden shutters which were tightly closed, all except one, through an opening in which a sunbeam came and transversed the room in a shaft of glittering motes.
“What scared her so?” demanded Mrs. Anderson. She had upon her a new authority. Anderson felt as if he had reverted to his childhood. He explained. “Well,” said his mother, “the poor child has had an awful shock, and she is lucky if she isn't down sick with a fever. I don't like to see anybody look the way she did. But I'm thankful the man didn't see her.”
“He might have been harmless enough,” said Anderson.
Mrs. Anderson sniffed. “I don't see many harmless-looking ones round here,” said she. “An awful-looking tramp came to the door this morning. I shouldn't wonder if it was the same one. I guess she will be all right now. She looked quieted down, but she had an awful shock, poor child.”
“I wonder when I ought to take her home,” said Anderson.
“Not for two hours,” said his mother, decidedly. “She is going to stay here till she gets rested and is a little over it.”
“Perhaps she had better,” said Anderson; “her folks may have gone on a long drive, too.”
“Did you know her before?” asked his mother, suddenly, and a sharp expression came into her soft, blue eyes.
“I have seen her in the store,” replied Anderson, and he was conscious of coloring.
“She knew you, then?” said his mother.
“Yes. She was in the store this morning.”
“It was lucky you were there.”
“Oh, as for that, she was in no danger,” said Anderson, coolly. “The tramp had gone.”
“If you hadn't been there, I believe that poor little thing would have fainted dead away and lain there, nobody knows how long. It doesn't do anybody any good to get such a fright, and she is a thin, delicate little thing.”
“Yes, she had quite a fright,” said Anderson, walking over to the window with the defective shutter. “This shutter must be fixed,” said he.
“I think she is prettier than the one that got married, but it is a pity she belongs to such a family,” said Mrs. Anderson. “Mrs. Ferguson was just in here, and she says it is awful, that they are owing everybody.”
“That is not the girl's fault,” Anderson rejoined, with sudden fire.
“No, I suppose not,” said Mrs. Anderson, with an anxious look at him. “Only, if she hasn't been taught to think it doesn't matter if debts are not paid.”
“Well, I don't think that poor child is to be blamed,” Anderson said.
“Do they owe you?”
“She came in and paid me this morning.”
“Oh, I'm glad of that!” said his mother, and Anderson was conscious of intense guilt at his deception. Somehow half a lie had always seemed to him more ignoble than a whole one, and he had told a half one. He turned to leave the room, when there came a loud peal of the door-bell.
“Oh, dear, that will wake her up!” said his mother.
Anderson strode past her to the door, and there stood Eddy Carroll. He was breathless from running, and his pretty face was a uniform rose.
“Say,” he panted, “is my sister in here?”
“Hush!” said Anderson. “Yes, she is.”
“I chased you all the way,” said Eddy, “but I tumbled down and hurt my knee on an old stone, and then I couldn't catch up.” Indeed, the left knee of Eddy's little knickerbockers showed a rub and a red stain. “Where's Charlotte?”
“She is lying down. She was frightened, and I brought her here, and she has had some wine and is lying down.”
“What frightened her, I'd like to know? First thing I saw you were lugging her off across the field. What frightened her?”
Anderson explained.
Eddy sniffed with utmost scorn. “Just like a girl,” said he, “to get scared of a man that was fast asleep, and wouldn't have hurt her, anyway. Just like a girl. Say, you'd better keep her awhile.”
“We are going to,” said Mrs. Anderson.
“If she stays to supper, I might stay too, and then I could go home with her, and save you the trouble,” said Eddy to Anderson.
There had been a mutter as of coming storm in Wall Street for several weeks, and this had culminated in a small, and probably a sham, tempest, with more stage thunder and lightning than any real. However, it was on that very account just the sort of cataclysm to overwhelm phantom and illusory ships of fortune like Arthur Carrolls. That week he acknowledged to himself that his career in the City was over, that it was high time for him to shut up his office and to shake the dust of the City from his feet, for fear of worse to come. Arthur Carroll had a certain method in madness, a certain caution in the midst of recklessness, and he had also a considerable knowledge of law, and had essayed to keep within it. However, there were complications and quibbles, and nobody knew what might happen, so he retreated in as good order as possible, and even essayed to guard as well as might be his retreat. He told the pretty stenographers, with more urbanity than usual, and even smiling at the prettier one, as if the fact of her roselike face did not altogether escape him, that he was feeling the need of a vacation and would close the office for a couple of weeks. At the end of that period they might report. Carroll owed both of these girls; both remembered that fact; both reflected on the possibility of their services being no longer required, but such was the unconscious masculine charm of the man over their foolish and irresponsible feminity that they questioned nothing. Their eyes regarded him half-shyly, half-boldly under their crests of blond pompadours. The younger and prettier blushed sweetly, and laughed consciously, as if she saw herself in a mirror; the other's face deepened like a word under a strenuous pencil—the lines in it grew accentuated. Going down-stairs, the pretty girl nudged the other almost painfully in the side.
“Say,” she whispered, “did you see him stare at me. Eh?”
The other girl drew away angrily. “I don't know as I did,” she replied, in a curt tone.
“He stared like everything. Say, I don't believe he's married.”
“I don't see what difference it makes to you whether he's married or not.”
“Sho! Guess I wouldn't be seen goin' with a married man. What do you take me for, Sadie Smith?”
“Wait till there's any question of goin' before you worry. I would.”
“Maybe I sha'n't have to wait long,” giggled the other. When she reached the sidewalk, she stood balancing herself airily, swinging her arms, keeping up a continuous flutter of motion like a bird, to keep warm, for the wind blew cold down Broadway. She was really radiant, vibrant with nerves and young blood, sparkling and dimpling, and bubbling over, as it were, with perfect satisfaction with herself and perfect assurance of what lay before her. The other stood rather soberly beside her. They were both waiting for a car up Broadway. The young man who was in love with the pretty one came clattering down the stairs. There had been something wrong with the elevator, and it was being repaired. He also had to wait for a car, and he joined the girls. He approached the pretty girl and timidly pressed his shoulder against hers in its trim, light jacket. She drew away from him with a sharp thrust of the elbow.
“Go 'long,” said she, forcibly. She laughed, but she was evidently in earnest.
The young man was not much abashed. He stood regarding her, winking fast.
“Say,” he said, with a cautious glance around at the staircase, “s'pose the boss is goin' to quit?”
Both girls turned and stared at him. The elder turned quite pale.
“What do you mean, talking so?” said she, sharply.
“Nothin', only I thought it was a kind of queer time of year for a man to take a vacation, a man as busy as the boss seems to be. And—it kind of entered my head—”
“If anything entered your head, do, for goodness' sake, hang on to it,” said the pretty girl, pertly. Then her car whirred over the crossing and ground to a standstill, and she sprang on it with a laugh at her own wit. “Good-night,” she called back.
The other two, waiting for another car, were left together. “You don't think Mr. Carroll means to give up business?” the girl said, in a guarded tone.
“Lord, no! Why, he has so much business he can hardly stagger under it, and he must be making money. I was only joking.”
“I suppose he's good pay,” the girl said, in a shamed tone.
“Good pay? Of course he is. He don't keep right up to the mark—none of these lordly rich men like him do—but he's sure as Vanderbilt. I should smile if he wasn't.”
“I thought so,” said the girl. “I didn't mean to say I had any doubt.”
“He's sure, only he's a big swell. That's always the way with these big swells. If he hadn't been such a swell, now, he'd have paid us all off before he took his vacation. But, bless you, money means so little to a chap like him that it don't enter into his head it can mean any more to anybody else.”
“It must be awful nice to have money enough so you can feel that way,” remarked the girl, with a curious sigh.
“That's so.” The young man craned his neck forward to look at an approaching car, then he turned again to the girl. “Say,” he whispered, pressing close to her in the hurrying throng, and speaking in her ear, “she's dead stuck on him, ain't she?” By two jerks, one of his right shoulder, one of his left, with corresponding jerks of his head, up the stairs and up Broadway, he indicated his employer and the girl who had just left on the car.
“She's a fool,” replied the girl, comprehensively.
“Think she 'ain't got no show?”
The girl sniffed.
The young man laughed happily. “Well,” he said, “I rather think he's married, myself, anyhow.”
“I don't think he's married,” returned the girl, quickly.
“I do. There's our car. Come along.”
The girl climbed after the young man on to the crowded platform of the car. She glanced back at the office window as the car rumbled heavily up Broadway, and it was a pathetic glance from a rather pathetic young face with a steady outlook upon a life of toil and petty needs.
William Allbright had lingered behind the rest, and was in the office talking with Carroll, who was owing him a month's salary. Allbright, respectfully and apologetically, but with a considerable degree of firmness, had asked for it.
“It is not quite convenient for me to pay you to-night, Mr. Allbright,” Carroll replied, courteously. “I was expecting a considerable sum to-day, which would have enabled me to square off a number of other debts beside yours. You know that matter of Gates & Ormsbee?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Allbright, rather evasively. He had curious misgivings lately about this very Gates & Ormsbee, who figured in considerable transactions on his books.
“Well,” continued Carroll, rather impatiently, looking at his watch, “you know they failed to meet their note this morning, and that has shortened me with ready money.”
“How long do you expect to keep the office shut, sir?” inquired the clerk, respectfully, but still with a troubled air, and with serious eyes with the unswerving intentness of a child's upon Carroll's face.
“About two weeks,” answered Carroll. “I must have that much rest. I am overworked.” It was, indeed, true that Carroll looked fagged and fairly ill.
“And then you expect to resume business?” questioned Allbright, with a mild persistence. He still kept those keen, childlike eyes of his upon the other man's face.
“What else would you understand from what I have already said?” said Carroll. He essayed to meet the other man's eyes, then he turned and looked out of the window, and at that minute the girl who had worked at the type-writer in the back office looked up at him from the crowded platform of the car with her small, intense face, whose intensity seemed to make it stand out from the others around her as from a blurred background of humanity. “May I ask you to kindly wait a moment, Mr. Allbright?” Carroll said, and went out hurriedly, leaving Allbright standing staring in amazement. There had been something in his employer's manner which he did not understand. He stood a second, then presently made free to take up a copy of the Wall Street edition of theSun, and sit down to glance over the panic reports. It was not very long, however, before he heard Carroll approaching the door. Carroll entered quite naturally, and the unusual expression which had perplexed the clerk was gone from his face. His mind seemed to be principally disturbed by the trouble about the elevator.
“It is an outrage,” he said, in his fine voice, which was courteous even while pronouncing anathema. “The management of this block is not what it should be.”
Allbright had risen, and was standing beside the desk on which lay theSun. “It hasn't been acting right for a week past,” he said, referring to the elevator.
“I know it hasn't, and there might have been an accident. It is an outrage. And they are taking twice as long to repair it as they should. I doubt if it is in working order by to-morrow.” As he spoke, Carroll was taking out his pocket-book, which he opened, disclosing neatly folded bank-notes. “By-the-way, Mr. Allbright,” he said, “I find I can settle my arrears with you to-night, after all. I happened to think of a party from whom I might procure a certain sum which was due me, and I did so.”
Allbright's face brightened. “I am very glad, sir,” he said. “I was afraid of getting behind with the rent, and my sister has not been very well lately, and there is the doctor's bill.”
“I am very glad also,” said Carroll. “I dislike exceedingly to allow these things to remain unpaid.” As he spoke he was counting out the amount of Allbright's month's salary. He then closed the pocket-book with a deft motion, but not before the clerk had seen that it was nearly empty. He also saw something else before Carroll brought his light overcoat together over his chest. “It is really cold to-night,” he said.
“I am very much obliged to you, sir, for the money,” Allbright said, putting the notes in his old pocket-book. Then he replied to Carroll's remark concerning the weather, that it was indeed cold, and he thought there would be a frost.
“Yes, I think so,” said Carroll.
Then Allbright put on his own rather shabby, dark overcoat and his hat and took his leave. Much to his surprise, Carroll extended his hand, something which he had never done before.
“Good-bye,” he said.
Allbright shook the extended hand, and felt a sudden, unexplained emotion. He returned the good-bye, and wished Mr. Carroll a pleasant vacation and restoration to health.
“I am tired out and ill,” Carroll admitted, in a weary voice, and his eyes, as they now met the other man's, were haggard.
“There's two weeks' vacation,” Allbright told his sister when he reached home that night, “and I don't know, but I'm afraid business ain't going just to suit Captain Carroll, and that's the reason for it.”
“Has he paid you?” asked his sister, quickly, and her placid forehead wrinkled. Her illness had made her irritable.
“Yes,” replied her brother. He looked at her meditatively. He was about to tell her something—that he was almost sure that Carroll had gone out and pawned his watch to pay him—then he desisted. He reflected that his sister was a woman, and would in all probability tell the woman down-stairs and her son about it, and that it would be none of their business whether he worked for a man who was honest enough, or hard up enough, to pawn his watch to pay him his month's salary or not. He was conscious of sentiments of loyalty both to himself and to Carroll. During the next two weeks he often strolled in the neighborhood of the office and stood looking up at the familiar windows. One day he saw some men carrying away a desk which looked familiar, but he was not sure. He hesitated about asking them from what office they had removed it until they had driven away and it was too late. He went up on the elevator and surveyed the office door, but it looked just as usual, with the old sign thereon. He tried it softly, but it was locked.
When he reached the sidewalk he encountered Harrison Day, the young clerk. He did not see him at first, but a nervous touch on his arm arrested his attention, and then he saw the young man's face with its fast-winking eyes.
“Say,” said Harrison Day, “it's all right, ain't it?”
“What's all right?” demanded Allbright, a trifle shortly, drawing away. He had never liked Harrison Day.
“Oh, nothin', only it's ten days since he went, and I thought I'd look round to see how things were lookin'. You s'pose he's comin' back all right?”
“I haven't any reason to think anything else.”
“Well, I thought I'd look around, and when I saw you I thought I'd ask what you thought. The girls are kind of uneasy—that is, Sadie is—May don't seem to fret much. Say!”
“What?”
“Did he pay you?”
“Yes, he did.”
“Ain't he owin' you anything?”
“No, he is not.”
The young man gave a whistle of relief. “Well, I s'pose he's all right,” he said. “He 'ain't paid the rest of us up yet, but I s'pose it's safe enough.”
A faithful, even an affectionate look came into the other man's face. He remembered his suspicions about the watch, and reasoned from premises. “I have no more doubt of him than I have of myself,” he replied.
“You s'pose the business is goin' on just the same, then?”
“Of course I do,” Allbright replied, almost angrily. And then a man who had just emerged from the street door coming from the elevator accosted him.
“Can you tell me anything about a man by the name of Carroll that's been running a sort of promoting business up in No. 233,” he asked, and his face looked reddened unnaturally. The young man thought he had probably been drinking, but Allbright thought he looked angry. The young man replied before Allbright opened his mouth.
“He's gone on a vacation,” he said.
“Queer time of year for a vacation,” snapped the man, who was long and lean and full of nervous vibrations.
“He was overworked,” said Harrison Day.
“Guess he overworked cheating me out of two thousand odd dollars,” said the man, and both the others turned and stared at him.
Then Allbright spoke. “That is a statement no man has any right to make about my employer unless he is in a position to prove it,” he said.
“That is so,” said Harrison Day. He was a very small man, but he danced before the tall, lean one, who looked as if all his flesh might have resolved to muscle.
The man looked contemptuously down at him and spoke to Allbright. “So he is your employer?” he said, in a sarcastic tone.
“Yes, he is.”
“This young man's also, I presume.”
“Yes, he is,” declared Day. But the man only heeded Allbright's response that he was.
“Well,” said the man, “may I ask a question?”
“Yes, you may,” said Day, pertly, “but it don't follow that we are goin' to answer it.”
“May I ask,” said the man, addressing Allbright, “if Captain Carroll has paid you your salaries?”
“He has paid me every dollar he owed me,” replied Allbright, with emphasis, and his own face flushed.
Then the man turned to Day. “Has he paid you?” he inquired.
And Day, with no hesitation, lied. “Yes, sir, he has, every darned cent,” he declared, “and I don't know what business it is of yours whether he has or not.”
“When is he coming back?” asked the man, of Allbright, not heeding Day.
“Next Monday,” replied Allbright, with confidence.