Read Ebook: The Debtor: A Novel by Freeman Mary Eleanor Wilkins Stevens William Dodge Illustrator

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Ebook has 679 lines and 38287 words, and 14 pages

et?" inquired Anderson, with a lurking mischief.

His mother looked at him with quick suspicion. "You don't want her asked?" she said.

"Why should she be asked? She never is."

"I don't know but with an extra dinner--"

"She has her mission," Mrs. Anderson said, with firmness. "You are eating nothing yourself, Randolph." Presently she looked at her son with an inscrutable expression. "Are the Carrolls all gone?" she asked.

Anderson cut himself a bit of beefsteak carefully before replying. "Some of them, I believe," said he.

"I heard Mrs. Carroll and her sister and daughter and the boy all went yesterday morning. Josie Eggleston came in about the Rainy Day Club meeting, this morning, and she told me." There was something so interrogative in his mother's tone that Anderson was obliged to say something.

"They all went except the daughter, I believe," he said.

"The girl who was here?"

"Yes."

"Then she didn't go?"

"She went as far as Lancaster, but she came back?"

"Came back?"

"Yes. She didn't want to leave her father alone, and--under a cloud, as he seems to be, and she knew if she declared she was not going there would be opposition--that, in fact, her mother would not go."

"I don't think much of her for going, anyway," said Mrs. Anderson. "Leaving her husband all alone. I don't care what he had done, he was her husband, and I dare say he cheated on her account, mostly. She ought not to have gone."

"They wanted her to go; she is not very strong; and the sister is really ill," said Anderson, "and so the daughter planned it. She went as far as Lancaster, then she got off the train."

"Why, I should think her mother would be crazy?"

"She sent word back, a letter by Eddy. He got off the train with her; the train stopped there a few minutes."

"Then she came back?"

"Yes."

"And she is going to stay with her father?"

"Yes."

"Oh!" said Mrs. Anderson.

After dinner Anderson sat beside the sitting-room window with his noon mail, as was his custom, for a few minutes before returning to the store, and his mother came up behind him. She stroked his hair, which was thick and brown, and only a little gray on the temples.

"She is a very pretty girl, and I think she is a dear child to come back and not leave her father alone," she said.

Anderson did not look up, but he leaned his head caressingly towards his mother.

"I have been thinking," said she. "I am a good deal older; she is only a little, young girl, and I am an old lady, and I have never called there. You know I never call on new people nowadays, but she must be very lonely, all alone there. I think I shall go up there and call on her some afternoon this week, if it is pleasant. I have some other calls I want to make on the way there, and I might as well."

"I will order the coach for you any afternoon you say, mother," replied Anderson.

It was the next day but one that Mrs. Anderson, arrayed in her best, seated in state in the Rawdy coach, was driven into the grounds of the Carroll house. Charlotte answered her ring. The elder woman's quick eye saw, with both pity and disapproval, that the girl was unsuitably arrayed for housework in a light cloth dress, which was necessarily stained and spotted.

"What is it, mother?"

"How much has that child seen of you?"

"Not so very much, mother. Why?"

"I think she thinks a great deal about you."

"Nonsense, mother!" Anderson said. It was after tea that night, and the mother and son sat together in the sitting-room. They had a fire on the hearth, and it looked very pleasant. Mrs. Anderson had a fine white apron over her best black silk, and she sat one side of the table, knitting. Anderson was smoking and reading the evening paper on the other. He continued to smoke and apparently to read after his mother made that statement with regard to Charlotte. She looked at him and knew perfectly well that he was not comprehending anything he read.

"She is a very sweet girl," she said, presently, in an inscrutable voice. "I don't like her family, and I must say I think her father, from what I hear, almost ought to be in prison, but I don't think that child is to blame."

"Of course not," said Anderson. He turned his paper with an air of pretended abstraction.

"She says she thinks her father will leave Banbridge before long," said Mrs. Anderson, further.

Her son made no response. She sat thinking how, if Carroll did leave Banbridge and the rest of the family were in Kentucky, why, the girl could be judged separately; and if Randolph should fancy her--she was not at all sure that he did--of Charlotte she had not a doubt. She had never had a doubt of any woman's attitude of readiness to grasp the sceptre, if it were only held out by her son. And she herself was conscious of something which was almost infatuation for the girl. Something about her appealed to her. She had an almost fierce impulse of protection, of partisanship.

Anderson himself had not the least realization of his mother's actual sentiments in the matter. It was the consequence in inconsequence of a woman, which a man can seldom grasp. From what he had known of his mother's character heretofore, a girl coming from such a family would have been the last one to appeal to her for a daughter-in-law. She had been plainly hostile to young women with much superior matrimonial assets. He had often surmised that she did not wish him to marry at all. He did not understand the possibility there is in some women's natures of themselves falling in love, both individually and vicariously, with the woman who loves their sons, or who is supposed to love their sons.

"Captain Carroll came into the yard just as I drove out," said Mrs. Anderson. "He is a very fine-looking man. It is a pity." Then she added again, with an obscure accent of congratulation, "Well, if he goes away nobody need say anything more against him."

Anderson reflected, without expressing it aloud, that it was doubtful if Carroll's exit was possible, and, if possible, would be conducive to silence from his creditors, but he apparently continued to read.

"He is a very handsome man," said his mother again, "and he has the air of a gentleman. He bowed to me like a prince. He is a very fine-looking man, isn't he?"

Before Anderson could reply the door-bell rang.

"I wonder who it is," Mrs. Anderson said, in a hushed voice.

"Somebody on business, probably," replied Anderson, rising. The maid had gone out. As he went into the front hall his mother rustled softly into the dining-room. She was always averse to being in the room when men came on business. Sometimes commercial travellers infringed upon Anderson's home hours, and she was always covertly indignant. She was constantly in a state of armed humility with regard to the details of business. She felt the incongruity of herself, the elderly gentlewoman in the soft, rich, black silk, with the scarf of real lace fastened with a brooch of real pearls at the throat, with the cap of real lace, with the knots of lavender ribbon, on her fluff of white curls, remaining in the room while the discussion as to the rates of tea and coffee or sugar or soap went on. So she slipped with her knitting-work into the dining-room, but she dropped her ball of white wool, which remained beside the chair which she had occupied in the sitting-room. She was knitting a white shawl. She sat beside the dining-table, and continued to knit, however, pulling furtively on the recreant ball, while her son ushered somebody into the sitting-room, asked him politely to be seated, and then closed the door. That prevented her from knitting anymore, as the wool was held taut. So she finally laid her work on the table and went out into the hall on her way up-stairs. The door leading from the hall into the sitting-room was closed, and she stopped and eyed curiously the hat and coat on the old-fashioned mahogany table in the hall. She stood looking at them from a distance of a few feet; then she wrapped her silk draperies closely around her and slid closer. She passed her hand over the fine texture of the coat, which was redolent of cigar smoke. She took up the hat. Then she spied the top card on the little china card-basket on the table, and took it up. It was Arthur Carroll's. She nodded her head, remained standing a moment listening to the inaudible murmur of conversation from the next room, then went up-stairs, to sit down in her old winged arm-chair, covered with a peacock-pattern chintz, and read until the visitor should be gone. She was fairly quivering with astonishment and curiosity. But she was no more astonished than her son had been when he had opened the front-door and seen Arthur Carroll standing there. He had almost doubted the evidence of his eyes, especially when Carroll had accepted his invitation to enter, and had removed his coat and hat and followed him into the sitting-room.

"It is a cold night," Anderson said, feeling that he must say something.

"Very, for the season," replied Carroll, "and I have not yet, in spite of my long residence North, grown sufficiently accustomed to the heated houses and unheated out-of-doors to keep my top-coat on inside, even if I remain only a few minutes."

The sumptuous lining of the coat gleamed as he laid it on the hall-table; there was something unconquerable, sumptuous, genial, undaunted yet about the man. He had the courtesy of a prince, this poor American who had lived by the exercise of his sharper wits on his neighbor's dull ones, if report said rightly. And yet Anderson, as he sat opposite Carroll, and they were both smoking in a comrade-like fashion, doubted. There was something in the man's face which seemed to belie the theory that he was a calculating knave. His face was keen, but not cunning, and, moreover, there was a strange, almost boyish, sanguineness about it which brought Eddy forcibly to mind. It was the face of a man who might dupe himself as well as others, and do it with generous enthusiasm and self-trust. It was the face of a man who might have bitter awakenings, as well as his dupes, but who might take the same fatuous, happy leaps to disaster again. And yet there was a certain strength, even nobility, in the face, and it was distinctly lovable, and in no weak sense. He looked very like Eddy as he sat there, and, curiously enough, he spoke almost at once of him.

"I believe you were a friend of my son, Mr. Anderson," he remarked, with his pleasant, compelling smile.

Anderson smiled in response. "I believe I had that honor," he replied. Then he said something about his having gone, and how much his father must miss him. "He is a fine little fellow," he added, and was almost surprised at the expression of positive gratitude which came into Carroll's eyes in response. He spoke, however, with a kind of proud deprecation.

"Oh, well, he is a boy yet, of course," he said, "but there is a man in him if fate doesn't put too many stumbling-blocks in his way."

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