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The Debtor: A Novel, a novel by Mary E Wilkins Freeman |
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Chapter 11 |
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_ Chapter XI 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 he _good?_" "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." _ |
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