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The Debtor: A Novel, a novel by Mary E Wilkins Freeman |
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Chapter 18 |
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_ Chapter XVIII There was in Banbridge, at this date, almost universal distrust of Carroll, but very little of it was expressed, for the reason, common to the greater proportion of humanity: the victims in proclaiming their distrust would have proclaimed at the same time their victimization. It was quite safe to assume that the open detractors of Carroll had not been duped by him; it was also quite safe to assume that many of those who either remained silent or declared their belief in him had suffered more or less. The latter were those who made it possible for the Carrolls to remain in Banbridge at all. There were many who had a lingering hope of securing something in the end, who did not wish Carroll to depart, and who were even uneasy at his absence, although the fact of his family remaining and of the wedding preparations for his daughter going on seemed sufficient to allay suspicions. It is generally true that partisanship, even of the few, counts for more than disparagement of the many, with all right-intentioned people who have a reasonable amount of love for their fellow-men. Somehow partisanship, up to a certain limit, beyond which the partisan appears a fool to all who listen to him, seems to give credit to the believer in it. At all events, while the number of Arthur Carroll's detractors was greatly in advance of his adherents, the moral atmosphere of Banbridge, while lowering, was still very far from cyclonic for him. He got little credit, yet still friendly, admiring, and even obsequious recognition. The invitations to his daughter's wedding had been eagerly accepted. The speculations as to whether the bills would be paid or not added to the interest. In those days the florist and the dressmaker were quite local celebrities. They looked anxious, yet rather pleasantly self-conscious. The dressmaker bragged by day and lay awake by night. Every time the florist felt uneasy, he slipped across to the nearest saloon and got a drink of beer. After that, when asked if he did not feel afraid he would lose money through the Carroll wedding, he said something about the general esteem in which people should be held who patronized local industries, in his thick German-English, grinned, and shambled back, his fat hips shaking like a woman's, to his hot-houses, and pottered around his geraniums and decorative palms. On the Sunday morning before the wedding there were an unusual number of men in the barber-shop--old Eastman, Frank's father, who generally shaved himself, besides Amidon, Drake, the postmaster, Tappan the milkman, and a number of others. Amidon was in the chair, and spoke whenever it did not seem too hazardous. He had just had his hair cut also, as a delicate concession to the barber on the part of a free customer on a busy morning, and his rather large head glistened like a silver ball. "Reckon Carroll must have gone out West promotin' to raise a little wind for the weddin'," he said. "I haven't seed him, and I atropined he had not come back yet," remarked the barber. Lee looked up from his Sunday paper--all the men except young Willy Eddy were provided with Sunday papers; he waited patiently for a spare page finished and thrown aside by another. Besides the odors of soap and perfumed oils and bay-rum and tobacco-smoke, that filled the little place, was the redolence of fresh newspapers, staring with violent head-lines, and as full of rustle as a forest. Lee looked up from his paper, and gave his head a curious, consequential toss. He had been shaved himself, and his little tuft of yellow beard was trimmed to a nicety. He looked sleek and well-dressed, and he had always his indefinable air of straining himself furtively upon tiptoe to reach some unattainable height. Lee's consequentiality had something painful about it at times. "I guess Captain Carroll hadn't any need to go out West promoting. I rather think he can find all the business he wants right here," he said. Tappan the milkman, bearded and grim, looked up from an article on the coal strike. "Guess he _can_ find about fools enough right here to work on, that's right," said he, and there was a laugh. Lee's small blond face colored furiously; his voice was shrill in response. "Perhaps those he doesn't work, as you call it, are bigger fools than those he does," said he. "Say," said the milkman, with a snarling sort of humor. He fastened brutally twinkling eyes on Lee. Everybody waited; the little barber held the razor poised over Amidon's chin. "When do your next dividends come in?" he inquired. Lee gave an angry sniff, and flirted up his paper before his face. "Why don't ye say?" pressed Tappan, with a hard wink at the others. "I don't know that it is any of your business," replied Lee. "Ask when the millennium's comin'," said Amidon, in the chair. "I wish I was as sure of the millennium as I am of those dividends," declared Lee, brought to bay. "Glad you've got faith in that dead-beat. He's owin' me for fifteen dollars' worth of milk-tickets, and I can't get a dam'ed penny of it," said Tappan. He gave the sheet of paper he held a vicious crumple and flung it to the floor, whence little Willy Eddy timidly and softly gathered it up. "Gettin' up at four o'clock in the mornin'," continued the milkman, in a cursing voice, "an' milkin' a lot of dam'ed old kickin' cows, and gittin' on the road half-dead with sleep, to make a present to whelps like him, goin' to the City dressed up like Morgan hisself, ridin' to the station in a carriage he 'ain't paid for, with a man drivin' that can't git a cent out of him. Talk about coal strikes! Lord! I could give them miners points. Strikin' for eight hours a day! Lord! what's that? Here I've got to go home an' hay, if it _is_ Sunday, to git enough for them dam'ed cows to eat in the winter! Eight hours! Hm! I work eighteen an' I 'ain't got anybody over me to strike again', 'cept the Almighty, an' I ruther guess He wouldn't make much account of it. Guess he'd starve me out ef I quit work, and not make much bones of it. I _can_ stop peddlin' milk to sech as Carroll, but the milk sours, an' hanged if I know who suffers most. Here's my wife been makin' dam'ed little pot-cheeses out of the sour milk as 'tis, and sellin' 'em for two cents apiece. They're hangin' all over the bushes tied up in little rags. She's got to work all day to-day makin' butter to save the cream, and then I s'pose I've got to hustle round and find somebody to give the butter to. Carroll ain't the only one. I wish they all had to work as hard as I do one day for the things they git for nothin', the whole bilin' lot of 'em. He's the worst, though. What business did he have settlin' down on us here in Banbridge, I'd like to know? If he'd got to steal to feather his nest, why didn't he go to some other place, confound him?" The milkman's voice and manner were malignant. The barber looked at him with some apprehension, but he spoke, still holding his razor aloft. "Now I rather guess you are jumpin' at exclusions too hasty, Mr. Tappan," said he, in an anxiously pacific voice. "I don't know about them dividends Mr. Lee's talkin' about. Captain Carroll, he gave me a little dip." The barber winked about mysteriously. "He told me he'd tell me when to come in, and he ain't told me yet, but I ain't no disprehension, but he's all right. Captain Carroll is a gentleman, he is." Flynn's voice fairly quivered with affectionate championship. There were tears in his foolish eyes. He bent over Amidon's face, which grinned up at him cautiously through the lather. "Let him pay me them milk-tickets, then, if he's all right," Tappan said, viciously. "He will when he's disembarrassed and his adventures are on a dividend-paying adipoise," said the barber, in a tearful voice. "I think he is all right," said the druggist. Then little Willy Eddy added his pipe. He had been covertly smoothing out Tappan's crumpled newspaper. "He's real nice-spoken," said he. "I guess he will come right in time." Tappan turned on him and snatched back his newspaper. "Here, I ain't done with that," he said; "I've got to take it home to my wife." Then he added, "For God's sake, you little fool, he ain't been swipin' anything from you, has he?" Then the barber arose to the situation. He advanced, razor in hand. He strode up to the milkman and stood dramatically before him, arm raised and head thrown back. "Now, look at here," he proclaimed, in a high falsetto, "I ain't agoin' to hear no asparagusment of my friends, not here in this tonsorial parlor. No, sir!" There was something at once touching, noble, and absurd about the demonstration. The others chuckled, then sobered, and watched. Tappan stared at him a second incredulously. Then he grinned, showing his teeth like a dog. "Lord! then that jailbird is one of your friends, is he?" he said. He had just lit his pipe. He puffed at it, and deliberately blew the smoke into the little barber's face. Flynn bent over towards him with a sudden motion, and his mild, consequential face in the cloud of smoke changed into something terrible, from its very absurdity. His blue eyes glittered greenly; he lifted the razor and cut the air with it close to the other man's face. Tappan heard the hiss of it, and drew back involuntarily, his expression changing. "What the devil are you up to?" he growled, with wary eyes on the other's face. The barber continued to hold the razor like a bayonet in rest, fixed within an inch of the other's nose. "I'm up to kickin' you out of my parlor if you don't stop speakin' individuously disregardin' my friends," said he, with an emphasis which was ridiculous and yet impressive. The other men chuckled again, then grew grave. "Come back here and finish up my job, John," Amidon called out; yet he watched him warily. "Here, put up that razor!" the postmaster called out. "I'll put it up when you stop speakin' mellifluously of my friends," declared the barber. "There ain't nobody in this parlor goin' to speak a word against Captain Carroll if I'm in hearin'; there ain't an honester man in this town." The barber's back was towards the door. Suddenly Tappan's eyes stared past him, his grin widened inexplicably. Flynn became aware of a pregnant silence throughout the shop. He turned, following Tappan's gaze, and Arthur Carroll stood there. He had entered silently and had heard all the last of the discussion. Every face in the shop was turned towards him; he stood looking at them with the curious expression of a man taken completely off guard. All the serene force and courtesy which usually masked his innermost emotions had, as it were, slipped off; for a flash he stood revealed, soul-naked, for any one who could see. None there could fully see, although every man looked, sharpened with curiosity and suspicion. Carroll was white and haggard, unsmiling, despairing, even pathetic; his eyes actually looked suffused. Then in a flash it was over, and Arthur Carroll in his usual guise stood before them--it was like one of those metamorphoses of which one reads in fairy tales. Carroll stood there smiling, stately, gracefully, even confidentially condescending. It was as if he appealed to their sense of humor, that he, Carroll, stood among them addressing them as their equals. "Good-day, gentleman," he said, and came forward. Little Willy Eddy sprang up with a frightened look and gave him his chair, murmuring in response to Carroll's deprecating thanks that he was just going; but he did not go. He remained in the doorway staring. He had a vague idea of some judgment descending upon them all from this great man whom they had been slandering. "Well, how are you, captain?" said Lee, speaking with an air of defiant importance. It became evident that what had gone before was to be ignored by everybody except Tappan, who suddenly rose and went out, muttering something which nobody heard. Then the lash of a whip was heard outside, a "g'lang," with the impetus of an oath, and a milk wagon clattered down the street. Carroll replied to Lee, urbanely: "Fine," he said, "fine. How are you, Mr. Lee?" "Seems to me you are not looking quite up to the mark," Lee remarked, surveying him with friendly solicitude. The little barber had returned to Amidon in the chair, and was carefully scraping his cheek with the razor. "Then my looks belie me," Carroll replied, smiling. He offered a cigar to Lee and to the druggist, who sat next on the other side. "Been out of town?" asked the druggist. "Yes," replied Carroll. Drake looked at him hesitatingly, but Amidon, speaking stiffly and cautiously, put the question directly: "Where you been, cap'n?" "A little journey on business," Carroll answered, easily, lighting his cigar. "When did you get home?" asked Amidon. "This morning." "You certainly look as if you had lost flesh," said Lee, with obsequious solicitude. "Well, it is a hard journey to Chicago--quite a hard journey," remarked the druggist, with cunning. "Not on the fast train," said Carroll. "So you went on the flyer?" said the postmaster. Carroll was having some difficulty in lighting his cigar, and did not reply. "Did you go on the flyer?" persisted the postmaster. "No, I did not," replied Carroll, with unmistakable curtness. The postmaster hemmed to conceal embarrassment. He had been shaved and had only lingered for a bit of gossip, and now the church-bells began to ring, and he was going to church, as were also Lee, the druggist, and most of the others. They rose and lounged out, one after another; little Willy Eddy followed them. Flynn finished shaving Amidon, who also left, and finally he was left alone in the shop with Carroll, who arose and approached the chair. "Sorry to keep you waitin', Captain Carroll," said Flynn, preparing a lather with enthusiasm. "The day is before me," said Carroll, as he seated himself. "I hope," said Flynn, beating away his hand in a bowl of mounting rainbow bubbles--"I hope that--that--your feelings were not hurt at--at--our eavesdropping." "At what?" asked Carroll, kindly and soberly. "At our eavesdropping," reported the barber, with a worshipful and agitated glance at him. "Oh!" answered Carroll, but he did not smile. "No," he said, "my feelings were not hurt." He looked at the small man who was the butt of the town, and his expression was almost caressing. Flynn continued to beat away at the lather, and the rainbow bubbles curled over the edge of the bowl. "You said that you would devise me when the time had come for me to invest that money," he said, diffidently, and yet with a noble air of confidence and loyalty. "It hasn't come yet," Carroll replied. _ |
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