The Debtor Part 18

"I regret that you should consider the taking anything without leave, however worthless, as trivial," said she. "I have not been so brought up, and neither has my brother." She said this with an indescribable air of offended rect.i.tude. She regarded him like a small, incarnate truth and honesty. Then she turned, and her brother was following with a reluctant backward pull at her leading hand, when suddenly he burst forth with a shout of malicious glee.

"Say, you are making me go away, when I haven't given him back his old candy, after all! He didn't take it."

Charlotte promptly caught the paper bag from her brother's hand, advanced upon Anderson, and thrust it in his face as if it had been a hostile weapon. Anderson took it perforce.

"Here is your property," said she, proudly, but she seemed almost as childish as her brother.

"I ain't said any apology, either," said Eddy.

"The coming here and returning it is apology enough," said Anderson.

He looked foolishly at the ridiculous paper bag, sticky with lollipops. For the first time he felt distinctly ashamed of his business. It seemed to him, as he realized its concentration upon the petty details of existence, its strenuous dwelling upon the small, inane sweets and absurdities of daily life which ought to be scattered with a free hand, not made subjects of trade and barter, to be entirely below a gentleman. He gave the paper bag an impatient toss out of the open window over the back of the sleeping cat, which started a little, then stretched himself luxuriously and slept again.

"There, he's thrown it out of the window!" proclaimed Eddy. He looked accusingly at Charlotte. "I might just as well have kept it as had it thrown out of the window," said he. "What good is it to anybody now, I'd like to know?"

"Never mind what he has done with it," said Charlotte. "Come at once."

"Papa told me I must apologize. He will ask me if I did."

"Apologize, then. Be quick."

"It is not--" began Anderson, who was sober enough now, and becoming more and more annoyed, but Charlotte interrupted him.

"Eddy!" said she.

"I am very sorry I took your candy," piped Eddy, in a loud, declamatory voice which was not the tone of humble repentance. The boy, as he spoke, eyed the man with defiance. It was as if he blamed him, for some occult reason, for having his own property stolen. The child's face became, under the forced humiliation of the apology, revolutionary, anarchistic, rebellious. He might have been the representative, the walking delegate, of some small cult of rebels against the established order of regard for the property-rights of others. The sinner, the covetous one of another's sweets, became the accuser. Just as he was going out of the door, following the pink flutter of his sister's muslin gown, he turned and spoke his whole mind.

"You had a whole big gla.s.s jar of them, anyhow," said he, "and I didn't have a single one. You might have given me some, and then I shouldn't have stolen them. It's your own fault. You ought not to have things that anybody else wants, when they haven't got money to pay for them. It's a good deal wickeder than stealing. It was your own fault."

But Eddy had then to deal with his sister. She towered over him, pinker than her pink muslin. The ruffles seemed agitated all over her slender, girlish figure, like the plumage of an angry bird. She caught her small brother by the shoulders, and shook him violently, until the dark hair which he wore rather long waved and his whole head wagged.

"Eddy Carroll," she cried, "aren't you ashamed of yourself? Oh, aren't you ashamed of yourself? Begging, yes, _begging_ for candy! If you want candy, you will buy it. You will not beg it nor take it without permission. If you cannot buy it, you will go without, if you are a brother of mine."

The boy for the first time quailed somewhat. He looked at her, and raised a hand childishly as if to ward off something.

"I didn't ask, Charlotte," he half whimpered. "If he was to offer me any now, I would not take it. I would just fling it in his face. I would, Charlotte; I would, honest."

"I heard you," said Charlotte.

"I didn't ask him. I said if he had given me a little of that candy, I wouldn't have been obliged to take any. I said--"

"I heard what you said. Now you must come at once."

Anderson said good-morning rather feebly. Charlotte made a distant inclination of her head in response, and they were gone, but he heard Eddy cry out, in a tone of reproachful glee:

"There! you've made me late at school, Charlotte. Look at that clock; it's after nine. You've made me late at school with all that fussing over a few old peppermint-drops."

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 att.i.tude 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 att.i.tude, 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 inc.u.mbent, 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 pa.s.sionate a.s.sertion of the principles of her home training with pity and wors.h.i.+pful 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 circ.u.mstantial 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 s.h.a.g of gray beard and a s.h.i.+ning 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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.