The Debtor Part 35

"Lord!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed his wife. "All them?"

"All them," replied Rawdy, moodily triumphant.

"Well," said his wife, "that ain't the point."

"No, it ain't," agreed Rawdy.

"The point is," said she, "is he agoin' to or ain't he agoin' to pay."

"That's so," said Rawdy.

"He's a-owin' everybody, ain't he?" said the wife.

"Pooty near, I guess."

"Well, you ain't goin' to let one of your cerridges go, let alone hirin', unless he pays ahead."

"Lord! Dilly, how'm I goin' to ask him?" protested Rawdy.

"How? Why, the way anybody would ask him. 'Ain't you got a tongue in your head?" demanded she.

"You dunno what a man he is. I asked him the other night when I drove him up, and it wa'n't a job I liked, I can tell you."

"Did he pay you?"

"Paid me some of it."

"He's owin' you now, ain't he?"

"Well, he ain't owin' much, only the few times their cerridge 'ain't been down. It ain't much, Dilly."

"But it's something."

"Yes; everythin' that ain't nothin' is somethin', I s'pose."

"And now you're goin' right on an' lettin' him have all your cerridges, and you'll be wantin' me to help clean the seats, too, I'll warrant, and you're agoin' to hire into the bargain, with him owin' you and owin' everybody else in town."

"Now, Dilly, I didn't say I was agoin' to," protested Rawdy.

"An' me needin' a new dress, and 'ain't had one to my back for two years, and them Carroll women in a different one every time they appear out, and the girl having enough clothes for a Vanderbilt. I guess Stella Griggs will rue the day. She's a fool, and always was.

If you can afford to give that man money you can afford to get me a new dress. I'd go to the weddin'--it's free, in the church--if I had anything decent to wear."

"Now, Dilly, what can I do? I leave it to you," asked Samson Rawdy, with confessed helplessness.

"Do?" said she. "Why, tell him he's got to pay ahead or he can't have the cerridges. If you're afraid to, I'll ask him. I ain't afraid."

"Lord! I ain't afraid, Dilly," said Rawdy.

"You'd better clean up, after supper, an' go up there and tell him,"

said Dilly Rawdy, mercilessly.

In the end Rawdy obeyed, having shaved and washed, and set forth.

When he returned he was jubilant.

"He's a gentleman, I don't care what they say," said he, "and he treated me like a gentleman. Gave me a cigar, and asked me to sit down. He was smokin', himself, out on the porch. The women folks were in the house.

"Did he pay you?" asked Mrs. Rawdy.

Then Rawdy shook a fat roll of bills in her face. "Look at here,"

said he.

"The whole of it?"

"Every darned mill; my cerridges and the New Sanderson ones, too."

"Well, now, ain't you glad you did the way I told you to?"

"Lord! he'd paid me, anyway," declared Rawdy. "He's a gentleman.

Women are always dreadful scart."

"It's a pity men wasn't a little scarter sometimes," said his wife.

Rawdy, grinning, tossed a bill to her. "Wa'n't you sayin' you wanted a dress?" said he.

"I ruther guess I do. I 'ain't had one for two years."

"I guess I'd better git a silk hat to wear. I suppose I shall have to drive some of the Carrolls' folks," said Rawdy, with a timid look at his wife. A silk hat had always been his ambition, but she had always frowned upon it.

"Well, I would," said she, cordially.

Samson Rawdy told everybody how Carroll had paid him in advance--"every cent, sir; and he didn't believe, for his part, half the stories that were told about him. He guessed that he paid, in the long run, as well as anybody in Banbridge. Carroll wa'n't the only one that hadn't paid him, not by a long-shot. He guessed some of them that talked about Carroll had better look to home. He called Carroll a gentleman, and any time when anything happened that his carriage wa'n't on hand when the train come in, he was ready an' willin' to drive him up, or any of his folks, an' if they didn't have a quarter handy right on the spot, he wa'n't goin' to lay awake sweatin' over it."

Rawdy's testimony prevented Blumenfeldt, the florist, from asking for his pay in advance, as he had intended. He and his son and daughter, who a.s.sisted him in his business, decorated the church and the Carroll house, and wagons laden with palms and flowers were constantly on the road. Tuesday, the day before the wedding, was unusually warm. Banbridge had an air of festive weariness. Everybody who pa.s.sed the church stopped and stared at the open doors and the wilting gra.s.s leaves strewn about.

Elsa Blumenfeldt, in a blue s.h.i.+rt-waist and black skirt, with the tightest of fair braids packed above a round, pink face, with eyes so blue they looked opaque, tied and wove garlands with the stolid radiance of her kind. Her brother Franz worked as she did. Only the father Blumenfeldt, who was of a more nervous strain, flew about in excitement, his fat form full of vibrations, his fat face blazing, contorting with frantic energy.

"It iss ein goot yob," he repeated, constantly--"ein goot yob." Not a doubt was left. When he came in contact with Carroll he bowed to the ground; he was full of eager protestations, of almost hysterical a.s.sertions. All day long he was in incessant and fruitless motion, buzzing, as it were, over his task, conserving force only in the heat of his own spirit, not in the performance of the work. Meanwhile the son and daughter, dogged, undiverted, wrought with good results, weaving many a pretty floral fancy with their fat fingers. Eddy Carroll had taken it upon himself to guard the church doors and prevent people from viewing the splendors before the appointed time.

All the morning he had waged war with sundry of his small a.s.sociates, who were restrained from forcible entry only by the fear of the Blumenfeldt family.

"Mr. Blumenfeldt says he'll run anybody out who goes in, and kick 'em head over heels all the way down the aisle and down the steps," Eddy declared, mendaciously, to everybody, even his elders.

"I think you are telling a lie, little boy," said Mrs. Samson Rawdy, who had come with a timid female friend on a tour of inspection. Mrs.

Rawdy, in virtue of her husband's employment, felt a sort of proprietors.h.i.+p in the occasion.

"There won't be a mite of trouble about our goin' in to see the church," she told the friend, who was a humble soul.

But Mrs. Rawdy reckoned without Eddy Carroll. When she told him that he was telling a lie, he smiled sweetly at her.