The Debtor Part 70

"I thought all Carroll's family had went," said the third man.

"Guess they didn't have enough money to take this one, and you can't beat the Pennsylvania Railroad nohow," said the fishman.

Charlotte went on to the butcher's, bought and paid for some ham, then to Anderson's for eggs. The old clerk came forward as she entered, and answered her question about the eggs.

"Do you want them charged?" he asked.

"No, I will pay for them," replied Charlotte, and took her little purse, and just then Anderson, having heard her voice, looked incredulously out of his office, his morning paper in hand. Charlotte laid some money on the counter, and stepped forward at once. She saw with a sort of wonder, and an agitation within herself for which she could not account, that the man was deadly white, that he fairly trembled.

"Good-morning, Mr. Anderson," she said.

Anderson was a man of self-control, but he gazed down at her fairly speechless. He had been telling himself that she had gone as certainly out of his life as if she were dead, and here she was again.

"I thought," he stammered, finally.

Charlotte's face of innocent wonder and disturbance flushed. "No, I did not go, after all," she said, like a child. "That is, I started, but I went no farther than Lancaster. They thought I was going--they all did--but I could not leave papa alone, and so I came back." She was incoherent. Her own confusion deepened. She tried to look into the man's face, but her own eyes fell; her lips quivered. She was almost crying, but she did not know why. She turned to the counter, behind which stood the man with the package of eggs and the change.

"Send that package," Anderson said, brusquely.

"The wagon has gone."

"Send it as soon as it comes back. There will be time enough."

"I can manage if I don't have the eggs until noon," said Charlotte.

The clerk turned to put away the parcel in readiness for the delivery-wagon, and again Anderson and the girl looked at each other.

Anderson had caught up his hat with his newspaper as he came out of the office, and Charlotte looked at it.

"Were you going out?" she asked, timidly, and yet the question seemed to imply a suggestion. She glanced towards the door.

Anderson muttered something about an errand, and went out with her.

They walked along the street together. Suddenly Charlotte looked up in his face and began confiding in him. She told the whole story.

"You see, I couldn't leave papa," she concluded.

Anderson looked down at her, and the look was unmistakable. Charlotte blushed and her face quivered.

"Then you are going to stay here all winter?" he said, in a low voice.

"Oh, no, I think not," she replied. "I think we shall go away."

Anderson's face fell. She had spoken very eagerly, almost as if she were anxious to go.

She made it worse. "I don't think I should have come back if it had not been for that," she said. "I did not see what poor papa could do all alone, trying to move. I don't think I should."

"Yes," said Anderson, soberly.

"Perhaps I should not have," said she. She did not look at him. She kept her eyes fixed on the frozen ground, but the man's face lighted.

They kept on in a vague sort of fas.h.i.+on and had reached the post-office. They entered, and when Anderson had unlocked his box and taken out his mail, and Charlotte had gotten some letters which looked like bills for her father, he realized the he had no excuse to go any farther with her. He bade her good-morning, therefore.

Charlotte said good-morning, and there was a little uncertainty and wistfulness in her look and voice. She was very unsophisticated, and she was wondering whether she should ask him to call, now her mother and aunt had gone. She resolved that she would ask her father. As for Anderson, he went back to the store in a sort of dream. He suddenly began to wonder if the impossible could be possible. At one moment he ridiculed himself for the absurdity of such an imagination, even, and then the imagination returned. He reflected that he would have had no such doubt if it had not been for his lack of success in his profession. He charged himself with a lack of self-respect that he should have doubts now.

"After all, I am a man," he told himself. "I am as good as ever I was."

Then he considered, and rightly, that it was not his own just estimate of himself which was to be taken into consideration in a case of this sort, but that of the people. He realized that a girl brought up as Charlotte Carroll had been might, knowing, as she must finally know, her own father to be little better than a common swindler, not even dream of the possibility of marrying a grocer. He had to pa.s.s his old office on his way home to dinner that noon, and he looked at it with more regret than he had ever done since leaving it. The school was out and the children were streaming along the street. The air was full of their chatter. Henry Edgecomb came up behind him with a good-morning. He looked worn and nervous. Anderson looked at him sharply after his greeting.

"What is the matter?" he asked.

"Nothing, only I am tired out," Edgecomb replied, wearily. "Sometimes I envy you."

"Don't," said Anderson.

"I do. This friction with new souls and temperaments is wearing my old one thin. I would rather sell b.u.t.ter and cheese."

"Rather do anything than desert the battle-field you have chosen, because you are beaten," said Anderson, with sudden bitterness.

"Nonsense! You are not beaten."

"Yes, I am."

"You have simply taken up new weapons."

"Weights and balances," said Anderson, but his laugh was bitter.

He left Edgecomb at the corner, and, going up his own street, reflected again. He began to wonder if possibly he would not have done better to have stuck to his profession; if he could not have left Banbridge and tried elsewhere--in the City. He wondered if he had shown energy and manly ambition, if he had not been poor-spirited. When he reached home his mother eyed him anxiously and asked if he were ill.

"No," he said, "but I met Henry, and he looks wretchedly."

"He hasn't enough to eat," Mrs. Anderson said. "Harriet does not give him enough to eat. It is a shame. If I were in his place I would get married."

"He says he is tired out teaching. He talks about the friction of so many natures on his."

"Of course there is a friction," said Mrs. Anderson, "but he could stand it if he had more to eat. Let us have a dinner next Sunday night; let us have a roast turkey and a pudding. We will have lunch at noon. Henry is very fond of turkey, and it is late enough to get good ones."

"Shall we ask Harriet?" 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.