The Debtor Part 83

"He is the best man I ever saw, except papa," cried Charlotte then, with a great gulp of blissful confession, and the two women wept in each other's arms. "I will try and make him a good wife," Charlotte whispered, softly.

"Of course you will, you precious child."

But suddenly Charlotte raised herself a little and looked at Mrs.

Anderson with a troubled face. "But I can't leave papa all alone,"

she said, "and your son would not want to leave you."

"Of course my son could not leave me," Mrs. Anderson said, quickly.

"I could not leave papa all alone."

"Well, we won't worry about that now, dear," Mrs. Anderson replied, although her forehead was slightly knitted. "Your mother and aunt will be back; some way will be opened. We will not worry about that now."

Charlotte blushed painfully at the thought that she had been hasty about making preparations for the marriage, and had shocked Mrs.

Anderson. "You don't think papa is very badly hurt?" she said.

"Why, of course not, dear. Didn't you hear what Randolph said? He probably was stunned. It is so easy to get stunned from a fall on the ice. My husband got a bad fall once, one icy Sunday as we were coming home from the church. They had to carry him into Mr. John Bemis's house, and he did not come to for several hours. I thought he was killed. I never was so frightened except once when Randolph had the croup. But he got all over it. His head was a little sore, but that was all. I presume it was black and blue under his hair. Randolph's father had beautiful thick hair just like his. I dare say he was not hurt so badly, because of that. Your father has thick hair, hasn't he?"

"Yes."

"Well, I dare say he struck on his head, just as my husband did, and was stunned. I dare say that was just what happened. Of course he did not break any bones, or he would not be coming home on the noon train. I don't believe they would let him out from the hospital so soon as that, even if he had only broken his arm."

"Oh, do you think they carried him to a hospital?"

"They took him somewhere where he was taken care of, or he would not be coming home on the noon train," said Mrs. Anderson. "It is almost time for you to get up, and I want you to drink another cup of coffee. You came here without any hat, didn't you, poor child?"

"Yes."

"Well, I haven't got any hat, and you can't wear one of my bonnets, but I have a pretty white head-tie that you can wear; and n.o.body will see you in the closed carriage, anyway."

"I am making so much trouble," said Charlotte.

"You precious child!" said Mrs. Anderson; "when I think of you all alone in that house!"

"It was dreadful," Charlotte said, with a shudder. "I suppose there was nothing at all to be afraid of, but I imagined all kinds of things."

"The things people imagine are more to be afraid of than the things they see, sometimes," Mrs. Anderson said, wisely. "Now, I think perhaps you had better get up, dear, and you must drink another cup of coffee. I think there will be just about time enough for you to drink it and get dressed before the carriage comes."

Mrs. Anderson took the pride in a.s.sisting the girl to dress that she had done in dressing her son when he was a child. She even noticed, with the tenderest commiseration instead of condemnation, that the lace on her undergarments was torn, and that there were b.u.t.tons missing.

"Poor dear child, she never had any decent training," she said to herself. She antic.i.p.ated teaching Charlotte to take care of her clothes, as she might have done if she had been her own girl baby. "I guess her clothes won't look like this when I have had her awhile,"

she said to herself, eying furtively some torn lace on the girl's slender white shoulder.

When they were at last driving through the streets of Banbridge, she felt unspeakably proud, and also a little defiant.

"I suppose there are plenty of people who will say Randolph is a fool to marry a girl whose father has done the way hers has," she told herself, "but I don't care. There isn't a girl in Banbridge to compare with her. I don't care; they can say what they want to." She was so excited that she had put on her bonnet, which had a little jet aigrette on top, awry. After a while Charlotte timidly ventured to speak of it and straighten it, and the tenderest thrill of delight came over the older woman at the daughterly attention.

She told Randolph that noon, after she had got home, that she was really surprised to see how well the poor child, with no training at all, had kept the house, and she said it, remembering quite distinctly a white shade of dust in full view on the parlor-table.

"Her dinner was all dried up, of course," she said, "but I thought it looked as if it might have been quite nice when it was first cooked."

Already Mrs. Anderson was becoming deceptive for the sake of the girl. She had carried a box of provisions to the house, and they had stopped at the fish-market and bought some oysters; and Mrs. Anderson had taught Charlotte how to make a stew, and retreated before it was quite time for Carroll to arrive. She felt in her heart of hearts that she could not see him yet. Even her love for the girl did not yet reconcile her to Carroll. Charlotte was so glad that her little purse was in her coat-pocket and that she had enough money to pay for the oysters. She felt that she could not have borne it had she been obliged to borrow money of Mrs. Anderson. She felt that it would reflect upon her father. Already she had an instinctive jealousy on her father's account. She loved Mrs. Anderson, but she felt vaguely that not enough was said, even there was not enough anxiety displayed, with regard to her father. She reflected with the fiercest loyalty that even although she did love Mr. Anderson, although she had let him kiss her, although at the mere memory thrills of delight overwhelmed her, she would not ever admit even to herself that he was any better than her father--her poor father who had been hurt and whom everybody was blaming and accusing. Directly after Mrs. Anderson and the maid had gone, she began making the oyster-stew. It would not be quite so good as if she had waited until her father had really arrived, and Mrs. Anderson had told her so, but Charlotte could not bear to wait. She wished him to have something nice and hot the minute he came in. The water boiled and she made the tea. Mrs.

Anderson had said that the tea might be better for him than coffee, and she also made toast. Then she went again into the parlor to the window, as she had done the night before; but it was all so different now. She was so happy that she was confused by it. She had not been brought up, as one would say, religiously, although she had always gone to church, but now she realized a strange uplifting of her thoughts above the happiness itself, to a sense of G.o.d. She was conscious of a thankfulness which at once exalted and humbled her.

She sat down beside the window and looked out, and everything, every dry spear of gra.s.s and every slender twig on the trees, was streaming like rainbows in the frosty air. It came to her what an unspeakable blessing it was that she had been allowed to come into a world where there were so many rainbows and so much happiness, and how nothing but more rainbows and happiness could come of these. That there was nothing whatever to dread in the future. And she thought how her father was coming home, and she thought of all her horrible imaginations of the night before as she might have thought of a legion of routed fiends. And soon Samson Rawdy drove her father into the grounds, and she ran to the door. She opened it and went to the carriage with her arms extended, but he got out himself, laughing.

"Did you think I wanted help, honey?" he said, but though he laughed, he walked weakly and his face was very pale.

He paid Samson Rawdy, who opened his mouth as if to say something, then looked at Carroll's pale face and changed his mind, getting rather stiffly up on his seat--he was growing stout--and driving away.

"Oh, papa!" Charlotte said, slipping her arm through his and nestling close up to him as they went into the house.

Carroll bent down and kissed her. "Papa's poor little girl!" he said.

"It was mighty hard on her, wasn't it?"

"Oh, papa, you are not hurt very badly?"

"Not hurt at all, sweetheart. I, to put it simply, tumbled down on the ice and hit my head, and was so stunned that I did not come to myself until it was too late for the last train."

"Oh, papa, where were you? Did they carry you to a hospital?"

"No, dear. I was very near a man who used to keep my books before I gave up my office, and he had me carried to his house, which was near by, and he and his sister did everything for me, they and their doctor."

"They must be such good people!" said Charlotte.

"Such good people that I can never pay them," said Carroll, in an odd voice. They had entered the house and were going through the hall.

"Not in other ways than money," he added, quickly. "I owe him nothing." It was the first time that Carroll had ever attempted to justify himself to his child, but at that moment the sting of thinking that she might suspect that he owed Allbright money was more than he could bear.

When they were in the dining-room, Carroll turned and looked at Charlotte. "My poor little girl! What did you think, and what did you do?" said he.

She threw her arms around his neck again and clung to him. "Oh, papa, when you didn't come, when the last train went by and you didn't come, I thought--"

"Poor little sweetheart!"

"I went down to the six-o'clock train, and then I waited for the next, and then I came home, and I watched, and the telegraph-boy came to tell me there was no telegram, and I had the dinner keeping warm on the back of the range; it was beefsteak cooked that way in the cook-book, and there was a pudding," said Charlotte, incoherently, and she began to weep against her father's shoulder.

In reality, the girl's nerves were nearer the overstrained point now than they had been before. She was so glad to have her father home, she was so dazed by her new happiness, and there was something about her father's white face which frightened her in a subtle fas.h.i.+on.

There was a changed meaning in it beside the sick look.

"Poor little girl!" Carroll said again. "Did you have to stay here alone all night?"

"No, papa. I stayed just as long as I could, and then I went out, and I ran--"

"Where, dear?"

"I ran to--"

Carroll waited. Charlotte had turned her face as far away from him as she could as she leaned against him, but one ear was burning red.