The Debtor Part 26

"I am very glad," Anderson replied, politely. He read a sign fastened beneath the window which framed the girl's head--"Madame Estelle Griggs, Modiste." He reflected that she was the Banbridge dressmaker, and that Charlotte was probably having her trousseau made there, which was a deduction that only a masculine mind of vivid imagination could have evolved.

Charlotte was gazing eagerly across at her sister. "It does not rain nearly so hard now," said she. "I think I might venture." She looked irresolutely at her hat on the counter.

"I can let you have an umbrella," said Anderson.

"Thank you," said Charlotte, "but my hair is still so wet, and my hat is lined with pink chiffon, you know."

"Yes," said Anderson, respectfully. He did not know what pink chiffon was, but he understood that water would injure it.

"If I might leave my hat here," said Charlotte, "until I come back--"

"Certainly," replied Anderson.

"Then I think I can go now. No, thank you; I won't take the umbrella.

I am about as wet as I can be now, and, besides, I like to feel the rain on my shoulders."

With a careful but wary gathering up of her white skirts, with chary disclosures of lace and embroidery and little skipping shoes, she was gone in a snowy whirl through the mist across the street. She seemed to fly over the puddles. The girl's head disappeared from the opposite window and Anderson heard quite distinctly the outburst of laughter and explanation.

"You had better get a sheet of tissue-paper and put it over that," he said to Sam Riggs, and he pointed at Charlotte's hat on the counter.

Then he went back to his office and wrote some letters. He resolved that he would not see Charlotte when she returned for her hat.

Presently the sun shone into the office, and a new light seemed to come from the rain-drenched branches outside the window. Anderson continued to write, feeling all the time unhappiness heavy in his heart. He also had a sense of injury which was foreign to him. He was distinctly aware that he had an unfair allotment of the good things of life. Yet there was a question dinning through his consciousness: "Why should I have so little?" Then the world-old query considering personal responsibility for misery swept over him. "What have I done?" he asked himself, and answered himself, with a fierce challenge of truth, that he had done nothing. Then the habit of his life of patience, which was at the same time a habit of bravery, a.s.serted itself. He wrote his letters carefully and closed his ears to the questions.

It was about half an hour later, and he was thinking about going home, when Sam Riggs came to the office door and informed him that Mrs. Griggs wanted to see him.

Mrs. Griggs was Madame nowhere except on her sign and in the mouths of a few genteel patrons who considered that Madame had a more fashionable sound than Mrs.

"Ask her to come in here," Anderson said, and directly the dressmaker appeared. She was a tiny, thin, nervous creature with restless, veinous little hands, and a long, thin neck upon which her small frizzled head vibrated constantly like the head of a bird. Anderson knew her very well. Back in his childhood they had been schoolmates.

He remembered distinctly little Stella Mixter. She had been a sharp, meagre, but rather pretty little girl, with light curls, and was always dressed in blue. She wore blue now, for that matter--blue muslin, ornate with lace and ribbons. She had had a sad and hard life, but her spirit still a.s.serted itself. Her husband had deserted her; she had lost her one child; she worked like a galley-slave, but she still frizzed her hair carefully, and never neglected her own costume even in her greatest rush of business, and that in a dressmaker showed deathless ambition and self-respect.

Anderson greeted her and offered her a chair. She seated herself with a conscious elegance, and disposed gracefully around her thin knees her blue muslin flounces. There was a slight coquetry in her manner, although she was evidently anxious about something. She looked around and spoke in a low voice.

"I want to ask you something," she said, in a whisper.

"Certainly," said Anderson.

"You used to be a lawyer, and I don't suppose you have forgotten all your law, if you are in the grocery business now." There was about the woman the very naivete of commonplacedness and offence.

Anderson smiled. "I trust not, Mrs. Griggs," he replied.

"Well"--she lowered her voice still more--"I wanted to ask you-- I've got a big job of work for--that Carroll girl that's going to be married, and I've heard something that made me kind of uneasy. What I want to know is, do you s'pose I'm likely to get my pay?"

"I know nothing whatever about the family's financial standing,"

Anderson replied, after a slight pause. He spoke constrainedly, and did not look at his questioner.

"You don't know whether I'm likely to get my pay or not?"

Anderson looked at her then, the little, nervous, overworked, almost desperate creature, fighting like a little animal in her bay of life against the odds which would drive her from it, and he felt in a horrible perplexity. He felt also profane. Why could not he be left out of this? he inquired, with concealed emphasis. Finally he said that he would rather not advise in a case about which he knew so little.

"I'm willing to pay," said the dressmaker, with her artless vulgarity.

"It is not that," Anderson said, quickly, with some asperity.

"I don't know," said the dressmaker, innocently deepening the offence, "but what you didn't feel as if you could give law-advice for nothin', even if you had quit the law. I s'pose it cost you a good deal to learn the law, and I know you didn't git your money back." She spoke with the kindest sympathy.

"That has nothing to do with it," Anderson repeated, with an inflection of irritated patience. "I cannot give any advice because I know nothing whatever about the matter."

"Can't you find out?"

"That belongs to the business which I have given up."

"Well, I s'pose it does," admitted Madame Griggs, with a sigh. "I wouldn't have bothered you if I hadn't been at my wit's end."

"I am willing to do anything in my power--" began Anderson, with a softened glance at the absurdly pathetic little figure, "but--"

"Then you think I had better not trust them?"

"No; I said--"

"You think I had better send her word I've changed my mind, and can't do her work?"

Anderson winced. "No; I did not say so," he replied, vehemently. "I merely said that you must settle--"

"Then you think I had better keep on with it?"

"If you think best," said Anderson, emphatically. "Really, Mrs.

Griggs, I cannot settle this matter for you. You often trust people in your business. You must decide yourself."

The dressmaker arose. "Well, I guess it's all right," said she.

"She's a lovely girl, and so are they all. Her mother seems sort of childish, but she's real sweet-spoken. I guess it's all right, but I'd heard some things, and I thought I would ask you what you thought. I thought it wouldn't do any harm. Now I feel a good deal easier about it. Good-afternoon. What a tempest we've had!"

"Yes," said Anderson. "Good-afternoon." He was conscious of a mental giddiness as he regarded her.

"We needed it, and I do think it has cooled the air a little. I'm very much obliged. I don't suppose there is any use in my offering to pay you, now you're in the grocery business?"

"Certainly not. I have done nothing to admit of any question of payment," replied Anderson, curtly.

"Well, I s'pose you throw it in along with the b.u.t.ter and eggs," said Madame Griggs, with a return of her slight coquetry. "By-the-way, I wish you'd send over five pounds of that best b.u.t.ter. Good-afternoon."

"Good-afternoon."

The dressmaker turned in the doorway and looked back. "I'm so glad to have my mind settled about it," she said, with a pathos which overcame her absurdity and vulgarity. "I do work awful hard, and it doesn't seem as if I could lose my money." She appeared suddenly tragic in her cheap muslin and her frizzes. She looked old and her features sharpened out rigidly.

Anderson, looking after her, felt both bewilderment and compunction.

He thought for a moment of going after her and saying something further; then he heard a flutter and a quick sweet voice, and he knew that Charlotte had come for her hat. He heard her say: "Where? Oh, I see; all covered up so nicely. Thank you. I did not come before, because the trees were dripping. Thank you." Then there was a silence.

Anderson got his hat and went out through the store. The old clerk was fussing over some packages on the counter.