The Debtor Part 84

"I ran to the--Andersons'. You know Mr. Anderson, that time when I was so frightened by the tramp-- You know I stayed there to tea, that-- Mrs. Anderson was very kind," said Charlotte, in a stammering and incoherent voice.

"Oh," said Carroll.

Suddenly Charlotte raised her head, and she looked at him quite bravely, with an innocent confidence. "Papa," said she, "you needn't think I am ever going to leave you, not until Amy and the others come back, because I never will. You never will think so?"

"No, darling," said Carroll. His face grew paler.

"But," continued Charlotte, "when I went to the Andersons' last night, I rang the bell, and I pounded with the knocker, too, I was so frightened, and Mr. Anderson came right away. He had been to New York himself, to the theatre, and he had not been home long, and--"

Carroll waited.

"I am never going to leave you, papa," said Charlotte, "and I love you just as much. I love you just as much as I do--him, only, of course, it is different. You needn't think I don't. There is n.o.body like you. But he--if you don't mind, papa, I think I will marry Mr.

Anderson sometime, the way Ina did Major Arms."

Carroll did not speak for a moment. He continued looking at her with an expression made up of various emotions--trouble, relief, shame.

"He is a very good man," said Charlotte, in a half-defensive tone.

"He is the best man I ever saw, except you, papa."

Carroll bent down and kissed her. "You are very sure you love him, are you, dear?" he said.

"Why, papa, of course I am! I never could see how Ina could love Major Arms enough to marry him, but I can see how anybody could be glad to marry Mr. Anderson."

"Then I am very glad, sweetheart," Carroll said, with a curious quietness, almost weariness.

"His mother is lovely, too," said Charlotte.

"That is nice, dear, for I suppose you will live with them."

"When Amy and the others come back," said Charlotte. "I am not ever going to leave you, papa. You know it, don't you?"

"Yes, sweetheart," said Carroll, still with the same curious, weary quiet.

Charlotte looked at him anxiously. "Does your head ache now, papa?"

she asked.

"No, dear."

"But you don't feel well. You are very pale."

"I feel a little weak, that is all, dear."

"You will feel better when you have had dinner. Mrs. Anderson came home with me, she and her maid, and she gave me some lovely thin slices of ham, and there is an oyster-stew, and some tea. Sit down, papa dear, and we will have dinner right away."

Carroll made a superhuman effort to eat that dinner, but still the look whose strangeness rather than paleness puzzled Charlotte never left his face. She kept looking at him.

"You won't go to New York again to-morrow, will you, papa?" said she.

"No, dear. I don't think so."

"I wish you wouldn't go again this week, papa. To-day is Thursday."

"Perhaps I won't, dear."

After dinner Carroll lay down on the divan in the den and Charlotte covered him up, and after a while he fell asleep; but even asleep, when she stole in to look at him, there was the same strange expression on his face. It was the face of a man whose mind is set irrevocably to an end. A martyr going to the stake might have had that same look, or even a criminal who was going to his doom with a sense of its being his just deserts, and with the bravery that befitted a man.

That evening Anderson came to call, and Carroll answered the door-bell. He took him into the parlor, and spoke at once of the subject uppermost in the minds of both.

"Charlotte has told me," Carroll said, simply. He extended his hand with a pathetic, deprecatory air. "You know what you are doing when you ask for my daughter's hand," he said. "You know she might have a parentage which would reflect more credit upon her."

"I am quite satisfied," Anderson replied, in a low voice. All at once, looking at the other man, it struck him that he had never in his life pitied any one to such an extent, and that he pitied him all the more because Carroll seemed one to resent pity.

"This much I will say--I can say it confidently now," said Carroll, "I shall meet all my indebtedness. You will have no reason to hesitate on that account," but he paused a moment. "I am driven to resorting to any honest method which I can find to enable me so to do," he continued. He made a slight emphasis upon the word honest.

"I can understand that as fully, possibly, as any man," Anderson replied, gravely.

Carroll looked at him. "Yes, so you can," he said--"so you can. Well, this much I will say for myself, Mr. Anderson. I am proud and glad to confide my daughter to your keeping. I am satisfied, and more than satisfied, with her choice."

"Thank you," replied Anderson. He felt a constraint, even embarra.s.sment, as if he had been a very young man. He was even conscious of blushing a little.

"Sit down," said Carroll, placing a chair for him, and offering him a cigar.

Then he went to call Charlotte. It was at that moment rather a hard experience for Charlotte that it was not her mother instead of her father who called her to go down and see her lover. She had thought, with a pa.s.sion of yearning, of her mother who had done the same thing, and would understand, as she fluffed out her pretty hair around her face in front of the gla.s.s in her room. When her father called her she ran down, but instead of going at once into the parlor, where she knew her lover was waiting for her, she ran into the den. She felt sure that her father had retreated there. She found him there, as she had thought, and she flung her arms around his neck.

"I am never going to leave you alone, you know, papa," she whispered.

"Yes, dear."

"Papa, come in there with me."

Carroll laughed then. "Run along, honey," he said, and gave her a kiss, and pushed her softly out of the room.

Chapter XLII

Carroll, left alone, lighted another cigar from force of habit. It was one of the abominably cheap ones which he had been smoking lately when by himself. He never offered one to anybody else. But soon the cigar went out and he never noticed it. He sat in a deep-hollowed chair before a fireless hearth, and the strange expression upon his face deepened. It partook of at once exaltation and despair. He heard the soft murmur of voices from the parlor where the lovers were. He reflected that he should tell Anderson, before he married Charlotte, the purpose in his mind; that he owed it to him, since that purpose might quite reasonably cause a man to change his own plans with regard to marrying her. He decided that he would tell him that night before he left. But he felt that it would make no difference to a man of Anderson's type; that it was only for his own sake, the sake of his own honor, that it was necessary to tell him at all. Then he fell to thinking of what was before him, of the new life upon which he would enter the next Monday, and it was actually to this man of wrong courses but right instincts, this man born and bred of the best and as the best, as if he were contemplating the flames of the stake or the torture of the rack. He felt, in antic.i.p.ation, his pride, his self-respect, stung as with fire and broken as upon the wheel. He was beset with the agonies of spiritual torture, which yet brought a certain solace in the triumph of endurance. He had at once the agony and the delight of the fighter, of the wrestler with the angel. What he had set himself to do for the sake of not only making good to others what they had lost through him, but what he had lost through himself, was unutterably terrible to him. But while his face was agonized, he yet threw back his head with the motion of the conqueror. And he owned to himself that the conquest was even greater because it was against such petty odds, because both the fight and the triumph savored of the ign.o.ble, even of the ridiculous. It would be much easier to be a hero whom the mult.i.tude would applaud and worship than a hero whom the mult.i.tude would welcome with laughter.

When comedy becomes tragedy, when the ignominious becomes victorious, he who brings it about becomes majestic in spite of fate itself. And yet withal the man sitting there listening to the soft murmur from the other room felt that his own life, so far as the happiness which, after all, makes life worth living for mortal weakness, was over. He thought of his wife and sister and children, who would be all safely sheltered, and, he hoped, even happy in time, although separated from him; and while his soul rejoiced over that, he yet could not help thinking of himself. Listening to the voices of the lovers in the parlor, he thought how he and Amy used to make love, and how it was all over, perhaps forever over. He smiled a little as he remembered how his Charlotte had asked him to go with her to meet her lover.

Gentle and affectionate to his family as he was, Carroll was essentially masculine. He could not in the least understand how the girl felt. He felt a little anxious lest the child should not really love Anderson, because she hesitated, since he could see no other reason for her hesitation. However, when, about eleven o'clock, he heard the stir of approaching departure, and went hurriedly into the hall in order to intercept Anderson before he went, one glimpse of the girl's little face rea.s.sured him. She seemed to at once have grown older and younger. She was reflective, and fairly beaming with utmost antic.i.p.ations. She looked at Anderson as he had never seen her look at any one. He had doubted a little about Ina; he had no doubt whatever about Charlotte. "She is in love with him, fast enough," he said to himself. He spoke to Anderson, and asked to have a word with him before he went.

"Come back into the parlor a moment, if you please," he said. "I have a word to say to you."

Anderson followed him into the room. He already had on his overcoat.

Carroll stood close to him and spoke in a low voice. His face was ghastly when he had finished, but he looked proudly at the other man.

"Now it is for you to say whether you will advance or retreat, for I think that, under the circ.u.mstances, n.o.body could say that you did not do the last with honor," he concluded.

Anderson, who had also turned pale, stared at him a second, and his look was a question.