The Debtor Part 85

"There is absolutely nothing else that I can do," replied Carroll, simply; "it is my only course."

Anderson held out his hand. "I shall be proud to have your daughter for my wife," he said.

"Remember she is not to know," Carroll said.

"Do you think the ignorance preferable to the anxiety?"

"I don't know. I cannot have her know. None of them shall know. I have trusted you," Carroll said, with a sort of agonized appeal. "I had, as a matter of honor, to tell you, but no one else," he continued, still in his voice which seemed strained to lowness. "I had to trust you."

"You will never find your trust misplaced," replied Anderson, gravely, "but it will be hard for her."

"You can comfort her," Carroll said, with a painful smile, in which was a slight jealousy, the feeling of a man outside all his loves of life.

"When?" asked Anderson, in a whisper.

"Monday."

"She will, of course, come straight to my mother, and it can all be settled as soon as possible afterwards. There will be no occasion to wait."

"Amy may wish to come," said Carroll, "and Anna."

"Of course."

The two men shook hands and went out in the hall. Carroll went back to the den, and left Charlotte, who was shyly waiting to have the last words with her lover. Pretty soon she came fluttering into the den.

"You do like him, don't you, papa?" she asked, putting her arms around her father's neck.

"Yes, dear."

"But I am never going to leave you, papa, not for him nor anybody, not until Amy and the others come back."

"You will never forget papa, anyway, will you, honey?" said Carroll, and his voice was piteous in spite of himself.

"Forget you, papa? I guess not!" said Charlotte, "and I never will leave you."

That was Thursday. The next afternoon Mrs. Anderson came and called on Charlotte. She was glad that Carroll was not at home. She shrank very much from meeting him. Carroll had not gone to New York, but had taken the trolley to New Sanderson. He also went into several of the Banbridge stores. The next Sunday morning, in the barber's shop, several men exhibited notes of hand with Carroll's signature.

"I don't suppose it is worth the paper it is written on," said Rosenstein, with his melancholy accent, frowning intellectually over the slip of paper.

"He gave the dressmaker one, too," said Amidon, "and she is tickled to death with it. The daughter had already asked her to take back a silk dress she had made for her, and she has sold it for something. The dressmaker thinks the note is as good as money."

"I've got one of the blasted things, too," said the milkman, Tappan.

"It's for forty dollars, and I'll sell out for ten cents."

"I'd be willing to make my davyalfit that Captain Carroll's notes will be met when they are accentuated," said the little barber, in a trembling voice of partisanship, looking up from the man he was shaving; and everybody laughed.

Lee, who was waiting his turn, spoke. "Captain Carroll says he will pay me the price I paid for the United Fuel stock, in a year's time,"

he said, proudly. "The stock has depreciated terribly, too. A pretty square man, I call him."

"He's got more sides than you have, anyhow," growled Tappan, who was bristling like a pirate with his week's beard; and everybody laughed again, though they did not altogether know why.

However the recipients of Carroll's notes doubted their soundness, they folded them carefully and put them in their pocketbooks. When Carroll took the eight-o'clock train to New York the next morning, several noticed it and thought it looked well for the payment of the notes.

"Guess he's goin' to start another cheat," said the milkman, who had stopped at the saloon opposite Rosenstein's. "I seed him git on the eight-ten train."

Charlotte had been told by her father that he was going to New York that morning, and she had risen early and prepared what she considered a wonderful breakfast for him. She was radiant. Anderson had called upon her the evening before. She had never been so happy.

Her father seemed in very good spirits, but she wondered why he looked so badly. It was actually as if he had lost ten pounds since the night before. He was horribly haggard, but he talked and laughed in a manner rather unusual for him, as he ate his breakfast.

Charlotte watched jealously that he should do that. When he took his second badly fried egg, she beamed, and he concealed his physical and mental nausea.

When they were eating breakfast, much to Charlotte's amazement, the village express drove into the yard.

"Why, there is the express, papa!" she said.

"Yes, honey," replied Carroll, calmly. "I have a trunk I want to send to New York."

"Oh, papa, you are not going away?"

"Sending a trunk does not necessarily imply you are going yourself, honey. I have a trunk to send in connection with some business."

"Oh!" said Charlotte, quite satisfied.

Carroll rose from the table and showed the expressman the way to his room, and the trunk was brought down and carried away, and Charlotte asked no more questions and thought no more about it. Carroll walked to the station. When it was time for him to start, he went to Charlotte, who was clearing away the breakfast dishes, and held her in his arms and kissed her.

"Good-bye, papa's blessing," he said, and in spite of himself his voice broke. The man had reached the limit of his strength.

But Charlotte, who was neither curious nor suspicious, and was, besides, dazzled by her new happiness, only laughed. "Why, papa, I should think you were going away to stay a year!" said she.

Carroll laughed too, but his laugh was piteous. He kissed her again.

"Well, good-bye, honey," he said. Just as he was going out of the door he stopped, and said, as if it were a minor matter which he had nearly forgotten, "Oh, by-the-way, sweetheart, I want you, at exactly half-past nine, to go into the den and look in the third volume of the Dutch Republic, and see what you will find."

Charlotte giggled. "A present!" said she. "I know it is a present, but what a funny place to put it in, papa, the third volume of the Dutch Republic."

"At exactly half-past nine," said Carroll. He kissed her again and went away.

Charlotte stood watching him go out of the yard. It came into her head that he must have had some very good luck, and had taken this funny way of making her a present of some money. Of course it could only be money which was to be hidden in such a place as a book. Poor Charlotte's imaginations were tainted by the lack of money.

She could hardly imagine a pleasant surprise unconnected with money.

She hurried about her household tasks, and at exactly half-past nine, for she was obedient as a child, she went into the den and got from the case the third volume of the Dutch Republic. In it she found an envelope. She thought that it contained money, but when she opened it and found a letter, suddenly her heart failed her. She sat down dizzily on the divan and read the letter. It was very short. It only told her that her father loved her and loved them all; that he was writing the others just what he was writing her; that he loved her, but he was forced to go away and leave her, and not even let her know where he was nor what he was doing--not for a long time, at least; but that she was not to worry, and she was to go at once to Mrs.

Anderson, who would take care of her until she was married. Then he bade G.o.d bless her, and said he was her loving father. Charlotte sat with the letter in her lap, and the room looked dim to her. She heard the door-bell ring, but she did not seem to realize what it was, not even when it rang the second and the third time. But the front door had been left unlocked when Carroll went, and Anderson came in presently, and his mother was with him. Mrs. Anderson knew nothing except that Carroll had gone, and n.o.body was to know where, or why, but that there was nothing dishonorable about it, and Charlotte was to come to them. She was quite pale herself when she saw Charlotte sitting on the divan with the letter in her lap.

"I have a letter from papa," Charlotte said, piteously, in a trembling voice. Then Anderson had her in his arms and was soothing and comforting her, and telling her he knew all about it. It was all right, and she was not to worry.

Mrs. Anderson stood watching them. "Where are your coat and hat, child?" said she, presently. She, in reality, felt that she was the proper person to have comforted the girl, under such circ.u.mstances, and not a man who knew nothing about girls, nor how they would feel when deserted, in a measure, by a father. When they were in the carriage, she sat on the seat with Charlotte and kept her arm around her, and looked across almost defiantly at her son.

"It is a terrible strain on the poor little thing, and if we are not careful she will be down with a fever," she told Randolph, privately, when they were home.

He laughed. "Take care of her all you want to, mother," he said.