There was in Banbridge, at this date, almost universal distrust of
Carroll, but very little of it was expressed, for the reason, common
to the greater proportion of humanity: the victims in proclaiming
their distrust would have proclaimed at the same time their
victimization. It was quite safe to assume that the open detractors
of Carroll had not been duped by him; it was also quite safe to
assume that many of those who either remained silent or declared
their belief in him had suffered more or less. The latter were those
who made it possible for the Carrolls to remain in Banbridge at all.
There were many who had a lingering hope of securing something in the
end, who did not wish Carroll to depart, and who were even uneasy at
his absence, although the fact of his family remaining and of the
wedding preparations for his daughter going on seemed sufficient to
allay suspicions. It is generally true that partisanship, even of the
few, counts for more than disparagement of the many, with all
right-intentioned people who have a reasonable amount of love for
their fellow-men. Somehow partisanship, up to a certain limit, beyond
which the partisan appears a fool to all who listen to him, seems to
give credit to the believer in it. At all events, while the number of
Arthur Carroll's detractors was greatly in advance of his adherents,
the moral atmosphere of Banbridge, while lowering, was still very far
from cyclonic for him. He got little credit, yet still friendly,
admiring, and even obsequious recognition.
The invitations to his daughter's wedding had been eagerly accepted.
The speculations as to whether the bills would be paid or not added
to the interest. In those days the florist and the dressmaker were
quite local celebrities. They looked anxious, yet rather pleasantly
self-conscious. The dressmaker bragged by day and lay awake by night.
Every time the florist felt uneasy, he slipped across to the nearest
saloon and got a drink of beer. After that, when asked if he did not
feel afraid he would lose money through the Carroll wedding, he said
something about the general esteem in which people should be held who
patronized local industries, in his thick German-English, grinned,
and shambled back, his fat hips shaking like a woman's, to his
hot-houses, and pottered around his geraniums and decorative palms.
On the Sunday morning before the wedding there were an unusual number
of men in the barber-shop--old Eastman, Frank's father, who generally
shaved himself, besides Amidon, Drake, the postmaster, Tappan the
milkman, and a number of others. Amidon was in the chair, and spoke
whenever it did not seem too hazardous. He had just had his hair cut
also, as a delicate concession to the barber on the part of a free
customer on a busy morning, and his rather large head glistened like
a silver ball.
"Reckon Carroll must have gone out West promotin' to raise a little
wind for the weddin'," he said.
"I haven't seed him, and I atropined he had not come back yet,"
remarked the barber.
Lee looked up from his Sunday paper--all the men except young Willy
Eddy were provided with Sunday papers; he waited patiently for a
spare page finished and thrown aside by another. Besides the odors of
soap and perfumed oils and bay-rum and tobacco-smoke, that filled the
little place, was the redolence of fresh newspapers, staring with
violent head-lines, and as full of rustle as a forest.
Lee looked up from his paper, and gave his head a curious,
consequential toss. He had been shaved himself, and his little tuft
of yellow beard was trimmed to a nicety. He looked sleek and
well-dressed, and he had always his indefinable air of straining
himself furtively upon tiptoe to reach some unattainable height.
Lee's consequentiality had something painful about it at times.
"I guess Captain Carroll hadn't any need to go out West promoting. I
rather think he can find all the business he wants right here," he
said.
Tappan the milkman, bearded and grim, looked up from an article on
the coal strike. "Guess he _can_ find about fools enough right here
to work on, that's right," said he, and there was a laugh.
Lee's small blond face colored furiously; his voice was shrill in
response. "Perhaps those he doesn't work, as you call it, are bigger
fools than those he does," said he.
"Say," said the milkman, with a snarling sort of humor. He fastened
brutally twinkling eyes on Lee. Everybody waited; the little barber
held the razor poised over Amidon's chin. "When do your next
dividends come in?" he inquired.
Lee gave an angry sniff, and flirted up his paper before his face.
"Why don't ye say?" pressed Tappan, with a hard wink at the others.
"I don't know that it is any of your business," replied Lee.
"Ask when the millennium's comin'," said Amidon, in the chair.
"I wish I was as sure of the millennium as I am of those dividends,"
declared Lee, brought to bay.
"Glad you've got faith in that dead-beat. He's owin' me for fifteen
dollars' worth of milk-tickets, and I can't get a dam'ed penny of
it," said Tappan. He gave the sheet of paper he held a vicious
crumple and flung it to the floor, whence little Willy Eddy timidly
and softly gathered it up. "Gettin' up at four o'clock in the
mornin'," continued the milkman, in a cursing voice, "an' milkin' a
lot of dam'ed old kickin' cows, and gittin' on the road half-dead
with sleep, to make a present to whelps like him, goin' to the City
dressed up like Morgan hisself, ridin' to the station in a carriage
he 'ain't paid for, with a man drivin' that can't git a cent out of
him. Talk about coal strikes! Lord! I could give them miners points.
Strikin' for eight hours a day! Lord! what's that? Here I've got to
go home an' hay, if it _is_ Sunday, to git enough for them dam'ed
cows to eat in the winter! Eight hours! Hm! I work eighteen an' I
'ain't got anybody over me to strike again', 'cept the Almighty, an'
I ruther guess He wouldn't make much account of it. Guess he'd starve
me out ef I quit work, and not make much bones of it. I _can_ stop
peddlin' milk to sech as Carroll, but the milk sours, an' hanged if I
know who suffers most. Here's my wife been makin' dam'ed little
pot-cheeses out of the sour milk as 'tis, and sellin' 'em for two
cents apiece. They're hangin' all over the bushes tied up in little
rags. She's got to work all day to-day makin' butter to save the
cream, and then I s'pose I've got to hustle round and find somebody
to give the butter to. Carroll ain't the only one. I wish they all
had to work as hard as I do one day for the things they git for
nothin', the whole bilin' lot of 'em. He's the worst, though. What
business did he have settlin' down on us here in Banbridge, I'd like
to know? If he'd got to steal to feather his nest, why didn't he go
to some other place, confound him?" The milkman's voice and manner
were malignant.
The barber looked at him with some apprehension, but he spoke, still
holding his razor aloft. "Now I rather guess you are jumpin' at
exclusions too hasty, Mr. Tappan," said he, in an anxiously pacific
voice. "I don't know about them dividends Mr. Lee's talkin' about.
Captain Carroll, he gave me a little dip." The barber winked about
mysteriously. "He told me he'd tell me when to come in, and he ain't
told me yet, but I ain't no disprehension, but he's all right.
Captain Carroll is a gentleman, he is." Flynn's voice fairly quivered
with affectionate championship. There were tears in his foolish eyes.
He bent over Amidon's face, which grinned up at him cautiously
through the lather.
"Let him pay me them milk-tickets, then, if he's all right," Tappan
said, viciously.
"He will when he's disembarrassed and his adventures are on a
dividend-paying adipoise," said the barber, in a tearful voice.
"I think he is all right," said the druggist.
Then little Willy Eddy added his pipe. He had been covertly smoothing
out Tappan's crumpled newspaper. "He's real nice-spoken," said he. "I
guess he will come right in time."
Tappan turned on him and snatched back his newspaper. "Here, I ain't
done with that," he said; "I've got to take it home to my wife." Then
he added, "For God's sake, you little fool, he ain't been swipin'
anything from you, has he?"
Then the barber arose to the situation. He advanced, razor in hand.
He strode up to the milkman and stood dramatically before him, arm
raised and head thrown back. "Now, look at here," he proclaimed, in a
high falsetto, "I ain't agoin' to hear no asparagusment of my
friends, not here in this tonsorial parlor. No, sir!" There was
something at once touching, noble, and absurd about the
demonstration. The others chuckled, then sobered, and watched.
Tappan stared at him a second incredulously. Then he grinned, showing
his teeth like a dog.
"Lord! then that jailbird is one of your friends, is he?" he said. He
had just lit his pipe. He puffed at it, and deliberately blew the
smoke into the little barber's face.
Flynn bent over towards him with a sudden motion, and his mild,
consequential face in the cloud of smoke changed into something
terrible, from its very absurdity. His blue eyes glittered greenly;
he lifted the razor and cut the air with it close to the other man's
face. Tappan heard the hiss of it, and drew back involuntarily, his
expression changing.
"What the devil are you up to?" he growled, with wary eyes on the
other's face.
The barber continued to hold the razor like a bayonet in rest, fixed
within an inch of the other's nose. "I'm up to kickin' you out of my
parlor if you don't stop speakin' individuously disregardin' my
friends," said he, with an emphasis which was ridiculous and yet
impressive. The other men chuckled again, then grew grave.
"Come back here and finish up my job, John," Amidon called out; yet
he watched him warily.
"Here, put up that razor!" the postmaster called out.
"I'll put it up when you stop speakin' mellifluously of my friends,"
declared the barber. "There ain't nobody in this parlor goin' to
speak a word against Captain Carroll if I'm in hearin'; there ain't
an honester man in this town."
The barber's back was towards the door. Suddenly Tappan's eyes stared
past him, his grin widened inexplicably. Flynn became aware of a
pregnant silence throughout the shop. He turned, following Tappan's
gaze, and Arthur Carroll stood there. He had entered silently and had
heard all the last of the discussion. Every face in the shop was
turned towards him; he stood looking at them with the curious
expression of a man taken completely off guard. All the serene force
and courtesy which usually masked his innermost emotions had, as it
were, slipped off; for a flash he stood revealed, soul-naked, for any
one who could see. None there could fully see, although every man
looked, sharpened with curiosity and suspicion. Carroll was white and
haggard, unsmiling, despairing, even pathetic; his eyes actually
looked suffused. Then in a flash it was over, and Arthur Carroll in
his usual guise stood before them--it was like one of those
metamorphoses of which one reads in fairy tales. Carroll stood there
smiling, stately, gracefully, even confidentially condescending. It
was as if he appealed to their sense of humor, that he, Carroll,
stood among them addressing them as their equals.
"Good-day, gentleman," he said, and came forward.
Little Willy Eddy sprang up with a frightened look and gave him his
chair, murmuring in response to Carroll's deprecating thanks that he
was just going; but he did not go. He remained in the doorway
staring. He had a vague idea of some judgment descending upon them
all from this great man whom they had been slandering.
"Well, how are you, captain?" said Lee, speaking with an air of
defiant importance. It became evident that what had gone before was
to be ignored by everybody except Tappan, who suddenly rose and went
out, muttering something which nobody heard. Then the lash of a whip
was heard outside, a "g'lang," with the impetus of an oath, and a
milk wagon clattered down the street.
Carroll replied to Lee, urbanely: "Fine," he said, "fine. How are
you, Mr. Lee?"
"Seems to me you are not looking quite up to the mark," Lee remarked,
surveying him with friendly solicitude.
The little barber had returned to Amidon in the chair, and was
carefully scraping his cheek with the razor.
"Then my looks belie me," Carroll replied, smiling. He offered a
cigar to Lee and to the druggist, who sat next on the other side.
"Been out of town?" asked the druggist.
"Yes," replied Carroll.
Drake looked at him hesitatingly, but Amidon, speaking stiffly and
cautiously, put the question directly: "Where you been, cap'n?"
"A little journey on business," Carroll answered, easily, lighting
his cigar.
"When did you get home?" asked Amidon.
"This morning."
"You certainly look as if you had lost flesh," said Lee, with
obsequious solicitude.
"Well, it is a hard journey to Chicago--quite a hard journey,"
remarked the druggist, with cunning.
"Not on the fast train," said Carroll.
"So you went on the flyer?" said the postmaster.
Carroll was having some difficulty in lighting his cigar, and did not
reply.
"Did you go on the flyer?" persisted the postmaster.
"No, I did not," replied Carroll, with unmistakable curtness.
The postmaster hemmed to conceal embarrassment. He had been shaved
and had only lingered for a bit of gossip, and now the church-bells
began to ring, and he was going to church, as were also Lee, the
druggist, and most of the others. They rose and lounged out, one
after another; little Willy Eddy followed them. Flynn finished
shaving Amidon, who also left, and finally he was left alone in the
shop with Carroll, who arose and approached the chair.
"Sorry to keep you waitin', Captain Carroll," said Flynn, preparing a
lather with enthusiasm.
"The day is before me," said Carroll, as he seated himself.
"I hope," said Flynn, beating away his hand in a bowl of mounting
rainbow bubbles--"I hope that--that--your feelings were not hurt
at--at--our eavesdropping."
"At what?" asked Carroll, kindly and soberly.
"At our eavesdropping," reported the barber, with a worshipful and
agitated glance at him.
"Oh!" answered Carroll, but he did not smile. "No," he said, "my
feelings were not hurt." He looked at the small man who was the butt
of the town, and his expression was almost caressing.
Flynn continued to beat away at the lather, and the rainbow bubbles
curled over the edge of the bowl. "You said that you would devise me
when the time had come for me to invest that money," he said,
diffidently, and yet with a noble air of confidence and loyalty.
"It hasn't come yet," Carroll replied.