Charlotte, before her sister was married, had been in the habit of
taking long walks with her. Now she went alone.
The elder women of the family never walked when they could avoid
doing so. Mrs. Carroll was, in consequence, putting on a soft
roundness of flesh like a baby, and was daily becoming a creature of
more curves and dimples. Anna did not gain flesh, but she moved more
languidly, and her languor of movement was at curious odds with the
subdued eagerness of her eyes. In these days Anna Carroll was not
well; her nerves were giving way. She slept little and ate little.
"You are losing your appetite, Anna, dear," Mrs. Carroll said once at
the dinner-table.
"A fortunate thing, perhaps," retorted Anna, with her little, veiled
sting of manner, and at that Carroll rose abruptly and left the table.
"What is the matter, Arthur?" his wife called after him. "I don't see
what ails Arthur lately," she said, with a soft tone of complaint,
when the door had closed behind him and he had made no response.
Charlotte adored her Aunt Anna, and seldom took any exception to
anything which she said or did, but then she turned upon her.
"Poor papa is hurt by what Aunt Anna said," she declared, severely,
"and I don't wonder. Here he cannot afford to buy as much to eat as
he would like, and hasn't enough to pay the butcher, and Aunt Anna
says things like that. I don't wonder he is hurt. It is cruel." Tears
flashed into Charlotte's eyes. She looked accusingly at her aunt, who
laughed.
"I think as much of your father as you do," said she, "and I know him
better. Don't fret, honey."
"Your aunt is ill, dear," said Mrs. Carroll, who always veered to the
side of the attacked party, and who, moreover, seldom grasped
sarcasm, "and besides, sweetheart," she added, "I don't see what she
said that could have hurt Arthur's feelings." Just then Carroll
passed the window towards the stable. "There," she cried,
triumphantly, "he is just going around to order the carriage. He had
finished his luncheon. He never did care much for that kind of
pudding. You are making too much of it, Charlotte, dear."
"No, I am not," said Charlotte, firmly. "Papa did not like the way
Anna spoke; he was hurt. It was cruel." She got up and left the table
also, and a soft sob was heard as she closed the dining-room door
behind her.
"That dear child is so sensitive and nervous, and she thinks so much
of Arthur," Mrs. Carroll said. "Give me the pudding sauce, Marie."
Eddy, who had been busily eating his pudding, looked up from his
empty plate. "Aunt Anna did mean it was fortunate she had lost her
appetite, because there wasn't enough to eat," he declared, in his
sweet treble. "You ain't very sharp, Amy. She did mean that, and that
was the reason papa went out. But it was true, too. There isn't
enough to eat. I haven't had near enough pudding, and it is all gone.
The dish is scraped. There is none left for Marie and Martin, either."
"I want no pudding," said Marie, unexpectedly, from behind Mrs.
Carroll's chair. She spoke with a certain sullenness, and her eyes
were red. She had a large, worn place in the sleeve of her white
shirt-waist, and she was given to lifting her arm and surveying it
with an air of covert injury and indignation.
"The omelet is all gone, too," said Eddy. "Marie and Martin haven't
got anything to eat."
"Oh, hush, dear!" said Mrs. Carroll. "Marie can cook another omelet."
The Hungarian girl opened her mouth as if to speak, then she shut it
again. An indescribable expression was on her pretty, peasant face,
the face of a down-trodden race, who yet retained in spirit a spark
of rebellion and resentment. Marie, in her ragged blouse, with her
countenance of inscrutable silence, standing behind her mistress's
chair, surveying the denuded table, was the embodiment of a folk-lore
song. She had been in America only a year and a half, and the Lord
only knew what she had expected in that land of promise, and what
bright visions had been dispelled, and how roughly she had been
forced back upon her old point of view of the world. The girl was
actually hungry. She had no money; her clothes were worn. Her naive
coquetry of expression had quite faded from her face. Her cheek-bones
showed high, her mouth was wide and set, her eyes fixed with a sort
of stolid and despairing acquiescence. The salient points of the Slav
were to the surface, the little wings of her hope and youth folded
away. She had fallen in love, moreover, and been prevented from
attending a wedding-feast where she would have met him that day, on
account of a lack of money for a new waist, and car fare. She knew
another girl who was gay in a new gown, and at whom the desired one
had often looked with wavering eyes. Her heart was broken as she
stood there. She was one of the weariest of the wheels within wheels
of Arthur Carroll's miserable system of life.
"I don't believe there are any more eggs to make an omelet," said
Eddy.
"The grocer still trusts us," said Mrs. Carroll; "besides, he has
been paid. Eddy, dear, you must not speak so to your aunt. Run out,
if you have finished your luncheon, and ask your father when he is
going to drive."
Carroll had not gone, as usual, to the City that day.
Mrs. Carroll and Anna rose from the table and went into the den on
the left of the hall.
"You must not mind the children speaking so, Anna, dear," Mrs.
Carroll said. "They would fly at me just the same if they thought I
had said anything to hurt Arthur."
"I don't mind, Amy," Anna replied, dully. She threw herself upon the
divan with its Oriental rug, lying flat on her back, with her hands
under her head and her eyes fixed upon a golden maple bough which
waved past the window opposite. She looked very ill. She was quite
pale, and her eyes had a strange, earnest depth in dark hollows.
Mrs. Carroll looked a little more serious than was her wont as she
sat in the willow rocker and swayed slowly back and forth. "I
suppose," she said, after a pause, "that it will end in our moving
away from Banbridge."
"I suppose so," Anna replied, listlessly.
"You don't mind going, do you, Anna, dear?"
"I mind nothing," Anna Carroll said. "I am past minding."
Mrs. Carroll looked at her with a bewildered sympathy. "Why, Anna,
dear, what is the matter?" she said.
"Nothing, Amy."
"You are feeling ill, aren't you?"
"Perhaps so, a little. It is nothing worth talking about."
"Are you troubled about anything, honey?"
Anna did not reply.
"I can't imagine what you have to trouble you, Anna. Everything is as
it has been for a long time. When we move away from Banbridge there
will be more for a while. I can't see anything to worry about."
"For God's sake, keep your eyes shut, then, Amy, as long as you can,"
cried Anna, suddenly, with a tone which the other woman had never
heard before. She gazed at her sister-in-law a minute, and her
expression of childish sweetness and contentment changed. Tears came
in her eyes, her mouth quivered.
"I don't know what you mean, Anna," she said, pitifully, like a
puzzled child.
Anna sprang up from the divan and went over to her and kissed her and
laughed. "I mean nothing, dear," she said. "There is no more to worry
about now than there has been all along. People get on somehow. We
are in the world, and we have our right here, and if we knock over a
few people to keep our footholds, I don't know that we are to blame.
It is nothing, Amy. I have felt wretched for a few days, and it has
affected my spirits. Don't mind anything I have said. We shall leave
Banbridge before long, and, as you say, we shall get on better."
Mrs. Carroll gave two or three little whimpers on her sister-in-law's
shoulder, then she smiled up at her. "I guess it is because you don't
feel well that you are looking on the dark side of things so," said
she. "You will feel better to go out and have a drive."
"Perhaps I shall," replied Anna.
"We shall go for a long drive. There will be plenty of time, it is so
early. How lovely it would be if we had our automobile, wouldn't it,
Anna? Then we could go any distance. Wouldn't it be lovely?"
"Very," replied Anna.
Then Eddy burst into the room. "Say, Amy," he cried, "there's a great
circus out in the stable. Papa and Martin are having a scrap."
"Eddy, dear," cried Mrs. Carroll, "you must not say scrap."
"A shindy, then. What difference does it make? Martin he won't
harness, because he hasn't been paid. He just sits on a chair in the
door and whittles a stick, and don't say anything, and he won't
harness."
"We have simply got to have an automobile," said Mrs. Carroll.
"How do you know it is because he hasn't been paid, Eddy?" asked Anna.
"Because he said so; before he wouldn't say anything, and began
whittling. Papa stands there talking to him, but it don't make any
difference."
"With an automobile it wouldn't make any difference," said Mrs.
Carroll. "An automobile doesn't have to be harnessed. I don't see why
Arthur doesn't get one."
Anna Carroll sat down on the nearest chair and laughed hysterically.
Mrs. Carroll stared at her. "What are you laughing at, Anna?" said
she, with a little tone of injury. "I don't see anything very funny.
It is a lovely day, and I wanted to go to drive, and it would do you
good. I don't see why people act so because they are not paid. I
didn't think it of Martin."
"I'll go out and see if he has stirred yet," cried Eddy, and was off,
with a countenance expressive of the keenest enjoyment of the
situation.
Out in the stable, beside the great door through which was a view of
the early autumn landscape--a cluster of golden trailing elms, with
one rosy maple on a green lawn intersected by the broad sweep of
drive--sat the man in a chair, and whittled with a face as
imperturbable as fate. Carroll stood beside him, talking in a low
tone. He was quite pale. Suddenly, just as the boy arrived, the man
spoke.
"Why in thunder, sir," said he, with a certain respect in spite of
the insolence of the words--"why in thunder don't you haul in, shut
up shop, sell out, pay your debts, and go it small?"
"Perhaps I will," Carroll replied, in a tone of rage. His face
flushed, he raised his right arm as if with an impulse to strike the
other man, then he let it drop.
"Sell the horses, papa?" cried Eddy, at his elbow, with a tone of
dismay.
Carroll turned and saw the boy. "Go into the house; this is nothing
that concerns you," he said, sternly.
"Are the horses paid for, papa?" asked Eddy.
"I believe they ain't," said the man in the chair, with a curious
ruminating impudence. Carroll towered over him with an expression of
ignoble majesty. But Eddy had made a dart into a stall, and the tramp
of iron hoofs was suddenly heard.
"I can harness as well as he can," a small voice cried.
Then Martin rose. "I'll harness," he said, sullenly. "You'll get
hurt"--to the boy. "She don't like children round her." He took hold
of the boy's small shoulders and pushed him away from the restive
horse, and grasped the bridle. Carroll strode out of the stable.
"Say," said Eddy, to the man.
"Well, what? I've got to have my pay. I've worked here long enough
for nothin'."
"When I'm a man I'll pay you," said Eddy, with dignity and severity.
"You must not speak to papa that way again, Martin."
Martin looked from the tall horse to the small boy, and began to
laugh.
"I'll pay you with interest," repeated the boy, and the man laughed
again.
"Much obleeged," said he.
"I don't see, now, why you need to worry just because papa hasn't
paid you," said Eddy, and walked out of the stable with a gait
exactly like his father.
The man threw the harness over the horse and whistled.
"He's harnessing," Eddy proclaimed when he went in.
His mother was pinning on her veil before the mirror over the hall
settle. Anna was just coming down-stairs in a long, red coat, with a
black feather curling against her black hair under her hat.
"Where is Charlotte?" asked Mrs. Carroll.
"She has gone off to walk," said Eddy.
"Well," said Mrs. Carroll, "you must go after her and walk with her,
Eddy."
"I don't want to, Amy," said Eddy. "I want to go to drive."
Then Carroll came down-stairs and repeated his wife's orders. "Yes,
Eddy, you must go to walk with your sister. I don't wish her to go
alone," said he peremptorily. He still looked pale; he had grown thin
during the last month.
"I don't see why Charlotte don't get married, too, and have her
husband to go with her," said Eddy, as he went out of the door.
"Tagging round after a girl all the time! It ain't fair."
"Eddy!" called Carroll, in a stern voice; but the boy had suddenly
accelerated his pace with his last words, and was a flying streak at
the end of the drive.
"Where 'm I goin' to find her?" he complained to himself. He hung
about a little until he saw the carriage emerge from the grounds and
turn in the other direction, then he went straight down to the main
street. Just as he turned the corner he met a small woman, carefully
dressed and frizzed, who stopped him.
"Is your mother at home, little boy?" she asked, in a nervous voice.
There were red spots on her thin cheeks; she was manifestly trembling.
The boy eyed her with a supercilious scorn and pity. He characterized
her in his own mind of extreme youth and brutal truth as an ugly old
woman, and yet he noted the trembling and felt like reassuring her.
He took off his little cap. "No, ma'am," said he. "Amy has gone to
drive."
"I wanted to see your mother," said the woman, wonderingly.
"Amy is my mother," replied the boy.
"Oh!" said the woman.
"They have all gone," said Eddy.
"Then I shall have to call another time," said the woman, with a
mixture of ingratiation and despair.
The boy eyed her sharply. "Say," he said, "are you the dressmaker
that made my sister Ina's clothes for her to be married?"
"Yes, I be," replied Madame Griggs.
"Then," said Eddy, "I can tell you one thing, there isn't any use for
you to go to my house now to get any money. I suppose you haven't
been paid."
"No, I haven't," said Madame Griggs. Then she loosened the
flood-gates of her grievance upon the boy. "No, I haven't been paid,"
said she, "and I've worked like a dog, and I'm owing for the things I
bought in New York, and I'm owing my girls, and if I don't get paid
before long, I'm ruined, and that's all there is to it. I 'ain't been
paid, and it's a month since your sister was married, and they'll
send out to collect the bills from the stores, if I don't pay them.
It's a cruel thing, and I don't care if I do say it." The woman was
flouncing along the street beside the boy, and she spoke in a loud,
shrill voice. "It's a cruel thing," she repeated. "If I couldn't pay
for my wedding fix I'd never get married, before I'd go and cheat a
poor dress-maker. She'd ought to be ashamed of herself, and so had
all your folks. I don't care if I do say it. They are nuthin' but a
pack of swindlers, that's what they be."
Suddenly the boy danced in front of the furious little woman, and
stood there, barring her progress. "They ain't!" said he.
"They be."
"They ain't! You can't pay folks if you 'ain't got any money."
"You needn't have the things, then," sniffed Madame Griggs.
"My sister had to have the things to get married, didn't she? A girl
can't get married without the clothes."
"Let her pay for 'em, then."
"I'll tell you what to do!" cried Eddy, looking at her with a sudden
inspiration. "You are in debt, ain't you?"
"Yes, I be," replied Madame Griggs, hopping nervously along by the
boy's side, poor little dressmaker, aping French gentility, holding
her skirts high, with a disclosure of a papery silk petticoat and a
meagre ankle. Even in her distress she felt of her frizzes to see if
they were in order after a breeze had struck her in the sharp, eager
face. "Yes, I be."
"Well," said the boy, delightedly, "I can tell you just what to do,
you know."
"What, I'd like to know?" Madame Griggs said, in a snapping tone.
"Move away from Banbridge," said the boy.
"What for, I'd like to know?"
"Why, then, don't you see," explained Eddy Carroll, "you would get
away from the folks that you owe, and other folks that you didn't owe
would trust you for things. You'd get along fine. That's the way we
always do."
"Well, I never!" said Madame Griggs. Then she turned on him with
sudden fury. "So that's what your folks are goin' to do, be they?"
said she. "Go off and leave me without payin' my bill! That's the
dodge, is it?"
Eddy was immediately on the alert. He was young and innocent, but he
had a certain sharpness. He was quite well aware that a knowledge on
the part of the creditors of his family's flittings was not
desirable. "I 'ain't heard them say a word about moving away from
Banbridge," declared he. "What you getting so mad about, Missis?"
"I guess I've got some reason to be mad, if that's your folks' game.
The way I've worked, slavin' all them hot days and nights on your
sister's wedding fix. I guess--"
"We ain't going to move away from Banbridge as long as we live, for
all I know," said Eddy, looking at the bundle of feminine nerves
beside him with a mixture of terror and scorn. "You don't need to
holler so, Missis."
"I don't care how loud I holler, I can tell you that."
"We ain't going to move; and if we did, I don't see why you couldn't.
I was just telling you what you could do, if you owed folks and
didn't have any money to pay 'em, and you turn on a feller that way.
I'm going to tell my sister and mother, and they won't have you make
any more dresses for 'em." With that Eddy Carroll made a dart into
Anderson's grocery store, which he had reached by that time. The
dressmaker remained standing on the sidewalk, staring after him. She
looked breathless; red spots were on her thin cheeks.
Eddy went straight through the store to the office. The door stood
open, and the little place was empty except for the cat, which cast a
lazy glance at him from under a half-closed lid, stretched,
displaying his claws, and began to purr loudly. Eddy went over to the
cat and took him up in his arms and carried him out into the main
store, where William Price stood behind the counter. He was alone in
the store.
"Say," said Eddy, "where's Mr. Anderson?"
"He's gone out," replied the clerk, with a kind look at the boy. He
had lost one of his own years ago, and Eddy, in spite of his innocent
superciliousness, appealed to him.
"Where?" asked Eddy. The cat wriggled in his arms and jumped down.
Then he rolled over ingratiatingly at his feet. Eddy stooped down and
rubbed the shining, furry stomach.
"He took the net he catches butterflies with," replied the old clerk,
"and I guess he's gone to walk in the fields somewhere."
"I should think it was pretty late for butterflies," said Eddy. He
straightened himself and looked very hard at the glass jar of
molasses-balls on the shelf behind the clerk.
"There might be a stray one," said William Price. "It's a warm day."
"Shucks!" said Eddy. "Say, how much are those a pound?"
The clerk glanced around at the jar of molasses-balls. "Twenty-five
cents," replied he.
"Guess I'll take a pound," said Eddy. "I 'ain't got any money with
me, but I'll pay you the next time I come in."
The old clerk's common face turned suddenly grave, and acquired
thereby a certain distinction. He turned about, took off the cover of
the glass jar, and gathered up a handful of the molasses-balls and
put them in a little paper bag. Then he came forth from behind the
counter and approached the boy. He thrust the paper bag into a little
grasping hand, then he took hold of the small shoulders and looked
down at him steadily. The blue eyes in the ordinary face of an
ordinary man, unfitted for any work in life except that of an
underling, were full of affection and reproof. Eddy looked into them,
then he hitched uneasily.
"What you doing so for?" said he; then he looked into the eyes again
and was still.
"It's jest this," said William Price. "Here's a little bag of them
molasses-balls, I'll give 'em to ye; but don't you never, as long as
you live, buy anything you 'ain't either got the money to pay for in
your fist, ready, or know jest where it's comin' from. It's stealin',
and it's the wust kind of stealin', 'cause it ain't out an' out. I
had a boy once about your size."
"Where's he now?" asked Eddy, in a half-resentful, half-wondering
fashion.
"He's dead; died years ago of scarlet-fever, and I'd a good deal
rather have it so, much as I thought of him--as much as your father
thinks of you--than to have him grow up and steal and cheat folks."
"Didn't he ever take anything that didn't belong to him?" asked Eddy.
"Never. I guess he didn't. John wasn't that kind of a boy. I'd have
trusted him with anythin'."
"Then he must have gone to heaven, I suppose," said Eddy. He
looked soberly into the old clerk's eyes. "Thank you for the
molasses-balls," he said. "I meant to pay for 'em, but I don't know
just when I'd have the money, so I guess it's better for you to give
them to me. Mr. Anderson won't mind, will he?"
"No, he won't, for I shall put fives cents into the cash-drawer for
them," replied the old clerk, with dignity.
"I wouldn't want to have you take anything that Mr. Anderson wouldn't
like," said Eddy.
"I shouldn't," replied the old clerk, going back to his place behind
the counter, as a woman entered the store.
Eddy looked back as he went out, with a very sweet expression. "The
first five-cent piece I get I'll pay you," he said. He had popped a
molasses-ball into his mouth, and his utterance was somewhat impeded.
"I thank you very much, indeed," he said, "and I'm sorry your boy
died."
"Have you just lost a boy?" asked the woman at the counter.
"Twenty years ago," replied the clerk.
"Land!" said the woman. She looked at him, then she turned and looked
after Eddy, who was visible on the sidewalk talking with Madame
Griggs, and her face showed her mind. Madame Griggs had waited on the
sidewalk until Eddy came out of the store. Now she seized him by the
arm, which he promptly jerked away from her.
"When will your folks be home? That's what I want to know!" said she,
sharply.
"They'll be home to-night, I guess," replied Eddy.
"Then I'll be up after supper," said Madame Griggs.
"All right," said Eddy.
"You tell 'em I'm comin'. I've got to see your ma and your pa."
"Yes, ma'am," replied Eddy. He raised his little cap as the
dressmaker flirted away, then he started on a run down the street,
sucking a molasses-ball, which is a staying sweet, and soon he left
the travelled road and was hastening far afield.