Carroll, when he reached his house, went up to the front door,
unlocked it, and entered. At once there smote upon his consciousness
that strange shock of emptiness and loneliness which has the effect,
for a sensitive soul entering a deserted house, of a menacing roar of
sound. He went through the hall to the little smoking-room or den on
the right, opposite the dining-room, and the first thing which he saw
on the divan was Charlotte's little chinchilla muff which she had
forgotten. He regarded it with the concern of a woman, reflecting
that she would miss it; and he must send it to her, and was wondering
vaguely about a suitable box, when he became aware of a noise of
insistent knocking mounting in a gradual crescendo from propitiatory
timidity to confidence. The knocking was on the kitchen door, and
Carroll went hurriedly through the house. When he reached the door it
was open, and a tramp was just entering, with head cautiously thrust
forward. When he saw Carroll, the unshaven, surly face manifestly
became dismayed. He turned to go, with a mutter which savored of
appeal, excuse, and defiance, but Carroll viciously accelerated his
exit with a thrust between the shoulders.
"What the devil are you doing here?" demanded Carroll.
The man, rolling surly yet intimidated eyes over his shoulder, after
a staggering recovery from a fall, muttered something in an
unintelligible _patois_, the grovelling, slurring whine of his kind.
"Well, get out of this!" shouted Carroll.
The man went, shuffling along with a degree of speed, lifting his
clumsily shod feet with a sort of painful alacrity as if they were
unduly heavy. His back, in its greenish-brown coat, was bent. He was
not a very young man, although vigorous. Carroll stood looking at the
inglorious exit of this Ishmael, and he was conscious of a feeling of
exhilaration. He felt an agreeable tingling in his fists, which were
still clinched. The using of them upon a legitimate antagonist in
whose debt he was not, and never had been, acted like a tonic. Then
suddenly something pathetic in that miserable retreating back struck
the other man, who also had reason to turn his back on and retreat
from his kind; a strange understanding came over him. He seemed to
know exactly how that other man, slinking away from his door, felt.
"Hullo, you!" he called out.
The man apparently did not hear, or did not think the shout meant for
him. He kept on.
Carroll shouted again. "Hullo, you! Come back here!"
Then the man turned, and his half-scared, half-defiant face fronted
Carroll. He growled an inarticulate inquiry.
"Come back here!" repeated Carroll.
The tramp came slowly, suspiciously, one hand slyly lifted as one
sees a wary animal with a paw ready for possible attack.
"Wait here," said Carroll, indicating the stoop with a gesture, "and
I will see if I can find something for you to eat."
The man reached the door and paused, and remained standing, still
with that wary lift of hand and foot in readiness for defence or
flight, while Carroll rummaged in the pantry, which was a lean
larder. At last he emerged with half a pie and a piece of cake. He
extended them to the tramp, who viewed them critically and mumbled
something about meat.
"Take these and clear out, or leave them and clear out!" shouted
Carroll, and again the sense of exhilaration was over him.
The man took the proffered food and slunk rapidly out of the yard.
Carroll laughed, and closed and bolted the kitchen door, which Marie
had left unlocked. Then he returned to the den and sat down with the
morning paper and a cigar. He skimmed over the contents, the rumors
of wars, and cruelties, the Wall Street items, the burglaries, the
fires, the defalcations, the suicides, the stresses of the world,
creation old, enduring in their fluctuations and recurrences like the
sea, beating with the same force upon the hearts of every new
generation. Carroll, as he sat there idly smoking, fell to thinking
abstractedly in that vein. He had a conception of a possible ocean of
elemental emotion, of joy and passion, of crime and agony and greed,
ever swelling and ebbing upon the shores of humanity. He had a mind
of psychological cast, although it had been turned of a necessity
into other channels. Finally he turned wholly to himself and his own
difficulties, which had reached possibly the worst crisis of his
life. He had never been in such a hard place as this. He had
heretofore seen a loop-hole out, into another labyrinth in the end,
it is true, still a way out. Now he saw none except one; that was
into a fiery torture, and whether it was or was not the torture of
beneficial sacrifice he could not tell.
As he sat there his face grew older with the laboring of his mind
over the track of his failures and over the certain difficulties of
the future. He sat there all the morning. Noon came, but he did not
think of food, although he had eaten little that morning. He lit
another cigar and took up the paper again, and read an account of the
suicide of a bank defaulter by shooting himself through the brain. He
fell to thinking of suicide in his own case, as a means of egress
from his own difficulties, but he thought idly, rather as a means of
amusement, and not with the slightest seriousness. He had a
well-balanced brain naturally, and maintained the balance even in the
midst of misfortune. However, a balance, however perfect, indicates
by its very name something which may be disturbed. He thought over,
idly, various means of unlawful exit from the world, and applied them
to his own case. He decided against the means employed by the
desperate bank cashier; he decided against the fiery draught of acid
swallowed by a love-distracted girl; he decided against the leap from
a ferry-boat taken by an unknown man, whose body lay unidentified in
the morgue; he decided against illuminating gas, which had released
from the woes of life a man and his three children; he thought rather
favorably of charcoal; he thought also rather favorably of morphine;
he thought more favorably still of the opening of a vein, employed by
fastidious old Romans who had enough of feast and gladiators and life
generally and wished for a chance to leave the entertainment. All
this was the merest idleness of suggestion, a species of rather
ghastly amusement, it is true, but none the less amusement, of an
unemployed and melancholy mind. But suddenly, something new and
hitherto unexperienced was over him, a mood which he had never
imagined, a possibility which he had never grasped. His brain, tried
to the extreme by genuine misery, tried in addition by dangerous
suggestion, lost its perfect poise for the time. A mighty hunger and
thirst--a more than hunger and thirst--a ravening appetite, a passion
beyond all passions which he had ever known, was upon him, had him in
its clutches. He knew for the first time the most monstrous and
irresistible passion of the race, the passion for release from mortal
existence, the passion for death. At that moment he felt, and
probably felt truly, that had he been in dire peril, he would not
have lifted a finger in self-preservation. He turned his eyes inward
upon himself with greed for his own life, for his own blood, and back
of that was the ravening thirst for release from the world and the
flesh and the miseries which appertained to them, as one suffocating
might thirst for air. He realized suddenly himself, stifling and
agonizing, behind a window which he had no need to wait for an
overruling Providence to open, which was not too heavy for his own
mortal strength, which he could open himself. He realized that
whatever lay outside _was_ outside; it was air outside this air,
misery outside this particular phase which was driving him mad. His
imagination dwelling upon the different means of suicide, now became
judicial. He thought seriously upon the drawbacks to one, the
advantages of another. Then since the man was essentially unselfish
and fond of his own flesh and blood, he began to reflect upon the
horror of a confessed suicide to them. He began to study the
feasibility of a suicide forever undiscovered. He began to plan how
the thing might distress his family as little as possible. His cigar
went out as he sat and studied. The furnace fire was low and the room
grew cold. He never noticed it. He studied and studied the best means
of suicide, the best means of concealing it, and all the time the
greed for it was increasing until his veins seemed to run with a
liquid fire of monstrous passion, the passion of a mortal man for his
own immolation upon fate, and all the time that sense of intolerable
suffocation by existence itself, by the air of the world, increased.
He had now arrived at a state of mind where every new phase was
produced by suggestion. He was, in a sense, hypnotized. Everything
served to swing him this way or that, up or down. The sight of a
little perfume-bottle on the table, a dainty glass thing traced over
with silver, set him thinking eagerly of another little bottle, of
glass with a silver stopper, his wife's vinaigrette which she was
fond of using when her head ached. From that, the contemplation of
inhaling aromatic salts, he went naturally enough to the inhaling of
more potent things which assuage pain, and could assuage, if taken in
sufficient quantities, the pain of life itself. He remembered the
exaltation which he had experienced once when given chloroform for a
slight operation. Directly the idea of repeating that blissful
sensation seized upon him he was mad for it. To go out of life like
that, to take that way of opening the window into eternity, into
another phase of existence or into oblivion, what ecstasy! He
remembered that when under the chloroform, a wonderful certainty, a
comprehension, seemingly, of the true import of life and death and of
the hereafter, had seized him. He remembered a tremendous assurance
which he had received under the influence of the drug, of the
ultimate joy beyond this present existence, of the ultimate end in
bliss of all misery, of the tending of death to the fulness of life.
He remembered a rapture beyond words, an enthusiasm of gratitude for
such an immortal delight for the power which he had sometimes
rebelled against and reviled for placing him in the scale of
existence. He remembered how all his past troubles seemed as only
stepping-stones to supernal heights, how he could have kissed them
for thankfulness that he had been forced by an all-wise Providence
over the agony of the ascent to such rapture. Immediately his
thoughts centred upon chloroform. He looked across at the divan with
its heaped-up pillows, and his mind, acting always from suggestion,
became filled with the picture of his peaceful bed up-stairs, and
himself lying thereon, oblivious to all his miserable cares and
worries, passing out of reach of them on an ecstatic flight propelled
by the force of the winged drug. He began to consider the possibility
of obtaining chloroform. At once the instinct of secrecy asserted
itself. He decided that he could not, under the circumstances, go
into the drug-store in Banbridge and ask for a quantity of the drug
sufficient for his purposes. He realized that to do so would be to
incur suspicion. He doubted if he could maintain a perfectly unmoved
countenance while asking for it. He felt that his face would bear
evidence to his wild greed. He heard, as he sat there, the whistle,
then the rumble of a heavy freight-train a quarter of a mile distant,
and at once he thought of the feasibility of going to New York for
the chloroform. He looked at his watch and reflected that he had lost
the noon train. He also reflected as to the possible suspicion which
he might awaken of going to join his family, and making his final
exodus from the town and his creditors. He placed his watch in his
pocket, and his eyes fell on the electric-light fixture, with a red
silk shade over the bulb, and at once his mind conceived the idea of
his going somewhere on the trolley-cars. He thought of going to New
Sanderson; then dismissed that as not feasible. He knew too many
people in that place, and had too many creditors. Then he thought of
going to Port Willis, which was also connected with Banbridge by a
trolley-line, and was about the same distance. Again he looked at his
watch. It was nearly two o'clock. He wondered absently where the day
had gone, that it was so late. He had not the least idea as to the
times and seasons of the Port Willis trolley-cars, but he directly
arose to make ready. As he did so he heard a distressful mew, and the
black kitten which Marie had essayed to carry with her that morning
made a leap to the window-sill. The little animal looked in, fixed
his golden, jewel-like eyes on the man, and again uttered an
appealing, accusatory wail. Then she rubbed her head with a pretty,
caressing motion against the window-glass. She had evidently escaped
from the Hungarian and sped home. Carroll opened the window, and the
cat arched her back and purred, hesitating. Carroll waited patiently.
Finally she stepped across the sill, and he closed the window. Then
he called the cat into the kitchen, but he could find no milk for
her, nothing except a tiny scrap of beefsteak. The cat followed him
around the kitchen, slinking with her furry stomach sweeping the
floor, and mewed loudly, with alert eyes of watchful fear, exactly as
if she were in a strange place. The strangeness in the house
intimidated her. She missed the wonted element of the human, and the
very corners of her familiar kitchen looked strange to her. She would
not even eat her meat, but ran under the table and wailed loudly,
with wild eyes of terror on Carroll. He went out, shutting the door
behind him, and her loud inquiring wail floated after him.
Carroll brushed his overcoat and hat carefully, and put them on. He
went out of the house and took the road to the trolley-line. It was
still very cold, and the rime of the morning lay yet on the shaded
places. In the road, in the full glare of the sun, were a few dark,
damp places. The sky was very clear, with a brisk wind from the
northwest. It was at Carroll's back and urged him along. He walked
quite rapidly. He had a curious singleness of purpose, as unreasoning
and unreflective as an animal in search of food. He was going to Port
Willis for chloroform to satisfy a hunger keener than any animal's,
to satisfy the keenest hunger of which man, body and soul together,
is capable, a hunger keener than that of love or revenge, the hunger
for the open beyond the suffocating fastnesses of life. He met
several people whom he knew, and bowed perfunctorily. One or two
turned and looked after him. Two ladies, starting on a round of
calls, Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Van Dorn, again looked forth from the window
of Samson Rawdy's best coach, and at the intent man hurrying along
the sidewalk.
"I wonder where's he going," Mrs. Lee said, in a hushed tone. She was
just approaching a house where they meditated calling, and she was
rubbing on her violet-scented white gloves. Mrs. Lee looked worn and
considerably thinner than usual, and she was uncomfortably conscious
of her last season's bonnet. "My bonnet doesn't look very well to
make calls," she had remarked, when she entered the coach, hired, as
usual, at her companion's expense.
"It looks very well indeed," said Mrs. Van Dorn, in a covertly
triumphant voice. She herself wore a most gorgeous new bonnet with a
clump of winter roses crowning her gray pompadour. "It isn't the one
you wore last winter, is it?" asked she.
"Yes," admitted Mrs. Lee.
"You don't mean it! I thought it was new," said Mrs. Van Dorn, lying
comfortably.
"No, it's my old bonnet. I thought maybe it would do a while longer,"
said Mrs. Lee, meekly.
"I heard yesterday that a good many folks in Banbridge had been
losing money through Captain Carroll," said Mrs. Van Dorn, with
appositeness.
Mrs. Lee colored. "Have they?" said she.
"I heard so."
"Who is that man coming?" said Mrs. Lee, quickly, striving to turn
the conversation. Then she directly saw that the man was Carroll
himself.
"Why, it's Captain Carroll himself!" said Mrs. Van Dorn, and then
Mrs. Lee wondered, in her small, hushed voice, where he was going.
Samson Rawdy, driving, looked sharply at him. He even leaned far out
from the seat after he had passed, and watched to make sure he did
not take the road to the railroad station. Then he began, for the
hundredth time mentally, calculating the amount that was still owing
him. It was not much, only a matter of two dollars and some cents,
but his mind dwelt upon it.
"Seems to me he looked queer," Mrs. Lee remarked, thoughtfully, after
Carroll had passed.
"How do you mean?"
"I don't know. There was something about the way he was walking made
me think so. I suppose he doesn't know what way to turn."
"Well, I don't pity him," said Mrs. Van Dorn, with subdued
vindictiveness. "I don't see what a man is thinking of to come into a
place and conduct himself as he has done. They say he is in debt
everywhere, and has cheated everybody who didn't know any better than
to be cheated."
Mrs. Van Dorn spoke with point. She had heard on very good authority
that Mrs. Lee's husband had lost heavily through his misplaced
confidence in Carroll. Mr. Lee knew that she knew, but she stood up
bravely for the maligned man hurrying towards the Port Willis
trolley-car.
"Well, I don't know," said she. "You can't always tell by what people
say. It always seems to me that Banbridge folks are pretty ready to
talk, anyway. We don't know how much temptation the poor man has had,
and maybe he never meant to cheat anybody."
"Never meant!" repeated Mrs. Van Dorn, sarcastically. "Why, that is
the way he has been doing right along everywhere he has lived. Why, I
had it straight from a lady I met who had visited in Hillfield, New
York, where they used to live before they came here. Never meant!"
"Maybe he didn't," persisted Mrs. Lee. She was a grateful soul, and,
even if capable of small and petty acts, was of fine grain enough to
bear no rancor towards the discoverer of them; but the other woman
was built on a different plan.
"I don't take any stock in him at all," she said, with a species of
delight. She looked out of the small, rear window of the coach as she
spoke. "He's going to Port Willis," she said. "He's getting in the
trolley-car."
Samson Rawdy also turned his head and saw with a strained side glance
Carroll getting into the Port Willis trolley-car. Then he said:
"G'lang!" to his horses, and they turned a corner with a fine sweep,
while the ladies began getting their cards ready.
"I wonder what he's going to Port Willis for," said Mrs. Van Dorn,
reflectively and malignantly. "I suppose he's looking out for
somebody to cheat over there."
"Well, I pity him, poor man!" said Mrs. Lee. "If a man does cheat
other folks, he can't do it without cheating himself worst of all,
and it always turns out so in the end."
As is often the way with a simple tongue, hers spoke more wisdom that
it wot of. It was indeed quite true that poor Arthur Carroll, seating
himself in the Port Willis trolley-car, had in the bitter end cheated
himself worse than he had any of his creditors. He was more largely
in his own debt than in that of any other man; he had, in reality,
less of that of which he had cheated than had any of his victims.
Hardly one of them all was in such sore straits as he, for in
addition to his immediate personal necessities there was always the
incubus of the debts. And he was starting forth upon this trip with
the purpose in his overstrained, distorted brain of spending his last
reserve, and incurring a debt to himself which should never be paid
to all eternity.
Carroll seated himself in the car, which was already quite well
filled; there was not much time to spare before its scheduled
departure. He found a corner seat empty, and settled himself into it
with a bitter little sense of self-gratulation for at least that
minor alleviation of the situation. The corner seat in a Port Willis
trolley-car had distinct advantages aside from the physical comfort,
owing to the frequent crowding and the uncertain nature of the
component elements of the crowd.
Carroll settled back in his corner and surveyed his
fellow-passengers, waiting with a kind of stupid patience for the
starting of the car. There was a curious look of indifference to
remaining or going, on most of the faces, the natural result of the
universality of travel in America, the being always on the road for
all classes in order to cover the enormous distances in this great
country between home and work or amusement. All excitement over the
mere act of transit has passed; there is stolidity and acquiescence
as to delays and speed, unless there are great interests at stake. As
a rule, the people in the Port Willis trolley-car had not great
interests at stake; they were generally not highly organized,
nervously, and were to all appearances carried as woodenly from one
point to another as were the seats of the car. That afternoon a
German woman sat nearly opposite Carroll. She was well-dressed in a
handsome black satin skirt, with an ornate, lace-trimmed waist
showing between the folds of her seal cape. There were smart red
velvet roses and a feather in her hat. She sat with her feet far
apart, planted squarely to prevent her enormous slanting bulk from
slipping on the high seat. Her great florid face, a blank of animal
cognizance of existence, stared straight ahead, her triple chins were
pressed obstinately into the fur collar of her cape. She was the wife
of a prosperous saloon proprietor of Port Willis, which was a city of
saloons. She had herself been nourished on beer, until her naturally
strong will had become so heavy that it clogged her own purposes. Her
absently set face had a bewildered scowl as if at some dimly
comprehended opposition. Carroll surveyed her with a sort of
irritated wonder. No mathematical problem could present for him
difficulties as insuperable as this other human being, who, in a
similar stress to his own, would think of beer instead of chloroform,
and of sleep instead of death--indeed, for whom a similar stress
could not exist, so cushioned was both soul and body with stupidity
and flesh against the pricks and stabs of life.
Beside Carroll sat, sprawling his ungainly sideways length over the
seat, a lank countryman in top-boots red with the earth of the
country roads. His face, lantern-jawed, of the Abraham Lincoln type,
lacking the shrewd intelligence of the trained brain, was painfully
apathetic. He had scarcely looked up when Carroll took his seat
beside him. His lantern jaws worked furtively and incessantly with a
rotary motion over his quid of tobacco, which he chewed with the
humble and rudimentary comfort of an animal over its cud. He was
half-starved on his poor country fare, and the tobacco furnished his
stomach with imagination in lieu of solid food. Now and then he rose
and slouched to the door, and returned. At the other end of the car,
opposite, were two Hungarian women, short, squat, heavily oscillating
as to hips, clad in full, short skirts, aprons, and gay handkerchiefs
over strange faces, at once pitiful, stern, and intimidating. One of
the women was distinctly handsome, with noble features closely framed
by a snow-white kerchief. She had the expression of the pure and
unrelenting asceticism of a nun, but four children nearly of an age
were with her--one a baby in her arms, one asleep with heavy head on
her shoulder, the other two, a boy and girl, sitting on the seat with
their well-shod little feet sticking straight out, and their little
Slav faces, softened by infancy, looked unsmilingly out of the
opposite window. The baby in her lap was also strangely sullen and
solemn, with an intensely repellent little face in a soft, white
hood. The face of the baby looked like an epitome of weary, even
vicious, heredity. He looked older than his mother. Now and then she
bent, and her severe face took on an expression of majestic
tenderness. She pressed her handsome face close to the little,
elfish, even evil face of the child, and kissed it. Then the baby
smiled a fatuous, toothless smile, and he also was transformed; his
little glory of infancy seemed to illuminate the face marked with the
labors and sins and degradation of his progenitors. The other
Hungarian woman, who had with her one child, older than the baby,
very large and heavy, caught it up and kissed it with fervor, and the
child stared at her in return with a sort of patient wonder. Then the
two women exchanged smiles of confidence. Carroll watched,
remembering Amy with their children. She had been very charming with
the children, and, after all, there was not such a difference as
might appear at first. The thought flashed into Carroll's mind that
here was a little, universal well-spring of human nature which was
good to see, but the deadly pessimism and despair of his own mood
made him straightway corrupt the spring with his own dark conclusions.
"What is it all for?" he asked himself, bitterly. "Look at the
handsome alien creature there, with four young around her, and the
other with that unresponsive little brat. Any one of those children,
from the looks of their faces, is capable, if left to its own
unguided proclivities, of murdering the very parent who is now
caressing him; any one of them is hardly capable of doing anything in
life for his own good or happiness, or the good and happiness of the
world, if left to himself, as he will be. What does either of those
women know about training a child with those features, a child
distorted from birth?"
Beyond Carroll, on the same seat, sat two quite pretty young girls
with smart hats, and protuberant pompadours over pink-and-white
faces. They had loosened their coats, revealing coquettish neckwear.
They sat with feet crossed, displaying embroidered petticoats, at
which now and then the Hungarian women glanced with the hopeless
admiration with which one might view crown jewels. The two girls
covertly now and then reached forward their pretty heads and regarded
Carroll with half-bold, half-innocent coquettishness, but he did not
notice it. One whispered to the other how handsome he was, and did
she know who he was.
A rumble and jar became audible, and the New Sanderson car came up at
right angles on the track on the other road. The two cars connected.
Then passengers alighted from the New Sanderson car and entered the
waiting one. There was a distinct stir of excitement as they entered,
for it was evidently a bridal party. They were all Hungarians, and on
their way to Port Willis for the ceremony. There were the prospective
bride and groom and several friends of both sexes. They settled
themselves in the car, the girls huddled close together, the young
men by themselves. The bride was quite evident from the bridal
whiteness of her hat, a pitiful cheap affair bedecked with thin white
ribbon and a forlorn white plume; but although the bridegroom was as
unmistakable, it was difficult to tell how. Carroll decided that it
was because of the intensified melancholy and abjectness and shame of
his expression. Not one of the young men, who numbered as many as the
girls, but had it. They were all ignoble, contemptible, their faces
above their paper collars and hideous ties stained with miserable
imaginations. There was not a self-respecting face among them; but
the girls were better. There was in their faces an innocent gayety
like children. Instead of the painful, restrained grins of the young
men, they giggled artlessly when their eyes met. They were innocently
conscious of their flimsy and gaudy dresses of the cheapest lawn or
muslin on that cold day, with a multitude of frills of cheap lace and
bows of cheap ribbon, with bare hands adorned with blue or red stoned
rings protruding from their poor jacket-sleeves. The bride, afraid of
crushing her finery, had nothing over her shoulders in her thin white
muslin except one of the gay Hungarian kerchiefs. It was of an
exceedingly brilliant green color, a green greener than the grass of
spring. Above it her homely, downcast face showed beneath the
flapping white hat, which had a cluster of blue roses under the brim
next the dark streaks of her coarse hair. The face of the bride was
simple and rude in contour and line, the face of a peasant from a
long line of peasants, and it was complex with the simple complexity
of the simplest and most primal emotions, with love and joy and
wonder, the half-fearful triumph of swift inertia, attained at last
in the full element of life. The others were different; they were
dimpling and laughing and jesting in their unintelligible guttural.
Their faces knew nothing of the seriousness of the bride's. One of
them was exceedingly pretty, with a beauty unusual in her race. Her
high cheek-bones were covered with the softest rosy flesh, her wide
mouth was outlined by curves. She wore her cheap muslin with an air,
gathering up her petticoat, edged with the coarsest lace, daintily
from the muddy floor, revealing her large feet in heavy shoes and
white stockings. All the young men of the party except the
prospective groom, who sat entirely wrapped in his atmosphere of
grinning, shamefaced consciousness, glanced furtively at her from
time to time. She was quite aware of their glances, but she never
returned them. When a young man looked at her, she said something to
one of the girls, and laughed prettily, striking another pose for
admiration. She never, however, glanced at Carroll as did the two
pretty girls beyond him on the same seat. She seemed to have no
consciousness of any one in the car outside of those of her own race.
Indeed, the whole party, travelling in a strange land, speaking their
strange tongue, gave a curious impression of utter alienty. It was
almost as if they lived apart in their own crystalline sphere of
separation, as if they were as much diverse as inhabitants of Mars,
and yet they were bound on a universal errand, which might have
served to bring them into touch with the rest if anything could.
Carroll gathered an uncanny impression that he might be himself
invisible to these people, that, living in another element, they
actually could not see or fairly sense anything outside. He looked
from them to the two older women of the same race with their
children, and again his pessimistic attitude, evolved from his own
misery, set his mind in a bitterly interrogative attitude. He looked
at the bride and the mistakenly happy mother caressing the
evil-looking child, and a sickening disgust of the whole was over him.
The car started, and proceeded at a terrific speed along the straight
road. Carroll stared past the bulk of the German woman at the flying
landscape. Since noon the sky had become clouded; it threatened snow
if the wind should go down. The earth, which had been sodden with
rain a few days before, the mud from which showed dried on the
countryman's boots, was now frozen in a million wrinkles. The trees
stood leafless, extending their rattling branches, the old
corn-fields flickered with withered streamers; a man was mournfully
spreading dung over a slope of field. His old horse stood between the
shafts with drooping head. The man himself was old, and moved slowly
and painfully. A white beard of unusual length blew over his right
shoulder. Everything seemed aged and worn and weary, and full of
knowledge, to its undoing. To Carroll, in this mood, even the
bridal-party, even the children, seemed as old as age itself, puppets
evolved from the ashes of ages, working out a creation-old plan of
things.
The car was very close and hot--in fact, the atmosphere was
intolerable--but he felt chilly. He pulled his coat closer. Two young
men, countrymen, who had entered from the New Sanderson car, and sat
next the German woman, eyed him at the gesture, and their eyes fell
with a sort of dull dissent upon his handsome coat. One said
something to the other, and both laughed with boorish malice. Then
one, after glancing at the conductor, whose back was turned as he
talked to one of the pretty girls with pompadours, bent his head
hastily to the floor. Then he scraped his foot, and looked aloft with
an innocent and unconcerned expression. One of the pretty girls had
observed him, and said something to the conductor, pointing to a
printed placard over the man's head. The conductor looked at him, but
the man did not notice. He gave his fare, when it was demanded,
surlily. Then he bent his head again, when the conductor had turned
again, scraped his foot, and gave a sharp glance at the same time at
Carroll's long coat, which was almost within range. The German woman
suddenly awoke to nervous life and pulled her satin skirt aside, with
a look at the offender, to which he was impervious.
Then the car stopped in response to a signal, and a tiny, evidently
aged, woman with the activity of a child sprang on board. She had a
large bag which she bore on one meagre little arm as if it had been a
feather. Her wrinkled little face, rosily colored with the cold air,
peeped alertly from under quite a fine, youthful hat trimmed with
smart bows and a wing, but set crookedly on the head. Her sparse gray
hair was strained tightly back from her thin temples and wound
tightly at the back. Although she was undoubtedly old, her face could
no more be called old than could that of a bird. She kept it in
constant motion, bringing bright eyes to bear upon the different
passengers. She did not travel very far. She stopped the car,
springing alertly to her feet and pulling the bell-rope. Then she
hopped off as spryly as a sparrow, on her thin ankles, moving with
nervous haste. Then it was that Carroll noticed the boy for the first
time, although he was seated directly opposite, and the child looked
long and intently at the man. When the strange, agile old woman ran
through the car, the boy looked across with a look of innocent fun at
the man, and for the first time the two pairs of eyes met. It was not
in Carroll, whatever his stress of mind, to meet a smile like that
without response. He smiled back. Then the boy ducked his head with
fervor, and off came his little cap, like a gentleman.
He was a handsome little fellow, younger than Eddy by a year or two,
fair-haired and blue-eyed, with a most innocent and infantile
expression. He was rather poorly dressed, but he looked well cared
for, and he had the confident and unhesitating regard of a child who
is well-beloved. He had a little package of school-books under his
arm.
Carroll, after returning the child's smile, turned away. He did not
look again, although he felt that the blue eyes with a look of
insistent admiration were steadfastly upon his face. The country
through which the car was now passing was of a strange, convulsive
character. It was torn alike by nature and by man. Storms and winds
had battered at the clayey soil, spade and shovel had upturned it. It
was honey-combed and upheaved. There were roughly shelving hills
overhung with coarse dry grass like an old man's beard, there were
ragged chasms and gulfs, and all in raw reds and toneless browns and
drabs, darkened constantly by the smoke which descended upon them
from the chimneys of the great factories to the right. Over this raw
red and toneless drab surface crawled, on narrow tracks, little
wagons, drawn by plodding old horses, guided by plodding men. Beyond,
the salt river gleamed with a keen brightness like steel. The sky
above it was dull and brooding. The wind was going down. The whole
landscape was desolate, and with a strange, ragged, ignominious
desolation. The earth looked despoiled, insulted, dissected, as if
her sacred inner parts were laid bare by these poor pygmies, the
tools of a few capitalists grubbing at her vitals for the clay which
meant dollars.
In the most desolate part of this desolate country, the car was
stopped, and two Syrians laden with heavy grips got on. These tall,
darkly gaunt men, their sinister picturesqueness thinly disguised by
their Western garb, these Orientals in the midst of the extremest
phase of the New World, passed Carroll with grace, and seated
themselves, with a weary air, and yet an air of ineffable lengths of
time at command, suggestive of anything but weariness. There was
actually, or so Carroll fancied, a faint odor of attar of rose and
sandal-wood evident in the horribly close car. The men had in their
grips rosaries, and Eastern stuffs or Eastern trinkets of the
cheapest description.
To Arthur Carroll, regarding them, the fancy occurred, as it had
often occurred, of himself following a similar pursuit. He had
revolved in his mind all possible schemes of money-making, of winning
an honest living. All the more dignified methods, the methods
apparently suited to himself, seemed out of his reach. He pictured
himself laden with a heavy grip, with two of them, one painfully
poised on the hip, the other dragging at the hand, going about the
country, concealing his rage with abjectness and humility, striving
to dispose of his small and worthless wares for money enough to keep
the machinery going.
"I believe I would make a very good peddler," he thought. Although
his grace of address was involuntary, like any keenly intelligent and
retrospective man, he could not avoid being aware of it. He felt that
he could outstrip that saturnine Syrian in his own field.
Looking away from them, his eyes met the little boy's, also returning
from a sober, innocent contemplation of them, and the boy's eyes
again smiled at him with an odd, confidential expression. So clearly
wise and understanding was their direct regard, that it almost seemed
as if the child guessed at the man's thoughts; but that was, of
course, impossible. Carroll smiled at him again, and the little face
blushed and dimpled like a girl's with admiration and grateful
delight. He was a daintily built little boy, with nothing of Eddy's
little dash of manner, but he was charming. The car reached Port
Willis and proceeded along the principal street. Carroll suddenly
reflected that he must soon get off; he would reach the end of the
line. Again his errand loomed up before him. The necessity for
immediate action removed the paralyzing effect which the very horror
of it had had upon him for a time. Curiously enough, during the
half-hour in the car he had held, as it were, a little truce with
this fell appetite which had seized upon him. He had thought very
little of it. The strange inertia of passivity in motion of the other
passengers had seized upon him, but now was coming a period of
wakening. The passengers began to drop off. The bridal-party went out
chattering and laughing, the prospective bride with ugly red spots of
agitation on her high cheek-bones, the pretty girl holding up her
laced petticoats with the air of a princess. The stout German woman
got off in front of her husband's saloon. The Syrians stopped in
front of a store. Carroll rode through to the end of the line, and
there was then nobody left except himself, the two pretty girls, and
the little boy. The girls swept off before him, with a consciousness
of their backs in his sight. Carroll got off, and, to his utter
amazement, the little boy, pressing close to his heels, lifted a
small voice. It was an exceedingly small and polite little voice, as
sweet as a girl's, a thin treble.
"Be you Eddy Carroll's father?" asked the little voice.
Carroll looked down from his height at the small creature beside him.
The little, upturned face looked very far down. The little cap was
pushed back and the fair hair clung to the innocent forehead damply
like a baby's.
"Yes, my little man," said he, affably. "Who are you?"
"I go to school with him," said the little boy.
"Oh!" said Carroll.
"Has he went?" further inquired the little boy, wistfully. He was a
little scholar, but he had not learned as yet the practical
application of English. It was "has gone" in the book and "has went"
on the tongue.
"Yes; this morning," replied Carroll.
"I was in his classes," said the little voice.
"Why, you are younger than he is!" said Carroll.
"I guess I got my lessons better," admitted the little voice, but
with no conceit, rather with a measure of apology.
Carroll laughed. "You must have," said he. The boy had, undoubtedly,
a rather intellectual head, a full forehead, and eyes full of thought
and question.
"You go to school in Banbridge?" said Carroll, walking along the
street by the boy's side.
"Yes. I live here. My papa is dead and my mother dressmakes."
"Oh!" said Carroll. Suddenly, to his utter amazement, the small hand
which was free from the books was slid into his, and he was walking
up the street with the strange small boy clinging to his hand.
Carroll was conscious of a feeling of grotesque amusement, of
annoyance, and at the same time of pleasure and of exquisite
flattery. There was, strangely enough, in the child, nothing which
savored of the presuming or the forward. There was no more offence to
be taken than if an exceedingly small, timidly ingratiating, and
pretty dog had followed one. There was the same subtle compliment
implied, that the dog and the child considered him a man desirable to
be followed, a man to be trusted by such helplessness and ignorance
and loving admiration.
Carroll asked no more questions, but walked up the street with the
boy clinging to his hand. He thought of Eddy, but the touch of this
child was very different; the hand was softer, not so nervous.
Carroll, walking up the street, became forgetful of the child, who
remained silent, only glancing up at him now and then, timidly and
delightedly and admiringly. It was, in fact, to the boy, almost as if
he were walking hand in hand with a god. But to the man had returned
in full force the abnormal passion which had sent him thither. He
looked for a drug-store where he could buy chloroform. His mind was
as set upon that one end as a hunting-dog's upon his quarry. He could
not seem to grasp anything very intelligently but that one idea,
which crowded out every other for the time. The two passed store
after store, markets, beer-saloons, fruit-stalls, and dry-goods.
There were several blocks before the first drug-store was reached.
Carroll saw the red, green, and blue bottles in the windows, and
turned towards the door.
"Mr. Willard keeps this store; he's a nice man," volunteered the boy,
in his sweet treble.
Carroll looked down and smiled mechanically. "Is he?" he said.
"Yes. My mamma makes Mis' Willard's dresses. She's real good pay."
Carroll entered the store, the boy still keeping close hold of his
hand.
There was no one behind the counter, on which stood an ornate
soda-fountain with the usual appliances for hot and cold beverages. A
thought struck Carroll. He put his hand in his pocket and looked down
at the boy.
"Do you like chocolate?" he asked.
The boy blushed and hung his head.
"Do you?" persisted Carroll.
"I didn't ask for any," the boy said, in an exceedingly shamefaced
voice.
Carroll laughed as a man came from the rear of the store and paused
inquiringly behind the counter. "Give this little boy a cup of hot
chocolate, and make it pretty sweet," he said.
When the boy was seated, blissfully sipping his chocolate, Carroll
asked calmly for his chloroform. The druggist himself gave it to him
without any demur. There was that about Carroll's whole appearance
which completely allayed suspicion. It seemed inconceivable that a
man of such appearance, benevolently and genially treating a pretty
little boy to a cup of chocolate, should be essaying to purchase
poison for any nefarious purpose. The druggist put up the chloroform
in a bottle marked poison in red letters, changed the bill which
Carroll gave him in payment, and remarked that it was a cold day and
looked like snow. The boy was hurrying to finish his chocolate, that
he might follow again this object of his admiration, but Carroll
caught sight of the Banbridge car coming up the street, after having
made an unusually long wait at the terminus of the line.
"Take your time, my boy. I have to go," he said, and hurried out to
the car, leaving the boy staring wistfully after him with the
chocolate sweet upon his tongue.
Carroll, with his chloroform in his pocket, boarded the car, and
speeded again over the road to Banbridge. The way home seemed to him
like a dream. He was not conscious of much about him; his mind now
seemed concentrated on that small bottle in his pocket. He noticed
nobody in the car, but sat in his corner, with eyes fixed absently on
the flying landscape. The conductor had to speak twice before he
realized that he was asking for his fare. When the car reached the
end of the line in Banbridge, he sat still for a few seconds before
he collected himself enough to understand that the end of his journey
was reached, and it was time for him to get off the car and walk home.
Walking along the familiar way, his apathy began to fail and his
nervous excitement returned. He began to realize everything, this
hideous end to his failure of a life which was so rapidly
approaching. He realized that he was walking alone to his deserted
home, cold and cheerless, dark and silent. It was already dusk, the
days were short and the sky heavily clouded. The raw wind from the
northeast smote him hard in the face like a diffused flail of wrath.
He thought of his wife and children and sister speeding along to
their old home in the cheerful Pullman-car. He reflected that about
this time they would be thinking of going to the dining-car for their
dinner. He reflected that after the chloroform had done its work,
they would be well cared for in Kentucky, much better off than they
had ever been under his doubtful protection; that Eddy might grow up
to be a better man than his father, that Charlotte would marry down
there, that they would all be comfortable, and in the intense and
abnormal self-centredness of the mood which was upon him, that mood
which leads a man to escape from his own agony of life by the first
exit, that awful hunger for the beyond of his own soul, he never gave
a thought to the possible sufferings of his family, to their possible
grief at the loss of him. He actually hugged himself with the
contemplation of their comfort and happiness, which would follow upon
his demise, as he hugged himself upon the prospective ecstasy and
oblivion in the bottle in his pocket.
He came in sight of his house, and a bright light shone in the
dining-room window. He looked at it in bewilderment. His first
thought was an unreasoning one that some of his creditors had in some
unforeseen way taken possession. He went wearily around to the side
door. There was a light also behind the drawn curtain of the kitchen.
He opened the door and smelled broiling beefsteak and tea. Then
Charlotte, warm and rosy, laughing and almost weeping at the same
time, ran towards him with her arms held out.
"I have come back, papa," said she.