The next morning Carroll looked ill, so ill that Charlotte regarded
him with dismay as she sat opposite him at the breakfast-table. She
was full of delight over her meal. She had gotten up early and made
the fire and cooked the breakfast; in fact, Carroll had been awakened
from the uneasy sleep into which he had fallen towards morning by the
fragrance of the coffee. He opened his eyes, and it took him some
time to adjust himself to his environment, so much had happened since
the morning before. He awoke in the same room, in the same bed, but
spiritual stresses had made him unfamiliar with himself. It took him
some time to recall everything--the departure of his family, his
journey to Port Willis, Charlotte's return, the chloroform--but that
which required no time to return, which was like a vital flame in him
from the first second of his consciousness, was his hatred of the man
who had done him the wrong. As he lay there reflecting he became
aware that he had always hated in just such measure as this, from the
very first moment in which he had become aware of the wrong, only he
had not himself fairly sensed the mighty power of the hate. He had
not known that it so permeated his very soul, so filled it with
unnatural fire. At last he arose and dressed and went down-stairs,
and greeted Charlotte, radiant and triumphant, and seated himself
opposite her at the table, when her face fell.
"You are certainly ill, papa," said she.
"No, dear," said Carroll. "I am not ill at all." This morning he
tried to eat, to please her, for his appetite of the night before had
gone. He was haggard and pale, and his eyes looked strained.
"You look very ill," said Charlotte. "Let me call the doctor for you,
papa, dear."
Carroll laughed. "Nonsense," he said. "I am as well as ever I was.
You make a baby of your old father, honey."
"Have another chop, then," said Charlotte.
And Carroll passed his plate for the chop, and ate it, although it
fairly nauseated him. He looked at the child opposite as he ate, and
she looked as beautiful as an angel, and as good as one to him. He
thought how the little thing had come back to him, her unfortunate
father, who had made such a muddle of his life, who had been able to
do so little for her; how she had given up the certainty of a happy
and comfortable home for uncertainty, and possibly privation, and the
purest gratitude and love that was so intense possessed him. Looking
at Charlotte, he almost forgot the hatred of the man who had brought
this upon him, and then the hatred awoke to fiercer life because of
the love.
Then, all unconsciously, Charlotte herself, seemingly actuated by a
species of mental telegraphy, spurred him on. "Papa," said she,
viewing him with approbation as he ate his second chop, "is that man
in Acton who treated you so dreadfully still living there?"
Carroll's face contracted. "Yes, dear," he said.
"If I had gone down there, and had seen that man, I should have been
afraid of the way I would have felt when I saw him," said Charlotte.
Her innocent girl's face took on an expression which was the echo of
her father's. "I suppose he is prosperous," she said.
"I think so, honey."
"I feel wicked when I think of him," said Charlotte, still with the
look which echoed her father's, "when I think of all he has made you
suffer, papa."
Carroll made no reply; the two looked at each other for a second. The
girl's soft face became almost terrible.
"I think if I were a man, and met him, and--had a pistol, I should
kill him," she said, slowly.
Carroll made an effort which fairly convulsed him. His face changed.
He sprang up, went over to Charlotte, took hold of her head, bent it
back, and kissed her. "For God's sake, honey, don't talk in that
way!" he said. "All this is not for you to meddle with nor trouble
your little head with."
"Yes it is, if it troubles you, Papa."
"I can manage my own troubles, and I don't want any little girl like
you trying to take hold of the heavy end," Carroll said, and laughed
quite naturally.
"Then you must not look so ill, papa."
"I am going to have another cup of coffee," Carroll said, and showed
diplomacy.
Charlotte delightedly poured out the coffee. "Isn't it very good
coffee?" she said.
"Delicious coffee."
"I am going to get a beautiful dinner for you," Charlotte said. The
second cup of coffee had reassured her. She began to think her father
did not look so ill, after all. She was herself in a state of perfect
content and happiness. She felt a sense of triumph, of daring, which
exhilarated her. She adored her father, and how cleverly she had
managed this coming back. How impossible she had made it for any one
to gainsay her! After breakfast her father went out, telling her he
should be home by noon, and she busied herself about the house. She
was an absolute novice about such work, but she found in it a charm
of novelty, and she developed a handiness which filled her with
renewed triumph. She kept considering what would her father have done
if she had not returned.
"He would have had no supper when he came home last night," Charlotte
said--"no supper, for he evidently was not going to the inn, and the
fire was out. How dreadful it would have been for him!" She imagined
perfectly her father's sensations of delighted surprise and relief
when he espied her, to welcome him, when he felt the warmth of the
fire, when he smelled the supper. The pure delight of a woman over
the comfort which she gives a child or a man whom she loves was over
her. She realized her father's comfort as she had never realized any
of her own. She fairly danced about her work. She put the bedrooms in
order, she washed the breakfast dishes. Then she meditated going
down-town and buying a fish for dinner. Carroll was very fond of
baked fish. About ten o'clock she had finished her work, and she put
on her hat and coat and set forth. She ordered the fish, and paid for
it. She gave the man a five-dollar note to change. He looked at it
suspiciously. When she had gone out, he and two other men who were
standing in the little market looked at one another.
"Guess the world's comin' to an end," he said, laughing, "when they
pay cash with five-dollar bills."
"Sure it was a good one?" said one of the other men.
"I thought all Carroll's family had went," said the third man.
"Guess they didn't have enough money to take this one, and you can't
beat the Pennsylvania Railroad nohow," said the fishman.
Charlotte went on to the butcher's, bought and paid for some ham,
then to Anderson's for eggs. The old clerk came forward as she
entered, and answered her question about the eggs.
"Do you want them charged?" he asked.
"No, I will pay for them," replied Charlotte, and took her little
purse, and just then Anderson, having heard her voice, looked
incredulously out of his office, his morning paper in hand. Charlotte
laid some money on the counter, and stepped forward at once. She saw
with a sort of wonder, and an agitation within herself for which she
could not account, that the man was deadly white, that he fairly
trembled.
"Good-morning, Mr. Anderson," she said.
Anderson was a man of self-control, but he gazed down at her fairly
speechless. He had been telling himself that she had gone as
certainly out of his life as if she were dead, and here she was again.
"I thought," he stammered, finally.
Charlotte's face of innocent wonder and disturbance flushed. "No, I
did not go, after all," she said, like a child. "That is, I started,
but I went no farther than Lancaster. They thought I was going--they
all did--but I could not leave papa alone, and so I came back." She
was incoherent. Her own confusion deepened. She tried to look into
the man's face, but her own eyes fell; her lips quivered. She was
almost crying, but she did not know why. She turned to the counter,
behind which stood the man with the package of eggs and the change.
"Send that package," Anderson said, brusquely.
"The wagon has gone."
"Send it as soon as it comes back. There will be time enough."
"I can manage if I don't have the eggs until noon," said Charlotte.
The clerk turned to put away the parcel in readiness for the
delivery-wagon, and again Anderson and the girl looked at each other.
Anderson had caught up his hat with his newspaper as he came out of
the office, and Charlotte looked at it.
"Were you going out?" she asked, timidly, and yet the question seemed
to imply a suggestion. She glanced towards the door.
Anderson muttered something about an errand, and went out with her.
They walked along the street together. Suddenly Charlotte looked up
in his face and began confiding in him. She told the whole story.
"You see, I couldn't leave papa," she concluded.
Anderson looked down at her, and the look was unmistakable. Charlotte
blushed and her face quivered.
"Then you are going to stay here all winter?" he said, in a low voice.
"Oh, no, I think not," she replied. "I think we shall go away."
Anderson's face fell. She had spoken very eagerly, almost as if she
were anxious to go.
She made it worse. "I don't think I should have come back if it had
not been for that," she said. "I did not see what poor papa could do
all alone, trying to move. I don't think I should."
"Yes," said Anderson, soberly.
"Perhaps I should not have," said she. She did not look at him. She
kept her eyes fixed on the frozen ground, but the man's face lighted.
They kept on in a vague sort of fashion and had reached the
post-office. They entered, and when Anderson had unlocked his box and
taken out his mail, and Charlotte had gotten some letters which
looked like bills for her father, he realized the he had no excuse to
go any farther with her. He bade her good-morning, therefore.
Charlotte said good-morning, and there was a little uncertainty and
wistfulness in her look and voice. She was very unsophisticated, and
she was wondering whether she should ask him to call, now her mother
and aunt had gone. She resolved that she would ask her father. As for
Anderson, he went back to the store in a sort of dream. He suddenly
began to wonder if the impossible could be possible. At one moment he
ridiculed himself for the absurdity of such an imagination, even, and
then the imagination returned. He reflected that he would have had no
such doubt if it had not been for his lack of success in his
profession. He charged himself with a lack of self-respect that he
should have doubts now.
"After all, I am a man," he told himself. "I am as good as ever I
was."
Then he considered, and rightly, that it was not his own just
estimate of himself which was to be taken into consideration in a
case of this sort, but that of the people. He realized that a girl
brought up as Charlotte Carroll had been might, knowing, as she must
finally know, her own father to be little better than a common
swindler, not even dream of the possibility of marrying a grocer. He
had to pass his old office on his way home to dinner that noon, and
he looked at it with more regret than he had ever done since leaving
it. The school was out and the children were streaming along the
street. The air was full of their chatter. Henry Edgecomb came up
behind him with a good-morning. He looked worn and nervous. Anderson
looked at him sharply after his greeting.
"What is the matter?" he asked.
"Nothing, only I am tired out," Edgecomb replied, wearily. "Sometimes
I envy you."
"Don't," said Anderson.
"I do. This friction with new souls and temperaments is wearing my
old one thin. I would rather sell butter and cheese."
"Rather do anything than desert the battle-field you have chosen,
because you are beaten," said Anderson, with sudden bitterness.
"Nonsense! You are not beaten."
"Yes, I am."
"You have simply taken up new weapons."
"Weights and balances," said Anderson, but his laugh was bitter.
He left Edgecomb at the corner, and, going up his own street,
reflected again. He began to wonder if possibly he would not have
done better to have stuck to his profession; if he could not have
left Banbridge and tried elsewhere--in the City. He wondered if he
had shown energy and manly ambition, if he had not been
poor-spirited. When he reached home his mother eyed him anxiously and
asked if he were ill.
"No," he said, "but I met Henry, and he looks wretchedly."
"He hasn't enough to eat," Mrs. Anderson said. "Harriet does not give
him enough to eat. It is a shame. If I were in his place I would get
married."
"He says he is tired out teaching. He talks about the friction of so
many natures on his."
"Of course there is a friction," said Mrs. Anderson, "but he could
stand it if he had more to eat. Let us have a dinner next Sunday
night; let us have a roast turkey and a pudding. We will have lunch
at noon. Henry is very fond of turkey, and it is late enough to get
good ones."
"Shall we ask Harriet?" inquired Anderson, with a lurking mischief.
His mother looked at him with quick suspicion. "You don't want her
asked?" she said.
"Why should she be asked? She never is."
"I don't know but with an extra dinner--"
"She has her mission," Mrs. Anderson said, with firmness. "You are
eating nothing yourself, Randolph." Presently she looked at her son
with an inscrutable expression. "Are the Carrolls all gone?" she
asked.
Anderson cut himself a bit of beefsteak carefully before replying.
"Some of them, I believe," said he.
"I heard Mrs. Carroll and her sister and daughter and the boy all
went yesterday morning. Josie Eggleston came in about the Rainy Day
Club meeting, this morning, and she told me." There was something so
interrogative in his mother's tone that Anderson was obliged to say
something.
"They all went except the daughter, I believe," he said.
"The girl who was here?"
"Yes."
"Then she didn't go?"
"She went as far as Lancaster, but she came back?"
"Came back?"
"Yes. She didn't want to leave her father alone, and--under a cloud,
as he seems to be, and she knew if she declared she was not going
there would be opposition--that, in fact, her mother would not go."
"I don't think much of her for going, anyway," said Mrs. Anderson.
"Leaving her husband all alone. I don't care what he had done, he was
her husband, and I dare say he cheated on her account, mostly. She
ought not to have gone."
"They wanted her to go; she is not very strong; and the sister is
really ill," said Anderson, "and so the daughter planned it. She went
as far as Lancaster, then she got off the train."
"Why, I should think her mother would be crazy?"
"She sent word back, a letter by Eddy. He got off the train with her;
the train stopped there a few minutes."
"Then she came back?"
"Yes."
"And she is going to stay with her father?"
"Yes."
"Oh!" said Mrs. Anderson.
After dinner Anderson sat beside the sitting-room window with his
noon mail, as was his custom, for a few minutes before returning to
the store, and his mother came up behind him. She stroked his hair,
which was thick and brown, and only a little gray on the temples.
"She is a very pretty girl, and I think she is a dear child to come
back and not leave her father alone," she said.
Anderson did not look up, but he leaned his head caressingly towards
his mother.
"I have been thinking," said she. "I am a good deal older; she is
only a little, young girl, and I am an old lady, and I have never
called there. You know I never call on new people nowadays, but she
must be very lonely, all alone there. I think I shall go up there and
call on her some afternoon this week, if it is pleasant. I have some
other calls I want to make on the way there, and I might as well."
"I will order the coach for you any afternoon you say, mother,"
replied Anderson.