The Debtor: A Novel

by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

All at once the door before him was swung violently open and a gentleman stood there. Carroll felt at once that he was Mr. A. Baumstein.

“What do you want, sir?” inquired the gentleman, and his tone was distinctly hostile, although he looked like a well-bred man, and it seemed puzzling that he thus received an answer to his application.

“I saw your advertisement, sir—” Carroll began.

“My advertisement for what, pray?” repeated Mr. Baumstein.

“For a coachman,” replied Carroll, “and I thought if you had not already secured one—”

“Clear out, or I will call a policeman!” thundered Mr. Baumstein, and again the door was slammed in his face.

Carroll then understood. A gentleman who would have been presentable at the Waldorf-Astoria, at a gentleman's area door applying for a position as coachman, was highly suspicious. He understood readily how he would have looked at the matter had the cases been reversed. He made his way out of the little yard, dodging the fluttering banners of servants' clothes, and was conscious that his progress was anxiously watched by peering eyes at the windows. He reflected that undoubtedly that house would be doubly bolted and barred that night, and he would not be surprised if a special policeman were summoned, in view of the great probability that he was a gentleman burglar spying out the land before he descended upon it in search of the spoons and diamonds. Somehow the fancy tickled him to that extent that he felt almost as hysterical as a woman. He laughed aloud, and two men whom he met just then turned round and looked at him suspiciously.

“Dopey, I guess,” one said, audibly, to the other.

It was now in Carroll's mind to gain the Elevated as soon as possible, and hurry down-town to his ferry and catch his train. He consulted his watch, and saw that he had just about time, if there were no delays. As he replaced his watch he remembered that he had, besides his railroad book, very little money, only a little silver. The helplessness of a cripple came over him. He recalled seeing a man who had lost both his legs shuffling along on the sidewalk, with the stumps bound with leather, carrying a little tray of lead-pencils which nobody seemed to buy. He felt like that cripple. A man living to-day in the heart of civilization, where money is in reality legs and wings and hands, is nothing more than a torso without it, he thought. He felt mutilated, unspeakably humiliated. It seemed more out of his ability to get any honest employment than it had ever done before. A number of laborers with their dinner-satchels, and their pickaxes over their shoulders, passed him. They looked at him, as they passed, with gloomy hostility. It was as if they accused him of having something which of a right belonged to them. He fell to wondering how he would figure in their ranks. He was no longer a very young man. However, his muscles were still good and supple; it really seemed to him that he might dig or pick away at rocks, as he had seen men doing in that apparently aimless and hopeless and never-ending fashion. He thought in such a case he should have to join the union, and he really wondered if they would admit him, if he pawned his clothes and should buy some poorer ones. He decided, passing himself before himself in mental review, that he might be treated by the leaders of a labor union very much as he had just been treated by Mr. Baumstein at his area door. He also decided that men like those who had just met him regard him with even worse suspicion and disfavor. He remembered stories he had read of gentlemen, of students, voluntarily joining the ranks of labor for the sake of information, but it seemed somehow impossible when it was attempted in earnest. Decidedly, his appearance was against him. He had the misfortune to look too much like a man who did not need to dig to easily obtain, in labor's parlance, a job to dig. Yet, while he thought of it, such was the man's desperation, his rage against his odds of life, that it seemed to him that a purely physical attack on the earth, to which he was fastened by some indissoluble laws of nature which he could not grasp, would be a welcome relief. He felt that with a heavy pick in his hand he could strike savagely at the concrete rock, the ribs of the earth, and almost enjoy himself. He felt that it would be like an attack, although a futile and antlike one, at creation itself. All this he thought idly, walking, even hurrying, along the slippery pavement through the pale, sleety mist. He walked as rapidly as he could, some of the time slipping, and recovering himself with a long slide. He came to a block of new stone houses, divided from another by a small space taken up by a little, old-fashioned, wooded structure that might have been with propriety in Banbridge. He noticed this, and the thought came to him that possibly it was the property of some ancient and opinionated mortal who was either holding it for higher prices or for the sake of some attachment or grudge. And just as he reached it he saw coming from the opposite direction his old book-keeper, William Allbright. Allbright, moving with a due regard to the dangerous state of the pavement, had still an alacrity of movement rather unusual to him. As he came nearer it was plain to see that his soberly outlined face, long and clean-shaven, was elated by something. He started when he recognized Carroll, and stopped. Carroll felt, meeting him a sensation of self-respect like a tonic. Here was at least one man to whom he owed nothing, whom he had not injured. He held out his hand.

“How do you do, Mr. Allbright?” he said.