The Debtor: A Novel

by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

Then he went to call Charlotte. It was at that moment rather a hard experience for Charlotte that it was not her mother instead of her father who called her to go down and see her lover. She had thought, with a passion of yearning, of her mother who had done the same thing, and would understand, as she fluffed out her pretty hair around her face in front of the glass in her room. When her father called her she ran down, but instead of going at once into the parlor, where she knew her lover was waiting for her, she ran into the den. She felt sure that her father had retreated there. She found him there, as she had thought, and she flung her arms around his neck.

“I am never going to leave you alone, you know, papa,” she whispered.

“Yes, dear.”

“Papa, come in there with me.”

Carroll laughed then. “Run along, honey,” he said, and gave her a kiss, and pushed her softly out of the room.

Chapter XLII

Carroll, left alone, lighted another cigar from force of habit. It was one of the abominably cheap ones which he had been smoking lately when by himself. He never offered one to anybody else. But soon the cigar went out and he never noticed it. He sat in a deep-hollowed chair before a fireless hearth, and the strange expression upon his face deepened. It partook of at once exaltation and despair. He heard the soft murmur of voices from the parlor where the lovers were. He reflected that he should tell Anderson, before he married Charlotte, the purpose in his mind; that he owed it to him, since that purpose might quite reasonably cause a man to change his own plans with regard to marrying her. He decided that he would tell him that night before he left. But he felt that it would make no difference to a man of Anderson's type; that it was only for his own sake, the sake of his own honor, that it was necessary to tell him at all. Then he fell to thinking of what was before him, of the new life upon which he would enter the next Monday, and it was actually to this man of wrong courses but right instincts, this man born and bred of the best and as the best, as if he were contemplating the flames of the stake or the torture of the rack. He felt, in anticipation, his pride, his self-respect, stung as with fire and broken as upon the wheel. He was beset with the agonies of spiritual torture, which yet brought a certain solace in the triumph of endurance. He had at once the agony and the delight of the fighter, of the wrestler with the angel. What he had set himself to do for the sake of not only making good to others what they had lost through him, but what he had lost through himself, was unutterably terrible to him. But while his face was agonized, he yet threw back his head with the motion of the conqueror. And he owned to himself that the conquest was even greater because it was against such petty odds, because both the fight and the triumph savored of the ignoble, even of the ridiculous. It would be much easier to be a hero whom the multitude would applaud and worship than a hero whom the multitude would welcome with laughter. When comedy becomes tragedy, when the ignominious becomes victorious, he who brings it about becomes majestic in spite of fate itself. And yet withal the man sitting there listening to the soft murmur from the other room felt that his own life, so far as the happiness which, after all, makes life worth living for mortal weakness, was over. He thought of his wife and sister and children, who would be all safely sheltered, and, he hoped, even happy in time, although separated from him; and while his soul rejoiced over that, he yet could not help thinking of himself. Listening to the voices of the lovers in the parlor, he thought how he and Amy used to make love, and how it was all over, perhaps forever over. He smiled a little as he remembered how his Charlotte had asked him to go with her to meet her lover. Gentle and affectionate to his family as he was, Carroll was essentially masculine. He could not in the least understand how the girl felt. He felt a little anxious lest the child should not really love Anderson, because she hesitated, since he could see no other reason for her hesitation. However, when, about eleven o'clock, he heard the stir of approaching departure, and went hurriedly into the hall in order to intercept Anderson before he went, one glimpse of the girl's little face reassured him. She seemed to at once have grown older and younger. She was reflective, and fairly beaming with utmost anticipations. She looked at Anderson as he had never seen her look at any one. He had doubted a little about Ina; he had no doubt whatever about Charlotte. “She is in love with him, fast enough,” he said to himself. He spoke to Anderson, and asked to have a word with him before he went.

“Come back into the parlor a moment, if you please,” he said. “I have a word to say to you.”

Anderson followed him into the room. He already had on his overcoat. Carroll stood close to him and spoke in a low voice. His face was ghastly when he had finished, but he looked proudly at the other man.

“Now it is for you to say whether you will advance or retreat, for I think that, under the circumstances, nobody could say that you did not do the last with honor,” he concluded.