Chapter 34

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_ Chapter XXXIV

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. _

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