The Debtor Part 69

"You never had a better?"

"Never so good, never half so good," said Carroll, fervently, smiling down at her eager face.

"You are glad I came back, aren't you, papa?"

"Glad for my own sake, G.o.d knows, dear, but--"

"There are no buts at all," Charlotte cried, laughing. "No buts at all. If you don't think I am happier and better off here with you than I would be rattling down to Kentucky on that old railroad, and I am always car-sick on a long journey, you know, papa."

Charlotte lit a lamp and bade her father good-night. She kissed him and looked at him anxiously and with a little bewilderment. He had seated himself, and was smoking with an abstracted air, his eyes fixed on vacancy.

"Now, papa, you will go to bed very soon yourself, won't you?" she urged. "You look sick, and I know you are tired out."

"Very soon, honey," Carroll replied.

After Charlotte had gotten into bed, and lay there with her lamp on a stand beside her and her book in hand, she listened more than she read. When in the course of half an hour she heard her father come up the stairs and enter his own room, she gave a sigh of relief.

"Good-night, papa," she called out.

"Good-night, dear," he responded. Then Charlotte fell asleep with her light burning and her book in her hand, and she did not hear her father go softly over the stairs a second time.

As was said, his mind, in regaining its normal balance, had swung too far to the opposite direction. His desire to live, that possessed him, was as much too intense as his previous desire to die. He had for the time being another fixed idea, not as dangerous in a sense as the other, at least not to himself, but still dangerous. The miserable little bottle of chloroform became, in this second abnormal state of his mind, the key-note on which his strenuous thoughts harped. It seemed to him that that bottle with its red label of "Poison" was as horrible a thing to have as a blood-stained knife of murder. It was in a sense blood-stained. It bore the stigma of the self-murderer. It bore evidence to his hideous cowardice, his unspeakable crime of spirit. He felt that he must do away with that bottle; but how? After he was in his room, and the door locked, he took the bottle from its neat wrapper of pink paper and looked at it.

It seemed like an absurdly easy thing to dispose of; but it did not, when he reflected, seem easy at all. It was not a thing to burn, or throw away. He thought of opening the window and giving it a fling; but what was to hinder some one finding it in the morning under the windows? The man actually sat down and gazed awhile at the small phial of death with utter helplessness and horror; and as he did so, the always smouldering wrath of his soul towards that man in Kentucky, that man who had wronged him, swelled to its height. He had always hated him, but his hate had never a.s.sumed such strength as this. He became conscious, as he had never been before, that that man was responsible for it all, even to the crowning horror and ignominy of that bottle. He reflected that no man of his name had ever, so far as he knew, stained it as he had done by his life; that no man of his name had ever so stained the record of his race by the contemplation of such a dastardly death. He felt, gazing at that bottle, every whit as guilty as if he had drained the contents, and he told himself that that man was responsible, that that man had murdered him in the worst and subtlest way in which murder can be done; he had caused him to do away with his own honor. He felt himself alive to his furthest fancy with hate and a desire for revenge.

"I will live, and I will have the better of him yet," he muttered to himself.

Every nerve tingled; his fingers clutched the bottle like hot wires--that bottle which that other man had caused him to buy, and which he could not get rid of, this palpable witness to his crime and disgrace.

Finally he got up and threw up the window; then he put it down again.

It did not seem to him, in his unreasoning state, that he could probably empty the chloroform out of the window without the slightest danger of detection, and then sc.r.a.pe the label from the bottle. It did not seem possible to him that Charlotte would not immediately perceive the fumes of the drug which would cry to her from the ground. Her room was next his own. He sat down again and gazed at the bottle with the absurd bewilderment of a drunken man. Then he tried stowing it away in a drawer of the dresser, behind a pile of s.h.i.+rts.

He even, after doing that, began to undress, but that did not satisfy him. It seemed certain to him that Charlotte would find it in the morning, and say, "Why, papa, what is this bottle marked 'Poison' in your drawer?"

At last he unlocked his door, opened it, and stole softly down-stairs. He unfastened the kitchen door, and went across the field and garden behind the house, to the little pond beside the rustic arbor, the little sentimental Idlewild of the original dwellers in the house. It was a dark, waving night. It still did not storm, and was warmer. It would probably rain before morning. The wind smote his face damply. He had come out in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves. He moved slyly, like a thief; he felt like one, like a thief and a murderer--a self-murderer, and a murderer, in will, of the man who had caused him to commit the crime. He felt burning with hate as he slunk across the field, of hate of the man who had brought him to this, who had caused his financial and moral downfall. At that time, had the man been near, his life would have been worth nothing.

Carroll thought, as he hurried on, holding fast to the bottle, how he could overthrow him, uncork the bottle and hold it to his face, that he might inhale the death he had meted out to him. It seemed to him like the merest instinct of self-defence. He stumbled now and then over the tangle of dry vines in the garden, among the corn-stalks. He went like a guilty thing, instead of moving with his usual confident state, the state of a gentleman from a long line of gentlemen. He had become alive to his own shame, his own ignominy, and he had turned at bay upon the one who had caused him, as he judged, to fall.

When he reached the little pond, he paused and looked about him for a second. It was a desolate spot at that time of year and that hour.

The little sheet of water gleamed dully like an obscured eye of life.

The trees waved their slender arms over it. Something about the summer-house creaked as a damp wind blew on his face. He saw through the trees a faint gleam of light from a house window farther down the road. He heard a rustle in the undergrowth on his right, probably a stray cat or a bird. He stood there holding the bottle of chloroform and hating that man; then he raised his arm and flung the thing into the pond. There was a splash which sounded unnaturally loud, as if it could be heard a long distance.

Then Carroll turned and went home across the field; the evidence of his guilt was hidden away out of sight, but the memory and consciousness of it was in his very soul and had become a part of him, and his hate of the man who had brought him to it stalked by his side like a demon across the fields.

Chapter x.x.xIV

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 appet.i.te 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 pa.s.sed 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 grat.i.tude 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 G.o.d'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 rea.s.sured 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.