The Debtor Part 75

His involuntary shrug of his narrow shoulders in his poor coat spoke as loudly as words.

Carroll was directly conscious in an odd, angry, contemptuous sort of fas.h.i.+on, and whether because of himself, or of that other man, or of an overruling Providence, he would have been puzzled to say, of his own outer garment of the finest cloth and most irreproachable make.

"As soon as I can manage it, every cent," he repeated, almost mechanically, and took another sip of his soup. The young fellow's winking eyes, full of tears, were putting him to an ignominious torture.

The two girls had stood close behind the young man, waiting their turns. Now the younger stepped forward, and she spoke quite audibly in her high-pitched voice.

"Good-morning, Mr. Carroll," said she, with a strained pertness of manner.

"Good-morning," Carroll returned, politely. He half arose from the table.

The girl giggled nervously. Her pretty, even beautiful face, under her crest of blond hair and the scoop of a bright red hat, paled and flushed. "Oh, don't stop your luncheon," said she. "Go right on. I just wanted to ask if you could possibly--"

"I am very sorry," Carroll replied, "but to-day it is impossible; but in the end you shall not lose one dollar."

The girl pouted. Her beauty gave her some power of self-a.s.sertion, although in reality she was of an exceedingly mild and gentle sort.

"That is very well," said she, "but how long do you think it will be before we get to the end, Mr. Carroll?"

"I hope not very long," Carroll said, with a miserable patience.

"It had better not be very long," said she, and suddenly her high voice pitched to tragedy. "If--if--I can't get another place that's decent for a girl to take," said she, "and if I don't get what's owing me before long, I shall either have to take one of them places or get a dose." She said the last word with an indescribably hideous significance. Her blue eyes seemed to blaze at Carroll.

Then the other girl pressed closer. "You needn't talk that way," said she to the girl. "You know that I--"

"I ain't goin' to live on you," returned the other girl, violently.

People were beginning to look at the group.

"Now, you know, May," said the other girl, "my room is plenty big enough for two, and I'm earning plenty to give you a bite till you get a place yourself, and you know you may get that place you went to see about yesterday."

"No, I won't," said May. "It seems to me it's pretty hard lines that a poor girl can't get the money she's worked as hard for as I have."

The other girl pushed herself in front of May and spoke to Carroll, and there was something womanly and beautiful in her face. "I have a real good place," she said, in a low voice, and she enunciated like a lady. "A real good place, and I'll look out for May till she gets one, and I can wait until you are able to pay me."

"I will pay you all as soon as possible. I give you all my word I will pay you in the end," said Carroll.

He seemed to see the three go out in a sort of dream. It did not really seem to him that it was he, Arthur Carroll, who was sitting there in that smoking, greasy atmosphere, before that table covered with a stained cloth, over which the waiter had ostentatiously spread a damp napkin, with that bowl of canned tomato-soup before him, and that thick cup of coffee, with those three unhappy young creditors, who had reviled and, worse than reviled, pitied him, pa.s.sing out, with the open glances of amused curiosity fastened upon him on every side.

"Guess that dude is down on his luck," he heard a young man at his left say.

"Guess he put the money he'd ought to have paid that young lady with into his overcoat," his companion, a girl with a picture-hat, and a wide lace collar over her coat, responded.

Carroll felt that he was overwhelmed, beaten, at bay before utter ignominy. The thought flashed across him, as he tried to swallow some more of the soup, that in some respects, if he had been a murderer or a great bank defaulter with detectives on his track, the situation would at least have been more endurable. The horrible pettiness of it all, const.i.tuted the maddening sting of it. While he was thinking this the girl they called May came flying back, her blond crest bobbing, her cheeks blazing. She looked like a beautiful and exceedingly vulgar little fury. She came close to Carroll, while the other girl's voice was heard at the door pleading with her to come back.

"I won't come back till I have said my say, so there!" she called back. Then she addressed Carroll very loudly. She was transformed for the time. Hysteria had her in its clutch. She was half-fed, half-clothed, made desperate by repeated failures. There was also a love affair in the background. She was, in reality, not so very far removed from the carbolic-acid crisis. "I say," said she. "I say, you! You'd better look out! You'd better pony up pretty quickly or you'll get into trouble you don't count on. There was a man at the office that morning after you quit, and if he should happen to walk in here and see you, you'd have a policeman after you. You'd better look out!"

Carroll felt his face flush hot. For the first time in his life he was conscious of being actually down. He realized the sensation of the under dog, and he realized his utter helplessness, his utter lack of defence against this small, pretty girl who was attacking him.

Everybody in the place seemed listening. Some of the people at the farther tables came nearer, other's were craning their necks. The girl gave her head an indescribable toss, at once vicious, coquettish, and triumphant. Her blond crest tossed, the scoop of her red hat rocked.

"I thought I'd just tell you," said she. Then she marched, holding her skirts tightly around her, with a disclosure of embroidered ruffles and the contour of pretty hips, and there was a shout of laughter in the place. Carroll pushed away his bowl of soup and turned to a grinning waiter near him.

"My check," he said.

"I ain't your waiter," replied the man, insolently.

"Bring me my check for this soup and coffee," repeated Carroll, and the man started. There was something in his look and tone that commanded respect even in this absurdity. In reality, for the time, he was almost a madman. His fixed idea rea.s.serted itself. At that moment, if it had been possible that his enemy, the man who had precipitated all this upon him, could have entered the room, there would have been murder done, and again for the moment his mind overlapped on the wrong side of life, and the desire for death was upon him. There was that in his face which hushed the laughter.

"They had better not hound that man much farther," one man at the table on the right whispered to his companion, who nodded, with sharp eyes on Carroll's face. They were both newspaper-men.

When Carroll had paid his bill and pa.s.sed out, one of the men, young and clean-shaven, pressed close to his side.

"Pardon me, sir," he said, "but if you would allow me to express my regrets and sympathy--"

"No regrets nor sympathy are required, thank you, sir," replied Carroll.

"If I could be of any a.s.sistance," persisted the man, who was short in his weekly column and not easily daunted.

"No a.s.sistance is required, thank you, sir," replied Carroll.

The man retreated, and rejoined his companion at the table.

"Get anything out of him?" asked the other.

"No, but I can make something out of him, I guess."

"Poor devil!" said the other man.

"It might have paid to shadow him," said the first man, thoughtfully.

"I shouldn't wonder if he took a bee-line for a drug-store. He looked desperate."

"Or perhaps the park. He looks like the sort that might have a pistol around somewhere."

This man actually, after a second's reflection, left his luncheon and hastened after Carroll, but he did not find him. Carroll had recovered himself and had taken the Elevated up-town to answer another advertis.e.m.e.nt. That was one for a book-keeper, and there was also unsuccessful. Coming out, he stood on the corner, looking at his list. He had written down nearly every want in the advertising columns. Actually he had even thought of trying for a position as coachman. He certainly could drive and could care for horses, and he considered quite impartially that he might make a good appearance in a livery on a fas.h.i.+onable turn-out. He had left now on his list only two which he had not tried; one was for a superintendent to care for a certain public building, a small museum. He had really a somewhat better chance there, apparently, for he had at one time known one of the trustees quite well. For that very reason he had put it off until the last, for he dreaded meeting an old acquaintance, and, too, there was a chance, though not a very good one, that the acquaintance might work harm instead of advantage. Still, the trustee had been in Europe for several years past, and the chances were that he would know nothing derogatory to Carroll which would interfere with his obtaining the position.

He reached the building, took the elevator to the floor on which was situated the offices, and, curiously enough, the first person he saw, on emerging from the elevator, was the man whom he knew, waiting to ascend. The man, whose name was Fowler, recognized him at once, and greeted him, but with constraint. Carroll immediately understood that in some unforeseen way the news which travels in circles in this small world had reached the other. He saw that he knew of his record during the last years.

"I have not seen you for a number of years, Mr. Carroll," said Fowler.

"No," replied Carroll, trying to speak coolly, "but that is easily accounted for; you have been abroad most of the time, living in London, have you not?"

"Yes, for seven years," replied the other, "but now I am home in my native land to end my days." Fowler was quite an elderly man, and remarkably distinguished in appearance, clean-featured and white-haired--indeed, he had cut quite a considerable figure in certain circles on the other side. He was even taller than Carroll, and portly in spite of the sharpness of his features.

"You are glad to be back in America?" Carroll said; he was almost forgetting, for the moment, the object of his visit to the place. He had years ago been on terms of social intimacy with this man.

"If I were not I would not say so," replied Fowler, with a diplomatic smile. "I do not disparage my country nor give another the preference in my speech, until I deliberately take out naturalization papers elsewhere."

Carroll smiled.

"By-the-way," said Fowler, whose handsome face had hard lines which appeared from time to time from beneath his polished surface-urbanity, "I have not seen you for perhaps ten years, Mr.

Carroll, but I heard from you in an out-of-the-way place--that is, if anything is out of the way in these days. It was in a little Arab village in Egypt. I was going down the Nile with a party, and something went wrong with the boat and we had to stop for repairs; and there I found--quartered in a most amazing studio which he had rigged up for himself out of a native hut and hung with things which looked to me like nightmares, and making studies of the native Egyptians--and I must say he seemed to be doing some fine work at last--Evan Dodge."