Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

“ She knew just what to do for a man in a moment of weakness. She towered, by virtue of the maternal instinct within her, high above her father in spiritual strength.
“Papa, come into the house,” said she, and her voice seemed no longer Charlotte's, but echoed from the man's far-off childhood. “Come into the house, papa,” she said; “come.” And Carroll followed her into the house, like a child, his hands clasped firmly and commandingly by the little, soft one of his daughter.
Charlotte led her father into the dining-room, which was warm and light. ”

“ In the road, in the full glare of the sun, were a few dark, damp places. The sky was very clear, with a brisk wind from the northwest. It was at Carroll's back and urged him along. He walked quite rapidly. He had a curious singleness of purpose, as unreasoning and unreflective as an animal in search of food. He was going to Port Willis for chloroform to satisfy a hunger keener than any animal's, to satisfy the keenest hunger of which man, body and soul together, is capable, a hunger keener than that of love or revenge, the hunger for the open beyond the suffocating fastnesses of life. ”

“ Everybody is up and wide awake and doing. The earth and the habitations thereof are rubbed, cleaned, and swept, or skylarked over; the boy plays with his marbles on the sidewalk or whoops over the fields; the housewives fling wide open their house windows, and the dust of the winter flies out like smoke; the tradesmen set out their new wares to public view, the bees make honey, the birds repeat their world-old nesting songs, the cocks crow straight through the day; nothing stops till the sun sets, and even then it is hard for such an ardent clock of life to quite run down. ”

“ Anderson could see Samson Rawdy on the white-ribboned wedding-coach, sitting in majesty. He was paid well in advance; his wife, complacent and beaming in her new silk waist, was in the church. The contemplation of the new marriage had brought a wave of analogous happiness and fresh love for her over his soul. He was as happy with his own measure of happiness as any one there. Every happiness as well as every sorrow is a source of centrifugal attraction. ”

“ When Carroll reached home his wife came running down the stairs in a long, white tea-gown, and flung her arms around his neck. “Oh, Arthur!” she sobbed out. “What do you think has happened? What do you think?”
Carroll raised his wife's lovely face, all flushed and panting with grief and terror like a child's, and kissed it softly. “Nothing, Amy; nothing, dear,” he said. “Don't, my darling. You will make yourself ill. Nothing has happened.”
His sister Anna's voice, clear and strained, came from the top of the stairs. ”

“ A great onslaught of the splendid wind filled the room, and everything waved and sprang as if gaining life. Then suddenly, without the slightest warning, came a shower of the confection known as molasses-peppermints through the door of the office. They are a small, hard candy, and being thrown with vicious emphasis, they rattled upon the bare floor like bullets. One even hit Anderson stingingly upon the cheek. He sprang to his feet and looked out. Nothing was to be seen except the young clerk, standing, gaping and half frightened, yet with a lurking grin. Anderson regarded him with amazement. ”

“ But Eddy had then to deal with his sister. She towered over him, pinker than her pink muslin. The ruffles seemed agitated all over her slender, girlish figure, like the plumage of an angry bird. She caught her small brother by the shoulders, and shook him violently, until the dark hair which he wore rather long waved and his whole head wagged.
“Eddy Carroll,” she cried, “aren't you ashamed of yourself? Oh, aren't you ashamed of yourself? Begging, yes, begging for candy! If you want candy, you will buy it. You will not beg it nor take it without permission. ”

“ To his mind, a coachman—that is, a City coachman—wears always more or less of a mask of stiff attention to duty. He could hide behind this mask. In reality, Carroll was almost at the end of his strength. His pride had suddenly become a forgotten thing. He was wretchedly worn out, and, in fact, he was hungry, almost famished. He had eaten very little lately, and poor Charlotte, in truth, knew little about cookery. He, in reality, became for the time what in once sense he was impersonating. He became a coachman in dire need of a job. ”

“ Carroll replied, still with that odd patience. It seemed to him as if he was getting a sort of fellow-feeling and intense personal knowledge of his fellow-beings, which united him to them with ties stronger than those of love. He felt as if he more than loved this rebellious wretch beside him, as if he were one with him, only possessed of that patience which gave him a certain power to aid him. “I suppose men have the right to employ whom they choose,” said Carroll. “If they prefer young men who don't know how to do the work, to old men who do, I suppose they have a right to engage them. ”

“ After dinner Carroll lay down on the divan in the den and Charlotte covered him up, and after a while he fell asleep; but even asleep, when she stole in to look at him, there was the same strange expression on his face. It was the face of a man whose mind is set irrevocably to an end. A martyr going to the stake might have had that same look, or even a criminal who was going to his doom with a sense of its being his just deserts, and with the bravery that befitted a man.
That evening Anderson came to call, and Carroll answered the door-bell. ”

“ Arthur Carroll at first looked merely bewildered. “Aren't the ladies at home?” said he. “Have you seen the ladies?” He glanced at Mrs. Van Dorn's deflowered bonnet, and extended the bunch of violets. “Yours, I think,” he said. Mrs. Van Dorn took them with an idiotic expression, and he asked again if they had seen the ladies.
The spectacle of two elderly, well-dressed females of Banbridge quaking before him in this wise, and of their sudden appearance in his house, was a mystery too great to be grasped at once even by a clever man, and he was certainly a clever man. ”

“ Everything was dark up-stairs, and silent. Mrs. Anderson always fell asleep like a baby immediately upon going to bed.
Anderson got his hat from the hall-tree, and went out, closing the door with its spring-lock very cautiously. Then he slipped around the house and listened. He could hear a soft, cooing murmur of voices from the back stoop. The servant, as usual, was keeping tryst there with her lover. He walked a little farther and came upon their consolidated shadow of love under the wild-cucumber vine which wreathed over the trellis-hood of the door. ”

“ He did not ask for pity, or even sympathy, in his downfall, but he did ask for recognition of it as a common accident that might befall mankind, and a consequent passing by with at least the toleration of indifference from those not actively concerned in it; but in this man's face had been something like exultation, even gloating, Carroll thought to himself, as he went down the street, in the childish way that Eddy might have done, with a sort of wonder, reflecting that he never in his life, that he could remember, had done Fowler, even indirectly, a bad turn. ”

“ Sometimes commercial travellers infringed upon Anderson's home hours, and she was always covertly indignant. She was constantly in a state of armed humility with regard to the details of business. She felt the incongruity of herself, the elderly gentlewoman in the soft, rich, black silk, with the scarf of real lace fastened with a brooch of real pearls at the throat, with the cap of real lace, with the knots of lavender ribbon, on her fluff of white curls, remaining in the room while the discussion as to the rates of tea and coffee or sugar or soap went on. ”

“ Frankly, Anna, you know how I shall feel about parting with you all, but it will be a load off my mind. If a man is not able to care for his own, it is better for him and for them that they should go where they will be cared for.”
“You need not speak in that way, Arthur. You have done all you could. All this would never have been if it had not been for us, and your wanting us to have everything. We have been a helpless lot. None of us have ever blamed you or complained, not even Amy, baby as she is.” ”

“ In speech, as is the way with an American, they held nothing sacred, not even the institutions which they propped, not even themselves. They might remain unquestioningly, even preferredly, outside the doors of superiority, but out there they raised a clamor of self-assertion. Their tongues wagged with prodigious activity utterly unleashed. In the days before Ina Carroll's wedding all Banbridge seethed and boiled like a pot with gossip, and gossip full of malice and sneer, and a good deal of righteous indignation. Anderson heard much of it. Neither he nor his mother was asked to the wedding. ”

“ It is through the face of another human being that one gets the furthest reach of human vision, and that furthest reach had now come for the first time to Randolph Anderson. All at once a quiver ran through his entire consciousness from this elongated vision, and he realized sight to its uttermost. Yet it did not dawn on him that he was in love with this girl. He would have laughed at the idea. He had seen her only twice; he had spoken to her only once. He knew nothing of her except that she had given him a worthless check to cash. ”

“ Don't!”
“Papa!”
“Oh, some business detained him in the City.”
“What has happened to papa?” demanded Charlotte, in a shrill voice, and it was again as if she were unconsciously accusing Anderson. When a heart becomes confident of love, it is filled with wonder at any evil mischance permitted, and accuses love, even the love of God. “What has happened to papa? Where is he?” she demanded again. And it was then that Mrs. Anderson, unseen by either of them, stood in the doorway with an enormous purple-flowered wrapper surging over her nightgown. ”

“ Even the strange, emotional unrest and effervescence, which had been more or less over him since he had seen Charlotte Carroll, was in abeyance. After all, he was not a passionate man, and he was not very young. The young girl seemed to become merely a part of the gracious harmony which was lulling his soul and his senses to content and peace. He was conscious of wondering what a man could want more than he had, as if he had suspected himself of guilt in that direction. ”

“ Anderson was a picture of a Sunday, in a rich lavender silk and a magnificent though old-fashioned lace shawl which floated from her shoulder in a fairy net-work of black roses. She would never wear plain black like most women of her age. She was one of the blue-eyed women who looks well in lavender. Her blue eyes, now looking at her son from under the rich purples and lavenders of the velvet pansies on her bonnet, got an indeterminate color like myrtle blossoms. A deeper pink also showed on her cheeks because of the color of her gown. ”

“ Anderson lit another cigar. The night seemed to grow more and more oppressive. When a breath of wind came, it was like a hot breath of some fierce sentiency. A disagreeable odor from something was also borne upon it. The odors of the flowers seemed in abeyance. The play of blue-and-rosy light along the northwest horizon continued. Anderson got a certain pleasure from watching it. Nature's spectacularity diverted him, as if he had been a child, from his own affairs, which seemed to give him a dull pain. ”

“ It became rather too warm, and on Carroll making a motion to move his chair into the shade, every other man moved into the sunshine, and sat sweltering and smoking in a fatuous vainglory. The canary bird hopped faster and faster. The gold-fishes swam with a larger school of bright reflections. A bumblebee flew in the open window and buzzed dangerously near the hero's head. Willy Eddy rose and, ostentatiously, at his own risk, drove the intruder away, and was gratefully thanked. Truly hero-worship, while it is often foolish and fool-making, is not the worst sentiment of mankind. ”

“ There is, to a human being of Charlotte Carroll's type, something unutterably terrifying about entering, especially at nightfall, an entirely empty house. The worst of it is it does not seem to be empty. In reality, the emptiness of it is the last thing which is comprehended. It is full to overflowing with terrors, with spiritual entities which are much more palpable, when one is in a certain mood, than actual physical presences. ”

“ Anderson wondered what that pretty, ignorant little girl in there was, to dare to tamper with this ancient force of the earth? Would it not crush her? If the man loved her would he not, after all, have simply tried to see to it that the fair little butterfly of a thing had always her flowers to hang over: the little sweets of existence, the hats and frocks and ribbons which she loved, and then have gone away and left her? ”