Читать книгу The Debtor - Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman - Страница 13

Little Eddy Carroll, running on his slim legs like a hound, raced down the homeward road, and came in sight of his father's carriage just before it turned the corner. Carroll had stopped once on the way, and so the boy overtook him. When Carroll stopped to make an inquiry, he caught a glimpse of the small, flying figure in the rear; in fact, the man to whom he spoke pointed this out.

“Why, there's your boy, now, Cap'n Carroll,” he said, “runnin' as fast after you as you be after him.” The man was an old fellow of a facetious turn of mind who had done some work on Carroll's garden.

Carroll, after that one rapid, comprehensive glance, said not another word. He nodded curtly and sprang into the carriage; but the old man, pressing close to the wheel, so that it could not move without throwing him, said something in a half-whisper, as if he were ashamed of it.

“Certainly, certainly, very soon,” replied Carroll, with some impatience.

“I need it pooty bad,” the old man said, abashedly.

“Very soon, I tell you,” repeated Carroll. “I cannot stop now.”

The old man fell back, with a pull at his ancient cap. He trembled a little nervously, his face was flushed, but he glanced back with a grin at Eddy racing to catch up.

“Drive on, Martin,” Carroll said to the coachman.

The old gardener waited until Eddy came alongside, then he called out to him. “Hi!” he said, “better hurry up. Guess your pa is goin' to have a reckonin' with ye.”

“You shut up!” cried the boy, breathlessly, racing past. When finally he reached the carriage, he promptly caught hold of the rear, doubled up his legs, and hung on until it rolled into the grounds of the Carroll place and drew up in the semicircle opposite the front-door. Then he dropped lightly to the ground and ran around to the front of the carriage as his father got out. Eddy without a word stood before his father, who towered over him grandly, confronting him with a really majestic reproach, not untinctured with love. The man's handsome face was quite pale; he did not look so angry as severe and unhappy, but the boy knew well enough what the expression boded. He had seen it before. He looked back at his father, and his small, pink-and-white face never quivered, and his black eyes never fell.

“Well?” said Carroll.

“Where have you been?” asked Carroll.

The anxious faces of the boy's mother and his aunt became visible at a front window, a flutter of white skirts appeared at the entrance of the grounds. The girls were returning from their search.

“Answer me,” commanded Carroll.

“Teacher sent me on an errand,” he replied then, with a kind of doggedness.

“The truth,” said Carroll.

“I went out catching butterflies, after I had dined with Mr. Anderson and his mother.”

“You dined with Mr. Anderson and his mother?”

“Yes, sir. You needn't think he was to blame. He wasn't. I made him ask me.”

“I understand. Then you did not go to school this afternoon, but out in the field?”

“Yes, sir.”

Carroll eyed sharply the boy's right-hand pocket, which bulged enormously. The girls had by this time come up and stood behind Eddy, holding to each other, their pretty faces pale and concerned.

“What is that in your pocket?” asked Carroll.

“Marbles.”

“Let me see the marbles.”

“It ain't marbles, it's candy.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Mr. Anderson gave it to me.”

Carroll continued to look his son squarely in the eyes.

“I stole it when they wasn't looking,” said the boy; “there was a glass jar—”

“Go into the house and up to your own room,” said Carroll.

The boy turned as squarely about-face as a soldier at the word of command, and marched before his father into the house. The four women, the two at the window, the two on the lawn, watched them go without a word. Ina, the elder of the two girls, put her handkerchief to her eyes and began to cry softly. Charlotte put her arm around her and drew her towards the door.

“Don't, Ina,” she whispered, “don't, darling.”

“Papa will whip him very hard,” sobbed Ina. “It seems to me I cannot bear it, he is such a little boy.”

“Papa ought to whip him,” said Charlotte, quite firmly, although she herself was winking back the tears.

“He will whip him so hard,” sobbed Ina. “I quite gave up when papa found the candy. Stealing is what he never will forgive him for, you know.”

“Yes, I know. Don't let poor Amy see you cry, Ina.”

“Wait a minute before we go in. You remember that the time papa whipped me, the only time he ever did, when—”

“Yes, I remember. You never did again, honey.”

“Yes, it cured me, but I fear it will not cure Eddy. A boy is different.”

“Stop crying, Ina dear, before we go in.”

“Yes—I—will. Are my eyes very red?”

“No; Amy will not notice it if you keep your eyes turned away.”

But Mrs. Carroll turned sharply upon Ina the moment she saw her. The two elder ladies had left the parlor and retreated to a small apartment on the right of the hall, called the den, and fitted up with some Eastern hangings and a divan. Upon this divan Anna Carroll had thrown herself, and lay quite still upon her back, her slender length extended, staring out of the window directly opposite at the spread of a great oak just lately putting forth its leaves. Mrs. Carroll was standing beside her, and she looked at the two girls entering with a hard expression in her usually soft eyes.

“Why have you been crying?” she asked, directly, of Ina. Her hair was in disorder, as if she had thrust her fingers through it. It was pushed far off from her temples, making her look much older. Red spots blazed on her cheeks, her mouth widened in a curious, tense smile. “Why have you been crying?” she demanded again when Ina did not reply at once to her question.

“Because papa is going to whip Eddy,” Ina said then, with directness, “and I know he will whip him very hard, because he has been stealing.”

“Well, what is that to cry about?” asked Mrs. Carroll, ruffling with indignation. “Don't you think the boy's father knows what is best for his own son? He won't hurt him any more than he ought to be hurt.”

“I only hope he will hurt himself as much as he ought to be hurt,” muttered Anna Carroll on the divan. Mrs. Carroll gave her sister-in-law one look, then swept out of the room. The tail of her rose-colored silk curled around the door-sill, and she was gone. She passed through the hall, and out of the front-door to the lawn, whence she strolled around the house, keeping on the side farthest from the room occupied by her son.

“Hark!” whispered Ina, a moment after her mother had gone.

They all listened, and a swishing sound was distinctly audible. It was the sound of regular, carefully measured blows.

“Amy went out so she should not hear,” whispered Ina. “Oh, Dear!”

“It is harder for her than for anybody else because she has to uphold Arthur for doing what she knows is wrong,” said Anna Carroll on the divan. She spoke as if to herself, pressing her hands to her ears.

“Papa is doing just right,” cried Charlotte, indignantly. “How dare you speak so about papa, Anna?”

“There is no use in speaking at all,” said Anna, wearily. “There never was. I am tired of this life and everything connected with it.”

Ina was weeping again convulsively. She also had put her hands to her ears, and her piteous little wet, quivering face was revealed.

“There is no need of either of you stopping up your ears,” said Charlotte. “You won't hear anything except the—blows. Eddy never makes a whimper. You know that.”

She spoke with a certain pride. She felt in her heart that a whimper from her little brother would be more than she herself could bear, and would also be more culpable than the offence for which he was being chastised. She said that her brother never whimpered, and yet she listened with a little fear that he might. But she need have had no apprehension. Up in his bedroom, standing before his father in his little thin linen blouse, for he had pulled off his jacket without being told, directly when he had first entered the room, the little boy endured the storm of blows, not only without a whimper, but without a quiver.

Eddy stood quite erect. His pretty face was white, his little hands hanging at his sides were clinched tightly, but he made not one sound or motion which betrayed pain or fear. He was counting the blows as they fell. He knew how many to expect. There were so many for running away and playing truant, and so many for lying, more for stealing, so many for all three. This time it was all three. Eddy counted while his father laid on the blows as regularly as a machine. When at last he stopped, Eddy did not move. He spoke without moving his head.

“There are two more, papa,” he said. “You have stopped too soon.”

Carroll's face contracted, but he gave the two additional blows. “Now undress yourself and go to bed,” he told the boy, in an even tone. “I will have some bread and milk sent up for your supper. To-morrow morning you will take that candy back to the store, and tell the man you stole it, and ask his pardon.”

“Yes, sir,” said Eddy. He at once began unfastening his little blouse preparatory to retiring.

Carroll went out of the room and closed the door behind him. His sister met him at the head of the stairs and accosted him in a sort of fury.

“Arthur Carroll,” said she, tersely, “I wish you would tell me one thing. Did you whip that child for his faults or your own?”

Carroll looked at her. He was very pale, and his face seemed to have lengthened out and aged. “For both, Anna,” he replied.

“What right have you to punish him for your faults, I should like to know?”

“The right of the man who gave them to him.”

“You have the right to punish him for your faults—your faults?”

“I could kill him for my faults, if necessary.”

“Who is going to punish you for your faults? Tell me that, Arthur Carroll.”

“The Lord Almighty in His own good time,” replied Carroll, and passed her and went down-stairs.