The Debtor. Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
sensitively his own lack of experience. So he had a way of subsiding when customers appeared, and retreating to his office in the rear of the building. He spent most of his time in this office. It was a very pleasant one, overlooking the river, on which steamboats and canal-boats travelled to the city. From Anderson's office the bank of red clay soil sloped to the water's edge. He could see the gleam of the current through the shag of young trees which found root in the unpromising soil. Now and then the tall mast of a sailing-vessel glided by, now the smoke-stack of a steamer. Often the quiet was broken by the panting breath of a tug. Often into his field of vision flapped the wet clothes from the line strung along the deck of a canal-boat. The canal ran along beside the regular current of the river, separated from it by a narrow tow-path. Farther down, the great railroad bridge crossed the stream, and at all hours he could catch the swift glisten of the train-windows as they shot past.
Anderson's office was about twelve by fourteen, and lined with shelves on two sides. On these he had books, not law-books. Those he had relegated to the library at home. He had probably in the depths of his consciousness a sensation of melancholy at the contemplation of those reminders of his balked career. No man, no matter how gracefully he may yield to it, cares to contemplate failures. He had filled these shelves with books of which he was fond, for daily reading. They were most of them old. He had little money with which to purchase new ones. He had been forced to rely upon those which his father and grandfather had accumulated. There were, however, a few recent and quite valuable books which he had acquired since his venture in trade, upon entomology, especially books upon butterflies. Since his retreat from the law he had developed suddenly, perhaps by the force of contrast, or the opposite swing of the pendulum, an overwhelming taste for those airy flowers of animated life. The two walls of the office not occupied with books were hung with framed specimens. He had also under the riverward window a little table equipped with the necessary paraphernalia for mounting them. Many a sunny day in the season he spent in the fields on this gentle hunt. There was a broad sill to the window, and upon it stood a box filled with green plants. When the season was enough advanced and the window always open, the trailing vines rooted in the box hung far down outside, and the women on the passing canal-boats looked up at them. The window-ledge was wide enough, moreover, for an old red cushion upon which slept in the sun when he was not afield for love or war or prey, a great cat striped like a tiger, with fierce green eyes, and a mighty purr of comfort, and a rounding back of affection for Anderson's legs when he talked to him.
Anderson had two comfortable old chairs in his office, and a goodly assortment of pipes, for he was a great smoker. He made tobacco a part of his grocery business, and had a strong sense of comfort in reflecting upon the unlimited supply. He had been forced, in the last days of his law-practice, to stint himself even in this creature comfort. On the whole, he was much happier when fairly established in trade than he had ever been before. He was so absorbed in his business (all the details of which he mastered), in his books, and his butterflies, that he saw very little of the people, and knew very little of what was going on in Banbridge, except through his mother. Mrs. Anderson, in spite of her years, and a certain lack of strength which had always hampered her, was quite prominent in Banbridge society. She was one of the old women whom young girls adore, even when the adoration is not increased by the existence of a marriageable son. Sometimes the old lady would regard an unmarried female-caller with a soft suspicion of ulterior motives, but she never whispered them to her son. Sylvia Anderson had a lovely, fine delicacy where the foibles of her own sex were concerned. She was so essentially feminine herself that she was never quite rid of her maiden sense of alienation even with her son. She would have been much happier with a daughter, although she was very fond of her son.
One afternoon in May, a short time after Mrs. Van Dorn and Mrs. Lee had made their circuit of calls which had included her, some other ladies were making the rounds in the calling-coach, which drew up before her door. There were three ladies, two of them unmarried. They were an elder aunt, her young unmarried niece, and a married lady who had been the girl friend of the aunt. They made a long call, and Mrs. Anderson entertained them with tea in her pink-and-gold china cups, with cream in the little family silver cream-jug, and with slices of pound-cake. It was an old custom of Mrs. Anderson's which she had copied all through her married life from Madam Anderson, Randolph's grandmother, the widow of old Dr. Anderson, the clergyman.
“I always make it a custom, my dear, to keep pound-cake on hand, and have some of the best green tea in the caddy, and then when callers come of an afternoon I can offer them some refreshment,” she had said when her son's wife first came to live with her. So Mrs. Anderson had antedated the modern fashion in Banbridge, but she did not keep a little, ornate tea-table in her parlor. The cake and tea were brought in by the one maid on a tray covered with a polka-dotted damask.
This afternoon the callers had their cake and tea, and lingered long afterwards. Now and then Mrs. Anderson glanced imperceptibly at the window, thinking her son might pass. She regarded the unmarried aunt and the young niece with asides of reflection even while she talked to them. The niece was not pretty, but her bloom of youth under the roses of her spring hat was ravishing. The aunt had never been pretty; and, moreover, her bloom had gone, but she was well dressed, and her thin figure was full of grace. She sat in her chair with delicate erectness, the folds of her gray gown was disposed over her supple length of limb with charming effect. She also had a sort of eager, almost appealing amiability. It was as if she said:
“Yes, I know I am no longer young. I am not fair to see, but indeed I mean well by you. I would do much for you. I even love you. Cannot you love me for that?” and that was softly compelling.
Mrs. Anderson reflected that a man might easily admire either of these women. Her manner, in spite of herself, cooled towards them. She did not think of the third woman, who was married, except to ply her with cake and tea and inquire for her husband and children. The woman, after she had finished her cake and tea, sat sunken in her corsets, under her loosely fitting black silk, and looked stupidly amiable. She rose with a slight sigh of relief when at last the others made a motion to go. She thought of her supper at home, and the children long out of school. It was past supper-time for Banbridge. The sun was quite low. An hour ago a little herd of cows had pelted by in a cloud of dust, with great udders swinging perilously, going home to be milked.
“That Flannigan boy always runs those cows home,” said the aunt, disapprovingly, as she passed the window.
“I have always heard it was bad for the milk,” assented Mrs. Anderson.
Now that her callers were on the move, Mrs. Anderson was exceedingly cordial. She said something further about the quality of the cream obtained from the cows, and the aunt said yes, it was very good, although so dear. The old lady kissed both the aunt and the niece when they at last went out of the door, and said she was so glad that she was at home, and begged them to come again. She stood in the door watching them get into the coach. The young girl's face in the window, with her beflowered hat, a rose crowned with roses, in the dark setting of the window, was beautiful. Even the aunt's face, older and more colorless, except for an unlovely flush of excitement, was pathetically compelling and charmed. Mrs. Anderson, filling up the doorway with her stately bulk, swept around by her soft black draperies, her fair old face rising from a foam of lace, and delicately capped with lace, on which was a knot of palest lavender, stood in a frame of luxuriant Virginia-creeper, and smiled and nodded graciously to her departing guests, while wondering if they would meet her son coming home. After that followed a reflection as to the undesirability of either of them as a possible daughter-in-law.
Just as she was turning to enter the house, after the coach had rolled out of sight, she saw her son coming down the street under the green shade of the maples which bordered it. The mother went toddling on her tiny feet down the steps to the gate to meet her son. The house stood quite close to the road; indeed, only a little bricked-path separated it from the sidewalk. All the ground was at the sides and back. The house was a square old affair with a row of half-windows in the third-story, or attic, and considerable good old panel-work and ornamentation about it. On the right side of the house was a large old flower-garden, now just beginning to assert itself anew; on the left were the stable and some out-buildings, with a grassy oval of lawn in the centre of a sweep of drive; in the rear was a kitchen-garden and a field rising to the railroad, for railroads circled all Banbridge