The Debtor.

by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.

Chapter I

Banbridge lies near enough to the great City to perceive after nightfall, along the southern horizon, the amalgamated glow of its mult.i.tudinous eyes of electric fire. In the daytime the smoke of its mighty breathing, in its race of progress and civilization, darkens the southern sky. The trains of great railroad systems speed between Banbridge and the City. Half the male population of Banbridge and a goodly proportion of the female have for years wrestled for their daily bread in the City, which the little village has long echoed, more or less feebly, though still quite accurately, with its own particular little suburban note.

Banbridge had its own "season," beginning shortly after Thanksgiving, and warming gradually until about two weeks before Lent, when it reached its high-water mark. All winter long there were luncheons and teas and dances. There was a whist club, and a flourishing woman's club, of course. It was the women who were thrown with the most entirety upon the provincial resources. But they were a resolved set, and they kept up the gait of progress of their s.e.x with a good deal of success. They improved their minds and their bodies, having even a physical-culture club and a teacher coming weekly from the City. That there were links and a golf club goes without saying.

It was spring, and golf had recommenced for some little time. Mrs.

Henry Lee and Mrs. William Van Dorn pa.s.sed the links that afternoon.

The two ladies were being driven about Banbridge by Samson Rawdy, the best liveryman in Banbridge, in his best coach, with his two best horses. The horses, indeed, two fat bays, were considered as rather sacred to fashionable calls, as was the coach, quite a resplendent affair, with very few worn places in the cloth lining.

Banbridge ladies never walked to make fashionable calls. They had a coach even for calls within a radius of a quarter of a mile, where they could easily have walked, and did walk on any other occasion. It would have shocked the whole village if a Banbridge woman had gone out in her best array, with her card-case, making calls on foot.

Therefore, in this respect the ladies who were better off in this world's goods often displayed a friendly regard for those who could ill afford the necessary expense of state calls. Often one would invite another to call with her, defraying all the expenses of the trip, and Mrs. Van Dorn had so invited Mrs. Lee to-day. Mrs. Lee, who was a small, elderly woman, was full of deprecating grat.i.tude and a sense of obligation which made it appear inc.u.mbent upon her not to differ with her companion in any opinion which she might advance, and, as a rule, to give her the initiative in conversation during their calls, and the precedence in entry and retreat.

Mrs. Van Dorn was as small as her companion, but with a confidence of manner which seemed to push her forward in the field of vision farther than her size warranted.

She was also highly corseted, and much trimmed over her shoulders, which gave an effect of superior size and weight; her face, too, was very full and rosy, while the other's was narrow and pinched at the chin and delicately transparent.

Mrs. Van Dorn sat quite erect on the very edge of the seat, and so did Mrs. Lee. Each held her card-case in her two hands encased in nicely cleaned, white kid gloves. Each wore her best gown and her best bonnet. The coach was full of black velvet streamers, and lace frills and silken lights over precise knees, and the nodding of flowers and feathers.

There was, moreover, in the carriage a strong odor of Russian violet, which diffused itself around both the ladies. Russian violet was the calling perfume in vogue in Banbridge. It nearly overcame the more legitimate fragrance of the spring day which floated in through the open windows of the coach.

It was a wonderful day in May. The cherry-trees were in full bloom, and tremulous with the winged jostling of bees, and the ladies inhaled the sweetness intermingled with their own Russian violet in a bouquet of fragrance. It was warm, but there was the life of youth in the air; one felt the bound of the pulse of the spring, not its la.s.situde of pa.s.sive yielding to the forces of growth.

The yards of the village homes, or the grounds, as they were commonly designated, were gay with the earlier flowering shrubs, almond and bridal wreath and j.a.panese quince. The deep scarlet of the quince-bushes was evident a long distance ahead, like floral torches.

Constantly tiny wings flashed in and out the field of vision with insistences of sweet flutings. The day was at once redolent and vociferous.

"It is a beautiful day," said Mrs. Van Dorn.

"Yes, it is beautiful," echoed Mrs. Lee, with fervor.

Her faded blue eyes, under the net-work of ingratiating wrinkles, looked aside, from self-consciousness, out of the coach window at a velvet lawn with a cherry-tree and a dark fir side by side, and a j.a.panese quince in the foreground.

After pa.s.sing the house, both ladies began pluming themselves, carefully rubbing on their white gloves and asking each other if their bonnets were on straight.

"Your bonnet is so pretty," said Mrs. Lee, admiringly.

"It's a bonnet I have had two years, with a little bunch of violets and new strings," said Mrs. Van Dorn, with conscious virtue.

"It looks as if it had just come out of the store," said Mrs. Lee.

She was vainly conscious of her own headgear, which was quite new that spring, and distinctly prettier than the other woman's. She hoped that Mrs. Van Dorn would remark upon its beauty, but she did not. Mrs. Van Dorn was a good woman, but she had her limitations when it came to admiring in another something that she had not herself.

Mrs. Lee's superior bonnet had been a jarring note for her all the way. She felt in her inmost soul, though she would have been loath to admit the fact to herself, that a woman whom she had invited to make calls with her at her expense had really no right to wear a finer bonnet--that it was, to say the least, indelicate and tactless.

Therefore she remarked, rather dryly, upon the beauty of a new pansy-bed beside the drive into which they now turned. The bed looked like a bit of fairy carpet in royal purples and gold.

"I call that beautiful," said Mrs. Van Dorn, with a slight emphasis on the that, as if bonnets were nothing; and Mrs. Lee appreciated her meaning.

"Yes, it is lovely," she said, meekly, as they rolled past and quite up to the front-door of the house upon whose mistress they were about to call.

"I wonder if Mrs. Morris is at home," said Mrs. Van Dorn, as she got a card from her case.

"I think it is doubtful, it is such a lovely day," said Mrs. Lee, also taking out a card.

Samson Rawdy threw open the coach door with a flourish and a.s.sisted the ladies to alight. He had a sensation of distinct reverence as the odor of Russian violet came into his nostrils.

"When them ladies go out makin' fashionable calls they have the best perfumery I ever seen," he was fond of remarking to his wife.

Sometimes he insisted upon her going out to the stable and sniffing in the coach by way of evidence, and she would sniff admiringly and unenviously. She knew her place. The social status of every one in Banbridge was defined quite clearly. Those who were in society wore their honors easily and unquestioned, and those who were not went their uncomplaining ways in their own humble spheres.

Mrs. Van Dorn and Mrs. Henry Lee, gathering up their silken raiment genteelly, holding their visiting-cards daintily, went up the front-door steps, and Mrs. Lee, taking that duty upon herself, since she was Mrs. Van Dorn's guest, pulled the door-bell, having first folded her handkerchief around her white glove.

"It takes so little to soil white gloves," said she, "and I think it is considerable trouble to send them in and out to be cleaned."

"I clean mine with gasolene myself," said Mrs. Van Dorn, with the superiority of a woman who has no need for such economies, yet practises them, over a woman who has need but does not.

"I never had much luck cleaning them myself," said Mrs. Lee, apologetically.

"It is a knack," admitted Mrs. Van Dorn. Then they waited in silence, listening for an approaching footstep.

"If she isn't at home," whispered Mrs. Van Dorn, "We can make another call before the two hours are up." Mr. Rawdy was hired by the hour.

"Yes, we can," a.s.sented Mrs. Lee.

Then they waited, and neither spoke. Mrs. Lee had occasion to sneeze, but she pinched her nose energetically and repressed it.

Suddenly both straightened themselves and held their cards in readiness.

"How does my bonnet look?" whispered Mrs. Lee.

Mrs. Van Dorn paid no attention, for then the door was opened and Mrs. Morris's maid appeared, with cap awry and her white ap.r.o.n over a blue-checked gingham which was plainly in evidence at the sides.

The ladies gave her their cards, and followed her into the best parlor, which was commonly designated in Banbridge as the reception-room. The best parlor was furnished with a sort of luxurious severity. There were a few pieces of staid old furniture of a much earlier period than the others, but they were rather in the background in the gloomy corners, and the new pieces were thrust firmly forward into greater evidence.

Mrs. Van Dorn sat down on the corner of a fine velvet divan, and Mrs.

Lee near her on the edge of a gold chair. Then they waited, while the maid retired with their cards. "It's a pretty room, isn't it?"

whispered Mrs. Lee, looking about.

"Beautiful."

"She kept a few pieces of the old furniture that she had in her old house when this new one was built, didn't she?"

"Yes. I suppose she didn't feel as if she could buy all new."

The ladies studied all the furnishings of the room, keeping their faces in readiness to a.s.sume their calling expression at an instant's notice when the hostess should appear.