Part 33 (1/2)
”I don't believe, if Anderson trusts him, but he knows what he is about,” said the druggist. ”I guess he knows he's goin' to get his pay.”
”Mebbe some of those fine securities of his will come up sometime,”
Amidon said. ”I heard they'd been slumpin' lately. Guess there's some Banbridge folks got hit pretty bad, too.”
”Who?” asked Drake, eagerly.
”I heard Lee was in it, for one, and I guess there's others. I must light out of this. It's dinner-time. Where's that arrow-root? My wife's got to make arrow-root gruel for old Mrs. Joy. She's dreadful poorly. Oh, there it is!”
Amidon started, and the postmaster also. In the doorway Amidon paused. ”Suppose you knew Carroll was away?” he said.
”No,” said Drake.
”Yes, he's been gone a week; ain't coming home till the day before the wedding. Their girl told ours. We've got a Hungarian, too, you know. Carroll's girl can't get any pay. It's a dam'ed shame.”
”Why don't she leave?”
”Afraid she'll lose it all, if she does. Same way with the coachman.”
”Where's Carroll gone?” asked the postmaster.
”Don't know. The girl said he'd gone to Chicago on business.”
”Guess he'll want to go farther than Chicago on business if he don't look out, before long. I don't see how he's goin' to have the weddin', anyway. I don't believe anybody 'll trust him here, and, unless I miss my guess, he won't find it very easy anywhere else.”
”They say the man the girl's goin' to marry is rich. Maybe he'll foot the bills,” said Drake.
”Mebbe he is,” a.s.sented Amidon. Then he went out in earnest, and the postmaster with him.
”Look at here,” said Amidon, mysteriously, as the two men separated on the next corner. ”I'll tell you something, if you want to know.”
”What?”
”I believe Drake trusts those Carrolls a little.”
Chapter XVIII
There was in Banbridge, at this date, almost universal distrust of Carroll, but very little of it was expressed, for the reason, common to the greater proportion of humanity: the victims in proclaiming their distrust would have proclaimed at the same time their victimization. It was quite safe to a.s.sume that the open detractors of Carroll had not been duped by him; it was also quite safe to a.s.sume that many of those who either remained silent or declared their belief in him had suffered more or less. The latter were those who made it possible for the Carrolls to remain in Banbridge at all.
There were many who had a lingering hope of securing something in the end, who did not wish Carroll to depart, and who were even uneasy at his absence, although the fact of his family remaining and of the wedding preparations for his daughter going on seemed sufficient to allay suspicions. It is generally true that partisans.h.i.+p, even of the few, counts for more than disparagement of the many, with all right-intentioned people who have a reasonable amount of love for their fellow-men. Somehow partisans.h.i.+p, up to a certain limit, beyond which the partisan appears a fool to all who listen to him, seems to give credit to the believer in it. At all events, while the number of Arthur Carroll's detractors was greatly in advance of his adherents, the moral atmosphere of Banbridge, while lowering, was still very far from cyclonic for him. He got little credit, yet still friendly, admiring, and even obsequious recognition.
The invitations to his daughter's wedding had been eagerly accepted.
The speculations as to whether the bills would be paid or not added to the interest. In those days the florist and the dressmaker were quite local celebrities. They looked anxious, yet rather pleasantly self-conscious. The dressmaker bragged by day and lay awake by night.
Every time the florist felt uneasy, he slipped across to the nearest saloon and got a drink of beer. After that, when asked if he did not feel afraid he would lose money through the Carroll wedding, he said something about the general esteem in which people should be held who patronized local industries, in his thick German-English, grinned, and shambled back, his fat hips shaking like a woman's, to his hot-houses, and pottered around his geraniums and decorative palms.
On the Sunday morning before the wedding there were an unusual number of men in the barber-shop--old Eastman, Frank's father, who generally shaved himself, besides Amidon, Drake, the postmaster, Tappan the milkman, and a number of others. Amidon was in the chair, and spoke whenever it did not seem too hazardous. He had just had his hair cut also, as a delicate concession to the barber on the part of a free customer on a busy morning, and his rather large head glistened like a silver ball.
”Reckon Carroll must have gone out West promotin' to raise a little wind for the weddin',” he said.
”I haven't seed him, and I atropined he had not come back yet,”
remarked the barber.