Anderson, as he went away that night, had before his eyes Charlotte's
little face, the intensity of which had seemed to make it fairly
luminous in the dim light, as she had turned it towards him. There
was in that face at once unreasoning and childish anger that he was
there at all, and in a measure a witness of the distress and disgrace
of herself and her family, and a piteous appeal for help--at once a
forbidding and a beseeching. For Anderson, naturally, the forbidding
seemed most in evidence as an impulse to action. He felt that he must
withdraw immediately and save them all the additional mortification
that he could. So he hurried away down the road, with the girl's face
before his eyes, and the sound of the scolding voice in the house in
his ears. The voice carried far. In spite of the wrath in it, it was
a sweet, almost a singing, voice, high-pitched but sonorous. It was
the voice of little Willy Eddy's German wife, and it came from a pair
of strong lungs in a well-developed chest, and was actuated by a
strong and indignant spirit. Arthur Carroll, listening to her, was
conscious of an absurdly impersonal sentiment of something like
admiration. The young woman was really in a manner superb. The
occasion was trivial, even ignoble. Carroll felt contemptuous both
for her and for himself, and yet she dignified it to a degree. Minna
Eddy was built on a large scale; she was both muscular and stout. Her
short, blue-woollen skirt, increasing with its fulness her firm hips,
disclosed generously her sturdy feet and ankles, which had a certain
beauty of fitness as pedestals of support for her great bulk of
femininity. She had come out just as she had been about her household
tasks, and her cotton blouse, of an incongruous green-figured
pattern, was open at the neck, disclosing a meeting of curves in a
roseate crease, and one sleeve, being badly worn, revealed a pink
boss of elbow. Minna Eddy had a distinctly handsome face, so far as
feature and color went. It was a harmonious combination of curves and
dimples, all overspread with a deep bloom, as of milk and roses, and
her fair hair was magnificent. She had a marvellous growth both for
thickness and length, and it was plaited smoothly, covering the back
of the head as with a mat. She had come out with a blue handkerchief
tied over her head, but she had torn it off, and waved it like a flag
of battle in one fat, muscular hand as she lifted on high her voice
of musical wrath. She spoke good English, although naturally
tinctured by the abuses of the country-side. She had come to America
before she could talk at all, and all her training had been in the
country. The only trace of her German descent was in the sounds of
certain letters, especially _d_ and _v_. She said _t_ for _d_, and
_f_ for _v_. Carroll noticed that as he noticed every detail. His
senses seemed unnaturally acute, as possibly any animal's may be when
at bay, and when the baiting has fairly begun.
A little behind Minna Eddy, and at her right, stood her husband, with
a face of utter discomfiture and terror. Now and then he reached out
a small, twitching hand and made an ineffectual clutch at her elbow
as she talked on. At times he rolled terrified and appealing eyes at
Carroll. He seemed even to be begging for his partisanship, although
the absurdity of that was obvious.
"Oh, you other man," his eyes seemed to say, "see how terrible a
woman can be! What can we do against such might as this?" The room
was quite full of people, but Minna Eddy had the platform.
"You, you, you!" she repeated before every paragraph of invective,
like a prelude and refrain. "You, you, you!" and she fairly hurled
the words at Carroll--"you, you, you! gettin' my man"--with a fierce
backward lunge of her bare right elbow towards her husband, who
shrank away, and a fierce backward roll of a blue eye--"gettin' my
man to take all his money and spend it for no goot. You, you, you!
When I haf need of it for shoes and stockings for the children, when
I go with my dress in rags. You, you, you!" She went on and on, with
a curious variety in the midst of monotony. The stream of her
invective flowed on like a river with ever-new ripples. There was a
species of fascination in it for the man who was the object of it,
and there seemed to be also a compelling quality for the others in
the room. There had been no preconcerted movement among Carroll's
creditors, but a number of them had that evening descended upon him
in a body. In the parlor were the little dressmaker; the druggist;
the butcher; Tappan, the milkman; the two stenographers, and Harrison
Day, the clerk, who had come on the seven-o'clock train from New
York; two men with whom he had dealings in a horse-trade; an old man
who had made the garden the previous spring; and another butcher who
had driven over from New Sanderson. In the dining-room door stood
Marie, the Hungarian maid, and behind her was the coachman. Carroll
stood leaning against the corner of the mantel-piece; some of the
others were defiantly yet deprecatingly seated, some were standing.
Anna Carroll, quite pale, with an odd, fixed expression, stood near
her brother. When Charlotte entered the house, she took up a position
in the hall, leaning against the wall, near the door. She could hear
every word, but she was quite out of sight. She leaned heavily
against the wall, for her limbs trembled under her, and she could
scarcely stand. Her aunt had looked around as she entered, and a
question as to where she had been had shaped itself on her lips: then
her look of inquiry and relief had died away in her expression of
bitter concentration upon the matter in hand. She had been alarmed
about Charlotte, as they had all been. Mrs. Carroll had called softly
down the stairs to know if Charlotte had come, and the girl had
answered, "Yes, Amy dear."
"Where have you been, dear?" asked the soft voice, from an indistinct
mass of floating white at the head of the stairs.
"I'll tell you by-and-by, Amy dear."
"I was alarmed about you," said the voice, "it was so late; about you
and Eddy."
"He has come, too."
"Yes, I heard him." Then the voice added, quite distinctly petulant,
"I have a headache, but it is so noisy I cannot get to sleep." Then
there was a rustle of retreat, and Charlotte leaned against the wall,
listening to the hushed turmoil surmounted by that voice of
accusation in the parlor. Eddy stood full in the doorway, in a
boyish, swaggering attitude, his hands on his hips, and bent
slightly, with sharp eyes of intense enjoyment on Minna Eddy.
Suddenly, Carroll turned and caught sight of him, and as if perforce
the boy's eyes turned to meet his father's. Carroll did not speak,
but he raised his hand and pointed to the hall with an upward motion
for the stairs, and Eddy went, with a faint whimper of remonstrance.
The scolding woman saw the little, retreating figure, and directly
the torrent of her vituperation was turned into a new course.
"You, you, you!" she proclaimed; "dressin' your boy up in fine
clothes, while mine children have went in rags since you have came to
Banbridge! You, you, you! gettin' all my man's money, and dressin' up
your boy in clothes that I haf paid for! You, you, you!"
But Minna Eddy had unwittingly furnished the right key-note for a
whole chorus. Madame Griggs, who had been rocking jerkily in a small,
red-plush chair which squeaked faintly, sprang up, and left it still
rocking and squeaking.
"Yes," said she, "yes, that is so. Look at the way the whole family
dress, at other people's expense!"
She was hysterical still, yet she had not lost her sense of the
gentility of self-restraint. That would come later. Her face worked
convulsively, red spots were on her thin cheeks, but there was still
an ingratiating, somewhat servile, tone in her voice, and she looked
scornfully at Minna Eddy. Then J. Rosenstein, who kept the principal
dry-goods store in Banbridge, bore his testimony. His grievances were
small, but none the less vital. His business dealings with the
Carrolls had been limited to sundry spools of thread and kitchen
towellings and buttons, but they were as lead in his estimate of
wrong, although he had a grave, introspective expression, out of
proportion to the seeming triviality of the matter in his mind. He
held in one long hand a slip of paper, and eyed Carroll with
dignified accusation.
"This is the fifth bill I have made out," he remarked, and he raised
his voice to the pitch of his brethren of the Bowery when they hawk
in the street. "The fifth bill I have made out, and it is only for
one dollar and fifty-three cents, and I am poor."
His intellectual Semitic face took on an ignoble expression of one
who squeezes justice to petty ends for his own deserts. His whine
penetrated the rising chorus of the other voices, even of the
butcher, who was a countryman of his own, and who said something with
dolorous fervor about the bill for meat which had been running for
six weeks, and not a dollar paid. He was of a more common sort, and
rendered a trifle indifferent by a recent visit to a beer-saloon. He
was also somewhat stupefied by an excess of flesh, as to the true
exigencies of life in general. After he had spoken he coughed
wheezily, settled his swelling bulk more comfortably in the
red-velvet chair, and planted his wide-apart, elephantine legs more
firmly on the floor, while he mentally appraised the Oriental rug
beneath his feet, with a view to the possibility of his taking that
in lieu of cash, and making a profitable bargain for its ultimate
disposal with a cousin in trade in New York. Looking up, he caught
Rosenstein's eyes just turning from a regard of the same rug, and the
two men's thoughts met with a mental clash. Then the New Sanderson
butcher, who was a great, handsome, blond man with a foam of yellow
beard, German, but not Jew, strolled silently over to them, and with
sharp eyes on the rug, conferred with the other two in low, eager
whispers. From that time they paid little attention to what was going
on around them. They talked, they gesticulated, they felt of the rug.
Madame Griggs, settling her skirts genteelly, spoke again. "I guess
my bill has been running fully as long as anybody's here," she said,
in her small, shrill voice. She eyed the two stenographers as she
spoke, with jealous suspicion. There was a certain smartness about
their attire, and she suspected them of being City dress-makers. She
also suspected the strange young man with them of being a City
lawyer, whom they had brought with them to urge their claims. Madame
Stella Griggs had a ready imagination. The two stenographers had not
spoken at all. From time to time the prettier wept, softly, in her
lace-edged handkerchief; the other looked pale and nervous. Whenever
she looked at Carroll her mouth quivered. The young man sat still and
winked furiously. He had discovered Carroll's address and informed
the girls, and they had planned this descent upon their employer. Now
they were there, they were frightened and intimidated and distressed.
They were a gentle lot, of the sort that are born to be led. Their
resentment and sense of injustice overwhelmed them with grief, rather
than a desire for retaliation. They were in sore straits for their
money, yet all would have walked again into the snare, and they
regarded Carroll with the same awed admiration as of old. No one but
felt commiseration for him, and trust in his ultimate payment of
their wages. They regarded the other creditors with a sort of mild
contempt. They felt themselves of another kind, especially from the
Germans and Jews. When Willy Eddy's wife had declaimed, one
stenographer had whispered to the other, "How vulgar!" and the other
had responded with a nod and curl of a lip of scorn. They met Madame
Griggs's hostile regard with icy stares. The less pretty girl said to
the young man that she thought it was mean for a dressmaker to come
there and hound folks like that, and he nodded, winking
disapprovingly at poor Madame Griggs, who was just then cherishing
the wild idea of consulting him for herself in his supposed capacity
of a lawyer. The stenographer, turning from her remark to the clerk,
met the laughing but impertinent gaze of one of the horse-trading
men, and she turned her back upon him with an emphasis that provoked
a chuckle from his companion.
"Got it in the shoulder then, Bill," he remarked, quite audibly, and
the other reddened and grinned foolishly. They were rough-looking men
with a certain swagger of smartness. They regarded Carroll with a
swearing emphasis, yet with a measure of reluctantly compelled
admiration.
"I'll be damned if he ain't the first that ever got the better of Jim
Dickerson," one had said to the other, as they had driven up to the
house that evening. "I'll be ---- damned if I see now how he got the
better of me," the other rejoined, with a bewildered expression. As
he spoke his mind revolved in the devious mesh of trap which he had
set for Carroll, and realized the clean cutting of it by Carroll by
the ruthless method of self-interest. Neither man had spoken besides
a defiant response to Carroll's polite "Good-evening," when they had
entered. They sat and watched and listened. Occasionally one raised a
hand, and an enormous diamond glowed with a red light like a ruby. In
the four-in-hand tie of the other a scarf-pin in the shape of a
horse's head with diamond eyes caught the light with infinitesimal
sparks of fire. Above it his clean-shaven, keen, blue-eyed face kept
watch, sharply ready to strike anger as the diamonds struck light,
and yet with a certain amusement. He had shown his teeth in a smile
when Willy Eddy's wife pronounced her tirade. He did so again when
she reopened, having regained her wind. When she spoke this time, she
glared at Anna Carroll with a dazzling look of spite.
"There ain't no red silk dresses for me to rig out in," said she, and
she pointed straight at Anna's silken skirts. "No, there ain't, and
there won't be, so long as my man's money goes to pay for _hers_."
She said "hers" with a harder emphasis than if she said "yours."
Anna never returned her vicious look, she never moved a muscle of her
handsome face, nor changed color. She continued to stand beside her
brother, with a curious expression of wide partisanship, and of
regard for these people as objects of offence as a whole, rather than
as individuals.
"Folks can pretend to be deaf if they want to," said Minna Eddy, "but
they hear, an' they'll hear more."
"That was fifteen dollars beside the findings, and they amounted to
twelve dollars and sixty-three cents more," said Madame Griggs, and
this time she addressed the young man whom she took to be a lawyer.
She met his nervous winks with a piteous smile of appealing
confidence. She wondered if possibly he might not be willing to
undertake her cause in connection with the other supposed
dressmakers' at a reduced rate. Nobody paid the slightest attention
when she spoke, Anna Carroll least of all.
Suddenly, Henry Lee tiptoed into the room. He came in smiling and
nervous. When he saw the assembled company he started, and gave an
inquiring glance at Carroll, who regarded him in an absent-minded
fashion, as if he hardly comprehended the fact of his entrance. It
was the glance of a man whose mind is too crowded to admit of more.
But Lee went close to him, bowing low to Anna, and extending his hand
with urbanity, flustered, it is true, yet still with urbanity.
"Good-evening, captain," he said, and even then, in sore distress of
mind as he was, he looked about at the company for admiration for
this proof of his intimacy with such a man.
"Good-evening," Carroll said, mechanically, and he shook hands. Anna
Carroll also said "Good-evening," and smiled automatically.
"A fine evening," said Lee, but he got no rejoinder to that. He
looked at the company, and his small, smug, fatuous face, which was
somewhat pale and haggard, frowned with astonishment. Again he looked
for information into Carroll's unanswering face. He looked at an
empty chair near him; then he looked at Carroll and his sister
standing, and did not seat himself. He also leaned against the mantel
on the other corner from Carroll, and endeavored to assume an
unconcerned air, as if it were quite the usual thing for him to drop
into the house and encounter such a nondescript company. He looked
across at the druggist and postmaster, and bowed with flourishing
politeness. He said to Carroll, endeavoring to make his voice so
unobtrusive that it would be unheard by the company, but with the
non-success usual to a nervous and self-conscious man, that he had a
word to say to him later on when he was at liberty, some matter of
business which he wished to talk over with him.
"Very well," Carroll replied. Then Lee followed up his remark, which
had in a measure reassured him.
"Got a cigar handy, captain?" said he. "I came off without one in my
pocket."
Carroll took out his cigar-case and extended it to Lee, who took a
cigar, bit the end off, and scratched a match. Carroll handed the
case mechanically to the postmaster and Drake, who were near. They
refused, and he took one himself, as if he did not realize what he
was doing, and lit it, his calm, impassively smiling face never
changing. He might have been lighting a bomb instead of a cigar, for
all the actual realization of the action which he had. He accepted a
light from Lee, who had lit his first with trembling haste. At the
first puff which he gave, at the first evidence of the fragrant aroma
in the room, one turbulent spirit, which had hitherto remained under
restraint, burst bounds and overwhelmed all besides. Even Minna Eddy,
who was fast warming to a new outburst, even Madame Griggs, who had
both hands pressed to her skinny throat because of a lump of emotion
there, and whose sunken temples were beating to the sight under the
shade of her protuberant frizzes, looked in a hush of wonder and
alarm at this furious champion of his own wrongs. Even the two
butchers and the dry-goods merchant looked away from the glowing
Oriental web upon which they stood. The weeping stenographer sat with
her damp little wad of lace-edged handkerchief in her hand and stared
at him with her reddened eyes; the other held her flaccid purse, and
looked at the speaker. Now and then she nudged violently the friend,
who did not seem to notice it.
Tappan, the milkman, arose to his feet. He had been sitting with a
stiff sprawl in the corner of a small divan. He arose when the
fragrance of that Havana cigar smote his nostrils like the odor of
battle. He was in great boots stained with the red shale, for the
roads outside Banbridge were heavy from a recent rain. He was
collarless, his greasy coat hung loosely over his dingy flannel
shirt. He was unshaven, and his face was at once grim and sardonic,
bitter and raging. It was the face of an impotent revolutionist, who
cursed his impotence, his lack of weapons, his wrong environments for
his fierce spirit. He belonged in a country at war. He had the
misfortune to be in a country at peace. He belonged in a field of
labor wherein weapons and armed men, sown by the need of justice,
sprang from the soil. He was in a bucolic pasture, with no appeal. He
was a striker with nothing save fate against which to strike. He
raged behind prison-bars of circumstance. Now, for once, was an enemy
for his onslaught, although even here he was restricted. He was held
in check by his ignoble need. He feared lest, in smiting with all the
force at his command, the blow recoil upon himself. He feared lest he
lose all where he might lose only part. But when he began to speak
his caution left him. There was real fire in the grim, unshaven man;
the honest fire of resentment against wrong, the spirit of
self-defence against odds. He was big enough to disregard
self-interest in his defence, and he was impressive. He sniffed as a
preliminary to his speech, and there was in that sniff fury, sarcasm,
and malignancy. Then he opened his mouth, and before the words came a
laugh or the travesty of one. There was something menacing in his
laugh. Then he spoke.
"Cigar!" he said. "Have a cigar? Will you have a cigar? Oh yes, a
cigar." His voice was murderously low and soft. He even lisped
slightly. "A cigar," he repeated. "A cigar. Oh, Lord! If men like me
git a hand of chewing-tobacco once a month, they think they are
damned lucky. Cigar, Lord!" Then the soft was out of his voice. He
cut his words short, or rather he seemed to hammer them down into the
consciousness of his auditors. He turned upon the others. "Want to
know how that good-for-nothin' liar an' thief gits them cigars?" he
shouted. "Want to know? Well, I'll tell you. I give 'em to him, an'
you did. How many of you can smoke cigars like them, hey? Smell 'em.
Ten or fifteen cents apiece; mebbe more. We give 'em to him. Yes,
sir, that's jest what we did. He took the money he owed us for milk
and meat and dress-makin' an' other things to buy them cigars. You
got up early an' worked late to pay for 'em; he didn't. I got up at
half-past three o'clock in the mornin'--half-past three in the
winter, when he was asleep in his bed, damn him. The time will come
when he won't sleep more than some other folks. I got up at half-past
three o'clock, and I snatched a mouthful of breakfast, fried cakes
and merlasses, that he'd 'a' turned up his nose at. He had beefsteak
an' eggs at our expense, he did, an' I had a cup of damned weak
coffee, cause I was too honest or too big a fool, whichever you call
it, to buy any coffee I couldn't pay for. He'd 'a' turned up his nose
at sech coffee. An' I went without sugar in it, an' I went without
milk, so's to give it to him, so's he could git cigars. And as for
cream, cream, cream! Lord! Couldn't git enough cream to give him. He
was always yellin' for cream. Cream! My wife an' me would no more of
thought of our puttin' cream in our coffee than we'd thought of
putting in five-dollar gold pieces to sweeten it. No, we saved the
cream for him. My wife don't look so young and fat as his wife. His
wife has been fed on our cream." Tappan looked hard at Anna Carroll,
whom he evidently took for Carroll's wife. He took note of her dress.
"My wife never had a silk gown," said he. "Lord! I guess she didn't!
She had to git up as early as I did, an' wash milk-pans, so we could
give milk to that man, an' he could save money on us to git his wife
a silk gown. Lord! Jest look--"
Then Madame Griggs spoke, her small, deprecatory snarl raised almost
to hysterical pitch. She was catching the infection of this bigger
resentment and sense of outraged justice.
"He didn't save money to git his wife that silk gown with your milk
money," said she, "for I made that gown, an' I got the material, an'
I 'ain't been paid a cent. That was one of the gowns I made when Ina
was married. That silk cost a dollar and a quarter a yard. I could
have got it at ninety-eight cents at a bargain, but that wa'n't good
enough for her. He didn't take your milk money for that. He didn't
take any money to pay anybody for anything he could run in debt for,
I can tell you that. He must have paid somebody that wouldn't wait
an' wouldn't be cheated."
"Must have been dealin' with a trust, then," said one of the
horsemen, with a loud laugh. "Guess he's been cheatin' 'most
everything else."
"And that lady ain't his wife, neither," said Madame Griggs to
Tappan. "That's his sister. I made another gown for his wife, a
lighter shade, an' I 'ain't been paid for that, neither." Suddenly
she burst into a hysterical wail. "Oh, dear!" she sobbed. "Oh, dear!
Here I've worked early an' late. Here I've got up in the mornin'
before light an' worked till most dawn, an' me none too strong, never
was, and always havin' to scratch for myself, a poor, lone woman, an'
here I am in debt, an' they sendin' out for the money; an' I've
worked so hard to build up my business, an' tried to make things
nice, an' please, an' here I've got to fail. Oh, dear!" Suddenly she
made a weak rush across the room, her silk petticoat giving out a
papery rustle, her frizzes vibrating like wire under her hat, crested
with ostrich plumes. She danced up to Carroll and looked at him with
indescribable piteousness of accusation. "Why couldn't you, if you
had to cheat, cheat a man an' not a woman like me?" she demanded, in
her high-pitched tremolo.
Carroll took his cigar from his mouth and looked at her. His face was
quite pale and rigid. Even Tappan stopped, watching the two. Madame
Griggs held up, with almost a sublimity of accusation, her tiny,
nervous, veinous hands. The fingers were long and the knuckles were
slightly enlarged with strenuous pullings of needles and handling of
scissors; the forefinger was calloused. "Look at my hands," said she.
"See how thin they be. I've worked them 'most to the bone for your
folks. I took a lot of pride in havin' your daughter look nice when
she was married. If I was a man an' goin' to steal, I'd steal from
somebody besides a woman with no more strength than I have, all alone
in the world, and that's been knocked hard ever since she can
remember." Then she brought a stiffly starched little handkerchief
from the folds of a small purse, and she wept with a low, querulous
wail like a baby. Standing before Carroll, "Oh, dear! Oh, dear!
Oh--dear!" she wailed.
Carroll laid a hand on her shaking shoulder. It felt to him like a
vibrating bone, so meagre it was. He bent over her and said something
that the others did not hear, but her wild rejoinder gave them the
key. She was fairly desperate; all her obsequiousness had
disappeared. She was burning with her wrongs; she even took a certain
pleasure in letting herself loose. She shook her shoulder free from
his touch. She turned on him, her tearful, convulsed face uncovered,
her frizzes tossing, as bold and unrestrained in her wrath as was
Minna Eddy, who came forward to her side as she spoke.
"You needn't come wheedlin' around me," she cried. "I don't believe a
word of it, not a word. I'll believe it when I see the color of your
cash. You're dreadful soft-spoken, an' so is your wife an' your
sister an' your daughters. Dreadful soft-spoken! Plenty of soft soap
runnin' all over every time you open your mouth. I don't want soft
soap. Soft soap won't buy me bread an' butter, nor pay my debts.
Folks won't take any soft soap from me instead of money. They want
dollars an' cents, an' that's what I want every time, dollars an'
cents, an' not soft soap. Yes, it's dollars an'--cents--and not so-ft
soa-p." Suddenly the dress-maker, borne high on a wave of hysteria,
disclosing the innate coarseness which underlay all her veneer of
harmless gentility and fine manners, raised a loud, shrill laugh,
ending in a multitude of reverberations like a bell. There was about
this unnatural metallic laughter something fairly blood-curdling in
its disclosure of overstrained emotion. She laughed and laughed,
while the room was silent except for that, and every eye was fixed
upon her. Poor, little Estella Griggs, of all that accusing company
of Arthur Carroll's petty creditors, had the floor. She laughed and
laughed. She threw back her head. Her plumed hat was tilted rakishly
one side; her frizzes tossed high above her forehead, revealing the
meagre temples; her skinny throat seemed to elongate above her
ribboned collar; her thin cheeks, folded into a multitude of lines by
her distorting mirth, glowed with a hard red; her eyes gleamed with a
glassy brilliance. Then, suddenly, that long, skinny throat seemed to
swell visibly. She choked and gurgled, then came a wild burst of
sobbing. Hysteria had reached its second stage. It was frightful.
"Good God!" said one of the horsemen, under his breath.
"That's so," said the other. "Let's git out of this."
They elbowed their way out of the room. "See you again," one of them
said, curtly, to Carroll as he passed.
"See you to-morrow about that little affair of ours, an' by G--,
you've got to pony up, you can take your oath on that, an' don't you
forget it," whispered the other in Carroll's ear, with a fierce
emphasis, and yet he half grinned with a masculine sympathy in this
ultra crisis.
"It's gitting too thick," said the other horseman. "See you
to-morrow, and, by G--, you've got to do somethin' or there'll be
trouble."
Carroll nodded. He was ashy white. He had strong nerves, but he was
delicately organized, man though he was, and with unusual
self-control. He felt now a set of sensations verging on those
displayed by the laughing, sobbing woman before him. He was conscious
of an insane desire to join in that laugh, in those sobbing shrieks.
His throat became constricted, his hands became as ice. The tragic
absurdity of the situation filled him at once with a monstrous mirth
and grief. The antitheses of emotion struggled together within him.
He looked at the little, frantic creature before him, and opened his
mouth to speak, but he said nothing. Anna Carroll caught his elbow.
"Come away, Arthur," she whispered.
She was trembling herself, but she had been braced to something of
this kind from being a woman herself, and was not so intimidated.
Carroll strove to speak again. Minna Eddy suddenly joined in her
torrent of vituperation with the dress-maker's. She caught up the
soft-soap idea with a peal of laughter more sustained than that of
Madame Griggs, for she had a better poise of mentality, and her wrath
was untempered with the grief and self-pity of a small, helpless
woman who was fitted by nature for petting rather than for warfare.
"Soft soap!" shouted Minna Eddy, while her small husband vainly
clutched at her petticoats. "Soft soap! Lord! I makes my own soft
soap. I has plenty to clean with. I don't want no soft soap. I want
money." She laughed loud and long, a ringing, mocking peal. Madame
Griggs's loud sobbing united with it. The dissonance of unnatural
mirth and grief was ghastly.
"Good God! Hear them!" whispered Sigsbee Ray to the druggist.
"I'd rather owe fifty men than one woman," the druggist whispered
back.
Lee edged nearer the women and strove to speak. He had a purpose.
Carroll, gazing at the women in a fascinated way, again opened his
mouth in vain, and again Anna dragged backward at his arm.
"For Heaven's sake, Arthur, come out of this," she whispered, and he
yielded for the second. He let himself be impelled to the door, then
suddenly he recovered himself and stepped forward with an accession
of dignity and authority which carried weight even in the face of
hysterical unreason. He raised his hand and spoke, and there was a
hush. Madame Griggs and Minna Eddy remained quiet, like petrified
furies, regarding the man's pale face of assertive will.
"I beg you to be quiet a moment and listen to me," he said. "I can do
nothing for any of you to-night, and, what is more, I will not do
anything to-night. It is impossible for me to deal with you in such
an unexpected fashion as this, in such numbers. I have not gone into
bankruptcy; no meeting of my creditors had been called. I have and
you have no legal representative here. Now I am going, and I advise
you all to do likewise. I beg you to excuse me. I know you all, I
know the amount of my indebtedness to you all, and I promise you all,
if I live, the very last dollar I owe you shall be paid. You must,
however, give me a little time, or nobody will get anything. I will
communicate with you all later on. Nobody shall lose anything, I say.
Now you must excuse me."
"Look at him; he's sick," whispered the pretty stenographer to the
other, whose soft, little sob of response alone broke the hush as
Carroll went out with his sister at his side. Their shadows moved
across the room as they ascended the stairs in the hall. The
creditors, left alone, regarded one another in a hesitating fashion.
The two women, Minna Eddy and Estella Griggs, remained quiet.
Presently the two butchers and the dry-goods merchant, standing about
the Oriental rug, quite a fine Bokhara, resumed their whispered
colloquy regarding it, then they went out. Lee began talking to the
druggist and the postmaster, with Willie Eddy at his elbow listening
eagerly.
"Carroll's sick," said Lee, with a curious effect of partisanship
towards himself, as well as Carroll. "He's sick, and it is too bad.
His nerves are a wreck."
"Well, our nerves are becoming wrecks," the postmaster rejoined,
dryly.
"That's so," said the druggist, with a worried look. "I don't know
but I'll have to mortgage my stock. I've lost more than I can afford
in that United Fuel."
"I don't like to own up I've been bit," said the postmaster, "but
when it comes to being sick, and nerves being wrecks, there are
others with full as much reason as Carroll."
"He'll pay up every cent," said Lee, eagerly.
"Maybe he will pay his debts," said the postmaster. "I am not going
to say he won't. I suppose he means to. But when it comes to making
things good, when he has simply led you by the nose into disastrous
speculations, I don't know. Bigger men than Arthur Carroll don't do
it."
"That's so," said Drew. "It's one thing to pay your butcher's bill in
the long run, and be above stealing goods off the counter, but a man
can cheat his fellow-men in a stock trade and think pretty well of
himself, and other folks think well of him."
"That's so," said Sigsbee Ray.
"I haven't any doubt that he will arrange that," said Lee. "And, for
that matter, the United Fuel may look up yet. I had a prospectus--"
"Prospectus be damned!" said the postmaster. He seldom used an oath,
and his tongue made a vicious lurch over it.
The druggist gave an enormous sigh. "Well, it won't come up to-night,
and I've left my little boy alone in the store," said he. "I've got
to be going."
"So have I," said the postmaster. "My wife is alone."
"My wife always stands up for Carroll," said Lee, trotting nervously
after the other men as they left the room. "Says she guesses he will
end up by paying his bills as well as other men that are blaming him."
"Hope to God he will," said the postmaster.
The clerk and the two stenographers from Carroll's office had been
having their heads together over a time-table. They also slipped out
after the three men. The elder one still sniffed softly in her
handkerchief.
The young man looked around at the stair up which Carroll had
disappeared, and winked as he went out. There were left Carroll's
coachman, the Hungarian girl, Madame Estella Griggs, Willy Eddy, and
his wife. The coachman heard a noise of pounding in the stable and
ran out. Marie remained in the doorway looking at the others with her
piteous red eyes; Minna Eddy advanced towards her.
"They owe you your wages, don't they?" said she, with no sympathy,
but rather a menace.
Little Marie shrank back. "Yis," said she, pursing her lips.
"You're a fool!" said Minna Eddy.
Marie smiled feebly at her.
Minna Eddy stood glaring around the room. Her husband was at her
elbow, watching her anxiously.
"Come home now, Minna," he pleaded.
But she stamped her foot suddenly. "I ain't goin' to stand it!" she
declared. "I'm goin' to take what I can get, I be." Her eyes rested
first upon one thing, then another, then she looked hard at the
Oriental rug, which the three tradesmen had discussed. Then she
swooped upon it and began gathering it up from the floor.
"Oh, Minna! Oh, Minna!" gasped little Willy Eddy.
"You lemme be," she said, fiercely. "I see'd them men lookin' at
this. It ain't handsome, but it's worth good money. I heard something
they said. I ain't goin' to lose all that money. I'm goin' to take
what I can git, I be."
"Minna, you--"
"Lemme be."
"It ain't accordin' to law, Minna."
"What do you s'pose I care about the law?" She turned to Estella
Griggs, who was watching her eagerly, with a gathering light of
fierce greed in her eyes. "If you take my advice you'll help yourself
to something while you have the chance," said she.
"Oh, Minna, it's stealin'! You'll be liable--"
"Liable to nothin'. Stealin'! If folks don't steal no more 'n I do,
I'll risk 'em. I'm a-takin' my lawful pay, I be. If you take my
advice, you'll take somethin', too."
Minna Eddy moved from the room with the rug gathered up in a roll in
her arms, but Marie had been gradually recovering herself. Now she
came forward.
"You must not take that; that iss not your rug," said she. "You must
not take that."
"Git out," said Minna Eddy. She thrust at the Hungarian with her
rug-laden arms, but the little peasant was as strong as she. Marie
caught hold of the rug and pulled; Minna also pulled.
"You lemme go," said Minna, with a vicious voice, but lowered, for
obvious reason.
"You must not take that," said Marie. She was, however, rather
fainter-hearted than the other woman.
Minna suddenly got the mastery. The Hungarian almost tumbled
backward. Minna, with the rug, was out of the room, her trembling,
almost whimpering husband at her heels. Madame Griggs looked at
Marie. Her distorted face was at once greedy, anguished, and cunning.
She began to gasp softly.
"Oh! Oh!" said she. "Oh!"
Marie regarded her in wondering agitation.
"Water! water! quick! Oh, get some water!" moaned Madame Griggs. "I
am faint! Water!" She sank into a chair, her head fell back. She
rolled her eyes at the terrified girl; she gasped feebly between her
parted lips.
Marie ran. Then up rose Madame Estella Griggs. She swept the
tea-table of its little Dresden service and some small, silver
spoons. She gathered them up in a little, lace-trimmed table-cover,
and she fled with that booty and a sofa-pillow which she caught from
the divan on her way out.
When Marie returned she stood gaping with the glass of water. She was
not over-shrewd, but she took in at once the situation. She
understood that the second lady had fled like the first, with the
teacups, the spoons, the table-cover, and the sofa-pillow. She stood
looking desolately around the room, and her simple heart tasted its
own bitterness.