Just Around the Corner Part 50

His voice caught in a tight knot of strangulation; he was dithering and palsied.

"To-night--you--you got to know!"

A sudden trembling took Mrs. Binsw.a.n.ger.

"For G.o.d's sakes, know what, Julius--know what?"

"I'm done for! I'm gone under! Till it happened you wouldn't believe me.

Two years I seen it coming, two years I been fightin' and fightin'--fightin' it by myself! And now for yourselves you look in the papers two weeks from to-morrow, the first of March, and see--I'm done for--I'm gone under, I--"

"Julius--my G.o.d, you--you ain't, Julius, you ain't!"

His voice rose like a gale.

"I'm gone under--I ain't got twenty cents on the dollar. I'm gone, Becky. Beat up! To-morrow two weeks the creditors, they're on me! My last extension expires, and they're on me. I been fightin' and fightin'.

Twenty cents on the dollar I can't meet, Becky--I can't, Becky, I can't!

I been fightin' and fightin', but I can't, Becky--I--can't! I'm gone!"

"Pa."

"Julius, Julius, for G.o.d's sakes, you--you don't mean it, Julius--you--don't--mean it--you're fooling us--Julius!"

Small, cold tears welled to the corners of his eyes.

"I'm gone, Becky--and now he--he wants the s.h.i.+rt off my back--he can have it, G.o.d knows. But--but--_ach_, Becky--I--I wish I could have saved _you_--but that a man twice so strong as his father--_ach, Gott_, what--what's the use? I'm gone, Becky, gone!"

Mr. Isadore Binsw.a.n.ger swung to his feet and regarded his parent with the dazed eyes of a sleepwalker awakening on a perilous ledge.

"Aw, pa, for--for G.o.d's sake, why didn't you tell a fellow? I--we--aw, pa, I--I can knuckle down if I got to. Gee whiz! how was a fellow to know? You--you been cuttin' up about everything since--since we was kids; aw, pa--please--gimme a chance, pa, I can knuckle down--pa--pa!"

He approached the racked form of his father as if he would throw himself a stepping-stone at his feet, and then because his voice stuck in his throat and ached until the tears sprang to his eyes he turned suddenly and went out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

The echo hung for a moment.

Miss Binsw.a.n.ger lay whitely in her chair, weakened as if the blood had flowed out of her heart. From the granitoid square at the base of the air-shaft came the rattle of after-dinner dishes and the babble of dialect. Mr. Binsw.a.n.ger wept the tears of physical weakness.

"I--I'm gone, Becky. What you want for Poil I can't do. I'm gone under.

We got to start over again. It was the interurban done it, Becky. I needed new capital to meet the new compet.i.tion. I--I could have stood up under it then, Becky, but--but--"

"_Ach_, my husband--for myself I don't care. _Ach_, my husband."

"I--I'm gone, Becky--gone."

He rose to his feet and shambled feebly to his bedroom, his fingers feeling of the furniture for support, and his breath coming in the long wheezes of dry tears. And in the cradle of her mother's arms Miss Binsw.a.n.ger wept the hot tears of black despair; they seeped through the showy lace yoke and scalded her mother's heart.

"Oh, my baby! _Ach_, my husband! A good man like him, a good man like him!"

"Don't cry, mamma, don't--cry."

"Nothing he ever refused me, and now when we should be able to do for our children and--"

"Don't cry, mamma, don't cry."

"If--if he had the money--for a boy like Max--he'd give it, Poil. Such a good husband--such--_ach_, I go me in to papa now--poor papa. I've been bad, Poil; we must make it up to him; we--"

"'Sh-h-h!"

"We got to start over again, Poil--to the bone I'll work my fingers, I--"

"'Shh-h-h, mamma,'sh-h-h--somebody's knocking."

They raised their tear-ravaged faces in the att.i.tude of listening, their eyes salt-bitten and glazed.

"It's--it's Izzy, baby. See how sorry he gets right away. He ain't a bad boy, Poil, only always I've spoilt him. Come in, my boy--come in, and go in to your papa."

The door swung open and fanned backward the stale air in a sharp gust, and the women sprang apart mechanically as automatons, the sagging, open-mouthed vacuity of surprise on Mrs. Binsw.a.n.ger's face, the tears still wet on her daughter's cheeks and lying lightly on her lashes like dew.

"Mr. Teitlebaum."

"Max!"

Mr. Teitlebaum hesitated at the threshold, the flavor of his amorous spirit tasty on his lips and curving them into a smile.

"That's my name! h.e.l.lo, Pearlie girlie! How-dye-do, Mrs.

Binsw.a.n.ger--what what--"

He regarded them with dark, quiet eyes, the quick red of embarra.s.sment running high in his face and under his tight-fitting cap of close-nap black hair.

"Ah, excuse me; I might have known. I--I'm too early. Like my mother says, I was in such a hurry to--to get back here again I--I nearly got out and pushed the Subway--I--you must excuse me. I--"

"No, no; sit down, Mr. Teitlebaum. Pearlie ain't feelin' so well this evening; she's all right now, though. Such a cold she's got, ain't you, Poil?"

"Yes--yes. Such a cold I got. Sit--sit down, Max."

He regarded her with the rims of his eyes stretched wide in anxiety.

"Down at supper so well you looked, Pearlie; I says to my mother, like a flower you looked."

A fog of tears rose sheer before her.

"Her papa, Mr. Teitlebaum, he ain't so well, neither. Just now he went to bed, and he--he said to you I should give his excuses."

"So! Ain't that too bad, now!"

"Sit down, Max, there, next to mamma."

He leaned across the table toward the little huddle of her figure, the gentle villanelle of his emotions writ frankly across his features.