"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' b.u.t.ter, 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 coa.r.s.eness which underlay all her veneer of harmless gentility and fine manners, raised a loud, shrill laugh, ending in a mult.i.tude 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 mult.i.tude of lines by her distorting mirth, glowed with a hard red; her eyes gleamed with a gla.s.sy 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 G.o.d!" said one of the hors.e.m.e.n, 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 pa.s.sed.

"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 ant.i.theses 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 G.o.d! 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 a.s.sertive 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 n.o.body will get anything. I will communicate with you all later on. n.o.body 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 d.a.m.ned!" 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 G.o.d 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, w.i.l.l.y 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 w.i.l.l.y 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."