Money and other stories/Money

gain, again it had come over him; he had scarcely swallowed a few mouthfuls of food when a painful heaviness seized him; a perspiration of faintness broke out on his forehead. He left his dinner untouched and leaned his head on his hand, sullenly indifferent to the landlady’s officious solicitude. At length she went out sighing, and he lay down on the sofa meaning to rest, but in reality to listen with alarm and attention to torturing sounds within him. The faintness did not pass off; his stomach seemed to have become a heavy stone, and his heart throbbed with rapid, irregular beats: from sheer exhaustion he perspired as he lay. Ah, if he could only sleep!

After an hour the landlady knocked: she handed him a telegram. He opened it in alarm and read “19.10. 7.34. Coming to-night. Rose.” What this might mean he simply could not grasp; bewildered, he stood up and read through the numbers and words, and at length understood: his married sister ​Rosa would arrive this evening and, of course, he must go and meet her. Probably she was coming to do some shopping, and he felt annoyed at the hasty, feminine thoughtlessness and disregard for others, which disturbed him for no reason at all. He paced up and down the room, irritated because his evening was spoiled. He was thinking how comfortably he would have rested on his old sofa, soothed by the humming of his faithful lamp, with a book in his hand; he had passed weary and tedious hours there, but now for some unknown reason they seemed to him especially attractive, full of wise musings and very peaceful. A wasted evening, an end to rest. Full of childish and resentful bitterness, he tore the luckless telegram to fragments.

But that evening, when he was waiting in the lofty, cold, damp station for the belated train, a wider feeling of distress took possession of him distress at the squalor and poverty around him, the weary folk who arrived, the disappointment of those who had been waiting in vain. With difficulty he found his fragile little slip of a sister in the thick of the hurrying crowd. Her eyes were frightened and she was dragging a heavy trunk along; and at once he saw that something serious had happened. He put her into a cab and took her straight home. During the journey it ​occurred to him that he had neglected to find a room for her; he asked her if she would like to go to an hotel, but this only evoked an outburst of tears. He really could do nothing with her in that state, so he gave it up, took her thin, nervous hand in his, and was immensely cheered when she at length looked up at him with a smile.

Once at home he looked closely at her and was alarmed. Distressed, trembling, strangely excited, with flaming eyes and parched lips, she sat there on his sofa, supported by the cushions which he heaped round her, and talked. . . . He asked her to speak softly, for it was already night. “I have run away from my husband,” she burst out, talking quickly. “Ah, if you knew, George, if you knew what I have had to bear! If you knew how hateful he is to me! I have come to you to advise me,” and then she burst into a flood of tears.

Gloomily George paced the room. One word after another called up before him a picture of her life with an overfed, money-grubbing, and vulgar husband, who insulted her before the servant, was ill-timed and immoderate in his affection, plagued her with endless scenes about nothing, about nothing, foolishly squandered her dowry, was self-indulgent at home, and at the same time spent extravagantly ​on the silly whims of a hypochondriac. He heard the story of food doled out bite by bite, of reproaches, humiliations and cruelty, shabby generosity, frenzied and brutal quarrels, exacted love, stupid and overbearing taunts. . . . George paced the room choking with disgust and sympathy: it was intolerable, he could not endure this endless torrent of shame and pain. And there sat the small, fragile, capricious girl whom he had never thoroughly known, his proud and violent little sister; she had always been combative, and refused to listen to reason, her eyes used to flash wickedly when she was a small girl. There she sat, her chin quivering with sobs and with the ceaseless torrent of words, exhausted and feverish. George wanted to soothe her, but was half afraid. “Stop,” he said roughly, “that will do, I know all about it.” But he was powerless to restrain her.

“Don’t,” wept Rosa, “I have no one but you.” Then the stream of complaints began again, more broken, at greater length, in calmer tones: details were repeated and incidents enlarged upon. Suddenly Rosa stopped and asked:

“And you, George, how are you getting on?”

“As for me,” grumbled George, “I can’t complain. But tell me, won’t you go back to him?”

​“Never,” declared Rosa excitedly. “That is impossible. I’d rather die than . . . If you only knew what it was like!”

“Yes, but wait,” observed George. “In that case, what do you think of doing?

Rosa expected that question. “I made up up my mind about that a long time ago,” she said warmly. “I will give lessons or go somewhere as a governess, to an office or anywhere. . . . You will see how I can work. I will get my living all by myself, and be so happy, so happy doing anything. You must advise me. . . . I will find a room somewhere, just a little one. . . . Tell me, something will turn up, won’t it?” She could not sit still for excitement, but jumped up and, with an eager face, paced the room beside her brother: “I have thought it all out. I will take the furniture, the old furniture you know, which belonged to our parents; wait till you see. I really want nothing, but to be left in peace. I don’t mind if I am poor, if only I don’t have to . . . I want nothing else, nothing more in life than that, so little will suffice! I shall be satisfied with anything only if I am right away from—from all that. I am looking forward to working, I will do all my own sewing and sing over it—I have not sung for years. Ah, George, if you only knew!

“Work,” reflected George doubtfully. “I ​don’t know if any can be found—and anyway, you are not accustomed to that, Rosy, it will be hard for you, very hard.”

“No,” retorted Rosa with flashing eyes. “You don’t know what it has been to be reproached for every mouthful, every rag, for everything. . . . All the time to be told that you don’t work but only spend. . . . I should like to tear off all these things, it’s all become so hateful to me. No, Georgie, you will see how glad I shall be to work, how happily I shall live. I shall enjoy every mouthful, even if it is only dry bread: I shall be proud of it. With pride I shall sleep, dress in calico, cook for myself. . . . Tell me, I can be a working woman, can’t I? If nothing else turns up will go into a factory. . . . I am looking forward to it all so much!”

George gazed at her with delighted astonishment. Heavens, what radiance, what courage in such a downtrodden life! He was ashamed of his own effeminacy and weariness; he thought of his own work with sudden warmth and happiness, infected by the ardent vitality of this strange, feverish girl. She had really become a young girl again, blushing, animated, childishly naive. Oh, it will turn out all right, how can it fail to?

“I shall manage, you’ll see,” said Rosa. “I want nothing from anyone, I will support ​myself, and I will really earn, at least enough to provide for myself, and have a few flowers on the table. And if I had no flowers there I would go into the street and just look at them. . . . You cannot imagine how each thing has filled me with happiness since I decided to run away. How beautifully, delightfully different everything looks! A new life has begun for me. . . . Till now I never understood how beautiful everything is. Ah, Georgie,” she exclaimed with tears running down her face, “I am so happy.”

“Little silly,” Georgie smiled at her, delighted. “It will not be so easy. Well, we will try it. But now lie down, you mustn’t make yourself ill. Don’t talk to me any more now, please. I have something to think over, and in the morning I will let you know. Go to sleep now and let me think.”

Nothing that he could say would induce her to take his bed; she lay down fully dressed on the sofa, he covered her with everything warm he had and turned down the lamp. It was quiet; only her rapid, childish breathing seemed to appeal to heaven for sympathy. George gently opened the window to the cool October night. The peaceful, lofty sky was bright with stars. Once in their father’s house they had stood by the open window, he and little Rosa; she, shivering with cold, pressed ​close to him, as they waited for falling stars. “When a star falls,” whispered Rosa, “I shall ask to be changed into a boy, and do something glorious.” Ah, father was asleep as soundly as a log: the bed could be heard creaking under his ponderous fatigue. And George, filled with a feeling of importance, meditated on something grand and with masculine gravity protected little Rosa, who was trembling with cold and excitement.

Over the garden a star shot across the sky.

“George,” Rosa’s voice called him softly from the room.

“All right, directly,” answered George shivering with excitement and cold.

Yes, to do something great: there was no other way out. Poor, foolish creature, what great deed did you want to do? You have your burden to bear; if you want to do something fine carry a greater one; the greater your burden, the greater are you. Are you a weakling, sinking under your own burden? Rise and help to support one who is fainting: you cannot do otherwise unless you would fall yourself.

“George,” called Rosa in a hushed voice.

George turned where he stood at the window. “Listen,” he began hesitatingly. “I have thought it out. . . . I think that—you will not ​find work to suit you. . . . There is work enough, but you will not earn enough to—oh, it’s nonsense.”

“I shall be satisfied with anything,” said Rosa quietly.

“No, wait a moment. You really don’t know what it means. You see, I have quite a fair salary now, I am glad to say, and I could get afternoon work, too. Sometimes I really do not know what to do. . . . It is quite enough for me. And I could let you have money———

“What money?” murmured Rosa.

“My share from our parents and the interest which has accumulated; that makes about five thousand a year. No, not five thousand, only four. . . . It is only the interest, you understand? It has occurred to me that I could let you have that interest, so that you might have something.”

Rosa bounded off the sofa. “That is not possible,” she cried excitedly.

“Don’t scream,” growled George. “It’s only the interest, I tell you. Whenever you don’t want it you need not draw it out. But now, just for the beginning. . . .”

Rosa stood like an amazed little girl. “But that will not do, what would you have?”

“Oh, don’t trouble about that,” he protested. ​“I have thought for a long time that I should like to get afternoon work, but—I was ashamed to take work away from my colleagues. However, you see how I live; I shall be glad to have something to do. That’s how it is; you understand, don’t you? That money only hindered me. So now, do you want it or not?”

“I do,” sighed Rosa, approaching him on tiptoe, flinging her arms round his neck and pressing her moist little face to his. “George,” she whispered, “I never dreamed of this; I swear to you that I wanted nothing from you, but since you are so good———”

“Never mind,” he said, deeply stirred. “That’s beside the point. That money really does not matter to me, Rosa; when a man is fed up with life, he must do something. . . . But what can one do all alone? In spite of all efforts one can only come face to face with oneself again in the end; you know, it is like living surrounded by nothing but mirrors, and whenever one looks in them there is only one’s own face, one’s own boredom, one’s own loneliness. . . . If you knew what that means! No, Rosa, I do not want to tell you about myself, but I am so glad that you are here, so glad that this has happened. Look how many stars there are: do you remember ​how once at home we watched for falling stars?”

“No, I don’t remember,” said Rosa, turning a pale face to his; in the dim frosty light he saw her eyes shining like stars. “Why are you like this?”

He thrilled with pleasant excitement and stroked her hair. Don’t talk about the money. It is so dear of you to come to me. Heavens, how glad I am, as if a window had opened among the mirrors. Can you imagine it? I really only cared for myself. I was sick of myself, tired of myself, but I had nothing else. . . . Oh, there was no sense in it at all. Do you remember, when the stars fell, what you asked for then? What would you ask for to-night if a star fell?”

“What should I ask?” Rosa smiled sweetly. “Something for myself. . . . No, something for you, for something to happen for you.”

“I have nothing to wish for, Rosa, I am so glad to have got rid. . . . Now, how will you arrange? Wait, to-morrow I will find you a nice room with a pleasant outlook. From here, you only look on to the yard; in the daytime, when there are no stars shining, it is a trifle depressing. But we must find something better for you, something more open.” Quite excited and enthusiastic, he strode about ​the room planning out the future, eagerly picturing each new detail, laughing, talking, promising all sorts of things. Of course, lodging, work, money, would all be forthcoming; the main thing was that this would be a new life. He felt how her eyes shone in the darkness, smiling, following him with their ardent brightness; his heart was so full that he could have laughed for joy; he did not think of resting till exhausted, worn out by sheer happiness and too much talking, they fell into long pauses of weariness, in utter harmony.

At last he made her lie down; she did not resist his quaint, motherly solicitude, and could not even thank him; but when he looked up from the piles of newspapers in which he was glancing through advertisements of lodgings and agencies, he found her eyes fixed on him with an ardent and strange brilliancy, and his heart was wrung with happiness. Thus morning found him.

Yes, it was a new life. His wretched lassitude was gone now as he swallowed a hasty dinner, then strode through countless houses in search of a room, coming home perspiring like a hunting dog and happy as a bridegroom, and settling down in the evening to plough through pieces of extra work, until he finally fell asleep worn out and enthusiastic over a profitable ​day. But he had, alas! to put up with a room without a pleasant outlook, a detestable room, upholstered in plush and outrageously dear, where he placed Rosa for the present. Sometimes, indeed, in the course of his work he was attacked by faintness and weakness, his eyelids would tremble, a sweat from giddiness breaking out on his suddenly livid brow; but he succeeded in mastering this, set his teeth and laid his hand on the cold slab of the table, saying resolutely: Bear it—you must bear it—indeed, you are not living for yourself alone. In this way he did feel better and better as day followed day. This was a new life.

Suddenly one day he had an unexpected visit. It was his other sister Tylda; she was married to a manufacturer in a small way who was not doing well and lived some little distance out of town. She always called on him when she came to Prague for anything—on business trips, for she looked after everything herself. She used regularly to sit with eyes cast down and talk in brief, quiet phrases of her three children and her many worries as if there were nothing else in the world. Today, however, she alarmed him; she was breathing heavily, struggling in her cobweb of ceaseless cares, and her fingers, disfigured by writing and sewing, touched his heart and ​made it ache with sympathy. Thank heaven, she got out brokenly, the children were well and good, but the workshop was not going well, machines were worn out; she was just looking for a purchaser.

“And so Rosa is here?” she suddenly said in a half-questioning tone vainly trying to raise her eyes. Strange to say, wherever her eyes rested there was a hole in the carpet, frayed furniture covers, something old, shabby, and neglected. Somehow or other neither he nor Rosa had paid any attention to such things. This vexed him, and he looked away; he was ashamed to meet her eyes, keen as needles and relentless as unceasing care.

“She has run away from her husband,” she began indifferently. Says that he plagued her. Perhaps he did, but everything has a cause.”

“He had cause, too,” she went on, failing to provoke questions. “You see, Rosa is—I don’t know how to put it . . .” She was silent, stitching with heavy eyes at a large hole in the carpet. “Rosa isn’t a housewife,” she began after a time. “And, of course, she has no children, need not work, has no cares, but———”

George looked gloomily out of the window.

“Rosa is a spendthrift,” Tylda forced out of herself. “She has run him into debt, you ​see. . . . Have you noticed what her linen is like?”

“No.”

Tylda sighed and made as if wiping something from her forehead. “You’ve no idea what it costs. . . . She buys, say, furs, for thousands, and then sells them for a few hundred to pay for boots. She used to hide the bills from him: then there came summonses. . . . Do you know about this?”

“No. He and I are not on speaking terms.”

Tylda nodded. “He is queer, of course, I don’t dispute it. . . . But when she does not mend a scrap of linen for him, and when she herself goes about like a duchess—tells him lies and carries on with other men———”

“Stop,” begged George in anguish.

Tylda’s sad eyes mended a torn bed cover. “Perhaps she has offered you,” she asked uncertainly, “to housekeep for you? Suggested your taking larger lodgings—and that she should cook for you?”

George’s heart contracted painfully. This had never occurred to him. Nor had it to Rosa. Heavens, how happy he would be! “I should not want her to,” he said sharply, controlling himself by main force.

Tylda succeeded in raising her eyes. “Perhaps she would not want it either. She has ​got him here—her officer. They transferred him to Prague. That’s why she ran away—and has taken up with him—a married man. Of course, she has said nothing about it to you.”

“Tylda,” he said hoarsely, withering her with his glance, “you lie.”

Her hands and face quivered, but she would not give in yet. “See for yourself,” she stammered. “You are too kind-hearted. I would not have said this if—if I were not sorry for you. Rosa never cared for you. She said you were———”

“Go!” he cried, beside himself with rage. “For God’s sake leave me in peace!”

Tylda rose slowly. “You should—you should get better lodgings, George,” she said with dignified calm. “Look how dirty this place is. Would you like me to send you a little box of pears?”

“I don’t want anything.”

“I must be off. . . . How dark it is here. . . . Dear, dear George; well, good-bye, then.”

The blood throbbed in his temples, his throat contracted; he tried to work, but he had only just sat down when he broke his pen in a rage, sprang to his feet and hurried round to see Rosa. He ran to her place in a sweat and rang: the landlady opened the door, and said that the ​young lady had been out since the morning: was there any message?

“It doesn’t matter,” growled George, and shuffled home as though carrying an immense load. There he sat down to his papers, leaned his head on his hand and began to study; but an hour went by and he had not turned over a page; dusk was followed by darkness, and he did not light up. Then the bell rang in a breezy, cheery way, there was a rustle of skirts in the passage and Rosa flew into the room. “You are asleep, Georgie?” She smiled tenderly. “Why, how dark it is here; where are you?”

“Eh? I have been busy,” he remarked drily. There was an air of chilliness in the room and an exceedingly pleasant scent.

“Listen,” she began cheerfully.

“I wanted to go round to you,” he interrupted, “but I thought perhaps you would not be at home.”

“Why, where should I have been?” she asked in genuine wonder. “Oh, how nice it is here. Georgie, I am so glad to be with you.” Joy and youth breathed from her and she was radiant with happiness. “Come and sit by me,” she said, and when he was seated beside her on the sofa she slipped her arm round his neck and repeated, “I am so happy, Georgie.” He rested his face against her cold ​fur, bedewed with autumn mist, let himself be rocked gently, and thought: Suppose she has been somewhere, what is that to me, after all? At any rate, she has come back to me at once. But his heart grew faint and oppressed with a strange mixture of keen pain and a sweet odour.

“What is the matter, Georgie?” she cried in shrill alarm.

“Nothing,” he said as though lulled. “Tylda has been here.”

“Tylda,” she repeated, dismayed. “Let go of me,” she said, after a while. “What did she say?”

“Nothing.”

“Come now, she spoke of me, didn’t she? Did she say anything horrid?”

“Well, yes—a few things.”

Rosa burst into wrathful tears. “The nasty creature. She is always jealous of everything I have. How can I help it if things go badly with them? She must have come because—because she found out what you had been doing for me. If things went better with them, she would forget all about you. It is so disgusting. She wants everything for herself—for her children—those horrid children.”

“Don’t talk about it,” entreated George.

But Rosa went on crying. “She wants to spoil everything for me. I have scarcely ​begun to have a happier life when she comes along, slandering me and wanting to take things from me. Tell me, do you believe what she has been saying?”

“No.”

“I really want nothing more than to be free. Haven’t I a right then to be a little more happy? I want so little, and was so happy here, George, and then she comes along———”

“Don’t worry about that,” he said, and went to light the lamp. Rosa stopped crying at once. He looked at her closely, as though for the first time. She was looking at the floor, her lips were trembling. Ah, how pretty and youthful! She had on new clothes, small gloves, so close-fitting that they seemed ready to burst; and silk stockings peeped from under her skirt. Her little nervous hands played with the threads of the worn sofa-covering.

“Excuse me,” he said sighing. “I have some work to do just now.”

She obeyed and rose. “Ah, Georgie,” she began, and did not know how to go on. With hands clasped against her breast, she gave him a swift, agonized glance and stood there, white-lipped, like an image of fear. “Don’t be anxious,” he said briefly, and turned to his work.

Next day he was sitting over his papers until twilight. He compelled himself to work ​mechanically, smoothly and unheedingly, and forced himself to go quicker and quicker; but all the time he was working there grew and deepened within him a keen sense of pain. Presently Rosa came in. “Go on writing,” she whispered. “I shall not disturb you.” She sat down quietly on the sofa, but he felt that her passionate, sleep-robbed, vigilant eyes never left him.

“Why didn’t you come to me?” she burst out suddenly. “I was at home to-day.” He felt in this a confession which touched him. He laid down his pen and turned to her; she was dressed in black like a penitent, paler than usual, folded in her lap were her appealing little hands, which even from where he sat he felt must be cold.

“It is rather chilly there,” he observed apologetically, and tried to talk as usual without making reference to the happenings of the previous day. She replied humbly and gently like a grateful child.

“About Tylda, you know,” the words came all at once,” the reason things go so badly with them is that her husband is a duffer. He stood surety for someone and then had to pay. . . . It is his own fault, and he ought to have thought of his children; but then, he doesn’t understand anything. He had an agent who robbed him, and yet goes on trusting everyone. You ​know they are suing him for fraudulent bankruptcy?”

“I know nothing about it,” George turned it off: he saw that she had been brooding over it all night, and felt somehow ashamed. Rosa was not aware of his quiet rebuff: she lost her temper, got excited, and immediately played her highest card: “They wanted my husband to help them, but he obtained information and simply laughed at them outright. To give them money, he said, would be to throw it away; they have three hundred thousand of liabilities. . . . A man would be a fool to put a single heller into that: he would lose it all.”

“Why do you tell me this?”

“So that you might know,” she forced herself to a gentle tone. “You know you are so kind-hearted, you would very likely let yourself be deprived of everything.”

“You are very kind,” he said without taking his eyes from her. She was highly strung, burning with desire to say something more, but his scrutiny made her uneasy; she began to be afraid that she had gone too far. She asked him to find her some work so that she might be a burden to no one, no one at all; she could live with strictly limited expenditure; she felt she ought not to have such expensive lodgings. . . . Now at last perhaps she would offer to housekeep for him. He waited with ​beating heart, but she looked away towards the window and began on something else.

The next day he received the following letter from Tylda:

George flung the letter aside. He felt bitter and disgusted, the unfinished work on his table presented an air of hopeless triviality. Disgust rose in a painful lump in his throat; he left everything and went round to Rosa. He was already on the steps before her door when he changed his mind with a sudden jerk of his hand, came down again, and strolled aimlessly about the street. He saw in the distance a young woman in furs on an officer’s arm; he started running after them like a jealous lover, but it was not Rosa. He saw a pair of bright eyes in a woman’s face, heard a laugh on rosy lips, saw the woman radiating and exhaling happiness, full of trust and joy and beauty. Wearily he returned home at last. On his sofa lay Rosa in tears. Tylda’s open letter fell to the floor.

“Miserly creature,” she sobbed passion​ately, “and not ashamed of herself. She wants to rob you of everything, Georgie; don’t give her anything, don’t believe a word of it. You can’t understand what a crafty, avaricious woman she is. Why does she pursue me like that? What have I done to her? For the sake of your money—to slander me in that way! It is only—only because of your money. It is really monstrous!”

“She has children, Rosa,” George observed gently.

“That is her own look-out,” she cried fiercely, choking with sobs. “She has always robbed us and only cares for money. She married for money, even when she was little she boasted that she would be rich. She is absolutely disgusting, vulgar, stupid—tell me, Georgie, what is there in her? You know what she was like when things went better with them—fat, insolent, unfriendly. And now she wants—to rob me. . . . George, would you let her? Would you get rid of me? I would rather drown myself than go back.”

George listened with bowed head. Yes, this girl was fighting for everything, for her love and happiness; she wept with rage, she cried out in passionate hatred against everyone, against Tylda, and even against himself who could take everything from her. Money—the ​word stung George like a whip whenever she said it; it struck him as shameless, disgusting, offensive.

“It was like a miracle to me when you offered me money,” wept Rosa. “It meant for me freedom—everything. You offered it yourself, Georgie, and you should not have offered it at all if you meant to take it away again. Now, when I am counting on it———”

George was no longer listening. Remotely he heard reproaches, lamentations, sobs. He felt humiliated beyond measure. Money, money, but was it only a question of money? O God, how had it come about? What had coarsened the careworn, motherly Tylda. Why was the other sister wailing? Why had his own heart grown hard and indifferent? What had money to do with it at all? In a strange way he was aware of his power to hurt Rosa, and of an inexplicable desire to wound her by saying something cruel, humiliating, and masterful.

He rose with a certain lightness. “Wait,” he said coldly. “It is my own money. And I,” he concluded with a magnificent gesture of dismissal, “shall think it over.”

Rosa sprang up with eyes full of alarm. “You—you———” she stammered. “But at all events—that’s understood. Please, Georgie—perhaps you did not understand me—I didn’t mean that———”

​“All right,” he broke in drily. “I say I shall think it over.”

A gleam of hatred blazed in Rosa’s eyes; but she bit her lip, and went out with bowed head.

Next day there was a new visitor waiting in his room: Tylda’s husband, an awkward, blushing man, full of embarrassment and doglike submissiveness. George, choking with shame and fury, refrained from sitting down, so as to compel his visitor to stand.

“What is your business?” he said, in the impersonal tone of an official.

The awkward man shivered and forced out of himself: “I—I—that is, Tylda—has sent some documents—which you asked for———” and began to hunt feverishly in his pockets.

“I certainly did not ask for any papers, said George with a negative wave of his hand. There was a painful pause.

“Tylda wrote to you, brother-in-law,” began the unfortunate tradesman, blushing more than ever, “that our business, to put it shortly, if you would like to be a partner———”

George purposely let him flounder.

“The fact is—things are not so bad, and if you were a partner, to put it shortly, our undertaking has a future, and as one who . . . shared———”

The door opened softly and there stood Rosa. ​She became petrified at the sight of Tylda’s husband.

“What is the matter?” said George sharply.

“Georgie,” gasped Rosa.

“I am engaged,” George rebuffed her, and turned to his guest. “I beg your pardon.”

Rosa did not stir.

Tylda’s husband perspired with shame and terror. “Here are—please—these proofs, letters which her husband wrote us and other papers intercepted———”

Rosa clutched at the door for support. “Show me them,” said George. He took the letters and feigned to read the first, but then crushed them all in his hand and gave them to Rosa. “There you are,” he smiled malevolently. And now excuse me. And don’t go to the bank to draw anything out: you would go for nothing.”

Rosa retreated without a word, her face ashen.

“Well now, your business,” continued George hoarsely, closing the door.

“Yes, the prospects are—of the very best, and if there were capital—that is, of course, without interest———”

“Listen,” George interrupted unceremoniously. “I know that you are to blame; I am informed that you are not provident or—businesslike———”

​“I would do my best,” stammered Tylda’s husband, gazing at him with pleading, doglike eyes, from which George turned away.

“How can I put any confidence in you? he asked, shrugging his shoulders.

“I assure you—that I would value your confidence—and all that is possible—we have children, brother-in-law.”

A terrible, intense, embarrassing feeling of sympathy wrung George’s heart. “Come in a year’s time,” he finished, holding on to the last fragment of his shattered will.

“In a year’s time . . . Oh God . . .” groaned Tylda’s husband, and his pale eyes filled with tears.

“Good-bye,” said George, extending his hand.

Tylda’s husband did not see the proffered hand. He made for the door and stumbled over a chair, groping vainly for the door-knob. “Good-bye,” he said in a broken voice at the door, “and—thank you.”

George was alone. A sweat of intense weakness burst out on his forehead. He arranged the papers on his table once more and called the landlady; when she arrived he was pacing the room with both hands pressed to his heart; he forgot what he wanted her for.

“Stop,” he cried, as she was going out, “if to-day, to-morrow, or at any time my sister ​Rosa comes, tell her that I am not well and that . . . I would rather not see anyone.”

Then he stretched himself on his old sofa, fixing his eyes on a new spider’s web freshly spun in the corner above his head.