The weeks go by and, toiling under our burden, we are desperately trying to stem the rush of time. In certain hard-pressed moments I have a sickly feeling that time will win—and crush us. A revoltingly new discovery I made yesterday, that Fred has taken to drinking during business hours, suddenly drew the life out of me like a suction pump. Then, realizing the meaning and the enormity of the fact, I was frightened out of fear and talked to him in as friendly and kindly a vein as the circumstances would permit, in an effort to show him our position and where it might lead us.
His first snarl of defiance gave way to contrition. He wept maudlin tears and made promises so robust that they ought to outlive him, but—I feel shaken as never before.
Meanwhile Sampson and Company are calling for the payments due on our allotment of bonds, and Fred, the smiler and the diplomat, is shirking interviews with them.
"What we need, Ranny," he said to me to-day in chastened mood, "is capital, more capital. We went into this business on a shoe string—sometimes it will hold till you can get a rope and sometimes—"
—"Even a life line is too late," I supplied.
He did not answer. But after a pause he began afresh:
"Couldn’t you get round and see some of your rich friends—see whether they could tide us over for a spell?"
"Rich friends!" I writhed as one in torment. "Who are my rich friends? I have none, as you ought to know. I have now put in every cent of capital that I own—against your business experience, Fred. And this is where we’ve arrived. If my sister’s children weren’t dependent upon me—but then," I ended bitterly, "I shouldn’t be here, as I think you know."
"Didn’t your sister—wasn’t there anything—?" But to his credit, he did not finish. If, as I suppose, he meant to ask whether Laura left any money that I could use, he evidently thought better of it and walked away in a somber silence. And that is where we stand.
That is where we stand in our business, and the needs of my household are expanding. Griselda knows nothing of my affairs and yet I surprise her dark eyes, singularly lustrous for one of her years, watching me at times out of her swarthy wrinkled face, as if divining the Jehannum I am experiencing. More than ever she lays herself out to perform incredible feats of economy, whilst I hypocritically pretend to be unaware of it.