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 God'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 shirt off my back—he can have it, God 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 Binswanger swung to his feet and regarded his parent with the dazed eyes of a sleepwalker awakening on a perilous ledge.
"Aw, pa, for—for God'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.