Their Large Hours
It was three o'clock in the morning when the guests danced Sir Roger de Coverley at Mrs. William Day's New Year's party. They would as soon have thought of having supper without trifle, tipsy-cake, and syllabub, in those days, as of finishing the evening without Sir Roger. Dancing had begun at seven-thirty. The lady at the piano was drooping with weariness. Violin and 'cello yawned over their bows; only spasmodically and half-heartedly the thrum and jingle of the tambourine fell on the ear.
The last was an instrument not included in the small band of the professional musicians, but was twisted and shaken and thumped on hand and knee and toe by no less an amateur than Mr. William Day himself.
The master of the house was too stout for dancing, of too restless and irritable a temperament for the role of looker-on. He loved noise, always; above all, noise made by himself. He thought no entertainment really successful at which you could hear yourself speak. He would have preferred a big drum whereby to inspirit the dancers, but failing that, clashed the bells of the tambourine in their ears.
"The tambourine is such fun!" the dancers always said, who, out of breath from polka, or schottische, or galop, paused at his side. "A dance at your house would not be the same thing at all without your tambourine, Mr. Day."
He banged it the louder for such compliments, turned it on his broad thumb, shook it over his great head with its shock of sand-coloured and grey hair; making, as the more saturnine of his guests confided in each other, "a most infernal row."
But an exercise of eight hours is long enough for even the most agreeable performance, and by the time Sir Roger de Coverley had brought the programme to an end the clash and rattle of the tambourine was only fitfully heard. Perceiving which, Deleah Day, younger daughter of the house, a slight, dark-haired, dark-eyed girl of sixteen, left her place in one of the two sides of the figure, extending nearly the length of the room, ran to her father, and taking the tambourine from him pulled upon his hands.
"Yes, papa! Yes!" she urged him. "Every year since I was able to toddle you have danced Sir Roger with me—and you shall!"
He shouted his protest, laughed uproariously when he yielded, and all in the noisy way, which to his thinking contributed to enjoyment. Presently, standing opposite the upright, pretty figure of his daughter, he was brawling to her what a naughty rogue she was, and calling on all to witness that he was about to make an exhibition of himself for the pleasure of his tyrant—his little Deleah. Then, turning, with his hands on the shoulders of the young man before him, he was racing down the room to join hands with the laughing Deleah at the end of the procession, ducking his heavy, short-necked head, to squeeze his broad figure with her slight one under the archway of raised arms, dashing to his place opposite his daughter at the top of the room again. Breathless, laughing, spluttering, stamping, he went through it all.
And now he and his little partner are themselves top-couple, and must dance the half length of the room to be swung round by the pair dancing to meet them; must be swung by right hand, by left, by both hands; must dance to bow, dance to caper with the opposite couple, back to back. And William Day, who had loved dancing till he grew too fat to dance, and was extraordinarily light on his feet for such a big, heavily-made man, never cried for mercy, but cheered on his companions, and footed it to the end.
"Never again!" he declared when the dance was over, and he stood smacking his chest, panting, struggling for breath with which to bid his guests good-night, "You'll never any of you catch me making such a fool of myself again."
"Why, papa, you danced it beautifully! Every single year you shall dance
Sir Roger de Coverley, and you shall always dance it with me."
He shouted that he would not. He always shouted. He would have felt himself falling behind himself on this festive occasion if he had been less boisterous to the end.
"I think it has been the nicest of all our parties," Deleah declared to her sister, as the girls went to their room.
"I've certainly enjoyed it the most," said Bessie. "And Reggie said so had he."
"You danced six times with Reggie, Bess. I counted."
"It is a pity you were not better employed. You wanted to dance with him yourself, I suppose?"
"Why, I did!" Deleah cried, and laughed "I danced the Lancers with him—twice. And in the grand chain he lifted me off my feet. He's most beautifully strong, Reggie is! Did he lift you off your feet, Bess?"
"Reggie would know better than to take such a liberty," Bess said, who was not dark and petite like her sister, but plump and fair and somewhat heavily built. "And you're too old for such romping, yourself, Deleah; and you've nicely spoilt your frock with it!"
"Yards of frilling gone," Deleah said happily, as if the loss of so much material was a merit. "Just a teeny bit came off to start with; Tom Marston caught his toe in it, and went, galloping the whole length of the room carrying it with him and his partner before I could stop him. Oh, how I laughed!"
"Mama won't laugh! She said you must wear the same frock at the Arkwrights' dance next week."
"The white silk, underneath, is all right—look! Only a new net skirt over it. Mama won't mind it in the least."
"If you have a new net over-skirt I shall have one too. You're not to have an evening frock more than me. So come! I shall have blue again. Blue tarlatan with white frillings on the flounces. Blue is my colour. Reggie said so to-night."
"I suppose he admired you in that wreath of forget-me-nots?"
"He didn't say I was to tell you, if he did! You go to bed, and to sleep,
Deleah; and don't interfere."
"I'm getting out of my clothes as fast as I can. Why aren't you getting out of yours, Bess?"
"I'm not going to bed yet. I'm waiting for mama. I've something to say to her."
"What about? Oh, Bess, do tell! I always tell you everything."
She paused, stepped out of her dress which lay a heap of shining silk and billowy net upon the floor, looked at her sister. "It's something about Reggie," she declared with eager interest. "Yes, it is! Oh, Bessie, tell me first. Your face is as red as red! Tell me first!"
You mind your own business, Deda; and brush your hair."
"I'm not going to brush it, to-night: I can't. It's so tangly. I'm just going to say my prayers, and hop into bed."
"Mama won't like it if you don't brush your hair. I shall tell her if you don't, Deda."
"Tell her, then!" Deda challenged, and hurried into her nightgown, and flung herself on her knees by the side of her bed, and hid her face in her hands, preparatory to making her devotions.
A soft tapping on the door before it opened, and Mrs. Day, candlestick in hand, appeared. A pretty woman of medium height, middle-aged, as women allowed themselves to be frankly, fifty years ago. She wore a handsome dress of green satin, a head-dress of white lace, green velvet and pink roses almost covering her plentiful dark hair.
"Not in bed yet?" she whispered, and looked at the small white kneeling figure of the younger girl, her hair hanging in a dusky mass of waves and curls and tangles upon her back. Deleah was hurrying conscientiously through the established form of her orisons, trying to achieve the prescribed sum of her supplications before her mother left.
"Can I speak to you for a minute, mama?" Bess demanded, with an air of importance. "Not here," glancing at Deleah; "outside; just a minute."
"Pray God bless dear papa and mama, sister and brothers, and friends. Make us all good and bring us safe to heaven at last. Amen," Deleah gabbled, her face upon the white quilt, her ears open.
"Certainly, dear." Mrs. Day stepped back, closing the door behind her daughter and herself.
"I don't want Deda to know. She's such a blab, mama."
"Oh, my dear, I don't like to hear you say that!"
"But she is. And she listens to things." Here Bessie pushed the door behind her open, to reveal the culprit in her white nightgown on the other side of it. "I should be ashamed to be a Paul Pry!" Bessie said with indignation and scorn.
Deleah was not at all abashed. "Mama, I don't see why, when nice, interesting things happen, I should not know them as well as Bessie!" she complained.
She was sent to bed, however, and tucked up there, and kissed, and enjoined by an indulgent, reproving mother to be a good girl, and to go quietly to sleep. What mother could be angry with Deleah, looking at her rose and white face amid the tumult of tossed dark curls upon her pillow!
Then Bessie led her mother into an unoccupied room, hard by, upon the landing, and began to unfold her tale.
"Mama, it is about Reggie." The room was only lit by the flame of the candle Mrs. Day held, but there was light enough to show the blushes on Bessie's young plump cheeks. "Mama, he has said something about that again. You know."
"About his being engaged to you?"
Bessie, cheeks and eyes aglow and alight, ecstatically nodded; her fair bosom in its garniture of white tulle and forget-me-nots, rose and fell. "What two pretty daughters I have!" Mrs. Day said to herself, and, being a devout woman, gave thanks accordingly.
"Well, dear, and what did you say?"
"I said—I don't know what I said, mama. We were dancing that last galop—the Orlando Furioso one, you know—and the room was so full, and other couples were rushing down upon us—people are so horribly selfish when they dance, and some of them dance so boisterously."
"It would be a very nice engagement for you, Bessie. I suppose there was not a girl here to-night who would not gladly take him."
"I know that. I know that, mama. So does he—Reggie."
"He did not say so, I hope?"
"No. Reggie does not always want exactly to say things."
"But what did he say to you, dear? Is the matter any forwarder than it was the last time you spoke of it to me?"
"Well, I suppose so, mama."
"You mean you and Reggie Forcus consider yourselves engaged?"
"I think so. But it was so difficult to catch every word in that galop. If he did not say the exact words he said as much."
"Did he say anything about speaking to papa?"
"No. But I said it."
"You said it, Bessie?"'
"Well, mama! Reggie did not seem to wish to be bothered."
"I see."
"Not quite yet, you understand."
"I see."
In the pause that followed the mother's large eyes, surrounded by dark rings, and set rather deeply in the dusky paleness of her well-featured face, dwelt consideringly upon her daughter's round cheeks with their fair smooth skin, upon her grey-green eyes, and smooth fair hair.
"It is not very satisfactory, I'm afraid, Bessie," she said reluctantly at length.
Bessie's face fell. "I thought I'd better tell you."
"Certainly, my dear."
"I wonder what we ought to do, mama?"
"To do, Bessie?"
"I thought, perhaps, if Reggie does not speak to papa, that papa might speak to Reggie?"
Mrs. Day shook a sharply dissenting head. "That would not be the same thing at all, my dear child."
"What ought we to do, then? I thought you would know. Mothers have to arrange these things, haven't they?"
"Well, you see, Bessie, usually the young man—"
"I know. But Reggie does not wish to. If you must know, mama, he said so, in so many words."
"Then, Bessie—!"
"But I think that something ought to be done. You ought to do something—or papa. Everything can't be left to me!"
The tip of Bessie's nose grew pink, her lip quivered, tears showed in her pale blue eyes. Mrs. Day laid a soothing hand upon her arm.
"We won't talk of it any more now," she said. "We are both tired. We will sleep on it, Bessie. Go to bed, dear, and leave everything till the morning."
Her silver candlestick in her hand, Mrs. Day trailed her rich green satin across the landing, pausing at the door of Bernard, her second-born, coming between Bessie and Deleah. She listened a moment, then rapped upon the door. "In bed, dear?"
"Yes, mother."
"Lights out?"
"A half hour ago."
"Not smoking, Bernard?"
"Of course not. Go away."
To the bedside of the youngest child she betook herself next. Franky, who had been sent to bed several hours before the rest, was sound asleep. There were nine years between this child and Deleah; Franky was the baby, the darling of them all. The mother, tired as she was with the duties and responsibilities of the evening, stood long to look upon the sleeping face of the boy. His dark hair, allowed, through mother's pride in its beauty, to grow longer than was fitting for a boy, curled damply about his brow, his small, dark, delicately aquiline features were like the pretty Deleah's. The elder boy and girl, fair of skin, with straight hair of a pale, lustreless gold, resembled their father; Mrs. William Day was not so far blinded by love of her husband as not to rejoice in secret that at least two of her children "favoured" herself.
The mother sat for a few minutes on the bed, her candle shaded by her hand, to watch the child's regular breathing. "My darling Franky!" she whispered aloud; and to herself she said, "If only they could all always keep Franky's age!" She smiled as she sighed, thinking of Bessie and her love affair, about which she had many doubts; of Bernard, who, in spite of prayers and chidings, would smoke in bed, and had once set fire to his bedclothes; of Deleah, even, who, schoolgirl as she was, had, and held to, her own ideas, and was not so easy to manage as she had been. If a mother could always keep her children about her, to be no older, no more difficult to make happy than Franky!
She sighed, kissed the child, pushed from his face the admired curls, then dragged her rich, voluminous draperies to her own room, where her husband was already, by his silence she judged, asleep.
There was a pier-glass in the large, handsomely furnished bedroom. Mrs. Day caught her reflection in it as she approached, and paused before it. Bessie had thought her new green satin might have been made a yard or so fuller in the skirt. Did it really need that alteration, she wondered? She lit the candles branching from the long glass and standing before it seriously debated the point with herself. Walking away from the glass, her head turned over her shoulder, she examined the back effect; walked to meet herself, gravely doubtful still; gathered the fullness of the skirt in her hand, released it, spreading out the rich folds. Then, something making her turn her head sharply to the big bed with its red moreen curtains hanging straightly down beside its four carved posts, her eyes met the wide open eyes of the man lying there.
"Oh!" she cried. "How you startled me, William! I thought you were asleep.
How silly you must have thought me!"
"Not more than usual," William growled. He held the idea—it was more prevalent perhaps at that period than this—that wives were the better for being snubbed and insulted.
"I was deciding if to have my evening dress altered or not."
"You are never in want of an excuse for posturing before the glass. What does it matter at your time of life how your dress looks? Come to bed, and give me a chance to get to sleep."
Mrs. Day extinguished again the candles she had lit, and began docilely to unrobe herself. As she did so she talked.
"It all went off very well to-night, I think, William?"
"First-rate. Champagne-cup ran short."
"There should have been enough. The Barkers at their party never have champagne at all."
"When you're about it, do the thing well. What's a few pounds more here and there, when the end comes!"
"The end, William?"
"The end of the year. When the bills come in."
"How did you think Bessie looked to-night?"
"I thought my little Deleah was the belle of the ball."
"Deleah is a child only. You never have eyes but for Deleah."
"Bess was all right."
"I thought she looked so fair and sweet. Her neck and arms are like milk,
William. I wonder if Reggie Forcus—means anything?"
"Ba-a! Not he! No such luck."
"I really don't see why. I don't see why our girls should not have as good luck as other people's. Reggie will marry some one, I suppose."
"Now, don't be a silly fool if you can help it; and don't encourage the girl to run her head at any such nonsense. Francis Forcus will no more allow his brother to marry your daughter than the queen will allow him to marry one of hers. I told you that before."
"But Bessie—poor child—thinks differently."
"Tell Bessie not to be an ass then; and come to bed."
She went to bed; and, spite of her disturbing thoughts of Bessie and her love affair, went to sleep.
"Oh, dear!" she said as she lay down. "What a lot of bother there'll be for the servants, getting the house straight, tomorrow; and they so late to bed! The drawing-room carpet to put down again, and all the furniture to move into place. And it only seems the other day since we went through the same thing on last New Year's Eve."
"Turning the house upside down is what women like. It's what they're made for."
"I wonder how many more dances we shall have to give before both the girls are married, and off our hands! I'm sure I shall never take the trouble to give one for the boys."
"Shan't you, indeed!"
"Why do you speak like that, William? I don't know that I have said anything for you to jeer at."
"Oh, go to sleep! And let's hope you won't have any worse troubles than the laying down or taking up of a carpet."
The old servant Emily, who had lived with the Days since their marriage, and was as much friend as servant to her mistress and the young people, had once, in speaking of her master, made the memorable pronouncement that he was "Apples abroad and crabs at home." This speech, being interpreted, meant that the noisy, boisterous good temper and high spirit which his acquaintances witnessed in him did not always characterise the deportment of the head of the house in the bosom of his family.
He lay for a time, staring at the dying fire which was on his side of the room. He lay still, to let his wife believe he was asleep, but was too irritable and restless to lie so for long. He turned about on his pillow, cautiously at first, so as not to wake her; yet when she did not awake was aggrieved, and sharply called her name.
"You sleep like a pig," he said. "I have not closed my eyes since I came to bed."
The fact that she could sleep and he could not was to him a grievance which dated from their marriage, twenty years ago. Poor Mrs. Day had grown to think her predilection to indulge in slumber when she went to bed was a failing to be apologised for and hidden, if possible. She was often driven fictitiously to protest that she also had lain wakeful. He received a like statement when she made it now in contemptuous silence.
"I have been thinking about what you tell me of Bess and young Forcus," the father said. "Of course, if there were, by chance, anything in it it would be a very good thing for the girl."
"I am glad you see it in that light at last, William. I have always, of course, known that it would be a good thing."
"What I have been thinking is, perhaps I had better go and see Francis
Forcus about it."
"Reggie's brother? Oh, no, William! I would not do that."
"And why not, pray? You and I can never look at a thing in the same light for two minutes at a time. If I want to rest on my oars you're badgering me to be up and doing. If I begin to see it's time for me to interfere, it's 'Oh, no, William!' There never was your equal for contradiction."
"All the same I should not go to Sir Francis."
"And why not? What's your reason? What is there against it? If his brother, who is dependent on him for the present as if he were his son, is going to marry my daughter, he and I will have to talk it over, I suppose?"
"Yes. But not until Reggie has spoken to you. At present he has not said a word, except to Bessie. I think Reggie should. I think—"
"Never mind what you think. Let's come to facts. Is there or is there not anything serious in this affair?"
"Bessie says there is."
"Can't you give a plain answer to a plain question? Is young Forcus, who is always hanging about the place, making love to my girl or is he not?"
"He has certainly paid her attention."
"Is he engaged to her?"
"Bessie considers herself engaged. But as I tell Bessie—"
"I don't want that. What you think, or what you tell Bessie. I want facts to go upon. Without facts you can't expect me to act."
"I really do not wish you to act, William."
"Leave that to me. I am not asking what you wish," William snapped at her; and then turning on his side he seemed to go to sleep.
Something Wrong At The Office
Mrs. Day had decided to spend the first morning of the New Year in superintending the relaying of the drawing-room carpet and the reducing her house to its habitual order after the dance. Bessie had decided otherwise. She had decided that she should be driven in the carriage, her mother beside her, to some flooded and frozen meadows, three miles out of the town, where many of the young people who had danced last night had arranged to go to skate. Deleah and the boys had started to walk there immediately after breakfast. Bessie, who could not skate, wished to be there also, but did not choose to walk, and could not be allowed to be in the carriage alone.
The girl, very fair and pretty in her velvet jacket with the ermine collar and cuffs, seated in the victoria by her mother's side, eagerly scanned the broad expanse of ice for the familiar figure of the young man who had paid her such particular attention during the memorable galop. She looked in vain. There were several of last night's partners who came to the side of the carriage and asked for the ladies' health after the fatigue of the dance, and descanted on their own freedom, or otherwise, from weariness. Deleah, her face the colour of a wild rose, her loose dark hair curling crisply in the frosty air, shouted greetings to her mother as she flew past, a little erect, graceful figure keeping her elegant poise with the ease of the young and fearless. Now and again she was seen to be fleeing, laughing as she went, from the pursuit of a skater who wished to make a circuit of the flooded meadow holding Deleah's hand. The girl was at once a romp and shy. She laughed with dancing eyes as she flew ahead; but captured, had a frightened, anxious look, her eyes appealing to her mother as she passed in protest and for protection.
"Deleah will be a flirt when she grows up," Bessie said, who knew that her mother was regarding the pretty child with admiration.
"Do you think so, my dear? I hope not, Bessie."
"She will! And she wants looking after. I thought, for a girl not yet 'out,' she was very forward last night. Reggie thought so too."
"I'm afraid you put it into his head, Bessie."
"As if Reggie had not got ideas of his own! Without my even so much as hinting he said he supposed she knew she was pretty."
"Reggie isn't here to-day, Bessie."
"I think he will come. He said he would come, and as I could not skate he promised to push me in a chair on the ice. We need not go home yet, mama. I like watching the skating."
But she only watched the arrivals; and Reggie Forcus was never among them.
"Perhaps he's gone to speak to papa," she said brightly after a silence." No doubt he thought, after all, it would be better to get things settled. I expect that is what Reggie has done, mama."
"I would not think so much about it, if I were you, my dear. Wait until matters have arranged themselves."
"Yes, but ought not we to do something to arrange them?" Bessie persisted.
"It is not usual, Bessie."
"But, mama, am I to lose Reggie for any nonsense of that sort? Usual or not usual I think you or papa should speak to him."
To pacify her the mother admitted that her father had even thought of doing so.
"Then I hope papa will have the sense to do it; and to get the whole thing settled," Bessie said.
She awaited in feverish expectancy the return of her father from his office, that evening, welcoming him with bright eyes and eager looks, trying to read in his face that which she longed to hear from his lips. But Mr. Day had arrived home in a temper of mind the reverse of encouraging. In gloomy silence he sat through the meal which families of the upper middle classes then took instead of dinner at the dinner hour. A comfortable, informal meal at which a big silver tea-tray and great silver tea-urn and heavily embossed tea-services, took a prominent part; where rolls and patties and huge hams and much-decorated tongues were present; and hot toast and muffins and many cakes. No servants waited; there was no centre-piece of flowers; but the gas from the many branches of the great chandelier of scintillating cut glass overhead shone on the silver and china and the appetising viands to which the Days always did such ample justice in a very agreeable way.
But to-night the master of the house, seated opposite his wife at her tea-tray, ate nothing of the generous fare. He had a black look on his heavy face, and short snarling replies for those who ventured to address him. Such a mood was not altogether unusual with him; when it was understood among them that something had gone wrong at the office and that it was safest to leave him alone. But Bessie, whose characteristic it was never, for a moment, under whatever stress of circumstances, to forget her own individual interests, kept whispering to her mother, by whose side she sat, urging her to ask of her father that which she desired to know.
"Ask him, mama. Do ask him!"
"H'sh, my dear!" a frown and a cautioning glance in the direction of the scowling face.
Bessie's foot upon her mother's beneath the table. "Mama, why are you so silly? Ask him! Ask him!"
The mother was never for long proof against the entreaties or commands of her offspring. "Have you seen anything of Reggie Forcus to-day, William?" presently she asked.
The man at the other end of the table glared upon her for a moment with angry eyes. "No!" he thundered. "But I have seen Francis Forcus, which was quite enough for me."
A silence fell. Bessie's heart beat loudly, the colour left her face. Her father turned to her as he said the last words. "Yes, papa?" she faltered.
"Your mother sent me to him on a fool's errand," he said. Then, scowling upon daughter and wife, he gulped down a cup of tea, pushed his chair noisily back and went from the room.
As the door closed behind him, Bessie burst into tears.
The boys and Deleah looked at her in consternation. "What's up now?" they asked of each other with lifted eyebrows.
"Bessie, my dear child! You must not give way so. You really must summon up a little pride," the mother chided.
"It's all very well for you!" Bessie retorted chokingly, and sobbed on. She felt for her handkerchief, and having none of her own grabbed without any thanks that which Deleah threw across the table. Deleah, shocked at the spectacle, watched her sister. "Whatever happened I would not cry before every one like that," she said to herself. Bernard, the elder boy, who lived in a chronic state of quarrelling with Bessie, openly giggled. Franky, having pulled his mother's face down to his own, was whispering, "What is it, mama? What is the matter with Bessie, now? Does she feel sick?" To feel sick was Franky's idea of the greatest earthly misery.
Having wiped her eyes on Deleah's handkerchief Bessie rolled it into a ball and flung it across the table, with greater force of will than directness of aim, at Bernard's face. "You beast!" she choked. "Mama, Bernard's laughing at me. Oughtn't Bernard to know how to behave better? Because I'm so unhappy isn't a reason I should be laughed at."
Whereat they all laughed—Bessie was so ridiculous, they thought; and Mrs.
Day, putting out a kind hand to the angrily sobbing girl, led her from the
room. "You're all too bad," she said, looking back at the sniggering group.
"Bernard, you should know better."
"Bessie's such an old ass!" the boy excused himself. "I want some more tea, mother. I won't have this her sopping handkerchief fell in. All her beastly tears in my cup!"
"Deleah must pour it out for you," the mother said, and closed the door behind herself and her daughter.
"I won't be called an ass by Bernard! I won't be made fun of by them all!"
Bessie cried. "You should go back, and punish them, mama."
Mrs. Day, murmuring words of soothing, led her to the foot of the stairs, and watched the girl mounting slowly to her room, crying audibly, childish fashion, as she went. "You must try to have more self-control," she said.
"But why did papa look at me in such a horrible manner?"
"You know what your father is, Bessie. So often irritable at home when things have gone wrong at the office. Go to your room till your tears are dry; I will see your father and find out if there is anything to tell you."
Mr. Day was in the room they called the breakfast-room. Looking upon it with the housewife's desire for neatness Mrs. Day often spoke of it as the Pig-sty, but it was the room they all of them loved best in the house. It was here the children learned their lessons for school, the ladies worked, Franky played. It was spacious and cheerful, and held nothing that rough usage would spoil. All the most comfortable chairs in the house were pulled up to the hearth, upon which Franky's cats were allowed to lie, and Bernard's dog. A canary, Deleah's especial protégée, hung in the window.
Mr. Day had pulled a chair too small for his huge bulk in front of the fire, and sat, looking huddled and uncomfortable, his feet drawn up beneath his chair, his knees dropped, staring at the bars.
"Is anything the matter, William?" his wife asked. "Aren't you going out again, this evening?"
Every night of his life, except the Sunday night, when on no account would he have missed going to church with his family, he went to a club in the town where whist and three-card loo were played—for higher stakes, it was whispered, than most of its members could spare.
"You have taken off your boots, William: aren't you going to your club?"
"No; I'm not going to my club."
"In heaven's name why?"
"Because my club's seen the last of me."
She looked at him aghast, hearing the news with real dismay. She never would have admitted, even to herself, being a kind woman and a dutiful wife, that she preferred her husband out of her presence rather than in it—her children would not have whispered such a disloyalty; yet if he was going to pass his evenings in the bosom of his family, for the future, each of them would know in his or her heart that the peacefullest and most enjoyable hours of the day would be spoilt.
"Have you had any unpleasantness over cards, William?"
He turned savagely upon her where she stood by the corner of the mantelpiece. "What the devil did you send me on that fool's errand to Francis Forcus for?" he asked.
"I send you, William?"
"I went because of the lying report you brought me."
"William, I—!"
"You led me to believe Bessie and young Forcus were engaged. Now did you or did you not lead me to believe it? Speak the truth if you can. Did you or did you not?"
"I only—"
"Did you lead me to believe it?"
"Yes, then; if you will have it so."
"And made me look a fool! I thought it was too good to be true—only you stuck to it. You were so d—d sure. You would have it so. Nothing would turn you."
"William, you must remember I advised you not to go."
"Did I ask your advice? Did I ever stoop to ask for it? I acted on information which you gave me. Went—and got kicked out."
"Kicked out? William!"
"Practically. I don't mean to say the man actually used his boot. If he had he couldn't have expressed plainer what he meant. Francis Forcus never had a civil word to fling at me in all his life. But for your infernal, silly cackle I'd as soon have gone to the devil as to him. If I'd only had myself and my own feeling to think about—Bessie or no Bessie—I'd have hanged myself sooner than have gone to him. But I'd got more than that."
His voice had fallen from its bullying key to a toneless melancholy. Mrs. Day, who had been standing hitherto, seated herself in the chair by the chimney corner, and looked at her husband's blunt profile as he sat before the fire with a sick feeling of impending disaster, and a dismayed inquiry in her dark eyes.
"I'd got you and the children to think about," the man added.
"What could Sir Francis have said to you, William?"
Her husband turned savagely upon her. "Say? He said there was no engagement between his brother—his 'young brother'—and my daughter. That such an engagement would never receive his sanction. That he was not aware his 'young brother'—he's always sticking the word down your throat; the sanctimonious prig—I longed to kick him!—was on terms of intimacy with any one in my family."
"William!" Mrs. Day, cut to the quick, called protestingly upon her husband's name. "I hope you answered him there. I hope you did!"
"I said the young beggar was always hanging about my house. That he had danced half the night with my daughter—and—and made love to her."
"And then? And then, William?"
"He said, 'I wish all acquaintanceship to cease. I beg you not to invite my young brother to your house again.'"
"He said that?"
"Damn him! Yes."
"But that was an insult!" The poor woman was pale with surprise and dismay. She stared breathlessly upon her husband. "Didn't you show him you felt it was an insult, William?"
William moved his huge shoulders. "What do you think?"
"Tell me what you said to him."
"I swore at him for ten minutes. He didn't know if he stood on his head or his heels when I'd done with him. Then I came away."
"I don't think that swearing would improve matters."
"Perhaps you'll tell me what would improve them? It's what I want to hear, and more than I know."
"Poor Bessie! Oh, poor, poor Bessie!"
"Ah!" poor Bessie's father said, and his short-necked head fell upon his breast, and he gazed drearily at the fire again.
Mrs. Day got up and stood, her white hand glittering with its rings laid upon the black marble of the mantelpiece, thinking of Bessie.
"I would go to the club, William," presently she advised. "It can't make matters any better to sit at home and mope over them."
"Didn't I tell you I wasn't going to the club? D'you think I'm like a woman, and don't know my own mind?"
"I thought it would be pleasanter for you," she said; and then she left him. Her mind was full of Bessie, and the blow which must be given to Bessie's hopes.
"I don't know how I shall ever find the heart to tell her," she said to herself as she went from the room.
Forcus's Family Ale
It was the period when to rob a poor man—or a rich one, for that matter—of his beer would have been a crime to arouse to furious expression the popular sense of justice; when beer was on the master's table as well as in the servants' hall; when every cellar of the well-to-do held its great cask for family consumption, and no one had thought of attempting to convert the poor man from indulgence in his national beverage. It was the period when brewers made huge fortunes—and that in spite of the fact that they used good malt and hops in their brewings—nor dreamed, save, perhaps, in their worst nightmare, of the interference of Government in their monopoly. In Brockenham and its county the liquor brewed at the Hope Brewery was considered the best tipple procurable. Nothing slipped down the local throat so satisfactorily as Forcus and Son's Family Ale; and the present representatives of the firm were easily the wealthiest people in the town.
There were but two of them at the time: Francis Forcus—Sir Francis, for the last twelve months, he having been knighted in the second year of his mayoralty on the visit of a Royal Personage to his native town—and Reginald, his brother, born twenty years after himself of his father's second marriage, and now in his twenty-fourth year. Very good-looking, very good-natured, very gay and friendly and accessible the younger brother was. Perhaps the most admired and popular young man in the town. His simple-minded pursuit of pleasure occupied a great deal of his time, and prevented his spending much of it at the Brewery where his brother made it a point of honour to pass three or four hours every day. But now and again Mr. Reginald appeared at the enormous pile of buildings, rising out of the slow-flowing river on which Brockenham stands, and where the famous Family Ale was composed. Now and then he would amuse himself for an hour, sauntering in the sunshine about the wide, brightly gravelled yards, inspecting the huge dray-horses in their stables, exchanging "the top of the morning," as he facetiously called it to them, with the draymen. He was seldom tempted to appear where the brewing operations were actually in process, but he never took his departure without looking in upon his brother in the spacious and comfortable room overlooking the river in which that gentleman sat conscientiously for three or four hours a day to read the Times and the local newspaper.
He paid his call upon the senior partner earlier than usual on the morning after Mrs. Day's New Year's Dance, but not so early that Sir Francis Forcus had not received a visitor before him. A visitor who had upset the equanimity of that always outwardly unruffled, and carefully self-contained person.
"You are up with the worm, this morning, Reggie," he said.
He was not at all a typical brewer in appearance, his tall, imposing figure being clothed in no superfluous flesh, his face, with its peculiarly set expression, being pale and handsome. His black hair, worn rather long, after the fashion of the day, was brushed smoothly from his temples; he was shaved but for the close-growing whiskers, which reached half-way down his cheeks.
"To what are we indebted for the honour of so early a call?" he inquired with a twist of his in-drawn lips.
"You were off before I was down this morning," the young man said. "I just looked in to tell you I was going out. That's all."
"You look in rather frequently on the same errand, I believe. Would it be indiscreet on my part to ask where you are going?"
"Not in the least," Reggie declared easily. He lifted for his brother's inspection a pair of skates which he had held dangling at his side. "They've flooded the meadows at Tooley. The ice ought to be in first-rate order, this morning."
"So it is in the moat at home. Half a score people were skating there already as I drove away this morning. Tooley is five miles off. Why need you take the trouble to go to Tooley?"
"Several people, last night, said they were going. I thought I might as well go too."
"Where were you last night, Reggie? I don't want to tie you at home, by any means, but sometimes I like to know where you have been."
"All right, Francis. Of course. There was a dance at the Days' in Queen Anne Street. I've gone to it every New Year's Night, for years. I went there."
"I see." The light hazel eyes of Sir Francis, according strangely with his black hair and palely dusky complexion, considered his brother's cheerful countenance.
"I'm going to ask you not to go to the Days' in Queen Anne Street any more,
Reggie," he said.
Reggie widely stared. "I don't think my going there, when I wish, and they ask me, can do any harm to any one," he protested.
"Sit down, will you?" his brother said, and pointed to the chair on the other side of the table by which he sat.
"I think not, now. I think I'll be off. The ice mayn't keep—"
The other still pointed to the chair. "What I want to say to you won't keep—emphatically. Sit down," he said, and down Reggie sat.
He was by no means embarrassed, or afraid. His brother had stood to him in place of a father since his own father had died when he was a boy at school, but he lectured him as little as possible, and very rarely thwarted him. "Get over it as quick as you can, Francis," was all he said.
"Did you meet Mr. Day going away as you came in?"
"Mr. Day? No."
"He has just left me. He came to tell me that you," he looked during a moment's pause in Reggie's wide eyes, "were engaged to be married to his daughter."
"Well! Come! That's a good 'un!" Reggie was surprised, his brother saw, but not so satisfactorily taken aback as he had hoped.
"Is it so?"
"No."
"Then, what did the man mean by daring to say it to me?"
Reggie maintained an instant's quite undisconcerted silence; then, "You see, she says it too," he said.
"She?"
"Bessie."
"Day's daughter? She must be stopped saying it."
"Oh, I don't know. Girls do say that sort of thing."
"I think not. Unless they are privileged to say it. Miss Day, you say, has nothing to go upon?"
"Oh, well, you know!" Reggie sat back from the table, putting his hands in his pockets, leaning in his chair at his ease, with the air of talking as one man of the world to another.
"But I do not know. I am waiting for you to tell me."
"You don't want me to go into detail, I suppose?"
"You mean you have indulged in a flirtation with this girl, and she has tried to grab you?"
Reggie gave the subject a moment's thought. "I won't quite admit that," he said conscientiously. "She, somehow, seems to think I've gone further than I have gone. She said something to me last night about my speaking to her father."
"Instead of which her father is sent to speak to me. Now, look here, Reggie, you and I have never, so far, had any unpleasantness—have we? Do not let us have it over this. A daughter of William Day's is about the last person on earth it would be desirable for you to marry."
"I'm not thinking of marrying any one yet, Francis."
"I should hope not! Were you going to meet Miss Day on the ice?"
"Well, she said she'd be there. A whole lot of them were going."
"Stay away, will you? To oblige me?"
"If you put it that way—"
"Thank you. I don't want our name"—he was as proud of the brewery as if it had been a dukedom; he said "our name" as though he spoke of a sacred thing—"mixed up with the name of Mr. William Day."
"He's a nice, good-natured old fellow. You should have heard him banging away with his tambourine, last night."
"I'm going to tell you something in confidence. On the strength of your engagement to his daughter—wait! I know you are not engaged to her—Mr. William Day came here to borrow five hundred pounds of me."
"Good-night!"
"I refused him the loan, of course. Wait a minute! What I was going to say is this: I happen to know why he wanted that money. Why it was important for him to get it at once. It was to pacify a certain client of his who is pressing him. She authorised him to sell some shares, which he did; but she can't get a settlement."
"I say! That's pretty bad, isn't it?"
"And it's the one case of which I happen to know the history. There are others, I am told, and more flagrant than this."
"Will he have to smash up?"
"I hope it will be no worse. I hope—well, we shall see. I have told you
this to show you how specially distasteful to me was what the man said to
me to-day. You understand, don't you?"
Reggie said he understood. "It was quite premature," he declared. "Quite!"
But he looked very thoughtful.
"You will keep clear of them, remember."
"I think I'm best out of their way for the present."
"Instead of skating this morning I wish you'd go over to Runnydale and have a look at that thorough-bred Candy is breaking for me."
Sir Francis knew his man. If Bessie Day had held for him ten times her attraction an errand which had a horse for its objective would have proved more attractive still to Reginald Forcus. With hardly a pang he assented.
The young man spent a happy and profitable day at Runnydale with old Candy, a horse-dealer, much affected by the well-to-do youth of the neighbourhood, he having a racy tongue, and a fund of anecdote, and a pleasant, joking, familiar way of transferring money from their pockets to his own. He returned in time for dinner at Cashelthorpe, his brother's country-house a few miles out of Brockenham, which the younger man also made his home. The two dined alone, as was usual of late, the delicate health of Lady Forcus compelling her often to keep her room.
"You remember what I told you about Day's affairs this morning?" Sir Francis asked, looking across the table at his brother as they sat down to their soup.
Of course Reggie remembered.
"Where do you suppose Mr. William Day is spending his evening?"
Reggie paused with his spoon on its way to his mouth to say he hoped in the bosom of Mr. William Day's family.
"He is spending it in prison."
The spoon fell back into its plate, and Reggie's face grew white. "It can't be true! I'll never believe it!"
"What did you expect, after what I told you? Unless he had made a bolt of it."
"Oh, poor old fellow! But what's the poor old fellow done, then?"
"Done? Fraudulently appropriated his clients' money and adapted it to his own uses."
"Poor old Day! Oh, poor old devil!"
"Well, get your dinner, my dear boy."
"He was slapping me on the shoulder, and I was drinking his champagne, last night!"
The younger Forcus recovered sufficiently to eat the fish, but his soup had to be removed untasted. He sat, with both hands gripping his table-napkin as it lay across his knees, his eyes on the table-cloth, seeing the pretty Deleah and her fat but agile father dancing down the gay ball-room. In prison! Some one he had known, and touched hands with! Prison!
"I wonder of what the poor old fellow was thinking as he banged away at his tambourine last night!" Reggie said.
Disaster
Shortly after Mrs. Day had left her husband sitting in his stocking-feet over the breakfast-room fire, she, in the midst of her children at their several occupations but attentive to what went on beyond, heard his heavy step in the hall, heard the front door open and close.
"Your father has gone to the club, after all," she said, and gave a sigh of relief as she worked away at her embroidery, making holes in a strip of muslin and stitching round them, for the adornment of the elder daughter's petticoat. She was a timid woman, in spite of her fine and handsome appearance, with a great fear of the unusual. It was her husband's habit to go out. The thought of him sitting alone and idle in the other room had been weighing on her mind.
The children paid no attention; they were all a little tired and languid and disinclined for their usual amusements after the excitement of last night's dance and the exertion of their morning on the ice. Even Deleah, the reader of the family, neglected her book to lie back in her chair and gaze into the fire, the music of galop, and rattle of her father's tambourine humming in her ears; before her eyes figures chasing each other over the blue sheet of ice or flying rhythmically over polished boards.
Franky having temporarily deserted his paint-box and the Illustrated News he had designed to colour for many tinted sheets of gelatine, saved from the crackers on last night's supper table, now held them in turn before his eyes. "Mama, you're all red—all lovely red, like roses," or "Bessie, you're frightful—you're white as if you felt sick," he cried, accordingly as a red or a green transparency was before his eyes.