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Mrs. Day's Daughters

by Mary E. Mann · English · Gutenberg #7941 · 503,688 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Mrs. Day's Daughters

Author: Mary E. Mann


        
Release date: April 1, 2005 [eBook #7941]
                Most recently updated: December 30, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7941

Credits: Stan Goodman, Beth Trapaga, Tonya Allen, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. DAY'S DAUGHTERS ***




Stan Goodman, Beth Trapaga, Tonya Allen, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.



MRS. DAY'S DAUGHTERS

By

MARY E. MANN







  "The common growth of Mother Earth
  Suffices me--her tears, her mirth,
  Her humblest mirth and tears."



CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I      Their Large Hours
II     Something Wrong At The Office
III    Forcus's Family Ale
IV     Disaster
V      Deleah's Errand
VI     Sour Misfortune
VII    Husband And Father
VIII   The Way Out
IX     For The Widow And The Fatherless
X      Exiles From Life's Revels
XI     The Attractive Bessie
XII    The Attractive Deleah
XIII   The Gay, Gilded Scene
XIV    A Tea-Party In Bridge Street
XV     The Manchester Man
XVI    For Bernard
XVII   What Is It Now?
XVIII  The Dangerous Scrooge
XIX    When Beauty Calls
XX     Sir Francis Makes A Call
XXI    In For It!
XXII   The Importunate Mr. Gibbon
XXIII  Deleah Has No Dignity
XXIV   The Cold-Hearted Fates
XXV    To Make Reparation
XXVI   A Householder
XXVII  Promotion For Mrs. Day
XXVIII At Laburnum Villa
XXIX   A Prohibition Cancelled
XXX    Deleah Grows Up
XXXI   Bessie's Hour
XXXII  The Man With The Mad Eyes
XXXIII The Moment Of Triumph





CHAPTER I

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.




CHAPTER II

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.




CHAPTER III

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.




CHAPTER IV

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.

The game called "Tactics," over which Bessie and Bernard nightly
quarrelled, had been so far neglected; a circumstance not to be regretted,
since Bessie generally played a losing game in tears, and signalised
Bernard's victory by upsetting the board and flinging the red and white
ivory pegs in his face.

For, the last night's dance, which had been an engrossing topic for several
weeks before it had come off, now that it was over must still be talked
about.

How silly Deleah had looked when her white satin shoe had come off and shot
across the slippery floor in the last waltz; and she would not stop, for
all that, but finished the dance without it.

"Were your shoes too big, Deleah?"

"A little, mama. They were a pair of Bessie's last year's ones, that were
too small for her."

"There you go! At me again!" Bessie cried. "Deda is proud because her foot
is smaller than mine, mama. If you're a little weed of a thing like Deda,
of course your feet are narrow and small. They have to be. There's no merit
in it."

"And I suppose Deleah danced her silk stockings into holes?"

"No, mama! Mr. Frost, I was waltzing with, held me up most beautifully; so
that after the shoe came off my feet never once touched the floor."

"Lucky it wasn't you, Bessie! It would have been the finish of poor Frost
to have tried to carry such a lump as you."

"Mama, will you speak to Bernard, and ask him not to be always saying rude
things about me."

"Hush, Bessie! Nonsense! Bernard, my dear, do try to be more polite to your
sister."

"Mama, here's a motter I rather like in this green cracker.

 "'What I most admire in you
  Are your eyes of lovely blue.'

"What would you have done, Deleah, if a gentleman had pulled the cracker
with you? Because your eyes aren't blue; they're yellow-brown."

"I should have passed it on to Bernard."

"And why wouldn't you have passed it on to me, pray, miss. My eyes are as
blue as Bernard's, I suppose?"

"Your eyes are green," from a Bernard ever ready for the fray.

"Mama! Mama! He's at me again! Bernard is at me again! He says my eyes are
green!"

"Come, come, children! Hush, Bessie! You are too bad, Bernard. Now then,
we have not yet decided who was the belle of the ball, last night."

It was while they gave their opinion on this momentous subject that Franky
fell asleep over his cracker papers and was sent to bed, an hour before
his time, his mother going up to hear him say his prayers, as was her
nightly custom. She was crossing the hall on her return when the front
door opened and the master of the house, to his wife's astonishment,
reappearing, stepped in again.

"Lydia!" he whispered, and with an odd shrinking from him, she noticed
that there was something furtive in his manner, and that his voice, wont
to sound alarmingly through the house on his return to it, was husky and
hushed. "Lydia, how much money have you in the house?"

"Money!" his wife repeated, and gazed upon him with alarm in her eyes.

"Money--I gave you a cheque for ten pounds on Monday. How much of it is
left?"

Most of it had gone in expenses for the dance. "I have only about thirty
shillings left, William." Without knowing why, her voice, like his, had
sunk to the tone of mystery.

"Give it me, then. Quick!"

She hesitated, fearfully questioning: "Has anything--?"

"Never mind now. Get it. Get all you can lay your hands on. Quick!"

Her purse was in the pocket hidden in the many folds of her silk dress.
There was not quite so much in it as she had reckoned; she slipped the
sovereign and few shillings with trembling fingers into his hand.

"I could ask Bernard, and Bessie, William."

"No! I won't take their money," he said. "This will get me to London."

"To London?"

"I am going up by the mail."

"But why in this hurry?"

Not the prospect of the sudden journey, but the something secret and
horribly unfamiliar in his manner frightened her. He came a step further
into the hall and picking up a dark muffler from a chair, wound it round
his neck. She saw that his face was livid, and looked suddenly flabby, and
that his hands were shaking.

"Business," he whispered. "Don't worry."

As he turned to the door, she laid a hand on his arm. "Something is wrong.
I have felt it all the evening. Tell me, have you had losses, William?"

He nodded, without looking at her. "That's about the tune of it."

"You should have told me."

"I've told you now. You'll hear about it soon enough."

She gripped his arm. "Don't go like this! Whatever it is, don't run away.
Is it very bad? Is it--" the word that stood for the worst business
misfortune she could imagine, trembled and died on her lips--"is it
_Failure_?"

He pulled his muffler about his face, his hat lower upon his brow: "You've
hit it," he said. "It's that."

Her hand slid from his coat-sleeve, he slipped through the half-open door,
and shuffled down the three white steps which led to the silent street.
Then, as white, half-stupefied, she watched him, he turned and climbed the
steps again and stood beside her.

"You had better go to George Boult," he said. "Boult will tell you what to
do. Are you listening? Go to Boult."

"But aren't you coming back to-morrow, William? You can't leave us like
this! You must come back!"

He was going down the steps again. There was a moon clear in a frosty sky.
How white the steps shone! For all her life she remembered the big,
unwieldy figure of her husband shuffling down them.

"I don't know what my movements may be. Just at present they are
uncertain." Arrived on the pavement he turned his miserable, furtive eyes
on her as she stood in the open door, the brightly-lit hall of home behind
her. "Shut the door," he said with something of his old passionate
irritability of manner. "I don't want all the world to know I'm going away
to-night. Shut the door!"

She obeyed him, as ever when he used that tone to her, with nervous haste.
William Day waited a moment to hear the bolts slipping into place. It was
a duty he performed himself every night of his life as he went up to bed.
The door was bolted with him on the wrong side of it, now. Never, he knew,
in all the years to come would he turn the lock of security on the
sleeping house and shuffle upstairs, bed-candle in hand, to warmth and
comfort and peaceful sleep again.

Mrs. Day, going back into the hall, came to a standstill beneath the
hanging lamp, trying to collect her thoughts, trying to realise, but
totally unable to do so, that ruin had come upon her home, her children,
herself. Ruin which she had seen visit the homes of other people,
devastate them; but whose shadow she had never imagined falling on the
fortunes of her own.

On the William Days; so well-to-do; so respected in the place; who had
their annual dance last night, all the nicest, most desirable people of
the town present. No one's dance was so nicely managed, so spirited, so
successful as theirs.

She was actually thinking of the dance as she stood there, dazed, in the
gas-lit hall. They would never give another New Year's dance.

William, with all his faults, was never mean. "Don't spoil the ship for a
ha'po'rth of tar," was a favourite motto of his. She had ever thought it a
proverb both pleasant and wise. She was not an extravagant woman, but she
also liked to have things well done, and had no sympathy with
cheese-paring ways. The house was well and handsomely furnished, she and
the children had plenty of dress, their table was an excellent one, all of
them indulging in an amused contempt of the domestic economies of their
friends. Servants stayed with them for years, and it was easy to fill
their places when they left. They kept one more of them than was needed,
for comfort's sake. She was a good mistress; he, for all his passionate
rating of his dependents at times, was a good master.

Was all this finished now? Was it possible? The old pleasant, natural
order of things--the only order to which she had ever been accustomed.
Finished now?

And if so what would follow?

Furniture sale. Dust of strange feet in the familiar rooms. People she
would never have dreamed of admitting there pulling about her carpets,
poking her feather-beds, turning up their noses at the breakfast-room
chair-covers which were shabby, there was no good in denying it; and with
her not by to explain they preferred them so. No more expensive
paint-boxes and toys for Franky; Bessie and darling Deleah in shabby hats;
Bernard without pocket-money, made a banker's clerk, perhaps--she had
heard her husband say bank-clerks had no prospects, poor beggars!
Bernard--her handsome Bernard to be a "poor beggar"--!

A sudden vertigo seized her: the hall was whirling round; she stretched a
hand blindly for support, and pulled over an umbrella-stand which fell
with a crash and clatter.

The girls and Bernard came running out. "What on earth are you doing,
mama? Have you hurt yourself? What is it?"

She had subsided upon a hall-chair, her face was ghastly, all her strength
seemed gone. "I felt faint. I am better," she got out, and looked
strangely round upon them all. Her gaze wandered lingeringly from object
to object in the hall as if she had never seen it before. She shivered
violently with deadly cold. "I will go to bed," she said.

The children helped her upstairs. She leant on Bessie's arm, the arm of
Deleah was round her waist. The stairway was broad, there was room for all
three. Bernard stood on the mat below and watched with an anxious face.

"Sure I can't do anything, mother?" he kept saying.

They were all so fond of her, so frightened if for a moment she seemed to
fail them. She could not get rid of them till they had undressed her and
put her to bed. Until they themselves went to bed they kept coming back
and peeping in at her. "Papa will be back soon; mind you send him for us
if you feel at all ill," they adjured her.

"Mama, you are sure it is not because I worried you about Reggie Forcus?"
a contrite Bessie asked. "Because he is sure to come to-morrow--you think
so, don't you?--and we shall make it all right, in spite of Sir Francis.
Promise not to worry, mama."

Twice in the night Deleah slipped from her own warm bed to stand, an
anxious little figure, shivering in her nightgown, her dark curls
streaming down her back, a suspensive ear to the keyhole of her mother's
door. People fainted because they had heart disease. Of heart disease they
also died. She dared not go in, because papa was there, but waited,
trembling with cold and fear, until her mother's sigh reassured her.

In the morning the mistress of the house came down with a pale face and
dark rings about her deeply-set large eyes. She could not smile, she could
not eat, she hardly spoke, but she was better, she said.

The children would have to know; but she could not bring herself to tell
them. That their father was not in the house they did not perceive, but
put down his absence from the breakfast-table to the fact that he had
over-slept himself.

A great fire blazed on the hearth. A stack of muffins was being kept warm
in a silver dish on a brass stand before it. Fish, and broiled kidneys
were on the table; a ham, and a brawn, and a glazed tongue on the
sideboard. Mrs. Day always drank coffee at her breakfast, Deleah liked
cocoa, the rest took tea; all three were served.

Mrs. Day surveyed these signs of comfort and luxury with a numb feeling at
her heart. All this, and such as this, would have to go. How would the
children endure life without it. Was this lavish amount of food
"extravagance"? she asked herself, for the first time. Was it possible
she, with her well-filled table on which she had prided herself, had
conduced to the misfortune? She was a woman whose conscience was very
easily touched, and she began to blame herself. "But I never dreamed!" she
said, "I never dreamed!"

Bessie could eat neither fish nor kidneys, that morning. "Mama, there was
some game-pie left, last night. Mayn't I have some of it?"

The servant was rung for to bring the game-pie. "If there are any oyster
patties we might have them in, mother," Bernard suggested.

The mother, sadly gazing, assented. Nothing would she have denied them,
that morning--her poor children who were so soon to be deprived of
game-pies and oysters for ever!

They were in the midst of breakfast, their voices a little subdued because
mama was not well, yet with an enjoyable sense of freedom because papa,
who was so often irritable at that meal, had not yet come down, when
suddenly the door opened and without any announcement Mr. George Boult
walked in.

He was a man they all knew as a friend and associate of the master of the
house, but he had never been held in favour by its mistress nor her
children, who indeed had but the slightest acquaintance with him. He had
been a school-fellow of William Day's at the Brockenham Grammar School; a
kind of comradeship had existed between the two from that time till now.
George Boult had assumed for years the habit of dropping in at Queen Anne
Street on Sunday afternoons to smoke a cigar and drink a glass of wine
with the lawyer, but it was a function the men had enjoyed _tête-à-tête_:
as an intimate in the family circle he had not been admitted.

Boult could have bought up all the superior people who turned up their
noses at him, his friend frequently declared; it had been a standing
grievance of his against his wife that she declined to put Mr. Boult's
name on the list of people invited to her parties.

George Boult was a self-made man; the process of manufacture recent, and
unfortunately fresh in people's minds. "If I invite the man who keeps the
draper's shop the professional people won't come to meet him," Mrs. Day
pointed out, and remained obdurate on the point. But because he, who did
not in the least wish to go to her parties, could not be invited to them,
a little awkwardness in the relations of her husband's Sunday afternoon
visitor and Mrs. Day had arisen.

His appearance thus early in the morning, and in the midst of their meal
was a matter more than a little surprising to them all. He was a short,
rather podgy man, with fair whiskers curled upon red cheeks, a common,
up-turned, broad-nostrilled nose, a wide, thick-lipped mouth; quick,
observant, but by no means beautiful eyes, a protruding chin, and a roll
of flesh which showed above his collar at the back of his neck. Well and
carefully he was dressed, however, and wore that air of conscious
prosperity to be observed in the man who has carved his own fortunes and
is proud of the fact.

He grasped, in his broad, short-fingered, red one, the white hand of Mrs.
Day, who went forward to meet him. "I got a verbal message from your
husband last night, asking me to look you up the first thing this
morning," he said. "This is a sad business for you all; I am sorry--very
sorry."

Mrs. Day took her place behind her tea-cups again, lacking the strength to
stand.

"Do the children know?" he asked, in a tone, muffled indeed, but quite
audible in the children's ears.

Mrs. Day shook her head. "But they must know," she said.

"Know what?" they all asked, alert for news, but suspecting no evil. Even
Franky looked up from his toast and marmalade with an inquiring glance.
Perhaps the circus was coming, and there would be another procession, with
elephants and camels walking through the streets, and unseen but loudly
roaring lions dragged in their cages.

"There is bad news, my dears," Mrs. Day began, but very faintly; she
clasped her hands upon the edge of the tea-tray, the cups and saucers
jingled with their shaking. "Poor papa is in trouble. Tell them," she
whispered to the man who stood beside her. "I can't tell them."

Mr. Boult fixed Bessie with the gaze of his slightly protruding eyes of
stone-coloured blue. She was the eldest, the only one who could really be
said to be grown up. For all his tail coat and smart neckties, Bernard at
seventeen was only a boy still.

"What is the matter with papa? Where is papa?" Bessie asked him.

"Just at present--we hope only for a short time until we can bail him
out--your papa is in prison," George Boult said.

He had known it would be a blow to them, but he was a man entirely without
imagination, and therefore quite incapable of putting himself in another
person's place. Rumours had been afloat in the business world. Money,
which the jog-trot profession of law alone could never have brought him
in, had been spent: more than once the suspicion of what would be the end
of his old school-friend had crossed his mind. But that the possibility of
such a, to them, hideous calamity, had never presented itself to the man's
wife and children he had not considered, nor was he capable of
appreciating the sorrow and shame they would suffer by such a disgrace.

He had not a high opinion of William Day's wife and family; they were
people who thought the world a place for play rather than hard work, who
frequented theatres and concert-rooms, and dances. It was not likely they
could feel anything very much. He was unprepared for the effect of his
words.

They were young, they were undisciplined, they were quite unused to
misfortune. The children met the news of its appearance among them by a
loud yell of terrified protest. Mrs. Day had flung herself upon him,
grasped him, clung to him.

"Not William! Not my husband! No! No! No!" she shrieked.

"I thought you knew! I thought you knew!" George Boult said. The woman
hurt him by her grip upon his arms; what a din was in his ears!

"Papa! Oh, papa! Papa!" Bessie screamed.

Franky was screaming too. He had got down from the table and rushed round
to his younger sister, who, white, and shaking like a leaf, took the child
in her arms. Bernard had risen, ashen-faced, staring. "It isn't true!" he
shouted savagely at his father's traducer. "It's a lie!"

"Didn't you know?" George Boult kept saying to the poor woman who was
shaking him by the force of her trembling as she clung to him. "I would
have prepared you--I thought you knew."

"I thought it was bankruptcy," she got out between her chattering teeth.
"I didn't know it was--disgrace. Are you sure? Quite sure?"

"Quite. There is not the shadow of a chance it is not true. A police
officer brought me a message from him from the station-house last night."

She let go his arms, and sank into her chair again; and Franky, who could
find no comfort in Deleah's embrace, left her, and still screaming his
terrified "Papa! papa! papa!" flew to hang upon his mother's neck.

Deleah crept round to Bernard. "Oh, Bernard, what can we do?" she said.
"What ought we to do?"

Bernard, who had sunk into his chair, only laid his arms upon the table,
his head upon his arms, and sobbed.

George Boult thought they were taking it very badly. "This comes of too
much pleasuring," he told himself. He looked round upon the miserable
group, feeling shocked and helpless. He had gone there to see if he could
be of use. How was it possible to help people who behaved like this! He
was a widower, but had no children of his own. If he had been more
fortunate in that respect what serious-minded, well-conducted boys and
girls they would have been: not squeaking over misfortune, but standing up
to it when it came; looking about them, open-eyed, for ways of making
money, marrying money, and getting on. The children of William Day and
their mother were acting like a set of lunatics only fit for Bedlam.

"I'm sorry to have to spring it upon you suddenly. I thought your mama
knew," he said again. "But it's a thing that had to be known--and perhaps
as well one time as another. It's a thing that has got to be borne, too,
and made the best of."

It was quite easy to play the philosopher if only they would have
listened, but they would not. Mrs. Day was rocking herself backwards and
forwards in her chair, the screaming Franky in her arms; Bessie had flung
herself upon the floor and was beating it with her palms and calling upon
the name of papa. George Boult was sorry for their misfortune, but he
looked on and listened with distaste. To have no more spunk than that!

"Which of you can I speak to?" he asked sharply at last. He crossed the
room and touched Bernard's heaving shoulders. "Come out," he said; and
Bernard, openly blubbering, got up, and followed his father's friend from
the room. In the hall George Boult laid a steadying hand upon the poor
boy's arm. "You must bear this like a man, Bernard," he said. "You're not
a child, nor a woman; try to be a man."

"What's he done? What's my father done?" the boy asked. He blew his nose
and wiped his eyes, and made an effort to hold himself upright.

"It's a question of some money belonging to a client."

"To a client, sir?"

"Your father invested a large sum of money for her, then sold the shares,
and did not buy others or give her the money."

"But--he would have done--in time. He--meant to do it."

"Your father has got to prove that."

"My father will do it," with a sob.

"I hope so. There's another matter we need not go into now. Her signature
authorising the sale she disputes."

"My father--will explain."

"Perhaps. He'll be up before the magistrates to-day. I shall attend, and
shall offer myself to go bail for him. They'll probably want two. Who is
there you can ask?"

Bernard did not know. He had not his wits sufficiently about him even to
think. "I can ask my mother," he said. He was sobbing again, fallen limply
against the wall, his face hidden.

"Do remember you've got to play the man," George Boult said. He felt
helpless in the presence of such surprising helplessness. He looked at the
heaving shoulders of the youth with an astonished distaste. What was to be
done with material so soft as this! "I am sorry I have been the bearer of
such ill news, but there is no good in my stopping now. I'll drop in, tell
your mother, when you're all more used to it. Wonderful how quickly people
do get used to things! Meantime, remember, I'll stand bail for your father
if you can find another. And there's no time to lose. You must shake
yourself together and set about it at once."

"Helpless set!" he said to himself as he let himself out and passed down
the three glistening white steps into the quiet street. "Hysterical,
useless, helpless set! Fit only for pleasure-seeking and money-spending.
What is to become of them now?"

They were certainly helpless. When Bernard went back to the room where
breakfast--the meal to be for ever unfinished--stood about, and told them
they had, there and then, to find some one willing to bail out his father,
none of them understood, or knew what to do.

"Do you know of any one we could ask, mother?" Mrs. Day sat, her brow
clasped tightly in her two hands as if she really feared her head would
split. "Let me think! Let me think!" she said piteously, but was incapable
of thinking.

"Would any of the people who were here at the dance--the Challises, the
Hollingsbys, the Buttifers, the Frosts, do it? Which of them shall we
ask?"

"I don't think one of them would do it. They would not care."

"But they're often here--to dinner, and so on."

"Don't ask them."

"Who then, mama?" Deleah questioned. She had made less noise than the
others, and there was about her an air of purpose, lacking in the rest,
although her childish face looked stricken.

"There is no one I should like you to ask a favour of."

"But we must ask some one."

"Let it be some one we do not know, then."

"Could we ask Sir Francis Forcus? He is very rich."

"I will go somewhere--I will ask--some one," Mrs. Day said; but, trying to
stand, she fell back in her chair, and her frightened children saw that
she had fainted.

They laid her on the sofa, and over her prostrate body renewed the subject
of the bail.

"Bessie must go," Deleah said.

"Then, I won't, miss!" said Bessie, and sobbed and choked and screamed at
her sister: "I won't! I won't!"

"Bernard must go."

"It would come better from a woman," Bernard said.

In the end it was Deleah who went--the little petted, sheltered Deleah,
who had never gone before on any errand of more moment than for the
matching of Berlin wools, or for the changing of the three-volume novel at
the Public Library.

"Deleah can't go--Deleah mustn't!" the prostrate mother on the sofa
gasped. She looked like a corpse beneath the cloths soaked in
eau-de-cologne-and-water which Bessie had arranged over her brow. "We
can't ask Sir Francis. Call Deleah back. Stop her."

But Deleah would not be stopped. It was a question of getting her father
out of prison, and they had been told to lose no time. While Bessie and
her mother and Bernard were still declaring she must not go she had run up
to her room for her hat and jacket; and lest they should catch and stop
her, she would not stay in the house to put them on, but flung them anyhow
upon her when once outside the door. Then, with her little wild white face
almost lost in the masses of loose dark hair escaped from the net she wore
in the morning, and falling anyhow beneath her hat, and her small bare
hands grasping the jacket she would not stop to button at her throat, she
ran through the streets.

Was that really Deleah running there, and on that errand? Deleah, who at
that hour was usually walking sedately to school; saying over to herself
her French poetry, perhaps, as she went, or taking a last peep in her
geography book, to make sure once again of the latitude and longitude of
Montreal, or to impress more firmly on her mind the imports and exports of
Prussia.

To get to her school she had to pass her father's office; and sometimes,
if it pleased him to start early enough, he would walk there with his
little daughter, her hand tucked within his arm. With her he was never
savage, and rarely irritable; on these walks his mood would be playful and
jocose, and they would incite each other to play the truant from office
and school, and pretend they were off on a holiday jaunt together.

And now her laughing, noisy, loving, boisterous father was in prison--in
prison!--and she was running to beg the help of a stranger to take him
out.

She gave no thought to the man to whom she was going, nor to the words she
would say to him. The difficulty of asking such a favour of such a
stranger did not distress her. Her father--her father--her father! was her
only thought.




CHAPTER V

Deleah's Errand


It chanced that Sir Francis Forcus drove to the Brewery an hour earlier
than usual that morning, and--a circumstance of rare occurrence--that
Reginald was pleased to drive with him. Both men came together into the
private room of the elder, where Deleah, for an hour which had seemed a
lifetime, awaited them.

If Sir Francis had ever seen William Day's little daughter, he had
forgotten her. It was Reggie, at whom Deleah never looked, who called her
name in his pleasant, good-natured tone of welcome.

"Why, it is Deleah!" he cried out, as if Deleah, of all the people in the
world, was the person he most wanted to see. "This is Deleah Day,
Francis."

He liked little Deleah--what young man with eyes in his head did not like
her!--she was so pretty; far and away prettier than Bessie, who had in
Francis's word tried to grab him. She was the jolliest little thing to
laugh with and to dance with; light as a feather--you could sweep her off
her feet and dance on with her, never feeling her weight upon your arm.

He held out his hand to her now, but she did not see it. Her own hands
were clasped. Without clasping them she would not have knelt to ask
anything of God. She went across the room and lifted her little white
stricken face to Sir Francis above the clasped hands, and gazed at him
with an agony of prayer in her eyes.

"My papa is in prison," she said. "I have come to ask you to take him
out."

Sir Francis looked at her in astonishment, not unmoved; at the back of his
mind the thought that this was one of a family who had impertinently
intruded on him, with whom, emphatically, he wished to have nothing to do.
Because this girl was so young and pretty they had sent her!

"Will you take my papa out of prison?"

"My poor child, I fear that is beyond me. Beyond any one now."

She squeezed the clasped hands painfully together, her eyes clung to his
face: "No: you can! You can! I heard them say so," she said. "Mr. George
Boult and you can take him out if you will. You can do it with money. He
said so. You can do it to-day."

"She means go bail for him," Reginald explained under his breath.

"But why should I do that?" Sir Francis asked, turning upon his brother.
"Her father was no friend--not even an acquaintance--of mine." He was most
anxious that point should be established. "People in--in Mr. Day's
position get their friends to bail them," he said to the girl. "And I
shall not be present; I am going out of town to-day."

"No! you must not go!" Deleah sobbed. "You must do it. There is no one
else. I don't know where to go--I don't know what to do. We none of us
know. You must! You must!"

Half because her strength was failing her, and half because it was the
attitude of prayer, she went to her knees, her head thrown back, looking
up at him, her clasped hands beneath her upturned chin.

How could any man, however cold, reserved, remote, inimical to her cause,
even, turn a deaf ear to such an appeal, remain adamant before her
helplessness, her trustfulness, her childish beauty and self-abandonment!

"Who sent you to me?" he asked.

"No one. I came," she whispered. The change in his tone had weakened her,
she began to shake from head to foot.

"They should have picked on a fitter person for such an errand. It is a
cruelty to have sent such a child as you," he said.

He held out his hand to raise her; but Reggie went to her and lifted her
and placed her in a comfortable chair. "It'll be all right. He'll do it.
Don't you fret," he whispered, soothing her.

She did not heed him, her eyes were on the elder man, who had gone to a
cupboard in the room from whence he produced a decanter of sherry. It was
in that primitive time when in trouble of mind or body, to "take a glass
of wine" was the customary thing. He was always stiff and distant in
bearing, and just now he was annoyed and aggrieved to feel that he was
being "had," as the word of a later age puts it. But his heart was sound.
To look on that trembling, frightened child, and to remember the errand on
which she had been sent he found to be an upsetting thing.

"Sip a little sherry," he said, and passed the glass to his brother to
hold to her lips.

But Deleah took no notice of the glass, she seemed unaware of the presence
of Reggie, her eyes clinging to the face of Reggie's brother: "Will you do
it? Will you save him? Will you?" she implored.

Then, with a gloomy brow, Sir Francis consented. "Very well. I will be in
the way, this afternoon. You say Mr. Boult also will be in the way? If we
can do anything we will."

"It's all right, Deleah," Reggie said. "I told you it would be all right."

"And, remember," Sir Francis adjured her, "that what I do, I do for
you--and for you alone."

Her petition, she understood, was granted; her clasped hands fell from
their attitude of prayer, but her strained eyes still clung to Sir
Francis's face. She did not attempt to thank him; words were inadequate to
express what she felt--she did not think of using them; but there was
adoration of him in her eyes.

With his promise to help, resentment had died out of the man. He took the
glass which Reggie had put down, and himself held it to her lips. "Sip a
little; it will give you strength," he said in the voice of authority; and
she obediently sipped.

"I'll go," she said, but held him with her adoring child's eyes for a
minute still, then slipped from the chair and went to the door. But there
she turned, and with her head pitifully lifted faced the two men. "My papa
has done nothing wrong," she said. "They have put him in prison, but it is
a mistake. Papa has done nothing wrong."

"Poor child!" Sir Francis said, and turned away. The scene had been
painful. He was anxious that it should be over.

Reginald had gone to the door and opened it for her. "You keep your
spirits up," he said coaxingly. "Don't you go and be unhappy, Deleah." He
was passing through the door with her, whispering cheery words, but his
brother called him sharply back.

"Reggie, come here!"

"In a minute."

"No, now. I want you."

There were certain tones of his brother's voice which the younger man had,
so far, never dreamed of disregarding. He reappeared in the room and
closed the door on Deleah's retreating figure.

"Where were you going?"

"Nowhere, in particular. To walk part of the way home with that poor
little girl."

"Stop here, will you? I want you."

Sir Francis Forcus was not going to allow his brother to be seen in the
streets of Brockenham with any member of Mr. William Day's family, that
morning.




CHAPTER VI

Sour Misfortune


Mrs. Day, in looking back over the miserable weeks and months and years
that succeeded her last New Year's party, was inclined to award the palm
for wretchedness to the weeks which intervened between her husband's
appearance before the magistrates and the Spring Assizes at which his
trial came on. It is more than possible that if George Boult and Sir
Francis Forcus had refused to stand bail for him, and he had remained for
those ten weeks in prison, he would have been less unhappy there than was
possible to him, a consciously guilty man, in the changed atmosphere of
his home.

What had happened had changed for him for ever his relations with wife and
children. Among the latter he sat as one beaten, cowed, estranged. With
Franky, alone, for ever again, did he approach to any intimacy. Franky,
who, now that that strange talk of his father being in prison was over,
and his father here at home once more, holding no apprehension of the
future, troubled his head no further about the matter. Him he sometimes
took upon his knee, as of old. To Franky he would give languid advice
about the pictures he was colouring, about the amount of cobbler's wax to
affix to the skipjack he was making, about the rigging of his walnut
ships.

Of Deleah--Deleah, who had been his pet, whom he had acknowledged openly
to be his favourite child--he was shy. He had been told how it had been
she who had arranged the matter of his bail. His little Deleah, to have
gone on such an errand for him! He would have liked never to meet again
those pretty trusting eyes of hers that had been full of pride in and love
for him.

When he had first come home she had cried heart-brokenly against him, had
hung with her arms about his neck, sobbing out that she knew--she
knew--she knew he had done nothing wrong. He had had to push her roughly
from him. He did not wish to go through a scene like that again!

To Bessie and his son, who maintained a sullen condemnatory attitude
towards him, he never spoke if he could avoid doing so.

Towards his wife he held an altogether different demeanour.

The troubles which had come upon him had been induced by his good-natured
desire to meet the heavy expenses of an extravagant household. Money which
he could not earn in the legitimate exercise of his profession, nor come
by honestly, had been spent. Who had had the spending of it but she--his
wife? Of his grievous undoing, then, it was she who was the sole cause.

Of this explanation he delivered himself to her in the first hour of his
return to his home.

She was too stricken, too dumbfounded, too much overwhelmed with shame and
sorrow for him to resent the attack upon herself, or to attempt reprisals.
Of her defenceless submission he took advantage, and presently had brought
himself honestly to believe that on his wife's shoulders lay the
responsibility of his downfall.

His counsel advised him to plead guilty. There was not in any one's mind a
doubt of what the verdict must be. The few who cared for him could only
hope for a light sentence.

When Deleah heard he was not even to deny his guilt she hid herself in her
bedroom, and lay there for hours, face downwards upon the floor. The
carpet was wet with her tears, its scent in her nostrils. For all her life
that snuffy, stuffy smell brought back to her the time of her
uncontrolled, rebellious anguish and her cruel shame.

Was it true? Was it possible? Could this horrible thing have happened in
her home? Deleah's, who had known there only careless, happy days? Was
this man who was to plead guilty to forgery, who had robbed a poor woman
of every farthing she possessed, who was to pass years, perhaps, in
prison, really her father? Who had been sometimes so affectionate to them
all, always so loving and indulgent to her; who had sat in the square
family pew with them all on the Sunday morning, and said grace every day
at meals; who had often told them funny tales, shouting with laughter over
his own jokes; who had banged the tambourine and joined in Sir Roger de
Coverley only a few nights ago?

Bessie and Bernard, drawn together by their misfortune, and forgetting to
torment one another, talked, their heads close together, over the tragedy
which had befallen. They were angry, outraged, seeing what their father
had done as it affected themselves, and they did not spare him. Sometimes
to them--the elder boy and girl--Mrs. Day felt constrained to talk. It was
a relief to pent-up feelings to talk, if only to say, "What will become of
us? How are we to live? What, in the name of God, are we to do?" To these
three, from companionship in misfortune, some consolation was afforded.

But Deleah spoke no word--except to the carpet.

All of them had much leisure. Mrs. Day and Bessie would not show their
faces out of doors. Bernard, who was spending a last quarter at school in
order to pass the Senior Cambridge Exam. before going into his father's
office, decided to work for it at home, rather than at school, where all
the other fellows _knew_. A letter was received from the head-mistress of
the Establishment, "all of whose pupils were the daughters of professional
men," and where Deleah was receiving her education, saying that, until the
dark cloud was lifted which at present overshadowed her family, it would
be better for Deleah Day to take a holiday.

"In any case, I would not have gone there again," Deleah said. "The girls
are always talking about who their fathers are, and looking down on each
other. Not but what there were some upon whose fathers I also looked down.
The Clarks--the wholesale shoe-makers--you could hardly call them
_professional_, could you? But now--oh, what nonsense it all seems now!"

The education of Franky had been carried on hitherto by Bessie. In a
lamentably desultory fashion it is true; but now that, for economy's sake,
they had restricted themselves to a fire in only one sitting-room the poor
child's tuition had to be abandoned. It would have been impossible to live
within the four walls wherein the elder daughter and the younger son
fought through the difficulties of imparting and acquiring knowledge.
Either Franky, on his back, on the floor, was screaming and dangerously
waving his legs, or an infuriate Bessie was chasing him round the table.
The spelling-book was more often used as a weapon of attack than a primer,
and Bessie's voice screaming out the information that C A T spelt Cat
could be heard in the street.

Economies in coal, economies in every direction they had to practise.
Money, where it had been so plentiful was all at once painfully scarce;
credit, which had seemed unlimited, there was none. George Boult, taking
things in hand, and trying to bring some order out of chaos, handed over
weekly to Mrs. Day two pounds for housekeeping. The change from lavishness
to penury bewildered the poor woman, and the change from a table loaded
with good things to one that was nearly bare was not skilfully made. For a
time, until experience taught her, things they could have done without she
continued to buy, and that which was really necessary they went without.
And that allowance, poor as it seemed to her, could not go on for long. It
was by no means certain that enough legally remained to them to repay Mr.
Boult for these disbursements. If they had been willing to live upon his
means he was not at all a generous man; he did not encourage them to
expect pecuniary help from him.

"What do you advise? Have you no plan? What are we all to do?" Mrs. Day
asked of her husband.

"You must hang on till I come out. If we're lucky it will only be a matter
of a few months."

"But even for a few months, William, what are we to do?"

"You must work," William said. "Earn something. It will be a change for
you. I've kept the lot of you in idleness till now. Now you'll learn what
it is to work. It won't do you any harm."

"All that is so easy to say. But what work are we to do? Where are we to
work? I cannot see that we shall have a roof over our heads."

Then the wretched man, who knew no more than she what would become of them
all, and was infinitely the more wretched on that account, broke into a
torrent of oaths. "Haven't I enough to bear?" he asked her. "Haven't I
myself to think about? Is mine such a pleasant prospect, that you come to
pester me, giving me no peace? How do other women manage? Women that have
never had husbands to slave for them as I have slaved for you."

Poor Mrs. Day, the least pugnacious of women, who at the best of times had
scarcely known how to hold her own with him, fled before the unreasonable,
miserable man.

Bessie, in talking to her brother over the hopelessness of their position,
used the child's time-honoured reproach against the parent. "Papa and mama
should not have had children if they were going to make such a muddle as
this," she argued. Bessie had not wanted to be born, she declared. Her
father and mother were responsible. They must at least say what was to be
done. Papa, she declared to Bernard, should be made to say.

"Papa, when Deleah and I want our hats and dresses for the spring, what
are we to do?" she asked her father, with that note of aggression in her
voice with which he had become familiar from her.

"Do? Go without them," he promptly replied.

"You know very well we can't go without clothes, papa."

"Then go to the devil," papa said, and getting up slouched from the room.

Bernard, too, who was more afraid of the altered man than Bessie, and for
long shrank from any conversation with him, was at last induced by his
mother to consult his father as to his own future.

"There isn't much use that I can see, sir, in my sweating away at my books
for this exam," he said.

"Oh? Why not?"

"Supposing that I get through it, what am I to do then?"

"You must do the best you can. This Senior Cambridge Exam, they tell me,
is a door to any of the professions."

"But you want money to enter a profession, sir. From what I hear we have
none."

"Your hearing has not played you false in that direction. What I had you
managed to spend, among you. I was the goose that laid the golden egg; now
circumstances forbid my laying any more--for a time. You must look after
yourselves."

"But if you could only give us some idea of how to set about it."

Then, upon him, too, his father, having shown a greater measure of
forbearance so far than he accorded the mere women of his family, turned
savagely. The poor wretch did not know how to help them, did not know what
to advise them to do: to frighten them was his only resource.

"Haven't I got enough to think about?" he shouted at the boy. "You and
your mother and sisters come and badger--and badger me--"

"All right, sir. I won't badger you any more."

"All I ask is to be let alone--to be granted a little peace. You have no
mercy--none!"

But after that conversation the boy gave up even the pretence of studying.
"Where's the good?" he asked of Bessie. "If I passed the blessed thing,
where's the good? I shall have to be an errand boy, I suppose, or sweep a
crossing. I don't want a Senior Cambridge Certificate for that."

The womankind did their best to persuade him to persevere, but he declared
that he could not study in his bedroom without a fire, nor could he so
much as drive a word into his head if he had to sit in the same room as
his father.

That room where their pleasant evenings had been passed while Mr. Day
played his cards at the club, presented altogether a different aspect in
these sad times when that unhappy man formed part of the circle. The poor,
bulky wretch sat always over the fire--literally over it, his chair-feet
touching the fender, his own feet as often as not on the bars; the rest of
the family withdrawn as much as possible from the hearth. If there was
talk among them as they sat at their table with their sewing, their
painting, their books--and being young they talked, and even sometimes
laughed--he resented the fact that they could do so, and sometimes snarled
round upon them with a request for silence. But equally, it seemed, did he
resent their silence when it fell, and would make sarcastic remarks to
them when they withdrew on the liveliness of the society they provided for
him.

An undue amount of the weekly two pounds for housekeeping money went to
find the master of the house tobacco. There was some good port wine in the
cellar; he might as well drink it while he had the chance, William Day
thought. What else had he to do but smoke and drink; and he did both, all
day long.

He had not been a drinking man, although he had ever taken his share of
the good things of life, nor an idle one. His family looked on now at his
altered habits with fear and a growing disgust. It was surprising how, in
the loss of his own self-respect and the knowledge that he had lost the
respect of those who had loved him, the man altered. With astonishment
they, who had known him all their lives, saw him in a few short weeks
become selfish, greedy, unmannerly, even unclean. The ash from his pipe
fell on his coat, he would not brush it away; he had evidently given up
the use of a nail-brush; his hair hung over his forehead; his untrimmed
beard and whiskers stuck out round the big face which was flabby now, and
unwholesome.

Missing the luxuries from his table, he forgot the niceties he had
hitherto observed there. When he came to his meals with unwashed hands,
took to himself, with apparently no thought for the rest, the best of what
he found there, the elder boy and girl would look at each other with angry
condemnation in their eyes. Such lapses from a hitherto observed code of
good manners Mrs. Day bore with an apparently apathetic indifference. For
years, truth to tell, she had ceased to love the man, and the little
deviations, which read so trivially but mean in daily life so much, were
almost unnoticed by her in the stupefying sense of the misfortune which
had befallen them all.

It was only Deleah, devotedly loving her father, who perceived the real
tragedy at the back of this neglect of personal and family obligations;
only she who dimly understood that this disfiguring outward alteration was
but the sign of an inner, more pitiful change; only she who had the
insight to read in her father's savage ways the despair, the scorn of
himself, the rage with destiny, the bitter enmity against a world in which
he was no longer to exist. Only Deleah felt in her heart the sorrow of it
all--Deleah who was a reader of Thackeray, of Trollope, of Dickens, of
Tennyson; whose eyes had wept for imaginary woes before these bitter drops
had been wrung from them for her own; who had learnt that tears were not
the only signs of an anguished heart; and knew that the love of position,
of home, of a fair name even were not the chief things for which they as a
family should have mourned.

And so the slow weeks, even the slow months passed. The muddy, narrow
pavements of Brockenham grew dry and dusty in the biting east winds.
People at whom Mrs. Day and her daughters peeped through curtained windows
walked by with snowdrops, with violets, and presently with cowslips in
their hands. Spring, so slow in coming, yet so dreaded by them all, was
coming at last. Easter was here. Easter too soon was here!--and the Easter
Assizes.




CHAPTER VII

Husband And Father


On the evening before the morning on which his trial was to take place, a
different creature seemed to be in the place lately occupied by William
Day.

For one thing, his appearance was improved. A barber, sent for, that
afternoon, had cut off the greasy, disguising locks of sand-coloured hair,
and trimmed the wildly luxuriant beard which had given the man such a
slovenly, unfamiliar appearance. His upper lip was once more shaved.

"I don't mind kissing you now, papa," Franky said, who had shirked
saluting the stubbly face.

This improvement being completed, he made a change in his clothes, and at
their tea-time appeared among them all in his black cloth, long-skirted
coat, his "pepper and salt" trousers. As another outward sign of his moral
degradation he had dispensed with linen at throat and wrists lately, but
now his heavy chin sank once more into the enclosure of a collar whose
stiffly starched points reached to the middle of his cheeks. The pin which
adorned his thickly padded necktie was large in size, consisting of a
gold-rimmed glass case in which was exhibited, braided and intertwined,
hair cut from the heads of his four children. They had all of them clubbed
together to prepare this offering for papa on last St. Valentine's Day.

And with the resumption of a more careful toilette the poor man had gone
back to the decent demeanour of happier days. He said nothing; was,
indeed, in a state of black depression which he made no attempt to hide,
but he outraged no longer the sensitive feelings of his family by his
behaviour.

"Papa is just like what he used to look," Franky said, when he beheld the
renovation of his parent's appearance. "Shall we paint pictures this
evening, papa?"

They tried to hush the child, but Franky saw no reason why he should not
make his request, nor why it should be refused. He fetched his paint-box
and a store of pictures he had cut from some old papers.

"You do sunsets so much more beautifully than me, papa. If you'd just do
the sunsets for me!"

And presently the father had drawn a chair by the side of his little
son's, and was showing him how to mix his colours, and admonishing him not
to suck his paintbrushes, as on the happy winter evenings before the
crash.

It was a landscape with mill and marshland and water, the child had
chosen, and there was a large space to be occupied with the sunset at
which his parent excelled, and much scraping and mixing of carmine and
yellow ochre and cobalt blues. So that Franky's bed-time was here before
the picture was finished. He was sent off as usual, protesting and in
tears.

"You'll help me to finish it to-morrow night, papa? Promise you'll help me
to-morrow night!" he entreated, through his weeping. But Bessie, whose
task it was to see him to bed, pulled the child relentlessly from the
room, and slammed the door upon them both.

George Boult had come in, for a last talk with his friend. His presence
was never desired by the family, but it relieved the tension, somewhat, of
that sad evening.

The two men sat with their pipes, and a bottle of that much diminished
store of "eighteen forty-sevens" was broached. But presently it was
noticed that although William Day held his pipe in his hand he did not
smoke. With the other hand he shaded his eyes from the gas light, and he
said nothing. One by one the young people crept off to bed, and presently
Mrs. Day, whose attempt to keep up a conversation with the visitor had
quickly failed, also stood up to go.

"Are you leaving us, Lydia?" the husband said when he became aware of her
intention.

"I will not go if you wish me to stay, William."

"No, no. Go, and get some sleep."

Then, as for a moment she stood, hesitating at the door, longing to escape
from that sad presence, yet miserable to go: "Do the best you can for my
poor wife," Day said to his friend. "She has been a good wife to me."

She had lived with him for twenty years, and had, perhaps, never heard a
word of praise from him before. When at last it came it was too much for
her to bear, and she went, sobbing loudly, from the room.

An hour later when the unhappy master of the house had for the last time
attended his friend to the hall-door, watched him down the steps into the
quiet street, given a silent nod to the other's silent gesture of farewell
as he turned to walk down the echoing pavement; when he had put out the
gas in the sitting-room and hall, and dragged himself--who can divine with
what heaviness of heart?--heavily up the stairs, he came upon a little
white night-gowned figure, watching for him on the landing, outside his
bedroom door.

It was Deleah who had waited for him there.

"It is only I, papa," she said when he stopped short at sight of her.
"Only your little Deleah that I--I--loves you so."

"Be off to bed, this instant," he said, and pointed an angry finger in the
direction of her room.

But she put her arms about his neck and clung to him with stifled sobbing,
till with the choke of his own sobbing she felt his great chest heave
beneath her clinging form.

When he had flung himself upon the bed beside his wife he was choking and
sobbing still, in a fashion dreadful to hear.

"William!" she said timidly, and put a shaking hand upon his shoulder. "Is
there anything I can do or say that can help you, William?"

He did not answer her, but the bed shook with his rending sobs; and she
lay and sobbed beside him.

When at length such calm as comes from exhaustion fell: "I did it for you
and the children," he said. "I thought, with luck, I could have put it
right. But it was for all of you I did it. You will remember that?"

"I will remember it while I live," she said. "You may be quite sure that
neither your children nor I will ever forget."

"Deleah upset me. She should have been in bed"--it was so he excused his
tears to her--"I should not have broken down like this if she had not
unmanned me. The child should have gone to bed."

She heard him swallow down his tears, and then he began again: "Deleah and
Franky have always been--have always been--"

"The dearest," she supplied, understanding him. "The dearest of your
children, William?"

"Tell them that--after to-morrow, will you?"

She promised. "Bessie and Bernard have not such winning ways, perhaps, but
they love you, William, I am sure."

To this he made no answer. After a time she spoke to him again: "Have you
anything else to say to me, William? There have been too few words between
us of late. It has been my fault, perhaps. But now, have you anything to
say that might comfort us both to remember?"

"Nothing." He said the word drearily, but not unkindly, and she did not
resent his silence. Full well she knew that volumes, if he could have
spoken them, could not have lightened her helplessness in the present and
terror of the future, nor his despair.

She lay for a few minutes, the tears pouring down her cheeks, unchecked in
the darkness, then she forced herself to say the only few words she could
think of which might comfort him in the time to come.

"William, I won't talk to you, I won't disturb you. I want you to go to
sleep, to get a night's rest, if you can; but just this one thing I do
wish to say to you--I do want you to remember. It is that you must be sure
never to think I feel any anger against you. Only pity--only pity,
William; and such a sorrow for you that I cannot put it into words. I have
wanted to tell you all along, but--"

She left it there, and he received what she said in silence.

Only once again he spoke. "This has been Hell," he said, and she knew he
spoke of the weeks he had spent, an alien in his own home, awaiting his
trial. "Hell! Whatever comes, I am glad this is over."

Then he turned on his side, away from her, and lay quite quiet; and
presently she knew with thanksgiving that he slept.




CHAPTER VIII

The Way Out


The prisoner in accordance with his counsel's advice pleaded Guilty. It
was only a question of the length of the sentence, therefore, and the
judge before whom William Day appeared did not err on the side of mercy.
The heaviest sentence that it was in his power to allot to a malefactor of
that class he passed upon William Day.

None of his own were present, but the Court was filled with people to whom
the prisoner was a familiar figure of everyday life.

It was all but impossible to look upon this big, important-looking man in
the well-cut clothes, holding till the last few weeks among them the
position of gentleman, and believe that it was a criminal standing before
their eyes. The attraction of gazing at, of gloating upon, such a
phenomenon was great. He had been a hectoring kind of man, walking very
noisily among his fellows, taking to himself a great deal of room. Such an
one gives offence frequently if unconsciously. There was none who saw
William Day standing up for his sentence in the dock that day who bore a
grudge, or remembered.

With some there he had assumed an insolent superiority, with other few,
whose position entitled them to choose their acquaintance, he had been
unwarrantably familiar. For the minute he held his place after sentence
was pronounced his eyes travelled slowly but with a dreadful look of
appeal over the familiar faces. Over faces of tradespeople, with whom he
had dealt; of clients for whom he had done business; of people with whom
he had dined and whom he had entertained in return; of men who had driven
him in cabs, blacked his boots, carried his portmanteaux. The slowly
travelling gaze had in it something of a sick despair, something of a wild
appeal. The men over whom it passed, bore it in absolute, breathless
silence, but they never forgot it.

The great cheeks that had seemed ready to burst with good-living, hung
loose and flabby now, the hands that had been prompt with the grasp of
friendship, that had waved greetings from window or pavement, that had
ever been generous in giving, clung to the rail of the dock, the knuckles
whitened with the tension. The tongue that had been so loud in dispute, so
rough in anger, so boisterous in welcome, lay dry and silent in the mouth
which had lopped open.

There was a feeling upon many of those who momentarily encountered the
dreadful gaze that they were responsible; they longed to exonerate
themselves, to say to him, "I, at least, had nothing to do with it. I am
sorry, William Day. Indeed I am sorry." It was a relief when he turned, at
the warder's touch on his arm, and went below.

In the room where he was allowed to sit for a time before being driven to
prison his lawyer came to speak to him; the confidential clerk from his
own office; his friend, George Boult.

"It is very severe," George Boult kept saying with nervous reiteration.
"Very severe."

The prisoner did not speak. He was wearing, arranged across his heavy
paunch, a handsome chain of gold. With fingers stiff from their hold upon
the dock-rail he began, bunglingly, to detach this chain from his
waistcoat. His watch came out with it--a big watch, with a double gold
case. He opened the outer case in an aimless way, mechanically, and for no
object, it seemed, for he did not look at the time. Then, without a word
he held out the watch and chain to his friend, and lifted the fingers
which had fumbled with the watch-case to his lead-coloured lips.

Within a quarter of an hour from the time that William Day had listened to
his heavy sentence of penal servitude he lay on his back, dead.




CHAPTER IX

For The Widow And The Fatherless


At the initiative of George Boult a subscription was opened for "the widow
and children of the late William Day, who had left them without any means
of support."

This sad and irrefutable statement was made in an advertisement in the
local newspaper, and was written, in Mr. Boult's own round and clerkly
hand, on the top of the list of subscribers hanging in conspicuous places
in the Banks, the Public Library, the principal shops of the town.

It was said by those competent to form an opinion that the engineering of
this scheme to help poor Mrs. Day and her children should have been in
other hands. That George Boult's social position in the town did not
entitle him to head the list. A banker's name should have figured there,
or the name of the M. P. for Brockenham, or Sir Francis Forcus's name.
With such an influential person to lead the way it was argued that the
smaller fry would have been more willing to follow suit. It was also
whispered that one of such persons of wealth and note would have led off
with at least a hundred pounds. George Boult's name was down for fifty.

It was a large amount for him to give--not because he could not well have
afforded more, but because he was all unaccustomed to giving. He had been
known to be the unhappy man's friend, and because he headed the list with
his fifty pounds it was said that no one liked to outdo that donation. Sir
Francis Forcus, in order to avoid hurting those sensitive feelings with
which Mr. Boult was accredited, had the happy thought to put his own name
down for fifty pounds, and those of his wife and his young brother, each
for the same amount.

There were two more names down for like sums, after which came a few for
ten pounds, a few more for five pounds; there were numerous donations of
one pound; after which the subscriptions dropped to ten shillings, to
five--

Poor Mrs. Day, casting a sick eye down the list as it continued to appear,
once a week, in the local paper, felt ashamed by the paltriness of the
amounts which were being amassed in her behalf. "Collected by a
well-wisher, six and nine." Several people, modestly content that their
initials only should appear, presented two and six.

"Sympathy" was down for a shilling. How degraded she felt as she read!
Though, why a gift of a shilling should have hurt her more than the gift
of fifty pounds she could not have explained.

When, after dragging on far several weeks, the subscription list was
closed the sum collected only amounted to a little over six hundred
pounds.

George Boult had been ready to pledge himself that it would have risen to
a thousand. He had spared no trouble in the collection of the sum. The
list of subscribers hung in a conspicuous place in his shop. He never
failed to call to it the attention of his well-to-do customers. A case
more needing help was never before the public of Brockenham, he would
point out to them.

But the public of Brockenham, severely shocked by the tragic circumstances
of William Day's death, recovered quickly from the blow, to say that the
death had been the best thing which could happen to the family. To be rid
of such a man, to have no more attaching to them the reproach of a father
and husband in prison, removed half the woeful load of misfortune from the
case. That the children were mostly of an age to earn their own livings,
their mother still fairly young and strong, were facts also remembered.
Then the word began to be passed about from mouth to mouth--spoken in a
whisper at first, but presently a word which might be spoken without fear
of rebuke in any ear--that the Day family had always been eaten up with
pride, and that the lawyer's troubles had come about through the
extravagance of his wife.

The sum of six hundred and forty-nine pounds being collected, what to do
with it was the next thing to decide.

The day after the subscription list was closed Mrs. Day went to an
interview with George Boult in order to set before him a proposition, the
result of the unanimous conclusion to which she and her children after
many tearful consultations had come.

"Of course I must have some plan to put before him," the mother had said,
pathetically conscious that however helpless she felt she must by no means
appear to be so. "It would not do for us to have made no plans, after the
interest Mr. Boult has taken; and his fifty pounds."

"I wish we could chuck it in his face," Bernard said; he was well on his
way, poor boy, to exemplify the truth of the proverb that scornful dogs
eat dirty puddings.

"Of all the people who have given, Mr. Boult is the one I would most love
to send his money back to," Bessie agreed. "We may be able to wipe the
rest off our minds in time, but we shall never be allowed to forget the
fifty pounds of the detestable Boult."

"He was poor papa's friend--the only one. He was good to papa," Deleah
said, but to herself alone. For in that unhappy household was a law,
unwritten, unspoken, but binding none the less, that the name of the
husband and father should never be spoken.

"We must remember that the fifty pounds seems a great deal to him," Mrs.
Day reminded them. "The least we can do is to pay him the compliment of
telling him what we intend to do with the money."

However, she found, on interviewing George Boult, that no such delicate
attention was expected from her. The money he had raised was money for him
to handle--for the benefit of Mrs. Day and her children of course, but
without reference to what might be their feelings in the matter.

He was not a man to doubt his own wisdom, or to seek to confirm an opinion
with the approval of others, or to hesitate in the pursuit of a course
which to his perceptions appeared desirable. Also, having mapped out his
plan or set out on his chosen path he never afterwards allowed to himself
that there were others. A simple method which reduced to nothing for him
the chances of regret or mental worry.

He was an eminently successful tradesman. His draper's business, which had
been on a par with the businesses of half a dozen drapers when he had
originally started in Brockenham, was now easily the first of its kind,
not only in the town but in the county. It was natural that he should
believe in trade--natural that he should fix his faith to nothing else as
a means of money-making.

"There's nothing like business," he said to Mrs. Day.

She was seated in his private counting-room on the upper floor of the big
shop--it was half a dozen shops joined into one now. To reach that room
she had to pass through an ante-room full of entering clerks, busy at
their desks. They lifted their heads from their quill-driving to look at
the poor woman as she went by. She went with hanging head, her thick
widow's veil over her face, the thought in her mind, "Perhaps among the
poor clerks that collection of six shillings and ninepence had been made."
Perhaps one of the chilblain-fingered girls behind the counters down below
had been the "Sympathiser" to whom she had been indebted for a shilling.

She was humbled to the earth. It was so she would have described her
condition, as she walked to her interview with George Boult. If she had
been told that her heart, on the contrary, was filled with pride, and
beating high with rebellion, and that it was just the want of humility
within her, who yet contrived to present a humble bearing, which made
everything so unnecessarily painful, she would not have believed.

When, seated opposite to him at the small square leather-covered
writing-table in the draper's counting-house, she turned back her veil, he
noticed at once the ravages which grief and shame and anxiety had made in
her face. He was quick to notice, because, practical, hard-working,
hard-headed widower as he was, he had an eye for female beauty, and the
handsome dark face of his friend's wife--the woman who, in the days of her
haughtiness, had turned her back on him and kept him at arm's length--he
had unwillingly admired.

The face of Lydia Day now was that of a woman who had been plump but was
so no longer. The cheeks which had been firm and full were pendulous, the
healthily pale but brunette complexion was of a leaden pallor; in the
darkened skin beneath the deep-set, large dark eyes, little puckers
showed. Her figure, too, had fallen away. She had lost her proud,
self-assured carriage.

"It's finished her off, as far as looks go," George Boult said to himself,
not entirely without satisfaction. He was one of those who firmly believed
his friend's ruin lay at her door. William Day had robbed to minister to
his wife's extravagance and pride. It was well that she should be humbled.

"There is nothing like business," he repeated. "And I have decided to
invest the little capital of six hundred and forty-nine pounds and a few
odd shillings I have raised for you, in a business which will yield a good
return, and enable you to make a living for your two younger children. A
groshery business, in short."

"Grocery?" repeated Mrs. Day, gazing blankly at him.

"Groshery," he said shortly, and looked hardily at her with his lips set,
his chin stuck out, and his quick observant eyes on her face.

"Grocery?" she reiterated faintly, at a loss for anything else to say.

"You know that nice bright little business in Bridge Street? Carr's. Old
Jonas Carr's. He is retiring, you know--or perhaps you don't know--it's
been kept secret for business purposes. I am glad to have got hold of it
in the nick of time, and I am putting your little capital into the
business."

"Indeed!"

"It's a stroke of wonderful luck, I consider--its falling in, just now."

"But I do not quite understand. Will someone who is taking the shop allow
a good interest, do you mean?"

"Not exactly that, ma'am." He gave a sound that might have been caused by
a smothered chuckle, or have been meant for a snort of contempt, and going
from the table, placed himself upon the hearthrug, where he paused, making
a prayer perhaps for patience to be given him to deal with this fool in
her untrained, untaught folly.

"Not exactly," he went on. "I am taking the business for you to work,
ma'am. Jonas Carr is an old man now, but he has lived out of the business,
and brought up his children out of it, and this with only antiquated
methods. With new life put into the concern, and with altogether
up-to-date management, there is the making there, in my opinion--and I
think I may say my opinion on such a matter is of value--of an excellent
little business."

"For me to work?" Mrs. Day asked in feeble protest. "Me? A _grocery_
business?"

"Why not?" He eyed her relentlessly, biting his finger nails. "What did
you think you were going to do with the money which I have collected for
you? Spend it? And collect again?"

"Not that, Mr. Boult. Certainly not that." She looked down at the
black-gloved hands which lay in her lap. They trembled; to keep them
steady she caught them one in the other. "I have been talking it over with
my children, and we have decided, if you approve, to take a good-sized
house by the sea, where we could all live together, and take in lodgers.
That would be a way of making a living which would come easier to my girls
and me than any other."

"Easier? Yes. The misfortune is, ma'am, that the things which are easier
in the beginning are always difficult to finish up. We'll begin the other
way round, if you please." He bit the nail a minute longer, looked at it,
put it out of sight behind his coat tails. "Ah no; that scheme won't do at
all," he said, quite pleasantly. "I know these lodgings, and the miserable
women who keep them, and can only make ends meet by thieving the lodgers'
mutton. The groshery line is altogether on another shelf. You and your
daughters can not only make a living at it, you can make money. Make
money."

Mrs. Day lifted her head, tried to capture something of her old bearing,
tried to get a note of firmness into her voice. "I do not really think I
could keep a shop," she said. "Above all, a grocery shop. I could not
undertake it, Mr. Boult; and I am sure the girls would not like it at all;
nor my son."

"What then?" he asked her, very quiet.

"I think my own plan. The house by the sea. We should escape from
Brockenham, which we much wish to do; we should begin again where
we--where our story--is not known. For the children's sake it would be
best. For us all it would be more--suitable."

"But I have told you, ma'am, the plan is out of the question." He turned
from her and kicked the coal in the grate, working off his irritation in
that harmless fashion. Then, facing the poor lady again he adopted a tone
intended to show her he was not to be trifled with. "Understand at once,
Mrs. Day, I will be no party to the money subscribed on the tacit
understanding that it is to be properly invested for you and your
children, being thrown away in any such hopeless, silly fashion. Your
husband asked me to stand your friend; to do my best for you. As I
understand the position, you have no one else to look to?"

He paused, but she said nothing. William Day's relatives had been poorer,
less well placed than he. As he had risen he had left them behind,
forgotten them. Mrs. Day had been the only child of parents long since
dead.

"Since there is no one else, I am willing to be your friend--within
limits, of course. I have been instrumental in securing for you this sum
of money--many fortunes have been made with less. To begin with I did not
have half the capital. In doing so I made myself responsible for its being
put to a proper use. I intend to see that it is done."

Mrs. Day was mute. The eyes looking out from their dark-stained orbits
were hopeless.

Mr. Boult having paused for the reply which did not come, went on in a
lighter tone. "There is a very good-sized house over Carr's shop. I went
over it, and in deed into everything before deciding. There are six
bed-rooms and a living room of unusual size. This gives you the
opportunity of taking a lodger. I have already spoken to my new buyer
about it. My Manchester man. He is anxious to board with a pleasant
family, he tells me. So there you have a lodger ready to your hand, ma'am;
since you fancy lodgers."

Mrs. Day had a feeling of oppression in the breathless air of the
counting-house, of being smothered by George Boult. She untied the broad
strings of ribbon and crape of her widow's bonnet, and looked round
anxiously for a window. There was none, the counting-house being lighted
by a sky-light. Two big tears rolled down her cheeks, she drew a long
breath like a great sigh.

"I am giving my Manchester man a good salary," the draper went on. "He
would easily be able to spare you thirty shillings a week for board and
lodging, and I should not advise you to take a penny less."

Mrs. Day with an effort pulled herself together. "The man who is to manage
the shop would want a room in the house, I suppose?" she suggested.

"Manage the shop? What shop?"

"The shop you have been speaking of--the grocer's shop."

"You yourself will manage it," Boult said. "Nice bright little concern as
it is, the business won't keep a man; you will manage it, assisted on busy
days by your eldest daughter."

But although Mrs. Day could not fight for herself, she was capable of
defending her children. "To that I could not consent," she said; "I would
never allow Bessie--Bessie!--to wait in a grocer's shop."

"It would not hurt her, ma'am. It would do her good."

Mrs. Day was silent, but her silence was eloquent. With shaking fingers
she tied her bonnet strings--the wide black strings that wanted pulling
out, the narrow white ones which must be arranged above them.

Boult, seeing that she was preparing to depart, assumed a more friendly
tone. "You must not feel that you are being hustled into this thing," he
said. "The money is, of course, in a sense, yours, although I have had to
decide what to do with it."

Mrs. Day rose to go, Boult came forward with his hand extended.

"Anything that has to do with the people's food or drink _pays_," he said
encouragingly. "If I had my time over again I would take up with the
groshery line instead of the drapery. People must have food, ma'am. They
must have it, even before frocks and furbelows."

"About Bernard?" Mrs. Day asked, waiving, not without dignity, the other
subject.

"I have thought of sending Bernard to Ingleby. I have opened a branch
there. It is not a big concern at present, of course, but the boy can
learn the business there, and if he has anything in him--I shall keep my
eye on him--he can come to us later."

Then he grasped the hand she unwillingly extended.

"You see I promised poor William," he told her, by way of explaining his
kind interest in her affairs. "And however thankless the task may be, I
shall keep my word."

She could not answer him, but when he released her hand she bowed her head
and went away.




Before Mrs. Day betook herself home she turned her feet in the direction
of Bridge Street. It was situated in a busy part of the town, but was only
a short and not by any means prosperous thoroughfare connecting two of the
principal streets. Standing on the opposite pavement Mrs. Day contemplated
the grocer's shop from which Mr. Jonas Carr was retiring. His name in
small white letters was painted on the black lintel of the door: "Jonas
Carr, licensed to sell tobacco and snuff." A dingy-looking little shop;
not such a shop as any of those on which the wife of William Day had
bestowed her custom, and she had never been within its door.

The three windows above the shop looked dirty, and closely over them were
stretched dirty lace curtains. The windows on the higher floor were
dirtier still, and in place of the lace curtains were crooked-hanging
blinds.

Poor Mrs. Day set her lips tightly as she looked. Then she crossed the
street and entered the shop. Mr. Carr, behind the counter, a toothless,
unpleasant-looking old man, was exhibiting in an apathetic manner a piece
of fat bacon to a customer.

"You can have the streaky if you prefer it," he said.

The customer did prefer the streaky, and took it, half wrapped, under her
shawl, and went.

"And what for you, pray?"

Mrs. Day asked for a quarter of a pound of tea, and while he served her
looked about at the dark little dirty shop with its mingled odours.

When she left the establishment of Jonas Carr her spirits had risen. The
whole thing was ludicrous. Imagine the name of Lydia Day, "licensed to
sell tobacco and snuff," painted over the door! Imagine her--her!--behind
the counter of that squalid little shop! Imagine Bessie, and her exquisite
young Deleah passing their lives in that upper room behind the net
curtains! It was ridiculous, grotesque, impossible, and could not be.

But she was to find with astonishingly small waste of time that it could
be.

And it was.




CHAPTER X

Exiles From Life's Revels


For the first year that Mrs. Day waited behind the counter of the Bridge
Street shop more trade was done there than in the most prosperous period
of old Jonas Carr's tenancy. Quite half the ladies of Brockenham left
their particular grocers to bestow their custom on the widow. From
kindness of heart, from curiosity, from the impulse to do as others were
doing, people flocked to purchase their tea and sugar of Lydia Day,
licensed also to supply them, if desired, with tobacco and snuff. George
Boult's prognostications of the success of the venture seemed to be more
than fulfilled.

Bessie stoutly refusing to go into the shop--it took more than George
Boult to manage Bessie!--he was constrained to sanction the engaging of a
youth to assist behind the counter. Mr. Pretty, therefore--he was called
"Mr." for business purposes, his tender years hardly entitling him to the
designation--and a boy to go errands, composed the staff.

From eight in the morning till eight at night the shop was open; and even
when it was supposed to be closed, Mrs. Day could not enjoy an undisturbed
rest with her daughters and Franky in their upstairs sitting-room. For the
neighbouring tradesmen, all of whom had stretched out friendly hands to
the poor lady so unwillingly becoming one of them, had the bad habit of
forgetting to make their purchases till after shop hours, when they would
send their maids-of-all-work to the private door for the supper cheese, or
the breakfast coffee they had too late discovered they were "out of."

Bessie and Deleah fought against the humouring of these out-of-season
customers. Often they attempted to hold their tired mother forcibly in her
chair when she would arise to go to them. "Let people get their goods at
regulation hours, or refuse to serve them," said the Manchester man, now
an inmate of the Day household. But when the grievance was put before
George Boult he was of a different opinion.

"Refuse to serve them over-night, and they go somewhere else in the
morning," he asserted. "The maxim I have held by all my life is, 'Business
is Never Done.' And you may take my word for it, ma'am, _successful_
business never is done. Write that out on a card, Miss Bessie, and hang it
over your mantelpiece."

"No, thank you," from a scornful Bessie with an averted head. "As it
happens I don't at all agree with you, Mr. Boult."

So poor Mrs. Day, who did not grumble, but who nevertheless knew herself
to be a martyr, would rise from her delicious rest in her chair over the
fire, accompanied by Deleah to hold the candle, would descend to the
cellar to cut the cheese--both the women were terrified of the cellar, the
unilluminated caves and corners, the beetles, the rats. In the shop again,
they would take down one of the monster green canisters, purchased of the
retiring Jonas Carr for the purpose of striking awe into the bosoms of
customers, but a few of which did, of a truth, hold tea, and select the
special mixture to the taste of the laggard customer. It was an
aggravation of the hardship when, in place of the maid, the mistress would
run in. In that case Mrs. Day must stand for a half hour to listen to talk
of the neighbour's children's colds, the neighbour's servant's
delinquencies, the neighbour's husband's shortcomings.

Bessie was always cross with her mother when she returned. "It makes
everything so uncomfortable and spoils the evening," she complained. "The
only time we have for comfort, mama. You might remember!"

As the Christmas season approached Mr. Boult was inspired with an idea
which was productive of good commercial results, but was the cause of
added extreme discomfort to them all. Mrs. Day, he ordained, was not only
to advertise home-made mincemeat, but to make the mincemeat at home, and
of a quality not procurable in shops. The housewives of Brockenham made
their own mincemeat because the article on the market was not palatable,
the tyrant of the family declared. Every one of them would be glad to be
saved trouble. Then, let Mrs. Day, for whom he had procured an excellent
receipt, make it for them. The sale would be enormous.

So they advertised the precious stuff from the beginning of December; and
from a fortnight before this time to the end of the second week in
January, the little family worked at stoning raisins (there were no
machines to make the task easy then), chopping almonds and suet and apples
and orange peel, late into the night, and sometimes on into the early
hours of the morning.

For the sale, as predicted, was great. It taxed the powers of the women to
their utmost to keep up the supply. Orders poured in, orders were
repeated; customers called to assure Mrs. Day that while she lived to do
it for them they would never be bothered to make the stuff again. Others
came with the intention to wheedle the receipt from the shop-woman. Such
was the unbusiness-like disposition of the poor creature, she would at
once have surrendered it, had the prescription been hers to give. But
George Boult, knowing with whom he had to deal, had laid an embargo on the
property.

It was during the stress of that first Christmas in Bridge Street that the
relations between the Days and their boarder, the Manchester man, hitherto
somewhat strained and distant, became easy and familiar.

Beside the comfortable chair in the chimney corner which had been
apportioned him, a small table was drawn up which held, always ready to
his use, his tobacco jar, his pipe, his book, his papers. To this, the
evening meal which he shared with the family over, he would retire,
preferring silence and, generally pretended, absorption in his book to the
obtrusion of his conversation on the widow and her daughters. But in the
harassment of the time of mincemeat the lodger's shyness evaporated or his
reserve broke down. He could not see women, dropping with sleep and
weariness, working themselves half to death over their hated tasks while
he sat at ease with his pipe and his newspaper.

"Why should you ladies spend your evenings in the kitchen?" he asked. "It
is comfortabler in here. Chop your plums and grate your nutmegs and things
here. You won't disturb me."

Bessie at once demurred. "We will keep our sitting-room, at least, free of
the shop, thank you," she said.

"If Mr. Gibbon doesn't like being in here alone, mayn't he bring his pipe
and see us chop in the kitchen," Franky suggested.

The lodger had become possessed of a pistol, bought second-hand, with a
view to practise on the stray cats who made a happy meeting-place of the
Days' back yard. But, one of the girls proving tender-hearted on the
subject of cats, bottles were substituted, Franky being admitted to the
perfect joy of seeing Mr. Gibbon try to hit them from his bedroom window.
An honour and privilege highly appreciated by the child.

Mr. Gibbon would not bring his pipe, but presently he appeared among them,
and drew up a chair to the table between Bessie and Deleah, and proceeded
quite cleverly to cut up the orange and lemon peel, a task allotted him by
Deleah.

"It is quite the nicest and least messy of all the things," she told him.

Deleah was careful at all times to show little special politeness to their
boarder. She had it on her mind that he lived among them, lonely and
apart, and often anxiously she pondered in her own mind the question did
poor Mr. Gibbon get his money's worth?

"Deleah always chops the candied peel herself," Bessie explained. "She
eats it, and feeds Franky on it. Mama, I should think Deda will soon take
all the profit off your mincemeat if she eats the citron peel."

"Don't eat the citron peel, my dear," mama dutifully admonished the pretty
younger daughter.

"Only the tiniest little bit, mama. Kind of hard bits that you can't cut
up. Bessie can take my place, and I can grate the nutmegs if she likes."

"But last night, Miss Deleah grated her thumb as well. We can't have any
of your thumbs, Miss Deleah, in the mincemeat."

It was Emily who made that observation. Emily who had gone into the family
nineteen years ago as nurse to the eldest child. She had stuck by them in
their reverse of fortune--indeed it had never entered either her mind or
theirs, so completely had the long service made her one of them, that she
could do anything else--and she now occupied the position of "general" in
the upstairs kitchen of Bridge Street. She was chopping suet at the
present moment, standing apart, at a side table, because Bessie had
declared that to see the suet cut made her feel ill.

"Miss Bessie's more nice than wise," Emily commented; but she removed her
material from the young lady's vicinity.

"I'm glad to know that I'm nice, at any rate," Bessie said, with her head
on one side. "So long as I'm nice, Emily--?"

"Oh there's more than me in the world that think you that, I suppose, Miss
Bessie."

"I don't know, I'm sure," Miss Bessie languidly murmured. "I only know I'm
very tired."

"Give up for to-night then, dear, and go to bed."

"Nonsense, mama. As if I could leave you all! Why should not I work as
well as poor Mr. Gibbon, for instance?"

"Some are made for work and some aren't, I suppose," that gentleman said,
with a side glance at Bessie's white hands. "I'm one of the workers. I
don't mind tackling your nutmegs after I've finished my lemons, if you'll
say the word, Miss Bessie."

"Mama, I wonder what Mr. Boult would say if he came in now and found me
working like a slave at ten o'clock at night?"

"Nothing complimentary, dear, I fear."

"Horrid, rude man! Yesterday afternoon he found me sitting over the fire
reading. I was in your comfortable chair, Mr. Gibbon--I hope you don't
mind?"

"I hope you'll always do it the honour of sitting in it, Miss Bessie; and
you, Miss Deleah--"

"I was gloriously comfortable; and Mr. Boult took upon him to lecture me."

"Well, he doesn't stop at much! but how he ever screws up his courage to
lecture _you_, Miss Bessie, passes everything," said the polite Manchester
man.

"I thought you'd be surprised," and Miss Day smiled obliquely at the
nutmegs. "He called me names, too."

"Names, Bessie! Surely not! What can you mean by 'names'?"

"He called me a drone, mama. A drone in a busy hive."

"And how did you answer him, Bessie?"

"I just went on, toasting my toes at the fire, and reading my book."

"And what then, Miss Bessie?"

"Oh, then he sat down opposite to me and preached me a sermon. A sermon of
five minutes, by the clock. He said--"

"We don't want to hear any sermons, thank you," from a petulant, tired
Franky. In the stress of their work the poor child's hour for retiring was
often overlooked.

"Go to bed, Franky. Go off, this minute. Mama, send Franky to bed."

"Oh, go at once to bed, my darling boy."

Franky, crying that he wanted to sit by Deleah and see her cut the citron
peel, was removed: "I hate Bessie," he announced at the door.

"Go! spoilt little wretch!" cried Bessie, threatening him with the nutmeg
grater. "Mama, Franky is becoming as rude as a horrid little street boy."

"Never mind, my dear. Tell me what Mr. Boult said in the sermon."

"He said my happiness as well as my duty was to work. He said my
'peevishness,' and my 'nervy fits'--wasn't it rude of him!--came from
idleness. He did, Mr. Gibbon, he said it in so many words."

"I hope you gave him one for hisself, Miss Bessie?"

"Oh, I hope not!" from an alarmed mother.

"It is what he wants, ma'am; and it is what he never gets. It is bully,
bully, bully, all the day, with the governor. And unless Miss Bessie
stands up to him--"

"You may trust me not to be afraid. All the rest are afraid. Not I! I just
raised my eyes to him, and said 'I wonder you dare to use such words to
me, Mr. Boult!' You should have seen him look! 'It's because I take an
interest in you,' he said; quite quiet, like any other man. It does him
good to snub him, mama."

"It was kind of him to say he takes an interest," Deleah put in.

"Now if he was only a handsome young gentleman, and Miss Bessie could take
an interest in him, there'd be more sense," Emily remarked from her side
table.

"Don't be such a ridiculous old thing, Emily!"

"Well, he've got his kerridge!"

"And a pretty sight he looks driving in it! podgy, fat, vulgar man!"

"Miss Bessie would never look twice in that direction, I'm sure," Mr.
Gibbon declared, and Mrs. Day gave one of her now seldom heard laughs.

"How can you all talk such nonsense?" she said.

"Oh, do let us do it!" Deleah pleaded. "It so helps with the citron peel,
mama."

Deleah said very little in those days. The shock, the grief for the cruel
end of a father, for all his faults most dearly loved, told more on her
than on any of his other children. She had not felt the sense of injury
against him which had helped Bessie to support the tragedy of his death,
nor had she Bessie's engrossing preoccupations with herself, her looks,
her fancies, her love affairs. Bernard at George Boult's little branch
shop in the country town of Ingleby, chained body and soul to the heavy
drudgery of uncongenial occupation, thought of his father only with rage
and resentment. Franky, childlike, had apparently forgotten.

Deleah could not forget. Night by night her pillow was wet with tears shed
for him on whose neck she had sobbed for those never-to-be-forgotten
minutes of his last night on earth. She tortured herself with a secret,
unearned remorse. Forgetting her habitual love and dutifulness, her mind
would dwell on some remembered occasion when she told herself she had
failed him. When she had pretended not to notice a hand held out for hers,
or had shirked some little service she might have done him.

Of none such small sins against him had the father been aware, but she was
tormented by the belief that she had wounded him. He seemed ever to be
looking at her with reproachful eyes. She forgot his ill temper, his
unlovableness, his want of consideration for any one but himself, during
the last wretched weeks of his sojourn among them, and saw him only as he
had been upon that last night before his trial, heard always the great sob
which had seemed to rend his chest as she had leant upon it.

Her seventeenth birthday was past now, and it seemed to her mother that
her young daughter had grown of a still more exceeding prettiness. Poor
Mrs. Day often longed for a sympathetic ear into which to breathe her
maternal admiration. With Bessie the subject of Deleah's beauty was like a
red rag to a bull. Emily, the general and confidential friend of the
family, was not an altogether satisfactory confidante on that matter,
because in her eyes, blinded by affection, the whole family was equally
beautiful.

"You've got handsome children, ma'am. I've knowed it since folk used to
crowd round my pram to have a look at them when I wheeled 'em out, times
gone by, as babies. Ofttimes the pavement got blocked, as you've heard me
mention before. There's no two opinions about their looks, and we know
which side they got them from."

There were no two opinions about that, at any rate. Not even the most
charitable critic could have credited poor William Day with good looks;
and the tired pathetic face of his widow was a handsome face still.




CHAPTER XI

The Attractive Bessie


Having been permitted to take his place among them, and to chop material
for mincemeat at their kitchen table, it was felt by them all that their
boarder could never be a stranger to the widow and her children again.
Through pride and through shyness they had held him at arm's length, but
now that they had joked together about George Boult's peculiarities, and
he had ventured with playful force to take the nutmeg grater from Bessie's
weary fingers, valiantly completing her task himself, it would have been
impossible, even if desirable, to return to their earlier relations.

Bessie, who had treated him with a carefully masked hauteur in the
beginning, was among the first to place him on terms of easy familiarity.
She had strongly resented the inclusion of a stranger in their family
circle, and presently was welcoming his presence there as supplying the
one item of interest in the _ménage_.

"A year ago, mama, we should not have admitted Mr. Boult's Manchester man
to the same table with us. And now, here we are keeping his plates hot, if
he comes in late, and telling him all our secrets."

"Mama and I don't tell Mr. Gibbon any secrets," Deleah said.

"I dare say Mr. Gibbon does not want to hear them. As for me I find, when
you live in the same house with a man, it's impossible to keep him at
arm's length."

"Who wants to keep him at arm's length? I only mentioned I did not feel
called upon to tell him any secrets."

"And I only said he wouldn't care to hear your secrets--if you have any."

"I haven't," Deleah admitted, laughing.

"I have, then. And I shall tell them to who I like, spite of Deda's
pertness, mama."

"Say to 'whom you like,' Bessie."

"Mama, will you speak to Deleah? She is being impertinent to me again."

How impossible it would have been to entertain Reggie Forcus and Mr.
Gibbon at the same board, Bessie often felt. But the days when Reggie had
dropped in to meals with the prosperous Days in Queen Anne Street were
over for ever. Half a loaf was better than no bread. To know that a male
creature, who could not be indifferent to her, was an inmate of the house
was as she often said to herself--something.

She took no interest in him, of course. A young man out of a draper's
shop! But it was more amusing to subjugate even such an one as he than to
have no one at her feet.

So, at the hour when Boult's great shutters went up over the front of the
six shops in Market Street, and the Manchester man was free to go to his
evening meal, Bessie took an extreme care to be ready to receive him. She
had allowed herself to become a little slovenly over her appearance in the
day-time--who was there to look at her, or care what she wore in the
sitting-room over the shop? But by supper-time she would have changed into
her most becoming frock, would have arranged her hair to the greatest
advantage, would have rubbed with a rough towel, or beaten with a
hair-brush the plump, fair cheeks she considered too pale.

There was always an irregularity about the meals in the Day family. The
shopkeeper was often kept below for an hour after the time she should have
been seated at the board above, and when she was detained in such a way,
Deleah would always stay too, to help her mother. But Bessie had ordained
that the meal should go on without them. It was not right that a man, at
work all day, should be kept waiting for his food at night. And so it
often happened that he and she would sit, _tête-à-tête_, over the cold
meat and pickles, of which, with the addition of bottled beer for the
boarder, the meal consisted.

Many intimate items of her own heart history did Bessie confide to the
politely attentive ear of Mr. Charles Gibbon. She did not receive
confidences in return, or ask for them. What could the young shopman have
to relate to compare with the interest attending Bessie's revelations?

He was no prince in disguise as it would have been so pleasant to discover
him to be--this short, thickly-made, middle-aged man, with the prominent,
bright, dark eyes, the large dark head, the knobbly red forehead, whose
parents had kept a small draper's shop in a small market-town in the
county.

What could a man so born and nurtured have to give Bessie in return for
the stories of the high life to which she had been accustomed? But he must
consider himself flattered by Bessie's condescension, he must see how
attractive she looked seated beneath the three-branched bronze gas-burner
to preside at his supper.

Emily, bringing in the hot sweet pudding to replace the cold meat, would
wag a facetiously warning head at the young lady behind the back of the
unconscious Mr. Gibbon. "Don't you go leading that nice young chap on to
make a fool of hisself over you, Miss Bessie," she would caution the girl,
the next day.

"He can take care of himself. Make your mind quite easy," Bessie would
answer, well pleased. She loved to discuss such topics with her devoted
admirer, Emily, and liked to be accused of breaking hearts.

"We shall be late for supper again," Mrs. Day, busy with daybook and
ledger in the shop, would say to the young daughter beside her.

"Never mind, mama. Perhaps it is charity not to hurry," Deleah on one
occasion responded.

"Oh, nonsense, dear!" said Mrs. Day, looking up with alarm in her tired
eyes.

"Well, if Mr. Gibbon is in love with Bessie?"

"'If,' indeed!"

"That will be the end of it. You'll see."

"The end indeed, Deleah!"

"You think Bessie would not take him?"

"Bessie will, at least, wait till he asks her."

"But should you object, mama? He is not a gentleman, I suppose; Bessie
says he's not. But I think we've got to accept things and people and our
place, as we are; not always to be looking back to what used to be. I
often wish Bessie would see it like that, mama."

"We should be all happier if we could, I have no doubt," poor Mrs. Day
sighed. The poor lady could not always keep before her mind the fate of
Lot's wife, and often cast longing eyes towards the pleasant, easeful land
that had been home.

"And I am not always inclined to take Bessie's opinion as to what is a
lady or what is a gentleman."

"Bessie does not think so much as you do, Deleah."

"I don't know that I think: I feel," Deleah explained.

While she waited for her mother to finish her books she was weighing out
and making up into half-ounce packets the tobacco Lydia Day was licensed
to sell. She dropped her voice to a more confidential tone, although she
and her mother were alone in the shop, where they were doing their
evening's work by the aid of the one melancholy gas-burner, to which they
restricted themselves after business hours. It gave insufficient light for
the low-ceilinged, narrow length of the place.

"Do you think, mama, Bessie ought to be always saying horrid things about
Mr. Boult? Making fun of him, mimicking him, complaining of everything he
does; not only to you and me, but to Mr. Gibbon? to Emily--to any one who
will listen? Do you think a lady--what you and I think a lady, not what
Bessie thinks--would do that?"

"Bessie is sensitive--and very proud. We must not forget that--poor
Bessie! And Mr. Boult's methods are not always pleasant, Deleah."

"No. But he has been our friend. He has stuck to us. Who else has, of all
the people with whom we were friendly? And we were never nice to him, in
the old days--not asking him to our parties, you remember, and never being
friendly to him on Sunday afternoons. Oh, how I wish we had been, mama!"

Mrs. Day acquiesced, but not with enthusiasm. She did not like George
Boult well enough to regret having kept him at arm's length while she
could.

"I am sure we ought to be grateful to him," Mrs. Day admitted. She was
very tired; the scent of the tobacco Deleah was pulling about, staining
the tips of her small white fingers, was in her nostrils; she did not feel
especially grateful.

"Then, when Bessie is laying down the law about what a lady should do I
wish you would remind her, mama, that a lady must show gratitude for
kindness."

"And why, my dear, are you suddenly fighting the battles of poor Mr.
Boult?"

"That is a secret," Deleah said. "But one day, if you are good, I will
tell you."




The sitting-room, with supper nicely laid, with Bessie nicely dressed,
fair and plump and attractive in the gas light, happily chatting to Mr.
Gibbon, looked a Paradise of Rest in the eyes of poor wearied Mrs. Day.
The room was in fact a very pleasant one; long, low, with broad seats
before each of the three windows looking into the street; with a tall and
narrow oak mantelpiece opposite the three windows; with panelled oak
walls, heavy oak rafters, supporting the low ceiling, old brass finger
plates high up on the oaken door--all as in the days when old Jonas Carr's
grandfather first kept shop in Bridge Street. It was made sweet with
flowers too. A basket of pink tulips set in moss occupied the central
position on the supper-table, and some pots of primulas, fully in bloom,
were on the window-seats; above that window upon the corner of whose seat
Miss Deleah Day liked to sit, her slight and supple body curled into as
small as possible a space in order not to incommode the primulas, a brass
birdcage holding a canary was hung.

Bessie was carrying on an animated but evidently confidential conversation
with the boarder, as mother and daughter came into the room.

"He was riding past again to-day," she was saying. "I took care that he
should not have the pleasure of thinking I was looking out for him; but
peeping behind the curtains I could see him gazing up at the window. What
consolation the poor thing finds in just looking at a window I'm sure I
don't know."

"He sees you there, Miss Bessie. Or hopes to see you."

"You can't see me from the street."

"From the opposite pavement you can. I know, because I have seen Miss
Deleah sitting there; with her book, and the bird, and the flowers."

Bessie's attention was caught by that piece of intelligence. "Can you? Are
you sure?" she asked; and at that moment, unpropitious for her, Deleah
appeared with her mother.

"Mama! When Deda sits on the window-seat in the corner she can be seen
from the street!"

"Well, my dear?"

"Well, mama! You don't wish Deda to make herself conspicuous, I suppose?"

"Who says I make myself conspicuous?" an ireful Deleah demands. "Who has
been saying anything about me?"

"I," the Manchester man hurriedly admits. "I did not say you were
conspicuous, Miss Deleah. I only said I had seen you sitting there with
your book--among the flowers."

"She is not to sit there again, mama. Will you please say so? Deda, you
are not to sit in the window again. We can't help living above a grocer's
shop, but we need not make a display of ourselves."

"If it offends Mr. Gibbon he does not need to look at the window. I shall
certainly sit there if I wish."

"Come, come, my dears. There is enough about it. Pray let us have supper
in peace."

"You've had a tiring day, ma'am," says Mr. Gibbon. "Let me persuade you to
have a glass of ale with your beef, to-night. Just to revive you. Forcus's
Family Ale is the finest pick-me-up."

"Reggie Forcus has ridden past three times this afternoon, mama," Bessie
informed her parent. Then turned sharply on her sister, "You were at
school, miss."

"I met him as I came away," said Deleah, seating herself at the table. "I
wish the pleasure had been yours instead of mine, Bessie."

"Did he stop to speak?"

"Of course he stopped. He always stops."

"Well?"

"He asked for you."

"He always does, I suppose?"

"Always."

"There!" said Bessie on the note of triumph, looking round.

"There!" echoed Deleah as she helped herself to the mustard Mr. Gibbon was
offering her.

"Mama, do you hear Deda? She is not to mock me."

"Bread, Miss Deleah? Pickles, Mrs. Day?" hastily interposes an obsequious
Mr. Gibbon. He was assiduous in his attentions on the ladies, ever
anxiously polite and kind. That he found his happiness among them and was
eager to gain and to retain their favour he plainly showed. If he
sometimes jarred on their fastidiousness he did not know it.

"Any interesting incident in the day's trade, ma'am?" he asked, as he
busied himself in supplying their wants.

Nothing much. The Quaker lady had been again for sugar. Again Mrs. Day had
unconditionally pledged herself that the canes from which it had been
derived had not been grown by slaves.

"And have they?" Deleah asked.

"I'm sure, my dear, I don't know if they have or they haven't," a harassed
grocer-woman acknowledged. Her conscience was becoming blunted in the
stress and strain of business life. "She took a pound of it as usual, and
that's all I can say about it."

"But, mama! For the sake of the profit on a pound of sugar!"

"There's no profit on it at all, Bessie. If she had taken a quarter of a
pound of tea with it there would have been three-ha'pence into our
pockets. But she did not. So you see I perjured myself for nothing."

"Don't let the thought trouble you for an instant, ma'am," Mr. Gibbon
advised. "None of us can afford to be too nice in trade. We've got to
live, Miss Bessie. Customers don't think so--they'd skin us if they
could--but we have. I'm of Mr. Boult's mind on that subject, although
there isn't much I uphold him in. 'Let us do our best for the public while
it pays reasonable prices,' he says, 'and when it won't, let us _do_ the
public.'"

"All that is so low, Mr. Gibbon."

"But it's business, Miss Bessie. Business is low."

"Oh, don't let us talk about it now," Deleah pleads.

"Deleah has a secret. She's dying to tell us all," Deleah's mother said.

"It's something Deleah's been up to!"

"No, Bess. Calm yourself. Calm all yourselves."

"But how can we? Out with it, darling."

"It's nothing, mama."

"Nothing?"

"Only an idea of mine."

"Something you've been and made up, Deda!"

"Something I'm as sure of, Bessie, as I am that you're always dying to
find fault with me. Thank you, Mr. Gibbon, I've got _three_ pieces of
bread already, look!"

"You've handed Deleah bread three times in as many minutes, Mr. Gibbon."

"Hand the bread _only_ to Bessie, Mr. Gibbon. (Mama, I _must_ answer
_sometimes_.")

"We're waiting for the secret, dear."

"It's about our mysterious presents, mama. Mr. Gibbon, you have heard us
talk about our unknown benefactor who loads us with delightful things, and
yet is so ungenerous he won't give us the pleasure of saying 'thank you.'"

Yes. Mr. Gibbon had heard that there was some one who sometimes sent Miss
Deleah flowers.

"They're always sent to Deleah--but I suppose they're meant for all of
us," Bessie said.

"And because they came in my name only, gave me the first clue," Deleah
said. "Let me see, we began with violets, didn't we? And in January, when
they were scarce and expensive. Lovely bunches of violets 'for Miss
Deleah.' Miss Deleah's name done in printing characters, so that no one
should discover by the handwriting. Then we went on to a basket of
sweets--sweets of my very most particular kind, such as none of us can
afford any longer to look at. Oh, my mouth waters to think of them even
now! No, I didn't ask for any more water in my glass, thank you, Mr.
Gibbon."

"We all know what you had, Deleah; we thought we were going to hear who
sent them."

"Patience! Patience, good people all! Let me see, what came next? Oh, the
bird in the cage. And there he is still in his cage for you all to see,"
and Deleah leant back in her chair, and threw her pretty head over her
shoulder to look at the canary hanging above the left-hand window where
was her favourite seat. "Then the azalea. The lovely rose-pink azalea; and
after that--oh, I forget. But always something coming--something that we
cannot afford to buy, but which has made our sitting-room delightful; and
horrid Bridge Street a bearable place to live in. Now you have all been
dying to find out who it is that has given us these delightful things; but
I have always known; and at last I am going to tell you."

"Then, if you knew you should have told us. Deda ought not to have been so
sly about it, mama, if she knew."

"We shall each have one guess; and Bessie, as a reward for her
good-nature, shall have the first. Now, Bessie?"

"I've known all along, too, miss. And what's more, I've known that
although they were sent to you, they were meant for me. Reggie Forcus."

"Wrong. Here is Emily with the pudding. Emily, you shall have a guess; who
is it who sends the flowers, and the books and the birds in the cages--?"

"One of the masters at the school that has fell in love with you, Miss
Deleah." Emily gave her opinion without hesitation, going on with her
business of changing the plates.

"Wrong again, Mr. Gibbon? Now, I give you a tip. Think of the least likely
person in all the world."

"The Quaker lady who objects to slave-grown sugar."

Deleah laughed as she shook her head. "That is most ingenious. And would
be delightful; but it is wrong. Now, mama. The least likely person in all
the world, remember."

"Mr. George Boult."

"Mama has it. It is Mr. Boult."

"Oh, my dear child, I hope not!"

"Scrooge?" cried Bessie. "Never!" Bessie herself had bestowed the name of
Scrooge on the successful draper, to whom, as far as his personal
appearance went, it was absurdly inappropriate.

"It is Scrooge;--a converted Scrooge; and I, I suppose, am Tiny Tim. And
he has heaped benefits on me, mama; meaning thereby to benefit the
family."

"Oh, my dear, it can't be! I am sure you are wrong, Deleah. Mr. Gibbon, do
say she is wrong. It can't possibly be Mr. Boult."

Mr. Gibbon only threw back his head and loudly laughed.

Deleah was a little hurt that the boarder should have forgone his usual
careful politeness to receive the exposition of her idea with ridicule.
She contemplated him gravely till he stopped laughing and gazed with an
apologetic, anxious gravity in his protruding, extraordinarily speaking
eyes back at her. Then she turned from him to her mother.

"Why do you think it impossible, mama? Because Mr. Boult can't _say_
agreeable things is no reason he cannot do them. Don't you know that there
are poor shut-up souls who want to be nice, who long to be loved--who have
to speak in the dumb language because they can't articulate?"

"Miss Deleah is right. That is so. That is so!" Mr. Gibbon eagerly
affirmed.

"Well, then, Mr. Boult isn't blessed with a tongue to say smooth things;
but the bird in the cage, the basket of sweets, the rose-pink azalea--they
are his kind and polite speeches."

"My dear, what nonsense!" cried Mrs. Day, who did not wish to believe in
Mr. Boult as the author of such agreeable attentions.

But the Manchester man assented with enthusiasm: "Miss Deleah is right,
ma'am," he said. "A man who could not get at Miss Deleah to say things to
her might try to say them so."

"And you think Mr. Boult wants to say things to Deleah?" a scornful Bessie
demanded.

"No, I don't, since you ask me. No, Miss Bessie."

"I should think not! And why, pray, should he have pitched on Deda?"

"Oh, why should any one pitch on me?" Deleah asks, lays down knife and
fork, spreads hands abroad, as if inviting with exaggerated humility an
inspection of her poor claims to favouritism.

"But--if it were Mr. Boult I think I can understand why it might be
Deleah," Mrs. Day said slowly, looking down. She was remembering how her
poor husband had made no secret of the fact that the younger girl was his
pet; and she recalled also that for her father's sake it was Deleah who
treated the arrogant, tyrannical man with unfailing respect and courtesy.

"Yes. And I can understand it too, mama," Deleah softly said.

"Well, them that live'll see," Emily remarked sententiously as she removed
the remains of the sago pudding.




CHAPTER XII

The Attractive Deleah


An engagement had been secured for Deleah Day as assistant English
governess at a ladies' school. At Miss Chaplin's seminary she was employed
in hearing lessons learnt by heart from Brewers' _Guide to Knowledge,
Mangnall's Questions_, Mrs. Markham's _History of England_; in reading
aloud while her pupils tatted or crocheted mats and antimacassars; in
struggling with them through the intricacies, never mastered by herself,
of Rule of Three and Vulgar Fractions, from nine every morning till five
every afternoon; with the exception of the Wednesday, when there was a
half-holiday, and the Saturday, when there was no school at all.

The slightness of Deleah's figure and the fragility of her small face,
with its innocent, unconscious allurement, were increased by the black
garments she still wore. To cast off her mourning for her unhappy father
would be, she felt, a slight to him.

"It is as if Bessie had forgotten," she said to herself, seeing her sister
in the blues and pinks in which she began as summer came on again to array
herself, for supper and the Manchester man. "I do not forget."

Black was not a fashionable wear in that age, only being used for
mourning. A woman wearing black did it to proclaim she sorrowed for the
dead. The sentiment attached to her sable garments heightened the interest
awakened by Deleah's slight form and her winsome face;--made her clear
skin paler; made her eyes shine more jewel-like beneath the fine line of
her black brows.

Among the members of her own sex were, at the period of her eighteenth
birthday, all the captives to her charms of which Deleah was aware. There
is no such ardent lover as a schoolgirl when she conceives a passion for
another girl at school; and half a dozen of the little pupils at Miss
Chaplin's were head over ears in love with Deleah Day. They sighed at her,
their adoring eyes clung to her face, they suffered agonies of jealousy
through her. They were cast down by a word, elated by a smile.

One of the girls then acquiring a polite education at Miss Chaplin's
seminary remembers to this day how she slept, night after night, with a
glove--such a worn and shabby glove--of the young English teacher beneath
her pillow. She possesses still an album called "The Deleah Book," wherein
is pasted an atrocious photograph--all photographs (cartes-de-visite they
were called)--were libellous and atrocious in those days--of a girl in a
black frock, the skirt a little distended at the feet by the small hoop of
the day, a short black jacket, with black hair parted in the middle over a
smudge of a face and gathered into a net at the back of the neck. Beneath
it is written Deleah's name and the date.

In "The Deleah Book," too, are treasured, scrawled there in the schoolgirl
writing, the words of wit and wisdom gathered from the idol's lips,
together with such precious items of information and memorabilia as the
following:

"Tennyson is the favourite poet of D. D."

"Of all flowers the rose is the Queen, and is the best loved of D. D."

"To remember to keep back unkind words. D. D."

"If we knew all we should find there are excuses for all. D. D."

"(Note). Burnt almonds are the favourite sweet of D. D. and 'Abide with
Me' is D. D.'s favourite hymn."

Their ways lying in the same direction, it was this young devotee who was
privileged to walk home with the passionately admired D. D. On a certain
afternoon as they made their way through the quiet streets of the old town
their talk was of a long-advertised concert to take place that evening, at
which a great singer was to appear.

"How much you will enjoy it, Kitty," Deleah was saying with a little
girlish longing. "Not only the concert, but everything. Let me picture it.
You will run home when you leave me--me in horrid Bridge Street!--and in
your bedroom there will be a fire lit, and on the bed your pretty evening
frock will be spread, and your lace petticoat, and your silk stockings--"

"Oh, how do you know all that, Miss Day? You know everything! But I shan't
enjoy the concert a bit. I shall not. Do you know why? Because you will
not be there."

"Oh, nonsense, Kitty! Nonsense! Nonsense!"

"I shall be thinking of you all the time, and wishing--oh wishing! Miss
Day, do you believe it is true that if we keep on wishing with all our
strength--not a selfish pig of a wish, you know, but something nice for
another person--the wish ever, _ever_ comes true?"

"Every wish is as a prayer with God," quoted Deleah, unquestioning in her
child's heart the literal truth of the words.

"Then, Miss Day, this is not Kitty Miller walking with you any longer, but
one big solid Wish--Oh, there he is again, Miss Day! There is young Mr.
Forcus--look!"

"I see him. I am not going to stop. Let us walk on quicker, Kitty."

"Isn't it strange that he should always be riding here, just when we come
out of school, Miss Day?"

"Never mind. No; you are not to look round, Kitty."

"How _beautifully_ he pulls off his hat! He had a most dreadfully
disappointed look when you would not stop, Miss Day. I think you are very
cruel."

"Never mind. No, Kitty! Don't, dear. No lady looks back when a gentleman
passes her."

(A new entry appeared in "The Deleah Book" that night: "No lady looks
round when a gentleman passes her. D. D.")

"Miss Day!"--with a soft, irrepressible giggle--"He has turned his horse
and is riding after us."

"Never mind. Let us hurry on."

But when the mare was pulled up beside her, her hoofs clattering on the
cobble-stones of the street, Miss Day, in spite of herself, must stop.

"How do, Deleah?" Kitty Miller had again the privilege of seeing how
beautifully the hat came off, exposing for quite an appreciable time the
young man's fair, smooth head. "Whoa, Nance!" to the satin-skinned, black
mare, who objected to being pulled into the gutter running by the side of
the pavement. "I say--there was something I particularly wanted to say to
you, Deleah. Whoa! Steady, old girl! I say--how's Bessie?"

"Bessie is very well, thank you, Mr. Forcus."

"'Mr. Forcus?' Come, I say, Deleah! you aren't going to put me at arm's
length, that fashion! I was going to ask you--How is Bessie?"

"Very well, thank you."

"I haven't seen Bessie for ages."

"Is it so long?"

"I was wondering if I might look in sometimes on Mrs. Day--"

"Mama is always busy, thank you."

"At your place, then?--Just to see--Bessie?"

"I'm sure I don't know. You'd better ask Bessie herself."

"I'll ask her when I call. Whoa! Steady, you fool! Steady! What time could
I come when I shouldn't be in the way?"

"We're always busy. Always. I think perhaps you'd better not come at all."

"Thank you! Why?"

"You used to come, if you remember; and you gave up coming," Deleah said.
The small face turned to him was unsmiling and proud. The clear eyes of
pale hazel looked past the fine young man on the beautiful fidgeting
horse.

"I'm more my own master now," he said. "I should like to look in upon you
all again, Deleah."

"You had better not. Good-bye."

"Wait! Wait! One minute! I say, are you going to this concert to-night?"

"Of course. All of us. Even Franky. Half-guinea places. Why need you ask?"

"But if I get you some tickets? You and Bessie and Mrs. Day? I will, you
know. I will, Deleah, if you'll say you'll go--"

"The tickets were all sold a fortnight ago. You're too late," she said;
and then she smiled her winning smile, in spite of herself, upon him and
moved on.

Kitty was waiting for the older girl a few paces farther on. "There!" she
said, her eyes wide with awe. "There, Miss Day! My wish nearly came true!
Oh, if he could have got you tickets and you would have gone, how
heavenly, heavenly everything would have been to-night!"




Tea was ready in the sitting-room above the shop when Deleah reached home.
Tea with thick bread-and-butter, dry toast, water-cress, little dishes of
sliced ham, and pastry-tarts made in Emily's best fashion; and Bessie and
Franky were already seated at the table.

By Deleah's plate a letter was lying. A letter at which she looked
dubiously, shrinking a little from opening it; for it was addressed, in a
fashion which had become embarrassingly familiar to her, in carefully
printed characters.

"It's money, this time, we think," Franky cried, jumping in his chair.
"Make haste, Deda."

"We're simply dying to know what he's sent you. How slow you are!" Bessie
scolded.

Reluctantly Deleah broke the envelope and drew forth two tickets for the
evening's concert.

"The ten-shilling places!" Bessie cried. "We'll go, Deleah. We'll go!"

Deleah looked with a little distrust at the tickets lying beside her
plate. "It's all very well, but I should so much prefer presents without
all this mystery about them. Months ago I would have thanked Mr. Boult if
you and mama would have allowed me. I am sure it would have been better. I
am sure we ought to thank him."

"That doesn't matter now. We've got to think about the concert. I'm going
to it, and I can't go without you."

"I don't know if we ought to go, Bessie--"

"Why not, pray?"

Deleah was silent.

"Because of papa? He's been dead nearly two years. Are we never to show
our noses among other people again? You do carry things to extremes,
Deda!"

Deleah accepted the reproach meekly, having nothing to say--nothing, that
is, which Bessie would understand.

Then the boarder came in, for it was early closing afternoon, and took his
place by the side of Franky.

"Some more mysterious presents," Bessie said, smiling upon him. "Very
useful ones, this time, and just what I should have wished for."

"Tickets for the concert," Deleah explained, pushing them across to him.
"Ten-shilling ones. Poor Mr. Boult hates music. I heard him say once that
he believed every one hated it, and that when they pretended to like it it
was only affectation and humbug. What pleasure can he possibly get in
giving us these tickets for which we may not even thank him?"

"He'll have the pleasure of knowing that you are happy, and that he has
made you so, Miss Deleah. And you too, of course, Miss Bessie."

"But Mr. Boult no more sent those tickets, than he sent the bird in the
cage, or the--!"

"Oh, you're thinking of Reggie Forcus again," Deleah interrupted
impatiently. "Such nonsense, Bessie!"

"She thinks a lot more of him than he does of her," Franky announced,
munching his bread-and-butter.

Bessie got up from her place at the tea-tray and with purpose in her eyes
walked round the table. "You take that for impertinence, sir!" she said,
and administered a stinging slap to Franky's cheek. His intention of
immediate retaliation was frustrated by Mr. Gibbon's seizing the tea-spoon
he was about to hurl at his assailant.

"I hate Bessie," Franky said; but he was used to having his face slapped
by his elder sister, and went on munching his bread-and-butter and
water-cress, not much the worse.

"We can't go to the concert, Bessie," Deleah was presently saying. "We've
got no evening frocks."

"Oh, but we have!" Bessie quickly reminded her. "The frocks which were new
for our party and never worn again."

"We _can't_ wear them!" Deleah pleaded. She felt that she could never
endure even to look at those garments again.

"But we can, and we will," Bessie declared. She was a very practical
person in matters connected with millinery and dressmaking, and in a
minute had planned the slight alterations and additional furbishings
required for their party frocks. Black ribbons instead of blue run in the
lace of the bodices. Deleah's skirt would be short, but who would see that
if Deleah were sitting down?

Deleah drooped as she listened, leaving the tea in her cup and the
bread-and-butter untouched on her plate.

"Elbows off the table, Deda," Franky reminded her, who was frequently
commanded to remove his own.

Deleah took no heed. She sat with brow leaning upon the hand which
screened her face, looking back upon that evening before the shadow of
misfortune and disgrace had touched them all; when she had worn her new
white silk frock, and papa had played the tambourine.

Bessie had gone, leaving her tea also, untasted; hurrying away to Emily,
who would help her to pull off the forget-me-nots from her frock, and to
substitute the black ribbon which would be more decorous. Bessie's pale,
full cheeks were pink with excitement, her eyes shone.

"Black will look better than blue, even--although that _was_ your
colour--against your white skin," Emily encouraged her.

Mr. Gibbon had made himself a neat sandwich of water-cress and thin
bread-and-butter. He paused in the act of daintily sprinkling it with salt
pinched in finger and thumb, and looked at Deleah across the table, her
hand hiding her face. So long he looked at her, so long she remained
unconscious of him, that Franky ventured in their preoccupation to help
himself to a third piece of cake, his allowance being two.

"Miss Deleah, if you don't want to go to this concert to-night, why go?" at
length the boarder ventured to ask. Deleah dropped the shielding hand; she
had for the moment forgotten the presence of Mr. Charles Gibbon.

"Bessie wants to go. Of course, I must go with her," she said.

"But why 'of course,' if you don't wish? Whoever sent those tickets--"

"Mr. Boult sent them."

"Well, then, Mr. Boult sent them to make you happy; not unhappier."

"I know. I am really quite grateful, Mr. Gibbon. It was only those
dresses. We wore them at a dance at our house--the evening
before--everything. I can't think how Bessie can! But she does not feel
things as I do. She never did feel like--dying--of pity--and sorrow--as I
did." She lifted her cup to her lips to hide the fact that tears were
rolling down her face.

Mr. Gibbon sighed heavily. He pushed his own cup away from him as a signal
perhaps that for him also the tea was spoilt. "But why need you go in that
particular frock, Miss Deleah?"

"I haven't another."

"The one you have on."

"This one? Oh!"

She laughed with the tears in her eyes, and looked down at her school
frock--a black skirt and a white muslin "garibaldi" (the garment so called
at that time being extremely like the shirt blouse, or waist, as the
Americans have it, of to-day). "Oh, how funny men are!" she said. "To
think I could go in the half-guinea places in such a dress!"

"It's a beautiful dress, isn't it! It seems so to me. And I don't think it
matters at all what you wear, Miss Deleah."

He spoke in a hushed voice, as if conscious of saying something of
tremendous import. Deleah accepted the remark as a simple statement of a
fact.

"It doesn't matter, perhaps, really. But Bessie thinks differently. Most
people do. I shall have to wear what Bessie wishes."

"I notice you are always the one to give way, Miss Deleah."

"No--not always, Mr. Gibbon."

"Can I do anything? I would do _anything_--" He spoke in the same hushed
voice; with his arms extended on each side of his plate, he was gripping
the edge of the table tightly, "Anything!"

"I know. I know you are a true friend. I know she talks to you. She talks
about Mr. Reggie Forcus. Bessie can't see that things are different with
us--at least she sees, of course, but she does not realise that they must
be different; not only now, but for ever. She never sees us with other
people's eyes. It never comes home to her that the friends we had we can
never have again. What have people like the Forcuses to do with us!"

"I think that Mr. Reggie Forcus, mighty as he thinks hisself, or the
Prince of Wales, come to that, might feel hisself honoured to be taken
notice of by you, Miss Deleah--or by Miss Bessie."

Deleah laughed in spite of herself. "You are too kind, Mr. Gibbon."

She got up from her chair and picked up the concert tickets and twisted
them about in her fingers with a little distaste of them. "All this is
very kind of Mr. Boult, of course," she said: "and one likes to be sure
there is a generous heart beneath that--well, that atrocious manner of
his. But we're under mountains of obligation to people already, and we can
do without concert tickets. We can do without--" She was going to say
without flowers, but she leant across the table and stooped her face above
the pot of heliotrope that graced the centre of the humble board, then
lifted it, shaking her head. "No; we could not do without the flowers,"
she said. "I do thank the good man for his flowers; and I shall tell him
so the first time I see him. I have made up my mind."

"I would not if I were you, Miss Deleah."

"But why not? Do tell me why not?"

"Mr. Boult is a good business man. He's my chief, and I'm not going to
speak against him; but I don't quite see him buying you flowers."

"You know he loved my poor father, don't you?" she asked him in a lowered
voice. She had never mentioned the dead man's name to him before; her
cheek paled, he saw, as she did so now. "And I was my father's pet. You
will not think me vain for saying that, will you? Mama will tell you it is
not my selfish fancy alone. Mama will tell you it is true."

"Indeed, Miss Deleah, I can quite believe it."

"He was a good father to us all, and fond of us all, but of me he would
talk always if he could get any to listen. He liked me to sit on his
knee--I was younger then--to walk with him, and wait on him--" Her voice
broke; she waited a minute before she went on. "And so I suppose Mr. Boult
sends these things to me for papa's sake. I could not explain before; but
you understand, do you not?"

He quite understood her point of view, Mr. Gibbon said, looking at the
tablecloth.

"I knew you would, when I could explain. I think poor Mr. Boult likes me
to take what he sends, for papa's sake--as if it really came from papa.
You see what I mean? And I can't help thinking there is something
beautiful in that thought of his."

Mr. Gibbon reflectively agreed. It was a beautiful thought, come to think
of it, he said.

"Well, then--?" said Deleah.

"Well then, Miss Deleah, don't you think by mentioning the matter to him,
you'll spoil all that? His intention, his beautiful thought, and the rest
of it."

"Perhaps!" Deleah acquiesced seriously. "I must think about what you say."

"You've done me a great honour to mention it, Miss Deleah. You won't think
I'm taking upon myself in any way to give you my opinion?"

"Oh, Mr. Gibbon! How could I ever think such a thing!" Deleah said, but
began at once to be a little ashamed of the confidence she had made. With
a man who could ask if he was "taking upon himself" she ought to have been
more reserved, she thought.




CHAPTER XIII

The Gay, Gilded Scene


Mrs. Day, being told that her daughters proposed to go unchaperoned to the
Assembly Rooms that night, declared that for them to do so was unheard-of
and not to be sanctioned. But, under the strain of adversity the poor
woman's will, never a strong one, had weakened. She was painfully
conscious of her own helplessness in the grip of circumstances, and was
always troubled with doubts as to the wisdom of her own judgment. By the
time her day's work was over she was too tired to stand up against any
power she came into collision with. In all that concerned Bessie she was
absolutely feeble. Bessie was victor always, not by reason of superior
strength but through fractiousness, through stubbornness, through a
hysterical determination to talk the opposing voices down, through her
habit of crying like a baby when contradicted, and flinging things about.

So, on this particular occasion, the elder daughter avowing in a high,
excited voice that not many pleasures came in her way, and that when one
did come she meant to take it, let her mother be pleased or let her be
teased, the objections were speedily silenced.

Leaving the shop for once in the care of Mr. Pretty, Mrs. Day went
upstairs for the pleasure of seeing her girls once more in gala attire.

"I have taken the liberty of ordering a fly for the young ladies," Mr.
Gibbon said as he and the mother sat awaiting the appearance of the pair.

"Oh, Mr. Gibbon, if you would go with them, and see them safe to the
Assembly Rooms I should be so much obliged."

Mr. Gibbon, with great solemnity of mien, thoroughly realising the
responsibility of the office, undertook to do so. He, for his part, was
going to take his chance of hearing the great singer with the expenditure
of a shilling only. He would be in the Promenade, but his eyes should be
on the Miss Days, and if protection were required by them he would be at
hand.

Mrs. Day was by no means sure in her anxious heart that her daughters
might not need the strong arm of the male to defend them. She thought as
she surveyed them while they awaited the arrival of the fly that no mother
had ever possessed such treasures to guard. Bessie was always especially
comely in evening dress. Her plump, clearly pale cheeks were now pink with
excitement. Her white skin against the black ribbon round her throat and
threaded through the lace over her ample young bosom was dazzlingly fair.

"Mama, I'm afraid my frock is dreadfully short; even now that Emily has
let down the hem," Deleah said, looking anxiously toward her extremities.
"It shows _all_ my feet!"

It showed the ankles too, truth to say; but what did that _matter_ when
the feet were so small and pretty, and the ankles so elegantly slim?

The wonder to the mother was to see how, since that white silk dress had
been worn before, the girl's beauty had grown to perfection.

"Do you think it looks ridiculous, mama?" referring anxiously to the
scantiness of the skirt and the unblushing exposure of the feet.

"Not at all ridiculous, my dear." What did any imperfection of raiment
matter with a face and head like Deleah's; as exquisitely moulded, as
delicately poised on her slender throat as a flower on its stalk? "There's
a tiny bit of hair awry," the mother said, caught the girl's little chin
in her hand and passed her fingers over the shadowy black hair for the
mere pleasure of caressing it.

When Mr. Gibbon came in presently it was seen he had changed into
dress-clothes, in which attire he had never before appeared.

"But, Mr. Gibbon, you need not have taken the trouble to dress for the
shilling places!" Mrs. Day told him.

"I am to have the honour of escorting the two young ladies," he said.

He was red in the face, and appeared bashful and ill at ease in the
costume which they saw was a new one.

"To think of his a-gettin' hisself up like that!" Emily said with an
amused scorn of the poor man as the cab containing the three drove off.
"There's no doubt what he've set his mind on, 'm. But Miss Bessie ain't
for such as him. She'll look higher."

When Mr. Reginald Forcus came into the Assembly Rooms with his brother and
the sister who since the death of Lady Forcus kept house at Cashelthorpe,
and made his way to seats not very far removed from those the sisters
occupied, Bessie impulsively seized a bit of Deleah's bare arm in her
finger and thumb. She pinched it unconsciously but with such painful
emphasis that in the morning Deleah discovered the place to be black and
blue.

"There he is! Quite close to us! _Now_ perhaps you will believe! I always
knew it was he who sent the tickets, and sent all the flowers and things!
and he sent them for me--only you always took them to yourself, Deda."

She was very smiling, very happy and excited and flushed, through the
concert. She looked so pretty, so like the Bessie of the "party" days of
old, that Deleah thought not only Reginald Forcus but every man who saw
her must admire her pretty sister.

When the "half" arrived, and the ten minutes in which the audience is
permitted to stretch its legs and crane its neck, and acknowledge the
presence of its acquaintance, behold the younger Forcus eagerly
recognising the sisters, and bowing in response to Miss Bessie's delighted
smiles and nods.

"Oh, what a pretty girl!" a woman's voice said. There had come a sudden
lull in the buzz of talk, and the exclamation reached the ears of many
more than his for whom it was intended.

Deleah felt sure it was Bessie who was being admired. She looked quickly
at the speaker. It was that middle-aged sister with the pleasant, kind
face who had come to take the place of Sir Francis Forcus's dead wife. It
was to Sir Francis she had spoken, but she might have been proclaiming the
fact of her discovery of a pretty girl, for the general benefit; so
complete had been the temporary calm into which her speech had broken.
Heads were turned, and several pairs of eyes were fixed upon Deleah.

By a good many present the sisters were recognised, and here and there a
smile was turned on them, and here and there a cool, discreet little bow
was made. And more often the people who knew them, having involuntarily
looked, looked away again; for them the girls' presence there, in a
fashionable company and the most expensive seats, was an offence.

"People we were asked a little time ago to keep from starving!" they said
to themselves. "If Mrs. Day's daughters can afford this sort of thing, we
might as well have kept our guineas in our pockets."

When the audience resumed their seats Bessie kept her eyes pretty
constantly directed upon the smooth fair head of Reggie Forcus. Perhaps he
was conscious of her gaze and found it a compelling one, for again and
again he turned round to look at the sisters, and always Bessie's eyes
caught and held his.

Except to the accompaniment of the singing of her own heart the poor girl
was unconscious of the music. If it was to the evening's nightingale she
listened or to the twittering of the inferior songstresses of the grove
who lifted up their voices when the queen was silent she could hardly have
said; the melody her heart was chanting triumphantly drowned every note of
theirs.

"It has been heavenly," she said, when it was all over, and they stood up
for the singing of "God Save the Queen." "In all my life, Deleah, I have
never enjoyed a concert so much before."

While she said it she was lingering in her place, stopping the gangway for
people anxious to make their way out, pretending to arrange her own cloak
and her sister's, in the endeavour to time their exit to that of the
Forcus family. She did manage it too; and in the crush as they all
approached the door Bessie's happy shoulder was rubbing against the
shoulder of the attractive Reggie.

"It's been first-rate, hasn't it?" he said, as if the two years in which
he had had no speech with the girl were as nothing, and they had parted
yesterday. "Wasn't _She_ fine! Glad I came. I wouldn't have missed her for
anything."

"Heavenly!" Bessie acquiesced, then quickly introduced the personal note.
"I wonder you knew me! I thought I was quite forgotten, and was surprised
when you bowed."

"Ages since we met, isn't it? I did think about coming to call, but I
suppose Mrs. Day is busy?"

"I'm not busy. And I'm always at home. Do come."

"Rather! Shall I call your carriage?"

"Will you?"

So the words "Miss Days' carriage" were passed from mouth to mouth; men
yelled it in the street, the officials in the porch of the Hall bawled it
to one another, a man in the crowd nearer the door turned his head and
shouted "Miss Days' carriage" into the concert room. The air was
reverberating with the cry, it seemed to poor Deleah. How could Bessie
have made them conspicuous in that way!

Sir Francis Forcus had been looking with some curiosity at the girl to
whom his brother was speaking, wedged into the crowd just in front of him;
the younger girl at her sister's back was by his side. He glanced at her
now, and saw it was she to whose loveliness his sister had called public
attention. The Days, of course! He remembered when he heard the name
called; remembered all about them.

"Good-evening. How do you do?" he said, looking down upon Deleah.

And Deleah, recalling the last occasion on which she had heard his voice,
lifted a pale and speechless face to him, for all her answer.

Some big and important Person at the back, impatient of the delay, here
attempted to battle her way through the crowd congested by the too narrow
doors. Sir Francis turned and looked at her reprovingly.

"It's no good, Lady Elizabeth. You'll have to wait like the rest of us.
It's only a matter of a few minutes."

"Oh, do hurry up in front there!" Lady Elizabeth called back to him,
laughing, but imperious. The pressure she and her party were making still
continued, with the result that Deleah was driven roughly forward.

"Gently! Gently!" Sir Francis called again, and Deleah felt that his hands
were on her shoulders and he was shielding her with his arms as much as
possible from the crushing of the crowd.

A minute, and they were through the doorway into the spacious porch, where
individual movement was possible, and the fresh night air blew, and Deleah
could see the light from the big lamp over the archway flaring on the top
of her shabby old fly, while behind it was a long line of handsome
carriages whose drivers vituperated the driver of the cab, in his broken
hat. At the window was Bessie's face. Bessie's excited voice was heard
shrilly calling on Deleah's name.

"Deda! Deda! Where _on earth_ have you got to?"

"Miss Days' carriage stops the way"--the cry which made one Miss Day long
to hide her minished head in the earth--woke the echoes again.

Deleah half turned her head on its long neck, whispered a shy "thank you"
to the tall gentleman at her back; and darted away.

"Oh here you are, Deleah! Come along," Reggie Forcus cried, appearing
before her. "We thought we'd lost you. Take my arm."

But before Deleah could comply another arm was proffered, and proffered in
a manner so brusque and so determined that the young Forcus fell back
involuntarily.

"Thank you. Miss Deleah is in my charge," a voice said; and Deleah felt
herself dragged through the crowded porch, and over the pavement to the
cab-door, on the arm of Mr. Charles Gibbon.

"You'll excuse me," he said, looking in upon the sisters through the cab
window when the door was shut. "I hope you young ladies did not think I
intruded. But your mother had asked me to keep an eye on you."

"And pray why didn't you come with Reggie?" Bessie demanded indignantly as
the fly at last moved on.

Deleah laughed hysterically. "I was torn away from him," she said. "He all
but knocked Reggie down, and seized upon me." She indicated the form of
Mr. Gibbon, dimly seen, seated sentinel on the box beside the
broken-hatted driver.

"Impertinence!" Bessie said. "We have to be civil to him at home, but when
we are among other people I think he might leave us to our friends."

"Reggie Forcus hasn't been much of a friend."

"He is going to be for the future. He asked leave to call. It is a little
awkward as you are always at the school, and mama is always
downstairs"--(Bessie had never yet brought herself to say "Mother is in
the shop") "I would have asked him to come in the evenings, but _he_"
(again a nod towards the figure of the guardian-angel on the box-seat) "is
always there."

"Well, why not?"

"Can't you understand that Reggie might not care to meet a young man out
of a draper's shop?"

"But he comes to call on people in a gro--"

"That's different," Bessie quickly announced. "We weren't always there,
remember."

"Wednesday afternoons I am at home after three. Saturdays I am at home all
day."

"I know," Bessie said, but did not promise to avail herself of the
protection offered by her sister's presence on those occasions.




CHAPTER XIV

A Tea-Party In Bridge Street


His time being so fully occupied in his own business during the week, and
those hours he had been wont to pass with his friend William Day being
still unfilled, Mr. George Boult had fallen into the evil habit of coming
to hold a business consultation with the widow on the Sunday afternoons.
The Day family complained bitterly of this custom. The poor grocer-woman's
one blessed day was no longer hers, to be passed from morn to eve in the
midst of her children, in rest and peace and forgetfulness of business
worries.

She was too tired for church, she always pleaded; but it was not fatigue
alone which kept her from public worship. She was accustomed to her place
behind the counter now, and in the work-days of the week was too busy for
regret, too anxious to sell her goods to feel any shame in the occupation.
But on that day when the rest of the world of women went forth with
husbands and children to take their places, dressed in their best, in
family pews, she felt that she lacked the courage to show her face. She
who had queened it with the best of them; she who was the widow of a man
who had killed himself to escape from prison! She for whom "sympathisers"
and "well-wishers" had collected their sixpenny-pieces that she and hers
might be saved from starving.

So she sent the girls to church with Franky, on the Sunday morning, while
she, prayer-book in hand, would sit in Deleah's favourite window-seat,
beneath the canary's cage, to watch the smart and prosperous Sabbath
people airing their newest clothes on the opposite pavement of the street.

Presently Emily, her preparations for dinner made, would come to stand
beside her mistress's chair, to turn a critical eye upon the passers-by
beneath. Emily knew the names of most of the people of any consideration
who passed; knew, and could at length relate the history of themselves and
their domestic economies.

"There's Mrs. Hamley, m'm. I haven't never seen her in that black lace
shawl before."

"Perhaps she's laid it by from last summer," Mrs. Day would suggest.

"Not she!" Here Emily would lean over the back of her mistress's chair and
crane her neck to get a better view of the raiment in question. "Bran'
new, I'll lay a guinea! And her still fifteen pound in your debt!"

"Here come the Briggses! Look out, m'm!" presently she would cry. "Well,
and ain't they figged out! The whole four of the girls--and every one of
'em in a new bonnet! And them buyin' a pound-and-a-half of butter a week
for the whole fam'ly! Tha's what I always say, m'm; the Briggses is a
fam'ly that save out of their insides to put it on their bids. Now, here
come the best-lookin' young ladies and young gentleman we have set eyes on
yet." And then Mrs. Day's own daughters, with Franky clinging to Deleah's
arm, would be seen to approach.

"We think so, don't we, Emily? It's because they're our own, you know,"
the mistress would say, with her deprecating smile. "It's because they're
ours, that they seem to look so nice."

But in her heart she heartily agreed with Emily that hers was indeed a
charming family.

In the evening Bessie would go off to church again, escorted by Emily, but
Deleah would stay with her mother. They would sit together in peaceful,
delicious idleness over the winter fire, or, it being summer, they would
go forth, escaping by backways and narrow lanes of the old town from the
crowded pavements to the quiet roads with their formal rows of trees,
their flower-packed gardens and trim hedges. Slowly they would pace along,
enjoying the sweeter air of the suburbs, or, gardenless themselves, would
stand to peep through garden-gates at the well-ordered array of geranium,
calceolaria, verbena; sniffing the fragrance from the serried rows of
stocks, the patches of mignonette, or the blossoming lime-trees overhead.

When on that scented Sabbath peacefulness the warm dark would begin to
descend, it sometimes happened that the boarder, Charles Gibbon, who also
loved the scent of flower and of shrub, and enjoyed the soft air of
evening upon his cheek, would meet or overtake Mrs. Day and her daughter
as they sauntered homewards; and in a very friendly and pleasant way the
three would finish their walk together.

But about the Sunday afternoons there was a less agreeable tale to tell.
The young ladies retired with their books to their bedrooms, on those
occasions; Franky took refuge with Emily in the kitchen, a store of
oranges and nuts having been laid in by that faithful retainer for his
entertainment there. The Manchester man saw more than enough of his
employer on week-days, and would have preferred to pass a Sabbath
afternoon in the cellar with the coals, to spending that portion of his
precious holiday with his employer. Poor Mrs. Day was compelled therefore
to receive her taskmaster and benefactor alone.

Then had her books to be produced, her order-sheet criticised; then was
comparison made between this week's takings and those of the corresponding
week last year. If, as too often happened, alas! the sales had been less,
the poor apologetic tradeswoman had to suffer for it.

"You are losing custom. You must not lose it," the tradesman would
bluster. Or "Your expenses are too much. You are eaten up with expenses,"
he would insist. "You don't see how you can reduce them? Do with less
help, my good lady. What do people do who can't afford help? Go without
it, and do the work themselves. It's what you must do. It is indeed, I do
assure you. C

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