Mrs. Day's Daughters. Mary E. Mann
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