DISASTER
Meanwhile in the finest house on Rose Hill the shrill sound of the
siren had roused pretty Betty Browning from scented rose-colored
slumber.
With a petulant exclamation the girl sat up in bed, prettier than
ever with her curling, golden hair disordered and her lovely eyes
dewy with sleep.
“What is all the noise about?” she cried, and would have stamped her
foot had she been on the floor instead of in bed. “Something ought
to be done about that siren, waking people up in the middle of the
night!”
Something in the red of the sky and shouts from without that came to
her faintly penetrated through her self-centered irritation.
With a slight shiver of dread--or perhaps the breeze from the window
was unexpectedly cool--she slipped on a filmy negligee, inserted
her pretty feet into satin mules, and padded across the room to the
window.
“It seems to be a rather serious fire at that,” thought Betty, as
she leaned from the window. Every one in town appeared to be abroad.
Still there was nothing, it seemed to her, to make such a fuss
about. The fire department would put out the fire. That’s what fire
departments were for!
She yawned, and her petulance returned.
She pattered back to the bed, kicked off the mules and prepared once
more to woo sweet slumber. But she was disturbed again, this time by
the sound of voices.
She heard her father speak in a quick agitated tone. He seemed to be
in the hall just outside her door, while her mother’s languid, bored
voice came from the direction of her bedroom.
Then suddenly the telephone rang and Betty heard her father go
quickly to answer it.
There was a moment of excited conversation, unintelligible to Betty.
Then she heard her father slam up the receiver and fairly run through
the hall.
“They say it’s Martin and Hull’s!” he cried. “If it is, I’m about
ruined!”
This brought Betty to her feet in earnest.
She slipped on the mules again, ran to the door, and flung it open.
She was still petulant, a little bewildered, yet vaguely alarmed.
She heard her mother’s voice say sharply:
“What do you mean by that preposterous statement? You, ruined! You?
Why, I never heard anything so absurd!”
“Maybe, my dear. But true, nevertheless.” Her father’s voice was
grim, so changed from its ordinary tone that Betty could scarcely
recognize it.
The girl could hear her mother stirring languidly, could guess at the
look of annoyance on her handsome face.
“If you must speak in riddles, Clyde Browning,” said Mrs. Browning,
still more sharply, “perhaps you will not object to giving me an
answer to this one.”
There was a moment of silence. Then Mr. Browning spoke in a slow
measured tone that struck a queer dread to the heart of the girl who
listened.
“I would give you an answer quickly enough, Lily, if I thought you
could understand or would even care to try. As it is, I can only tell
you that I have met with some rather heavy losses lately. Before I
knew of these losses----”
“You are always having losses, Clyde,” Mrs. Browning’s voice broke
in, bored and angry. “You have had losses ever since I married you,
yet we continue to live in the handsomest house on Rose Hill. We have
two cars and servants still. You must know that I am rather well
seasoned to your false alarms by this time.”
“This is no false alarm,” returned Mr. Browning in that same grim
voice. “I wish to heaven it were. If I could get back that thirty
thousand----”
“What thirty thousand?” asked his wife sharply.
“Thirty thousand dollars that I lent Martin and Hull only two weeks
ago,” Mr. Browning returned. “If Martin and Hull’s has burned down,
then my thirty thousand has probably burned with it, for their
building was not fireproof, and if they had any insurance it was
little. That--try to understand this, Lily--wipes out just about
everything I had left in the world!”
Betty gave a strangled cry and pressed her hands to her lips. She
listened, expecting to hear her mother cry out in alarm. It was with
an odd shock then that she heard a laugh, a mocking, tinkling laugh.
“Surely, you don’t intend me to think that you haven’t something more
than that to fall back upon, Clyde?” she said. “You, who, from a
small beginning, amassed a fortune. You are joking, of course.”
Mr. Browning gave a harsh, exasperated exclamation and came down the
hall. Betty could see that he was fully dressed and ready for the
street. She ran to him.
“Dad, I didn’t mean to listen--I hardly knew what I was doing,” she
gasped. “It--what you said--isn’t true?”
“I’m afraid it is, Betty.” Mr. Browning stood for a moment, looking
at her oddly. “But don’t bother your pretty head about it. Young
girls can’t understand such things. Go to bed now and see if you
can’t finish your sleep. I’ll be back soon.”
“Are you going to the fire?” Betty asked as he turned away.
“I’m going to see if that burning building is really Martin and
Hull’s,” her father returned grimly.
Betty was left standing in the hall, shivering.
“Betty!”
It was her mother’s voice, high, querulous.
“Yes, mother?”
“Is that you in the hall?”
“Yes, mother.”
“Then come in here. Shut the door, too. I do hope,” she continued
when Betty had obeyed, “that none of the servants heard what your
father was saying.”
“Why?”
Betty’s tone was distant. She was trying vaguely to understand
something that was new and bewildering to her, something that
frightened her.
That new thing in her father’s tone and manner! What if he were not
joking, as her mother seemed to think? What if he were really in
danger of losing all his money? What if they were really to be poor?
“Why!” Her mother’s sharp voice broke into her unpleasant
meditations. “It isn’t like you to ask such a silly question,
Elizabeth.” Mrs. Browning only called her daughter by her full name
when she was in a state of extreme annoyance with her. This seemed
to be one of those occasions. “Why, indeed! Because it is vulgar to
let the servants know one’s private affairs--especially when they are
unpleasant.”
“Mother,” Betty spoke in an odd tone, a tone odd enough, indeed, to
catch even Mrs. Browning’s languid attention, “suppose what dad said
is true? Suppose we _have_ lost all our money?”
“Nonsense, child!” A dark frown marred Mrs. Browning’s otherwise
perfect forehead. “You ought to know your father well enough by this
time to know that he is always worrying about something. I don’t
think he would be happy,” she said, with an impatient movement of her
handsome shoulders, “if he hadn’t something to worry about.”
“He didn’t seem happy to-night,” said Betty in a monotonous voice.
Mrs. Browning switched on her bed-light, and in its rose-shaded,
flattering light surveyed her daughter.
Betty was amazingly pretty in her lacy blue negligee with her yellow
hair rumpled charmingly and her lovely eyes wide and thoughtful. She
was a vision to soothe even Mrs. Browning’s irate heart. For with all
her failings, and they were many, this lady was inordinately fond and
proud of her pretty daughter.
“What can be the matter with you, child?” she said, but not as
sharply as she had intended. “You are far too pretty and much too
young to bother your head with money matters. Run along now and get
your beauty sleep.”
“But I don’t want to go to sleep,” Betty persisted. “I’d like to talk
about dad, mother. I never saw him like that before. I’m sure he
really is worried.”
“Worried!” Mrs. Browning spoke lightly and even laughed a little. “Of
course he’s worried. I think I remember saying before that that is
how he takes his pleasure. Now run along, like a good girl. You may
speak lightly of beauty sleep, but I, never! To-morrow we’ll write
to Chevot’s, darling, and order several of those sports frocks you
fancied. That’s right--leave the door open just a crack as you go.”
Doubtless her mother was asleep soon after that. Betty did not go
back to see; though, oddly enough, she would have liked to.
What she did not know was that her mother had attached more
importance to Mr. Browning’s announcement of money losses than
she had pretended to. Although she refused entirely to credit his
statement that if Martin and Hull’s burned, her husband would lose
the great bulk of his fortune, Mrs. Browning did believe that he had
suffered more or less severe reverses in some of his investments.
“I do wish he would be careful,” she thought, as she switched off the
rosy bed-light and settled herself impatiently in a luxurious, downy
bed. “I may have to do without that jet evening gown I admired. Of
course this had to come at a time when Chevot’s offerings are almost
irresistible!”
Mrs. Browning fell asleep shortly after that with nothing weighing
more heavily upon her mind, apparently, than the loss of the jet
evening gown.
Betty, on the contrary, was suffering a rare experience. She could
not sleep.
The reflection of the flames still danced on the walls of her pretty
room. For a time they seemed to burn more brightly, and objects of
furniture stood out almost as clearly as though it were day.
“Suppose the whole town should go up in flames,” thought Betty.
Such things had happened before, she knew.
But after what seemed to her--and, in reality, were--hours of
waiting, the menacing glare of the flames wavered, lessened, changed
from red to salmon, from salmon to a faint yellow, and then merged,
sullen and beaten, into the dreary gray of early dawn.
Betty heard her father come in soon after that. His step dragged. In
that halting sound was weariness--defeat.
Betty wanted to go to him, but did not dare.