WHERE IS FATHER?
“Jem, you had better go to bed, and you too, Jack. It’s very late,
and I don’t suppose father will be home before twelve. A quarter past
eleven! That’s too late for all of you.”
It was Mrs. Kayll who spoke, looking first at the clock and then round
at her sleepy children. Madge was nodding, Bob stifling a yawn, and
Jack and Jem both appeared much too wide-awake to be natural.
Jem made a grimace.
“Oh, no, do let us stay and hear all about it,” he said in imploring
tones.
Jack, however, rose at once.
“All right, mother; good-night.” And he went straight upstairs in the
dark, for candles by which to see to undress were a luxury not indulged
in by the Kayll children.
“It’s all very well for Jack to go, you know, mother,” said Jem, who
was not inclined to yield without an argument, “because he has to be up
early and off to work; but I haven’t, until I get something else to do,
so I may just as well sit up and keep you company. Send Bob and Madge
instead.”
Mrs. Kayll looked up with a slight smile.
“I don’t want any company, thank you,” she told him. “I get quite as
much as I need--rather too much, sometimes. And I don’t think it’s good
for you to be up till twelve, dear.”
“It won’t hurt me for once,” said the boy quickly.
“Why can’t you go to bed when mother tells you?” muttered Bob, who was
preparing to go himself. “What’s the good of bothering her and making
such a fuss?”
Jem fired up angrily.
“You be quiet, Bob. Nobody spoke to you. I may stay, mayn’t I, mother?”
“No, no, no,” repeated Mrs. Kayll firmly, shaking her head. “Go to
bed, all of you, and get a good rest, ready for the work of to-morrow.
Father will be tired, and I’m sure he’d a great deal rather find you
all gone and the house quiet. Do go, there’s good children.”
Madge folded up her work, kissed her, and went. Bob followed her
example; but still Jem lingered, sitting so silent that his mother
thought he had gone, and sewed on industriously until some slight sound
he made caused her to start and look up.
“Dear me, Jem! What has come over you? You heard what I said a few
minutes ago.”
“I didn’t suppose you’d really mind, mother. Besides, I want to tell
father about leaving Mr. Graves’s, and to ask him what I’d better do
next.”
“Jem! How thoughtless you are, to be sure! Now, do you think, when
father comes in tired, as he certainly will be, between twelve and one
at night, he will want to be worried by your affairs? There, no more,
Jem. Go along at once.”
Very slowly and reluctantly, and wearing a sulky expression which meant
that he thought himself ill-used, Jem departed, though all the time
he was so sleepy he had hardly been able to hold his eyes open for a
quarter of an hour past.
Edith and Bessie were sleeping soundly when Madge went up. She stood
for a few minutes looking at them, as they lay side by side, for there
was enough moonlight to show their faces quite plainly to eyes that had
grown accustomed to the darkness.
“How pretty they are like that!” thought Madge, with an elder sister’s
affection. “What dear little things they are too, in spite of their
faults, when one comes to think about it!”
Then she undressed, said her prayers, and crept in beside Bessie, so
weary after seventeen hours of hard toil that almost as soon as her
head touched the pillow she was in a dreamless sleep.
Before long the whole house was wrapped in a peaceful stillness, as
one after another of its occupants lay down and forgot all fatigues,
anxieties, longings for money, aches and pains, in pleasant visions or
calm unconsciousness.
And the poor mother down-stairs? She drew the lamp nearer, now that
there was no one else to share its light, and stitched away at her
mending, the click of her needle on the thimble being almost as regular
as the “tick-tack” of the little clock on the mantelpiece.
Ungrateful little clock that it was! It had always been treated well
and kindly, and wound up every night, in spite of its not telling the
exact truth, and now Mr. Kayll had just cleaned it, oiled its works,
and set it going again; yet, such is the ingratitude of clocks, it set
itself to work to make poor Mrs. Kayll uncomfortable, by compelling her
to notice how fast the time was going. It would not even strike twelve
quietly, but gave a warning growl first, to attract her attention, and
then hammered out twelve distinct “tings,” that sounded twice as loud
as usual.
“He must be here soon,” said Mrs. Kayll, taking a fresh needleful
of cotton, and trying to go on with her work; but somehow or other
the needle would not go in at the right place, and Mrs. Kayll’s head
drooped forward slowly more and more, until her chin rested upon her
breast.
She, too, was asleep. The clock at once seized this opportunity, and
rushed on as fast as it could go, the big hand hurrying round its face
and the little one creeping steadily after. Half-past twelve. She did
not move. The hands hurried on, and suddenly the tired mother started
awake, roused by a loud warning sound, in time to hear it strike “One.”
“Good gracious!” she exclaimed, springing to her feet, rubbing her eyes
and staring hard at the clock, before she could believe. “One! How late
he is! I must have been nodding.”
She walked up and down the room a few times, to wake herself more
thoroughly; and then again tried to go on with her work, thinking
meanwhile of the little girl and her sad story.
“They are keeping him long,” she said to herself; “but there’s no
saying how much worse he may have found matters than he expected.
Possibly they are in such great trouble that he cannot bring himself to
leave them. Poor Robert! How worn out he will be!”
Stitch, stitch. And then the drowsiness came back, and the clock made
haste, and succeeded in striking two without waking her. She awoke,
though, at a quarter past the hour, put away her work, and walked to
the door to stand looking out into the street.
It is very painful to wait and wait for someone you expect, who does
not come. At first you are surprised, then astonished, then you begin
to be anxious, after which, if the expected person is one for whom you
care much, you become seriously frightened, and imagine every terrible
thing that could possibly have come to pass.
So it was with Mrs. Kayll. At three o’clock she fancied her husband
must have been run over, or have met with some other accident, and
before long she determined to wait no longer, but to go out and look
for him.
She went upstairs, the first thing, bent over the bed where Madge was
sleeping, and gently shook her by the arm. The girl opened her eyes in
an instant.
“Hush, Madge! Don’t wake the others, pray.”
Madge sat upright, staring at her mother with a bewildered expression.
“Do you hear me, child? Are you awake?”
“Yes, mother. What’s the matter?”
“Father hasn’t come home!”
Madge stared at her still, evidently not quite understanding.
“Why--what time is it?” she whispered.
“A quarter past three or more.”
“Oh, mother!”
“I want you to dress quickly and come down, so that you could open the
door if I should miss him, and then I’m going to look for him,” Mrs.
Kayll said hurriedly, but without raising her voice above a whisper, so
that the others slept on undisturbed.
Madge stepped out on to the floor and began to put on her clothes.
“I don’t think you need be so frightened, mother dear,” she said. “So
many things might have kept him. Perhaps the baby that the little
girl said was so ill, was worse, and father thought it would be cruel
to come away. Or the mother may be worse, so that he could not leave
the children. Or perhaps there may be a fire somewhere, and father is
stopping to see it. You know how fond father is of looking at fires.”
These solutions of the puzzle had already occurred to Mrs. Kayll, but
yet they seemed more possible when suggested by someone else.
“Well, dear, it can’t do any harm for me to go and see. The worst that
can happen is that your father may laugh at me for being so anxious
about nothing. Come down as soon as you’re ready.”
And, thinking it safer, not to talk there any longer, she went and put
on bonnet and shawl, and again took up her position at the front door.
In a few minutes Madge was at her side.
“What are you going to do first, mother?”
“I am going to find the address Amy Coleson gave us--Wingate Row--to
see if he is there, and, if not, whether he has been there, and at what
time he left. If he comes home, Madge, tell him how it was, and that I
am sure to be in soon.”
And with these words her mother hurried away, and the girl was left
to keep lonely watch, and to stifle her fears as well as she could.
Fortunately for her, Madge had not such a quick imagination as her
mother.