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.