Mrs. Day's Daughters Part 8

He was a man they all knew as a friend and a.s.sociate 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 comrades.h.i.+p had existed between the two from that time till now.

George Boult had a.s.sumed for years the habit of dropping in at Queen Anne Street on Sunday afternoons to smoke a cigar and drink a gla.s.s of wine with the lawyer, but it was a function the men had enjoyed _tete-a-tete_: 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, m.u.f.fled 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 s.p.u.n.k 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 pa.s.sed 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 b.u.t.tifers, the Frosts, do it? Which of them shall we ask?"

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