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 people of the town present. No one's dance was so nicely managed, so spirited, so successful as theirs.
She was actually thinking of the dance as she stood there, dazed, in the gas-lit hall. They would never give another New Year's dance.
William, with all his faults, was never mean. "Don't spoil the ship for a ha'po'rth of tar," was a favourite motto of his. She had ever thought it a proverb both pleasant and wise. She was not an extravagant woman, but she also liked to have things well done, and had no sympathy with cheese-paring ways. The house was well and handsomely furnished, she and the children had plenty of dress, their table was an excellent one, all of them indulging in an amused contempt of the domestic economies of their friends. Servants stayed with them for years, and it was easy to fill their places when they left. They kept one more of them than was needed, for comfort's sake. She was a good mistress; he, for all his passionate rating of his dependents at times, was a good master.
Was all this finished now? Was it possible? The old pleasant, natural order of things—the only order to which she had ever been accustomed. Finished now?
And if so what would follow?
Furniture sale. Dust of strange feet in the familiar rooms. People she would never have dreamed of admitting there pulling about her carpets, poking her feather-beds, turning up their noses at the breakfast-room chair-covers which were shabby, there was no good in denying it; and with her not by to explain they preferred them so. No more expensive paint-boxes and toys for Franky; Bessie and darling Deleah in shabby hats; Bernard without pocket-money, made a banker's clerk, perhaps—she had heard her husband say bank-clerks had no prospects, poor beggars! Bernard—her handsome Bernard to be a "poor beggar"—!
A sudden vertigo seized her: the hall was whirling round; she stretched a hand blindly for support, and pulled over an umbrella-stand which fell with a crash and clatter.
The girls and Bernard came running out. "What on earth are you doing, mama? Have you hurt yourself? What is it?"