Mrs Days Daughters | Page 9

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.
CHAPTER III
Forcus's Family Ale
It was the period when to rob a poor man--or a rich one, for that
matter--of his beer would have been a crime to arouse to furious
expression the popular sense of justice; when beer was on the master's
table as well as in the servants' hall; when every cellar of the well-to-do
held its great cask for family consumption, and no one had thought of
attempting to convert the poor man from indulgence in his national
beverage. It was the period when brewers made huge fortunes--and that
in spite of the fact that they used good malt and hops in their
brewings--nor dreamed, save, perhaps, in their worst nightmare, of the
interference of Government in their monopoly. In Brockenham and its
county the liquor brewed at the Hope Brewery was considered the best
tipple procurable. Nothing slipped down the local throat so
satisfactorily as Forcus and Son's Family Ale; and the present
representatives of the firm were easily the wealthiest people in the
town.

There were but two of them at the time: Francis Forcus--Sir Francis, for
the last twelve months, he having been knighted in the second year of
his mayoralty on the visit of a Royal Personage to his native town--and
Reginald, his brother, born twenty years after himself of his father's
second marriage, and now in his twenty-fourth year. Very good-looking,
very good-natured, very gay and friendly and accessible the younger
brother was. Perhaps the most admired and popular young man in the
town. His simple-minded pursuit of pleasure occupied a great deal of
his time, and prevented his spending much of it at the Brewery where
his brother made it a point of honour to pass three or four hours every
day. But now and again Mr. Reginald appeared at the enormous pile of
buildings, rising out of the slow-flowing river on which Brockenham
stands, and where the famous Family Ale was composed. Now and
then he would amuse himself for an hour, sauntering in the sunshine
about the wide, brightly gravelled yards, inspecting the huge
dray-horses in their stables, exchanging "the top of the morning," as he
facetiously called it to them, with the draymen. He was seldom tempted
to appear where the brewing operations were actually in process, but he
never took his departure without looking in upon his brother in the
spacious and comfortable room overlooking the river in which that
gentleman sat conscientiously for three or four hours a day to read the
Times and the local newspaper.
He paid his call upon the senior partner earlier than usual on the
morning after Mrs. Day's New Year's Dance, but not so early that Sir
Francis Forcus had not received a visitor before him. A visitor who had
upset the equanimity of that always outwardly unruffled, and carefully
self-contained person.
"You are up with the worm, this morning, Reggie," he said.
He was not at all a typical brewer in