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 appearance, his tall, imposing figure being clothed in no superfluous flesh, his face, with its peculiarly set expression, being pale and handsome. His black hair, worn rather long, after the fashion of the day, was brushed smoothly from his temples; he was shaved but for the close-growing whiskers, which reached half-way down his cheeks.

"To what are we indebted for the honour of so early a call?" he inquired with a twist of his in-drawn lips.

"You were off before I was down this morning," the young man said. "I just looked in to tell you I was going out. That's all."

"You look in rather frequently on the same errand, I believe. Would it be indiscreet on my part to ask where you are going?"

"Not in the least," Reggie declared easily. He lifted for his brother's inspection a pair of skates which he had held dangling at his side. "They've flooded the meadows at Tooley. The ice ought to be in first-rate order, this morning."

"So it is in the moat at home. Half a score people were skating there already as I drove away this morning. Tooley is five miles off. Why need you take the trouble to go to Tooley?"

"Several people, last night, said they were going. I thought I might as well go too."

"Where were you last night, Reggie? I don't want to tie you at home, by any means, but sometimes I like to know where you have been."

"All right, Francis. Of course. There was a dance at the Days' in Queen Anne Street. I've gone to it every New Year's Night, for years. I went there."

"I see." The light hazel eyes of Sir Francis, according strangely with his black hair and palely dusky complexion, considered his brother's cheerful countenance.

"I'm going to ask you not to go to the Days' in Queen Anne Street any more,
Reggie," he said.

Reggie widely stared. "I don't think my going there, when I wish, and they ask me, can do any harm to any one," he protested.

"Sit down, will you?" his brother said, and pointed to the chair on the other side of the table by which he sat.

"I think not, now. I think I'll be off. The ice mayn't keep—"

The other still pointed to the chair. "What I want to say to you won't keep—emphatically. Sit down," he said, and down Reggie sat.

He was by no means embarrassed, or afraid. His brother had stood to him in place of a father since his own father had died when he was a boy at school, but he lectured him as little as possible, and very rarely thwarted him. "Get over it as quick as you can, Francis," was all he said.

"Did you meet Mr. Day going away as you came in?"

"Mr. Day? No."

"He has just left me. He came to tell me that you," he looked during a moment's pause in Reggie's wide eyes, "were engaged to be married to his daughter."

"Well! Come! That's a good 'un!" Reggie was surprised, his brother saw, but not so satisfactorily taken aback as he had hoped.

"Is it so?"

"No."

"Then, what did the man mean by daring to say it to me?"

Reggie maintained an instant's quite undisconcerted silence; then, "You see, she says it too," he said.

"She?"

"Bessie."

"Day's daughter? She must be stopped saying it."

"Oh, I don't know. Girls do say that sort of thing."

"I think not. Unless they are privileged to say it. Miss Day, you say, has nothing to go upon?"

"Oh, well, you know!" Reggie sat back from the table, putting his hands in his pockets, leaning in his chair at his ease, with the air of talking as one man of the world to another.

"But I do not know. I am waiting for you to tell me."

"You don't want me to go into detail, I suppose?"

"You mean you have indulged in a flirtation with this girl, and she has tried to grab you?"

Reggie gave the subject a moment's thought. "I won't quite admit that," he said conscientiously. "She, somehow, seems to think I've gone further than I have gone. She said something to me last night about my speaking to her father."

"Instead of which her father is sent to speak to me. Now, look here, Reggie, you and I have never, so far, had any unpleasantness—have we? Do not let us have it over this. A daughter of William Day's is about the last person on earth it would be desirable for you to marry."

"I'm not thinking of marrying any one yet, Francis."

"I should hope not! Were you going to meet Miss Day on the ice?"

"Well, she said she'd be there. A whole lot of them were going."

"Stay away, will you? To oblige me?"

"If you put it that way—"

"Thank you. I don't want our name"—he was as proud of the brewery as if it had been a dukedom; he said "our name" as though he spoke of a sacred thing—"mixed up with the name of Mr. William Day."

"He's a nice, good-natured old fellow. You should have heard him banging away with his tambourine, last night."

"I'm going to tell you something in confidence. On the strength of your engagement to his daughter—wait! I know you are not engaged to her—Mr. William Day came here to borrow five hundred pounds of me."

"Good-night!"

"I refused him the loan, of course. Wait a minute! What I was going to say is this: I happen to know why he wanted that money. Why it was important for him to get it at once. It was to pacify a certain client of his who is pressing him. She authorised him to sell some shares, which he did; but she can't get a settlement."

"I say! That's pretty bad, isn't it?"

"And it's the one case of which I happen to know the history. There are others, I am told, and more flagrant than this."

"Will he have to smash up?"

"I hope it will be no worse. I hope—well, we shall see. I have told you this to show you how specially distasteful to me was what the man said to me to-day. You understand, don't you?"

Reggie said he understood. "It was quite premature," he declared. "Quite!"
But he looked very thoughtful.

"You will keep clear of them, remember."

"I think I'm best out of their way for the present."

"Instead of skating this morning I wish you'd go over to Runnydale and have a look at that thorough-bred Candy is breaking for me."

Sir Francis knew his man. If Bessie Day had held for him ten times her attraction an errand which had a horse for its objective would have proved more attractive still to Reginald Forcus. With hardly a pang he assented.

The young man spent a happy and profitable day at Runnydale with old Candy, a horse-dealer, much affected by the well-to-do youth of the neighbourhood, he having a racy tongue, and a fund of anecdote, and a pleasant, joking, familiar way of transferring money from their pockets to his own. He returned in time for dinner at Cashelthorpe, his brother's country-house a few miles out of Brockenham, which the younger man also made his home. The two dined alone, as was usual of late, the delicate health of Lady Forcus compelling her often to keep her room.

"You remember what I told you about Day's affairs this morning?" Sir Francis asked, looking across the table at his brother as they sat down to their soup.

Of course Reggie remembered.

"Where do you suppose Mr. William Day is spending his evening?"

Reggie paused with his spoon on its way to his mouth to say he hoped in the bosom of Mr. William Day's family.

"He is spending it in prison."

The spoon fell back into its plate, and Reggie's face grew white. "It can't be true! I'll never believe it!"

"What did you expect, after what I told you? Unless he had made a bolt of it."

"Oh, poor old fellow! But what's the poor old fellow done, then?"

"Done? Fraudulently appropriated his clients' money and adapted it to his own uses."

"Poor old Day! Oh, poor old devil!"

"Well, get your dinner, my dear boy."

"He was slapping me on the shoulder, and I was drinking his champagne, last night!"

The younger Forcus recovered sufficiently to eat the fish, but his soup had to be removed untasted. He sat, with both hands gripping his table-napkin as it lay across his knees, his eyes on the table-cloth, seeing the pretty Deleah and her fat but agile father dancing down the gay ball-room. In prison! Some one he had known, and touched hands with! Prison!

"I wonder of what the poor old fellow was thinking as he banged away at his tambourine last night!" Reggie said.