When Beauty Calls

"Oh, Reggie!" Deleah said in a tone of supreme annoyance.

She regarded the young man walking to meet her—his rather dandified but sufficiently handsome figure resplendent in the latest and best cut of coat, waistcoat and hat, the newest thing in neckties about his throat, the ropiest arrangement of gold chain looped across his person—with a severe expression of disapproval on her face.

"Now, what are you doing here?" she demanded of him as he turned and walked by her side. "Isn't it too bad of you, Reggie! I told you that Miss Chaplin had heard of your 'hanging about' for me, as she called it; and that I had promised it should not occur again. I have gone a longer way home, through far less pleasant streets, to escape you—yet here you are, waylaying me again."

"Don't be angry with me, dear; I can't help it," the young man pleaded.

"Can't help it!" she repeated, softly scornful. "You'll get me dismissed from the school. That will be our next misfortune."

"I wish the old woman would dismiss you. I wish she'd turn you out, so that you hadn't a penny except what I could give you; or anywhere to go except to come to me."

"How many times have I asked you not to say that sort of thing?"

"But, hang it all, why shouldn't I? A man knows his own mind at my age, I suppose—?"

"You thought you knew it a year ago when all the town was talking of you and Harriet Hart. You thought you knew it two—or was it three years before that?—when you said you were in love with Bessie."

"Parcel of silly rot, Deleah! They tell you anything, my dear. Don't you believe it. I've never been in love—not head over ears, as I am now—in all my life before. You may believe it."

"I don't wish to believe it. Let us forget it. Do, Reggie!"

"No; let's have it out. You know what I mean. I mean I want you to marry me, dear."

"Nonsense!"

"I can tell you there's no nonsense about it. It's downright, deadly earnest. And I'll tell you another thing, Deleah, since you have dragged in Bessie: that you've no need to be jealous of her—"

"Jealous! Really, Reggie! Oh, what a conceited young man!"

"Hold on. I'll come to that presently. I'm telling you that even when I seemed sweet on Bessie, years ago, I used to think about you. I used to think you were the prettiest little girl I'd ever set eyes on. And so you were; I used to think what a beauty you'd be; and you are. There's no one among the girls I've seen to touch you. You top the lot. You needn't laugh, dear. I mean it."

"But if you do—I'm much obliged to you—but it makes no difference,
Reggie."

"And as to my being conceited—you're always hinting I'm conceited—I'm no more so than any young man would be in my place, with a lot of girls trying to catch him—Ah, there you go! Don't jump on me, Deleah. You know what I mean. Lots of girls are looking out to get married, and I've got money, and I've got a name—"

"On the Brewers' carts. 'Forcus and Sons; Brewers.'"

"It's a name I ain't ashamed of, and one that's pretty well known, at any rate!"

"And my name, or my mother's name, is over a shop-doorway, 'licensed to sell tobacco and snuff'; and it's a name that we can't be proud of, Reggie."

"But I'll put up with it, Deleah. I've made up my mind, and I'll go through with it. The name wouldn't be yours any longer, dear, when you'd taken mine; and as for the grocer's shop—"

"Why, here it is!" Deleah said. "And so good-bye, Reggie."

"I was coming in with you."

"You can't unless I ask you."

"And you're not going to? You're not very polite or kind to me, Deleah, upon my word!"

"Indeed, I am very, very kind, Reggie. And that you'll say when you are wiser. And so, good-bye. Run away and get wiser, Reggie."

"Deleah, something must be done for Bernard," Mrs. Day said with desperation in her tone. She had called the girl into her bedroom to hold conference away from the excitable Bessie. "Something I must do for my poor boy, or I feel that I shall go out of my senses. You must help me to do something, Deleah. Look at this."

From her pocket she drew forth a letter received that morning from the unhappy son. Deleah read it with a painful mingling of pity and contempt.

It was indeed an afflicting letter for any mother to receive; and Mrs. Day had too long been fed on the bread of affliction.

"You see, he begs of me to do something—to buy him off."

"Yes. I think his letter is abject."

"Don't, dear! Your blaming him makes it worse for me to bear, not better.
Somehow this thing must be done—somehow, if I am to know any peace, to
be able to go on. Deleah, Reggie Forcus would do anything for you. Ask
Reggie Forcus to do this."

"Oh, mama! No!"

"My account is overdrawn at the Bank. I dare not ask for a further amount. What would these few pounds be to him? He spends as much on a dinner for a few men at the Royal."

"I can't ask him. Can't you see I must not?"

"I see what you mean. But oh, Deleah, we seem to have come to the bottom of things. What to us, in the very depths, are all those rules and niceties that happier people observe? You see what my boy says? He is 'in hell.' He says it in so many words. My boy! My Bernard!"

With that Mrs. Day flung her arms upon the table by which she was sitting, and her head upon her arms, and gave way to bitter weeping: "My boy! My boy! My poor dear, precious Bernard!" she sobbed despairingly.

The sight made Deleah almost desperate: "I can't do what you ask. I can't possibly ask Reggie. But—there is another person—"

She stopped there, saying to herself, "The third time The third time! I can't ask him for money the third time!"

"Bernard! My Bernard!" cried the mother, her face hidden on her arms.

"Mama, pray do not cry so dreadfully—you break my heart. I can't do what you ask, but I will do what I can," Deleah promised.