CHAPTER IX
DISASTER
Meanwhile in the finest house on Rose Hill the shrill sound of the siren had roused pretty Betty Browning from scented rose-colored slumber.
With a petulant exclamation the girl sat up in bed, prettier than ever with her curling, golden hair disordered and her lovely eyes dewy with sleep.
“What is all the noise about?” she cried, and would have stamped her foot had she been on the floor instead of in bed. “Something ought to be done about that siren, waking people up in the middle of the night!”
Something in the red of the sky and shouts from without that came to her faintly penetrated through her self-centered irritation.
With a slight shiver of dread—or perhaps the breeze from the window was unexpectedly cool—she slipped on a filmy negligee, inserted her pretty feet into satin mules, and padded across the room to the window.
“It seems to be a rather serious fire at that,” thought Betty, as she leaned from the window. Every one in town appeared to be abroad.
Still there was nothing, it seemed to her, to make such a fuss about. The fire department would put out the fire. That’s what fire departments were for!
She yawned, and her petulance returned.
She pattered back to the bed, kicked off the mules and prepared once more to woo sweet slumber. But she was disturbed again, this time by the sound of voices.
She heard her father speak in a quick agitated tone. He seemed to be in the hall just outside her door, while her mother’s languid, bored voice came from the direction of her bedroom.
Then suddenly the telephone rang and Betty heard her father go quickly to answer it.
There was a moment of excited conversation, unintelligible to Betty. Then she heard her father slam up the receiver and fairly run through the hall.
“They say it’s Martin and Hull’s!” he cried. “If it is, I’m about ruined!”
This brought Betty to her feet in earnest.
She slipped on the mules again, ran to the door, and flung it open. She was still petulant, a little bewildered, yet vaguely alarmed.
She heard her mother’s voice say sharply:
“What do you mean by that preposterous statement? You, ruined! You? Why, I never heard anything so absurd!”
“Maybe, my dear. But true, nevertheless.” Her father’s voice was grim, so changed from its ordinary tone that Betty could scarcely recognize it.
The girl could hear her mother stirring languidly, could guess at the look of annoyance on her handsome face.
“If you must speak in riddles, Clyde Browning,” said Mrs. Browning, still more sharply, “perhaps you will not object to giving me an answer to this one.”
There was a moment of silence. Then Mr. Browning spoke in a slow measured tone that struck a queer dread to the heart of the girl who listened.
“I would give you an answer quickly enough, Lily, if I thought you could understand or would even care to try. As it is, I can only tell you that I have met with some rather heavy losses lately. Before I knew of these losses——”
“You are always having losses, Clyde,” Mrs. Browning’s voice broke in, bored and angry. “You have had losses ever since I married you, yet we continue to live in the handsomest house on Rose Hill. We have two cars and servants still. You must know that I am rather well seasoned to your false alarms by this time.”
“This is no false alarm,” returned Mr. Browning in that same grim voice. “I wish to heaven it were. If I could get back that thirty thousand——”
“What thirty thousand?” asked his wife sharply.
“Thirty thousand dollars that I lent Martin and Hull only two weeks ago,” Mr. Browning returned. “If Martin and Hull’s has burned down, then my thirty thousand has probably burned with it, for their building was not fireproof, and if they had any insurance it was little. That—try to understand this, Lily—wipes out just about everything I had left in the world!”
Betty gave a strangled cry and pressed her hands to her lips. She listened, expecting to hear her mother cry out in alarm. It was with an odd shock then that she heard a laugh, a mocking, tinkling laugh.
“Surely, you don’t intend me to think that you haven’t something more than that to fall back upon, Clyde?” she said. “You, who, from a small beginning, amassed a fortune. You are joking, of course.”
Mr. Browning gave a harsh, exasperated exclamation and came down the hall. Betty could see that he was fully dressed and ready for the street. She ran to him.
“Dad, I didn’t mean to listen—I hardly knew what I was doing,” she gasped. “It—what you said—isn’t true?”
“I’m afraid it is, Betty.” Mr. Browning stood for a moment, looking at her oddly. “But don’t bother your pretty head about it. Young girls can’t understand such things. Go to bed now and see if you can’t finish your sleep. I’ll be back soon.”
“Are you going to the fire?” Betty asked as he turned away.
“I’m going to see if that burning building is really Martin and Hull’s,” her father returned grimly.
Betty was left standing in the hall, shivering.
“Betty!”
It was her mother’s voice, high, querulous.
“Yes, mother?”
“Is that you in the hall?”
“Yes, mother.”
“Then come in here. Shut the door, too. I do hope,” she continued when Betty had obeyed, “that none of the servants heard what your father was saying.”
“Why?”
Betty’s tone was distant. She was trying vaguely to understand something that was new and bewildering to her, something that frightened her.
That new thing in her father’s tone and manner! What if he were not joking, as her mother seemed to think? What if he were really in danger of losing all his money? What if they were really to be poor?
“Why!” Her mother’s sharp voice broke into her unpleasant meditations. “It isn’t like you to ask such a silly question, Elizabeth.” Mrs. Browning only called her daughter by her full name when she was in a state of extreme annoyance with her. This seemed to be one of those occasions. “Why, indeed! Because it is vulgar to let the servants know one’s private affairs—especially when they are unpleasant.”
“Mother,” Betty spoke in an odd tone, a tone odd enough, indeed, to catch even Mrs. Browning’s languid attention, “suppose what dad said is true? Suppose we have lost all our money?”
“Nonsense, child!” A dark frown marred Mrs. Browning’s otherwise perfect forehead. “You ought to know your father well enough by this time to know that he is always worrying about something. I don’t think he would be happy,” she said, with an impatient movement of her handsome shoulders, “if he hadn’t something to worry about.”
“He didn’t seem happy to-night,” said Betty in a monotonous voice.
Mrs. Browning switched on her bed-light, and in its rose-shaded, flattering light surveyed her daughter.
Betty was amazingly pretty in her lacy blue negligee with her yellow hair rumpled charmingly and her lovely eyes wide and thoughtful. She was a vision to soothe even Mrs. Browning’s irate heart. For with all her failings, and they were many, this lady was inordinately fond and proud of her pretty daughter.
“What can be the matter with you, child?” she said, but not as sharply as she had intended. “You are far too pretty and much too young to bother your head with money matters. Run along now and get your beauty sleep.”
“But I don’t want to go to sleep,” Betty persisted. “I’d like to talk about dad, mother. I never saw him like that before. I’m sure he really is worried.”
“Worried!” Mrs. Browning spoke lightly and even laughed a little. “Of course he’s worried. I think I remember saying before that that is how he takes his pleasure. Now run along, like a good girl. You may speak lightly of beauty sleep, but I, never! To-morrow we’ll write to Chevot’s, darling, and order several of those sports frocks you fancied. That’s right—leave the door open just a crack as you go.”
Doubtless her mother was asleep soon after that. Betty did not go back to see; though, oddly enough, she would have liked to.
What she did not know was that her mother had attached more importance to Mr. Browning’s announcement of money losses than she had pretended to. Although she refused entirely to credit his statement that if Martin and Hull’s burned, her husband would lose the great bulk of his fortune, Mrs. Browning did believe that he had suffered more or less severe reverses in some of his investments.
“I do wish he would be careful,” she thought, as she switched off the rosy bed-light and settled herself impatiently in a luxurious, downy bed. “I may have to do without that jet evening gown I admired. Of course this had to come at a time when Chevot’s offerings are almost irresistible!”
Mrs. Browning fell asleep shortly after that with nothing weighing more heavily upon her mind, apparently, than the loss of the jet evening gown.
Betty, on the contrary, was suffering a rare experience. She could not sleep.
The reflection of the flames still danced on the walls of her pretty room. For a time they seemed to burn more brightly, and objects of furniture stood out almost as clearly as though it were day.
“Suppose the whole town should go up in flames,” thought Betty.
Such things had happened before, she knew.
But after what seemed to her—and, in reality, were—hours of waiting, the menacing glare of the flames wavered, lessened, changed from red to salmon, from salmon to a faint yellow, and then merged, sullen and beaten, into the dreary gray of early dawn.
Betty heard her father come in soon after that. His step dragged. In that halting sound was weariness—defeat.
Betty wanted to go to him, but did not dare.