That room where their pleasant evenings had been passed while Mr. Day played his cards at the club, presented altogether a different aspect in these sad times when that unhappy man formed part of the circle. The poor, bulky wretch sat always over the fire--literally over it, his chair-feet touching the fender, his own feet as often as not on the bars; the rest of the family withdrawn as much as possible from the hearth. If there was talk among them as they sat at their table with their sewing, their painting, their books--and being young they talked, and even sometimes laughed--he resented the fact that they could do so, and sometimes snarled round upon them with a request for silence. But equally, it seemed, did he resent their silence when it fell, and would make sarcastic remarks to them when they withdrew on the liveliness of the society they provided for him.
An undue amount of the weekly two pounds for housekeeping money went to find the master of the house tobacco. There was some good port wine in the cellar; he might as well drink it while he had the chance, William Day thought. What else had he to do but smoke and drink; and he did both, all day long.
He had not been a drinking man, although he had ever taken his share of the good things of life, nor an idle one. His family looked on now at his altered habits with fear and a growing disgust. It was surprising how, in the loss of his own self-respect and the knowledge that he had lost the respect of those who had loved him, the man altered. With astonishment they, who had known him all their lives, saw him in a few short weeks become selfish, greedy, unmannerly, even unclean. The ash from his pipe fell on his coat, he would not brush it away; he had evidently given up the use of a nail-brush; his hair hung over his forehead; his untrimmed beard and whiskers stuck out round the big face which was flabby now, and unwholesome.
Missing the luxuries from his table, he forgot the niceties he had hitherto observed there. When he came to his meals with unwashed hands, took to himself, with apparently no thought for the rest, the best of what he found there, the elder boy and girl would look at each other with angry condemnation in their eyes. Such lapses from a hitherto observed code of good manners Mrs. Day bore with an apparently apathetic indifference. For years, truth to tell, she had ceased to love the man, and the little deviations, which read so trivially but mean in daily life so much, were almost unnoticed by her in the stupefying sense of the misfortune which had befallen them all.