The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns
by
Arnold Bennett
Part 1 out of 5
Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Carol David and PG Distributed Proofreaders
WORKS BY ARNOLD BENNETT
NOVELS
A MAN FROM THE NORTH
ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS
LEONORA
A GREAT MAN
SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE
WHOM GOD HATH JOINED
BURIED ALIVE
THE OLD WIVES' TALE
THE GLIMPSE
LILIAN
MR. PROHACK
LORD RAINGO
IMPERIAL PALACE
HELEN WITH THE HIGH HAND
THE PRICE OF LOVE
CLAYHANGER
HILDA LESSWAYS
THESE TWAIN
THE ROLL CALL
THE CARD
THE REGENT
THE LION'S SHARE
THE PRETTY LADY
RICEYMAN STEPS
THE STRANGE VANGUARD
ACCIDENT
FANTASIAS
THE GRAND BABYLON HOTEL
THE GATES OF WRATH
TERESA OF WATLING STREET
THE LOOT OF CITIES
HUGO
THE GHOST
THE CITY OF PLEASURE
SHORT STORIES
THE NIGHT VISITOR
TALES OF THE FIVE TOWNS
THE MATADOR OF THE FIVE TOWNS
THE GRIM SMILE OF THE FIVE TOWNS
ELSIE AND THE CHILD
THE WOMAN WHO STOLE EVERYTHING
BELLES-LETTRES
JOURNALISM FOR WOMEN
FAME AND FICTION
HOW TO BECOME AN AUTHOR
THE TRUTH ABOUT AN AUTHOR
MENTAL EFFICIENCY
HOW TO LIVE ON TWENTY-FOUR HOURS A DAY
THE HUMAN MACHINE
LITERARY TASTE
THE FEAST OF ST. FRIEND
HOW TO MAKE THE BEST OF LIFE
THE RELIGIOUS INTERREGNUM
MARRIED LIFE
THE AUTHOR'S CRAFT
LIBERTY
OVER THERE
BOOKS AND PERSONS
SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT
THINGS THAT HAVE INTERESTED ME
THINGS THAT HAVE INTERESTED ME (Second Series)
THINGS THAT HAVE INTERESTED ME (Third Series)
THE SAVIOUR OF LIFE
DRAMA
POLITE FARCES
CUPID AND COMMON SENSE
WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS
THE HONEYMOON
THE LOVE MATCH
DON JUAN
THE GREAT ADVENTURE
THE TITLE
JUDITH
SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE
BODY AND SOUL
THE BRIGHT ISLAND
MR. PROHACK
MISCELLANEOUS
THEIR UNITED STATE
PARIS NIGHTS
OUR WOMEN
THE LOG OF THE "VELSA"
MEDITERRANEAN SCENES
* * * * *
(In Collaboration with EDEN PHILLPOTTS)
THE SINEWS OF WAR: A ROMANCE
THE STATUE: A ROMANCE
(In Collaboration with EDWARD KNOBLOCK)
MILESTONES
LONDON LIFE
THE CARD
A STORY OF ADVENTURE
IN THE FIVE TOWNS
BY
ARNOLD BENNETT
_First Published (Crown 8vo), February 23rd, 1911_
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
CONTENTS
I. THE DANCE 7
II. THE WIDOW HULLINS'S HOUSE 27
III. THE PANTECHNICON 48
IV. WRECKING OF A LIFE 71
V. THE MERCANTILE MARINE 89
VI. HIS BURGLARY 112
VII. THE RESCUER OF DAMES 132
VIII. RAISING A WIGWAM 153
IX. THE GREAT NEWSPAPER WAR 177
X. HIS INFAMY 196
XI. IN THE ALPS 218
XII. THE SUPREME HONOUR 240
THE CARD
CHAPTER I
THE DANCE
I
Edward Henry Machin first saw the smoke on the 27th May 1867, in
Brougham Street, Bursley, the most ancient of the Five Towns. Brougham
Street runs down from St Luke's Square straight into the Shropshire
Union Canal, land consists partly of buildings known as "potbanks"
(until they come to be sold by auction, when auctioneers describe them
as "extensive earthenware manufactories") and partly of cottages whose
highest rent is four-and-six a week. In such surroundings was an
extraordinary man born. He was the only anxiety of a widowed mother, who
gained her livelihood and his by making up "ladies' own materials" in
ladies' own houses. Mrs Machin, however, had a speciality apart from her
vocation: she could wash flannel with less shrinking than any other
woman in the district, and she could wash fine lace without ruining it;
thus often she came to sew and remained to wash. A somewhat gloomy
woman; thin, with a tongue! But I liked her. She saved a certain amount
of time every day by addressing her son as Denry, instead of Edward
Henry.
Not intellectual, not industrious, Denry would have maintained the
average dignity of labour on a potbank had he not at the age of twelve
won a scholarship from the Board School to the Endowed School. He owed
his triumph to audacity rather than learning, and to chance rather than
design. On the second day of the examination he happened to arrive in
the examination-room ten minutes too soon for the afternoon sitting. He
wandered about the place exercising his curiosity, and reached the
master's desk. On the desk was a tabulated form with names of candidates
and the number of marks achieved by each in each subject of the previous
day. He had done badly in geography, and saw seven marks against his
name, in the geographical column, out of a possible thirty. The figures
had been written in pencil. The pencil lay on the desk. He picked it
up, glanced at the door and at the rows of empty desks, and a neat
"_2_" in front of the _7_; then he strolled innocently forth
and came back late. His trick ought to have been found out--the odds
were against him--but it was not found out. Of course it was dishonest.
Yes, but I will not agree that Denry was uncommonly vicious. Every
schoolboy is dishonest, by the adult standard. If I knew an honest
schoolboy I would begin to count my silver spoons as he grew up. All is
fair between schoolboys and schoolmasters.
This dazzling feat seemed to influence not only Denry's career but also
his character. He gradually came to believe that he had won the
scholarship by genuine merit, and that he was a remarkable boy and
destined to great ends. His new companions, whose mothers employed
Denry's mother, also believed that he was a remarkable boy; but they did
not forget, in their gentlemanly way, to call him "washer-woman."
Happily Denry did not mind.
He had a thick skin, and fair hair and bright eyes and broad shoulders,
and the jolly gaiety of his disposition developed daily. He did not
shine at the school; he failed to fulfil the rosy promise of the
scholarship; but he was not stupider than the majority; and his opinion
of himself, having once risen, remained at "set fair." It was
inconceivable that he should work in clay with his hands.
II
When he was sixteen his mother, by operations [**words missing in
original] a yard and a half of Brussels point lace, put [**words missing
in original] Emery under an obligation. Mrs Emery [**words missing in
original] the sister of Mr Duncalf. Mr Duncalf was town Clerk of
Bursley, and a solicitor. It is well known that all bureaucracies are
honey-combed with intrigue. Denry Machin left school to be clerk to Mr
Duncalf, on the condition that within a year he should be able to write
shorthand at the rate of a hundred and fifty words a minute. In those
days mediocre and incorrect shorthand was not a drug on the market. He
complied (more or less, and decidedly less than more) with the
condition. And for several years he really thought that he had nothing
further to hope for. Then he met the Countess.
The Countess of Chell was born of poor but picturesque parents, and she
could put her finger on her great-grandfather's grandfather. Her mother
gained her livelihood and her daughter's by allowing herself to be seen
a great deal with humbler but richer people's daughters. The Countess
was brought up to matrimony. She was aimed and timed to hit a given mark
at a given moment. She succeeded. She married the Earl of Chell. She
also married about twenty thousand acres in England, about a fifth of
Scotland, a house in Piccadilly, seven country seats (including Sneyd),
a steam yacht, and five hundred thousand pounds' worth of shares in the
Midland Railway. She was young and pretty. She had travelled in China
and written a book about China. She sang at charity concerts and acted
in private theatricals. She sketched from nature. She was one of the
great hostesses of London. And she had not the slightest tendency to
stoutness. All this did not satisfy her. She was ambitious! She wanted
to be taken seriously. She wanted to enter into the life of the people.
She saw in the quarter of a million souls that constitute the Five Towns
a unique means to her end, an unrivalled toy. And she determined to be
identified with all that was most serious in the social progress of the
Five Towns. Hence some fifteen thousand pounds were spent in
refurbishing Sneyd Hall, which lies on the edge of the Five Towns, and
the Earl and Countess passed four months of the year there. Hence the
Earl, a mild, retiring man, when invited by the Town Council to be the
ornamental Mayor of Bursley, accepted the invitation. Hence the Mayor
and Mayoress gave an immense afternoon reception to practically the
entire roll of burgesses. And hence, a little later, the Mayoress let it
be known that she meant to give a municipal ball. The news of the ball
thrilled Bursley more than anything had thrilled Bursley since the
signing of Magna Charta. Nevertheless, balls had been offered by
previous mayoresses. One can only suppose that in Bursley there remains
a peculiar respect for land, railway stock, steam yachts, and
great-grandfathers' grandfathers.
Now, everybody of account had been asked to the reception. But everybody
could not be asked to the ball, because not more than two hundred people
could dance in the Town Hall. There were nearly thirty-five thousand
inhabitants in Bursley, of whom quite two thousand "counted," even
though they did not dance.
III
Three weeks and three days before the ball Denry Machin was seated one
Monday alone in Mr Duncalf's private offices in Duck Square (where he
carried on his practice as a solicitor), when in stepped a tall and
pretty young woman, dressed very smartly but soberly in dark green. On
the desk in front of Denry were several wide sheets of "abstract" paper,
concealed by a copy of that morning's _Athletic News_. Before Denry
could even think of reversing the positions of the abstract paper and
the _Athletic News_ the young woman said "Good-morning!" in a very
friendly style. She had a shrill voice and an efficient smile.
"Good-morning, madam," said Denry.
"Mr Duncalf in?" asked the young woman brightly.
(Why should Denry have slipped off his stool? It is utterly against
etiquette for solicitors' clerks to slip off their stools while
answering inquiries.)
"No, madam; he's across at the Town Hall," said Denry.
The young lady shook her head playfully, with a faint smile.
"I've just been there," she said. "They said he was here."
"I daresay I could find him, madam--if you would----"
She now smiled broadly. "Conservative Club, I suppose?" she said, with
an air deliciously confidential.
He, too, smiled.
"Oh, no," she said, after a little pause; "just tell him I've called."
"Certainly, madam. Nothing I can do?"
She was already turning away, but she turned back and scrutinised his
face, as Denry thought, roguishly.
"You might just give him this list," she said, taking a paper from her
satchel and spreading it. She had come to the desk; their elbows
touched. "He isn't to take any notice of the crossings-out in red ink--
you understand? Of course, I'm relying on him for the other lists, and I
expect all the invitations to be out on Wednesday. Good-morning."
She was gone. He sprang to the grimy window. Outside, in the snow, were
a brougham, twin horses, twin men in yellow, and a little crowd of
youngsters and oldsters. She flashed across the footpath, and vanished;
the door of the carriage banged, one of the twins in yellow leaped up to
his brother, and the whole affair dashed dangerously away. The face of
the leaping twin was familiar to Denry. The man had, indeed, once
inhabited Brougham Street, being known to the street as Jock, and his
mother had for long years been a friend of Mrs Machin's.
It was the first time Denry had seen the Countess, save at a distance.
Assuredly she was finer even than her photographs. Entirely different
from what one would have expected! So easy to talk to! (Yet what had he
said to her? Nothing--and everything.)
He nodded his head and murmured, "No mistake about that lot!" Meaning,
presumably, that all that one had read about the brilliance of the
aristocracy was true, and more than true.
"She's the finest woman that ever came into this town," he murmured.
The truth was that she surpassed his dreams of womanhood. At two o'clock
she had been a name to him. At five minutes past two he was in love with
her. He felt profoundly thankful that, for a church tea-meeting that
evening, he happened to be wearing his best clothes.
It was while looking at her list of invitations to the ball that he
first conceived the fantastic scheme of attending the ball himself. Mr
Duncalf was, fussily and deferentially, managing the machinery of the
ball for the Countess. He had prepared a little list of his own of
people who ought to be invited. Several aldermen had been requested to
do the same. There were thus about half-a-dozen lists to be combined
into one. Denry did the combining. Nothing was easier than to insert the
name of E.H. Machin inconspicuously towards the centre of the list!
Nothing was easier than to lose the original lists, inadvertently, so
that if a question arose as to any particular name, the responsibility
for it could not be ascertained without inquiries too delicate to be
made. On Wednesday Denry received a lovely Bristol board, stating in
copper-plate that the Countess desired the pleasure of his company at
the ball; and on Thursday his name was ticked off as one who had
accepted.
IV
He had never been to a dance. He had no dress-suit, and no notion of
dancing.
He was a strange, inconsequent mixture of courage and timidity. You and
I are consistent in character; we are either one thing or the other but
Denry Machin had no consistency.
For three days he hesitated, and then, secretly trembling, he slipped
into Shillitoe's, the young tailor who had recently set up, and who was
gathering together the _jeunesse doree_ of the town.
"I want a dress-suit," he said.
Shillitoe, who knew that Denry only earned eighteen shillings a week,
replied with only superficial politeness that a dress-suit was out of
the question; he had already taken more orders than he could execute
without killing himself. The whole town had uprisen as one man and
demanded a dress-suit.
"So you're going to the ball, are you?" said Shillitoe, trying to
condescend, but, in fact, slightly impressed.
"Yes," said Denry; "are you?"
Shillitoe started and then shook his head. "No time for balls," said he.
"I can get you an invitation, if you like," said Denry, glancing at the
door precisely as he had glanced at the door before adding 2 to 7.
"Oh!" Shillitoe cocked his ears. He was not a native of the town, and
had no alderman to protect his legitimate interests.
To cut a shameful story short, in a week Denry was being tried on.
Shillitoe allowed him two years' credit.
The prospect of the ball gave an immense impetus to the study of the art
of dancing in Bursley, and so put quite a nice sum of money info the
pocket of Miss Earp, a young mistress in that art. She was the daughter
of a furniture dealer with a passion for the Bankruptcy Court. Miss
Earp's evening classes were attended by Denry, but none of his money
went into her pocket. She was compensated by an expression of the
Countess's desire for the pleasure of her company at the ball.
The Countess had aroused Denry's interest in women as a sex; Ruth Earp
quickened the interest. She was plain, but she was only twenty-four, and
very graceful on her feet. Denry had one or two strictly private lessons
from her in reversing. She said to him one evening, when he was
practising reversing and they were entwined in the attitude prescribed
by the latest fashion: "Never mind me! Think about yourself. It's the
same in dancing as it is in life--the woman's duty is to adapt herself
to the man." He did think about himself. He was thinking about himself
in the middle of the night, and about her too. There had been something
in her tone... her eye... At the final lesson he inquired if she would
give him the first waltz at the ball. She paused, then said yes.
V
On the evening of the ball, Denry spent at least two hours in the
operation which was necessary before he could give the Countess the
pleasure of his company. This operation took place in his minute bedroom
at the back of the cottage in Brougham Street, and it was of a complex
nature. Three weeks ago he had innocently thought that you had only to
order a dress-suit and there you were! He now knew that a dress-suit is
merely the beginning of anxiety. Shirt! Collar! Tie! Studs! Cuff-links!
Gloves! Handkerchief! (He was very glad to learn authoritatively from
Shillitoe that handkerchiefs were no longer worn in the waistcoat
opening, and that men who so wore them were barbarians and the truth was
not in them. Thus, an everyday handkerchief would do.) Boots!... Boots
were the rock on which he had struck. Shillitoe, in addition to being a
tailor was a hosier, but by some flaw in the scheme of the universe
hosiers do not sell boots. Except boots, Denry could get all he needed
on credit; boots he could not get on credit, and he could not pay cash
for them. Eventually he decided that his church boots must be dazzled up
to the level of this great secular occasion. The pity was that he
forgot--not that he was of a forgetful disposition in great matters; he
was simply over-excited--he forgot to dazzle them up until after he had
fairly put his collar on and his necktie in a bow. It is imprudent to
touch blacking in a dress-shirt, so Denry had to undo the past and begin
again. This hurried him. He was not afraid of being late for the first
waltz with Miss Ruth Earp, but he was afraid of not being out of the
house before his mother returned. Mrs Machin had been making up a lady's
own materials all day, naturally--the day being what it was! If she had
had twelve hands instead of two, she might have made up the own
materials of half-a-dozen ladies instead of one, and earned twenty-four
shillings instead of four. Denry did not want his mother to see him ere
he departed. He had lavished an enormous amount of brains and energy to
the end of displaying himself in this refined and novel attire to the
gaze of two hundred persons, and yet his secret wish was to deprive his
mother of the beautiful spectacle.
However, she slipped in, with her bag and her seamy fingers and her
rather sardonic expression, at the very moment when Denry was putting on
his overcoat in the kitchen (there being insufficient room in the
passage). He did what he could to hide his shirt-front (though she knew
all about it), and failed.
"Bless us!" she exclaimed briefly, going to the fire to warm her hands.
A harmless remark. But her tone seemed to strip bare the vanity of human
greatness.
"I'm in a hurry," said Denry, importantly, as if he was going forth to
sign a treaty involving the welfare of the nations.
"Well," said she, "happen ye are, Denry. But th' kitchen table's no
place for boot-brushes."
He had one piece of luck. It froze. Therefore no anxiety about the
condition of boots.
VI
The Countess was late; some trouble with a horse. Happily the Earl had
been in Bursley all day, and had dressed at the Conservative Club; and
his lordship had ordered that the programme of dances should be begun.
Denry learned this as soon as he emerged, effulgent, from the
gentlemen's cloak-room into the broad red-carpeted corridor which runs
from end to end of the ground-floor of the Town Hall. Many important
townspeople were chatting in the corridor--the innumerable Swetnam
family, the Stanways, the great Etches, the Fearnses, Mrs Clayton
Vernon, the Suttons, including Beatrice Sutton. Of course everybody knew
him for Duncalf's shorthand clerk and the son of the flannel-washer; but
universal white kid gloves constitute a democracy, and Shillitoe could
put more style into a suit than any other tailor in the Five Towns.
"How do?" the eldest of the Swetnam boys nodded carelessly.
"How do, Swetnam?" said Denry, with equal carelessness.
The thing was accomplished! That greeting was like a Masonic initiation,
and henceforward he was the peer of no matter whom. At first he had
thought that four hundred eyes would be fastened on him, their glance
saying, "This youth is wearing a dress-suit for the first time, and it
is not paid for, either!" But it was not so. And the reason was that the
entire population of the Town Hall was heartily engaged in pretending
that never in its life had it been seen after seven o'clock of a night
apart from a dress-suit. Denry observed with joy that, while numerous
middle-aged and awkward men wore red or white silk handkerchiefs in
their waistcoats, such people as Charles Fearns, the Swetnams, and
Harold Etches did not. He was, then, in the shyness of his handkerchief,
on the side of the angels.
He passed up the double staircase (decorated with white or pale frocks
of unparalleled richness), and so into the grand hall. A scarlet
orchestra was on the platform, and many people strolled about the floor
in attitudes of expectation. The walls were festooned with flowers. The
thrill of being magnificent seized him, and he was drenched in a vast
desire to be truly magnificent himself. He dreamt of magnificence and
boot-brushes kept sticking out of this dream like black mud out of snow.
In his reverie he looked about for Ruth Earp, but she was invisible.
Then he went downstairs again, idly; gorgeously feigning that he spent
six evenings a week in ascending and descending monumental staircases,
appropriately clad. He was determined to be as sublime as any one.
There was a stir in the corridor, and the sublimest consented to be
excited.
The Countess was announced to be imminent. Everybody was grouped round
the main portal, careless of temperatures. Six times was the Countess
announced to be imminent before she actually appeared, expanding from
the narrow gloom of her black carriage like a magic vision. Aldermen
received her--and they did not do it with any excess of gracefulness.
They seemed afraid of her, as though she was recovering from influenza
and they feared to catch it. She had precisely the same high voice, and
precisely the same efficient smile, as she had employed to Denry, and
these instruments worked marvels on aldermen; they were as melting as
salt on snow. The Countess disappeared upstairs in a cloud of shrill
apologies and trailing aldermen. She seemed to have greeted everybody
except Denry. Somehow he was relieved that she had not drawn attention
to him. He lingered, hesitating, and then he saw a being in a long
yellow overcoat, with a bit of peacock's feather at the summit of a
shiny high hat. This being held a lady's fur mantle. Their eyes met.
Denry had to decide instantly. He decided.
"Hello, Jock!" he said.
"Hello, Denry!" said the other, pleased.
"What's been happening?" Denry inquired, friendly.
Then Jock told him about the antics of one of the Countess's horses.
He went upstairs again, and met Ruth Earp coming down. She was glorious
in white. Except that nothing glittered in her hair, she looked the very
equal of the Countess, at a little distance, plain though her features
were.
"What about that waltz?" Denry began informally.
"That waltz is nearly over," said Ruth Earp, with chilliness. "I suppose
you've been staring at her ladyship with all the other men."
"I'm awfully sorry," he said. "I didn't know the waltz was----"
"Well, why didn't you look at your programme?"
"Haven't got one," he said naively.
He had omitted to take a programme. Ninny! Barbarian!
"Better get one," she said cuttingly, somewhat in her _role_ of
dancing mistress.
"Can't we finish the waltz?" he suggested, crestfallen.
"No!" she said, and continued her solitary way downwards.
She was hurt. He tried to think of something to say that was equal to
the situation, and equal to the style of his suit. But he could not. In
a moment he heard her, below him, greeting some male acquaintance in the
most effusive way.
Yet, if Denry had not committed a wicked crime for her, she could never
have come to the dance at all!
He got a programme, and with terror gripping his heart he asked sundry
young and middle-aged women whom he knew by sight and by name for a
dance. (Ruth had taught him how to ask.) Not one of them had a dance
left. Several looked at him as much as to say: "You must be a goose to
suppose that my programme is not filled up in the twinkling of my eye!"
Then he joined a group of despisers of dancing near the main door.
Harold Etches was there, the wealthiest manufacturer of his years
(barely twenty-four) in the Five Towns. Also Shillitoe, cause of another
of Denry's wicked crimes. The group was taciturn, critical, and very
doggish.
The group observed that the Countess was not dancing. The Earl was
dancing (need it be said with Mrs Jos Curtenty, second wife of the
Deputy Mayor?), but the Countess stood resolutely smiling, surrounded by
aldermen. Possibly she was getting her breath; possibly nobody had had
the pluck to ask her. Anyhow, she seemed to be stranded there, on a
beach of aldermen. Very wisely she had brought with her no members of a
house-party from Sneyd Hall. Members of a house-party, at a municipal
ball, invariably operate as a bar between greatness and democracy; and
the Countess desired to participate in the life of the people.
"Why don't some of those johnnies ask her?" Denry burst out. He had
hitherto said nothing in the group, and he felt that he must be a man
with the rest of them.
"Well, _you_ go and do it. It's a free country," said Shillitoe.
"So I would, for two pins!" said Denry.
Harold Etches glanced at him, apparently resentful of his presence
there. Harold Etches was determined to put the extinguisher on
_him_.
"I'll bet you a fiver you don't," said Etches scornfully.
"I'll take you," said Denry, very quickly, and very quickly walked off.
VII
"She can't eat me. She can't eat me!"
This was what he said to himself as he crossed the floor. People seemed
to make a lane for him, divining his incredible intention. If he had not
started at once, if his legs had not started of themselves, he would
never have started; and, not being in command of a fiver, he would
afterwards have cut a preposterous figure in the group. But started he
was, like a piece of clockwork that could not be stopped! In the grand
crises of his life something not himself, something more powerful than
himself, jumped up in him and forced him to do things. Now for the first
time he seemed to understand what had occurred within him in previous
crises.
In a second--so it appeared--he had reached the Countess. Just behind
her was his employer, Mr Duncalf, whom Denry had not previously noticed
there. Denry regretted this, for he had never mentioned to Mr Duncalf
that he was coming to the ball, and he feared Mr Duncalf.
"Could I have this dance with you?" he demanded bluntly, but smiling and
showing his teeth.
No ceremonial title! No mention of "pleasure" or "honour." Not a trace
of the formula in which Ruth Earp had instructed him! He forgot all such
trivialities.
"I've won that fiver, Mr Harold Etches," he said to himself.
The mouths of aldermen inadvertently opened. Mr Duncalf blenched.
"It's nearly over, isn't it?" said the Countess, still efficiently
smiling. She did not recognise Denry. In that suit he might have been a
Foreign Office attache.
"Oh! that doesn't matter, I'm sure," said Denry.
She yielded, and he took the paradisaical creature in his arms. It was
her business that evening to be universally and inclusively polite. She
could not have begun with a refusal. A refusal might have dried up all
other invitations whatsoever. Besides, she saw that the aldermen wanted
a lead. Besides, she was young, though a countess, and adored dancing.
Thus they waltzed together, while the flower of Bursley's chivalry gazed
in enchantment. The Countess's fan, depending from her arm, dangled
against Denry's suit in a rather confusing fashion, which withdrew his
attention from his feet. He laid hold of it gingerly between two
unemployed fingers. After that he managed fairly well. Once they came
perilously near the Earl and his partner; nothing else. And then the
dance ended, exactly when Denry had begun to savour the astounding
spectacle of himself enclasping the Countess.
The Countess had soon perceived that he was the merest boy.
"You waltz quite nicely!" she said, like an aunt, but with more than an
aunt's smile.
"Do I?" he beamed. Then something compelled him to say: "Do you know,
it's the first time I've ever waltzed in my life, except in a lesson,
you know?"
"Really!" she murmured. "You pick things up easily, I suppose?"
"Yes," he said. "Do you?"
Either the question or the tone sent the Countess off into carillons of
amusement. Everybody could see that Denry had made the Countess laugh
tremendously. It was on this note that the waltz finished. She was still
laughing when he bowed to her (as taught by Ruth Earp). He could not
comprehend why she had so laughed, save on the supposition that he was
more humorous than he had suspected. Anyhow, he laughed too, and they
parted laughing. He remembered that he had made a marked effect (though
not one of laughter) on the tailor by quickly returning the question,
"Are you?" And his unpremeditated stroke with the Countess was similar.
When he had got ten yards on his way towards Harold Etches and a fiver
he felt something in his hand. The Countess's fan was sticking between
his fingers. It had unhooked itself from her chain. He furtively
pocketed it.
VIII
"Just the same as dancing with any other woman!" He told this untruth in
reply to a question from Shillitoe. It was the least he could do. And
any other young man in his place would have said as much or as little.
"What was she laughing at?" somebody asked.
"Ah!" said Denry, judiciously, "wouldn't you like to know?"
"Here you are!" said Etches, with an inattentive, plutocratic gesture
handing over a five-pound note. He was one of those men who never
venture out of sight of a bank without a banknote in their pockets--
"Because you never know what may turn up."
Denry accepted the note with a silent nod. In some directions he was
gifted with astounding insight, and he could read in the faces of the
haughty males surrounding him that in the space of a few minutes he had
risen from nonentity into renown. He had become a great man. He did not
at once realise how great, how renowned. But he saw enough in those eyes
to cause his heart to glow, and to rouse in his brain those ambitious
dreams which stirred him upon occasion. He left the group; he had need
of motion, and also of that mental privacy which one may enjoy while
strolling about on a crowded floor in the midst of a considerable noise.
He noticed that the Countess was now dancing with an alderman, and that
the alderman, by an oversight inexcusable in an alderman, was not
wearing gloves. It was he, Denry, who had broken the ice, so that the
alderman might plunge into the water. He first had danced with the
Countess, and had rendered her up to the alderman with delicious gaiety
upon her countenance. By instinct he knew Bursley, and he knew that he
would be talked of. He knew that, for a time at any rate, he would
displace even Jos Curtenty, that almost professional "card" and amuser
of burgesses, in the popular imagination. It would not be: "Have ye
heard Jos's latest?" It would be: "Have ye heard about young Machin,
Duncalf's clerk?"
Then he met Ruth Earp, strolling in the opposite direction with a young
girl, one of her pupils, of whom all he knew was that her name was
Nellie, and that this was her first ball: a childish little thing with a
wistful face. He could not decide whether to look at Ruth or to avoid
her glance. She settled the point by smiling at him in a manner that
could not be ignored.
"Are you going to make it up to me for that waltz you missed?" said Ruth
Earp. She pretended to be vexed and stern, but he knew that she was not.
"Or is your programme full?" she added.
"I should like to," he said simply.
"But perhaps you don't care to dance with us poor, ordinary people, now
you've danced with the _Countess_!" she said, with a certain lofty
and bitter pride.
He perceived that his tone had lacked eagerness.
"Don't talk like that," he said, as if hurt.
"Well," she said, "you can have the supper dance."
He took her programme to write on it.
"Why," he said, "there's a name down here for the supper dance.
'Herbert,' it looks like."
"Oh!" she replied carelessly, "that's nothing. Cross it out."
So he crossed Herbert out.
"Why don't you ask Nellie here for a dance?" said Ruth Earp.
And Nellie blushed. He gathered that the possible honour of dancing with
the supremely great man had surpassed Nellie's modest expectations.
"Can I have the next one?" he said.
"Oh, yes!" Nellie timidly whispered.
"It's a polka, and you aren't very good at polking, you know," Ruth
warned him. "Still, Nellie will pull you through."
Nellie laughed, in silver. The naive child thought that Ruth was trying
to joke at Denry's expense. Her very manifest joy and pride in being
seen with the unique Mr Machin, in being the next after the Countess to
dance with him, made another mirror in which Denry could discern the
reflection of his vast importance.
At the supper, which was worthy of the hospitable traditions of the
Chell family (though served standing-up in the police-court), he learnt
all the gossip of the dance from Ruth Earp; amongst other things that
more than one young man had asked the Countess for a dance, and had been
refused, though Ruth Earp for her part declined to believe that aldermen
and councillors had utterly absorbed the Countess's programme. Ruth
hinted that the Countess was keeping a second dance open for him, Denry.
When she asked him squarely if he meant to request another from the
Countess, he said no, positively. He knew when to let well alone, a
knowledge which is more precious than a knowledge of geography. The
supper was the summit of Denry's triumph. The best people spoke to him
without being introduced. And lovely creatures mysteriously and
intoxicatingly discovered that programmes which had been crammed two
hours before were not, after all, quite full.
"Do tell us what the Countess was laughing at?" This question was shot
at him at least thirty times. He always said he would not tell. And one
girl who had danced with Mr Stanway, who had danced with the Countess,
said that Mr Stanway had said that the Countess would not tell either.
Proof, here, that he was being extensively talked about!
Towards the end of the festivity the rumour floated abroad that the
Countess had lost her fan. The rumour reached Denry, who maintained a
culpable silence. But when all was over, and the Countess was departing,
he rushed down after her, and, in a dramatic fashion which demonstrated
his genius for the effective, he caught her exactly as she was getting
into her carriage.
"I've just picked it up," he said, pushing through the crowd of
worshippers.
"On! thank you so much!" she said. And the Earl also thanked Denry. And
then the Countess, leaning from the carriage, said, with archness in her
efficient smile: "You do pick things up easily, don't you?"
And both Demo and the Countess laughed without restraint, and the
pillars of Bursley society were mystified.
Denry winked at Jock as the horses pawed away. And Jock winked back.
The envied of all, Denry walked home, thinking violently. At a stroke he
had become possessed of more than he could earn from Duncalf in a month.
The faces of the Countess, of Ruth Earp, and of the timid Nellie mingled
in exquisite hallucinations before his tired eyes. He was inexpressibly
happy. Trouble, however, awaited him.
CHAPTER II
THE WIDOW HULLINS'S HOUSE
I
The simple fact that he first, of all the citizens of Bursley, had asked
a countess for a dance (and not been refused) made a new man of Denry
Machin. He was not only regarded by the whole town as a fellow wonderful
and dazzling, but he so regarded himself. He could not get over it. He
had always been cheerful, even to optimism. He was now in a permanent
state of calm, assured jollity. He would get up in the morning with song
and dance. Bursley and the general world were no longer Bursley and the
general world; they had been mysteriously transformed into an oyster;
and Denry felt strangely that the oyster-knife was lying about somewhere
handy, but just out of sight, and that presently he should spy it and
seize it. He waited for something to happen. And not in vain.
A few days after the historic revelry, Mrs Codleyn called to see Denry's
employer. Mr Duncalf was her solicitor. A stout, breathless, and yet
muscular woman of near sixty, the widow of a chemist and druggist who
had made money before limited companies had taken the liberty of being
pharmaceutical. The money had been largely invested in mortgage on
cottage property; the interest on it had not been paid, and latterly Mrs
Codleyn had been obliged to foreclose, thus becoming the owner of some
seventy cottages. Mrs Codleyn, though they brought her in about twelve
pounds a week gross, esteemed these cottages an infliction, a bugbear,
an affront, and a positive source of loss. Invariably she talked as
though she would willingly present them to anybody who cared to accept--
"and glad to be rid of 'em!" Most owners of property talk thus. She
particularly hated paying the rates on them.
Now there had recently occurred, under the direction of the Borough
Surveyor, a revaluation of the whole town. This may not sound exciting;
yet a revaluation is the most exciting event (save a municipal ball
given by a titled mayor) that can happen in any town. If your house is
rated at forty pounds a year, and rates are seven shillings in the
pound, and the revaluation lifts you up to forty-five pounds, it means
thirty-five shillings a year right out of your pocket, which is the
interest on thirty-five pounds. And if the revaluation drops you to
thirty-five pounds, it means thirty-five shillings _in_ your
pocket, which is a box of Havanas or a fancy waistcoat. Is not this
exciting? And there are seven thousand houses in Bursley. Mrs Codleyn
hoped that her rateable value would be reduced. She based the hope
chiefly on the fact that she was a client of Mr Duncalf, the Town Clerk.
The Town Clerk was not the Borough Surveyor and had nothing to do with
the revaluation. Moreover, Mrs Codleyn persumably [Transcriber's note:
sic] entrusted him with her affairs because she considered him an honest
man, and an honest man could not honestly have sought to tickle the
Borough Surveyor out of the narrow path of rectitude in order to oblige
a client. Nevertheless, Mrs Codleyn thought that because she patronised
the Town Clerk her rates ought to be reduced! Such is human nature in
the provinces! So different from human nature in London, where nobody
ever dreams of offering even a match to a municipal official, lest the
act might be construed into an insult.
It was on a Saturday morning that Mrs Codleyn called to impart to Mr
Duncalf the dissatisfaction with which she had learned the news (printed
on a bit of bluish paper) that her rateable value, far from being
reduced, had been slightly augmented.
The interview, as judged by the clerks through a lath-and-plaster wall
and by means of a speaking tube, atoned by its vivacity for its lack of
ceremony. When the stairs had finished creaking under the descent of Mrs
Codleyn's righteous fury, Mr Duncalf whistled sharply twice. Two
whistles meant Denry. Denry picked up his shorthand note-book and obeyed
the summons.
"Take this down!" said his master, rudely and angrily.
Just as though Denry had abetted Mrs Codleyn! Just as though Denry was
not a personage of high importance in the town, the friend of
countesses, and a shorthand clerk only on the surface.
"Do you hear?"
"Yes, sir."
"MADAM"--hitherto it had always been "Dear Madam," or "Dear Mrs
Codleyn"--"MADAM,--Of course I need hardly say that if, after our
interview this morning, and your extraordinary remarks, you wish to
place your interests in other hands, I shall be most happy to hand over
all the papers, on payment of my costs. Yours truly ... To Mrs Codleyn."
Denry reflected: "Ass! Why doesn't he let her cool down?" Also: "He's
got 'hands' and 'hand' in the same sentence. Very ugly. Shows what a
temper he's in!" Shorthand clerks are always like that--hypercritical.
Also: "Well, I jolly well hope she does chuck him! Then I shan't have
those rents to collect." Every Monday, and often on Tuesday, too, Denry
collected the rents of Mrs Codleyn's cottages--an odious task for Denry.
Mr Duncalf, though not affected by its odiousness, deducted 7-1/2 per
cent. for the job from the rents.
"That'll do," said Mr Duncalf.
But as Denry was leaving the room Mr Duncalf called with formidable
brusqueness--
"Machin!"
"Yes, sir?"
In a flash Denry knew what was coming. He felt sickly that a crisis had
supervened with the suddenness of a tidal wave. And for one little
second it seemed to him that to have danced with a countess while the
flower of Bursley's chivalry watched in envious wonder was not, after
all, the key to the door of success throughout life.
Undoubtedly he had practised fraud in sending to himself an invitation
to the ball. Undoubtedly he had practised fraud in sending invitations
to his tailor and his dancing-mistress. On the day after the ball,
beneath his great glory, he had trembled to meet Mr Duncalf's eye, lest
Mr Duncalf should ask him: "Machin, what were _you_ doing at the
Town Hall last night, behaving as if you were the Shah of Persia, the
Prince of Wales, and Henry Irving?" But Mr Duncalf had said nothing, and
Mr Duncalf's eye had said nothing, and Denry thought that the danger was
past.
Now it surged up. "Who invited you to the Mayor's ball?" demanded Mr
Duncalf like thunder.
Yes, there it was! And a very difficult question.
"I did, sir," he blundered out. Transparent veracity. He simply could
not think of a lie.
"Why?"
"I thought you'd perhaps forgotten to put my name down on the list of
invitations, sir."
"Oh!" This grimly. "And I suppose you thought I'd also forgotten to put
down that tailor chap, Shillitoe?"
So it was all out! Shillitoe must have been chattering. Denry remembered
that the classic established tailor of the town, Hatterton, whose trade
Shillitoe was getting, was a particular friend of Mr Duncalf's. He saw
the whole thing.
"Well?" persisted Mr Duncalf, after a judicious silence from Denry.
Denry, sheltered in the castle of his silence, was not to be tempted
out.
"I suppose you rather fancy yourself dancing with your betters?" growled
Mr Duncalf, menacingly.
"Yes," said Denry. "Do _you_?"
He had not meant to say it. The question slipped out of his mouth. He
had recently formed the habit of retorting swiftly upon people who put
queries to him: "Yes, are _you_?" or "No, do _you_?" The trick
of speech had been enormously effective with Shillitoe, for instance,
and with the Countess. He was in process of acquiring renown for it.
Certainly it was effective now. Mr Duncalf's dance with the Countess had
come to an ignominious conclusion in the middle, Mr Duncalf preferring
to dance on skirts rather than on the floor, and the fact was notorious.
"You can take a week's notice," said Mr Duncalf, pompously.
It was no argument. But employers are so unscrupulous in an altercation.
"Oh, very well," said Denry; and to himself he said: "Something
_must_ turn up, now."
He felt dizzy at being thus thrown upon the world--he who had been
meditating the propriety of getting himself elected to the stylish and
newly-established Sports Club at Hillport! He felt enraged, for Mr
Duncalf had only been venting on Denry the annoyance induced in him by
Mrs Codleyn. But it is remarkable that he was not depressed at all. No!
he went about with songs and whistling, though he had no prospects
except starvation or living on his mother. He traversed the streets in
his grand, new manner, and his thoughts ran: "What on earth can I do to
live up to my reputation?" However, he possessed intact the five-pound
note won from Harold Etches in the matter of the dance.
II
Every life is a series of coincidences. Nothing happens that is not
rooted in coincidence. All great changes find their cause in
coincidence. Therefore I shall not mince the fact that the next change
in Denry's career was due to an enormous and complicated coincidence. On
the following morning both Mrs Codleyn and Denry were late for service
at St Luke's Church--Mrs Codleyn by accident and obesity, Denry by
design. Denry was later than Mrs Codleyn, whom he discovered waiting in
the porch. That Mrs Codleyn was waiting is an essential part of the
coincidence. Now Mrs Codleyn would not have been waiting if her pew had
not been right at the front of the church, near the choir. Nor would she
have been waiting if she had been a thin woman and not given to
breathing loudly after a hurried walk. She waited partly to get her
breath, and partly so that she might take advantage of a hymn or a psalm
to gain her seat without attracting attention. If she had not been late,
if she had not been stout, if she had not had a seat under the pulpit,
if she had not had an objection to making herself conspicuous, she would
have been already in the church and Denry would not have had a private
colloquy with her.
"Well, you're nice people, I must say!" she observed, as he raised his
hat.
She meant Duncalf and all Duncalf's myrmidons. She was still full of her
grievance. The letter which she had received that morning had startled
her. And even the shadow of the sacred edifice did not prevent her from
referring to an affair that was more suited to Monday than to Sunday
morning. A little more, and she would have snorted.
"Nothing to do with me, you know!" Denry defended himself.
"Oh!" she said, "you're all alike, and I'll tell you this, Mr Machin,
I'd take him at his word if it wasn't that I don't know who else
I could trust to collect my rents. I've heard such tales about
rent-collectors.... I reckon I shall have to make my peace with him."
"Why," said Denry, "I'll keep on collecting your rents for you if you
like."
"You?"
"I've given him notice to leave," said Denry. "The fact is, Mr Duncalf
and I don't hit it off together."
Another procrastinator arrived in the porch, and, by a singular
simultaneous impulse, Mrs Codleyn and Denry fell into the silence of the
overheard and wandered forth together among the graves.
There, among the graves, she eyed him. He was a clerk at eighteen
shillings a week, and he looked it. His mother was a sempstress, and he
looked it. The idea of neat but shabby Denry and the mighty Duncalf not
hitting it off together seemed excessively comic. If only Denry could
have worn his dress-suit at church! It vexed him exceedingly that he had
only worn that expensive dress-suit once, and saw no faintest hope of
ever being able to wear it again.
"And what's more," Denry pursued, "I'll collect 'em for five per cent,
instead of seven-and-a-half. Give me a free hand, and see if I don't get
better results than _he_ did. And I'll settle accounts every month,
or week if you like, instead of once a quarter, like _he_ does."
The bright and beautiful idea had smitten Denry like some heavenly
arrow. It went through him and pierced Mrs Codleyn with equal success.
It was an idea that appealed to the reason, to the pocket, and to the
instinct of revenge. Having revengefully settled the hash of Mr Duncalf,
they went into church.
No need to continue this part of the narrative. Even the text of the
rector's sermon has no bearing on the issue.
In a week there was a painted board affixed to the door of Denry's
mother:
E.H. MACHIN, _Rent Collector and Estate Agent_.
There was also an advertisement in the _Signal_, announcing that
Denry managed estates large or small.
III
The next crucial event in Denry's career happened one Monday morning, in
a cottage that was very much smaller even than his mother's. This
cottage, part of Mrs Codleyn's multitudinous property, stood by itself
in Chapel Alley, behind the Wesleyan chapel; the majority of the
tenements were in Carpenter's Square, near to. The neighbourhood was not
distinguished for its social splendour, but existence in it was
picturesque, varied, exciting, full of accidents, as existence is apt to
be in residences that cost their occupiers an average of three shillings
a week. Some persons referred to the quarter as a slum, and ironically
insisted on its adjacency to the Wesleyan chapel, as though that was the
Wesleyan chapel's fault. Such people did not understand life and the joy
thereof.
The solitary cottage had a front yard, about as large as a blanket,
surrounded by an insecure brick wall and paved with mud. You went up two
steps, pushed at a door, and instantly found yourself in the principal
reception-room, which no earthly blanket could possibly have covered.
Behind this chamber could be seen obscurely an apartment so tiny that an
auctioneer would have been justified in terming it "bijou," Furnished
simply but practically with a slopstone; also the beginnings of a
stairway. The furniture of the reception-room comprised two chairs and a
table, one or two saucepans, and some antique crockery. What lay at the
upper end of the stairway no living person knew, save the old woman who
slept there. The old woman sat at the fireplace, "all bunched up," as
they say in the Five Towns. The only fire in the room, however, was in
the short clay pipe which she smoked; Mrs Hullins was one of the last
old women in Bursley to smoke a cutty; and even then the pipe was
considered coarse, and cigarettes were coming into fashion--though not
in Chapel Alley. Mrs Hullins smoked her pipe, and thought about nothing
in particular. Occasionally some vision of the past floated through her
drowsy brain. She had lived in that residence for over forty years. She
had brought up eleven children and two husbands there. She had coddled
thirty-five grand-children there, and given instruction to some
half-dozen daughters-in-law. She had known midnights when she could
scarcely move in that residence without disturbing somebody asleep. Now
she was alone in it. She never left it, except to fetch water from the
pump in the square. She had seen a lot of life, and she was tired.
Denry came unceremoniously in, smiling gaily and benevolently, with his
bright, optimistic face under his fair brown hair. He had large and good
teeth. He was getting--not stout, but plump.
"Well, mother!" he greeted Mrs Hullins, and sat down on the other chair.
A young fellow obviously at peace with the world, a young fellow content
with himself for the moment. No longer a clerk; one of the employed;
saying "sir" to persons with no more fingers and toes than he had
himself; bound by servile agreement to be in a fixed place at fixed
hours! An independent unit, master of his own time and his own
movements! In brief, a man! The truth was that he earned now in two days
a week slightly more than Mr Duncalf paid him for the labour of five and
a half days. His income, as collector of rents and manager of estates
large or small, totalled about a pound a week. But, he walked forth in
the town, smiled, joked, spoke vaguely, and said, "Do _you_?" to
such a tune that his income might have been guessed to be anything from
ten pounds a week to ten thousand a year. And he had four days a week in
which to excogitate new methods of creating a fortune.
"I've nowt for ye," said the old woman, not moving.
"Come, come, now! That won't do," said Denry. "Have a pinch of my
tobacco."
She accepted a pinch of his tobacco, and refilled her pipe, and he gave
her a match.
"I'm not going out of this house without half-a-crown at any rate!" said
Denry, blithely.
And he rolled himself a cigarette, possibly to keep warm. It was very
chilly in the stuffy residence, but the old woman never shivered. She
was one of those old women who seem to wear all the skirts of all their
lives, one over the other.
"Ye're here for th' better part o' some time, then," observed Mrs
Hullins, looking facts in the face. "I've told you about my son Jack.
He's been playing [out of work] six weeks. He starts to-day, and he'll
gi'me summat Saturday."
"That won't do," said Denry, curtly and kindly.
He then, with his bluff benevolence, explained to Mother Hullins that
Mrs Codleyn would stand no further increase of arrears from anybody,
that she could not afford to stand any further increase of arrears, that
her tenants were ruining her, and that he himself, with all his cheery
good-will for the rent-paying classes, would be involved in her fall.
"Six-and-forty years have I been i' this 'ere house!" said Mrs Hullins.
"Yes, I know," said Denry. "And look at what you owe, mother!"
It was with immense good-humoured kindliness that he invited her
attention to what she owed. She tacitly declined to look at it.
"Your children ought to keep you," said Denry, upon her silence.
"Them as is dead, can't," said Mrs Hullins, "and them as is alive has
their own to keep, except Jack."
"Well, then, it's bailiffs," said Denry, but still cheerfully.
"Nay, nay! Ye'll none turn me out."
Denry threw up his hands, as if to exclaim: "I've done all I can, and
I've given you a pinch of tobacco. Besides, you oughtn't to be here
alone. You ought to be with one of your children."
There was more conversation, which ended in Denry's repeating, with
sympathetic resignation:
"No, you'll have to get out. It's bailiffs."
Immediately afterwards he left the residence with a bright filial smile.
And then, in two minutes, he popped his cheerful head in at the door
again.
"Look here, mother," he said, "I'll lend you half-a-crown if you like."
Charity beamed on his face, and genuinely warmed his heart.
"But you must pay me something for the accommodation," he added. "I
can't do it for nothing. You must pay me back next week and give me
threepence. That's fair. I couldn't bear to see you turned out of your
house. Now get your rent-book."
And he marked half-a-crown as paid in her greasy, dirty rent-book, and
the same in his large book.
"Eh, you're a queer 'un, Mester Machin!" murmured the old woman as he
left. He never knew precisely what she meant. Fifteen--twenty--years
later in his career her intonation of that phrase would recur to him and
puzzle him.
On the following Monday everybody in Chapel Alley and Carpenter's Square
seemed to know that the inconvenience of bailiffs and eviction could be
avoided by arrangement with Denry the philanthropist. He did quite a
business. And having regard to the fantastic nature of the security, he
could not well charge less than threepence a week for half-a-crown. That
was about 40 per cent. a month and 500 per cent. per annum. The security
was merely fantastic, but nevertheless he had his remedy against
evil-doers. He would take what they paid him for rent and refuse to mark
it as rent, appropriating it to his loans, so that the fear of bailiffs
was upon them again. Thus, as the good genius of Chapel Alley and
Carpenter's Square, saving the distressed from the rigours of the open
street, rescuing the needy from their tightest corners, keeping many a
home together when but for him it would have fallen to pieces--always
smiling, jolly, sympathetic, and picturesque--Denry at length employed
the five-pound note won from Harold Etches. A five-pound note--
especially a new and crisp one, as this was--is a miraculous fragment of
matter, wonderful in the pleasure which the sight of it gives, even to
millionaires; but perhaps no five-pound note was ever so miraculous as
Denry's. Ten per cent. per week, compound interest, mounts up; it
ascends, and it lifts. Denry never talked precisely. But the town soon
began to comprehend that he was a rising man, a man to watch. The town
admitted that, so far, he had lived up to his reputation as a dancer
with countesses. The town felt that there was something indefinable
about Denry.
Denry himself felt this. He did not consider himself clever or
brilliant. But he considered himself peculiarly gifted. He considered
himself different from other men. His thoughts would run:
"Anybody but me would have knuckled down to Duncalf and remained a
shorthand clerk for ever."
"Who but me would have had the idea of going to the ball and asking the
Countess to dance?... And then that business with the fan!"
"Who but me would have had the idea of taking his rent-collecting off
Duncalf?"
"Who but me would have had the idea of combining these loans with the
rent-collecting? It's simple enough! It's just what they want! And yet
nobody ever thought of it till I thought of it!"
And he knew of a surety that he was that most admired type in the
bustling, industrial provinces--a card.
IV
The desire to become a member of the Sports Club revived in his breast.
And yet, celebrity though he was, rising though he was, he secretly
regarded the Sports Club at Hillport as being really a bit above him.
The Sports Club was the latest and greatest phenomenon of social life in
Bursley, and it was emphatically the club to which it behoved the golden
youth of the town to belong. To Denry's generation the Conservative Club
and the Liberal Club did not seem like real clubs; they were machinery
for politics, and membership carried nearly no distinction with it. But
the Sports Club had been founded by the most dashing young men of
Hillport, which is the most aristocratic suburb of Bursley and set on a
lofty eminence. The sons of the wealthiest earthenware manufacturers
made a point of belonging to it, and, after a period of disdain, their
fathers also made a point of belonging to it. It was housed in an old
mansion, with extensive grounds and a pond and tennis courts; it had a
working agreement with the Golf Club and with the Hillport Cricket Club.
But chiefly it was a social affair. The correctest thing was to be seen
there at nights, rather late than early; and an exact knowledge of card
games and billiards was worth more in it than prowess on the field.
It was a club in the Pall Mall sense of the word.
And Denry still lived in insignificant Brougham Street, and his mother
was still a sempstress! These were apparently insurmountable truths. All
the men whom he knew to be members were somehow more dashing than Denry
--and it was a question of dash; few things are more mysterious than
dash. Denry was unique, knew himself to be unique; he had danced with a
countess, and yet... these other fellows!... Yes, there are puzzles,
baffling puzzles, in the social career.
In going over on Tuesdays to Hanbridge, where he had a few trifling
rents to collect, Denry often encountered Harold Etches in the tramcar.
At that time Etches lived at Hillport, and the principal Etches
manufactory was at Hanbridge. Etches partook of the riches of his
family, and, though a bachelor, was reputed to have the spending of at
least a thousand a year. He was famous, on summer Sundays, on the pier
at Llandudno, in white flannels. He had been one of the originators of
the Sports Club. He spent far more on clothes alone than Denry spent in
the entire enterprise of keeping his soul in his body. At their first
meeting little was said. They were not equals, and nothing but
dress-suits could make them equals. However, even a king could not
refuse speech with a scullion whom he had allowed to win money from him.
And Etches and Denry chatted feebly. Bit by bit they chatted less
feebly. And once, when they were almost alone on the car, they chatted
with vehemence during the complete journey of twenty minutes.
"He isn't so bad," said Denry to himself, of the dashing Harold Etches.
And he took a private oath that at his very next encounter with Etches
he would mention the Sports Club--"just to see." This oath disturbed his
sleep for several night. But with Denry an oath was sacred. Having sworn
that he would mention the club to Etches, he was bound to mention it.
When Tuesday came, he hoped that Etches would not be on the tram, and
the coward in him would have walked to Hanbridge instead of taking the
tram. But he was brave. And he boarded the tram, and Etches was already
in it. Now that he looked at it close, the enterprise of suggesting to
Harold Etches that he, Denry, would be a suitable member of the Sports
Club at Hillport, seemed in the highest degree preposterous. Why! He
could not play any games at all! He was a figure only in the streets!
Nevertheless--the oath!
He sat awkwardly silent for a few moments, wondering how to begin. And
then Harold Etches leaned across the tram to him and said:
"I say, Machin, I've several times meant to ask you. Why don't you put
up for the Sports Club? It's really very good, you know."
Denry blushed, quite probably for the last time in his life. And he saw
with fresh clearness how great he was, and how large he must loom in the
life of the town. He perceived that he had been too modest.
V
You could not be elected to the Sports Club all in a minute. There were
formalities; and that these formalities were complicated and took time
is simply a proof that the club was correctly exclusive and worth
belonging to. When at length Denry received notice from the "Secretary
and Steward" that he was elected to the most sparkling fellowship in the
Five Towns, he was positively afraid to go and visit the club. He wanted
some old and experienced member to lead him gently into the club and
explain its usages and introduce him to the chief _habitues_. Or
else he wanted to slip in unobserved while the heads of clubmen were
turned. And then he had a distressing shock. Mrs Codleyn took it into
her head that she must sell her cottage property. Now, Mrs Codleyn's
cottage property was the back-bone of Denry's livelihood, and he could
by no means be sure that a new owner would employ him as rent-collector.
A new owner might have the absurd notion of collecting rents in person.
Vainly did Denry exhibit to Mrs Codleyn rows of figures, showing that
her income from the property had increased under his control. Vainly did
he assert that from no other form of investment would she derive such a
handsome interest. She went so far as to consult an auctioneer. The
auctioneer's idea of what could constitute a fair reserve price shook,
but did not quite overthrow her. At this crisis it was that Denry
happened to say to her, in his new large manner: "Why! If I could
afford, I'd buy the property off you myself, just to show you...!" (He
did not explain, and he did not perhaps know himself, what had to be
shown.) She answered that she wished to goodness he would! Then he said
wildly that he _would_, in instalments! And he actually did buy the
Widow Hullins's half-a-crown-a-week cottage for forty-five pounds, of
which he paid thirty pounds in cash and arranged that the balance should
be deducted gradually from his weekly commission. He chose the Widow
Hullins's because it stood by itself--an odd piece, as it were, chipped
off from the block of Mrs Codleyn's realty. The transaction quietened
Mrs Codleyn. And Denry felt secure because she could not now dispense
with his services without losing her security for fifteen pounds. (He
still thought in these small sums instead of thinking in thousands.)
He was now a property owner.
Encouraged by this great and solemn fact, he went up one afternoon to
the club at Hillport. His entry was magnificent, superficially. No one
suspected that he was nervous under the ordeal. The truth is that no one
suspected because the place was empty. The emptiness of the hall gave
him pause. He saw a large framed copy of the "Rules" hanging under a
deer's head, and he read them as carefully as though he had not got a
copy in his pocket. Then he read the notices, as though they had been
latest telegrams from some dire seat of war. Then, perceiving a massive
open door of oak (the club-house had once been a pretty stately
mansion), he passed through it, and saw a bar (with bottles) and a
number of small tables and wicker chairs, and on one of the tables an
example of the _Staffordshire Signal_ displaying in vast letters
the fearful question:--"Is your skin troublesome?" Denry's skin was
troublesome; it crept. He crossed the hall and went into another room
which was placarded "Silence." And silence was. And on a table with
copies of _The Potter's World, The British Australasian, The Iron
Trades Review_, and the _Golfers' Annual_, was a second copy of
the _Signal_, again demanding of Denry in vast letters whether his
skin was troublesome. Evidently the reading-room.
He ascended the stairs and discovered a deserted billiard-room with two
tables. Though he had never played at billiards, he seized a cue, but
when he touched them the balls gave such a resounding click in the hush
of the chamber that he put the cue away instantly. He noticed another
door, curiously opened it, and started back at the sight of a small
room, and eight middle-aged men, mostly hatted, playing cards in two
groups. They had the air of conspirators, but they were merely some of
the finest solo-whist players in Bursley. (This was before bridge had
quitted Pall Mall.) Among them was Mr Duncalf. Denry shut the door
quickly. He felt like a wanderer in an enchanted castle who had suddenly
come across something that ought not to be come across. He returned to
earth, and in the hall met a man in shirt-sleeves--the Secretary and
Steward, a nice, homely man, who said, in the accents of ancient
friendship, though he had never spoken to Denry before: "Is it Mr
Machin? Glad to see you, Mr Machin! Come and have a drink with me, will
you? Give it a name." Saying which, the Secretary and Steward went
behind the bar, and Denry imbibed a little whisky and much information.
"Anyhow, I've _been!_" he said to himself, going home.
VI
The next night he made another visit to the club, about ten o'clock. The
reading-room, that haunt of learning, was as empty as ever; but the bar
was full of men, smoke, and glasses. It was so full that Denry's arrival
was scarcely observed. However, the Secretary and Steward observed him,
and soon he was chatting with a group at the bar, presided over by the
Secretary and Steward's shirt-sleeves. He glanced around, and was
satisfied. It was a scene of dashing gaiety and worldliness that did not
belie the club's reputation. Some of the most important men in Bursley
were there. Charles Fearns, the solicitor, who practised at Hanbridge,
was arguing vivaciously in a corner. Fearns lived at Bleakridge and
belonged to the Bleakridge Club, and his presence at Hillport (two miles
from Bleakridge) was a dramatic tribute to the prestige of Hillport's
Club.
Fearns was apparently in one of his anarchistic moods. Though a
successful business man who voted right, he was pleased occasionally to
uproot the fabric of society and rebuild it on a new plan of his own.
To-night he was inveighing against landlords--he who by "conveyancing"
kept a wife and family, and a French governess for the family, in rather
more than comfort. The Fearns's French governess was one of the seven
wonders of the Five Towns. Men enjoyed him in these moods; and as he
raised his voice, so he enlarged the circle of his audience.
"If the by-laws of this town were worth a bilberry," he was saying,
"about a thousand so-called houses would have to come down to-morrow.
Now there's that old woman I was talking about just now--Hullins. She's
a Catholic--and my governess is always slumming about among Catholics--
that's how I know. She's paid half-a-crown a week for pretty near half a
century for a hovel that isn't worth eighteen-pence, and now she's going
to be pitched into the street because she can't pay any more. And she's
seventy if she's a day! And that's the basis of society. Nice refined
society, eh?"
"Who's the grasping owner?" some one asked.
"Old Mrs Codleyn," said Fearns.
"Here, Mr Machin, they're talking about you," said the Secretary and
Steward, genially. He knew that Denry collected Mrs Codleyn's rents.
"Mrs Codleyn isn't the owner," Denry called out across the room, almost
before he was aware what he was doing. There was a smile on his face and
a glass in his hand.
"Oh!" said Fearns. "I thought she was. Who is?"
Everybody looked inquisitively at the renowned Machin, the new member.
"I am," said Denry.
He had concealed the change of ownership from the Widow Hullins. In his
quality of owner he could not have lent her money in order that she
might pay it instantly back to himself.
"I beg your pardon," said Fearns, with polite sincerity. "I'd no
idea...!" He saw that unwittingly he had come near to committing a gross
outrage on club etiquette.
"Not at all!" said Denry. "But supposing the cottage was _yours_,
what would _you_ do, Mr Fearns? Before I bought the property I used
to lend her money myself to pay her rent."
"I know," Fearns answered, with a certain dryness of tone.
It occurred to Denry that the lawyer knew too much.
"Well, what should you do?" he repeated obstinately.
"She's an old woman," said Fearns. "And honest enough, you must admit.
She came up to see my governess, and I happened to see her."
"But what should you do in my place?" Denry insisted.
"Since you ask, I should lower the rent and let her off the arrears,"
said Fearns.
"And supposing she didn't pay then? Let her have it rent-free because
she's seventy? Or pitch her into the street?"
"Oh--Well--"
"Fearns would make her a present of the blooming house and give her a
conveyance free!" a voice said humorously, and everybody laughed.
"Well, that's what I'll do," said Denry. "If Mr Fearns will do the
conveyance free, I'll make her a present of the blooming house. That's
the sort of grasping owner I am."
There was a startled pause. "I mean it," said Denry firmly, even
fiercely, and raised his glass. "Here's to the Widow Hullins!"
There was a sensation, because, incredible though the thing was, it had
to be believed. Denry himself was not the least astounded person in the
crowded, smoky room. To him, it had been like somebody else talking, not
himself. But, as always when he did something crucial, spectacular, and
effective, the deed had seemed to be done by a mysterious power within
him, over which he had no control.
This particular deed was quixotic, enormously unusual; a deed assuredly
without precedent in the annals of the Five Towns. And he, Denry, had
done it. The cost was prodigious, ridiculously and dangerously beyond
his means. He could find no rational excuse for the deed. But he had
done it. And men again wondered. Men had wondered when he led the
Countess out to waltz. That was nothing to this. What! A smooth-chinned
youth giving houses away--out of mere, mad, impulsive generosity.
And men said, on reflection, "Of course, that's just the sort of thing
Machin _would_ do!" They appeared to find a logical connection
between dancing with a Countess and tossing a house or so to a poor
widow. And the next morning every man who had been in the Sports Club
that night was remarking eagerly to his friends: "I say, have you heard
young Machin's latest?"
And Denry, inwardly aghast at his own rashness, was saying to himself:
"Well, no one but me would ever have done that!"
He was now not simply a card; he was _the_ card.
CHAPTER III
THE PANTECHNICON
I
"How do you do, Miss Earp?" said Denry, in a worldly manner, which he
had acquired for himself by taking the most effective features of the
manners of several prominent citizens, and piecing them together so
that, as a whole, they formed Denry's manner.
"Oh! How do you do, Mr Machin?" said Ruth Earp, who had opened her door
to him at the corner of Tudor Passage and St Luke's Square.
It was an afternoon in July. Denry wore a new summer suit, whose pattern
indicated not only present prosperity but the firm belief that
prosperity would continue. As for Ruth, that plain but piquant girl was
in one of her simpler costumes; blue linen; no jewellery. Her hair was
in its usual calculated disorder; its outer fleeces held the light. She
was now at least twenty-five, and her gaze disconcertingly combined
extreme maturity with extreme candour. At one moment a man would be
saying to himself: "This woman knows more of the secrets of human nature
than I can ever know." And the next he would be saying to himself: "What
a simple little thing she is!" The career of nearly every man is marked
at the sharp corners with such women. Speaking generally, Ruth Earp's
demeanour was hard and challenging. It was evident that she could not be
subject to the common weaknesses of her sex. Denry was glad.
A youth of quick intelligence, he had perceived all the dangers of the
mission upon which he was engaged, and had planned his precautions.
"May I come in a minute?" he asked in a purely business tone. There was
no hint in that tone of the fact that once she had accorded him a
supper-dance.
"Please do," said Ruth.
An agreeable flouncing swish of linen skirts as she turned to precede
him down the passage! But he ignored it. That is to say, he easily
steeled himself against it.
She led him to the large room which served as her dancing academy--the
bare-boarded place in which, a year and a half before, she had taught
his clumsy limbs the principles of grace and rhythm. She occupied the
back part of a building of which the front part was an empty shop. The
shop had been tenanted by her father, one of whose frequent bankruptcies
had happened there; after which his stock of the latest novelties in
inexpensive furniture had been seized by rapacious creditors, and Mr
Earp had migrated to Birmingham, where he was courting the Official
Receiver anew. Ruth had remained solitary and unprotected, with a
considerable amount of household goods which had been her mother's.
(Like all professional bankrupts, Mr Earp had invariably had belongings
which, as he could prove to his creditors, did not belong to him.)
Public opinion had justified Ruth in her enterprise of staying in
Bursley on her own responsibility and renting part of the building, in
order not to lose her "connection" as a dancing-mistress. Public opinion
said that "there would have been no sense in her going dangling after
her wastrel of a father."
"Quite a long time since we saw anything of each other," observed Ruth
in rather a pleasant style, as she sat down and as he sat down.
It was. The intimate ecstasy of the supper-dance had never been
repeated. Denry's exceeding industry in carving out his career, and his
desire to graduate as an accomplished clubman, had prevented him from
giving to his heart that attention which it deserved, having regard to
his tender years.
"Yes, it is, isn't it?" said Denry.
Then there was a pause, and they both glanced vaguely about the
inhospitable and very wooden room. Now was the moment for Denry to carry
out his pre-arranged plan in all its savage simplicity. He did so.
"I've called about the rent, Miss Earp," he said, and by an effort
looked her in the eyes.
"The rent?" exclaimed Ruth, as though she had never in all her life
heard of such a thing as rent; as though June 24 (recently past) was an
ordinary day like any other day.
"Yes," said Denry.
"What rent?" asked Ruth, as though for aught she guessed it might have
been the rent of Buckingham Palace that he had called about.
"Yours," said Denry.
"Mine!" she murmured. "But what has my rent got to do with you?" she
demanded. And it was just as if she had said, "But what has my rent got
to do with you, little boy?"
"Well," he said, "I suppose you know I'm a rent-collector?"
"No, I didn't," she said.
He thought she was fibbing out of sheer naughtiness. But she was not.
She did not know that he collected rents. She knew that he was a card, a
figure, a celebrity; and that was all. It is strange how the knowledge
of even the cleverest woman will confine itself to certain fields.
"Yes," he said, always in a cold, commercial tone, "I collect rents."
"I should have thought you'd have preferred postage-stamps," she said,
gazing out of the window at a kiln that was blackening all the sky.
If he could have invented something clever and cutting in response to
this sally he might have made the mistake of quitting his _role_ of
hard, unsentimental man of business. But he could think of nothing. So
he proceeded sternly:
"Mr Herbert Calvert has put all his property into my hands, and he has
given me strict instructions that no rent is to be allowed to remain in
arrear."
No answer from Ruth. Mr Calvert was a little fellow of fifty who had
made money in the mysterious calling of a "commission agent." By
reputation he was really very much harder than Denry could even pretend
to be, and indeed Denry had been considerably startled by the advent of
such a client. Surely if any man in Bursley were capable of unmercifully
collecting rents on his own account, Herbert Calvert must be that man!
"Let me see," said Denry further, pulling a book from his pocket and
peering into it, "you owe five quarters' rent--thirty pounds."
He knew without the book precisely what Ruth owed, but the book kept him
in countenance, supplied him with needed moral support.
Ruth Earp, without the least warning, exploded into a long peal of gay
laughter. Her laugh was far prettier than her face. She laughed well.
She might, with advantage to Bursley, have given lessons in laughing as
well as in dancing, for Bursley laughs without grace. Her laughter was a
proof that she had not a care in the world, and that the world for her
was naught but a source of light amusement.
Denry smiled guardedly.
"Of course, with me it's purely a matter of business," said he.
"So that's what Mr Herbert Calvert has done!" she exclaimed, amid the
embers of her mirth. "I wondered what he would do! I presume you know
all about Mr Herbert Calvert," she added.
"No," said Denry, "I don't know anything about him, except that he owns
some property and I'm in charge of it. Stay," he corrected himself, "I
think I do remember crossing his name off your programme once."
And he said to himself: "That's one for her. If she likes to be so
desperately funny about postage-stamps, I don't see why I shouldn't have
my turn." The recollection that it was precisely Herbert Calvert whom he
had supplanted in the supper-dance at the Countess of Chell's historic
ball somehow increased his confidence in his ability to manage the
interview with brilliance.
Ruth's voice grew severe and chilly. It seemed incredible that she had
just been laughing.
"I will tell you about Mr Herbert Calvert;" she enunciated her words
with slow, stern clearness. "Mr Herbert Calvert took advantage of his
visits here for his rent to pay his attentions to me. At one time he was
so far--well--gone, that he would scarcely take his rent."
"Really!" murmured Denry, genuinely staggered by this symptom of the
distance to which Mr Herbert Calvert was once "gone."
"Yes," said Ruth, still sternly and inimically. "Naturally a woman can't
make up her mind about these things all of a sudden," she continued.
"Naturally!" she repeated.
"Of course," Denry agreed, perceiving that his experience of life, and
deep knowledge of human nature were being appealed to.
"And when I did decide definitely, Mr Herbert Calvert did not behave
like a gentleman. He forgot what was due to himself and to me. I won't
describe to you the scene he made. I'm simply telling you this, so that
you may know. To cut a long story short, he behaved in a very vulgar
way. And a woman doesn't forget these things, Mr Machin." Her eyes
threatened him. "I decided to punish Mr Herbert Calvert. I thought if he
wouldn't take his rent before--well, let him wait for it now! I might
have given him notice to leave. But I didn't. I didn't see why I should
let myself be upset because Mr Herbert Calvert had forgotten that he was
a gentleman. I said, 'Let him wait for his rent,' and I promised myself
I would just see what he would dare to do."
"I don't quite follow your argument," Denry put in.
"Perhaps you don't," she silenced him. "I didn't expect you would. You
and Mr Herbert Calvert...! So he didn't dare to do anything himself, and
he's paying you to do his dirty work for him! Very well! Very well!..."
She lifted her head defiantly. "What will happen if I don't pay the
rent?"
"I shall have to let things take their course," said Denry with a genial
smile.
"All right, then," Ruth Earp responded. "If you choose to mix yourself
up with people like Mr Herbert Calvert, you must take the consequences!
It's all the same to me, after all."
"Then it isn't convenient for you to pay anything on account?" said
Denry, more and more affable.
"Convenient!" she cried. "It's perfectly convenient, only I don't care
to. I won't pay a penny until I'm forced. Let Mr Herbert Calvert do his
worst, and then I'll pay. And not before! And the whole town shall hear
all about Mr Herbert Calvert!"
"I see," he laughed easily.
"Convenient!" she reiterated, contemptuously. "I think everybody in
Bursley knows how my _clientele_ gets larger and larger every
year!... Convenient!"
"So that's final, Miss Earp?"
"Perfectly!" said Miss Earp.
He rose. "Then the simplest thing will be for me to send round a bailiff
to-morrow morning, early." He might have been saying: "The simplest
thing will be for me to send round a bunch of orchids."
Another man would have felt emotion, and probably expressed it. But not
Denry, the rent-collector and manager of estates large and small. There
were several different men in Denry, but he had the great gift of not
mixing up two different Denrys when he found himself in a complicated
situation.
Ruth Earp rose also. She dropped her eyelids and looked at him from
under them. And then she gradually smiled.
"I thought I'd just see what you'd do," she said, in a low, confidential
voice from which all trace of hostility had suddenly departed. "You're a
strange creature," she went on curiously, as though fascinated by the
problems presented by his individuality. "Of course, I shan't let it go
as far as that. I only thought I'd see what you'd say. I'll write you
to-night."
"With a cheque?" Denry demanded, with suave, jolly courtesy. "I don't
collect postage-stamps."
(And to himself: "She's got her stamps back.")
She hesitated. "Stay!" she said. "I'll tell you what will be better. Can
you call to-morrow afternoon? The bank will be closed now."
"Yes," he said, "I can call. What time?"
"Oh!" she answered, "any time. If you come in about four, I'll give you
a cup of tea into the bargain. Though you don't deserve it!" After an
instant, she added reassuringly: "Of course I know business is business
with you. But I'm glad I've told you the real truth about your precious
Mr Herbert Calvert, all the same."
And as he walked slowly home Denry pondered upon the singular, erratic,
incalculable strangeness of woman, and of the possibly magic effect of
his own personality on women.
II
It was the next afternoon, in July. Denry wore his new summer suit, but
with a necktie of higher rank than the previous day's. As for Ruth, that
plain but piquant girl was in one of her more elaborate and foamier
costumes. The wonder was that such a costume could survive even for an
hour the smuts that lend continual interest and excitement to the
atmosphere of Bursley. It was a white muslin, spotted with spots of
opaque white, and founded on something pink. Denry imagined that he had
seen parts of it before--at the ball; and he had; but it was now a
tea-gown, with long, languishing sleeves; the waves of it broke at her
shoulders, sending lacy surf high up the precipices of Ruth's neck.
Denry did not know it was a tea-gown. But he knew that it had a most
peculiar and agreeable effect on himself, and that she had promised him
tea. He was glad that he had paid her the homage of his best necktie.
Although the month was July, Ruth wore a kind of shawl over the
tea-gown. It was not a shawl, Denry noted; it was merely about two yards
of very thin muslin. He puzzled himself as to its purpose. It could not
be for warmth, for it would not have helped to melt an icicle. Could it
be meant to fulfil the same function as muslin in a confectioner's shop?
She was pale. Her voice was weak and had an imploring quality.
She led him, not into the inhospitable wooden academy, but into a very
small room which, like herself, was dressed in muslin and bows of
ribbon. Photographs of amiable men and women decorated the pinkish-green
walls. The mantelpiece was concealed in drapery as though it had been a
sin. A writing-desk as green as a leaf stood carelessly in one corner;
on the desk a vase containing some Cape gooseberries. In the middle of
the room a small table, on the table a spirit-lamp in full blast, and on
the lamp a kettle practising scales; a tray occupied the remainder of
the table. There were two easy chairs; Ruth sank delicately into one,
and Denry took the other with precautions.
He was nervous. Nothing equals muslin for imparting nervousness to the
naive. But he felt pleased.
"Not much of the Widow Hullins touch about this!" he reflected
privately.
And he wished that all rent-collecting might be done with such ease, and
amid such surroundings, as this particular piece of rent-collecting. He
saw what a fine thing it was to be a free man, under orders from nobody;
not many men in Bursley were in a position to accept invitations to four
o'clock tea at a day's notice. Further 5 per cent. on thirty pounds was
thirty shillings, so that if he stayed an hour--and he meant to stay an
hour--he would, while enjoying himself, be earning money steadily at the
rate of sixpence a minute.
It was the ideal of a business career.
When the kettle, having finished its scales, burst into song with an
accompaniment of castanets and vapour, and Ruth's sleeves rose and fell
as she made the tea, Denry acknowledged frankly to himself that it was
this sort of thing, and not the Brougham Street sort of thing, that he
was really born for. He acknowledged to himself humbly that this sort of
thing was "life," and that hitherto he had had no adequate idea of what
"life" was. For, with all his ability as a card and a rising man, with
all his assiduous frequenting of the Sports Club, he had not penetrated
into the upper domestic strata of Bursley society. He had never been
invited to any house where, as he put it, he would have had to mind his
p's and q's. He still remained the kind of man whom you familiarly chat
with in the street and club, and no more. His mother's fame as a
flannel-washer was against him; Brougham Street was against him; and,
chiefly, his poverty was against him. True, he had gorgeously given a
house away to an aged widow! True, he succeeded in transmitting to his
acquaintances a vague idea that he was doing well and waxing financially
from strength to strength! But the idea was too vague, too much in the
air. And save by a suit of clothes, he never gave ocular proof that he
had money to waste. He could not. It was impossible for him to compete
with even the more modest of the bloods and the blades. To keep a
satisfactory straight crease down the middle of each leg of his trousers
was all he could accomplish with the money regularly at his disposal.
The town was wafting for him to do something decisive in the matter of
what it called "the stuff."
Thus Ruth Earp was the first to introduce him to the higher intimate
civilisations, the refinements lurking behind the foul walls of Bursley.
"Sugar?" she questioned, her head on one side, her arm uplifted, her
sleeve drooping, and a bit of sugar caught like a white mouse between
the claws of the tongs.
Nobody before had ever said "Sugar?" to him like that. His mother never
said "Sugar?" to him. His mother was aware that he liked three pieces,
but she would not give him more than two. "Sugar?" in that slightly
weak, imploring voice seemed to be charged with a significance at once
tremendous and elusive.
"Yes, please."
"Another?"
And the "Another?" was even more delicious.
He said to himself: "I suppose this is what they call flirting."
When a chronicler tells the exact truth, there is always a danger that
he will not be believed. Yet, in spite of the risk, it must be said
plainly that at this point Denry actually thought of marriage. An absurd
and childish thought, preposterously rash; but it came into his mind,
and--what is more--it stuck there! He pictured marriage as a perpetual
afternoon tea alone with an elegant woman, amid an environment of
ribboned muslin. And the picture appealed to him very strongly. And Ruth
appeared to him in a new light. It was perhaps the change in her voice
that did it. She appeared to him at once as a creature very feminine and
enchanting, and as a creature who could earn her own living in a manner
that was both original and ladylike. A woman such as Ruth would be a
delight without being a drag. And, truly, was she not a remarkable
woman, as remarkable as he was a man? Here she was living amid the
refinements of luxury. Not an expensive luxury (he had an excellent
notion of the monetary value of things), but still luxury. And the whole
affair was so stylish. His heart went out to the stylish.
The slices of bread-and-butter were rolled up. There, now, was a
pleasing device! It cost nothing to roll up a slice of bread-and-butter
--her fingers had doubtless done the rolling--and yet it gave quite a
different taste to the food.
"What made you give that house to Mrs Hullins?" she asked him suddenly,
with a candour that seemed to demand candour.
"Oh," he said, "just a lark! I thought I would. It came to me all in a
second, and I did."
She shook her head. "Strange boy!" she observed.
There was a pause.
"It was something Charlie Fearns said, wasn't it?" she inquired.
She uttered the name "Charlie Fearns" with a certain faint hint of
disdain, as if indicating to Denry that of course she and Denry were
quite able to put Fearns into his proper place in the scheme of things.
"Oh!" he said. "So you know all about it?"
"Well," said she, "naturally it was all over the town. Mrs Fearns's
girl, Annunciata--what a name, eh?--is one of my pupils--the youngest,
in fact."
"Well," said he, after another pause, "I wasn't going to have Fearns
coming the duke over me!" She smiled sympathetically. He felt that they
understood each other deeply.
"You'll find some cigarettes in that box," she said, when he had been
there thirty minutes, and pointed to the mantelpiece.
"Sure you don't mind?" he murmured.
She raised her eyebrows.
There was also a silver match-box in the larger box. No detail lacked.
It seemed to him that he stood on a mountain and had only to walk down a
winding path in order to enter the promised land. He was decidedly
pleased with the worldly way in which he had said: "Sure you don't
mind?"
He puffed out smoke delicately. And, the cigarette between his lips, as
with his left hand he waved the match into extinction, he demanded:
"You smoke?"
"Yes," she said, "but not in public. I know what you men are."
This was in the early, timid days of feminine smoking.
"I assure you!" he protested, and pushed the box towards her. But she
would not smoke.
"It isn't that I mind _you_," she said, "not at all. But I'm not
well. I've got a frightful headache."
He put on a concerned expression.
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