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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 40103
   :PG.Title: Denry the Audacious
   :PG.Released: 2012-06-28
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Arnold Bennett
   :DC.Title: Denry the Audacious
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1911
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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DENRY THE AUDACIOUS
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      Cover

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   Denry the Audacious

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      By

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      Arnold Bennett

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      Author of "Clayhanger"

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      NEW YORK
      \E. \P. DUTTON & COMPANY
      31 West Twenty-Third Street

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      THE DEEDS OF DENRY THE AUDACIOUS

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      COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY
      \E. \P. BUTTON & COMPANY

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      DENRY THE AUDACIOUS

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      COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY
      \E. \P. BUTTON & COMPANY

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      The Knickerbocker Press, New York

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      CONTENTS

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      CHAPTER

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      I.  `The Dance`_
      II.  `The Widow Hullins's House`_
      III.  `The Pantechnicon`_
      IV.  `Wrecking of a Life`_
      V.  `The Mercantile Marine`_
      VI.  `His Burglary`_
      VII.  `The Rescuer of Dames`_
      VIII.  `Raising a Wigwam`_
      IX.  `The Great Newspaper War`_
      X.  `His Infamy`_
      XI.  `In the Alps`_
      XII.  `The Supreme Honour`_

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.. _`THE DANCE`:

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   Denry the Audacious

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   CHAPTER I.  THE DANCE

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   II

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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, and 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 specialty 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 very pencil lay
on the desk.  He picked it up, glanced at the
door and at the rows of empty desks, and
wrote 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
cheerful 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.

When he was sixteen his mother, by operations
on a yard and a half of Brussels point
lace, put Mrs. Emery under an obligation.
Mrs. Emery was the sister of Mr. Duncalf.  Mr. Duncalf
was the Town Clerk of Bursley, and a
solicitor.  It is well known that all
bureaucracies are honeycombed 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 in 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.

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   II

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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 Picadilly, 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 municipal 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-grandfather's 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.

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   III

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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.

(Why should Denry have slipped off his stool?
It is utterly against etiquette for solicitors'
clerks to slip off their stools while answering
enquiries.)

"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 is n'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 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 enquiries 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 on the list as one who had
accepted.

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   IV

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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 Sillitoe's the young
tailor who had recently set up and who was
gathering together the *jeunesse dorée* of the
town.

"I want a dress-suit," he said.

Sillitoe, who knew that Denry only earned
eighteen shilling 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
Sillitoe, trying to condescend, but in fact slightly
impressed.

"Yes," said Denry, "are you?"

Sillitoe 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!"  Sillitoe 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.  Sillitoe 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
into 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 enquired if she would give him the
first waltz at the ball.  She paused, then said yes.

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   V

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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 Sillitoe 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.  Sillitoe,
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 nations.

"Well," said she, "happen ye are, Denry.
But the kitchen table's no place for boot-brushes."

He had one piece of luck.  It froze.  Therefore,
no anxiety about the condition of boots!

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   VI

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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 Sweetnam 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
incomparable flannel-washer; but universal white
kid gloves constitute a democracy, and Sillitoe
could put more style into a suit than any other
tailor in the Five Towns.

"How do?" the eldest of the Sweetnam boys
nodded carelessly.

"How do, Sweetnam?" 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
Sweetnams, 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,
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 down-stairs 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 up-stairs 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 enquired, friendly.

Then Jock told him about the antics of one
of the Countess's horses.

He went up-stairs 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 did n't
know the waltz was——"

"Well, why did n't you look at your programme?"

"Have n't got one," he said naïvely.

He had omitted to take a programme.  Ninny!
Barbarian!

"Better get one," she said, cuttingly,
somewhat in her rôle 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
Sillitoe, 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. Curtenly, 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 Sillitoe.

"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.

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   VII

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"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 crisis 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, is n't it?" said the Countess,
still efficiently smiling.  She did not
recognise Denry.  In that suit he might have been
a Foreign Office attaché.

"Oh! that does n't matter, I 'm sure!" said Denry.

She yielded, and he took the paradisiacal
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.

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   VIII

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"Just the same as dancing with any other
woman!"—he told this untruth in reply to a
question from Sillitoe.  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 else asked.

"Ah!" said Denry judiciously, "wouldn't
you like to know?"

"Here you are!" said Etches, with an
unattentive, 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 Aldermen 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. Curtenly, 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 are n't very good at
polking, you know," Ruth warned him.  "Still,
Nellie will pull you through."

Nellie laughed, in silver.  The naïve 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, 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!

Toward 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.

"Oh! 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 Denry 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.





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.. _`THE WIDOW HULLINS'S HOUSE`:

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   CHAPTER II.  THE WIDOW HULLINS'S HOUSE

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   I

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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 re-valuation
of the whole town.  This may not sound exciting;
yet a re-valuation 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 £40 a year, and rates are 7/- in the £,
and the re-valuation lifts you up to £45, it means
thirty-five shillings a year right out of your
pocket, which is the interest on £35.  And if the
re-valuation drops you to £35, 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
ratable 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 re-valuation.  Moreover
Mrs. Codleyn presumably 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 ratable
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 does n'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 sha n'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 7-½ 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 Mr. George Alexander?"  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, Sillitoe?"

So it was all out!  Sillitoe must have been
chattering.  Denry remembered that the classic
established tailor of the town, Hatterton, whose
trade Sillitoe was filching, 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 Sillitoe, 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 on 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.

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   II

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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 chancel.  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 was n'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 inch advertisement in the *Signal*
announcing that Denry managed estates large or
small.

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   III

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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 fire-place, "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 grandchildren 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,
poked, 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 ye 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 ought not to be here
alone.  You ought to be with one of your
children."

There was more conversation, which ended in
Denry 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 could n'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 forty per cent. a month and five hundred
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, nor 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
evermore."

"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.

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   IV

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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 ... those 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
tram-car.  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 meetings 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 in the car, they chatted
with vehemence during the complete journey of
twenty minutes.

"He is n'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 nights.  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 at 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 determined to get
it over.  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.

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   V

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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
habitués.  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 backbone 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 would 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, to show her, 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 £45, of
which he paid £30 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 old piece,
as it were, chipped off from the block of
Mrs. Codleyn's realty.  The transaction quieted
Mrs. Codleyn.  And Denry felt secure because
she could not now dispense with his services
without losing her security for £15.  (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 *Golfer's 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 whiskey and much
information concerning the Club.

"Anyhow, I 've *been*!" he said to himself
going home.

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   VI

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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 Fearnses' 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 bye-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 is n'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 should *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 streets?"

"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
although 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.





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.. _`THE PANTECHNICON`:

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   CHAPTER III.  THE PANTECHNICON

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   I

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"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 jewelry.  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 24th (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 did n'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 rôle 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, £30."

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 should n'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 does n't forget these
things, Mr. Machin."  Her eyes threatened him.
"I decided to punish Mr. Herbert Calvert.  I
thought if he would n't take his rent before—well,
let him wait for it now!  I might have
given him notice to leave.  But I did n't.  I
did n'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
did n't expect you would.  You and Mr. Herbert
Calvert! ... So he didn't dare to do anything
himself, and he is 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 is n'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 am 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 postage
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.

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   II

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It was the next afternoon in July.  Denry
wore his new summer suit, but with a necktie
of higher rank than the previous days.  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, 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 in the naïve.  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, five 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 waiting 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 had ever before 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
rib-boned 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 enquired.

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
was n'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 is n'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.

"I *thought* you looked rather pale," he said
awkwardly.

"Pale!" she repeated the word.  "You should
have seen me this morning!  I have fits of dizziness,
you know, too.  The doctor says its nothing
but dyspepsia.  However, don't let's talk about
poor little me and my silly complaints.  Perhaps
the tea will do me good."

He protested again, but his experience of
intimate civilisation was too brief to allow him
to protest with effectiveness.  The truth was, he
could not say these things naturally.  He had
to compose them, and then pronounce them, and
the result failed in the necessary air of
spontaneity.  He could not help thinking what
marvellous self-control women had.  Now when he
had a headache—which happily was seldom—he
could think of nothing else and talk of nothing
else; the entire universe consisted solely of his
headache.  And here she was overcome with a
headache and during more than half an hour
had not even mentioned it!

She began talking gossip about the Fearnses
and the Sweetnams, and she mentioned rumours
concerning Henry Mynors (who had scruples
against dancing) and Anna Tellwright, the
daughter of that rich old skinflint, Ephraim
Tellwright.  No mistake; she was on the inside of
things in Bursley society!  It was just as if
she had removed the front walls of every house
and examined every room at her leisure, with
minute particularity.  But of course a teacher
of dancing had opportunities....  Denry had
to pretend to be nearly as omniscient as she was.

Then she broke off, without warning, and lay
back in her chair.

"I wonder if you 'd mind going into the barn
for me?" she murmured.

She generally referred to her academy as the
barn.  It had once been a warehouse.

He jumped up.  "Certainly," he said, very
eager.

"I think you 'll see a small bottle of eau-de-cologne
on the top of the piano," she said, and
shut her eyes.

He hastened away, full of his mission, and
feeling himself to be a terrific cavalier and
guardian of weak women.  He felt keenly that he must
be equal to the situation.  Yes, the small bottle
of eau-de-cologne was on the top of the piano.
He seized it and bore it to her on the wings of
chivalry.  He had not been aware that eau-de-cologne
was a remedy for, or a palliative of headaches.

She opened her eyes, and with a great effort
tried to be bright and better.  But it was a
failure.  She took the stopper out of the bottle and
sniffed first at the stopper and then at the bottle;
then she spilled a few drops of the liquid on her
handkerchief and applied the handkerchief to
her temples.

"It's easier," she said.

"Sure?" he asked.  He did not know what
to do with himself, whether to sit down and
feign that she was well, or to remain standing
in an attitude of respectful and grave anxiety.
He thought he ought to depart; yet would it not
be ungallant to desert her under the circumstances?
She was alone.  She had no servant,
only an occasional charwoman.

She nodded with brave, false gaiety.  And
then she had a relapse.

"Don't you think you'd better lie down?"
he suggested in more masterful accents.  And
added: "And I'll go? ... You ought to lie
down.  It's the only thing."  He was now
speaking to her like a wise uncle.

"Oh, no!" she said, without conviction.
"Besides, you can't go till I 've paid you."

It was on the tip of his tongue to say:
"Oh! don't bother about that, now!"  But he
restrained himself.  There was a notable core of
common-sense in Denry.  He had been puzzling
how he might neatly mention the rent while
departing in a hurry so that she might lie down.
And now she had solved the difficulty for him.

She stretched out her arm, and picked up a
bunch of keys from a basket on a little table.

"You might just unlock that desk for me,
will you?" she said.  And further, as she went
through the keys one by one to select the right
key: "Each quarter I 've put your precious
Mr. Herbert Calvert's rent in a drawer in that
desk....  Here 's the key."  She held up the
whole ring by the chosen key, and he accepted
it.  And she lay back once more in her chair,
exhausted by her exertions.

"You must turn the key sharply in the lock,"
she said weakly, as he fumbled at the locked
part of the desk.

So he turned the key sharply.

"You 'll see a bag in the little drawer on the
right," she murmured.

The key turned round and round.  It had
begun by resisting but now it yielded too easily.

"It does n't seem to open," he said, feeling
clumsy.

The key clicked and slid, and the other keys
rattled together.

"Oh, yes," she replied.  "I opened it quite
easily this morning.  It *is* a bit catchy."

The key kept going round and round.

"Here!  I 'll do it," she said wearily.

"Oh, no!" he urged.

But she rose courageously, and tottered to the
desk, and took the bunch off him.

"I 'm afraid you 've broken something in the
lock," she announced, which gentle resignation,
after she had tried to open the desk and
failed.

"Have I?" he mumbled.  He knew that he
was not shining.

"Would you mind calling in at Allman's," she
said, resuming her chair, "and tell them to send
a man down at once to pick the lock?  There 's
nothing else for it.  Or perhaps you 'd better
say first thing to-morrow morning.  And then as
soon as he 's done it, I 'll call and pay you the
money, myself.  And you might tell your
precious Mr. Herbert Calvert that next quarter I
shall give notice to leave."

"Don't you trouble to call, please!" said he.
"I can easily pop in here."

She sped him away in an enigmatic tone.  He
could not be sure whether he had succeeded or
failed, in her estimation, as a man of the world
and a partaker of delicate teas.

"Don't *forget* Allman's!" she enjoined him
as he left the room.  He was to let himself out.

"Oh, no!" he said.

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   III

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He was coming home late that night from the
Sports Club, from a delectable evening which
had lasted till one o'clock in the morning, when
just as he put the large door-key into his mother's
cottage, he grew aware of peculiar phenomena
at the top end of Brougham Street, where it runs
into St. Luke's Square.  And then, in the gas-lit
gloom of the dark summer night he perceived
a vast and vague rectangular form in slow
movement towards the slope of Brougham Street.

It was a pantechnicon van.

But the extraordinary thing was, not that it
should be a pantechnicon van, but that it should
be moving of its own accord and power.  For
there were no horses in front of it, and Denry
saw that the double shafts had been pushed up
perpendicularly, after the manner of carmen
when they outspan.  The pantechnicon was
running away.  It had perceived the wrath to come
and was fleeing.  Its guardians had evidently
left it imperfectly scotched or braked and it had
got loose.

It proceeded down the first bit of Brougham
Street with a dignity worthy of its dimensions,
and at the same time with apparently a certain
sense of the humour of the situation.  Then it
seemed to be saying to itself: "Pantechnicons
will be pantechnicons."  Then it took on the
absurd gravity of a man who is perfectly sure that
he is not drunk.  Nevertheless it kept fairly well
to the middle of the road, but as though the road
were a tight rope.

The rumble of it increased as it approached
Denry.  He withdrew the key from his mother's
cottage and put it in his pocket.  He was always
at his finest in a crisis.  And the onrush of the
pantechnicon constituted a clear crisis.  Lower
down the gradient of Brougham Street was more
dangerous, and it was within the possibilities
that people inhabiting the depths of the street
might find themselves pitched out of bed by the
sharp corner of a pantechnicon that was
determined to be a pantechnicon.  A pantechnicon
whose ardour is fairly aroused may be capable
of surpassing deeds.  Whole thoroughfares might
crumble before it.

As the pantechnicon passed Denry, at the rate
of about three and a half miles an hour, he
leaped, or rather he scrambled, on to it, losing
nothing in the process except his straw hat,
which remained a witness at his mother's door
that her boy had been that way and departed
under unusual circumstances.

Denry had the bright idea of dropping the
shafts down, to act as a brake.  But,
unaccustomed to the manipulation of shafts, he was
rather slow in accomplishing the deed, and ere
the first pair of shafts had fallen the pantechnicon
was doing quite eight miles an hour and
the steepest declivity was yet to come.  Further
the dropping of the left-hand shafts jerked the
van to the left, and Denry dropped the other
pair only just in time to avoid the sudden
uprooting of a lamp-post.  The four points of the
shafts digging and prodding into the surface of
the road gave the pantechnicon something to
think about for a few seconds.  But
unfortunately the precipitousness of the street
encouraged its headstrong caprices, and a few
seconds later all four shafts were broken; and
the pantechnicon seemed to scent the open
prairie.  (What it really did scent was the
canal.)  Then Denry discovered the brake, and
furiously struggled with the iron handle.  He
turned it and turned it, some forty revolutions.
It seemed to have no effect.  The miracle was
that the pantechnicon maintained its course in
the middle of the street.  Presently Denry could
vaguely distinguish the wall and double wooden
gates of the canal wharf.  He could not jump
off; the pantechnicon was now an express; and
I doubt whether he would have jumped off even
if jumping off had not been madness.  His was
the kind of perseverance that, for the fun of it,
will perish in an attempt.  The final fifty or
sixty yards of Brougham Street were level, and
the pantechnicon slightly abated its haste.
Denry could now plainly see, in the radiance
of a gas-lamp, the gates of the wharf, and on
them the painted letters: "Shropshire Union
Canal Coy. Ltd. General Carriers.  No
admittance except on business."  He was heading
straight for those gates, and the pantechnicon
evidently had business within.  It jolted over
the iron guard of the weighing machine, and
this jolt deflected it, so that instead of aiming at
the gates it aimed for part of a gate and part
of a brick pillar.  Denry ground his teeth
together and clung to his seat.  The gate might
have been paper and the brick pillar a cardboard
pillar.  The pantechnicon went through them as
a sword will go through a ghost, and Denry was
still alive.  The remainder of the journey was
brief and violent, owing partly to a number of
bags of cement and partly to the propinquity of
the canal basin.  The pantechnicon jumped into
the canal like a mastodon, and drank.

Denry, clinging to the woodwork, was
submerged for a moment, but by standing on the
narrow platform from which sprouted the
splintered ends of the shafts, he could get his waist
clear of the water.  He was not a swimmer.

All was still; and dark, save for the faint
stream of starlight on the broad bosom of the
canal basin.  The pantechnicon had encountered
nobody whatever en route.  Of its strange
escapade Denry had been the sole witness.

"Well, I 'm dashed!" he murmured aloud.

And a voice replied from the belly of the
pantechnicon: "Who is there?"

All Denry's body shook.

"It's me!" said he.

"Not Mr. Machin?" said the voice.

"Yes," said he.  "I jumped on as it came
down the street—and here we are!"

"Oh!" cried the voice.  "I do wish you could
get round to me!"

Ruth Earp's voice!

He saw the truth in a moment of piercing
insight.  Ruth had been playing with him!  She
had performed a comedy for him in two acts.
She had meant to do what is called in the Five
Towns "a moonlight flit."  The pantechnicon
(doubtless from Birmingham, where her father
was) had been brought to her door late in the
evening, and was to have been filled and taken
away during the night.  The horses had been
stabled, probably in Ruth's own yard, and while
the carmen were reposing the pantechnicon had
got off, Ruth in it.  She had no money locked in
her unlockable desk.  Her reason for not having
paid the precious Mr. Herbert Calvert was not
the reason which she had advanced.

His first staggered thought was:

"She 's got a nerve!  No mistake!"

Her duplicity, her wickedness, did not shock
him.  He admired her tremendous and audacious
enterprise; it appealed strongly to every cell in
his brain.  He felt that she and he were kindred
spirits.

He tried to clamber round the side of the van
so as to get to the doors at the back, but a
pantechnicon has a wheel-base which forbids
leaping from wheel to wheel, especially when
the wheels are under water.  Hence he was
obliged to climb on to the roof, and so slide
down on to the top of one of the doors, which was
swinging loose.  The feat was not simple.  At
last he felt the floor of the van under half a
yard of water.

"Where are you?"

"I 'm here," said Ruth, very plaintively.
"I 'm on a table.  It was the only thing they
had put into the van before they went off to
have their supper or something.  Furniture
removers are always like that.  Haven't you got
a match?"

"I 've got scores of matches," said Denry.
"But what good do you suppose they 'll be now?
All soaked through!"

A short silence.  He noticed that she had
offered no explanation of her conduct towards
himself.  She seemed to take it for granted that
he would understand.

"I 'm frightfully bumped, and I believe my
nose is bleeding," said Ruth, still more
plaintively.  "It's a good thing there was a lot of
straw and sacks here."

Then, after much groping, his hand touched
her wet dress.

"You know you 're a very naughty girl," he said.

He heard a sob, a wild sob.  The proud,
independent creature had broken down under the
stress of events.  He climbed out of the water
on to the part of the table which she was not
occupying.  And the van was as black as Erebus.

Gradually, out of the welter of sobs, came faint
articulations, and little by little he learnt the
entire story of her difficulties, her misfortunes,
her struggles, and her defeats.  He listened to a
frank confession of guilt.  But what could she
do?  She had meant well.  But what could
she do?  She had been driven into a corner.
And she had her father to think of!  Honestly,
on the previous day, she had intended to pay the
rent, or part of it.  But there had been a
disappointment!  And she had been so unwell.  In
short....

The van gave a lurch.  She clutched at him
and he at her.  The van was settling down for
a comfortable night in the mud.

(Queer that it had not occurred to him
before; but at the first visit she had postponed
paying him on the plea that the bank was closed;
while at the second visit she had stated that
the actual cash had been slowly accumulating in
her desk.  And the discrepancy had not struck
him!  Such is the influence of a tea-gown.
However, he forgave her, in consideration of her
immense audacity.)

"What can we do?" she almost whispered.
Her confidence in him affected him.

"Wait till it gets light," said he.

So they waited, amid the waste of waters.  In
a hot July it is not unpleasant to dangle one's
feet in water during the sultry dark hours.  She
told him more and more.

When the inspiring grey preliminaries of the
dawn began, Denry saw that at the back of the
pantechnicon the waste of waters extended for
at most a yard, and that it was easy, by climbing
on to the roof, to jump therefrom to the wharf.
He did so; and then fixed a plank so that Ruth
could get ashore.  Relieved of their weight the
table floated out after them.  Denry seized it,
and set about smashing it to pieces with his feet.

"What *are* you doing?" she asked faintly.
She was too enfeebled to protest more vigorously.

"Leave it to me," said Denry.  "This table
is the only thing that can give your show away.
We can't carry it back.  We might meet some one."

He tied the fragments of the table together
with rope that was afloat in the van, and
attached the heavy iron bar whose function was
to keep the doors closed.  Then he sank the
faggot of wood and iron in a distant corner of the
basin.

"There!" he said.  "Now you understand,
nothing's happened except that a furniture
van 's run off and fallen into the canal, owing
to the men's carelessness.

"We can settle the rest later—I mean about
the rent and so on."

They looked at each other.

Her skirts were nearly dry.  Her nose showed
no trace of bleeding, but there was a bluish lump
over her left eye.  Save that he was hatless, and
that his trousers clung, he was not utterly
unpresentable.

They were alone in the silent dawn.

"You 'd better go home by Acre Lane, not up
Brougham Street," he said.  "I 'll come in
during the morning."

It was a parting in which more was felt than said.

They went one after the other through the
devastated gateway, baptising the path as they
walked.  The Town Hall clock struck three as
Denry crept up his mother's stairs.  He had
seen not a soul.

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   IV

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The exact truth in its details was never known
to more than two inhabitants of Bursley.  The
one clear certainty appeared to be that Denry,
in endeavouring to prevent a runaway pantechnicon
from destroying the town, had travelled with
it into the canal.  The romantic trip was
accepted as perfectly characteristic of Denry.
Around this island of fact washed a fabulous
sea of uninformed gossip, in which assertion
conflicted with assertion, and the names of Denry
and Ruth were continually bumping against
each other.

Mr. Herbert Calvert glanced queerly and
perhaps sardonically at Denry when Denry called
and handed over ten pounds (less commission)
which he said Miss Earp had paid on
account.

"Look here," said the little Calvert, his mean
little eyes gleaming, "you must get in the
balance at once."

"That's all right," said Denry.  "I shall."

"Was she trying to hook it on the q.t.?"
Calvert demanded.

"Oh, no!" said Denry.  "That was a very
funny misunderstanding.  The only explanation
I can think of is that that van must have come
to the wrong house."

"Are you engaged to her?" Calvert asked,
with amazing effrontery.

Denry paused.  "Yes," he said.  "Are
you?"  Mr. Calvert wondered what he meant.

He admitted to himself that the courtship had
begun in a manner surpassingly strange.





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.. _`WRECKING OF A LIFE`:

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   CHAPTER IV.  WRECKING OF A LIFE

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   I

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In the Five Towns, and perhaps elsewhere,
there exists a custom in virtue of which a couple
who have become engaged in the early summer
find themselves by a most curious coincidence
at the same seaside resort, and often in the
same street thereof, during August.  Thus it
happened to Denry and to Ruth Earp.  There
had been difficulties—there always are.  A
business man who lives by collecting weekly rents
obviously cannot go away for an indefinite
period.  And a young woman who lives alone
in the world is bound to respect public opinion.
However, Ruth arranged that her girlish friend
Nellie Cotterill, who had generous parents,
should accompany her.  And the North
Staffordshire Railway's philanthropic scheme of
issuing four-shilling tourist return tickets to the
seaside enabled Denry to persuade his mother
and himself that he was not absolutely mad in
contemplating a fortnight on the shores of England.

Ruth chose Llandudno, Llandudno being more
stylish than either Rhyl or Blackpool, and
not dearer.  Ruth and Nellie had a double
room in a boarding-house, No. 26, St. Asaph's
Road (off the Marine Parade), and Denry
had a small single room in another boarding-house,
No. 28, St. Asaph's Road.  The ideal
could scarcely have been approached more nearly.

Denry had never seen the sea before.  As,
in his gayest clothes, he strolled along the
esplanade or on the pier between those two girls in
their gayest clothes, and mingled with the
immense crowd of pleasure-seekers and
money-spenders, he was undoubtedly much impressed
by the beauty and grandeur of the sea.  But
what impressed him far more than the beauty
and grandeur of the sea was the field for
profitable commercial enterprise which a place like
Llandudno presented.  He had not only his first
vision of the sea, but his first genuine vision of
the possibilities of amassing wealth by honest
ingenuity.  On the morning after his arrival he
went out for a walk and lost himself near the
Great Orme, and had to return hurriedly along
the whole length of the Parade about nine
o'clock.  And through every ground-floor
window of every house he saw a long table full
of people eating and drinking the same kinds
of food.  In Llandudno fifty thousand souls
desired always to perform the same act at the
same time; they wanted to be distracted and
they would do anything for the sake of
distraction, and would pay for the privilege.  And
they would all pay at once.

This thought was more majestic to him than
the sea or the Great Orme or the Little Orme.

It stuck in his head because he had suddenly
grown into a very serious person.  He
had now something to live for, something on
which to lavish his energy.  He was happy in
being affianced, and more proud than happy, and
more startled than proud.  The manner and
method of his courtship had sharply differed
from his previous conception of what such an
affair would be.  He had not passed through
the sensations which he would have expected to
pass through.  And then this question was
continually presenting itself: *What could she see
in him*?  She must have got a notion that he
was far more wonderful than he really was.
Could it be true that she, his superior in
experience and in splendour of person, had kissed
him?  *Him*!  He felt that it would be his duty
to live up to this exaggerated notion which she
had of him.  But how?

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   II

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They had not yet discussed finance at all,
though Denry would have liked to discuss it.
Evidently she regarded him as a man of means.
This became clear during the progress of the
journey to Llandudno.  Denry was flattered.
But the next day he had slight misgivings, and
on the day following he was alarmed; and on
the day after that his state resembled terror.  It
is truer to say that she regarded him less as
a man of means than as a magic and
inexhaustible siphon of money.

He simply could not stir out of the house
without spending money, and often in ways quite
unforeseen.  Pier, minstrels, Punch and Judy,
bathing, buns, ices, canes, fruit, chairs,
rowboats, concerts, toffee, photographs, char-à-bancs;
any of these expenditures was likely to happen
whenever they went forth for a simple stroll.
One might think that strolls were gratis, that
the air was free!  Error!  If he had had the
courage he would have left his purse in the
house, as Ruth invariably did.  But men are
moral cowards.

He had calculated thus: Return fare, four
shillings a week.  Agreed terms at boarding-house,
twenty-five shillings a week.  Total
expenses per week, twenty-nine shillings,—say
thirty!

On the first day he spent fourteen shillings
on nothing whatever—which was at the rate of
five pounds a week of supplementary estimates!
On the second day he spent nineteen shillings
on nothing whatever, and Ruth insisted on his
having tea with herself and Nellie at their
boarding-house; for which of course he had to pay,
while his own tea was wasting next door.  So
the figures ran on, jumping up each day.
Mercifully, when Sunday dawned the open wound
in his pocket was temporarily staunched.  Ruth
wished him to come in for tea again.  He
refused.  At any rate he did not come.  And the
exquisite placidity of the stream of their love
was slightly disturbed.

Nobody could have guessed that she was in
monetary difficulties on her own account.  Denry,
as a chivalrous lover, had assisted her out of the
fearful quagmire of her rent; but she owed much
beyond rent.  Yet, when some of her quarterly
fees had come in, her thoughts had instantly
run to Llandudno, joy, and frocks.  She did not
know what money was, and she never would.
This was, perhaps, part of her superior splendour.
The gentle, timid, silent Nellie occasionally
let Denry see that she, too, was scandalised
by her bosom friend's recklessness.  Often Nellie
would modestly beg for permission to pay her
share of the cost of an amusement.  And it
seemed just to Denry that she should pay her
share.  And he violently wished to accept her
money.  But he could not.  He would even get
quite curt with her when she insisted.  From
this it will be seen how absurdly and irrationally
different he was from the rest of us.

Nellie was continually with them, except just
before they separated for the night.  So that
Denry paid consistently for three.  But he liked
Nellie Cotterill.  She blushed so easily, and she
so obviously worshipped Ruth and admired
himself.  And there was a marked vein of common
sense in her ingenuous composition.

On the Monday morning he was up early and
off to Bursley to collect rents and manage
estates.  He had spent nearly five pounds beyond
his expectation.  Indeed, if by chance he had not
gone to Llandudno with a portion of the previous
week's rents in his pockets, he would have been
in what the Five Towns call a fix.

While in Bursley he thought a good deal.
Bursley in August encourages nothing but
thought.  His mother was working as usual.
His recitals to her of the existence led by
betrothed lovers at Llandudno were vague.

On the Tuesday evening he returned to
Llandudno.  And, despite the general trend of his
thoughts, it once more occurred that his pockets
were loaded with a portion of the week's rents.
He did not know precisely what was going to
happen, but he knew that something was going
to happen; for the sufficient reason that his
career could not continue unless something did
happen.  Without either a quarrel, an understanding,
or a miracle, three months of affianced
bliss with Ruth Earp would exhaust his
resources and ruin his reputation as one who was
ever equal to a crisis.

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   III

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What immediately happened was a storm at
sea.  He heard it mentioned at Rhyl, and he
saw, in the deep night, the foam of breakers at
Prestatyn.  And when the train reached Llandudno,
those two girls in ulsters and caps greeted
him with wondrous tales of the storm at sea,
and of wrecks, and of lifeboats.  And they were
so jolly, and so welcoming, so plainly glad to
see their cavalier again, that Denry instantly
discovered himself to be in the highest spirits.
He put away the dark and brooding thoughts
which had disfigured his journey, and became
the gay Denry of his own dreams.  The very
wind intoxicated him!  There was no rain.

It was half-past nine, and half Llandudno was
afoot on the Parade and discussing the storm—a
storm unparalleled, it seemed, in the month
of August.  At any rate, people who had visited
Llandudno yearly for twenty-five years declared
that never had they witnessed such a storm.  If
the tide had not been out the Parade would have
been uninhabitable.  The new lifeboat had gone
forth, amid cheers, about six o'clock to a
schooner in distress near Rhos.  And at eight
o'clock a second lifeboat (an old one which the
new one had replaced and which had been
bought for a floating warehouse by an aged
fisherman) had departed to the rescue of a
Norwegian barque, the *Hjalmar*, round the bend of
the Little Orme.

"Let's go on the pier," said Denry.  "It will
be splendid."

He was not an hour in the town, and yet
was already hanging expense!

"They 've closed the pier," the girls told him.

But when in the course of their meanderings
among the excited crowd under the gas-lamps
they arrived at the pier-gates, Denry perceived
figures on the pier.

"They 're sailors and things, and the Mayor,"
the girls explained.

"Pooh!" said Denry, fired.

He approached the turnstile and handed a
card to the official.  It was the card of an
advertisement agent of the *Staffordshire Signal*,
who had called at Brougham Street in Denry's
absence about the renewal of Denry's advertisement.

"Press," said Denry to the guardian at the
turnstile, and went through with the ease of a
bird on the wing.

"Come along," he cried to the girls.

The guardian seemed to hesitate.

"These ladies are with me," he said.

The guardian yielded.

It was a triumph for Denry.  He could read
his triumph in the eyes of his companions.
When she looked at him like that, Ruth was
assuredly marvellous among women.  And any
ideas derogatory to her marvellousness which
he might have had at Bursley and in the train
were false ideas.

At the head of the pier beyond the pavilion
there were gathered together some fifty people.
And the tale ran that the second lifeboat had
successfully accomplished its mission and was
approaching the pier.

"I shall write an account of this for the
*Signal*," said Denry, whose thoughts were
excusably on the Press.

"Oh, do!" exclaimed Nellie.

"They have the *Signal* at all the newspaper
shops here," said Ruth.

Then they seemed to be merged in the storm.
The pier shook and trembled under the shock
of the waves, and occasionally, though the tide
was very low, a sprinkle of water flew up and
caught their faces.  The eyes could see nothing
save the passing glitter of the foam on the crest
of a breaker.  It was the most thrilling
situation that any of them had ever been in.

And at last came word from the mouths of
men who could apparently see as well in dark
as in daylight that the second lifeboat was close
to the pier.  And then everybody momentarily
saw it—a ghostly thing that heaved up pale out
of the murk for an instant and was lost again.
And the little crowd cheered.

The next moment a Bengal light illuminated
the pier, and the lifeboat was silhouetted with
strange effectiveness against the storm.  And
some one flung a rope.  And then another rope
arrived out of the sea and fell on Denry's
shoulder.

"Haul on there!" yelled a hoarse voice.  The
Bengal light expired.

Denry hauled with a will.  The occasion was
unique.  And those few seconds were worth to
him the whole of Denry's precious life—yes, not
excluding the seconds in which he had kissed
Ruth and the minutes in which he had danced
with the Countess of Chell.  Then two men with
beards took the rope from his hands.  The air
was now alive with shoutings.  Finally there
was a rush of men down the iron stairway to
the lower part of the pier, ten feet nearer the
water.

"You stay here, you two!" Denry ordered,
extremely excited.

"But Denry——"

"Stay here, I tell you!"  All the male in
him was aroused.  He was off, after the rush
of men.  "Half a jiffy!" he said, coming back.
"Just take charge of this, will you?"  And he
poured into their hands about twelve shillings'
worth of copper, small change of rents, from
his pocket.  "If anything happened, that might
sink me," he said, and vanished.

It was very characteristic of him, that effusion
of calm sagacity in a supreme emergency.

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   IV

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Beyond getting his feet wet Denry accomplished
but little in the dark basement of the
pier.  In spite of his success in hauling on the
thrown rope, he seemed to be classed at once
down there by the experts assembled as an eager
and useless person who had no right to the
space which he occupied.  However, he
witnessed the heaving arrival of the lifeboat and
the disembarking of the rescued crew of the
Norwegian barque, and he was more than ever
decided to compose a descriptive article for the
*Staffordshire Signal*.  The rescued and the
rescuing crews disappeared in single file to the
upper floor of the pier, with the exception of
the coxswain, a man with a spreading red beard,
who stayed behind to inspect the lifeboat, of
which indeed he was the absolute owner.  As a
journalist Denry did the correct thing and
engaged him in conversation.  Meanwhile, cheering
could be heard above.  The coxswain, who stated
that his name was Cregeen and that he was a
Manxman, seemed to regret the entire expedition.
He seemed to be unaware that it was his
duty now to play the part of the modest hero
to Denry's interviewer.  At every loose end of
the chat he would say gloomily:

"And look at her now, I 'm telling ye!"

Meaning the battered craft, which rose and
fell on the black waves.

Denry ran upstairs again, in search of more
amenable material.  Some twenty men in
various sou'westers and other headgear were eating
thick slices of bread and butter and drinking hot
coffee, which with foresight had been prepared
for them in the pier buffet.  A few had
preferred whiskey.  The whole crowd was now
under the lee of the pavilion, and it constituted a
spectacle which Denry said to himself he should
refer to in his article as "Rembrandtesque."  For
a few moments he could not descry Ruth
and Nellie in the gloom.  Then he saw the
indubitable form of his betrothed at a
penny-in-the-slot machine, and the indubitable form of
Nellie at another penny-in-the-slot machine.  And
then he could hear the click-click-click of the
machines, working rapidly.  And his thoughts
took a new direction.

Presently Ruth ran with blithe gracefulness
from her machine and commenced a generous
distribution of packets to the members of the
crews.  There was neither calculation nor
exact justice in her generosity.  She dropped
packets on to heroic knees with a splendid
gesture of *largesse*.  Some packets even fell on the
floor.  But she did not mind.

Denry could hear her saying:

"You must eat it.  Chocolate is so sustaining.
There 's nothing like it."

She ran back to the machines, and snatched
more packets from Nellie, who under her orders
had been industrious; and then began a second
distribution.

A calm and disinterested observer would
probably have been touched by this spectacle of
impulsive womanly charity.  He might even have
decided that it was one of the most beautifully
human things that he had ever seen.  And the
fact that the hardy heroes and Norsemen
appeared scarcely to know what to do with the
silver-wrapped bonbons would not have impaired
his admiration for these two girlish figures of
benevolence.  Denry, too, was touched by the
spectacle, but in another way.  It was the rents
of his clients that were being thus dissipated
in a very luxury of needless benevolence.  He
muttered:

"Well, that's a bit thick, that is!"

But of course he could do nothing.

As the process continued, the clicking of the
machines exacerbated his ears.

"Idiotic!" he muttered.

The final annoyance to him was that everybody
except himself seemed to consider that
Ruth was displaying singular ingenuity, originality,
enterprise, and goodness of heart.

In that moment he saw clearly for the first
time that the marriage between himself and
Ruth had not been arranged in heaven.  He
admitted privately then that the saving of a young
woman from violent death in a pantechnicon
need not inevitably involve espousing her.  She
was without doubt a marvellous creature, but
it was as wise to dream of keeping a carriage
and pair as to dream of keeping Ruth.  He grew
suddenly cynical.  His age leaped to fifty or so,
and the curve of his lips changed.

Ruth, spying around, saw him and ran to
him with a glad cry.

"Here!" she said.  "Take these.  They 're no
good."  She held out her hands.

"What are they?" he asked.

"They 're the halfpennies."

"So sorry!" he said, with an accent whose
significance escaped her, and took the useless coins.

"We 've exhausted all the chocolate," said she.
"But there 's butterscotch left—it's nearly as
good—and gold-tipped cigarettes.  I dare say
some of them would enjoy a smoke.  Have you
got any more pennies?"

"No!" he replied.  "But I 've got ten or a
dozen half-crowns.  They 'll work the machine
just as well, won't they?"

This time she did notice a certain unusualness
in the flavour of his accent.  And she hesitated.

"Don't be silly!" she said.

"I 'll try not to be," said Denry.  So far as he
could remember, he had never used such a tone
before.  Ruth swerved away to rejoin Nellie.

Denry surreptitiously counted the half-pennies.
There were eighteen.  She had fed
those machines, then, with over a hundred and
thirty pence.

He murmured, "Thick, thick!"

Considering that he had returned to Llandudno
in the full intention of putting his foot
down, of clearly conveying to Ruth that his
conception of finance differed from hers, the
second sojourn had commenced badly.  Still, he
had promised to marry her, and he must marry
her.  Better a lifetime of misery and insolvency
than a failure to behave as a gentleman should.
Of course, if she chose to break it off...  But
he must be minutely careful to do nothing which
might lead to a breach.  Such was Denry's code.

The walk home at midnight, amid the
reverberations of the falling tempest, was marked by
a slight pettishness on the part of Ruth, and
by Denry's polite taciturnity.

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   V

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Yet the next morning, as the three companions
sat together under the striped awning of
the buffet on the pier, nobody could have
divined, by looking at them, that one of them at
any rate was the most uncomfortable young man
in all Llandudno.  The sun was hotly shining
on their bright attire and on the still turbulent
waves.  Ruth, thirsty after a breakfast of
herrings and bacon, was sucking iced lemonade up
a straw.  Nellie was eating chocolate,
undistributed remains of the night's benevolence.
Denry was yawning, not in the least because
the proceedings failed to excite his keen
interest, but because he had been a journalist till
three A.M. and had risen at six in order to
despatch a communication to the editor of the
*Staffordshire Signal* by train.

The girls were very playful.  Nellie dropped
a piece of chocolate into Ruth's glass, and Ruth
fished it out, and bit at it.

"What a jolly taste!" she exclaimed.

And then Nellie bit at it.

"Oh!  It's just lovely!" said Nellie softly.

"Here, dear!" said Ruth.  "Try it."

And Denry had to try it, and to pronounce
it a delicious novelty (which indeed it was) and
generally to brighten himself up.  And all the
time he was murmuring in his heart, "This can't
go on."

Nevertheless he was obliged to admit that it
was he who had invited Ruth to pass the rest
of her earthly life with him, and not *vice versa*.

"Well, shall we go on somewhere else?" Ruth
suggested.

And he paid yet again.  He paid and smiled,
he who had meant to be the masterful male,
he who deemed himself always equal to a crisis.
But in this crisis he was helpless.

They set off down the pier, brilliant in the
brilliant crowd.  Everybody was talking of
wrecks and lifeboats.  The new lifeboat had
done nothing, having been forestalled by the
Prestatyn boat; but Llandudno was apparently
very proud of its brave old worn-out lifeboat
which had brought ashore the entire crew of
the *Hjalmar*, without casualty, in a terrific
hurricane.

"Run along, child," said Ruth to Nellie,
"while uncle and auntie talk to each other for
a minute."

Nellie stared, blushed, and walked forward in
confusion.  She was startled.  And Denry was
equally startled.  Never before had Ruth so
brazenly hinted that lovers must be left alone
at intervals.  In justice to her it must be said
that she was a mirror for all the proprieties.
Denry had even reproached her, in his heart, for
not sufficiently showing her desire for his
exclusive society.  He wondered, now, what was to be
the next revelation of her surprising character.

"I had our bill this morning," said Ruth.

She leaned gracefully on the handle of her
sunshade, and they both stared at the sea.  She
was very elegant, with an aristocratic air.  The
bill, as she mentioned it, seemed a very negligible
trifle.  Nevertheless, Denry's heart quaked.

"Oh!" he said.  "Did you pay it?"

"Yes," said she.  "The landlady wanted the
money, she told me.  So Nellie gave me her share,
and I paid it at once."

"Oh!" said Denry.

There was a silence.  Denry felt as though
he were defending a castle, or as though he were
in a dark room and somebody was calling him,
calling him, and he was pretending not to be
there and holding his breath.

"But I 'd hardly enough money left," said
Ruth.  "The fact is, Nellie and I spent such a
lot yesterday and the day before....  You 've
no idea how money goes!"

"Haven't I?" said Denry.  But not to
her—only to his own heart.

To her he said nothing.

"I suppose we shall have to go back home,"
she ventured lightly.  "One can't run into debt
here.  They 'd claim your luggage."

"What a pity!" said Denry sadly.

Just those few words—and the interesting
part of the interview was over!  All that
followed counted not in the least.  She had meant
to induce him to offer to defray the whole of
her expenses in Llandudno—no doubt in the
form of a loan; and she had failed.  She had
intended him to repair the disaster caused by
her chronic extravagance.  And he had only
said, "What a pity!"

"Yes, it is!" she agreed bravely, and with
a finer disdain than ever of petty financial
troubles.  "Still, it can't be helped."

"No, I suppose not," said Denry.

There was undoubtedly something fine about
Ruth.  In that moment she had it in her to kill
Denry with a bodkin.  But she merely smiled.
The situation was terribly strained, past all
Denry's previous conceptions of a strained situation;
but she deviated with superlative *sang-froid*
into frothy small-talk.  A proud and an
unconquerable woman!  After all, what were men for,
if not to pay?

"I think I shall go home to-night," she said,
after the excursion into prattle.

"I 'm sorry," said Denry.

He was not coming out of his castle.

At that moment a hand touched his shoulder.
It was the hand of Cregeen, the owner of the
old lifeboat.

"Mister!" said Cregeen, too absorbed in his
own welfare to notice Ruth.  "It's now or never!
Five-and-twenty 'll buy the *Fleetwing*, if ten 's
paid down this mornun."

And Denry replied boldly:

"You shall have it in an hour.  Where shall
you be?"

"I 'll be in John's cabin, under the pier," said
Cregeen, "where ye found me this mornun."

"Right!" said Denry.

If Ruth had not been caracoling on her
absurdly high horse, she would have had the truth
out of Denry in a moment concerning these early
morning interviews and mysterious transactions
in shipping.  But from that height she could
not deign to be curious.  And so she said naught.
Denry had passed the whole morning since
breakfast and had uttered no word of
preprandial encounters with mariners, though he
had talked a lot about his article for the *Signal*
and of how he had risen betimes in order to
despatch it by the first train.

And as Ruth showed no curiosity, Denry
behaved on the assumption that she felt none.
And the situation grew even more strained.

As they walked down the pier towards the
beach, at the dinner-hour, Ruth bowed to a
dandiacal man who obsequiously saluted her.

"Who 's that?" asked Denry instinctively.

"It's a gentleman that I was once engaged
to," answered Ruth with cold, brief politeness.

Denry did not like this.

The situation almost creaked under the
complicated stresses to which it was subject.  And
the wonder was that it did not fly to pieces long
before evening.

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   VI

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The pride of the principal actors being now
engaged, each person was compelled to carry
out the intentions which he had expressed either
in words or tacitly.  Denry's silence had
announced more efficiently than any words that
he would under no inducement emerge from his
castle.  Ruth had stated plainly that there was
nothing for it but to go home at once, that very
night.  Hence she arranged to go home, and
hence Denry refrained from interfering with her
arrangements.  Ruth was lugubrious under a
mask of gaiety; Nellie was lugubrious under no
mask whatever.  Nellie was merely the puppet
of these betrothed players, her elders.  She
admired Ruth and she admired Denry, and
between them they were spoiling the little thing's
holiday for their own adult purposes.  Nellie
knew that dreadful occurrences were in the
air—occurrences compared to which the storm at
sea was a storm in a teacup.  She knew partly
because Ruth had been so queerly polite, and
partly because they had come separately to
St. Asaph's Road and had not spent the entire
afternoon together.

So quickly do great events loom up and happen
that at six o'clock they had had tea and were
on their way afoot to the station.  The odd man
of No. 26, St. Asaph's Road had preceded them
with the luggage.  All the rest of Llandudno
was joyously strolling home to its half-past six
high tea—grand people to whom weekly bills
were as dust and who were in a position to
stop in Llandudno for ever and ever, if they
chose!  And Ruth and Nellie were conscious of
the shame which always afflicts those whom
necessity forces to the railway station of a
pleasure resort in the middle of the season.  They
saw omnibuses loaded with luggage and jolly
souls who were actually *coming*, whose holiday
had not yet properly commenced.  And this
spectacle added to their humiliation and their
disgust.  They genuinely felt that they belonged
to the lower orders.

Ruth, for the sake of effect, joked on the most
solemn subjects.  She even referred with
giggling laughter to the fact that she had borrowed
from Nellie in order to discharge her liabilities
for the final twenty-four hours at the boarding-house.
Giggling laughter being contagious, as
they were walking side by side close together,
they all laughed.  And each one secretly
thought how ridiculous was such behaviour
and how it failed to reach the standard of true
worldliness.

Then, nearer the station, some sprightly
caprice prompted Denry to raise his hat to two
young women who were crossing the road in
front of them.  Neither of the two young women
responded to the homage.

"Who are they?" asked Ruth, and the words
were out of her mouth before she could remind
herself that curiosity was beneath her.

"It's a young lady I was once engaged to,"
said Denry.

"Which one?" asked the ninny, Nellie, astounded.

"I forget," said Denry.

He considered this to be one of his greatest
retorts—not to Nellie, but to Ruth.  Nellie
naturally did not appreciate its loveliness.  But
Ruth did.  There was no facet of that retort
that escaped Ruth's critical notice.

At length they arrived at the station, quite a
quarter of an hour before the train was due,
and half an hour before it came in.

Denry tipped the odd man for the transport
of the luggage.

"Sure it's all there?" he asked the girls,
embracing both of them in his gaze.

"Yes," said Ruth, "but where 's yours?"

"Oh!" he said.  "I 'm not going to-night.
I 've got some business to attend to here.  I
thought you understood.  I expect you 'll be all
right, you two together."

After a moment, Ruth said brightly, "Oh,
yes!  I was quite forgetting about your
business."  Which was completely untrue, since she
knew nothing of his business, and he had
assuredly not informed her that he would not
return with them.

But Ruth was being very brave, haughty, and
queen-like, and for this the precise truth must
sometimes be abandoned.  The most precious
thing in the world to Ruth was her dignity—and
who can blame her?  She meant to keep it
at no matter what costs.

In a few minutes the bookstall on the
platform attracted them as inevitably as a prone
horse attracts a crowd.  Other people were near
the bookstall, and as these people were obviously
leaving Llandudno, Ruth and Nellie felt a
certain solace.  The social outlook seemed brighter
for them.  Denry bought one or two penny
papers, and then the newsboy began to paste
up the contents poster of the *Staffordshire
Signal*, which had just arrived.  And on this
poster, very prominent, were the words: "The
Great Storm in North Wales.  Special Descriptive
Report."  Denry snatched up one of the
green papers and opened it, and on the first
column of the news page saw his wondrous
description, including the word
"Rembrandtesque."  "Graphic account by a Bursley gentleman of
the scene at Llandudno," said the sub-title.  And
the article was introduced by the phrase, "We
are indebted to Mr. E. H. Machin, a prominent
figure in Bursley," etc.

It was like a miracle.  Do what he would,
Denry could not stop his face from glowing.

With false calm he gave the paper to
Ruth.  Her calmness in receiving it upset him.

"We 'll read it in the train," she said primly,
and started to talk about something else.  And
she became most agreeable and companionable.

Mixed up with papers and sixpenny novels on
the bookstall were a number of souvenirs of
Llandudno—paper-knives, pens, paper-weights,
watch-cases, pen-cases, all in light wood or glass,
and ornamented with coloured views of
Llandudno, and also the word "Llandudno" in large
German capitals, so that mistakes might not
arise.  Ruth remembered that she had even
intended to buy a crystal paper-weight with a
view of the Great Orme at the bottom.  The
bookstall clerk had several crystal paper-weights
with views of the pier, the Hotel Majestic, the
Esplanade, the Happy Valley, but none with a
view of the Great Orme.  He had also paper-knives
and watch-cases with a view of the Great
Orme.  But Ruth wanted a combination of
paper-weight and Great Orme, and nothing else
would satisfy her.  She was like that.  The clerk
admitted that such a combination existed, but
he was sold "out of it."

"Could n't you get one and send it to me?"
said Ruth.

And Denry saw anew that she was incurable.

"Oh, yes, miss," said the clerk.  "Certainly,
miss.  To-morrow at latest!"  And he pulled
out a book.  "What name?"

Ruth looked at Denry, as women do look on
such occasions.

"Rothschild," said Denry.

It may seem perhaps strange that that single
word ended their engagement.  But it did.  She
could not tolerate a rebuke.  She walked away,
flushing.  The bookstall clerk received no order.
Several persons in the vicinity dimly perceived
that a domestic scene had occurred, in a flash,
under their noses, on a platform of a railway
station.  Nellie was speedily aware that
something very serious had happened, for the train
took them off without Ruth speaking a syllable
to Denry, though Denry raised his hat and was
almost effusive.

The next afternoon Denry received by post a
ring in a box.  "I will not submit to insult,"
ran the brief letter.

"I only said 'Rothschild'!" Denry murmured
to himself.  "Can't a fellow say 'Rothschild'?"

But secretly he was proud of himself.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE MERCANTILE MARINE`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER V.  THE MERCANTILE MARINE

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center large

   I

.. vspace:: 2

The decisive scene, henceforward historic,
occurred in the shanty known as "John's cabin"—John
being the unacknowledged leader of the
'longshore population—under the tail of
Llandudno pier.  The cabin, festooned with cordage,
was lighted by an oil-lamp of a primitive model,
and round the orange case on which the lamp
was balanced sat Denry, Cregeen, the owner of
the lifeboat, and John himself (to give, as it
were, a semi-official character to whatever was
afoot).

"Well, here you are," said Denry, and handed
to Cregeen a piece of paper.

"What's this, I 'm asking ye," said Cregeen,
taking the paper in his large fingers and peering
at it as though it had been a papyrus.

But he knew quite well what it was.  It was
a check for twenty-five pounds.  What he did
not know was that, with the ten pounds paid in
cash earlier in the day, it represented a very
large part indeed of such of Denry's savings
as had survived his engagement to Ruth Earp.
Cregeen took a pen as though it had been a
match-end and wrote a receipt.  Then, after
finding a stamp in a pocket of his waistcoat
under his jersey, he put it in his mouth and
lost it there for a long time.  Finally Denry
got the receipt, certifying that he was the owner
of the lifeboat formerly known as *Llandudno*,
but momentarily without a name, together with
all her gear and sails.

"Are ye going to live in her?" the rather
curt John enquired.

"Not in her.  On her," said Denry.

And he went out on to the sand and shingle,
leaving John and Cregeen to complete the sale
to Cregeen of the *Fleetwing*, a small cutter
specially designed to take twelve persons forth for
"a pleasant sail in the bay."  If Cregeen had
not had a fancy for the *Fleetwing* and a perfect
lack of the money to buy her, Denry might
never have been able to induce him to sell the
lifeboat.

Under another portion of the pier Denry
met a sailor with a long white beard, the aged
Simeon, who had been one of the crew that
rescued the *Hjalmar*, but whom his colleagues
appeared to regard rather as an ornament than
as a motive force.

"It's all right," said Denry.

And Simeon, in silence, nodded his head
slowly several times.

"I shall give you thirty shillings for the
week," said Denry.

And that venerable head oscillated again in
the moon-lit gloom and rocked gradually to a
standstill.

Presently the head said, in shrill, slow tones:

"I 've seen three o' them Norwegian chaps.
Two of 'em can no more speak English than
a babe unborn; no, nor understand what ye
say to 'em, though I fair bawled in their
ear-holes."

"So much the better," said Denry.

"I showed 'em that sovereign," said the
bearded head, wagging again.

"Well," said Denry, "you won't forget.  Six
o'clock to-morrow morning."

"Ye 'd better say five," the head suggested.
"Quieter like!"

"Five, then," Denry agreed.

And he departed to St. Asaph's Road
burdened with a tremendous thought.

The thought was:

"I 've gone and done it this time!"

Now that the transaction was accomplished
and could not be undone, he admitted to himself
that he had never been more mad.  He could
scarcely comprehend what had led him to do
that which he had done.  But he obscurely
imagined that his caprice for the possession of
sea-going craft must somehow be the result of
his singular adventure with the pantechnicon in
the canal at Bursley.

He was so preoccupied with material interests
as to be capable of forgetting, for a quarter of an
hour at a stretch, that in all essential respects
his life was wrecked, and that he had nothing
to hope for save hollow worldly success.  He
knew that Ruth would return the ring.  He
could almost see the postman holding the little
cardboard cube which would contain the
rendered ring.  He had loved, and loved tragically.
(That was how he put it—in his unspoken
thoughts; but the truth was merely that he had
loved something too expensive.)  Now the dream
was done.  And a man of disillusion walked
along the Parade towards St. Asaph's Road
among revellers, a man with a past, a man who
had probed women, a man who had nothing to
learn about sex.  And amid all the tragedy of
his heart, and all his apprehensions concerning
hollow worldly success, little thoughts of absurd
unimportance kept running about like clockwork
mice in his head.  Such as that it would
be a bit of a bore to have to tell people at
Bursley that his engagement, which truly had
thrilled the town, was broken off.  Humiliating,
that!  And, after all, Ruth was a glittering gem
among women.  Was there another girl in
Bursley so smart, so effective, so truly ornate?

Then he comforted himself with the reflection,
"I 'm certainly the only man that ever put an
end to an engagement by just saying 'Rothschild'."  This
was probably true.  But it did
not help him to sleep.

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large

   II

.. vspace:: 2

The next morning at 5:20 the youthful sun
was shining on the choppy water of the Irish
Sea, just off the Little Orme, to the west of
Llandudno Bay.  Oscillating on the uneasy
waves was Denry's lifeboat, manned by the
nodding bearded head, three ordinary British
longshoremen, a Norwegian who could speak English
of two syllables, and two other Norwegians who
by a strange neglect of education could speak
nothing but Norwegian.

Close under the headland, near a morsel of
beach, lay the remains of the *Hjalmar*, in an
attitude of repose.  It was as if the *Hjalmar*,
after a long struggle, had lain down like a
cab-horse and said to the tempest, "Do what you
like, now!"

"Yes," the venerable head was piping, "Us
can come out comfortable in twenty minutes,
unless the tide be setting east strong.  And as
for getting back, it 'll be the same, other way
round, if ye understand me."

There could be no question that Simeon had
come out comfortable.  But he was the
coxswain.  The rowers seemed to be aware that the
boat was vast and beamy.

"Shall we row up to it?" Simeon inquired,
pointing to the wreck.

Then a pale face appeared above the gunwale,
and an expiring, imploring voice said:

"No.  We 'll go back."  Whereupon the pale
face vanished again.

Denry had never before been outside the bay.
In the navigation of pantechnicons on the
squall-swept basins of canals he might have been a
great master, but he was unfitted for the open
sea.  At that moment he would have been almost
ready to give the lifeboat and all that he owned
for the privilege of returning to land by train.
The inward journey was so long that Denry lost
hope of ever touching his native island again.
And then there was a bump.  And he disembarked,
with hope burning up again cheerfully
in his bosom.  And it was a quarter to six.

By the first post, which arrived at half-past
seven, there came a brown package, "The
ring!" he thought, starting horribly.  But the
package was a cube of three inches, and would
have held a hundred rings.  He undid the cover,
and saw on half a sheet of note-paper the words,
"Thank you so much for the lovely time you
gave me.  I hope you will like this.  NELLIE."

He was touched.  If Ruth was hard, mercenary,
costly, her young and ingenuous companion
could at any rate be grateful and sympathetic.
Yes, he was touched.  He had imagined himself
to be dead to all human affections, but it was
not so.  The package contained chocolate, and
his nose at once perceived that it was chocolate
impregnated with lemon—the surprising but
agreeable compound accidentally invented by
Nellie on the previous day at the pier buffet.
The little thing must have spent a part of the
previous afternoon in preparing it, and she must
have put the package in the post at Crewe.
Secretive and delightful little thing!  After his
recent experience beyond the bay he had
imagined himself to be incapable of ever eating
again, but it was not so.  The lemon gave a
peculiar astringent, appetising, *settling* quality
to the chocolate.  And he ate even with gusto.
The result was that, instead of waiting for the
nine o'clock boarding-house breakfast, he hurried
energetically into the streets and called on a
jobbing printer whom he had seen on the
previous evening.  As Ruth had said on the night
of the wreck—there is nothing like chocolate for
sustaining you.

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large

   III

.. vspace:: 2

At ten o'clock two Norwegian sailors, who
could only smile in answer to the questions
which assailed them, were distributing the
following handbill on the Parade:

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: medium center white-space-pre-line

   WRECK OF THE "HJALMAR."
   ———
   HEROISM AT LLANDUDNO.
   ———
   Every hour, at 11, 12, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 o'clock,
   THE IDENTICAL (guaranteed) LIFEBOAT
   which rescued the crew of the
   "HJALMAR"
   will leave the beach for the scene of the wreck.
   ———
   Manned by Simeon Edwards, the oldest boatman
   in LLANDUDNO, and by members of the rescued
   crew, genuine Norwegians (guaranteed).
   ———
   SIMEON EDWARDS, COXSWAIN.
   Return fare, with use of cork belt and life lines
   if desired, 2s. 6d.
   ———
   A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY.
   A UNIQUE EXPERIENCE.
   ———
   P.S.—The bravery of the lifeboatmen has been
   the theme of the Press throughout the Principality
   and neighbouring counties.

   E. D. MACHIN.
   ———

.. vspace:: 2

At eleven o'clock there was an eager crowd
down on the beach, where, with some planks
and a piece of rock, Simeon had arranged an
embarkation pier for the lifeboat.  One man, in
overalls, stood up to his knees in the water and
escorted passengers up the planks, while
Simeon's confidence-generating beard received them
into the broad waist of the boat.  The rowers
wore sou'westers and were secured to the craft
by life-lines, and these conveniences were also
offered, with life-belts, to the intrepid
excursionists.  A paper was pinned in the stern:
"Licensed to carry fourteen."  (Denry had just
paid the fee.)  But quite forty people were
anxious to make the first voyage.

"No more!" shrilled Simeon solemnly.  And
the wader scrambled in and the boat slid away.

"Fares please!" shrilled Simeon.

He collected one pound fifteen, and slowly
buttoned it up in the right-hand pocket of his
blue trousers.

"Now, my lads, with a will!" he gave the
orders.  And then with deliberate method he
lighted his pipe.  And the lifeboat shot away.

Close by the planks stood a young man in a
negligent attitude, and with a look on his face
as if to say:

"Please do not imagine that I have the
slightest interest in this affair."  He stared
consistently out to sea until the boat had disappeared
round the Little Orme, and then he took a few
turns on the sands, in and out amid the castles.
His heart was beating in a most disconcerting
manner.  After a time he resumed his perusal
of the sea.  And the lifeboat reappeared and
grew larger and larger, and finally arrived at
the spot from which it had departed, only higher
up the beach because the tide was rising.  And
Simeon debarked first, and there was a small
blue and red model of a lifeboat in his hand,
which he shook to a sound of coins.

"*For* the Lifeboat Fund!  *For* the Lifeboat
Fund!" he gravely intoned.

Every debarking passenger dropped a coin
into the slit.

In five minutes the boat was refilled, and
Simeon had put the value of fourteen more
half-crowns into his pocket.

The lips of the young man on the beach moved,
and he murmured:

"That makes over three pounds!  Well, I 'm
dashed!"

At the hour appointed for dinner he went to
St. Asaph's Road, but could eat nothing.  He
could only keep repeating very softly to himself,
"Well, I 'm dashed!"

Throughout the afternoon the competition for
places in the lifeboat grew keener and more
dangerous.  Denry's craft was by no means the
sole craft engaged in carrying people to see the
wreck.  There were dozens of boats in the
business, which had suddenly sprung up that
morning, the sea being then fairly inoffensive for the
first time since the height of the storm.  But
the other boats simply took what the lifeboat
left.  The guaranteed identity of the lifeboat,
and of the Norsemen (who replied to questions
in gibberish), and of Simeon himself; the
sou'-westers, the life-belts, and the lines; even the
collection for the Lifeboat Fund at the close of
the voyage: all these matters resolved themselves
into a fascination which Llandudno could not
resist.

And in regard to the collection, a remarkable
crisis arose.  The model of a lifeboat became
full, gorged to the slot.  And the local secretary
of the Fund had the key.  The model was
despatched to him by special messenger to open
and to empty, and in the meantime Simeon used
his sou'-wester as a collecting box.  This
contretemps was impressive.  At night Denry received
twelve pounds odd at the hands of Simeon
Edwards.  He showered the odd in largesse on his
heroic crew, who had also received many tips.
By the evening post the fatal ring arrived from
Ruth, as he anticipated.  He was just about to
throw it into the sea, when he thought better
of the idea, and stuck it in his pocket.  He
tried still to feel that his life had been blighted
by Ruth.  But he could not.  The twelve pounds,
largely in silver, weighed so heavy in his pocket.
He said to himself:

"Of course this can't last!"

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large

   IV

.. vspace:: 2

Then came the day when he first heard
someone saying discreetly behind him:

"That's the lifeboat chap!"

Or more briefly:

"That's him!"

Implying that in all Llandudno "him" could
mean only one person.

And for a time he went about the streets
self-consciously.  However, that self-consciousness
soon passed off, and he wore his fame as
easily as he wore his collar.

The lifeboat trips to the *Hjalmar* became a
feature of daily life in Llandudno.  The
pronunciation of the ship's name went through a
troublous period.  Some said the "j" ought to
be pronounced to the exclusion of the "h," and
others maintained the contrary.  In the end the
first two letters were both abandoned utterly,
also the last—but nobody had ever paid any
attention to the last.  The facetious had a trick
of calling the wreck "Inkerman."  This definite
settlement of the pronunciation of the name was
a sign that the pleasure-seekers of Llandudno
had definitely fallen in love with the lifeboat trip
habit.  Denry's timid fear that the phenomenon
which put money into his pocket could not
continue was quite falsified.  It continued violently.
And Denry wished that the *Hjalmar* had been
wrecked a month earlier.  He calculated that
the tardiness of the *Hjalmar* in wrecking itself
had involved him in a loss of some four
hundred pounds.  If only the catastrophe had
happened early in July, instead of early in August,
and he had been there!  Why, if forty *Hjalmars*
had been wrecked, and then forty crews saved
by forty different lifeboats, and Denry had
bought all the lifeboats, he could have filled
them all!

Still, the regularity of his receipts was
extremely satisfactory and comforting.  The thing
had somehow the air of being a miracle; at any
rate of being connected with magic.  It seemed
to him that nothing could have stopped the
visitors to Llandudno from fighting for places
in his lifeboat and paying handsomely for the
privilege.  They had begun the practice, and
they looked as if they meant to go on with
the practice eternally.  He thought that the
monotony of it would strike them unfavourably.
But no!  He thought that they would revolt
against doing what everyone had done.  But
no!  Hundreds of persons arrived fresh from
the railway station every day, and they all
appeared to be drawn to that lifeboat as to a
magnet.  They all seemed to know instantly and
instinctively that to be correct in Llandudno
they must make at least one trip in Denry's
lifeboat.

He was pocketing an income which far
exceeded his most golden visions.  And therefore
naturally his first idea was to make that
income larger and larger still.  He commenced by
putting up the price of the afternoon trips.
There was a vast deal too much competition for
seats in the afternoon.  This competition led to
quarrels, unseemly language, and deplorable loss
of temper.  It also led to loss of time.  Denry
was therefore benefiting humanity by charging
three shillings after two o'clock.  This simple
and benign device equalised the competition
throughout the day, and made Denry richer by
seven or eight pounds a week.

But his fertility of invention did not stop
there.  One morning the earliest excursionists
saw a sort of Robinson Crusoe marooned on the
strip of beach near the wreck.  All that
heartless fate had left him appeared to be a machine
on a tripod and a few black bags.  And there
was no shelter for him save a shallow cave.
The poor fellow was quite respectably dressed.
Simeon steered the boat round by the beach,
which shelved down sharply, and as he did so
the Robinson Crusoe hid his head in a cloth,
as though ashamed, or as though he had gone
mad and believed himself to be an ostrich.  Then
apparently he thought the better of it, and gazed
boldly forth again.  And the boat passed on its
starboard side within a dozen feet of him and
his machine.  Then it put about and passed on
the port side.  And the same thing occurred on
every trip.  And the last trippers of the day
left Robinson Crusoe on the strip of beach in
his solitude.

The next morning a photographer's shop on
the Parade pulled down its shutters and
displayed posters all over the upper part of its
windows:

.. class:: medium center

   "THE LIFEBOAT PHOTOGRAPH BUREAU."

.. vspace:: 2

And the lower part of the windows held
sixteen different large photographs of the lifeboat
broadside on.  The likenesses of over a hundred
visitors, many of them with sou'-westers, cork
belts, and life lines, could be clearly
distinguished in these picturesque groups.  A notice
said:

.. vspace:: 2

..

   "*Copies of any of these magnificent
   permanent photographs can be supplied,
   handsomely mounted, at a charge of two shillings
   each.  Orders executed in rotation, and
   delivered by post if necessary.  It is respectfully
   requested that cash be paid with order.
   Otherwise orders cannot be accepted.*"

.. vspace:: 2

Very few of those who had made the trip
could resist the fascination of a photograph of
themselves in a real lifeboat, manned by real
heroes, and real Norwegians on real waves,
especially if they had worn the gear appropriate
to lifeboats.  The windows of the shop were
beset throughout the day with crowds anxious to
see who was in the lifeboat, and who had come
out well, and who was a perfect fright.  The
orders on the first day amounted to over fifteen
pounds, for not everybody was content with one
photograph.  The novelty was acute and
enchanting and it renewed itself each day.  "Let's
go down and look at the lifeboat photographs,"
people would say, when they were wondering
what to do next.  Some persons who had not
"taken nicely" would perform a special trip
in the lifeboat and would wear special clothes
and compose special faces for the ordeal.  The
Mayor of Ashby-de-la-Zouch for that year
ordered two hundred copies of a photograph
which showed himself in the centre, for
presentation as New Year's cards.  On the mornings
after very dull days or wet days, when
photography had been impossible or unsatisfactory,
Llandudno felt that something lacked.  Here it
may be mentioned that inclement weather (of
which, for the rest, there was little) scarcely
interfered with Denry's receipts.  Imagine a
lifeboat being deterred by rain or by a breath
of wind!  There were tarpaulins.  When the
tide was strong and adverse, male passengers
were allowed to pull, without extra charge,
though naturally they would give a trifle
to this or that member of the professional crew.

Denry's arrangement with the photographer
was so simple that a child could have grasped
it.  The photographer paid him sixpence on every
photograph sold.  This was Denry's only
connection with the photographer.  The sixpences
totalled over a dozen pounds a week.  Regardless
of cost, Denry reprinted his article from
the *Staffordshire Signal* descriptive of the night
of the wreck, with a photograph of the lifeboat
and its crew, and presented a copy of the sheet
to every client of his photographic department.

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large

   V

.. vspace:: 2

Llandudno was next titillated by the
mysterious "Chocolate Remedy" which made its
first appearance in a small boat that plied off
Robinson Crusoe's strip of beach.  Not
infrequently passengers in the lifeboat were
inconvenienced by displeasing and even distressing
sensations, as Denry had once been
inconvenienced.  He felt deeply for them.  The
Chocolate Remedy was designed to alleviate the
symptoms while captivating the palate.  It was
one of the most agreeable remedies that the wit
of man ever invented.  It tasted like chocolate,
and yet there was an astringent flavour of lemon
in it—a flavour that flattered the stomach into
a good opinion of itself and seemed to say,
"All's right with the world."  The stuff was
retailed in sixpenny packets, and you were
advised to eat only a very little of it at a time,
and not to masticate, but merely to permit
melting.  Then the Chocolate Remedy came to be
sold on the lifeboat itself, and you were
informed that if you "took" it before starting
on the wave, no wave could disarrange you.
And, indeed, many persons who followed this
advice suffered no distress, and were proud
accordingly and duly informed the world.  Then
the Chocolate Remedy began to be sold
everywhere.  Young people bought it because they
enjoyed it, and perfectly ignored the advice
against over-indulgence and against mastication.
The Chocolate Remedy penetrated like the
refrain of a popular song to other seaside places.
It was on sale from Morecambe to Barmouth,
and at all the landing-stages of the steamers
for the Isle of Man and Anglesey.  Nothing
surprised Denry so much as the vogue of the
Chocolate Remedy.  It was a serious anxiety to him,
and he muddled both the manufacture and the
distribution of the remedy, from simple
ignorance and inexperience.  His chief difficulty
at first had been to obtain small cakes of
chocolate that were not stamped with the maker's
name or mark.  Chocolate manufacturers seemed
to have a passion for imprinting their quakerly
names on every bit of stuff they sold.  Having
at length obtained a supply, he was silly enough
to spend time in preparing the remedy himself
in his bedroom!  He might as well have tried
to feed the British Army from his mother's
kitchen.  At length he went to a confectioner
in Rhyl and a green-grocer in Llandudno, and
by giving away half the secret to each he
contrived to keep the whole secret to himself.  But
even then he was manifestly unequal to the
situation created by the demand for the Chocolate
Remedy.  It was a situation that needed the close
attention of half a dozen men of business.  It was
quite different from the affair of the lifeboat.

One night a man who had been staying a day
or two in the boarding-house in St. Asaph's
Road said to Denry:

"Look here, mister.  I go straight to the
point.  What 'll you take?"

And he explained what he meant.  What
would Denry take for the entire secret and
rights of the Chocolate Remedy and the use
of the name "Machin" ("without which none
was genuine").

"What do you offer?" Denry asked.

"Well, I 'll give you a hundred pounds down,
and that's my last word."

Denry was staggered.  A hundred pounds for
simply nothing at all—for dipping bits of
chocolate in lemon-juice!

He shook his head.

"I 'll take two hundred," he replied.

And he got two hundred.  It was probably
the worst bargain that he ever made in his life.
For the Chocolate Remedy continued obstinately
in demand for ten years afterwards.  But he
was glad to be rid of the thing; it was spoiling
his sleep and wearing him out.

He had other worries.  The boatmen of
Llandudno regarded him as an enemy of the human
race.  If they had not been nature's gentlemen
they would have burnt him alive at a stake.
Cregeen, in particular, consistently referred to
him in terms which could not have been more
severe had Denry been the assassin of Cregeen's
wife and seven children.  In daring to make
over a hundred pounds a week out of a
ramshackle old lifeboat that Cregeen had sold to
him for thirty-five pounds, Denry was outraging
Cregeen's moral code.  Cregeen had paid
thirty-five pounds for the *Fleetwing*, a craft
immeasurably superior to Denry's nameless tub.  And
was Cregeen making a hundred pounds a week
out of it?  Not a hundred shillings!  Cregeen
genuinely thought that he had a right to half
Denry's profits.  Old Simeon, too, seemed to
think that *he* had a right to a large percentage
of the same profits.  And the Corporation,
though it was notorious that excursionists visited
the town purposely to voyage in the lifeboat,
the Corporation made difficulties—about the
embarking and disembarking, about the
photographic strip of beach, about the crowds on the
pavement outside the photograph shop.  Denry
learnt that he had committed the sin of not
being a native of Llandudno.  He was a stranger,
and he was taking money out of the town.  At
times he wished he could have been born again.
His friend and saviour was the local secretary
of the Lifeboat Institution, who happened to be
a town councillor.  This worthy man, to whom
Denry paid over about a pound a day, was
invaluable to him.  Further, Denry was invited—nay
commanded—to contribute to nearly every
church, chapel, mission, and charity in
Carnarvonshire, Flintshire, and other counties.  His
youthfulness was not accepted as an excuse.
And as his gross profits could be calculated by
any dunce who chose to stand on the beach for
half a day, it was not easy for him to pretend
that he was on the brink of starvation.  He
could only ward off attacks by stating with
vague, convinced sadness that his expenses were
much greater than any one could imagine.

In September, when the moon was red and
full, and the sea glassy, he announced a series
of nocturnal "rocket fêtes."  The lifeboat, hung
with Chinese lanterns, put out in the evening
(charge five shillings) and, followed by half the
harbour's fleet of rowing-boats and cutters,
proceeded to the neighbourhood of the strip of beach,
where a rocket apparatus had been installed by
the help of the Lifeboat Secretary.  The mortar
was duly trained; there was a flash, a whizz, a
line of fire, and a rope fell out of the sky across
the lifeboat.  The effect was thrilling and roused
cheers.  Never did the Lifeboat Institution
receive such an advertisement as Denry gave it—gratis.

After the rocketing Denry stood alone on the
slopes of the Little Orme and watched the
lanterns floating home over the water, and heard
the lusty mirth of his clients in the still air.  It
was an emotional experience for him.  "By
Jove!" he said, "I 've wakened this town up!"

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   VI

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One morning, in the very last sad days of the
dying season, when his receipts had dropped to
the miserable figure of about fifty pounds a
week, Denry had a great and pleasing surprise.
He met Nellie on the Parade.  It was a fact
that the recognition of that innocent, childlike
blushing face gave him joy.  Nellie was with her
father, Councillor Cotterill, and her mother.
The Councillor was a speculative builder, who
was erecting several streets of British homes in
the new quarter above the new municipal park
at Bursley.  Denry had already encountered
him once or twice in the way of business.  He
was a big and portly man of forty-five, with a
thin face and a consciousness of prosperity.  At
one moment you would think him a jolly, bluff
fellow, and at the next you would be disconcerted
by a note of cunning or of harshness.
Mrs. Councillor Cotterill was one of those women
who fail to live up to the ever-increasing height
of their husbands.  Afflicted with an eternal
stage-fright, she never opened her close-pressed
lips in society, though a few people knew that
she could talk as fast and as effectively as
anyone.  Difficult to set in motion, her vocal
machinery was equally difficult to stop.  She
generally wore a low bonnet and a mantle.
The Cotterills had been spending a fortnight in
the Isle of Man, and they had come direct from
Douglas to Llandudno by steamer, where they
meant to pass two or three days.  They were
staying at Craig-y-don, at the eastern end of
the Parade.

"Well, young man!" said Councillor Cotterill.

And he kept on young-manning Denry with
an easy patronage which Denry could scarcely
approve of.  "I bet I 've made more money this
summer than you have—with all your jerrying!"
said Denry silently to the Councillor's back
while the Cotterill family were inspecting the
historic lifeboat on the beach.  Councillor
Cotterill said frankly that one reason for their
calling at Llandudno was his desire to see this
singular lifeboat, about which there had really
been a very great deal of talk in the Five Towns.
The admission comforted Denry.  Then the
Councillor recommenced his young-manning.

"Look here," said Denry carelessly, "you must
come and dine with me one night, all of
you—will you?"

Nobody who has not passed at least twenty
years in a district where people dine at one
o'clock, and dining after dark is regarded as
a wild idiosyncrasy of earls, can appreciate
the effect of this speech.

The Councillor, when he had recovered
himself, said that they would be pleased to dine
with him; Mrs. Cotterill's tight lips were seen
to move, but not heard; and Nellie glowed.

"Yes," said Denry, "come and dine with me
at the Majestic."

The name of the Majestic put an end to the
young-manning.  It was the new hotel by the
pier, and advertised itself as the most luxurious
hotel in the Principality.  Which was bold of it,
having regard to the magnificence of caravanserais
at Cardiff.  It had two hundred bedrooms,
and waiters who talked English imperfectly; and
its prices were supposed to be fantastic.

After all, the most startled and frightened
person of the four was perhaps Denry.  He had
never given a dinner to anybody.  He had never
even dined at night.  He had never been inside
the Majestic.  He had never had the courage to
go inside the Majestic.  He had no notion of
the mysterious preliminaries to the offering of
a dinner in a public place.

But the next morning he contracted to give
away the lifeboat to a syndicate of boatmen,
headed by John their leader, for £35.  And
he swore to himself that he would do that
dinner properly even if it cost him the whole
price of the boat.  Then he met Mrs. Cotterill
coming out of a shop.  Mrs. Cotterill, owing to
a strange hazard of fate, began talking at once.
And Denry, as an old shorthand writer,
instinctively calculated that not Thomas Allen Reed
himself could have taken Mrs. Cotterill down
verbatim.  Her face tried to express pain, but
pleasure shone out of it.  For she found herself
in an exciting contretemps which she could
understand.

"Oh, Mr. Machin," she said, "what *do* you
think's happened?  I don't know how to tell
you, I 'in sure.  Here you 've arranged for that
dinner to-morrow and it's all settled, and now
Miss Earp telegraphs to our Nellie to say she 's
coming to-morrow for a day or two with us.
You know Ruth and Nellie are *such* friends.
It's like as if what must be, isn't it?  I don't
know what to do, I do declare.  What *ever* will
Ruth say at us leaving her all alone the first
fortnight she comes?  I really do think she
might have——"

"You must bring her along with you," said Denry.

"But won't you—shan't you—won't she—won't it——"

"Not at all," said Denry.  "Speaking for
myself, I shall be delighted."

"Well, I 'm sure you 're very sensible," said
Mrs. Cotterill.  "I was but saying to Mr. Cotterill
over breakfast—I said to him——"

"I shall ask Councillor Rhys-Jones to meet
you," said Denry.  "He 's one of the principal
members of the Town Council here; local
secretary of the Lifeboat Institution.  Great friend
of mine."

"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Cotterill, "it'll be
quite an affair."

It was.

Denry found to his relief that the only difficult
part of arranging a dinner at the Majestic was
the steeling of yourself to enter the gorgeous
portals of the hotel.  After that, and after
murmuring that you wished to fix up a little snack,
you had nothing to do but listen to suggestions,
each surpassing the rest in splendour, and say
"Yes."  Similarly with the greeting of a young
woman who was once to you the jewel of the
world.  You simply said, "Good afternoon,
how are you?"  And she said the same.  And
you shook hands.  And there you were, still
alive!

The one defect of the dinner was that the men
were not in evening dress.  (Denry registered
a new rule of life: Never travel without your
evening dress, because you never know what may
turn up.)  The girls were radiantly white.
And after all there is nothing like white.
Mrs. Cotterill was in black silk and silence.  And
after all there is nothing like black silk.  There
was champagne.  There were ices.  Nellie, not
being permitted champagne, took her revenge in
ice.  Denry had found an opportunity to relate
to her the history of the Chocolate Remedy.  She
said, "How wonderful you are!"  And he said
it was she who was wonderful.  Denry gave no
information about the Chocolate Remedy to her
father.  Neither did she.  As for Ruth,
indubitably she was responsible for the social
success of the dinner.  She seemed to have the habit
of these affairs.  She it was who loosed tongues.
Nevertheless, Denry saw her now with different
eyes and it appeared incredible to him that
he had once mistaken her for the jewel of the
world.

At the end of the dinner Councillor Rhys-Jones
produced a sensation by rising to propose
the health of their host.  He referred to the
superb heroism of England's lifeboatmen, and
in the name of the Institution thanked Denry
for the fifty-three pounds which Denry's public
had contributed to the funds.  He said it was
a noble contribution and that Denry was a
philanthropist.  And he called on Councillor
Cotterill to second the toast.  Which Councillor
Cotterill did, in good set terms the result of
long habit.  And Denry stammered that he was
much obliged, and that really it was nothing.

But when the toasting was finished Councillor
Cotterill lapsed somewhat into a patronising
irony, as if he were jealous of a youthful
success.  And he did not stop at "young man."  He
addressed Denry grandiosely as "my boy."

"This lifeboat—it was just an idea, my boy,
just an idea!" he said.

"Yes," said Denry; "but I thought of it."

"The question is," said the Councillor
pompously, "can you think of any more ideas as
good?"

"Well," said Denry, "can *you*?"

With reluctance they left the luxury of the
private dining-room, and Denry surreptitiously
paid the bill with a pile of sovereigns, and
Councillor Rhys-Jones parted from them with
lively grief.  The other five walked in a row
along the Parade in the moonlight.  And when
they arrived in front of Craig-y-don, and the
Cotterills were entering, Ruth, who loitered
behind, said to Denry in a liquid voice:

"I don't feel a bit like going to sleep.  I
suppose you would n't care for a stroll?"

"Well——"

"I dare say you 're very tired," she said.

"No," he replied; "it's this moonlight I 'm
afraid of."

And their eyes met under the door-lamp, and
Ruth wished him pleasant dreams and vanished.
It was exceedingly subtle.

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   VII

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The next afternoon the Cotterills and Ruth
Earp went home, and Denry with them.  Llandudno
was just settling into its winter sleep,
and Denry's rather complex affairs had all been
put in order.  Though the others showed a
certain lassitude, he himself was hilarious.  Among
his insignificant luggage was a new hat-box,
which proved to be the origin of much gaiety.

"Just take this, will you?" he said to a porter
on the platform at Llandudno Station, and held
out the new hat-box with an air of calm.  The
porter innocently took it, and then, as the
hat-box nearly jerked his arm out of the socket,
gave vent to his astonishment after the manner
of porters.

"By gum, mister!" said he.  "That's heavy!"

It, in fact, weighed nearly two stone.

"Yes," said Denry; "it's full of sovereigns,
of course."

And everybody laughed.

At Crewe, where they had to change, and
again at Knype and at Bursley, he produced
astonishment in porters by concealing the effort
with which he handed them the hat-box as
though its weight was ten ounces.  And each
time he made the same witticism about sovereigns.

"What *have* you got in that hat-box?" Ruth
asked.

"Don't I tell you?" said Denry, laughing.
"Sovereigns!"

Lastly he performed the same trick on his
mother.  Mrs. Machin was working, as usual,
in the cottage in Brougham Street.  Perhaps the
notion of going to Llandudno for a change had
not occurred to her.  In any case, her presence
had been necessary in Bursley, for she had
frequently collected Denry's rents for him, and
collected them very well.  Denry was glad to
see her again, and she was glad to see him, but
they concealed their feelings as much as
possible.  When he basely handed her the hat-box
she dropped it, and roundly informed him
that she was not going to have any of his pranks.

After tea, whose savouriness he enjoyed quite
as much as his own state dinner, he gave her
a key and asked her to open the hat-box, which
he had placed on a chair.

"What is there in it?"

"A lot of jolly fine pebbles that I 've been
collecting on the beach," he said.

She got the hat-box on to her knee, and
unlocked it, and came to a thick cloth, which she
partly withdrew, and then there was a scream
from Mrs. Machin, and the hat-box rolled with
a terrific crash to the tiled floor, and she was
ankle-deep in sovereigns.  She could see
sovereigns running about all over the parlour.
Gradually even the most active sovereigns
decided to lie down and be quiet, and a great
silence ensued.  Denry's heart was beating.

Mrs. Machin merely shook her head.  Not
often did her son deprive her of words, but this
theatrical culmination of his home-coming really
did leave her speechless.

Late that night rows of piles of sovereigns
decorated the oval table in the parlour.

"A thousand and eleven," said Denry at
length, beneath the lamp.  "There's fifteen
missing yet.  We 'll look for 'em to-morrow."

For several days afterwards Mrs. Machin was
still picking up sovereigns.  Two had even gone
outside the parlour, and down the two steps into
the backyard, and, finding themselves unable to
get back, had remained there.

And all the town knew that the unique Denry
had thought of the idea of returning home to his
mother with a hat-box crammed with sovereigns.
This was Denry's "latest," and it employed the
conversation of the borough for I don't know
how long.





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.. _`HIS BURGLARY`:

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   CHAPTER VI.  HIS BURGLARY

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   I

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The fact that Denry Machin decided not to
drive behind his mule to Sneyd Hall showed
in itself that the enterprise of interviewing the
Countess of Chell was not quite the simple daily
trifling matter that he strove to pretend it was.

The mule was a part of his more recent
splendour.  It was aged seven, and it had cost Denry
ten pounds.  He had bought it off a farmer
whose wife "stood" St. Luke's Market.  His
excuse was that he needed help in getting about
the Five Towns in pursuit of cottage rents, for
his business of a rent collector had grown.  But
for this purpose a bicycle would have served
equally well, and would not have cost a shilling
a day to feed, as the mule did, nor have shied
at policemen, as the mule nearly always did.
Denry had bought the mule simply because he
had been struck all of a sudden with the idea
of buying the mule.  Some time previously Jos
Curtenty (the Deputy Mayor, who became Mayor
of Bursley on the Earl of Chell being called
away to govern an Australian Colony) had made
an enormous sensation by buying a flock of
geese and driving them home himself.  Denry
did not like this.  He was, indeed, jealous, if
a large mind can be jealous.  Jos Curtenty was
old enough to be his grandfather, and had been
a recognised "card" and "character" since
before Denry's birth.  But Denry, though so young,
had made immense progress as a card, and had,
perhaps justifiably, come to consider himself as
the premier card, the very ace, of the town.  He
felt that some reply was needed to Curtenty's
geese, and the mule was his reply.  It served
excellently.  People were soon asking each other
whether they had heard that Denry Machin's
"latest" was to buy a mule.  He obtained a
little old victoria for another ten pounds, and
a good set of harness for three guineas.  The
carriage was low which enabled him, as he said,
to nip in and out much more easily than in
and out of a trap.  In his business you did
almost nothing but nip in and out.  On the front
seat he caused to be fitted a narrow box of
japanned tin with a formidable lock and slits
on the top.  This box was understood to receive
the rents, as he collected them.  It was always
guarded on journeys by a cross between a
mastiff and something unknown, whose growl would
have terrorised a lion-tamer.  Denry himself was
afraid of Rajah, the dog, but he would not
admit it.  Rajah slept in the stable behind
Mrs. Machin's cottage, for which Denry paid a
shilling a week.  In the stable there was precisely
room for Rajah, the mule, and the carriage, and
when Denry entered to groom or to harness,
something had to go out.

The equipage quickly grew into a familiar
sight of the streets of the district.  Denry said
that it was funny without being vulgar.
Certainly it amounted to a continual advertisement
for him; an infinitely more effective advertisement
than, for instance, a sandwich-man at
eighteen-pence a day, and costing no more, even
with the license and the shoeing.  Moreover a
sandwich-man has this inferiority to a turnout:
when you have done with him you cannot put
him up to auction and sell him.  Further, there
are no sandwich-men in the Five Towns; in that
democratic and independent neighbourhood
nobody would deign to be a sandwich-man.

The mulish vehicular display does not end the
tale of Denry's splendour.  He had an office in
St. Luke's Square, and in the office was an
office-boy, small but genuine, and a real copying-press,
and outside it was the little square signboard
which in the day of his simplicity used
to be screwed on to his mother's door.  His
mother's steely firmness of character had driven
him into the extravagance of an office.  Even
after he had made over a thousand pounds out
of the Llandudno lifeboat in less than three
months, she would not listen to a proposal for
going into a slightly larger house, of which one
room might serve as an office.  Nor would she
abandon her own labours as a sempstress.
She said that since her marriage she had
always lived in that cottage and had always
worked, and that she meant to die there,
working; and that Denry could do what he chose.
He was a bold youth, but not bold enough to
dream of quitting his mother; besides, his share
of household expenses in the cottage was only
ten shillings a week.  So he rented the office;
and he hired an office-boy, partly to convey to
his mother that he should do what he chose, and
partly for his own private amusement.

He was thus, at an age when fellows without
imagination are fraying their cuffs for the
enrichment of their elders and glad if they can
afford a cigar once a month, in possession of a
business, business premises, a clerical staff, and
a private carriage drawn by an animal unique
in the Five Towns.  He was living on less than
his income; and in the course of about two years,
to a very small extent by economies and to a
very large extent by injudicious but happy
investments, he had doubled the Llandudno
thousand and won the deference of the manager of
the bank at the top of St. Luke's Square—one
of the most unsentimental men that ever wrote
"refer to drawer" on a cheque.

And yet Denry was not satisfied.  He had a
secret woe, due to the facts that he was
gradually ceasing to be a card and that he was not
multiplying his capital by two every six months.
He did not understand the money market, nor
the stock market, nor even the financial article
in the *Signal*; but he regarded himself as a
financial genius and deemed that as a financial
genius he was vegetating.  And as for setting
the town on fire, or painting it scarlet, he seemed
to have lost the trick of that.

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   II

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And then one day the populace saw on his
office-door, beneath his name-board, another
sign: "Five Towns Universal Thrift Club.
Secretary and Manager, E. H. Machin."

An idea had visited him.

Many tradesmen formed slate-clubs—goose-clubs,
turkey-clubs, whisky-clubs—in the
autumn, for Christmas.  Their humble customers
paid so much a week to the tradesmen, who
charged them nothing for keeping it, and at
the end of the agreed period they took out the
total sum in goods—dead or alive; eatable,
drinkable, or wearable.  Denry conceived a universal
slate-club.  He meant it to embrace each of the
Five Towns.  He saw forty thousand industrial
families paying weekly instalments into his
slate-club.  He saw his slate-club entering into
contracts with all the principal tradesmen of
the entire district, so that the members of the
slate-club could shop with slate-club tickets
practically where they chose.  He saw his slate-club
so powerful that no tradesman could afford not
to be in relations with it.  He had induced all
Llandudno to perform the same act daily for
nearly a whole season, and he now wished to
induce all the vast Five Towns to perform the
same act to his profit for all eternity.

And he would be a philanthropist into the
bargain.  He would encourage thrift in the working-man
and the working-man's wife.  He would
guard the working-man's money for him; and to
save trouble to the working-man he would call
at the working-man's door for the working-man's
money.  Further, as a special inducement and
to prove superior advantages to ordinary
slate-clubs, he would allow the working-man to spend
his full nominal subscription to the club as soon
as he had actually paid only half of it.  Thus,
after paying ten shillings to Denry the
working-man could spend a pound in Denry's chosen
shops, and Denry would settle with the shops
at once, while collecting the balance weekly at
the working-man's door.  But this privilege of
anticipation was to be forfeited or postponed
if the working-man's earlier payments were
irregular.

And Denry would bestow all these wondrous
benefits on the working-man without any charge
whatever.  Every penny that members paid in,
members would draw out.  The affair was
enormously philanthropic.

Denry's modest remuneration was to come
from the shopkeepers upon whom his scheme
would shower new custom.  They were to
allow him at least twopence in the shilling
discount on all transactions, which would be more
than sixteen per cent. on his capital; and he
would turn over his capital three times a year.
He calculated that out of fifty per cent. per
annum he would be able to cover working
expenses and a little over.

Of course, he had to persuade the shopkeepers.
He drove his mule to Hanbridge and began with
Bostocks, the largest but not the most
distinguished drapery house in the Five Towns.  He
succeeded in convincing them on every point
except that of his own financial stability.
Bostocks indicated their opinion that he looked far
too much like a boy to be financially stable.  His
reply was to offer to deposit fifty pounds with
them before starting business and to renew the
sum in advance as quickly as the members of
his club should exhaust it.  Cheques talk.  He
departed with Bostocks' name at the head of
his list, and he used them as a clinching
argument with other shops.  But the prejudice
against his youth was strong and general.
"Yes," tradesmen would answer, "what you say
is all right, but you are so young."  As if to
insinuate that a man must be either a rascal
or a fool until he is thirty, just as he must
be either a fool or a physician after he is forty.
Nevertheless, he had soon compiled a list of
several score shops.

His mother said:

"Why don't you grow a beard?  Here you
spend money on razors, strops, soaps, and
brushes, besides a quarter of an hour of your
time every day, and cutting yourself—all to keep
yourself from having something that would be
the greatest help to you in business!  With a
beard you 'd look at least thirty-one.  Your
father had a splendid beard, and so could you
if you chose."

This was high wisdom.  But he would not
listen to it.  The truth is, he was getting
somewhat dandiacal.

At length his scheme lacked naught but what
Denry called a "right-down good starting shove."  In
a word a fine advertisement to fire it off.
Now, he could have had the whole of the first
page of the *Signal* (at that period) for
five-and-twenty pounds.  But he had been so
accustomed to free advertisements of one sort or
another that the notion of paying for one was
loathsome to him.  Then it was that he thought
of the Countess of Chell, who happened to be
staying at Knype.  If he could obtain that great
aristocrat, that ex-Mayoress, that lovely witch,
that benefactor of the district, to honour his
Thrift Club as patroness, success was certain.
Everybody in the Five Towns sneered at the
Countess and called her a busybody; she was
even dubbed "interfering Iris" (Iris being one
of her eleven Christian names); the Five Towns
was fiercely democratic—in theory.  In practice
the Countess was worshipped; her smile was
worth at least five pounds, and her invitation
to tea was priceless.  She could not have been
more sincerely adulated in the United States,
the home of social equality.

Denry said to himself.

"And why *should n't* I get her name as patroness?
I will have her name as patroness."

Hence the expedition to Sneyd Hall, one of
the various ancestral homes of the Earls of
Chell.

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   III

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He had been to Sneyd Hall before many times—like
the majority of the inhabitants of the
Five Towns—for, by the generosity of its owner,
Sneyd Park was always open to the public.  To
picnic in Sneyd Park was one of the chief
distractions of the Five Towns on Thursday and
Saturday afternoons.  But he had never entered
the private gardens.  In the midst of the private
gardens stood the Hall, shut off by immense iron
palisades, like a lion in a cage at the Zoo.  On
the autumn afternoon of his historic visit, Denry
passed with qualms through the double gates of
the palisade, and began to crunch the gravel
of the broad drive that led in a straight line to
the overwhelming Palladian façade of the Hall.

Yes, he was decidedly glad that he had not
brought his mule.  As he approached nearer and
nearer to the Countess's front door his
arguments in favour of the visit grew more and more
ridiculous.  Useless to remind himself that he
had once danced with the Countess at the
municipal ball, and amused her to the giggling point,
and restored her lost fan to her.  Useless to
remind himself that he was a quite exceptional
young man, with a quite exceptional renown,
and the equal of any man or woman on earth.
Useless to remind himself that the Countess was
notorious for her affability and also for her
efforts to encourage the true welfare of the Five
Towns.  The visit was grotesque.

He ought to have written.  He ought, at any
rate, to have announced his visit by a note.  Yet
only an hour earlier he had been arguing that
he could most easily capture the Countess by
storm, with no warning or preparations of any kind.

Then, from a lateral path, a closed carriage
and pair drove rapidly up to the Hall, and a
footman bounced off the hammer-cloth.  Denry
could not see through the carriage, but under it
he could distinguish the skirts of some one who
got out of it.  Evidently the Countess was just
returning from a drive.

He quickened his pace, for at heart he was an
audacious boy.

"She can't eat me!" he said.

This assertion was absolutely irrefutable, and
yet there remained in his bold heart an
irrational fear that after all she *could* eat him.
Such is the extraordinary influence of a
Palladian façade!

After what seemed several hours of torture
entirely novel in his experience, he skirted the
back of the carriage and mounted the steps to
the portal.  And, although the coachman was
innocuous, being apparently carved in stone,
Denry would have given a ten-pound note to
find himself suddenly in his club or even
in church.  The masonry of the Hall rose
up above him like a precipice.  He was
searching for the bell-knob in the face of the
precipice when a lady suddenly appeared at
the doors.  At first he thought it was the
Countess, and that heart of his began to slip
down the inside of his legs.  But it was not
the Countess.

"Well!" demanded the lady.  She was dressed
in black.

"Can I see the Countess?" he inquired.

The lady stared at him.  He handed her his
professional card which lay waiting all ready in
his waistcoat pocket.

"I will ask my lady," said the lady in black.

Denry perceived from her accent that she was
not English.

She disappeared through a swinging door; and
then Denry most clearly heard the Countess's
own authentic voice, saying in a pettish,
disgusted tone:

"Oh!  Bother!"

And he was chilled.  He seriously wished that
he had never thought of starting his confounded
Universal Thrift Club.

After some time the carriage suddenly drove
off, presumably to the stables.  As he was now
within the hollow of the porch, a sort of cave at
the foot of the precipice, he could not see along
the length of the façade.  Nobody came to him.
The lady who had promised to ask my lady
whether the latter could see him did not return.
He reflected that she had not promised to
return; she had merely promised to ask a
question.  As the minutes passed he grew careless, or
grew bolder, gradually dropping his correct
attitude of a man-about-town paying an afternoon
call, and peered through the glass of the doors
that divided him from the Countess.  He could
distinguish nothing that had life.  One of his
preliminary tremors had been caused by a
fanciful vision of multitudinous footmen, through
a double line of whom he would be compelled to
walk in order to reach the Countess.  But there
was not even one footman.  This complete
absence of indoor footmen seemed to him remiss,
not in accordance with centuries of tradition
concerning life at Sneyd.

Then he caught sight, through the doors, of
the back of Jock, the Countess's carriage
footman and the son of his mother's old friend.  Jock
was standing motionless at a half-open door to
the right of the space between Denry's double
doors and the next pair of double doors.  Denry
tried to attract his attention by singular
movements and strange noises of the mouth.  But
Jock, like his partner the coachman, appeared
to be carven in stone.  Denry decided that he
would go in and have speech with Jock.  They
were on Christian-name terms, or had been a
few years ago.  He unobtrusively pushed at the
doors, and at the very same moment Jock, with
a start—as though released from some
spell—vanished away from the door to the right.

Denry was now within.

"Jock!"  He gave a whispering cry, rather
conspiratorial in tone.  And as Jock offered no
response, he hurried after Jock through the door
to the right.  This door led to a large apartment
which struck Denry as being an idealisation
of a first-class waiting-room at a highly
important terminal station.  In a wall to the
left was a small door, half open.  Jock must
have gone through that door.  Denry hesitated—he
had not properly been invited into the Hall.
But in hesitating he was wrong; he ought to
have followed his prey without qualms.  When
he had conquered qualms and reached the further
door, his eyes were met, to their amazement,
by an immense perspective of great chambers.
Denry had once seen a Pullman car, which had
halted at Knype Station with a French actress
on board.  What he saw now presented itself
to him as a train of Pullman cars, one opening
into the other, constructed for giants.  Each car
was about as large as the large hall in Bursley
Town Hall, and, like that auditorium, had a
ceiling painted to represent blue sky, milk-white
clouds, and birds.  But in the corners were
groups of naked cupids, swimming joyously
on the ceiling; in Bursley Town Hall there
were no naked cupids.  He understood now
that he had been quite wrong in his estimate
of the room by which he had come into this
Versailles.  Instead of being large it was tiny,
and instead of being luxurious it was merely
furnished with miscellaneous odds and ends left
over from far more important furnishings.  It
was, indeed, naught but a nondescript box of
a hole insignificantly wedged between the state
apartments and the outer lobby.

For an instant he forgot that he was in
pursuit of Jock.  Jock was perfectly invisible
and inaudible.  He must, however, have gone
down the vista of the great chambers, and
therefore Denry went down the vista of the great
chambers after him, curiously expecting to have
a glimpse of his long salmon-tinted coat or his
cockaded hat popping up out of some corner.
He reached the other end of the vista, having
traversed three enormous chambers, of which the
middle one was the most enormous and the most
gorgeous.  There were high windows everywhere
to his right, and to his left, in every
chamber, double doors with gilt handles of a
peculiar shape.  Windows and doors, with equal
splendour, were draped in hangings of brocade.
Through the windows he had glimpses of the
gardens in their autumnal colours, but no
glimpse of a gardener.  Then a carriage flew past
the windows at the end of the suite, and he
had a very clear though a transient view of
two menials on the box-seat; one of those menials
he knew must be Jock.  Hence Jock must have
escaped from the state suite by one of the
numerous doors.

Denry tried one door after another, and they
were all fastened firmly on the outside.  The
gilded handles would turn, but the lofty and
ornate portals would not yield to pressure.
Mystified and startled, he went back to the place
from which he had begun his explorations, and
was even more seriously startled and more deeply
mystified to find nothing but a blank wall where
he had entered.  Obviously he could not have
penetrated through a solid wall.  A careful perusal
of the wall showed him that there was indeed
a door in it, but that the door was artfully
disguised by painting and other devices so as to
look like part of the wall.  He had never seen
such a phenomenon before.  A very small glass
knob was the door's sole fitting.  Denry turned
this crystal, but with no useful result.  In the
brief space of time since his entrance that door,
and the door by which Jock had gone, had been
secured by unseen hands.  Denry imagined sinister
persons bolting all the multitudinous doors,
and inimical eyes staring at him through many
keyholes.  He imagined himself to be the victim
of some fearful and incomprehensible conspiracy.

Why in the sacred name of common sense
should he have been imprisoned in the state
suite?  The only answer to the conundrum was
that nobody was aware of his quite unauthorised
presence in the state suite.  But then why should
the state suite be so suddenly locked up, since
the Countess had just come in from a drive?
It then occurred to him that, instead of just
coming in, the Countess had been just leaving.
The carriage must have driven round from some
humble part of the Hall, with the lady in black
in it, and the lady in black—perhaps a lady's
maid—alone had stepped out from it.  The
Countess had been waiting for the carriage in the
porch, and had fled to avoid being forced to
meet the unfortunate Denry!  (Humiliating
thought!)  The carriage had then taken her up
at a side door.  And now she was gone.
Possibly she had left Sneyd Hall not to return for
months, and that was why the doors had been
locked!  Perhaps everybody had departed from
the Hall save one aged and deaf retainer—he
knew, from historical novels which he had
glanced at in his youth, that in every Hall that
respected itself an aged and deaf retainer was
invariably left solitary during the absences of
the noble owner.  He knocked on the small
disguised door.  His unique purpose in knocking
was naturally to make a noise, but something
prevented him from making a noise.  He felt
that he must knock decently, discreetly; he felt
that he must not outrage the conventions.

No result to this polite summoning.

He attacked other doors; he attacked every
door he could put his hands on; and gradually
he lost his respect for decency and the conventions
proper to Halls, knocking loudly and more
loudly.  He banged.  Nothing but sheer solidity
stopped his sturdy hands from going through
the panels.  He so far forgot himself as to shake
the doors with all his strength furiously.

And finally he shouted, "Hi, there!  Hi!
Can't you hear?"

Apparently the aged and deaf retainer could
not hear.  Apparently he was the deafest
retainer that a peeress of the realm ever left in
charge of a princely pile.

"Well, that's a nice thing!" Denry
exclaimed.  And he noticed that he was hot and
angry.  He took a certain pleasure in being
angry.  He considered that he had a right to
be angry.

At this point he began to work himself up
into the state of "not caring," into the state of
despising Sneyd Hall and everything for which
it stood.  As for permitting himself to be
impressed or intimidated by the lonely magnificence
of his environment, he laughed at the idea; or,
more accurately, he snorted at it.  Scornfully
he tramped up and down those immense
interiors, doing the caged lion, and cogitating in
quest of the right, dramatic, effective act to
perform in the singular crisis.  Unhappily, the
carpets were very thick, so that though he could
tramp, he could not stamp, and he desired to
stamp.  But in the connecting doorways there
were expanses of bare, highly polished oak floor,
and here he did stamp.

The rooms were not furnished after the
manner of ordinary rooms.  There was no round
or square table in the midst of each with a
checked cloth on it and a plant in the centre.
Nor in front of each window was there a small
table with a large Bible thereupon.  The middle
parts of the rooms were empty, save for a group
of statuary in the largest room.  Great
armchairs and double-ended sofas were ranged about
in straight lines, and among these, here and
there, were smaller chairs gilded from head to
foot.  Round the walls were placed long,
narrow tables with tops like glass-cases, and in the
cases were all sorts of strange matters—such as
coins, fans, daggers, snuff-boxes.  In various
corners white statues stood awaiting the day
of doom without a rag to protect them from the
winds of destiny.  The walls were panelled in
tremendous panels, and in each panel was a
formidable dark oil-painting.  The mantlepieces
were so preposterously high that not even a
giant could have sat at the fireplace and put
his feet on them.  And if they had held clocks,
as mantlepieces do, a telescope would have been
necessary to discern the hour.  Above each
mantelpiece, instead of a looking-glass, was a
vast picture.  The chandeliers were overpowering
in glitter and in dimensions.

Near to a sofa Denry saw a pile of yellow
linen things.  He picked up the topmost article,
and it assumed the form of a chair.  Yes,
these articles were furniture-covers.  The Hall,
then, was to be shut up.  He argued from
the furniture-covers that somebody must enter
sooner or later to put the covers on the furniture.

Then he did a few more furlongs up and down
the vista, and sat down at the far end, under a
window.  Anyhow, there were always the
windows.  High though they were from the floor,
he could easily open one, spring out, and slip
unostentatiously away.  But he thought he
would wait until dusk fell.  Prudence is seldom
misplaced.  The windows, however, held a
disappointment for him.  A simple bar, pad-locked,
prevented each one of them from being opened;
it was a simple device.  He would be under the
necessity of breaking a plate-glass pane.  For
this enterprise he thought he would wait until
black night.  He sat down again.  Then he made
a fresh and noisy assault on all the doors.  No
result!  He sat down a third time and gazed
into the gardens where the shadows were
creeping darkly.  Not a soul in the gardens!  Then
he felt a draught on the crown of his head, and
looking aloft he saw that the summit of the
window had a transverse glazed flap, for ventilation,
and that this flap had been left open.  If
he could have climbed up, he might have fallen
out on the other side into the gardens and
liberty.  But the summit of the window was at
least sixteen feet from the floor.

Night descended.

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   IV

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At a vague hour in the evening a stout woman
dressed in black, with a black apron, a neat
violet cap on her head, and a small lamp in her
podgy hand, unlocked one of the doors giving
entry to the state rooms.  She was on her
nightly round of inspection.  The autumn moon,
nearly at full, had risen and was shining into
the great windows.  And in front of the furthest
window she perceived in the radiance of the
moonshine a pyramidal group somewhat in the
style of a family of acrobats dangerously
arranged on the stage of a music-hall.  The base
of the pyramid comprised two settees; upon these
were several arm-chairs laid flat, and on the
armchairs two tables covered with cushions and
rugs; lastly, in the way of inanimate nature, two
gilt chairs.  On the gilt chairs was something
that unmistakably moved and was fumbling with
the top of the window.  Being a stout woman
with a tranquil and sagacious mind, her first act
was not to drop the lamp.  She courageously
clung to the lamp.

"Who 's there?" said a voice from the apex
of the pyramid.

Then a subsidence began, followed by a crash
and a multitudinous splintering of glass.  The
living form dropped on to one of the settees,
rebounding like a football from its powerful
springs.  There was a hole as big as a coffin
in the window.  The living form collected itself,
and then jumped wildly through that hole into
the gardens.

Denry ran.  The moment had not struck him
as a moment propitious for explanation.  In a
flash he had seen the ridiculousness of endeavouring
to convince a stout lady in black that he was
a gentleman paying a call on the Countess.  He
simply scrambled to his legs and ran.  He ran
aimlessly in the darkness and sprawled over a
hedge, after crossing various flower-beds.  Then
he saw the sheen of the moon on Sneyd Lake,
and he could take his bearings.  In winter all
the Five Towns skate on Sneyd Lake if the ice
will bear, and the geography of it was quite
familiar to Denry.  He skirted its east bank,
plunged into Great Shendon wood, and emerged
near Great Shendon Station, on the line from
Stafford to Knype.  He inquired for the next
train in the tones of innocency, and in half an
hour was passing through Sneyd Station itself.
In another fifty minutes he was at home.  The
clock showed ten-fifteen.  His mother's cottage
seemed amazingly small.  He said that he had
been detained in Hanbridge on business, that
he had had neither tea nor supper, and that he
was hungry.  Next morning he could scarcely
be sure that his visit to Sneyd Hall was not
a dream.  In any event, it had been a complete
and foolish failure.

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   V

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It was on this untriumphant morning that one
of the tenants under his control, calling at the
cottage to pay some rent overdue, asked him
when the Universal Thrift Club was going to
commence its operations.  He had talked of the
enterprise to all his tenants, for it was precisely
with his tenants that he hoped to make a beginning.
He had there a *clientèle* ready to his hand,
and as he was intimately acquainted with the
circumstances of each, he could judge between
those who would be reliable and those to whom
he would be obliged to refuse membership.  The
tenants, conclaving together of an evening on
doorsteps, had come to the conclusion that the
Universal Thrift Club was the very contrivance
which they had lacked for years.  They saw in
it a cure for all their economic ills and the gate
to paradise.  The dame who put the question
to him on the morning after his defeat wanted to
be the possessor of carpets, a new teapot, a silver
brooch, and a cookery book; and she was
evidently depending upon Denry.  On consideration
he saw no reason why the Universal Thrift Club
should not be allowed to start itself by the
impetus of its own intrinsic excellence.  The
dame was inscribed for three shares, paid
eighteen pence entrance fee, undertook to pay
three shillings a week, and received a document
entitling her to spend £3 18s. in sixty-five shops
as soon as she had paid £1 19s. to Denry.  It
was a marvellous scheme.  The rumour of it
spread; before dinner Denry had visits from
other aspirants to membership, and he had
posted a cheque to Bostocks', but more from
ostentation than necessity; for no member could
possibly go into Bostocks' with his coupons until
at least two months had elapsed.

But immediately after dinner, when the
posters of the early edition of the *Signal* waved in
the streets, he had material for other thought.
He saw a poster as he was walking across to
his office.  The awful legend ran: "Astounding
attempted burglary at Sneyd Hall."  In buying
the paper he was afflicted with a kind of
ague.  And the description of events at Sneyd
Hall was enough to give ague to a negro.  The
account had been taken from the lips of
Mrs. Gater, housekeeper at Sneyd Hall.  She had
related to a reporter how, upon going into the
state suite before retiring for the night, she had
surprised a burglar of Herculean physique and
Titanic proportions.  Fortunately she knew her
duty and did not blench.  The burglar had
threatened her with a revolver and then,
finding such bluff futile, had deliberately jumped
through a large plate-glass window and
vanished.  Mrs. Gater could not conceive how the
fellow had "effected an entrance."  (According
to the reporter, Mrs. Gater said "effected an
entrance," not "got in."  And here it may be
mentioned that in the columns of the *Signal*
burglars never get into a residence; without
exception they invariably effect an
entrance.)  Mrs. Gater explained further how the plans of
the burglar must have been laid with the most
diabolic skill; how he must have studied the
daily life of the Hall patiently for weeks, if not
months; how he must have known the habits
and plans of every soul in the place, and the
exact instant at which the Countess had arranged
to drive to Stafford to catch the London
express.

It appeared that save for four maidservants,
a page, two dogs, three gardeners, and the
kitchen-clerk, Mrs. Gater was alone in the Hall.
During the late afternoon and early evening they
had all been to assist at a rat-catching in the
stables, and the burglar must have been aware
of this.  It passed Mrs. Gater's comprehension
how the criminal had got clear away out of
the gardens and park, for to set up a hue and
cry had been with her the work of a moment.
She could not be sure whether he had taken any
valuable property, but the inventory was being
checked.  Though surely for her an inventory
was scarcely necessary, as she had been housekeeper
at Sneyd Hall for six-and-twenty years,
and might be said to know the entire contents
of the mansion by heart.  The police were at
work.  They had studied footprints and *débris*.
There was talk of obtaining detectives from
London.  Up to the time of going to press no
clue had been discovered, but Mrs. Gater was
confident that a clue would be discovered, and
of her ability to recognise the burglar when
he should be caught.  His features, as seen in
the moonlight, were imprinted on her mind for
ever.  He was a young man, well dressed.  The
Earl had telegraphed offering a reward of
£20 for the fellow's capture.  A warrant was out.

So it ran on.

Denry saw clearly all the errors of tact which
he had committed on the previous day.  He
ought not to have entered uninvited.  But
having entered, he ought to have held firm in quiet
dignity until the housekeeper came, and then
he ought to have gone into full details with
the housekeeper, producing his credentials and
showing her unmistakably that he was offended
by the experience which somebody's gross
carelessness had forced upon him.

Instead of all that, he had behaved with simple
stupidity, and the result was that a price was
upon his head.  Far from acquiring moral
impressiveness and influential aid by his journey
to Sneyd Hall, he had utterly ruined himself as
a founder of a Universal Thrift Club.  You
cannot conduct a thrift club from prison, and a
sentence of ten years does not inspire confidence
in the ignorant mob.  He trembled at the
thought of what would happen when the police
learned from the Countess that a man with a
card on which was the name of Machin had
called at Sneyd just before her departure.

However, the police never did learn this from
the Countess (who had gone to Rome for the
autumn).  It appeared that her maid had
merely said to the Countess that "a man" had
called, and also that the maid had lost the card.
Careful research showed that the burglar had
been disturbed before he had had opportunity
to burgle.  And the affair, after raising a terrific
pother in the district, died down.

Then it was that an article appeared in the
*Signal*, signed by Denry, and giving a full
picturesque description of the state apartments at
Sneyd Hall.  He had formed a habit of occasional
contributions to the *Signal*.  This article
began:

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..

   "The recent sensational burglary at Sneyd
   Hall has drawn attention to the magnificent
   state apartments of that unique mansion.  As
   very few but the personal friends of the family
   are allowed a glimpse of these historic rooms,
   they being of course quite closed to the
   public, we have thought that some account of
   them might interest the readers of the *Signal*.
   On the occasion of our last visit..." etc.

.. vspace:: 2

He left out nothing of their splendour.

The article was quoted as far as Birmingham
in the *Midland Press*.  People recalled Denry's
famous waltz with the Countess at the
memorable dance in Bursley Town Hall.  And they
were bound to assume that the relations thus
begun had been more or less maintained.  They
were struck by Denry's amazing discreet
self-denial in never boasting of them.  Denry rose
in the market of popular esteem.  Talking of
Denry, people talked of the Universal Thrift
Club, which went quietly ahead, and they
admitted that Denry was of the stuff which
succeeds and deserves to succeed.

But only Denry himself could appreciate fully
how great Denry was, to have snatched such
a wondrous victory out of such a humiliating
defeat!

His chin slowly disappeared from view under
a quite presentable beard.  But whether the
beard was encouraged out of respect for his
mother's sage advice or with the object of
putting the housekeeper of Sneyd Hall off the scent
if she should chance to meet Denry, who shall say?





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.. _`THE RESCUER OF DAMES`:

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   CHAPTER VII.  THE RESCUER OF DAMES

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   I

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It next happened that Denry began to suffer
from the ravages of a malady which is almost
worse than failure—namely, a surfeit of success.
The success was that of his Universal Thrift
Club.  This device, by which members after
subscribing one pound in weekly instalments could
at once get two pounds' worth of goods at nearly
any large shop in the district, appealed with
enormous force to the democracy of the Five
Towns.  There was no need whatever for Denry
to spend money on advertising.  The first
members of the Club did all the advertising and made
no charge for doing it.  A stream of people
anxious to deposit money with Denry in exchange
for a card never ceased to flow into his little
office in St. Luke's Square.  The stream, indeed,
constantly thickened.  It was a wonderful
invention, the Universal Thrift Club.  And Denry
ought to have been happy, especially as his beard
was growing strongly and evenly, and giving
him the desired air of a man of wisdom and
stability.  But he was not happy.  And the reason
was that the popularity of the Thrift Club
necessitated much book-keeping, and he hated
book-keeping.

He was an adventurer, in the old honest sense,
and no clerk.  And he found himself obliged
not merely to buy large books of account, but
to fill them with figures; and to do addition
sums from page to page; and to fill up hundreds
of cards; and to write out lists of shops, and to
have long interviews with printers whose proofs
made him dream of lunatic asylums; and to
reckon innumerable piles of small coins; and to
assist his small office-boy in the great task of
licking envelopes and stamps.  Moreover, he was
worried by shopkeepers; every shopkeeper in the
district now wanted to allow him twopence in
the shilling on the purchases of Club members.
And he had to collect all the subscriptions, in
addition to his rents; and also to make personal
preliminary inquiries as to the reputation of
intending members.  If he could have risen
every day at 4 A.M. and stayed up working every
night till 4 A.M. he might have got through most
of the labour.  He did as a fact come very near
to this ideal.  So near that one morning his
mother said to him, at her driest:

"I suppose I may as well sell your bedstead,
Denry?"

And there was no hope of improvement;
instead of decreasing the work multiplied.

What saved him was the fortunate death of
Lawyer Lawton.  The aged solicitor's death put
the town into mourning and hung the church
with black.  But Denry as a citizen bravely
bore the blow because he was able to secure
the services of Penkethman, Lawyer Lawton's
eldest clerk, who, after keeping the Lawton
books and writing the Lawton letters for thirty-five
years, was dismissed by young Lawton for
being over fifty and behind the times.  The
desiccated bachelor was grateful to Denry.  He
called Denry "sir."  Or rather he called Denry's
suit of clothes "sir," for he had a vast respect
for a well-cut suit.  On the other hand, he
maltreated the little office-boy, for he had always
been accustomed to maltreating little office-boys,
not seriously, but just enough to give them an
interest in life.  Penkethman enjoyed desks,
ledgers, pens, ink, rulers, and blotting-paper.
He could run from bottom to top of a column
of figures more quickly than the fire-engine
could run up Oldcastle Street; and his totals
were never wrong.  His gesture with a piece
of blotting-paper as he blotted off a total was
magnificent.  He liked long hours; he was
thoroughly used to overtime, and his boredom in
his lodgings was such that he would often
arrive at the office before the appointed hour.  He
asked thirty shillings a week, and Denry in a
mood of generosity gave him thirty-one.  He
gave Denry his whole life, and put a meticulous
order into the establishment.  Denry secretly
thought him a miracle, but up at the Club at
Porthill he was content to call him "the human
machine."  "I wind him up every Saturday
night with a sovereign, half a sovereign, and a
shilling," said Denry, "and he goes for a week.
Compensated balance adjusted for all temperatures.
No escapement.  Jewelled in every hole.
Ticks in any position.  Made in England."

This jocularity of Denry's was a symptom that
Denry's spirits were rising.  The bearded youth
was seen oftener in the streets behind his mule
and his dog.  The adventurer had, indeed, taken
to the road again.  After an emaciating period
he began once more to stouten.  He was the
image of success.  He was the picturesque card,
whom everybody knew and everybody had pleasure
in greeting.  In some sort he was rather
like the flag on the Town Hall.

And then a graver misfortune threatened.

It arose out of the fact that, though Denry
was a financial genius, he was in no sense
qualified to be a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered
Accountants.  The notion that an excess of
prosperity may bring ruin had never presented
itself to him, until one day he discovered that
out of over two thousand pounds there remained
less than six hundred to his credit at the bank.
This was at the stage of the Thrift Club when
the founder of the Thrift Club was bound under
the rules to give credit.  When the original lady
member had paid in her £2 or so, she was
entitled to spend £4 or so at shops.  She did spend
£4 or so at shops.  And Denry had to pay the
shops.  He was thus temporarily nearly £2 out
of pocket, and he had to collect that sum by
trifling instalments.  Multiply this case by five
hundred, and you will understand the drain on
Denry's capital.  Multiply it by a thousand, and
you will understand the very serious peril which
overhung Denry.  Multiply it by fifteen
hundred and you will understand that Denry had
been culpably silly to inaugurate a mighty
scheme like the Universal Thrift Club on a
paltry capital of two thousand pounds.  He had.
In his simplicity he had regarded two thousand
pounds as boundless wealth.

Although new subscriptions poured in, the
drain grew more distressing.  Yet he could not
persuade himself to refuse new members.  He
stiffened his rules, and compelled members to
pay at his office instead of on their own doorsteps;
he instituted fines for irregularity.  But
nothing could stop the progress of the Universal
Thrift Club.  And disaster approached.  Denry
felt as though he were being pushed nearer and
nearer to the edge of a precipice by a tremendous
multitude of people.  At length, very much
against his inclination, he put up a card in his
window that no new members could be accepted
until further notice, pending the acquisition of
larger offices and other rearrangements.

For the shrewd, it was a confession of failure,
and he knew it.

Then the rumour began to form, and to
thicken, and to spread, that Denry's famous
Universal Thrift Club was unsound at the core,
and that the teeth of those who had bitten the
apple would be set on edge.

And Denry saw that something great, something
decisive, must be done and done with
rapidity.

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   II

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His thoughts turned to the Countess of Chell.
The original attempt to engage her moral
support in aid of the Thrift Club had ended in a
dangerous fiasco.  Denry had been beaten by
circumstances.  And though he had emerged
from the defeat with credit, he had no taste for
defeat.  He disliked defeat even when it was
served with jam.  And his indomitable thoughts
turned to the Countess again.  He put it to
himself in this way, scratching his head:

"I 've got to get hold of that woman, and
that's all about it!"

The Countess at this period was busying
herself with the policemen of the Five Towns.  In
her exhaustless passion for philanthropy,
bazaars, and platforms, she had already dealt with
orphans, the aged, the blind, potter's asthma,
crèches, churches, chapels, schools, economic
cookery, the smoke-nuisance, country holidays,
Christmas puddings and blankets, healthy
musical entertainments, and barmaids.  The
excellent and beautiful creature was suffering
from a dearth of subjects when the policemen
occurred to her.  She made the benevolent
discovery that policemen were overworked,
underpaid, courteous and trustworthy public
servants, and that our lives depended on them.
And from this discovery it naturally
followed that policemen deserved her energetic
assistance.  Which assistance resulted in the
erection of a Policemen's Institute at
Hanbridge, the chief of the Five Towns.  At the
Institute policemen would be able to play at
draughts, read the papers, and drink everything
non-alcoholic at prices that defied competition.
And the Institute also conferred other benefits
on those whom all the Five Mayors of the Five
Towns fell into the way of describing as "the
stalwart guardians of the law."  The Institute,
having been built, had to be opened with due
splendour and ceremony.  And naturally the
Countess of Chell was the person to open it,
since without her it would never have existed.

The solemn day was a day in March, and the
hour was fixed for three o'clock, and the place
was the large hall of the Institute itself, behind
Crown Square, which is the Trafalgar Square
of Hanbridge.  The Countess was to drive over
from Sneyd.  Had the epoch been ten years later
she would have motored over.  But probably
that would not have made any difference as to
what happened.

In relating what did happen I confine myself
to facts, eschewing imputations.  It is a truism
that life is full of coincidences, but whether
these events comprised a coincidence, or not,
each reader must decide for himself according
to his cynicism or his faith in human nature.

The facts are: First, that Denry called one
day at the house of Mrs. Kemp a little lower
down Brougham Street, Mrs. Kemp being
friendly with Mrs. Machin, and the mother of
Jock, the Countess's carriage-footman, whom
Denry had known from boyhood.  Second, that
a few days later, when Jock came over to see
his mother, Denry was present, and that
subsequently Denry and Jock went for a stroll
together in the Cemetery, the principal resort of
strollers in Bursley.  Third, that on the
afternoon of the opening ceremony the Countess's
carriage broke down in Sneyd Vale, two miles
from Sneyd and three miles from Hanbridge.
Fourth, that five minutes later Denry, all in his
best clothes, drove up behind his mule.  Fifth,
that Denry drove right past the breakdown,
apparently not noticing it.  Sixth, that Jock
touching his hat to Denry as if to a stranger (for, of
course, while on duty a footman must be dead
to all human ties) said:

"Excuse me, sir," and so caused Denry to stop.

These are the simple facts.

Denry looked round with that careless half-turn
of the upper part of the body which drivers
of elegant equipages affect when their attention
is called to something trifling behind them.  The
mule also looked round—it was a habit of the
mule's—and if the dog had been there the dog
would have shown an even livelier inquisitiveness;
but Denry had left the faithful animal at home.

"Good afternoon, Countess," he said, raising
his hat, and trying to express surprise, pleasure,
and imperturbability all at once.

The Countess of Chell, who was standing in
the road, raised her lorgnon, which was attached
to the end of a tortoiseshell pole about a foot
long, and regarded Denry.  This lorgnon was a
new device of hers, and it was already having
the happy effect of increasing the sale of
long-handled lorgnons throughout the Five Towns.

"Oh!  It's you, is it?" said the Countess.
"I see you 've grown a beard."

It was just this easy familiarity that endeared
her to the district.  As observant people put it,
you never knew what she would say next, and
yet she never compromised her dignity.

"Yes," said Denry.  "Have you had an accident?"

"No," said the Countess bitterly: "I 'm
doing this for idle amusement."

The horses had been taken out, and were
grazing by the roadside like common horses.
The coachman was dipping his skirts in the
mud as he bent down in front of the carriage
and twisted the pole to and fro and round about
and round about.  The footman, Jock, was
industriously watching him.

"It's the pole-pin, sir," said Jock.

Denry descended from his own hammer-cloth.
The Countess was not smiling.  It was the first
time that Denry had ever seen her without an
efficient smile on her face.

"Have you got to be anywhere particular?"
he asked.  Many ladies would not have
understood what he meant.  But the Countess was
used to the Five Towns.

"Yes," said she.  "I have got to be somewhere
particular.  I 've got to be at the Police
Institute at three o'clock particular, Mr. Machin.
And I shan't be.  I 'in late now.  We 've been
here ten minutes."

The Countess was rather too often late for
public ceremonies.  Nobody informed her of the
fact.  Everybody, on the contrary, assiduously
pretended that she had arrived to the very
second.  But she was well aware that she had
a reputation for unpunctuality.  Ordinarily,
being too hurried to invent a really clever excuse,
she would assert lightly that something had
happened to her carriage.  And now something
in truth had happened to her carriage—but who
would believe it at the Police Institute?

"If you 'll come with me I 'll guarantee to
get you there by three o'clock," said Denry.

The road thereabouts was lonely.  A canal
ran parallel with it at a distance of fifty yards,
and on the canal a boat was moving in the
direction of Hanbridge at the rate of a mile an
hour.  Such was the only other vehicle in sight.
The outskirts of Knype, the nearest town, did
not begin until at least a mile further on; and
the Countess, dressed for the undoing of mayors
and other unimpressionable functionaries, could
not possibly have walked even half a mile in
that rich dark mud.

She thanked him, and without a word to her
servants took the seat beside him.

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   III

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Immediately the mule began to trot the
Countess began to smile again.  Relief and content
were painted upon her handsome features.
Denry soon learnt that she knew all about
mules—or almost all.  She told him how she
had ridden hundreds of miles on mules in the
Apennines, where there were no roads, and only
mules, goats, and flies could keep their feet on
the steep stony paths.  She said that a good
mule was worth forty pounds in the Appenines,
more than a horse of similar quality.  In fact,
she was very sympathetic about mules.  Denry
saw that he must drive with as much style as
possible, and he tried to remember all that he
had picked up from a book concerning the
proper manner of holding the reins.  For in
everything that appertained to riding and
driving the Countess was an expert.  In the season
she hunted once or twice a week with the North
Staffordshire Hounds, and the *Signal* had stated
that she was a fearless horsewoman.  It made
this statement one day when she had been
thrown and carried to Sneyd senseless.

The mule, too, seemingly conscious of its
responsibilities and its high destiny, put its best
foot foremost and behaved in general like a mule
that knew the name of its great-grandfather.
It went through Knype in admirable style, not
swerving at the steam-cars nor exciting itself
about the railway bridge.  A photographer who
stood at his door manoeuvring a large camera
startled it momentarily, until it remembered
that it had seen a camera before.  The
Countess, who wondered why on earth a photographer
should be capering round a tripod in a doorway,
turned to inspect the man with her lorgnon.

They were now coursing up the Cauldon Bank
towards Hanbridge.  They were already within
the boundaries of Hanbridge, and a pedestrian
here and there recognised the Countess.  You
can hide nothing from the quidnunc of
Hanbridge.  Moreover, when a quidnunc in the
streets of Hanbridge sees somebody famous or
striking or notorious, he does not pretend that
he has seen nobody.  He points unmistakably to
what he has observed, if he has a companion,
and if he has no companion he stands still and
stares with such honest intensity that the
entire street stands and stares too.  Occasionally
you may see an entire street standing and
staring without any idea of what it is staring at.
As the equipage dashingly approached the busy
centre of Hanbridge, the region of fine shops,
public-houses, hotels, halls, and theatres, more
and more of the inhabitants knew that Iris (as
they affectionately called her) was driving with
a young man in a tumble-down little victoria
behind a mule whose ears flapped like an
elephant's.  Denry being far less renowned in
Hanbridge than in his native Bursley, few persons
recognised him.  After the victoria had gone by
people who had heard the news too late rushed
from shops and gazed at the Countess's back as
at a fading dream until the insistent clanging
of a car-bell made them jump again to the
footpath.

At length Denry and the Countess could see
the clock of the Old Town Hall in Crown Square,
and it was a minute to three.  They were less
than a minute off the Institute.

"There you are!" said Denry proudly.  "Three
miles if it's a yard, in seventeen minutes.  For
a mule it's none so dusty."

And such was the Countess's knowledge of the
language of the Five Towns that she instantly
divined the meaning of even that phrase "none
so dusty."

They swept into Crown Square grandly.

And then, with no warning, the mule suddenly
applied all the automatic brakes which a mule
has, and stopped.

"Oh, Lor!" sighed Denry.  He knew the
cause of that arresting.

A large squad of policemen, a perfect regiment
of policemen, was moving across the north side
of the square in the direction of the Institute.
Nothing could have seemed more reassuring, less
harmful, than that band of policemen, off duty
for the afternoon and collected together for the
purpose of giving a hearty and policemanly
welcome to their benefactress the Countess.  But
the mule had his own views about policemen.
In the early days of Denry's ownership of him,
he had nearly always shied at the spectacle of
a policeman.  He would tolerate steam-rollers,
and even falling kites, but a policeman had ever
been antipathetic to him.  Denry by patience
and punishment had gradually brought him
round almost to the Countess's view of
policemen—namely, that they were a courteous and
trustworthy body of public servants, not to be
treated as scarecrows or the dregs of society.
At any rate, the mule had of late months
practically ceased to set his face against the policing
of the Five Towns.  And when he was on his
best behaviour he would ignore a policeman
completely.

But there were several hundreds of policemen
in that squad, the majority of all the policemen
in the Five Towns.  And clearly the mule
considered that Denry, in confronting him with
several hundred policemen simultaneously, had
been presuming upon his good nature.

The mule's ears were saying agitatedly:

"A line must be drawn somewhere, and I
have drawn it where my forefeet now are."

The mule's ears soon drew together a little crowd.

It occurred to Denry that if mules were so
wonderful in the Apennines the reason must be
that there are no policemen in the Apennines.
It also occurred to him that something must be
done to this mule.

"Well?" said the Countess inquiringly.

It was a challenge to him to prove that he and
not the mule was in charge of the expedition.

He briefly explained the mule's idiosyncrasy,
as it were apologising for its bad taste in
objecting to public servants whom the Countess
cherished.

"They 'll be out of sight in a moment," said
the Countess.  And both she and Denry tried to
look as if the victoria had stopped in that special
spot for a special reason and that the mule was
a pattern of obedience.  Nevertheless, the little
crowd was growing a little larger.

"Now," said the Countess encouragingly.  The
tail of the regiment of policemen had vanished
towards the Institute.

"Tchk!  Tchk!" Denry persuaded the mule.
No response from those forefeet!

"Perhaps I 'd better get out and walk," the
Countess suggested.  The crowd was becoming
inconvenient and had even begun to offer
unsolicited hints as to the proper management of
mules.  The crowd was also saying to itself,
"It's her!  It's her!  It's her!"  Meaning
that it was the Countess.

"Oh, no!" said Denry.  "It's all right."

And he caught the mule "one" over the head
with his whip.

The mule, stung into action, dashed away, and
the crowd scattered as if blown to pieces by the
explosion of a bomb.  Instead of pursuing a
right line the mule turned within a radius of
its own length, swinging the victoria round after
it as though the victoria had been a kettle
attached to it with string.  And Countess, Denry,
and victoria were rapt with miraculous
swiftness away—not at all towards the Policemen's
Institute, but down Longshaw Road, which is
tolerably steep.  They were pursued, but
ineffectually.  For the mule had bolted and was
winged.  They fortunately came into contact
with nothing except a large barrow of carrots,
turnips, and cabbages which an old woman was
wheeling up Longshaw Road.  The concussion
upset the barrow, half filled the victoria with
vegetables, and for a second stayed the mule;
but no real harm seemed to have been done, and
the mule proceeded with vigour.  Then the
Countess noticed that Denry was not using his right
arm, which swung about rather uselessly.

"I must have knocked my elbow against the
barrow," he muttered.  His face was pale.

"Give me the reins," said the Countess.

"I think I can turn the brute up here," he said.

And he did in fact neatly divert the mule up
Birches Street, which is steeper even than
Longshaw Road.  The mule for a few instants
pretended that all gradients, up or down, were
equal before its angry might.  But Birches
Street has the slope of a house-roof.  Presently
the mule walked, and then it stood still.  And
half Birches Street emerged to gaze.  For the
Countess's attire was really very splendid.

"I 'll leave this here, and we 'll walk back,"
said Denry.  "You won't be late—that is,
nothing to speak of.  The Institute is just round
the top here."

"You don't mean to say you 're going to let
that mule beat you!" exclaimed the Countess.

"I was only thinking of your being late,"
said he.

"Oh, bother!" said she.  "Your mule may be
ruined."  The horse-trainer in her was aroused.

"And then my arm?" said Denry.

"Shall I drive back?" the Countess suggested.

"Oh, do!" said Denry.  "Keep on up the
street, and then to the left."

They changed places, and two minutes later
she brought the mule to an obedient rest in front
of the Police Institute, which was all newly red
with terra-cotta.  The main body of policemen
had passed into the building, but two remained
at the door, and the mule haughtily tolerated
them.  The Countess despatched one to
Longshaw Road to settle with the old woman whose
vegetables they had brought away with them.
The other policeman who, owing to the Countess's
philanthropic energy, had received a course
of instruction in first aid, arranged a sling for
Denry's arm.  And then the Countess said that
Denry ought certainly to go with her to the
inauguration ceremony.  The policeman whistled
a boy to hold the mule.  Denry picked a carrot
out of the complex folds of the Countess's rich
costume.  And the Countess and her saviour
entered the portico and were therein met by an
imposing group of important male personages,
several of whom wore mayoral chains.  Strange
tales of what had happened to the Countess
had already flown up to the Institute, and the
chief expression on the faces of the group seemed
to be one of astonishment that she still lived.

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   IV

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Denry observed that the Countess was now a
different woman.  She had suddenly put on a
manner to match her costume, which in certain
parts was stiff with embroidery.  From the
informal companion and the tamer of mules she
had miraculously developed into the public
celebrity, the peeress of the realm, and the
inaugurator-general of philanthropic schemes and
buildings.  Not one of the important male
personages but would have looked down on Denry!
And yet, while treating Denry as a jolly equal,
the Countess with all her embroidered and stiff
politeness somehow looked down on the important
male personages—and they knew it.  And
the most curious thing was that they seemed
rather to enjoy it.  The one who seemed to enjoy
it the least was Sir Jehoshophat Dain, a
white-bearded pillar of terrific imposingness.

Sir Jee—as he was then beginning to be
called—had recently been knighted, by way of
reward for his enormous benefactions to the
community.  In the *rôle* of philanthropist he
was really much more effective than the
Countess.  But he was not young, he was not pretty,
he was not a woman, and his family had not
helped to rule England for generations—at any
rate, so far as anybody knew.  He had made
more money than had ever before been made
by a single brain in the manufacture of
earthenware, and he had given more money to public
causes than a single pocket had ever before
given in the Five Towns.  He had never sought
municipal honours, considering himself to be
somewhat above such trifles.  He was the first
purely local man to be knighted in the Five
Towns.  Even before the bestowal of the knighthood
his sense of humour had been deficient, and
immediately afterwards it had vanished entirely.
Indeed, he did not miss it.  He divided the
population of the kingdom into two classes—the
titled and the untitled.  With Sir Jee, either
you were titled, or you were n't.  He lumped all
the untitled together; and to be just to his logical
faculty, he lumped all the titled together.  There
were various titles—Sir Jee admitted that—but
a title was a title, and therefore all titles were
practically equal.  The Duke of Norfolk was
one titled individual, and Sir Jee was another.
The fine difference between them might be
perceptible to the titled, and might properly be
recognised by the titled when the titled were
among themselves, but for the untitled such a
difference ought not to exist and could not exist.

Thus for Sir Jee there were two titled beings
in the group—the Countess and himself.  The
Countess and himself formed one caste in the
group, and the rest another caste.  And although
the Countess, in her punctilious demeanour
towards him gave due emphasis to his title (he
returning more than due emphasis to hers), he
was not precisely pleased by the undertones of
suave condescension that characterised her
greeting of him as well as her greeting of the others.
Moreover, he had known Denry as a clerk of
Mr. Duncalf's, for Mr. Duncalf had done a lot
of legal work for him in the past.  He looked
upon Denry as an upstart, a capering mountebank,
and he strongly resented Denry's familiarity
with the Countess.  He further resented
Denry's sling, which gave to Denry an interesting
romantic aspect (despite his beard), and he
more than all resented that Denry should have
rescued the Countess from a carriage accident
by means of his preposterous mule.  Whenever
the Countess, in the preliminary chatter,
referred to Denry or looked at Denry, in recounting
the history of her adventures, Sir Jee's soul
squirmed, and his body sympathised with his
soul.  Something in him that was more powerful
than himself compelled him to do his utmost
to reduce Denry to a moral pulp, to flatten him,
to ignore him, or to exterminate him by the
application of ice.  This tactic was no more lost
on the Countess than it was on Denry.  And
the Countess foiled it at every instance.  In truth,
there existed between the Countess and Sir Jee a
rather hot rivalry in philanthropy and the
cultivation of the higher welfare of the district.
He regarded himself, and she regarded herself,
as the most brightly glittering star of the Five
Towns.

When the Countess had finished the recital of
her journey, and the faces of the group had gone
through all the contortions proper to express
terror, amazement, admiration, and manly
sympathy, Sir Jee took the lead, coughed, and said
in his elaborate style:

"Before we adjourn to the hall, will not your
ladyship take a little refreshment?"

"Oh, no, thanks!" said the Countess.  "I 'm
not a bit upset."  Then she turned to the
enslinged Denry and with concern added, "But
will you have something?"

If she could have foreseen the consequences of
her question, she might never have put it.  Still,
she might have put it just the same.

Denry paused an instant, and an old habit
rose up in him.

"Oh, no, thanks!" he said, and turning
deliberately to Sir Jee, he added: "Will *you*?"

This of course was mere crude insolence to
the titled philanthropic white beard.  But it
was by no means the worst of Denry's behaviour.
The group, every member of the group, distinctly
perceived a slight movement of Denry's left hand
toward Sir Jee.  It was the very slightest
movement, a wavering, a nothing.  It would have
had no significance whatever, but for one fact:
Denry's left hand still held the carrot.

Everybody exhibited the most marvellous
self-control.  And everybody except Sir Jee was
secretly charmed, for Sir Jee had never inspired
love.  It is remarkable how local philanthropists
are unloved, locally.  The Countess without
blenching gave the signal for what Sir Jee called
the "adjournment" to the hall.  Nothing might
have happened, yet everything had happened.

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   V

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Next, Denry found himself seated on the
temporary platform which had been erected in the
large games hall of the Policemen's Institute.
The Mayor of Hanbridge was in the chair, and
he had the Countess on his right and the Mayoress
of Bursley on his left.  Other mayoral chains
blazed in the centre of the platform, together
with fine hats of mayoresses and uniforms of
police-superintendents and captains of
fire-brigades.  Denry's sling also contributed to the
effectiveness; he was placed behind the
Countess.  Policemen (looking strange without
helmets) and their wives, sweethearts, and friends,
filled the hall to its fullest; enthusiasm was rife
and strident; and there was only one little sign
that the untoward had occurred.  That little
sign was an empty chair in the first row near
the Countess.  Sir Jee, a prey to a sudden
indisposition, had departed.  He had somehow
faded away, while the personages were climbing
the stairs.  He had faded away amid the
expressed regrets of those few who by chance saw
him in the act of fading.  But even these bore
up manfully.  The high humour of the gathering
was not eclipsed.

Towards the end of the ceremony came the
votes of thanks, and the principal of these was
the vote of thanks to the Countess, prime cause
of the Institute.  It was proposed by the
Superintendent of the Hanbridge Police.  Other
personages had wished to propose it, but the
stronger right of the Hanbridge Superintendent,
as chief officer of the largest force of constables
in the Five Towns, could not be disputed.  He
made a few facetious references to the episode
of the Countess's arrival, and brought the house
down by saying that if he did his duty he would
arrest both the Countess and Denry for driving
to the common danger.  When he sat down,
amid tempestuous applause, there was a hitch.
According to the official programme Sir
Jehosophat Dain was to have seconded the vote, and
Sir Jee was not there.  All that remained of
Sir Jee was his chair.  The Mayor of Hanbridge
looked round about, trying swiftly to make up
his mind what was to be done, and Denry heard
him whisper to another mayor for advice.

"Shall I do it?" Denry whispered, and by
at once rising relieved the Mayor from the
necessity of coming to a decision.

Impossible to say why Denry should have
risen as he did, without any warning.  Ten
seconds before, five seconds before, he himself
had not the dimmest idea that he was about to
address the meeting.  All that can be said is
that he was subject to these attacks of the
unexpected.

Once on his legs he began to suffer, for he
had never before been on his legs on a platform,
or even on a platform at all.  He could see
nothing whatever except a cloud that had
mysteriously and with frightful suddenness filled the
room.  And through this cloud he could feel
that hundreds and hundreds of eyes were
piercingly fixed upon him.  A voice was saying
inside him, "What a fool you are!  What a fool
you are!  I always told you you were a fool!"  And
his heart was beating as it had never beat,
and his forehead was damp, his throat distressingly
dry, and one foot nervously tap-tapping on
the floor.  This condition lasted for something
like ten hours, during which time the eyes
continued to pierce the cloud and him with patient,
obstinate cruelty.

Denry heard some one talking.  It was himself.

The Superintendent had said, "I have very
great pleasure in proposing the vote of thanks
to the Countess of Chell."

And so Denry heard himself saying, "I have
very great pleasure in seconding the vote of
thanks to the Countess of Chell."

He could not think of anything else to say.
And there was a pause, a real pause, not a pause
merely in Denry's sick imagination.

Then the cloud was dissipated.  And Denry
himself said to the audience of policemen, with
his own natural tone, smile, and gesture,
colloquially, informally, comically:

"Now then!  Move along there, please!  I 'm
not going to say any more!"

And for a signal he put his hands in the
position for applauding.  And sat down.

He had tickled the stout ribs of every bobby
in the place.  The applause surpassed all
previous applause.  The most staid ornaments of
the platform had to laugh.  People nudged
each other and explained that it was "that
chap Machin from Bursley," as if to imply
that that chap Machin from Bursley never let
a day pass without doing something striking
and humorous.  The Mayor was still smiling
when he put the vote to the meeting, and the
Countess was still smiling when she responded.

Afterwards in the portico, when everything
was over, Denry exercised his right to remain
in charge of the Countess.  They escaped from
the personages by going out to look for her
carriage and neglecting to return.  There was no
sign of the Countess's carriage, but Denry's mule
and victoria were waiting in a quiet corner.

"May I drive you home?" he suggested.

But she would not.  She said that she had
a call to pay before dinner, and that her
brougham would surely arrive the very next
minute.

"Will you come and have tea at the Sub
Rosa?" Denry next asked.

"The Sub Rosa?" questioned the Countess.

"Well," said Denry, "that's what we call the
new tea-room that's just been opened round
here."  He indicated a direction.  "It's quite
a novelty in the Five Towns."

The Countess had a passion for tea.

"They have splendid China tea," said Denry.

"Well," said the Countess, "I suppose I may
as well go through with it."

At the moment her brougham drove up.  She
instructed her coachman to wait next to the
mule and victoria.  Her demeanour had cast off
all its similarity to her dress: it appeared to
imply that, as she had begun with a mad
escapade, she ought to finish with another one.

Thus the Countess and Denry went to the
tea-shop, and Denry ordered tea and paid for it.
There was scarcely a customer in the place, and
the few who were fortunate enough to be present
had not the wit to recognise the Countess.  The
proprietress did not recognise the Countess.
(Later, when it became known that the Countess
had actually patronised the Sub Rosa, half
the ladies of Hanbridge were almost ill from
sheer disgust that they had not heard of it in
time.  It would have been so easy for them to
be there, taking tea at the next table to the
Countess, and observing her choice of cakes, and
her manner of holding a spoon, and whether she
removed her gloves or retained them in the case
of a meringue.  It was an opportunity lost that
would in all human probability never occur
again.)

And in the discreet corner which she had
selected the Countess fired a sudden shot at Denry.

"How did you get all those details about the
state rooms at Sneyd?" she asked.

Upon which opening the conversation became lively.

The same evening Denry called at the *Signal*
office and gave an order for a half-page
advertisement of the Five Towns Universal Thrift
Club—"patroness, the Countess of Chell."  The
advertisement informed the public that the Club
had now made arrangements to accept new
members.  Besides the order for a half-page
advertisement, Denry also gave many interesting and
authentic details about the historic drive from
Sneyd Vale to Hanbridge.  The next day the
*Signal* was simply full of Denry and the
Countess.  It had a large photograph, taken by a
photographer on Cauldon Bank, which showed
Denry actually driving the Countess, and the
Countess's face was full in the picture.  It
presented, too, an excellently appreciative account
of Denry's speech, and it congratulated Denry
on his first appearance in the public life of the
Five Towns.  (In parenthesis it sympathised
with Sir Jee in his indisposition.)  In short,
Denry's triumph obliterated the memory of his
previous triumphs.  It obliterated, too, all
rumours adverse to the Thrift Club.  In a few
days he had a thousand new members.  Of
course, this addition only increased his
liabilities; but now he could obtain capital on fair
terms, and he did obtain it.  A company was
formed.  The Countess had a few shares in this
company.  So (strangely) had Jock and his
companion the coachman.  Not the least of the
mysteries was that when Denry reached his
mother's cottage on the night of the tea with
the Countess his arm was not in a sling and
showed no symptom of having been damaged.





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.. _`RAISING A WIGWAM`:

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   CHAPTER VIII.  RAISING A WIGWAM

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   I

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A still young man—his age was thirty—with
a short, strong beard peeping out over the fur
collar of a vast overcoat, emerged from a cab
at the snowy corner of St. Luke's Square and
Brougham Street, and paid the cabman with a
gesture that indicated both wealth and the habit
of command.  And the cabman, who had driven
him over from Hanbridge through the winter
night, responded accordingly.  Few people take
cabs in the Five Towns.  There are few cabs to
take.  If you are going to a party you may
order one in advance by telephone, reconciling
yourself also in advance to the expense, but
to hail a cab in the street without forethought
and jump into it as carelessly as you would
jump into a tram—this is by very few done.
The young man with the beard did it frequently,
which proved that he was fundamentally ducal.

He was encumbered with a large and rather
heavy parcel as he walked down Brougham
Street, and moreover the footpath of Brougham
Street was exceedingly dirty.  And yet no one
acquainted with the circumstances of his life
would have asked why he had dismissed the cab
before arriving at his destination, because every
one knew.  The reason was that this ducal
person with the gestures of command dared not
drive up to his mother's door in a cab oftener
than about once a month.  He opened that door
with a latchkey (a modern lock was almost the
only innovation that he had succeeded in fixing
on his mother), and stumbled with his unwieldy
parcel into the exceedingly narrow lobby.

"Is that you, Denry?" called a feeble voice
from the parlour.

"Yes," said he, and went into the parlour,
hat, fur coat, parcel, and all.

Mrs. Machin, in a shawl and an antimacassar
over the shawl, sat close to the fire and leaning
towards it.  She looked cold and ill.  Although
the parlour was very tiny and the fire comparatively
large, the structure of the grate made it
impossible that the room should be warm, as all
the heat went up the chimney.  If Mrs. Machin
had sat on the roof and put her hands over the
top of the chimney she would have been much
warmer than at the grate.

"You aren't in bed?" Denry queried.

"Can't ye see?" said his mother.  And
indeed to ask a woman who was obviously sitting
up in a chair whether she was in bed did seem
somewhat absurd.  She added, less sarcastically:

"I was expecting ye every minute.  Where have
ye had your tea?"

"Oh!" he said lightly, "in Hanbridge."

An untruth!  He had not had his tea
anywhere.  But he had dined richly at the new
Hôtel Métropole, Hanbridge.

"What have ye got there?" asked his mother.

"A present for you," said Denry.  "It's your
birthday to-morrow."

"I don't know as I want reminding of that,"
murmured Mrs. Machin.

But when he had undone the parcel and held
up the contents before her she exclaimed:

"Bless us!"

The staggered tone was an admission that for
once in a way he had impressed her.

It was a magnificent sealskin mantle, longer
than sealskin mantles usually are.  It was one
of those articles the owner of which can say:
"Nobody can have a better than this—I don't
care who she is."  It was worth in monetary
value all the plain shabby clothes on
Mrs. Machin's back, and all her very ordinary best
clothes upstairs, and all the furniture in the
entire house, and perhaps all Denry's dandiacal
wardrobe too, except his fur coat.  If the entire
contents of the cottage, with the aforesaid
exception, had been put up to auction, they would
not have realised enough to pay for that sealskin
mantle.

Had it been anything but a sealskin mantle,
and equally costly, Mrs. Machin would have
upbraided.  But a sealskin mantle is not "showy."  It
"goes with" any and every dress and bonnet.
And the most respectable, the most conservative,
the most austere woman may find legitimate
pleasure in wearing it.  A sealskin mantle is
the sole luxurious ostentation that a woman
of Mrs. Machin's temperament—and there are
many such in the Five Towns and elsewhere—will
conscientiously permit herself.

"Try it on," said Denry.

She rose weakly and tried it on.  It fitted as
well as a sealskin mantle can fit.

"My word—it's warm!" she said.  This was
her sole comment.

"Keep it on," said Denry.

His mother's glance withered the suggestion.

"Where are you going?" he asked, as she
left the room.

"To put it away," said she.  "I must get
some moth powder to-morrow."

He protested with inarticulate noises, removed
his own furs, which he threw down on to the
old worn-out sofa, and drew a Windsor chair
up to the fire.  After a while his mother
returned, and sat down in her rocking-chair, and
began to shiver again under the shawl and the
antimacassar.  The lamp on the table lighted
up the left side of her face and the right side
of his.

"Look here, mother," said he.  "You must
have a doctor."

"I shall have no doctor."

"You 've got influenza, and it's a very tricky
business—influenza is; you never know where
you are with it."

"Ye can call it influenza if ye like," said
Mrs. Machin.  "There was no influenza in my young
days.  We called a cold a cold."

"Well," said Denry.  "You are n't well, are you?"

"I never said I was," she answered grimly.

"No," said Denry, with the triumphant ring
of one who is about to devastate an enemy.
"And you never will be in this rotten old
cottage."

"This was reckoned a very good class of house
when your father and I came into it.  And it's
always been kept in repair.  It was good enough
for your father, and it's good enough for
me.  I don't see myself flitting.  But some
folks have gotten so grand.  As for health,
old Reuben next door is ninety-one.  How
many people over ninety are there in those
grimcrack houses up by the Park, I should like
to know?"

Denry could argue with any one save his
mother.  Always, when he was about to reduce
her to impotence, she fell on him thus and rolled
him in the dust.  Still, he began again.

"Do we pay four-and-sixpence a week for this
cottage, or don't we?" he demanded.

"And always have done," said Mrs. Machin.
"I should like to see the landlord put it up!"
she added, formidably, as if to say: "I 'd
landlord him, if he tried to put *my* rent up!"

"Well," said Denry, "here we are living in
a four-and-six a week cottage, and do you know
how much I 'm making?  I 'm making two thousand
pounds a year.  That's what I 'm making."

A second wilful deception of his mother!  As
managing director of the Five Towns Universal
Thrift Club, as proprietor of the majority of its
shares, as its absolute autocrat, he was making
very nearly four thousand a year.  Why could
he not easily have said four as two to his mother?
The simple answer is that he was afraid to say
four.  It was as if he ought to blush before
his mother for being so plutocratic, his mother
who had passed most of her life in hard toil
to gain a few shillings a week.  Four thousand
seemed so fantastic!  And in fact the Thrift
Club, which he had invented in a moment, had
arrived at a prodigious success, with its central
offices in Hanbridge and its branch offices in the
other four towns, and its scores of clerks and
collectors presided over by Mr. Penkethman.  It
had met with opposition.  The mighty said that
Denry was making an unholy fortune under the
guise of philanthropy.  And to be on the safe
side the Countess of Chell had resigned her
official patronage of the Club and given her
shares to the Pirehill Infirmary, which had
accepted the high dividends on them without the
least protest.  As for Denry, he said that he had
never set out to be a philanthropist nor posed
as one, and that his unique intention was to
grow rich by supplying a want, like the rest of
them, and that anyhow there was no compulsion
to belong to his Thrift Club.  Then letters
in his defence from representatives of the
thousands and thousands of members of the Club
rained into the columns of the *Signal*, and Denry
was the most discussed personage in the county.
It was stated that such thrift clubs, under
various names, existed in several large towns in
Yorkshire and Lancashire.  This disclosure
rehabilitated Denry completely in general esteem,
for whatever obtains in Yorkshire and Lancashire
must be right for Staffordshire; but it
rather dashed Denry, who was obliged to admit
to himself that after all he had not invented
the Thrift Club.  Finally the hundreds of tradesmen
who had bound themselves to allow a
discount of twopence in the shilling to the Club
(sole source of the Club's dividends) had
endeavoured to revolt.  Denry effectually cowed
them by threatening to establish co-operative
stores—there was not a single co-operative
store in the Five Towns.  They knew he would
have the wild audacity to do it.

Thenceforward the progress of the Thrift Club
had been unruffled.  Denry waxed amazingly in
importance.  His mule died.  He dared not buy
a proper horse and dog-cart because he dared
not bring such an equipage to the front door of
his mother's four-and-sixpenny cottage.  So he
had taken to cabs.  In all exterior magnificence
and lavishness he equalled even the great Harold
Etches, of whom he had once been afraid; and
like Etches he became a famous habitué of
Llandudno pier.  But whereas Etches lived with his
wife in a superb house at Bleakridge, Denry
lived with his mother in a ridiculous cottage in
ridiculous Brougham Street.  He had a
regiment of acquaintances, and he accepted a lot
of hospitality, but he could not return it
at Brougham Street.  His greatness fizzled
into nothing in Brougham Street.  It stopped
short and sharp at the corner of St. Luke's
Square, where he left his cabs.  He could do
nothing with his mother.  If she was not still
going out as a sempstress the reason was, not
that she was not ready to go out, but that her
old clients had ceased to send for her.  And
could they be blamed for not employing at three
shillings a day the mother of a young man who
wallowed in thousands sterling?  Denry had
essayed over and over again to instil reason
into his mother, and he had invariably failed.
She was too independent, too profoundly rooted
in her habits; and her character had more force
than his.  Of course, he might have left her and
set up a suitably gorgeous house of his own.

But he would not.

In fact, they were a remarkable pair.

On this eve of her birthday he had meant to
cajole her into some step, to win her by an
appeal, basing his argument on her indisposition.
But he was being beaten off once more.  The
truth was that a cajoling, caressing tone could
not be long employed towards Mrs. Machin.  She
was not persuasive herself, nor favourable to
persuasiveness in others.

"Well," said she, "if you 're making two
thousand a year, ye can spend it or save it as ye
like, though ye 'd better save it.  Ye never know
what may happen in these days.  There was a
man dropped half-a-crown down a grid opposite
only the day before yesterday."

Denry laughed.

"Ay!" she said; "ye can laugh."

"There 's no doubt about one thing," he said,
"you ought to be in bed.  You ought to stay in
bed for two or three days at least."

"Yes," she said.  "And who 's going to look
after the house while I 'm moping between
blankets?"

"You can have Rose Chudd in," he said.

"No," said she.  "I 'm not going to have any
woman rummaging about my house, and me in bed!"

"You know perfectly well she's been practically
starving since her husband died, and as
she 's going out charing, why can't you have her
and put a bit of bread into her mouth?"

"Because I won't have her!  Neither her nor
any one.  There 's naught to prevent you giving
her some o' your two thousand a year, if you 've
a mind.  But I see no reason for my house
being turned upside down by her, even if I have
got a bit of a cold."

"You 're an unreasonable old woman," said Denry.

"Happen I am!" said she.  "There can't be
two wise ones in a family.  But I 'm not going
to give up this cottage, and as long as I
am standing on my feet I 'm not going to
pay any one for doing what I can do better
myself."  A pause.  "And so you need n't think
it!  You can't come round me with a fur mantle."

She retired to rest.  On the following morning
he was very glum.

"Ye need n't be so glum," she said.

But she was rather pleased at his glumness.
For in his glumness was a sign that he
recognised defeat.

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   II

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The next episode between them was curiously
brief.  Denry had influenza.  He said that
naturally he had caught hers.

He went to bed and stayed there.  She nursed
him all day, and grew angry in a vain attempt
to force him to eat.  Towards night he tossed
furiously on the little bed in the little
bedroom, complaining of fearful headaches.  She
remained by his side most of the night.  In the
morning he was easier.  Neither of them
mentioned the word "doctor."  She spent the day
largely on the stairs.  Once more towards night
he grew worse, and she remained most of the
second night by his side.

In the sinister winter dawn Denry murmured
in a feeble tone:

"Mother, you 'd better send for him."

"Doctor?" she said.  And secretly she thought
that she *had* better send for the doctor, and that
there must be after all some difference between
influenza and a cold.

"No," said Denry; "send for young Lawton."

"Young Lawton!" she exclaimed.  "What
do you want young Lawton to come *here* for?"

"I have n't made my will," Denry answered.

"Pooh!" she retorted.

Nevertheless she was the least bit in the world
frightened.  And she sent for Dr. Stirling, the
aged Harrop's Scotch partner.

Dr. Stirling, who was full-bodied and left
little space for anybody else in the tiny, shabby
bedroom of the man with four thousand a year,
gazed at Mrs. Machin, and he gazed also at Denry.

"Ye must go to bed this minute," said he.

"But he 's *in* bed," cried Mrs. Machin.

"I mean yerself," said Dr. Stirling.

She was very nearly at the end of her
resources.  And the proof was that she had no
strength left to fight Dr. Stirling.  She did go
to bed.  And shortly afterwards Denry got up.
And a little later, Rose Chudd, that prim and
efficient young widow from lower down the
street, came into the house and controlled it as
if it had been her own.  Mrs. Machin, whose
constitution was hardy, arose in about a week,
cured, and duly dismissed Rose with wages and
without thanks.  But Rose had been.  Like the
*Signal's* burglars, she had "effected an
entrance."  And the house had not been turned
upside down.  Mrs. Machin, though she tried,
could not find fault with the result of Rose's
uncontrolled activities.

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   III

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One morning—and not very long afterwards;
in such wise did fate seem to favour the young
at the expense of the old—Mrs. Machin received
two letters which alarmed and disgusted her.
One was from her landlord announcing that he
had sold the house in which she lived to a
Mr. Wilbraham of London, and that in future she
must pay the rent to the said Mr. Wilbraham
or his legal representatives.  The other was
from a firm of London solicitors announcing
that their client Mr. Wilbraham had bought the
house and that the rent must be paid to their
agent whom they would name later.

Mrs. Machin gave vent to her emotion in her
customary manner:

"Bless us!"

And she showed the impudent letters to Denry.

"Oh!" said Denry.  "So he has bought them,
has he?  I heard he was going to."

"Them?" exclaimed Mrs. Machin.  "What
else has he bought?"

"I expect he 's bought all the five—this and
the four below, as far as Downes's.  I expect
you 'll find that the other four have had notices
just like these.  You know all this row used to
belong to the Wilbrahams.  You surely must
remember that, mother?"

"Is he one of the Wilbrahams of Hillport, then?"

"Yes, of course he is."

"I thought the last of 'em was Cecil, and
when he 'd beggared himself here he went to
Australia and died of drink.  That's what I
always heard.  We always used to say as there
was n't a Wilbraham left."

"He did go to Australia, but he did n't die
of drink.  He disappeared, and when he 'd made
a fortune he turned up again in Sydney, so it
seems.  I heard he 's thinking of coming back
here to settle.  Anyhow, he 's buying up a lot
of the Wilbraham property.  I should have
thought you 'd have heard of it.  Why, lots of
people have been talking about it."

"Well," said Mrs. Machin, "I don't like it."

She objected to a law which permitted a landlord
to sell a house over the head of a tenant who
had occupied it for more than thirty years.  In
the course of the morning she discovered that
Denry was right—the other tenants had received
notices exactly similar to hers.

Two days later Denry arrived home for tea
with a most surprising article of news.
Mr. Cecil Wilbraham had been down to Bursley from
London, and had visited him, Denry.  Mr. Cecil
Wilbraham's local information was evidently
quite out of date, for he had imagined Denry to
be a rent-collector and estate agent, whereas the
fact was that Denry had abandoned this minor
vocation years ago.  His desire had been that
Denry should collect his rents and watch over
his growing interests in the district.

"So what did you tell him?" asked Mrs. Machin.

"I told him I 'd do it," said Denry.

"Why?"

"I thought it might be safer for you" said
Denry with a certain emphasis.  "And, besides,
it looked as if it might be a bit of a lark.  He's
a very peculiar chap."

"Peculiar?"

"For one thing, he's got the largest moustaches
of any man I ever saw.  And there 's something
up with his left eye.  And then I think he's a
bit mad."

"Mad?"

"Well, touched.  He's got a notion about
building a funny sort of a house for himself
on a plot of land at Bleakridge.  It appears
he is fond of living alone, and he's collected
all kind of dodges for doing without servants
and still being comfortable."

"Ay!  But he 's right there!" breathed
Mrs. Machin in deep sympathy.  As she said about
once a week, "she never could abide the idea of
servants."  "He's not married, then?" she added.

"He told me he 'd been a widower three times,
but he 'd never had any children," said Denry.

"Bless us!" murmured Mrs. Machin.

Denry was the one person in the town who
enjoyed the acquaintance and the confidence of
the thrice-widowed stranger with long
moustaches.  He had descended without notice on
Bursley, seen Denry (at the branch office of the
Thrift Club), and then departed.  It was
understood that later he would permanently settle
in the district.  Then the wonderful house
began to rise on the plot of land at Bleakridge.
Denry had general charge of it, but always
subject to erratic and autocratic instructions
from London.  Thanks to Denry, who since the
historic episode at Llandudno had remained very
friendly with the Cotterill family, Mr. Cotterill
had the job of building the house; the plans
came from London.  And though Mr. Cecil
Wilbraham proved to be exceedingly watchful
against any form of imposition, the job was a
remunerative one for Mr. Cotterill, who talked
a great deal about the originality of the
residence.  The town judged of the wealth and
importance of Mr. Cecil Wilbraham by the fact
that a person so wealthy and important as Denry
should be content to act as his agent.  But then
the Wilbrahams had been magnates in the
Bursley region for generations, up till the final
Wilbraham smash in the late seventies.  The town
hungered to see those huge moustaches and that
peculiar eye.  In addition to Denry, only one
person had seen the madman, and that person
was Nellie Cotterill, who had been viewing the
half-built house with Denry one Sunday
morning when the madman had most astonishingly
arrived upon the scene, and after a few minutes
vanished.  The building of the house strengthened
greatly the friendship between Denry and
the Cotterills.  Yet Denry neither liked
Mr. Cotterill nor trusted him.

The next incident in these happenings was
that Mrs. Machin received notice from the
London firm to quit her four-and-sixpence a week
cottage.  It seemed to her that not merely
Brougham Street, but the world, was coming to
an end.  She was very angry with Denry for not
protecting her more successfully.  He was
Mr. Wilbraham's agent, he collected the rent, and it
was his duty to guard his mother from unpleasantness.
She observed, however, that he was
remarkably disturbed by the notice, and he
assured her that Mr. Wilbraham had not consulted
him in the matter at all.  He wrote a letter to
London, which she signed, demanding the reason
of this absurd notice flung at an ancient and
perfect tenant.  The reply was that Mr. Wilbraham
intended to pull the houses down,
beginning with Mrs. Machin's, and rebuild.

"Pooh!" said Denry.  "Don't you worry
your head, mother; I shall arrange it.  He'll
be down here soon to see his new house—it's
practically finished, and the furniture is coming
in—and I 'll just talk to him."

But Mr. Wilbraham did not come, the
explanation doubtless being that he was mad.  On
the other hand, fresh notices came with
amazing frequency.  Mrs. Machin just handed them
over to Denry.  And then Denry received a
telegram to say that Mr. Wilbraham would be
at his new house that night and wished to see
Denry there.  Unfortunately, on the same day,
by the afternoon post, while Denry was at his
offices, there arrived a sort of supreme and
ultimate notice from London to Mrs. Machin, and
it was on blue paper.  It stated, baldly, that as
Mrs. Machin had failed to comply with all the
previous notices, had indeed ignored them, she
and her goods would now be ejected into the
street according to the law.  It gave her twenty-four
hours to flit.  Never had a respectable dame
been so insulted as Mrs. Machin was insulted
by that notice.  The prospect of camping out in
Brougham Street confronted her.  When Denry
reached home that evening Mrs. Machin, as the
phrase is, "gave it him."

Denry admitted frankly that he was
nonplussed, staggered, and outraged.  But the thing
was simply another proof of Mr. Wilbraham's
madness.  After tea he decided that his mother
must put on her best clothes and go up with
him to see Mr. Wilbraham and firmly expostulate—in
fact, they would arrange the situation between
them; and if Mr. Wilbraham was obstinate
they would defy Mr. Wilbraham.  Denry
explained to his mother that an Englishwoman's
cottage was her castle, that a landlord's
minions had no right to force an entrance, and that
the one thing that Mr. Wilbraham could do was
to begin unbuilding the cottage from the top,
outside.  And he would like to see Mr. Wilbraham
try it on!

So the sealskin mantle (for it was spring
again) went up with Denry to Bleakridge.

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   IV

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The moon shone in the chill night.  The house
stood back from Trafalgar Road in the
moonlight—a squarish block of a building.

"Oh!" said Mrs. Machin.  "It isn't so large."

"No!  He did n't want it large.  He only
wanted it large enough," said Denry, and pushed
a button to the right of the front door.  There
was no reply, though they heard the ringing of
the bell inside.  They waited.  Mrs. Machin was
very nervous, but thanks to her sealskin mantle
she was not cold.

"This is a funny doorstep," she remarked, to
kill time.

"It's of marble," said Denry.

"What's that for?" asked his mother.

"So much easier to keep clean," said Denry.
"No stoning to do."

"Well," said Mrs. Machin.  "It's pretty
dirty now, anyway."

It was.

"Quite simple to clean," said Denry, bending
down.  "You just turn this tap at the side.
You see, it's so arranged that it sends a flat
jet along the step.  Stand off a second."

He turned the tap, and the step was washed
pure in a moment.

"How is it that that water steams?" Mrs. Machin demanded.

"Because it's hot," said Denry.  "Did you
ever know water steam for any other reason?"

"Hot water outside?"

"Just as easy to have hot water outside as
inside, is n't it?" said Denry.

"Well, I never!" exclaimed Mrs. Machin.
She was impressed.

"That's how everything's dodged up in
this house," said Denry.  He shut off the
water.

And he rang once again.  No answer!  No
illumination within the abode!

"I tell you what I shall do," said Denry at
length.  "I shall let myself in.  I 've got a key
of the back door."

"Are you sure it's all right?"

"I don't care if it is n't all right," said Denry
defiantly.  "He asked me to be up here, and
he ought to be here to meet me.  I 'm not going
to stand any nonsense from anybody."

In they went, having skirted round the walls
of the house.

Denry closed the door, pushed a switch, and
the electric light shone.  Electric light was then
quite a novelty in Bursley.  Mrs. Machin had
never seen it in action.  She had to admit that
it was less complicated than oil-lamps.  In the
kitchen the electric light blazed upon walls tiled
in grey and a floor tiled in black and white.
There was a gas range and a marble slopstone
with two taps.  The woodwork was dark.  Earthenware
saucepans stood on a shelf.  The cupboards
were full of gear chiefly in earthenware.
Denry began to exhibit to his mother a tank
provided with ledges and shelves and grooves,
in which he said that everything except knives
could be washed and dried automatically.

"Had n't you better go and find your
Mr. Wilbraham?" she interrupted.

"So I had," said Denry; "I was forgetting him."

She heard him wandering over the house and
calling in divers tones upon Mr. Wilbraham.
But she heard no other voice.  Meanwhile she
examined the kitchen in detail, appreciating
some of its devices and failing to comprehend others.

"I expect he 's missed the train," said Denry,
coming back.  "Anyhow, he is n't here.  I
may as well show you the rest of the house now."

He led her into the hall, which was radiantly
lighted.

"It's quite warm here," said Mrs. Machin.

"The whole house is heated by steam," said
Denry.  "No fireplaces."

"No fireplaces!"

"No!  No fireplaces.  No grates to polish,
ashes to carry down, coals to carry up, mantelpieces
to dust, fire-irons to clean, fenders to
polish, chimneys to sweep."

"And suppose he wants a bit of fire all of
a sudden in summer."

"Gas stove in every room for emergencies,"
said Denry.

She glanced into a room.

"But," she cried, "It's all complete, ready!
And as warm as toast."

"Yes," said Denry.  "He gave orders.  I
can't think why on earth he is n't here."

At that moment an electric bell rang loud
and sharp, and Mrs. Machin jumped.

"There he is!" said Denry, moving to the door.

"Bless us!  What will he think of us being
here like?" Mrs. Machin mumbled.

"Pooh!" said Denry carelessly.

And he opened the door.

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   V

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Three persons stood on the newly washed
marble step—Mr. and Mrs. Cotterill and their
daughter Nellie.

"Oh!  Come in!  Come in!  Make yourselves
quite at home.  That's what *we 're* doing," said
Denry in blithe greeting; and added, "I suppose
he 's invited you too?"

And it appeared that Mr. Cecil Wilbraham
had indeed invited them too.  He had written
from London saying that he would be glad if
Mr. and Mrs. Cotterill would "drop in" on
this particular evening.  Further, he had
mentioned that, as he had already had the pleasure
of meeting Miss Cotterill, perhaps she would
accompany her parents.

"Well, he is n't here," said Denry, shaking
hands.  "He must have missed his train or
something.  He can't possibly be here now till
to-morrow.  But the house seems to be all ready
for him...."

"Yes, my word!  And how 's yourself,
Mrs. Cotterill?" put in Mrs. Machin.

"So we may as well look over it in its finished
state.  I suppose that's what he asked us up
for," Denry concluded.

Mrs. Machin explained quickly and nervously
that she had not been comprised in any
invitation; that her errand was pure business.

"Come on up-stairs," Denry called out, turning
switches and adding radiance to radiance.

"Denry!" his mother protested.  "I 'm sure
I don't know what Mr. and Mrs. Cotterill will
think of you!  You carry on as if you owned
everything in the place.  I wonder *at* you!"

"Well," said Denry, "if anybody in this town
is the owner's agent I am.  And Mr. Cotterill
has built the blessed house.  If Wilbraham
wanted to keep his old shanty to himself he
should n't send out invitations.  It's simple
enough not to send out invitations.  Now Nellie!"

He was hanging over the balustrade at the
curve of the stairs.

The familiar ease with which he said "Now
Nellie," and especially the spontaneity of Nellie's
instant response, put new thoughts into the mind
of Mrs. Machin.  But she neither pricked up
her ears, nor started back, nor accomplished any
of the acrobatic feats which an ordinary mother
of a wealthy son would have performed under
similar circumstances.  Her ears did not even
tremble.  And she just said:

"I like this balustrade knob being of black china."

"Every knob in the house is of black china,"
said Denry.  "Never shows dirt.  But if you
should take it into your head to clean it, you
can do it with a damp cloth in a second."

Nellie now stood beside him.  Nellie had
grown up since the Llandudno episode.  She
did not blush at a glance.  When spoken to
suddenly she could answer without torture to
herself.  She could, in fact, maintain a
conversation without breaking down for a much longer
time than, a few years ago, she had been able
to skip without breaking down.  She no longer
imagined that all the people in the street were
staring at her, anxious to find faults in her
appearance.  She had temporarily ruined the
lives of several amiable and fairly innocent
young men by refusing to marry them.  (For
she was pretty, and her father cut a figure in
the town, though her mother did not.)  And
yet, despite the immense accumulation of her
experiences and the weight of her varied
knowledge of human nature, there was something very
girlish and timidly roguish about her as she
stood on the stairs near Denry, waiting for the
elder generation to follow.  The old Nellie still
lived in her.

The party passed to the first floor.

And the first floor exceeded the ground floor
in marvels.  In each bedroom two aluminum
taps poured hot and cold water respectively into
a marble basin, and below the marble basin was
a sink.  No porterage of water anywhere in the
house.  The water came to you, and every room
consumed its own slops.  The bedsteads were of
black enamelled iron and very light.  The floors
were covered with linoleum, with a few rugs
that could be shaken with one hand.  The walls
were painted with grey enamel.  Mrs. Cotterill,
with her all-seeing eye, observed a detail that
Mrs. Machin had missed.  There were no sharp
corners anywhere.  Every corner, every angle
between wall and floor or wall and wall, was
rounded, to facilitate cleaning.  And every wall,
floor, ceiling, and fixture could be washed,
and all the furniture was enamelled and could
be wiped with a cloth in a moment instead of
having to be polished with three cloths and many
odours in a day and a half.  The bathroom was
absolutely waterproof; you could spray it with
a hose, and by means of a gas apparatus you
could produce an endless supply of hot water
independent of the general supply.  Denry was
apparently familiar with each detail of
Mr. Wilbraham's manifold contrivances, and he
explained them with an enormous gusto.

"Bless us!" said Mrs. Machin.

"Bless us!" said Mrs. Cotterill (doubtless the
force of example).

They descended to the dining-room, where a
supper table had been laid by order of the
invisible Mr. Cecil Wilbraham.  And there the
ladies lauded Mr. Wilbraham's wisdom in
eschewing silver.  Everything of the table service
that could be of earthenware was of earthenware.
The forks and spoons were electro-plate.

"Why!" Mrs. Cotterill said, "I could run
this house without a servant and have myself
tidy by ten o'clock in a morning."

And Mrs. Machin nodded.

"And then when you want a regular turnout,
as you call it," said Denry, "there's the
vacuum cleaner."

The vacuum cleaner was at that period the
last word of civilisation, and the first agency
for it was being set up in Bursley.  Denry
explained the vacuum cleaner to the housewives,
who had got no further than a Ewbank.  And
they again called down blessings on themselves.

"What price this supper?" Denry exclaimed.
"We ought to eat it.  I 'm sure he 'd like us
to eat it.  Do sit down, all of you.  I 'll take the
consequences."

Mrs. Machin hesitated even more than the
other ladies.

"It's really very strange, him not being
here!"  She shook her head.

"Don't I tell you he 's quite mad," said Denry.

"I should n't think he was so mad as all that,"
said Mrs. Machin dryly.  "This is the most
sensible kind of a house I 've ever seen."

"Oh!  Is it?" Denry answered.  "Great
Scott!  I never noticed those three bottles of
wine on the sideboard."

At length he succeeded in seating them at the
table.  Thenceforward there was no difficulty.
The ample and diversified cold supper began
to disappear steadily, and the wine with it.  And
as the wine disappeared so did Mr. Cotterill
(who had been pompous and taciturn) grow
talkative, offering to the company the exact
figures of the cost of the house and so forth.
But ultimately the sheer joy of life killed
arithmetic.

Mrs. Machin, however, could not quite rid
herself of the notion that she was in a dream
that outraged the proprieties.  The entire affair,
for an unromantic spot like Bursley, was too
fantastically and wickedly romantic.

"We must be thinking about home, Denry,"
said she.

"Plenty of time," Denry replied.  "What!
All that wine gone!  I 'll see if there 's any more
in the sideboard."

He emerged, with a red face, from bending
into the deeps of the enamelled sideboard, and
a wine-bottle was in his triumphant hand.  It
had already been opened.

"Hooray!" he proclaimed, pouring a white
wine into his glass and raising the glass:
"Here 's to the health of Mr. Cecil Wilbraham."

He made a brave tableau in the brightness of
the electric light.

Then he drank.  Then he dropped the glass,
which broke.

"Ugh!  What's that?" he demanded, with
the distorted features of a gargoyle.

His mother, who was seated next to him, seized
the bottle.  Denry's hand, in clasping the bottle,
had hidden a small label, which said: "*Poison.
Nettleship's Patent Enamel-Cleaning Fluid.  One
wipe does it.*"

Confusion!  Only Nellie Cotterill seemed to
be incapable of realising that a grave accident
had occurred.  She had laughed throughout the
supper, and she still laughed, hysterically, though
she had drunk scarcely any wine.  Her mother
silenced her.

Denry was the first to recover.

"It 'll be all right," said he, leaning back in
his chair.  "They always put a bit of poison
in those things.  It can't hurt me, really.  I
never noticed the label."

Mrs. Machin smelt at the bottle.  She could
detect no odour, but the fact that she could
detect no odour appeared only to increase her alarm.

"You must have an emetic instantly," she said.

"Oh, no!" said Denry.  "I shall be all right."  And
he did seem to be suddenly restored.

"You must have an emetic instantly," she repeated.

"What can I have?" he grumbled.  "You
can't expect to find emetics here."

"Oh, yes, I can," said she.  "I saw a mustard
tin in a cupboard in the kitchen.  Come along
now, and don't be silly."

Nellie's hysteric mirth surged up again.

Denry objected to accompanying his mother
into the kitchen.  But he was forced to submit.
She shut the door on both of them.  It is
probable that during the seven minutes which they
spent mysteriously together in the kitchen, the
practicability of the kitchen apparatus for
carrying off waste products was duly tested.  Denry
came forth, very pale and very cross, on his
mother's arm.

"There's no danger now," said his mother easily.

Naturally the party was at an end.  The
Cotterills sympathised, and prepared to depart,
and inquired whether Denry could walk home.

Denry replied, from a sofa, in a weak,
expiring voice, that he was perfectly incapable of
walking home, that his sensations were in the
highest degree disconcerting, that he should
sleep in that house, as the bedrooms were ready
for occupation, and that he should expect his
mother to remain with him.

And Mrs. Machin had to concur.  Mrs. Machin
sped the Cotterills from the door as though it
had been her own door.  She was exceedingly
angry and agitated.  But she could not impart
her feelings to the suffering Denry.  He moaned
on a bed for about half an hour, and then fell
asleep.  And in the middle of the night, in the
dark strange house, she also fell asleep.

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   VI

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The next morning she arose and went forth,
and in about half-an-hour returned.  Denry
was still in bed, but his health seemed to have
resumed its normal excellence.  Mrs. Machin
burst upon him in such a state of complicated
excitement as he had never before seen her in.

"Denry," she cried.  "What do you think?"

"What?" said he.

"I 've just been down home, and they 're—they
're pulling the house down.  All the
furniture 's out, and they 've got all the tiles off
the roof, and the windows out.  And there's a
regular crowd watching."

Denry sat up.

"And I can tell you another piece of news,"
said he.  "Mr. Cecil Wilbraham is dead."

"Dead!" she breathed.

"Yes," said Denry.  "*I think he 's served his
purpose*.  As we 're here, we 'll stop here.  Don't
forget it's the most sensible kind of a house
you 've ever seen.  Don't forget that Mrs. Cotterill
could run it without a servant and have
herself tidy by ten o'clock in a morning."

Mrs. Machin perceived then, in a flash of
terrible illumination, that there never had been
any Cecil Wilbraham; that Denry had merely
invented him and his long moustaches and his
wall eye for the purpose of getting the better
of his mother.  The whole affair was an
immense swindle upon her.  Not a Mr. Cecil
Wilbraham, but her own son had bought her cottage
over her head and jockeyed her out of it beyond
any chance of getting into it again.  And to
defeat his mother the rascal had not simply
perverted the innocent Nellie Cotterill to some
co-operation in his scheme, but he had actually
bought four other cottages because the landlord
would not sell one alone, and he was actually
demolishing property to the sole end of stopping
her from re-entering it!

Of course, the entire town soon knew of the
upshot of the battle, of the year-long battle,
between Denry and his mother, and the means
adopted by Denry to win.  The town also had
been hoodwinked, but it did not mind that.  It
loved its Denry the more, and, seeing that he
was now properly established in the most
remarkable house in the district, it soon
afterwards made him a town councillor as some
reward for his talent in amusing it.

And Denry would say to himself:

"Everything went like clockwork, except the
mustard and water.  I did n't bargain for the
mustard and water.  And yet, if I was clever
enough to think of putting a label on the bottle
and to have the beds prepared, I ought to have
been clever enough to keep mustard out of the
house."  It would be wrong to mince the
unpleasant fact that the sham poisoning which he
had arranged to the end that he and his mother
should pass the night in the house had finished
in a manner much too realistic for Denry's
pleasure.  Mustard and water, particularly when
mixed by Mrs. Machin, is mustard and water.

She had that consolation.





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.. _`THE GREAT NEWSPAPER WAR`:

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   CHAPTER IX.  THE GREAT NEWSPAPER WAR

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   I

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When Denry and his mother had been
established a year and a month in the new house
at Bleakridge, Denry received a visit one
evening which perhaps flattered him more than
anything had ever flattered him.  The visitor was
Mr. Myson.  Now Mr. Myson was the founder,
proprietor, and editor of the *Five Towns Weekly*,
a new organ of public opinion which had been
in existence about a year; and Denry thought
that Mr. Myson had popped in to see him in
pursuit of an advertisement of the Thrift Club,
and at first he was not at all flattered.

But Mr. Myson was not hunting for advertisements,
and Denry soon saw him to be the kind
of man who would be likely to depute that work
to others.  Of middle height, well and quietly
dressed, with a sober, assured deportment, he
spoke in a voice and accent that were not of
the Five Towns; they were superior to the
Five Towns.  And in fact Mr. Myson
originated in Manchester and had seen London.  He
was not provincial, and he beheld the Five
Towns as part of the provinces, which no
native of the Five Towns ever succeeds in doing.
Nevertheless, his manner to Denry was the
summit of easy and yet deferential politeness.

He asked permission "to put something
before" Denry.  And when, rather taken aback by
such smooth phrases, Denry had graciously
accorded the permission, he gave a brief history
of the *Five Towns Weekly*, showing how its
circulation had grown, and definitely stating that
at that moment it was yielding a profit.  Then
he said:

"Now my scheme is to turn it into a daily."

"Very good notion!" said Denry instinctively.

"I 'm glad you think so," said Mr. Myson.
"Because I 've come here in the hope of getting
your assistance.  I 'm a stranger to the district,
and I want the co-operation of some one who
is n't.  So I 've come to you.  I need money,
of course, though I have myself what most people
would consider sufficient capital.  But what I
need more than money is—well—moral support."

"And who put you on to me?" asked Denry.

Mr. Myson smiled.  "I put myself on to you,"
said he.  "I think I may say I 've got my
bearings in the Five Towns, after over a year's
journalism in it, and it appeared to me that
you were the best man I could approach.  I
always believe in flying high."

Therein was Denry flattered.  The visit seemed
to him to seal his position in the district in
a way in which his election to the Bursley Town
Council had failed to do.  He had been
somehow disappointed with that election.  He had
desired to display his interest in the serious
welfare of the town, and to answer his
opponent's arguments with better ones.  But the
burgesses of his ward appeared to have no
passionate love of logic.  They just cried "Good
old Denry!" and elected him—with a majority
of only forty-one votes.  He had expected to feel
a different Denry when he could put
"Councillor" before his name.  It was not so.  He
had been solemnly in the mayoral procession to
church, he had attended meetings of the council,
he had been nominated to the Watch Committee.
But he was still precisely the same Denry, though
the youngest member of the council.  But now
he was being recognised from the outside.
Mr. Myson's keen Manchester eye, ranging
over the quarter of a million inhabitants of the
Five Towns in search of a representative
individual force, had settled on Denry Machin.  Yes,
he was flattered.  Mr. Myson's choice threw a
rose light on all Denry's career; his wealth and
its origin; his house and stable, which were the
astonishment and the admiration of the town;
his Universal Thrift Club; yea, and his
councillorship.  After all, these *were* marvels.
(And possibly the greatest marvel was the
signed presence of his mother in that wondrous
house, and the fact that she consented to employ
Rose Chudd, the incomparable Sappho of
charwomen, for three hours every day.)

In fine, he perceived from Mr. Myson's eyes
that his position was unique.

And after they had chatted a little, and the
conversation had deviated momentarily from
journalism to house property, he offered to
display Machin House (as he had christened it) to
Mr. Myson, and Mr. Myson was really impressed
beyond the ordinary.  Mr. Myson's homage to
Mrs. Machin, whom they chanced on in the
paradise of the bathroom, was the polished mirror
of courtesy.  How Denry wished that he could
behave like that when he happened to meet
countesses!

Then, once more in the drawing-room, they
resumed the subject of newspapers.

"You know," said Mr. Myson.  "It 's really
a very bad thing indeed for a district to have
only one daily newspaper.  I 've nothing myself
to say against *The Staffordshire Signal*, but
you 'd perhaps be astonished"—this in a
confidential tone—"at the feeling there is against
the *Signal* in many quarters."

"Really!" said Denry.

"Of course its fault is that it is n't sufficiently
interested in the great public questions of the
district.  And it can't be.  Because it can't take
a definite side.  It must try to please all parties.
At any rate it must offend none.  That is the
great evil of a journalistic monopoly....  Two
hundred and fifty thousand people—why! there
is an ample public for two first-class papers!
Look at Nottingham!  Look at Bristol!  Look
at Leeds!  Look at Sheffield! ... And *their*
newspapers."

And Denry endeavoured to look at these great
cities!  Truly the Five Towns was just about
as big.

The dizzy journalistic intoxication seized him.
He did not give Mr. Myson an answer at once,
but he gave himself an answer at once.  He
would go into the immense adventure.  He was
very friendly with the *Signal* people—certainly;
but business was business, and the highest
welfare of the Five Towns was the highest welfare
of the Five Towns.

Soon afterwards all the hoardings of the
district spoke with one blue voice, and said that
the *Five Towns Weekly* was to be transformed
into the *Five Towns Daily*, with four editions
beginning each day at noon, and that the new
organ would be conducted on the lines of a
first-class evening paper.

The inner ring of knowing ones knew that a
company entitled "The Five Towns Newspapers,
Limited," had been formed, with a capital of
ten thousand pounds, and that Mr. Myson held
three thousand pounds' worth of shares, and the
great Denry Machin one thousand five hundred,
and that the remainder were to be sold and
allotted as occasion demanded.  The inner ring
said that nothing would ever be able to stand
up against the *Signal*.  On the other hand, it
admitted that Denry, the most prodigious card
ever born into the Five Towns, had never been
floored by anything or anybody.  The inner ring
anticipated the future with glee.  Denry and
Mr. Myson anticipated the future with righteous
confidence.  As for the *Signal*, it went on its august
way, calmly blind to sensational hoardings.

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   II

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On the day of the appearance of the first issue
of the *Five Towns Daily*, the offices of the new
paper at Hanbridge gave proof of their excellent
organisation, working in all details with an
admirable smoothness.  In the basement a
Marinoni machine thundered like a sucking dove to
produce fifteen thousand copies an hour.  On
the ground floor ingenious arrangements had
been made for publishing the paper; in
particular, the iron railings to keep the boys in
order in front of the publishing counter had
been imitated from the *Signal*.  On the first
floor was the editor and founder, with his staff,
and above that the composing department.  The
number of stairs that separated the composing
department from the machine room was not a
positive advantage, but bricks and mortar are
inelastic, and one does what one can.  The offices
looked very well from the outside, and they
compared passably with the offices of the *Signal*
close by.  The posters were duly in the
ground-floor windows, and gold signs, one above another
to the roof, produced an air of lucrative success.

Denry happened to be in the *Daily* offices that
afternoon.  He had had nothing to do with the
details of organisation, for details of
organisation were not his speciality.  His speciality was
large, leading ideas.  He knew almost nothing
of the agreements with correspondents and Press
Association and Central News and the racing
services and the fiction syndicates, nor of the
difficulties with the Compositors' Union, nor of
the struggle to lower the price of paper by the
twentieth of a penny per pound, nor of the
awful discounts allowed to certain advertisers, nor
of the friction with the railway company, nor
of the sickening adulation that had been lavished
on quite unimportant news agents, nor—worst of
all—of the dearth of newsboys.  These matters
did not attract him.  He could not stoop to
them.  But when Mr. Myson, calm and proud,
escorted him down to the machine room, and
the Marinoni threw a folded pink *Daily* almost
into his hands, and it looked exactly like a real
newspaper, and he saw one of his own descriptive
articles in it, and he reflected that he was
an owner of it—then Denry was attracted and
delighted, and his heart beat.  For this pink
thing was the symbol and result of the whole
affair, and had the effect of a miracle on him.

And he said to himself, never guessing how
many thousands of men had said it before him,
that a newspaper was the finest toy in the world.

About four o'clock the publisher, in shirt
sleeves and an apron, came up to Mr. Myson
and respectfully asked him to step into the
publishing office.  Mr. Myson stepped into the
publishing office, and Denry with him, and they
there beheld a small, ragged boy with a bleeding
nose and a bundle of *Dailys* in his wounded hand.

"Yes," the boy sobbed; "and they said they 'd
cut my eyes out and plee [play] marbles wi'
'em, if they cotched me in Crown Square agen."  And
he threw down the papers with a final yell.

The two directors learnt that the delicate
threat had been uttered by four *Signal* boys who
had objected to any fellow-boys offering any
paper other than the *Signal* for sale in Crown
Square or anywhere else.

Of course, it was absurd.

Still, absurd as it was, it continued.  The
central publishing offices of the *Daily* at
Hanbridge, and its branch offices in the neighbouring
towns, were like military hospitals, and the
truth appeared to the directors that while the
public was panting to buy copies of the *Daily*,
the sale of the *Daily* was being prevented by
means of a scandalous conspiracy on the part
of *Signal* boys.  For it must be understood that
in the Five Towns people prefer to catch their
newspaper in the street as it flies and cries.  The
*Signal* had a vast army of boys, to whom every
year it gave a great fête.  Indeed, the *Signal*
possessed nearly all the available boys, and
assuredly all the most pugilistic and strongest
boys.  Mr. Myson had obtained boys only after
persistent inquiry and demand, and such as he
had found were not the fittest, and therefore
were unlikely to survive.  You would have
supposed that in a district that never ceases to
grumble about bad trade and unemployment,
thousands of boys would have been delighted to
buy the *Daily* at fourpence a dozen and sell it
at sixpence.  But it was not so.

On the second day the dearth of boys at the
offices of the *Daily* was painful.  There was that
magnificent, enterprising newspaper waiting to
be sold, and there was the great enlightened
public waiting to buy; and scarcely any business
could be done because the *Signal* boys had
established a reign of terror over their puny and
upstart rivals!

The situation was unthinkable.

Still, unthinkable as it was, it continued.
Mr. Myson had thought of everything except this.
Naturally it had not occurred to him that an
immense and serious effort for the general weal
was going to be blocked by a gang of tatterdemalions.

He complained, with dignity, to the *Signal*,
and was informed, with dignity, by the *Signal*
that the *Signal* could not be responsible for the
playful antics of its boys in the streets; that, in
short, the Five Towns was a free country.  In
the latter proposition Mr. Myson did not concur.

After trouble in the persuasion of
parents—astonishing how indifferent the Five Towns'
parent was to the loss of blood by his offspring!—a
case reached the police-court.  At the hearing
the *Signal* gave a solicitor a watching brief,
and that solicitor expressed the *Signal's* horror
of carnage.  The evidence was excessively
contradictory, and the Stipendiary dismissed the
summons with a good joke.  The sole definite
result was that the boy whose father had
ostensibly brought the summons got his ear torn
within a quarter of an hour of leaving the court.
Boys will be boys.

Still, the *Daily* had so little faith in human
nature that it could not believe that the *Signal*
was not secretly encouraging its boys to be boys.
It could not believe that the *Signal*, out of a
sincere desire for fair play and for the highest
welfare of the district, would willingly sacrifice
nearly half its circulation and a portion of its
advertisement revenue.  And the hurt tone of
Mr. Myson's leading articles seemed to indicate
that in Mr. Myson's opinion his older rival
*ought* to do everything in its power to ruin
itself.  The *Signal* never spoke of the fight.
The *Daily* gave shocking details of it every day.

The struggle trailed on through the weeks.

Then Denry had one of his ideas.  An
advertisement was printed in the *Daily* for two
hundred able-bodied men to earn two shillings for
working six hours a day.  An address different
from the address of the *Daily* was given.  By a
ruse Denry procured the insertion of the
advertisement in the *Signal* also.

"We must expend our capital on getting the
paper on to the streets," said Denry.  "That's
evident.  We 'll have it sold by men.  We 'll
soon see if the *Signal* ragamuffins will attack
*them*.  And we won't pay 'em by results; we'll
pay 'em a fixed wage; that 'll fetch 'em.  And
a commission, on sales into the bargain.  Why!
I would n't mind engaging *five* hundred men.
Swamp the streets!  That's it!  Hang expense.
And when we 've done the trick, then we can
go back to the boys; they'll have learnt their
lesson."

And Mr. Myson agreed, and was pleased that
Denry was living up to his reputation.

The state of the earthenware trade was
supposed that summer to be worse than it had been
since 1869, and the grumblings of the
unemployed were prodigious, even seditious.
Mr. Myson, therefore, as a measure of precaution
engaged a couple of policemen to ensure order
at the address, and during the hours, named in
the advertisement as a rendezvous for respectable
men in search of a well-paid job.  Having
regard to the thousands of perishing families
in the Five Towns, he foresaw a rush and
a crush of eager breadwinners.  Indeed, the
arrangements were elaborate.

Forty minutes after the advertised time for
the opening of the reception of respectable men
in search of money four men had arrived.
Mr. Myson, mystified, thought that there had been
a mistake in the advertisement.  But there was
no mistake in the advertisement.  A little later
two more men came.  Of the six, three were
tipsy, and the other three absolutely declined
to be seen selling papers in the streets.  Two
were abusive, one facetious.  Mr. Myson did not
know his Five Towns; nor did Denry.  A man
in the Five Towns, when he can get neither
bread nor beer, will keep himself and his family
on pride and water.

The policemen went off to more serious duties.

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   III

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Then came the announcement of the thirty-fifth
anniversary of the *Signal*, and of the
processional fête by which the *Signal* was at once
to give itself a splendid spectacular advertisement
and to reward and enhearten its boys.
The *Signal* meant to liven up the streets of the
Five Towns on that great day by means of a
display of all the gilt chariots of Snape's Circus
in the main thoroughfares.  Many of the boys
would be in the gilt chariots.  Copies of the
anniversary number of the *Signal* would be sold
from the gilt chariots.  The idea was excellent,
and it showed that after all the *Signal* was
getting just a little more afraid of its young rival
than it had pretended to be.

For, strange to say, after a trying period of
hesitation, the *Five Towns Daily* was slightly
on the upward curve—thanks to Denry.  Denry
did not mean to be beaten by the puzzle which
the *Daily* offered to his intelligence.  There the
*Daily* was, full of news, and with quite an
encouraging show of advertisements, printed on real
paper with real ink—and yet it would not
"go."  Notoriously the *Signal* earned a net profit of at
the very least five thousand a year, whereas the
*Daily* earned a net loss of at the very least sixty
pounds a week—and of that sixty quite a third
was Denry's money.  He could not explain it.
Mr. Myson tried to rouse the public by passionately
stirring up extremely urgent matters—such
as the smoke-nuisance, the increase of the
rates, the park question, German competition,
technical education for apprentices; but the
public obstinately would not be roused concerning
its highest welfare to the point of insisting
on a regular supply of the *Daily*.  If a mere
five thousand souls had positively demanded
daily a copy of the *Daily* and not slept till
boys or agents had responded to their wish,
the troubles of the *Daily* would soon have
vanished.  But this ridiculous public did not seem
to care which paper was put into its hand in
exchange for its halfpenny so long as the sporting
news was put there.  It simply was indifferent.
It failed to see the importance to such
an immense district of having two flourishing
and mutually opposing daily organs.  The
fundamental boy difficulty remained ever-present.

And it was the boy difficulty that Denry
perseveringly and ingeniously attacked, until at
length the *Daily* did indeed possess some sort
of a brigade of its own, and the bullying and
slaughter in the streets (so amusing to the
inhabitants) grew a little less one-sided.

A week or more before the *Signal's*
anniversary day Denry heard that the *Signal* was
secretly afraid lest the *Daily's* brigade might
accomplish the marring of its gorgeous
procession, and that the *Signal* was ready to do
anything to smash the *Daily's* brigade.  He laughed;
he said he did not mind.  About that time
hostilities were rather acute; blood was
warming, and both papers, in the excitation of rivalry,
had partially lost the sense of what was due
to the dignity of great organs.  By chance a
tremendous local football match—Knype
v. Bursley—fell on the very Saturday of the
procession.  The rival arrangements for the
reporting of the match were as tremendous as the
match itself, and somehow the match seemed
to add keenness to the journalistic struggle,
especially as the *Daily* favoured Bursley and the
*Signal* was therefore forced to favour Knype.

By all the laws of hazard there ought to have
been a hitch on that historic Saturday.
Telephone or telegraph ought to have broken down,
or rain ought to have made play impossible.
But no hitch occurred.  And at five-thirty o'clock
of a glorious afternoon in earliest November
the *Daily* went to press with a truly brilliant
account of the manner in which Bursley (for
the first and last time in its history) had
defeated Knype by one goal to none.  Mr. Myson
was proud.  Mr. Myson defied the *Signal* to beat
his descriptive report.  As for the *Signal's*
procession—well, Mr. Myson and the chief
sub-editor of the *Daily* glanced at each other and
smiled.

And a few minutes later the *Daily* boys were
rushing out of the publishing-room with bundles
of papers—assuredly in advance of the *Signal*.

It was at this juncture that the unexpected
began to occur to the *Daily* boys.  The publishing
door of the *Daily* opened into Stanway Rents,
a narrow alley in a maze of mean streets
behind Crown Square.  In Stanway Rents was a
small warehouse in which, according to rumours
of the afternoon, a free soup kitchen was to be
opened.  And just before the football edition of
the *Daily* came off the Marinoni, it emphatically
was opened, and there issued from its inviting
gate an odour—not, to be sure, of soup, but of
toasted cheese and hot jam—such an odour as
had never before tempted the nostrils of a *Daily*
boy; a unique and omnipotent odour.  Several
boys (who, I may state frankly, were traitors
to the *Daily* cause, spies and mischief-makers
from elsewhere) raced unhesitatingly in, crying
that toasted cheese sandwiches and jam tarts
were to be distributed like lightning to all
authentic newspaper lads.

The entire gang followed—scores, over a
hundred—inwardly expecting to emerge instantly
with teeth fully employed, followed like sheep
unto a fold.

And the gate was shut.

Toasted cheese and hot jammy pastry were
faithfully served to the ragged host—but with
no breathless haste.  And when, loaded, the boys
struggled to depart, they were instructed by the
kind philanthropist who had fed them to depart
by another exit and they discovered themselves
in an enclosed yard of which the double doors
were apparently unyielding.  And the warehouse
door was shut also.  And, as the cheese and jam
disappeared, shouts of fury arose on the air.
The yard was so close to the offices of the *Daily*
that the chimney-pots of those offices could
actually be seen.  And yet the shouting brought
no answer from the lords of the *Daily*,
congratulating themselves up there on their fine
account of the football match, and on their
celerity in going to press, and on the loyalty
of their brigade.

The *Signal*, it need not be said, disavowed
complicity in this extraordinary entrapping of
the *Daily* brigade by means of an odour.  Could
it be held responsible for the excesses of its
disinterested sympathisers? ... Still, the
appalling trick showed the high temperature to which
blood had risen in the genial battle between
great rival organs.  Persons in the very inmost
ring whispered that Denry Machin had at length
been bested on this critically important day.

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   IV

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Snape's Circus used to be one of the great
shining institutions of North Staffordshire,
trailing its magnificence on sculptured wheels from
town to town, and occupying the dreams of boys
from one generation to another.  Its
headquarters were at Axe, in the Moorlands, ten
miles away from Hanbridge, but the riches of
old Snape had chiefly come from the Five Towns.
At the time of the struggle between the *Signal*
and the *Daily* its decline had already begun.
The aged proprietor had recently died, and the
name, and the horses, and the chariots, and the
carefully repaired tents had been sold to
strangers.  On the Saturday of the anniversary
and the football match (which was also
Martinmas Saturday) the circus was set up at
Oldcastle, on the edge of the Five Towns, and was
giving its final performances of the season.
Even boys will not go to circuses in the middle
of a Five Towns' winter.  The *Signal* people
had hired the processional portion of Snape's
for the late afternoon and early evening.  And
the instructions were that the entire *cortège*
should be round about the *Signal* offices, in
marching order, not later than five o'clock.

But at four o'clock several gentlemen with
rosettes in their button-holes and *Signal* posters
in their hands arrived important and panting
at the fair-ground at Oldcastle and announced
that the programme had been altered at the
last moment in order to defeat certain feared
machinations of the unscrupulous *Daily*.  The
cavalcade was to be split into three groups, one
of which, the chief, was to enter Hanbridge by
a "back road" and the other two were to go
to Bursley and Longshaw respectively.  In this
manner the forces of advertisement would be
distributed and the chief parts of the district
equally honoured.

The special linen banners, pennons, and
ribbons—bearing the words "Signal: Thirty-fifth
Anniversary," etc.—had already been hung, and
planted, and draped about the gilded summits
of the chariots.  And after some delay the
processions were started separating at the bottom
of the Cattle-market.  The head of the
Hanbridge part of the procession consisted of an
enormous car of Jupiter, with six wheels and
thirty-six paregorical figures (as the clown used
to say), and drawn by six pie-bald steeds guided
by white reins.  This coach had a windowed
interior (at the greater fairs it sometimes served
as a box-office), and in the interior one of the
delegates of the *Signal* had fixed himself; from
it he directed the paths of the procession.

It would be futile longer to conceal that the
delegate of the *Signal* in the bowels of the car
of Jupiter was not honestly a delegate of the
*Signal* at all.  He was, indeed, Denry Machin,
and none other.  From this single fact it will
be seen to what extent the representatives of
great organs had forgotten what was due to
their dignity and to public decency.  Ensconced
in his lair, Denry directed the main portion of
the *Signal's* advertising procession by all
manner of discreet lanes round the skirts of
Hanbridge and so into the town from the hilly side.
And ultimately the ten vehicles halted in Crapper
Street, to the joy of the simple inhabitants.

Denry emerged and wandered innocently towards
the offices of his paper, which were close
by.  It was getting late.  The first yelling of
the imprisoned *Daily* boys was just beginning
to rise on the autumn air.

Suddenly Denry was accosted by a young man.

"Hello, Machin!" cried the young man.
"What have you shaved your beard off for?
I scarcely knew you."

"I just thought I would, Swetnam," said
Denry, who was obviously discomposed.

It was the youngest of the Swetnam boys;
he and Denry had taken a sort of curt fancy
to one another.

"I say," said Swetnam confidentially, as if
obeying a swift impulse, "I did hear that the
*Signal* people meant to collar all your chaps
this afternoon, and I believe they have done.
Hear that now?"  (Swetnam's father was
exceedingly intimate with the *Signal* people.)

"I know," Denry replied.

"But I mean—papers and all."

"I know," said Denry.

"Oh!" murmured Swetnam.

"But I 'll tell you a secret," Denry added.
"They are n't to-day's papers.  They 're yesterday's,
and last week's, and last month's.  We 've
been collecting them specially and keeping them
nice and new-looking."

"Well, you're a caution!" murmured Swetnam.

"I am," Denry agreed.

A number of men rushed at that instant with
bundles of the genuine football edition from the
offices of the *Daily*.

"Come on!" Denry cried to them.  "Come
on!  This way!  By-by, Swetnam."

And the whole file vanished round a corner.
The yelling of imprisoned cheese-fed boys grew
louder.

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   V

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In the meantime at the *Signal* office (which
was not three hundred yards away, but on the
other side of Crown Square) apprehension had
deepened into anxiety as the minutes passed
and the Snape Circus procession persisted in not
appearing on the horizon of the Oldcastle Road.
The *Signal* would have telephoned to Snape's
but for the fact that a circus is never on the
telephone.  It then telephoned to its Oldcastle
agent, who, after a long delay, was able to reply
that the cavalcade had left Oldcastle at the
appointed hour with every sign of health and
energy.  Then the *Signal* sent forth scouts all
down the Oldcastle Road to put spurs into the
procession, and the scouts returned having seen
nothing.  Pessimists glanced at the possibility
of the whole procession having fallen into the
canal at Cauldon Bridge.  The paper was
printed, the train parcels for Knype, Longshaw,
Bursley, and Turnhill were despatched; the boys
were waiting; the fingers of the clock in the
publishing department were simply flying.  It
had been arranged that the bulk of the Hanbridge
edition, and in particular the first copies
of it, should be sold by boys from the gilt chariots
themselves.  The publisher hesitated for an
awful moment, and then decided that he could wait
no more and that the boys must sell the papers
in the usual way from the pavements and gutters.
There was no knowing what the *Daily* might not
be doing.

And then *Signal* boys in dozens rushed forth
paper-laden, but they were disappointed boys;
they had thought to ride in gilt chariots, not
to paddle in mud.  And almost the first thing
they saw in Crown Square was the car of Jupiter
in its glory, flying all the *Signal* colours; and
other cars behind.  They did not rush now; they
sprang, as from a catapult; and alighted like
flies on the vehicles.  Men insisted on taking
their papers from them and paying for them on
the spot.  The boys were startled; they were
entirely puzzled; but they had not the habit of
refusing money.  And off went the procession to
the music of its own band down the road to
Knype, and perhaps a hundred boys on board,
cheering.  The men in charge then performed
a curious act; they tore down all the *Signal*
flagging, and replaced it with the emblem of
the *Daily*.

So that all the great and enlightened public,
wandering home in crowds from the football
match at Knype, had the spectacle of a *Daily*
procession instead of a *Signal* procession, and
could scarce believe their eyes.  And *Dailys*
were sold in quantities from the cars.  At Knype
Station the procession curved and returned to
Hanbridge, and finally, after a multitudinous
triumph, came to a stand with all its *Daily*
bunting in front of the *Signal* offices; and Denry
appeared from his lair.  Denry's men fled with
bundles.

"They 're an hour and a half late," said Denry
calmly to one of the proprietors of the *Signal*,
who was on the pavement.  "But I 've managed
to get them here.  I thought I 'd just look in
to thank you for giving such a good feed to
our lads."

The telephones hummed with news of similar
*Daily* processions in Longshaw and Bursley.
And there was not a high-class private bar in
the district that did not tinkle with delighted
astonishment at the brazen, the inconceivable
effrontery of that card, Denry Machin.  Many
people foresaw lawsuits, but it was agreed that
the *Signal* had begun the game of impudence, in
trapping the *Daily* lads so as to secure a holy
calm for its much-trumpeted procession.

And Denry had not finished with the *Signal*.

In the special football edition of the *Daily*
was an announcement, the first, of special
Martinmas fêtes organised by the Five Towns *Daily*.
And on the same morning every member of the
Universal Thrift Club had received an invitation
to the said fêtes.  They were three—held on
public ground at Hanbridge, Bursley, and
Longshaw.  They were in the style of the usual Five
Towns "wakes"; that is to say, roundabouts,
shows, gingerbread stalls, swings, cocoa-nut
shies.  But at each fête a new and very simple
form of "shy" had been erected.  It consisted
of a row of small railway signals.

"March up!  March up!" cried the shy-men.
"Knock down the signal!  Knock down the
signal!  And a packet of Turkish delight is
yours.  Knock down the signal!"

And when you had knocked down the signal
the men cried:

"We wrap it up for you in the special
Anniversary Number of the *Signal*."

And they disdainfully tore into suitable
fragments copies of the *Signal* which had cost Denry
and Co. a halfpenny each, and enfolded the
Turkish delight therein and handed it to you
with a smack.

And all the fair-grounds were carpeted with
draggled and muddy *Signals*.  People were up
to the ankles in *Signals*.

The affair was the talk of Sunday.  Few
matters in the Five Towns had raised more gossip
than did that enormous escapade which Denry
invented and conducted.  The moral damage to
the *Signal* was held to approach the disastrous.
And now not the possibility but the probability
of lawsuits was incessantly discussed.

On the Monday both papers were bought with
anxiety.  Everybody was frothing to know what
the respective editors would say.

But in neither sheet was there a single word
as to the affair.  Both had determined to be
discreet; both were afraid.  The *Signal* feared
lest it might not, if the pinch came, be able to
prove its innocence of the crime of luring boys
into confinement by means of toasted cheese and
hot jam.  The *Signal* had also to consider its
seriously damaged dignity; for such wounds
silence is the best dressing.  The *Daily* was
comprehensively afraid.  It had practically driven
its gilded chariots through the entire Decalogue.
Moreover, it had won easily in the grand
altercation.  It was exquisitely conscious of glory.

Denry went away to Blackpool, doubtless to
grow his beard.

The proof of the *Daily's* moral and material
victory was that soon afterwards there were four
applicants, men of substance, for shares in the
*Daily* company.  And this, by the way, was the
end of the tale.  For these applicants, who
secured options on a majority of the shares, were
emissaries of the *Signal*.  Armed with the
options, the *Signal* made terms with its rival, and
then by mutual agreement killed it.  The price
of its death was no trifle, but it was less than
a year's profits of the *Signal*.  Denry
considered that he had been "done."  But in the
depths of his heart he was glad that he had
been done.  He had had too disconcerting a
glimpse of the rigours and perils of journalism
to wish to continue in it.  He had scored
supremely, and, for him, to score was life itself.
His reputation as a card was far, far higher
than ever.  Had he so desired, he could have
been elected to the House of Commons on the
strength of his procession and fête.

Mr. Myson, somewhat scandalised by the
exuberance of his partner, returned to Manchester.

And the *Signal*, subsequently often referred
to as "The Old Lady," resumed its monopolistic
sway over the opinions of a quarter of a million
of people, and has never since been attacked.





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.. _`HIS INFAMY`:

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   CHAPTER X.  HIS INFAMY

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   I

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When Denry at a single stroke "wherreted"
his mother and proved his adventurous spirit by
becoming the possessor of one of the first
motorcars ever owned in Bursley, his instinct
naturally was to run up to Councillor Cotterill's in
it.  Not that he loved Councillor Cotterill, and
therefore wished to make him a partaker in his
joy, for he did not love Councillor Cotterill.
He had never been able to forgive Nellie's father
for those patronising airs years and years before
at Llandudno, airs indeed which had not even
yet disappeared from Cotterill's attitude towards
Denry.  Though they were councillors on the
same town council, though Denry was getting
richer and Cotterill was assuredly not getting
richer, the latter's face and tone always seemed
to be saying to Denry: "Well, you are not
doing so badly for a beginner."  So Denry did
not care to lose an opportunity of impressing
Councillor Cotterill.  Moreover, Denry had
other reasons for going up to the Cotterills.

There existed a sympathetic bond between him
and Mrs. Cotterill, despite her prim taciturnity
and her exasperating habit of sitting with her
hands pressed tight against her body and one
over the other.  Occasionally he teased
her—and she liked being teased.  He had glimpses
now and then of her secret soul; he was
perhaps the only person in Bursley thus privileged.
Then there was Nellie.  Denry and Nellie were
great friends.  For the rest of the world she had
grown up, but not for Denry, who treated her
as the chocolate child, while she, if she called
him anything, called him respectfully "Mr."

The Cotterills had a fairly large old house
with a good garden "up Bycars Lane," above
the new park and above all those red streets
which Mr. Cotterill had helped to bring into
being.  Mr. Cotterill built new houses with
terra-cotta facings for others, but preferred an
old one in stucco for himself.  His abode had
been saved from the parcelling out of several
Georgian estates.  It was dignified.  It had a
double entrance gate, and from this portal the
drive started off for the house door, but
deliberately avoided reaching the house door until
it had wandered in curves over the entire garden.
That was the Georgian touch!  The modern
touch was shown in Councillor Cotterill's bay
windows, bathroom, and garden squirter.  There
was stabling, in which were kept a Victorian
dog-cart and a Georgian horse, used by the
councillor in his business.  As sure as ever his wife
or daughter wanted the dog-cart, it was either
out, or just going out, or the Georgian horse
was fatigued and needed repose.  The man who
groomed the Georgian also ploughed the
flowerbeds, broke the windows in cleaning them, and
put blacking on brown boots.  Two indoor
servants had differing views as to the frontier
between the kingdom of his duties and the kingdom
of theirs.  In fact, it was the usual spacious
household of successful trade in a provincial
town.

Denry got to Bycars Lane without a breakdown.
This was in the days, quite thirteen years
ago, when automobilists made their wills and
took food supplies when setting forth.  Hence
Denry was pleased.  The small but useful fund
of prudence in him, however, forbade him to
run the car along the unending sinuous drive.
The May night was fine, and he left the loved
vehicle with his new furs in the shadow of a
monkey-tree near the gate.

As he was crunching towards the door, he
had a beautiful idea: "I'll take 'em all
out for a spin.  There 'll just be room!" he
said.

Now even to-day, when the very cabman drives
his automobile, a man who buys a motor cannot
say to a friend: "I 've bought a motor.  Come
for a spin," in the same self-unconscious accents
as he would say: "I 've bought a boat.  Come
for a sail," or "I 've bought a house.  Come and
look at it."  Even to-day in the centre of London
there is still something about a motor,—well,
something....  Everybody who has bought a
motor, and everybody who has dreamed of
buying a motor, will comprehend me.  Useless to
feign that a motor is the most banal thing
imaginable.  It is not.  It remains the supreme
symbol of swagger.  If such is the effect of a
motor in these days and in Berkeley Square,
what must it have been in that dim past, and
in that dim town three hours by the fastest
express from Euston?  The imagination must be
forced to the task of answering this question.
Then will it be understood that Denry was
simply tingling with pride.

"Master in?" he demanded of the servant,
who was correctly starched, but unkempt in
detail.

"No, sir.  He ain't been in for tea."

("I shall take the women out then," said
Denry to himself.)

"Come in!  Come in!" cried a voice from
the other side of the open door of the drawing-room.
Nellie's voice!  The manners and state
of a family that has industrially risen combine
the spectacular grandeur of the caste to which
it has climbed with the ease and freedom of
the caste which it has quitted.

"Such a surprise!" said the voice.  Nellie
appeared, rosy.

Denry threw his new motoring cap hastily on
to the hall-stand.  No!  He did not hope that
Nellie would see it.  He hoped that she would
not see it.  Now that the moment was really
come to declare himself the owner of a
motor-car he grew timid and nervous.  He would have
liked to hide his hat.  But then Denry was
quite different from our common humanity.  He
was capable even of feeling awkward in a new
suit of clothes.  A singular person.

"Hello!" she greeted him.

"Hello!" he greeted her.

Then hands touched.

"Father has n't come yet," she added.  He
fancied she was not quite at ease.

"Well," he said, "what's this surprise?"

She motioned him into the drawing-room.

The surprise was a wonderful woman, brilliant
in black—not black silk, but a softer,
delicate stuff.  She reclined in an easy-chair with
surpassing grace and self-possession.  A black
Egyptian shawl, spangled with silver, was
slipping off her shoulders.  Her hair was
dressed—that is to say, it was *dressed*; it was obviously
and thrillingly a work of elaborate art.  He
could see her two feet, and one of her ankles.
The boots, the open-work stocking—such boots,
such an open-work stocking, had never been seen
in Bursley, not even at a ball!  She was in
mourning, and wore scarcely any jewelry, but
there was a gleaming tint of gold here and there
among the black which resulted in a marvellous
effect of richness.  The least experienced would
have said, and said rightly: "This must be a
woman of wealth and fashion."  It was the
detail that finished the demonstration.  The detail
was incredible.  There might have been ten
million stitches in the dress.  Ten sempstresses
might have worked on the dress for ten years.
An examination of it under a microscope could
but have deepened one's amazement at it.

She was something new in the Five Towns,
something quite new.

Denry was not equal to the situation.  He
seldom was equal to a small situation.  And
although he had latterly acquired a considerable
amount of social *savoir*, he was constantly
mislaying it, so that he could not put his hand on
it at the moment when he most required it,
as now.

"Well, Denry!" said the wondrous creature
in black, softly.

And he collected himself as though for a
plunge and said:

"Well, Ruth!"

This was the woman whom he had once loved,
kissed, and engaged himself to marry.  He was
relieved that she had begun with Christian
names, because he could not recall her surname.
He could not even remember whether he had
ever heard it.  All he knew was that, after
leaving Bursley to join her father in Birmingham,
she had married somebody with a double
name, somebody well off, somebody older than
herself; somebody apparently of high social
standing; and that this somebody had died.

She made no fuss.  There was no implication
in her demeanour that she expected to be wept
over as a lone widow, or that because she and
he had on a time been betrothed therefore they
could never speak naturally to each other again.
She just talked as if nothing had ever happened
to her, and as if about twenty-four hours had
elapsed since she had last seen him.  He felt
that she must have picked up this most useful
diplomatic calmness in her contacts with her
late husband's class.  It was a valuable lesson
to him: "Always behave as if nothing had
happened—no matter what has happened."

To himself he was saying:

"I 'm glad I came up in my motor."

He seemed to need something in self-defence
against the sudden attack of all this wealth and
all this superior social tact, and the motor-car
served excellently.

"I 've been hearing a great deal about you
lately," said she with a soft smile, unobtrusively
rearranging a fold of her skirt.

"Well," he replied, "I 'm sorry I can't say the
same of you."

Slightly perilous, perhaps, but still he thought
it rather neat.

"Oh!" she said.  "You see I 've been so much
out of England.  We were just talking about
holidays.  I was saying to Mrs. Cotterill they
certainly ought to go to Switzerland this year
for a change."

"Yes, Mrs. Capron-Smith was just saying——"
Mrs. Cotterill put in.

(So that was her name.)

"It would be something too lovely!" said
Nellie in ecstasy.

Switzerland!  Astonishing how with a single
word she had marked the gulf between Bursley
people and herself.  The Cotterills had never
been out of England.  Not merely that, but the
Cotterills had never dreamt of going out of
England.  Denry had once been to Dieppe, and had
come back as though from Timbuctoo with a
traveller's renown.  And she talked of
Switzerland easily.

"I suppose it is very jolly," he said.

"Yes," she said, "it's splendid in summer.
But, of course, *the* time is winter, for the sports.
Naturally when you are n't free to take a bit
of a holiday in winter you must be content with
summer, and very splendid it is.  I 'm sure you 'd
enjoy it frightfully, Nell."

"I'm sure I should—frightfully!" Nellie
agreed.  "I shall speak to father.  I shall make
him——"

"Now, Nellie—" her mother warned her.

"Yes I shall mother," Nellie insisted.

"There *is* your father!" observed Mrs. Cotterill,
after listening.

Footsteps crossed the hall, and died away into
the dining-room.

"I wonder why on earth father does n't
come in here.  He must have heard us talking,"
said Nellie, like a tyrant crossed in some
trifle.

A bell rang, and the servant came into the
drawing-room and remarked: "If you please,
mum," at Mrs. Cotterill, and Mrs. Cotterill
disappeared, closing the door after her.

"What are they up to, between them?" Nellie
demanded, and she too departed, with wrinkled
brow, leaving Denry and Ruth together.  It
could be perceived on Nellie's brow that her
father was going "to catch it."

"I have n't seen Mr. Cotterill yet," said
Mrs. Capron-Smith.

"When did you come?" Denry asked.

"Only this afternoon."

She continued to talk.

As he looked at her, listening and responding
intelligently now and then, he saw that
Mrs. Capron-Smith was in truth the woman that
Ruth had so cleverly imitated ten years before.
The imitation had deceived him then; he had
accepted it for genuine.  It would not have
deceived him now—he knew that.  Oh, yes!
This was the real article that could hold its
own anywhere, Switzerland!  And not simply
Switzerland, but a refinement on Switzerland!
Switzerland in winter!  He divined that in her
secret opinion Switzerland in summer was not
worth doing—in the way of correctness.  But
in winter——

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   II

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Nellie had announced a surprise for Denry as
he entered the house, but Nellie's surprise for
Denry, startling and successful though it proved,
was as naught to the surprise which Mr. Cotterill
had in hand for Nellie, her mother, Denry,
the town of Bursley, and various persons up and
down the country.

Mrs. Cotterill came hysterically in upon the
duologue between Denry and Ruth in the
drawing-room.  From the activity of her hands,
which, instead of being decently folded one over
the other, were waving round her head in the
strangest way, it was clear that Mrs. Cotterill
was indeed under the stress of a very unusual
emotion.

"It's those creditors—at last!  I knew it
would be!  It's all those creditors!  They won't
let him alone, and now they 've *done* it."

So Mrs. Cotterill!  She dropped into a chair.
She had no longer any sense of shame, of what
was due to her dignity.  She seemed to have
forgotten that certain matters are not proper to
be discussed in drawing-rooms.  She had left
the room Mrs. Councillor Cotterill; she returned
to it nobody in particular, the personification
of defeat.  The change had operated in five
minutes.

Mrs. Capron-Smith and Denry glanced at each
other, and even Mrs. Capron-Smith was at a
loss for a moment.  Then Ruth approached
Mrs. Cotterill and took her hand.  Perhaps
Mrs. Capron-Smith was not so astonished after all.
She and Nellie's mother had always been "very
friendly."  And in the Five Towns "very
friendly" means a lot.

"Perhaps if you were to leave us," Ruth
suggested, twisting her head to glance at Denry.

It was exactly what he desired to do.  There
could be no doubt that Ruth was supremely
a woman of the world.  Her tact was faultless.

He left them, saying to himself: "Well,
here 's a go!"

In the hall, through an open door, he saw
Councillor Cotterill standing against the
dining-room mantelpiece.

When Cotterill caught sight of Denry he
straightened himself into a certain uneasy
perkiness.

"Young man," he said in a counterfeit of
his old patronising tone, "come in here.  You
may as well hear about it.  You 're a friend of
ours.  Come in and shut the door."

Nellie was not in view.

Denry went in and shut the door.

"Sit down," said Cotterill.

And it was just as if he had said: "Now,
you 're a fairly bright sort of youth, and you
have n't done so badly in life; and as a reward
I mean to admit you to the privilege of hearing
about our ill-luck, which for some mysterious
reason reflects more credit on me than your
good luck reflects on you, young man."

And he stroked his straggling grey beard.

"I 'm going to file my petition to-morrow,"
said he, and gave a short laugh.

"Really!" said Denry, who could think of
nothing else to say.  His name was not Capron-Smith.

"Yes; they won't leave me any alternative,"
said Mr. Cotterill.

Then he gave a brief history of his late
commercial career to the young man.  And he
seemed to figure it as a sort of tug-of-war
between his creditors and his debtors, he himself
being the rope.  He seemed to imply that he
had always done his sincere best to attain the
greatest good of the greatest number, but that
those wrong-headed creditors had consistently
thwarted him.  However, he bore them no
grudge.  It was the fortune of the tug-of-war.
He pretended, with shabby magnificence of spirit,
that a bankruptcy at the age of near sixty, in
a community where one has cut a figure, is a
mere passing episode.

"Are you surprised?" he asked foolishly, with
a sheepish smile.

Denry took vengeance for all the patronage
that he had received during a decade.

"No!" he said.  "Are you?"

Instead of kicking Denry out of the house
for an impudent young jackanapes, Mr. Cotterill
simply resumed his sheepish smile.

Denry had been surprised for a moment, but
he had quickly recovered.  Cotterill's downfall
was one of those events which any person of
acute intelligence can foretell after they have
happened.  Cotterill had run the risks of the
speculative builder, and mortgaged, built and
mortgaged, sold at a profit, sold without profit,
sold at a loss, and failed to sell; given bills,
given second mortgages, given third mortgages;
and because he was a builder and could do
nothing but build, he had continued to build
in defiance of Bursley's lack of enthusiasm for
his erections.  If rich gold deposits had been
discovered in Bursley Municipal Park, Cotterill
would have owned a mining camp and amassed
immense wealth; but unfortunately gold
deposits were not discovered in the Park.
Nobody knew his position; nobody ever does know
the position of a speculative builder.  He did
not know it himself.  There had been rumours,
but they had been contradicted in an adequate
way.  His recent refusal of the mayoral
chain, due to lack of spare coin, had been
attributed to prudence.  His domestic
existence had always been conducted on the
same moderately lavish scale.  He had always
paid the baker, the butcher, the tailor, the
dressmaker.

And now he was to file his petition in
bankruptcy, and to-morrow the entire town would
have "been seeing it coming" for years.

"What shall you do?" Denry inquired in
amicable curiosity.

"Well," said Cotterill, "that's the point.
I 've got a brother, a builder in Toronto, you
know.  He 's doing very well; building is building
over there!  I wrote to him a bit since, and
he replied by the next mail—by the next mail—that
what he wanted was just a man like me
to overlook things.  He's getting an old man
now, is John.  So, you see, there 's an opening
waiting for me."

As if to say, "The righteous are never forsaken."

"I tell you all this as you 're a friend of the
family like," he added.

Then, after an expanse of vagueness, he began
hopefully, cheerfully, undauntedly:

"Even *now* if I could get hold of a couple
of thousand I could pull through handsome—and
there 's plenty of security for it."

"Bit late now, isn't it?"

"Not it!  If only some one who really knows
the town, and has faith in the property market,
would come down with a couple of thousand—well,
he might double it in five years."

"Really!"

"Yes," said Cotterill.  "Look at Clare Street!"

Clare Street was one of his terra-cotta
masterpieces.

"You, now!" said Cotterill, insinuating.  "I
don't expect any one can teach *you* much about
the value o' property in this town.  You know
as well as I do.  If you happened to have a
couple of thousand loose—by gosh! it's a chance
in a million!"

"Yes," said Denry.  "I should say that was
just about what it was."

"I put it before you," Cotterill proceeded,
gathering way, and missing the flavour of
Denry's remark.  "Because you 're a friend of
the family.  You 're so often here.  Why, it's
pretty near ten years..."

Denry sighed: "I expect I come and see
you all about once a fortnight fairly regular.
That makes two hundred and fifty times in ten
years.  Yes...."

"A couple of thou'," said Cotterill reflectively.

"Two hundred and fifty into two thousand—eight.
Eight pounds a visit.  A shade thick,
Cotterill, a shade thick!  You might be half a
dozen fashionable physicians rolled into one."

Never before had he called the Councillor
"Cotterill" unadorned.

Mr. Cotterill flushed and rose.

Denry does not appear to advantage in this
interview.  He failed in magnanimity.  The
only excuse that can be offered for him is that
Mr. Cotterill had called him "young man"
once or twice too often in the course of ten
years.  It is subtle.

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   III

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"No," whispered Ruth, in all her wraps.
"Don't bring it up to the door.  I 'll walk down
with you to the gate, and get in there."

He nodded.

They were off, together.  Ruth, it had
appeared, was actually staying at the Five Towns
Hotel, at Knype, which at that epoch was the
only hotel in the Five Towns seriously pretending
to be "first-class" in the full-page
advertisement sense.  The fact that Ruth was staying at
the Five Towns Hotel impressed Denry anew.
Assuredly she did things in the grand manner.
She had meant to walk down by the Park to
Bursley Station and catch the last loop line train
to Knype, and when Denry suddenly disclosed
the existence of his motor-car, and proposed to
see her to her hotel in it, she in her turn had
been impressed.  The astonishment in her tone
as she exclaimed:

"Have you got a *motor*?" was the least in
the world naïve.

Thus they departed together from the stricken
house, Ruth saying brightly to Nellie, who had
reappeared in a painful state of demoralisation,
that she should return on the morrow.

And Denry went down the obscure drive with
a final vision of the poor child Nellie as she
stood at the door to speed them.  It was
extraordinary how that child had remained a
child.  He knew that she must be more than
half-way through her twenties, and yet she
persisted in being the merest girl!  A delightful
little thing; but no *savoir vivre*, no equality to
a situation, no spectacular pride.  Just a nice,
bright girl, strangely girlish!  The Cotterills
had managed that bad evening badly.  They
had shown no dignity, no reserve, no
discretion; and old Cotterill had been simply
fatuous in his suggestion!  As for Mrs. Cotterill,
she was completely overcome, and it was due
solely to Ruth's calm managing influence that
Nellie, nervous and whimpering, had wound
herself up to come and shut the front door after
the guests.

It was all very sad.

When he had successfully started the car, and
they were sliding down the Moorthorne hill
together, side by side, their shoulders touching,
Denry threw off the nightmarish effect of the
bankrupt household.  After all, there was no
reason why he should be depressed.  He was
not a bankrupt.  He was steadily adding riches
to riches.  He acquired wealth mechanically
now.  Owing to the habits of his mother he never
came within miles of living up to his income.
And Ruth—she too was wealthy.  He felt that
she must be wealthy in the strict significance
of the term.  And she completed wealth by
experience of the world.  She was his equal.  She
understood things in general.  She had lived,
travelled, suffered, reflected—in short, she was a
completed article of manufacture.  She was no
little, clinging, raw girl.  Further, she was less
hard than of yore.  Her voice and gestures had
a different quality.  The world had softened her.
And it occurred to him suddenly that her sole
fault—extravagance—had no importance now
that she was wealthy.

He told her all that Mr. Cotterill had said
about Canada.  And she told him all that
Mrs. Cotterill had said about Canada.  And they
agreed that Mr. Cotterill had got his deserts,
and that, in its own interest, Canada was
the only thing for the Cotterill family.  And
the sooner the better!  People must accept the
consequences of bankruptcy.  Nothing could be done.

"I think it's a pity Nellie should have to
go," said Denry.

"Oh!  *Do* you?" replied Ruth.

"Yes.  Going out to a strange country like
that.  She 's not what you may call the
Canadian kind of girl.  If she could only get
something to do here....  If something could be
found for her!"

"Oh!  I don't agree with you at *all*!" said
Ruth.  "Do you really think she ought to leave
her parents just *now*?  Her place is with her
parents.  And besides, between you and me,
she 'll have a much better chance of marrying
there than in *this* town—after all this—I can
tell you.  Of course I shall be very sorry to
lose her—and Mrs. Cotterill, too.  But..."

"I expect you 're right," Denry concurred.

And they sped on luxuriously through the
lamplit night of the Five Towns.  And Denry
pointed out his house as they passed it.  And
they both thought much of the security of their
positions in the world, and of their incomes,
and of the honeyed deference of their bankers;
and also of the mistake of being a failure.
You could do nothing with a failure.

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   IV

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On a frosty morning in early winter you might
have seen them together in a different vehicle—a
first-class compartment of the express from
Knype to Liverpool.  They had the compartment
to themselves and they were installed
therein with every circumstance of luxury.  Both
were enwrapped in furs, and a fur rug united
their knees in its shelter.  Magazines and
newspapers were scatted about to the value of a
labourer's hire for a whole day; and when
Denry's eye met the guard's it said "shilling."  In
short, nobody could possibly be more superb
than they were on that morning in that compartment.

The journey was the result of peculiar events.

Mr. Cotterill had made himself a bankrupt,
and cast away the robe of a Town Councillor.
He had submitted to the inquisitiveness of the
Official Receiver and to the harsh prying of
those rampant baying beasts, his creditors.  He
had laid bare his books, his correspondence, his
lack of method, his domestic extravagance, and
the distressing fact that he had continued to
trade long after he knew himself to be insolvent.
He had for several months, in the interests of
the said beasts, carried on his own business as
manager at a nominal salary.  And gradually
everything that was his had been sold.  And
during the final weeks the Cotterill family had
been obliged to quit their dismantled house and
exist in lodgings.  It had been arranged that
they should go to Canada by way of Liverpool,
and on the day before the journey of Denry
and Ruth to Liverpool they had departed from
the borough of Bursley (which Mr. Cotterill
had so extensively faced with terra-cotta)
unhonoured and unsung.  Even Denry, though he
had visited them in their lodgings to say
good-bye, had not seen them off at the station.  But
Ruth Capron-Smith had seen them off at the
station.  She had interrupted a sojourn at
Southport in order to come to Bursley and
despatch them therefrom with due friendliness.
Certain matters had to be attended to after their
departure, and Ruth had promised to attend to them.

Now immediately after seeing them off Ruth
had met Denry in the street.

"Do you know," she said brusquely, "those
people are actually going steerage?  I 'd no idea
of it.  Mr. and Mrs. Cotterill kept it from me,
and I should not have heard of it only from
something Nellie said.  That's why they 've
gone to-day.  The boat does n't sail till
to-morrow afternoon."

"Steerage!" and Denry whistled.

"Yes," said Ruth.  "Nothing but pride, of
course.  Old Cotterill wanted to have every
penny he could scrape so as to be able to make
the least tiny bit of a show when he gets to
Toronto, and so—steerage!  Just think of
Mrs. Cotterill and Nellie in the steerage!  If I'd
known of it I should have altered that, I can
tell you, and pretty quickly too; and now it's
too late."

"No, it is n't," Denry contradicted her flatly.

"But they 've gone."

"I could telegraph to Liverpool for saloon
berths—there 's bound to be plenty at this time
of year—and I could run over to Liverpool
to-morrow and catch 'em on the boat and make
'em change."

She asked him whether he really thought he
could, and he assured her.

"Second-cabin berths would be better," said she.

"Why?"

"Well, because of dressing for dinner and so
on.  They have n't got the clothes, you know."

"Of course," said Denry.

"Listen," she said, with an enchanting smile.
"Let's halve the cost, you and I.  And let's go
to Liverpool together and—er—make the little
gift and arrange things.  I 'm leaving for
Southport to-morrow, and Liverpool's on my way."

Denry was delighted by the suggestion, and
telegraphed to Liverpool, with success.

Thus they found themselves on that morning
in the Liverpool express together.  The work of
benevolence in which they were engaged had
a powerful influence on their mood, which grew
both intimate and tender.  Ruth made no
concealment of her regard for Denry; and as he
gazed across the compartment at her, exquisitely
mature (she was slightly older than himself),
dressed to a marvel, perfect in every detail of
manner, knowing all that was to be known about
life, and secure in a handsome fortune—as he
gazed, Denry reflected, joyously, victoriously:

"I 've got the dibs, of course.  But she's got
'em too—perhaps more.  Therefore she must like
me for myself alone.  This brilliant creature has
been everywhere and seen everything, and she
comes back to the Five Towns and comes back to *me*."

It was his proudest moment.  And in it he
saw his future far more dazzlingly glorious than
he had dreamt—even as late as six months before.

"When shall you be out of mourning?" he inquired.

"In two months," said she.

This was not a proposal and acceptance, but
it was very nearly one.  They were silent, and happy.

Then she said:

"Do you ever have business at Southport?"

And he said, in a unique manner:

"I shall have."

Another silence.  This time, he felt, he would
marry her.

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   V

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The White Star liner *Titubic* stuck out of the
water like a row of houses against the
landing-stage.  There was a large crowd on her
promenade deck, and a still larger crowd on the
landing-stage.  Above the promenade deck officers
paced on the navigating deck, and above that
was the airy bridge, and above that the funnels,
smoking, and somewhere still higher a flag or
two fluttering in the icy breeze.  And behind
the crowd on the landing-stage stretched a row
of four-wheeled cabs and rickety horses.  The
landing-stage swayed ever so slightly on the
tide.  Only the ship was apparently solid,
apparently cemented in foundations of concrete.

On the starboard side of the promenade deck,
among a hundred other small groups, was a
group consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Cotterill and
Ruth and Denry.  Nellie stood a few feet apart.
Mrs. Cotterill was crying.  People naturally
thought she was crying because of the adieux.
But she was not.  She wept because Denry and
Ruth by sheer force of will had compelled them
to come out of the steerage and occupy beautiful
and commodious berths in the second cabin,
where the manner of the stewards was quite
different.  She wept because they had been
caught in the steerage.  She wept because she
was ashamed, and because people were too kind.
She was at once delighted and desolated.  She
wanted to outpour psalms of gratitude, and also
she wanted to curse.

Mr. Cotterill said stiffly that he should
repay—and that soon.

An immense bell sounded impatiently.

"We 'd better be shunting," said Denry.
"That's the second."

In exciting crises he sometimes employed such
peculiar language as this.  And he was very
excited.  He had done a great deal of rushing
about.  The upraising of the Cotterill family
from the social Hades of the steerage to the
respectability of the second cabin had demanded
all his energy and a lot of Ruth's.

Ruth kissed Mrs. Cotterill and then Nellie.
And Mrs. Cotterill and Nellie acquired rank and
importance for the whole voyage by reason of
being kissed in public by a woman so elegant
and aristocratic as Ruth Capron-Smith.

And Denry shook hands.  He looked brightly
at the parents, but he could not look at Nellie;
nor could she look at him; their handshaking
was perfunctory.  For months their playful
intimacy had been in abeyance.

"Good-bye!"

"Good luck!"

"Thanks.  Good-bye!"

"Good-bye!"

The horrible bell continued to insist.

"All non-passengers ashore!  All ashore!"

The numerous gangways were thronged with
people obeying the call, and handkerchiefs
began to wave.  And there was a regular vibrating
tremor through the ship.

Mr. and Mrs. Cotterill turned away.

Ruth and Denry approached the nearest
gangway, and Denry stood aside and made a place
for her to pass.  And, as always, a number of
women pushed into the gangways immediately
after her and Denry had to wait, being a perfect
gentleman.

His eye caught Nellie's.  She had not moved.

He felt then as he had never felt in his life.
No, absolutely never!  Her sad, her tragic
glance rendered him so uncomfortable, and yet
so deliciously uncomfortable, that the symptoms
startled him.  He wondered what would happen
to his legs.  He was not sure that he had legs.

However, he demonstrated the existence of
his legs by running up to Nellie.  Ruth was by
this time swallowed in the crowd on the landing-stage.
He looked at Nellie.  Nellie looked at
him.  Her lips twitched.

"What am I doing here?" he asked of his soul.

She was not at all well dressed.  She was
indeed shabby—in a steerage style.  Her hat
was awry; her gloves miserable.  No girlish
pride in her distraught face!  No determination
to overcome fate!  No consciousness of ability
to meet a bad situation.  Just those sad eyes
and those twitching lips.

"Look here!" Denry whispered.  "You must
come ashore for a second.  I 've something I
want to give you, and I 've left it in the cab."

"But there's no time.  The bell's..."

"Bosh!" he exclaimed, gruffly, extinguishing
her timid childish voice.  "You won't go for
at least a quarter of an hour.  All that's only
a dodge to get people off in plenty of time.
Come on, I tell you."

And in a sort of hysteria he seized her thin,
long hand, and dragged her along the deck to
another gangway, down whose steep slope they
stumbled together.  The crowd of sightseers and
handkerchief-wavers jostled them.  They could
see nothing but heads and shoulders and the
great side of the ship rising above.  Denry
turned her back on the ship.

"This way!"  He still held her hand.

He struggled to the cab-rank.

"Which one is it?" she asked.

"Any one.  Never mind which.  Jump in!"  And
to the first driver whose eye met his, he
said: "Lime-street Station."

The gangways were being drawn away.  A
hoarse boom filled the air, and then a cheer.

"But I shall miss the boat," the dazed girl
protested.

"Jump in!"

He pushed her in.

"But I shall miss the..."

"I know you will," he replied, as if angrily.
"Do you suppose I was going to let you go by
that steamer?  Not much!"

"But mother and father..."

"I 'll telegraph.  They 'll get it on landing."

"And where's Ruth?"

"*Be hanged to Ruth!*" he shouted furiously.

As the cab rattled over the cobbles, the
*Titubic* slipped away from the landing-stage.
The irretrievable had happened.

Nellie burst into tears.

"Look here!" Denry said savagely.  "If you
don't dry up, I shall have to cry myself!"

"What are you going to do with me?" she
whimpered.

"Well, what do *you* think?  I 'm going to
marry you, of course."

His aggrieved tone might have been supposed
to imply that people had tried to thwart him,
but that he had no intention of being thwarted,
nor of asking permissions, nor of conducting
himself as anything but a fierce tyrant.

As for Nellie, she seemed to surrender.

Then he kissed her—also angrily.  He kissed
her several times—yes, even in Lord-street
itself—less and less angrily.

"Where are you taking me to?" she inquired
humbly, as a captive.

"I shall take you to my mother's," he said.

"Will she like it?"

"She 'll either like it or lump it," said Denry.
"It 'll take a fortnight."

"What?"

"The notice, and things."

In the train, in the midst of a great submissive
silence, she murmured:

"It 'll be simply awful for father and mother."

"That can't be helped," said he.  "And they 'll
be far too seasick to bother their heads about you."

"You can't think how you 've staggered me,"
said she.

"You can't think how I 've staggered myself,"
said he.

"When did you decide to..."

"When I was standing at the gangway and
you looked at me," he answered.

"But..."

"It's no use butting," he said.  "I 'm like
that....  That's me, that is!"

It was the bare truth that he had staggered
himself.  But he had staggered himself into a
miraculous, ecstatic happiness.  She had no
money, no clothes, no style, no experience, no
particular gifts.  But she was she.  And when
he looked at her, calmed, he knew that he had
done well for himself.  He knew that if he had
not yielded to that terrific impulse he would have
done badly for himself.

Mrs. Machin had what she called a ticklish
night of it.

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   VI

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The next day he received a note from Ruth,
dated Southport, inquiring how he came to lose
her on the landing-stage, and expressing
concern.  It took him three days to reply, and even
then the reply was a bad one.  He had behaved
infamously to Ruth: so much could not be
denied.  Within three hours of practically
proposing to her he had run off with a simple girl
who was not fit to hold a candle to her.  And
he did not care.  That was the worst of it: he
did not care.

Of course the facts reached her.  The facts
reached everybody; for the singular
reappearance of Nellie in the streets of Bursley
immediately after her departure for Canada had
to be explained.  Moreover, the infamous Denry
was rather proud of the facts.  And the town
inevitably said: "Machin all over, that!  Snatching
the girl off the blooming lugger!  Machin
all over!"  And Denry agreed privately that it
was Machin all over.

"What other chap," he demanded of the air,
"would have thought of it?  Or had the pluck...."

It was mere malice on the part of Destiny
that caused Denry to run across Mrs. Capron-Smith
at Euston some weeks later.  Happily
they both had immense nerve.

"Dear me!" said she.  "What are you doing here?"

"Only honeymooning," he said.





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.. _`IN THE ALPS`:

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   CHAPTER XI.  IN THE ALPS

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   I

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Although Denry was extremely happy as
a bridegroom, and capable of the most foolish
symptoms of affection in private, he said to
himself, and he said to Nellie (and she sturdily
agreed with him): "We aren't going to be
the ordinary silly honeymooners."  By which,
of course, he meant that they would behave so
as to be taken for staid married persons.  They
failed thoroughly in this enterprise as far as
London, where they spent a couple of nights,
but on leaving Charing Cross they made a new
and a better start, in the light of experience.

The destination—it need hardly be said—was
Switzerland.  After Mrs. Capron-Smith's
remarks on the necessity of going to Switzerland
in winter if one wished to respect one's self,
there was really no alternative to Switzerland.
Thus it was announced in the *Signal* (which
had reported the wedding in ten lines, owing
to the excessive quietude of the wedding) that
Mr. and Mrs. Councillor Machin were spending
a month at Mont Pridoux, sur Montreux, on the
Lake of Geneva.  And the announcement looked
very well.

At Dieppe they got a through carriage.  There
were several through carriages for Switzerland
on the train.  In walking through the corridors
from one to another Denry and Nellie had
their first glimpse of the world which travels
and which runs off for a holiday whenever it
feels in the mood.  The idea of going for a
holiday in any month but August seemed odd to
both of them.  Denry was very bold and would
insist on talking in a naturally loud voice.
Nellie was timid and clinging.  "What do you
say?" Denry would roar at her when she
half-whispered something, and she had to repeat it
so that all could hear.  It was part of their
plan to address each other curtly, brusquely,
and to frown, and to pretend to be slightly bored
by each other.

They were outclassed by the world which
travels.  Try as they might, even Denry was
morally intimidated.  He had managed his clothes
fairly correctly; he was not ashamed of them;
and Nellie's were by no means the worst in the
compartments; indeed, according to the standard
of some of the most intimidating women,
Nellie's costume erred in not being quite
sufficiently negligent, sufficiently "anyhow."  And
they had plenty, and ten times plenty of money,
and the consciousness of it.  Expense was not
being spared on that honeymoon.  And yet...
Well, all that can be said is that the company
was imposing.  The company, which was entirely
English, seemed to be unaware that any one
ever did anything else but travel luxuriously to
places mentioned in second-year geographies.
It astounded Nellie that there should be so many
people in the world with nothing to do but spend.
And they were constantly saying the strangest
things with an air of perfect calm.

"How much did you pay for the excess
luggage?" an untidy young woman asked of an
old man.

"Oh!  Thirteen pounds," answered the old
man carelessly.

And not long before Nellie had scarcely
escaped ten days in the steerage of an Atlantic
liner.

After dinner in the restaurant car—no
champagne because it was vulgar, but a good sound
expensive wine—they felt more equal to the
situation, more like part-owners of the train.  Nellie
prudently went to bed ere the triumphant feeling
wore off.  But Denry stayed up smoking in the
corridor.  He stayed up very late, being too
proud and happy and too avid of new sensations
to be able to think of sleep.  It was a match
which led to a conversation between himself and
a thin, drawling, overbearing fellow with an
eyeglass.  Denry had hated this lordly creature all
the way from Dieppe.  In presenting him with
a match he felt that he was somehow getting the
better of him, for the match was precious in
the nocturnal solitude of the vibrating corridor.
The mere fact that two people are alone
together and awake, divided from a sleeping or
sleepy population only by a row of closed,
mysterious doors, will do much to break down social
barriers.  The excellence of Denry's cigar also
helped.  It atoned for the breadth of his accent.

He said to himself:

"I 'll have a bit of a chat with this johnny."

And then he said aloud:

"Not a bad train this!"

"No!" the eyeglass agreed languidly.  "Pity
they give you such a beastly dinner!"

And Denry agreed hastily that it was.

Soon they were chatting of places, and
somehow it came out of Denry that he was going to
Montreux.  The eyeglass professed its indifference
to Montreux in winter, but said the resorts
above Montreux were all right, such as Caux
or Pridoux.

And Denry said:

"Well, of course, should n't think of stopping
in Montreux.  Going to try Pridoux."

The eyeglass said it wasn't going so far as
Switzerland yet; it meant to stop in the Jura.

"Geneva's a pretty deadly place, ain't it?"
said the eyeglass after a pause.

"Ye-es," said Denry.

"Been there since that new esplanade was finished?"

"No," said Denry.  "I saw nothing of it."

"When were you there?"

"Oh!  A couple of years ago."

"Ah!  It was n't started then.  Comic thing!
Of course they 're awfully proud in Geneva of
the view of Mont Blanc."

"Yes," said Denry.

"Ever noticed how queer women are about
that view?  They 're no end keen on it at first,
but after a day or two it gets on their nerves."

"Yes," said Denry.  "I 've noticed that
myself.  My wife..."

He stopped because he did n't know what he
was going to say.

The eyeglass nodded understandingly.  "All
alike," it said.  "Odd thing!"

When Denry introduced himself into the
two-berth compartment which he had managed to
secure at the end of the carriage for himself
and Nellie, the poor tired child was as wakeful
as an owl.

"Who have you been talking to?" she yawned.

"The eyeglass johnny."

"Oh!  Really!" Nellie murmured, interested
and impressed.  "With him, have you?  I could
hear voices.  What sort of a man is he?"

"He seems to be an ass," said Denry.  "Fearfully
haw-haw.  Could n't stand him for long.
I 've made him believe we 've been married for
two years."

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   II

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They stood on the balcony of the Hotel
Beau-Site of Mont Pridoux.  A little below, to the
right, was the other hotel, the Métropole, with
the red-and-white Swiss flag waving over its
central tower.  A little below that was the
terminal station of the funicular railway from
Montreux.  The railway ran down the sheer of
the mountain into the roofs of Montreux, like
a wire.  On it, two toy trains crawled towards
each other, like flies climbing and descending a
wall.  Beyond the fringe of hotels that
constituted Montreux was a strip of water, and
beyond the water a range of hills white at the top.

"So these are the Alps!" Nellie exclaimed.

She was disappointed; he also.  But when
Denry learnt from the guide-book and by
enquiry that the strip of lake was seven miles
across, and the highest notched peaks ten
thousand feet above the sea and twenty-five miles
off, Nellie gasped and was content.

They liked the Hotel Beau-Site.  It had been
recommended to Denry, by a man who knew
what was what, as the best hotel in
Switzerland.  "Don't you be misled by prices," the
man had said.  And Denry was not.  He paid
sixteen francs a day for the two of them at
the Beau-Site, and was rather relieved than
otherwise by the absence of finger-bowls.
Everything was very good, except sometimes the hot
water.  The hot-water cans bore the legend "hot
water," but these two words were occasionally
the only evidence of heat in the water.  On the
other hand, the bedrooms could be made sultry
by merely turning a handle; and the windows
were double.  Nellie was wondrously inventive.
They breakfasted in bed, and she would save
butter and honey from the breakfast to furnish
forth afternoon tea, which was not included in
the terms.  She served the butter freshly with
ice by the simple expedient of leaving it outside
the window of a night!  And Denry was struck
by this housewifery.

The other guests appeared to be of a
comfortable, companionable class, with, as Denry
said, "no frills."  They were amazed to learn
that a chattering little woman of thirty-five,
who gossiped with everybody, and soon invited
Denry and Nellie to have tea in her room, was
an authentic Russian Countess—inscribed in the
visitors' lists as "Comtesse Ruhl (with maid),
Moscow."  Her room was the untidiest that
Nellie had ever seen, and the tea a picnic.  Still,
it was thrilling to have had tea with a Russian
Countess.  (Plots!  Nihilism!  Secret police!
Marble palaces!)  Those visitors' lists were
breath-taking.  Pages and pages of them; scores
of hotels, thousands of names, nearly all
English—and all people who came to Switzerland
in winter, having naught else to do!  Denry
and Nellie bathed in correctness as in a bath.

The only persons in the hotel with whom they
did not "get on" nor "hit it off" were a military
party, chiefly named Clutterbuck, and presided
over by a Major Clutterbuck and his wife.  They
sat at a large table in a corner—father, mother,
several children, a sister-in-law, a sister, a
governess, eight heads in all; and while utterly
polite they seemed to draw a ring round
themselves.  They grumbled at the hotel; they played
bridge (then a newish game); and once, when
Denry and the Countess played with them
(Denry being an adept card-player) for shilling
points, Denry overheard the sister-in-law say
that she was sure Captain Deverax would n't
play for shilling points.  This was the first
rumour of the existence of Captain Deverax;
but afterwards Captain Deverax began to be
mentioned several times a day.  Captain
Deverax was coming to join them, and it seemed that
he was a very particular man.  Soon all the
rest of the hotel had got its back up against
this arriving Captain Deverax.  Then a
Clutterbuck cousin came, a smiling, hard, fluffy
woman, and pronounced definitely that the Hotel
Beau-Site would never do for Captain Deverax.
This cousin aroused Denry's hostility in a
strange way.  She imparted to the Countess
(who united all sects) her opinion that Denry
and Nellie were on their honeymoon.  At night
in a corner of the drawing-room the Countess
delicately but bluntly asked Nellie if she had
been married long.  "No," said Nellie.  "A
month?" asked the Countess smiling.  "N-no!"
said Nellie.

The next day all the hotel knew.  The vast
edifice of make-believe that Denry and Nellie
had laboriously erected crumbled at a word, and
they stood forth, those two, blushing for the
criminals they were.

The hotel was delighted.  There is more
rejoicing in a hotel over one honeymoon couple
than over fifty families with children.

But the hotel had a shock the same day.  The
Clutterbuck cousin had proclaimed that owing
to the inadequacy of the bedroom furniture she
had been obliged to employ a sofa as a
wardrobe.  Then there were more references to
Captain Deverax.  And then at dinner it became
known—Heaven knows how!—that the entire
Clutterbuck party had given notice and was
seceding to the Hotel Métropole.  Also they had
tried to carry the Countess with them, but had
failed.

Now, among the guests of the Hotel Beau-Site
there had always been a professed scorn of the
rival Hotel Métropole, which was a franc a day
dearer and famous for its new and rich furniture.
The Métropole had an orchestra twice a week,
and the English Church services were held in
its drawing-room; and it was larger than the
Beau-Site.  In spite of these facts the clients of
the Beau-Site affected to despise it, saying that
the food was inferior and that the guests were
snobbish.  It was an article of faith in the
Beau-Site that the Beau-Site was the best hotel on
the mountainside, if not in Switzerland.

The insolence of this defection on the part of
the Clutterbucks!  How on earth *could* people
have the face to go to a landlord and say to
him that they meant to desert him in favour
of his rival?

Another detail: the secession of nine or ten
people from one hotel to the other meant that
the Métropole would decidedly be more
populous than the Beau-Site, and on the point of
numbers the emulation was very keen.  "Well!"
said the Beau-Site, "let 'em go!  With their
Captain Deverax!  We shall be better without
'em!"  And that deadliest of all feuds sprang
up—a rivalry between the guests of rival hotels.
The Métropole had issued a general invitation
to a dance, and after the monstrous conduct of
the Clutterbucks the question arose whether the
Beau-Site should not boycott the dance.  However,
it was settled that the truly effective course
would be to go with critical noses in the air,
and emit unfavourable comparisons with the
Beau-Site.  The Beau-Site suddenly became
perfect in the esteem of its patrons.  Not
another word was heard on the subject of hot
water being coated with ice.  And the Clutterbucks,
with incredible assurance, slid their
luggage off in a sleigh to the Métropole, in the
full light of day, amid the contempt of the
faithful.

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   III

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Under the stars the dancing section of the
Beau-Site went off in jingling sleighs over the
snow to the ball at the Métropole.  The distance
was not great, but it was great enough to show
the inadequacy of furs against twenty degrees
of mountain frost, and it was also great enough
to allow the party to come to a general final
understanding that its demeanour must be cold
and critical in the gilded halls of the Métropole.
The rumour ran that Captain Deverax had
arrived, and every one agreed that he must be
an insufferable booby, except the Countess Ruhl,
who never used her fluent exotic English to say
ill of anybody.

The gilded halls of the Métropole certainly
were imposing.  The hotel was incontestably larger
than the Beau-Site, newer, more richly furnished.
Its occupants, too, had a lordly way with them,
trying to others, but inimitable.  Hence the
visitors from the Beau-Site, as they moved to
and fro beneath those crystal chandeliers from
Tottenham Court Road, had their work cut out
to maintain the mien of haughty indifference.
Nellie, for instance, frankly could not do it.
And Denry did not do it very well.

Denry nevertheless did score one point over
Mrs. Clutterbuck's fussy cousin.

"Captain Deverax has come," said this
latter.  "He was very late.  He 'll be downstairs
in a few minutes.  We shall get him to
lead the cotillon."

"Captain Deverax?" Denry questioned.

"Yes.  You 've heard us mention him," said
the cousin, affronted.

"Possibly," said Denry.  "I don't remember."

On hearing this brief colloquy the cohorts of
the Beau-Site felt that in Denry they possessed
the making of a champion.

There was a disturbing surprise, however,
waiting for Denry.

The lift descended, and with a peculiar double
action of his arms on the doors, like a
pantomime fairy emerging from an enchanted castle,
a tall, thin man stepped elegantly out of the
lift and approached the company with a certain
mincingness.  But before he could reach the
company several young women had rushed
towards him, as though with the intention of
committing suicide by hanging themselves from his
neck.  He was in an evening suit so perfect in
detail that it might have sustained comparison
with the costume of the head waiter.  And he
wore an eyeglass in his left eye.  It was the
eyeglass that made Denry jump.  For two
seconds he dismissed the notion.  But
another two seconds of examination showed
beyond doubt that this eyeglass was the eyeglass
of the train.  And Denry had apprehensions.

"Captain Deverax!" exclaimed several voices.

The manner in which the youthful and the
mature fair clustered around this Captain aged
forty (and not handsome) was really
extraordinary—to the males of the Hotel Beau-Site.
Even the little Russian Countess attached
herself to him at once.  And by reason of her
title, her social energy, and her personal
distinction, she took natural precedence of the
others.

"Recognise him?" Denry whispered to his wife.

Nellie nodded.  "He seems rather nice," she
said diffidently.

"Nice!" Denry repeated the adjective.  "The
man 's an ass."

And the majority of the Beau-Site party
agreed with Denry's verdict either by word or
gesture.

Captain Deverax stared fixedly at Denry;
then smiled vaguely and drawled, "Hullo!
How d' do?"

And they shook hands.

"So you know him?" some one murmured to Denry.

"Know him? ... Since infancy."

The inquirer scented facetiousness, but he was
somehow impressed.  The remarkable thing was
that though he regarded Captain Deverax as a
popinjay, Denry could not help feeling a certain
slight satisfaction in the fact that they were
in some sort acquaintances.  Mystery of the
human heart.  He wished sincerely that he
had not, in his conversation with the Captain
in the train, talked about previous visits to
Switzerland.  It was dangerous.

The dance achieved that brightness and joviality
which entitle a dance to call itself a success.
The cotillon reached brilliance, owing to the
captaincy of Captain Deverax.  Several score
opprobrious epithets were applied to the Captain
in the course of the night, but it was agreed
*nemine contradicente* that, whatever he would
have done in front of a Light Brigade at
Balaclava, as a leader of cotillons he was terrific.
Many men, however, seemed to argue that if a
man who was a man led a cotillon he ought
not to lead it too well, on pain of being
considered a coxcomb.

At the close, during the hot soup, the worst
happened.  Denry had known that it would.

Captain Deverax was talking to Nellie, who
was respectfully listening, about the scenery,
when the Countess came up, plate in hand.

"No!  No!" the Countess protested.  "As
for me, I hate your mountains.  I was born in
the steppe where it is all level—level!  Your
mountains close me in.  I am only here by
order of my doctor.  Your mountains get on
my nerves."  She shrugged her shoulders.

Captain Deverax smiled.

"It is the same with you, isn't it?" he said,
turning to Nellie.

"Oh! no!" said Nellie simply.

"But your husband told me the other day
that when you and he were in Geneva a couple
of years ago, the view of Mont Blanc used
to—er—upset you."

"View of Mont Blanc?" Nellie stammered.

Everybody was aware that she and Denry had
never been in Switzerland before, and that their
marriage was indeed less than a month old.

"You misunderstood me," said Denry gruffly.
"My wife has n't been to Geneva."

"Oh!" drawled Captain Deverax.

His "Oh!" contained so much of insinuation,
disdain, and lofty amusement that Denry
blushed, and when Nellie saw her husband's
cheek she blushed in competition and defeated
him easily.  It was felt that either Denry had
been romancing to the Captain or that he
had been married before, unknown to his Nellie,
and had been "carrying on" at Geneva.  The
situation, though it dissolved of itself in a brief
space, was awkward.  It discredited the Hotel
Beau-Site.  It was in the nature of a repulse
for the Hotel Beau-Site (franc a day cheaper
than the Métropole) and of a triumph for the
popinjay.

The fault was utterly Denry's.  Yet he said
to himself:

"I 'll be even with that chap."

On the drive home he was silent.  The theme
of conversation in the sleighs which did not
contain the Countess was that the Captain had
flirted tremendously with the Countess and that
it amounted to an affair.

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   IV

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Captain Deverax was equally salient in the
department of sports.  There was a fair sheet
of ice, obtained by cutting into the side of the
mountain, and a very good tobogganing track,
about half a mile in length and full of fine
curves, common to the two hotels.  Denry's
predilection was for the track.  He would lie on
his stomach on the little contrivance which the
Swiss call a "luge" and which consists of
naught but three bits of wood and two steel-clad
runners, and would course down the perilous
curves at twenty miles an hour.  Until the
Captain came this was regarded as dashing,
because most people were content to sit on the
luge and travel legs foremost instead of head
foremost.  But the Captain, after a few eights
on the ice, intimated that for the rest no sport
was true sport save the sport of ski-running.
He allowed it to be understood that luges were
for infants.  He had brought his skis, and these
instruments of locomotion, some six feet in
length, made a sensation among the
inexperienced.  For when he had strapped them to
his feet the Captain, while stating candidly that
his skill was as nothing to that of the Swedish
professionals at St. Moritz, could assuredly slide
over snow in a manner prodigious and beautiful.
And he was exquisitely clothed for the
part.  His knickerbockers, in the elegance of
their lines, were the delight of beholders.
Ski-ing became the rage.  Even Nellie insisted on
hiring a pair.  And the pronunciation of the
word "ski" aroused long discussions and was
never definitely settled by anybody.  The
Captain said "skee," but he did not object to
"shee," which was said to be the more strictly
correct by a lady who knew some one who had
been to Norway.  People with no shame and no
feeling for correctness said, brazenly, "sky."  Denry,
whom nothing could induce to desert his
luge, said that obviously "s-k-i" could only spell
"planks."  And thanks to his inspiration this
version was adopted by the majority.

On the second day of Nellie's struggle with
her skis she had more success than she either
anticipated or desired.  She had been making
experiments at the summit of the track, slithering
about, falling and being restored to uprightness
by as many persons as happened to be
near.  Skis seemed to her to be the most
ungovernable and least practical means of travel
that the madness of man had ever concocted.
Skates were well-behaved old horses compared
to these long, untamed fiends, and a luge was
like a tricycle.  Then suddenly a friendly
starting push drove her a yard or two, and she
glided past the level on to the first imperceptible
slope of the track.  By some hazard her two
planks were exactly parallel, as they ought to
be, and she glided forward miraculously.  And
people heard her say:

"How lovely!"

And then people heard her say:

"Oh! ... Oh!"

For her pace was increasing.  And she dared
not strike her pole into the ground.  She had,
in fact, no control whatever over those two
planks to which her feet were strapped.  She
might have been Mazeppa and they, mustangs.
She could not even fall.  So she fled down the
preliminary straight of the track, and ecstatic
spectators cried: "Look how *well* Mrs. Machin
is doing!"

Mrs. Machin would have given all her furs to
be anywhere off those planks.  On the adjacent
fields of glittering snow the Captain had been
giving his adored Countess a lesson in the use
of skis; and they stood together, the Countess
somewhat insecure, by the side of the track at
its first curve.

Nellie, dumb with excitement and amazement,
swept towards them.

"Look out!" cried the Captain.

In vain!  He himself might perhaps have
escaped, but he could not abandon his Countess
in the moment of peril, and the Countess could
only move after much thought and many efforts,
being scarce more advanced than Nellie.  Nellie's
wilful planks quite ignored the curve, and, as it
were afloat on them, she charged off the track,
and into the Captain and the Countess.  The
impact was tremendous.  Six skis waved like
semaphores in the air.  Then all was still.
Then, as the beholders hastened to the scene
of the disaster, the Countess laughed and Nellie
laughed.  The laugh of the Captain was not
heard.  The sole casualty was a wound about
a foot long in the hinterland of the Captain's
unique knickerbockers.  And as threads of that
beautiful check pattern were afterwards found
attached to the wheel of Nellie's pole, the cause
of the wound was indisputable.  The Captain
departed home chiefly backwards, but with great
rapidity.

In the afternoon Denry went down to Montreux
and returned with an opal bracelet, which
Nellie wore at dinner.

"Oh!  What a ripping bracelet!" said a girl.

"Yes," said Nellie.  "My husband gave it me
only to-day."

"I suppose it's your birthday or something,"
the inquisitive girl ventured.

"No," said Nellie.

"How nice of him!" said the girl.

The next day Captain Deverax appeared in
riding breeches.  They were not correct for
ski-running, but they were the best he could do.
He visited a tailor's in Montreux.

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   V

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The Countess Ruhl had a large sleigh of her
own, also a horse; both were hired from
Montreux.  In this vehicle, sometimes alone,
sometimes with a male servant, she would drive at
Russian speed over the undulating mountain
roads; and for such expeditions she always wore
a large red cloak with a hood.  Often she was
thus seen, in the afternoon; the scarlet made a
bright moving patch on the vast expanses of
snow.  Once, at some distance from the village,
two tale-tellers observed a man on skis careering
in the neighbourhood of the sleigh.  It was
Captain Deverax.  The flirtation, therefore, was
growing warmer and warmer.  The hotels
hummed with the tidings of it.  But the Countess
never said anything; nor could anything be
extracted from her by even the most experienced
gossips.  She was an agreeable but a mysterious
woman, as befitted a Russian Countess.  Again
and again were she and the Captain seen
together afar off in the landscape.  Certainly it
was a novelty in flirtations.  People wondered
what might happen between the two at the
fancy-dress ball which the Hotel Beau-Site was
to give in return for the hospitality of the Hotel
Métropole.  The ball was offered not in love,
but in emulation, almost in hate; for the jealousy
displayed by the Beau-Site against the increasing
insolence and prosperity of the Métropole
had become acute.  The airs of the Captain and
his lieges, the Clutterbuck party, had reached
the limit of the Beau-Site's endurance.  The
Métropole seemed to take it for granted that
the Captain would lead the cotillon at the
Beau-Site's ball as he had led it at the
Métropole's.

And then, on the very afternoon of the ball,
the Countess received a telegram—it was said
from St. Petersburg—which necessitated her
instant departure.  And she went, in an hour,
down to Montreux by the funicular railway, and
was lost to the Beau-Site.  This was a blow to
the prestige of the Beau-Site.  For the Countess
was its chief star, and moreover much loved by
her fellow guests, despite her curious weakness
for the popinjay, and the mystery of her outings
with him.

In the stables Denry saw the Countess's hired
sleigh and horse, and in the sleigh her glowing
red cloak.  And he had one of his ideas, which
he executed, although snow was beginning to
fall.  In ten minutes he and Nellie were driving
forth, and Nellie in the red cloak held the reins.
Denry, in a coachman's furs, sat behind.  They
whirled past the Hotel Métropole.  And shortly
afterwards, on the wild road towards Attalens,
Denry saw a pair of skis scudding as quickly
as skis can scud in their rear.  It was astonishing
how the sleigh, with all the merry jingle
of its bells, kept that pair of skis at a distance
of about a hundred yards.  It seemed to
invite the skis to overtake it, and then to regret
the invitation and flee further.  Up the hills it
would crawl, for the skis climbed slowly.  Down
them it galloped, for the skis slid on the slopes
at a dizzy pace.  Occasionally a shout came
from the skis.  And the snow fell thicker and
thicker.  So for four or five miles.  Starlight
commenced.  Then the road made a huge
descending curve round a hollowed meadow, and
the horse galloped its best.  But the skis,
making a straight line down the snow,
acquired the speed of an express, and gained on
the sleigh one yard in every three.  At the
bottom, where the curve met the straight line, was
a farmhouse and out-buildings and a hedge and
a stone wall and other matters.  The sleigh
arrived at the point first, but only by a trifle.
"Mind your toes," Denry muttered to himself,
meaning an injunction to the skis, whose toes
were three feet long.  The skis, through the
eddying snow, yelled frantically to the sleigh
to give room.  The skis shot up into the
road, and in swerving aside swerved into
a snow-laden hedge, and clean over it into
the farmyard, where they stuck themselves
up in the air, as skis will when the person
to whose feet they are attached is lying prone.
The door of the farmhouse opened and a woman
appeared.

She saw the skis at her doorstep.  She heard
the sleigh-bells, but the sleigh had already
vanished into the dusk.

"Well, that was a bit of a lark, that was,
Countess!" said Denry to Nellie.  "That will
be something to talk about.  We 'd better drive
home through Corsier, and quick too!  It'll be
quite dark soon."

"Supposing he's dead?" Nellie breathed,
aghast, reining in the horse.

"Not he!" said Denry.  "I saw him beginning
to sit up."

"But how will he get home?"

"It looks a very nice farmhouse," said Denry.
"I should think he 'd be sorry to leave it."

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   VI

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When Denry entered the dining-room of the
Beau-Site, which had been cleared for the ball,
his costume drew attention not so much by its
splendour or ingenuity as by its peculiarity.  He
wore a short Chinese-shaped jacket, which his
wife had made out of blue linen, and a flat
Chinese hat to match, which they had
constructed together on a basis of cardboard.  But
his thighs were enclosed in a pair of absurdly
ample riding breeches of an impressive check
and cut to a comic exaggeration of the English
pattern.  He had bought the cloth for these at
the tailor's in Montreux.  Below them were very
tight leggings, also English.  In reply to a
question as to what or whom he supposed himself
to represent he replied:

"A Captain of Chinese cavalry, of course."

And he put an eyeglass into his left eye and
stared about.

Now it had been understood that Nellie was
to appear as Lady Jane Grey.  But she appeared
as Little Red Riding Hood, wearing over her
frock the forgotten cloak of the Countess Ruhl.

Instantly he saw her, Denry hurried towards
her, with a movement of the legs and a flourish
of the eyeglass in his left hand which powerfully
suggested a figure familiar to every
member of the company.  There was laughter.
People saw that the idea was immensely funny
and clever, and the laughter ran about like fire.
At the same time some persons were not quite
sure whether Denry had not lapsed a little from
the finest taste in this caricature.  And all of
them were secretly afraid that the uncomfortable
might happen when Captain Deverax arrived.

However, Captain Deverax did not arrive.
The party from the Métropole came with the
news that he had not been seen at the hotel
for dinner; it was assumed that he had been to
Montreux and missed the funicular back.

"Our two stars simultaneously eclipsed!"
said Denry, as the Clutterbucks (representing
all the history of England) stared at him
curiously.

"Why?" exclaimed the Clutterbuck cousin.
"Who 's the other?"

"The Countess," said Denry.  "She went this
afternoon—three o'clock."

And all the Métropole party fell into grief.

"It's a world of coincidences," said Denry,
with emphasis.

"You don't mean to insinuate," said Mrs. Clutterbuck,
with a nervous laugh, "that Captain
Deverax has—er—gone after the Countess?"

"Oh, no!" said Denry with unction.  "Such
a thought never entered my head."

"I think you 're a very strange man,
Mr. Machin," retorted Mrs. Clutterbuck, hostile and
not a bit reassured.  "May one ask what that
costume is supposed to be?"

"A Captain of Chinese cavalry," said Denry,
lifting his eyeglass.

Nevertheless, the dance was a remarkable
success, and little by little even the sternest
adherents of absent Captain Deverax deigned to
be amused by Denry's Chinese gestures.  Also,
Denry led the cotillon, and was thereafter
greatly applauded by the Beau-Site.  The
visitors agreed among themselves that, considering
that his name was not Deverax, Denry acquitted
himself honourably.  Later he went to the
bureau, and returning, whispered to his wife:

"It's all right.  He's come back safe."

"How do you know?"

"I 've just telephoned to ask."

Denry's subsequent humour was wildly gay.
And for some reason which nobody could
comprehend he put a sling round his left arm.  His
efforts to insert the eyeglass into his left eye
with his right hand were insistently ludicrous
and became a sure source of laughter for all
beholders.  When the Métropole party were
getting into their sleighs to go home—it had ceased
snowing—Denry was still trying to insert his
eyeglass into his left eye with his right hand,
to the universal joy.

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   VII

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But the joy of the night was feeble in
comparison with the violent joy of the next
morning.  Denry was wandering, apparently aimless,
between the finish of the tobogganing track and
the portals of the Métropole.  The snowfall had
repaired the defects of the worn track, but it
needed to be flattened down by use, and a
number of conscientious "lugeurs" were flattening
it by frequent descents, which grew faster at
each repetition.  Other holiday makers were
idling about in the sunshine.  A page-boy of
the Métropole departed in the direction of the
Beau-Site with a note in his hand.

At length—the hour was nearing eleven—Captain
Deverax, languid, put his head out of
the Métropole and sniffled the air.  Finding the
air sufferable, he came forth on to the steps.
His left arm was in a sling.  He was wearing
the new knickerbockers which he had ordered
at Montreux, and which were of precisely the
same vast check as had ornamented Denry's legs
on the previous night.

"Hullo!" said Denry sympathetically.  "What's this?"

The Captain needed sympathy.

"Ski-ing yesterday afternoon," said he, with
a little laugh.  "Has n't the Countess told any
of you?"

"No," said Denry.  "Not a word."

The Captain seemed to pause a moment.

"Yes," said he.  "A trifling accident.  I was
ski-ing with the Countess.  That is, I was
ski-ing and she was in her sleigh."

"Then this is why you did n't turn up at the dance?"

"Yes," said the Captain.

"Well," said Denry.  "I hope it's not serious.
I can tell you one thing, the cotillon was
a most fearful frost without you."  The Captain
seemed grateful.

They strolled together towards the track.

The first group of people that caught sight
of the Captain with his checked legs and his
arm in a sling began to smile.  Observing this
smile, and fancying himself deceived, the
Captain attempted to put his eyeglass into his left
eye with his right hand, and regularly failed.
His efforts towards this feat changed the smiles
to enormous laughter.

"I dare say it's awfully funny," said he.
"But what can a fellow do with one arm in a
sling?"

The laughter was merely intensified.  And the
group, growing as luge after luge arrived at
the end of the track, seemed to give itself up to
mirth, to the exclusion of even a proper
curiosity about the nature of the Captain's damage.
Each fresh attempt to put the eyeglass to his
eye was coal on the crackling fire.  The
Clutterbucks alone seemed glum.

"What on earth is the joke?" Denry asked
primly.  "Captain Deverax came to grief late
yesterday afternoon, ski-ing with the Countess
Ruhl.  That's why he did n't turn up last night.
By the way, where was it, Captain?"

"On the mountain, near Attalens," Deverax
answered gloomily.  "Happily there was a
farmhouse near—it was almost dark."

"With the Countess?" demanded a young
impulsive schoolgirl.

"You did say the Countess, didn't you?" Denry asked.

"Why, certainly," said the Captain testily.

"Well," said the schoolgirl with the
nonchalant thoughtless cruelty of youth,
"considering that we all saw the Countess off in the
funicular at three o'clock I don't see how you
could have been ski-ing with her when it was
nearly dark."  And the child turned up the hill
with her luge, leaving her elders to unknot the
situation.

"Oh, yes!" said Denry.  "I forgot to tell you
that the Countess left yesterday after lunch."

At the same moment the page-boy, reappearing,
touched his cap and placed a note in the
Captain's only free hand.

"Could n't deliver it, Sir.  The Comtesse left
early yesterday afternoon."

Convicted of imaginary adventure with noble
ladies, the Captain made his retreat, muttering,
back to the hotel.  At lunch Denry related the
exact circumstances to a delighted table, and
the exact circumstances soon reached the
Clutterbuck faction at the Métropole.  On the
following day the Clutterbuck faction and Captain
Deverax (now fully enlightened) left Mont
Pridoux for some paradise unknown.  If murderous
thoughts could kill, Denry would have lain dead.
But he survived to go with about half the
Beau-Site guests to the funicular station to wish the
Clutterbucks a pleasant journey.  The Captain
might have challenged him to a duel, but a
haughty and icy ceremoniousness was deemed
the best treatment for Denry.  "Never show a
wound" must have been the Captain's motto.

The Beau-Site had scored effectively.  And,
now that its rival had lost eleven clients by
one single train, it beat the Métropole even in
vulgar numbers.

Denry had an embryo of a conscience somewhere,
and Nellie's was fully developed.

"Well," said Denry, in reply to Nellie's
conscience, "it serves him right for making me look
a fool over that Geneva business.  And besides,
I can't stand uppishness, and I won't.  I 'm from
the Five Towns, I am."

Upon which singular utterance the incident closed.





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.. _`THE SUPREME HONOUR`:

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   CHAPTER XII.  THE SUPREME HONOUR

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   I

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Denry was not as regular in his goings and
comings as the generality of business men in
the Five Towns; no doubt because he was not
by nature a business man at all, but an
adventurous spirit who happened to be in a business
which was much too good to leave.  He was
continually, as they say there, "up to
something" that caused changes in daily habits.
Moreover, the Universal Thrift Club (Limited)
was so automatic and self-winding that Denry
ran no risks in leaving it often to the care of
his highly-drilled staff.  Still, he did usually
come home to his tea about six o'clock of an
evening, like the rest, and like the rest he brought
with him a copy of the *Signal* to glance at during
tea.

One afternoon in July he arrived thus upon
his waiting wife at Machin House, Bleakridge.
And she could see that an idea was fermenting
in his head.  Nellie understood him.  One of
the most delightful and reassuring things about
his married life was Nellie's instinctive
comprehension of him.  His mother understood him
profoundly.  But she understood him in a
manner sardonic, slightly malicious, and even hostile.
Whereas Nellie understood him with her absurd
love.  According to his mother's attitude, Denry
was guilty till he had proved himself innocent.
According to Nellie's, he was always right and
always clever in what he did, until he himself
said that he had been wrong and stupid—and
not always then.  Nevertheless, his mother was
just as ridiculously proud of him as Nellie was;
but she would have perished on the scaffold
rather than admit that Denry differed in any
detail from the common run of sons.  Mrs. Machin
had departed from Machin House, without
waiting to be asked.  It was characteristic
of her that she had returned to Brougham Street
and rented there an out-of-date cottage without
a single one of the labour-saving contrivances
that distinguished the residence which her son
had originally built for her.

It was still delicious for Denry to sit down
to tea in the dining-room, that miracle of
conveniences, opposite the smile of his wife, which
told him (*a*) that he was wonderful, (*b*) that
she was enchanted to be alive, and (*c*) that he
had deserved her particular caressing attentions
and would receive them.  On the afternoon in
July the smile told him (*d*) that he was
possessed by one of his ideas.

"Extraordinary how she tumbles to things!"
he reflected.

Nellie's new fox-terrier had come in from the
garden through the French window, and eaten
part of a muffin, and Denry had eaten a
muffin and a half, before Nellie, straightening
herself proudly and putting her shoulders
back (a gesture of hers), thought fit to murmur:

"Well, anything thrilling happened to-day?"

Denry opened the green sheet and read:

"Sudden death of Alderman Bloor in London.
What price that?"

"Oh!" exclaimed Nellie.  "How shocked
father will be!  They were always rather
friendly.  By the way, I had a letter from
mother this morning.  It appears as if Toronto
was a sort of paradise.  But you can see the
old thing prefers Bursley.  Father 's had a boil
on his neck, just at the edge of his collar.  He
says it's because he 's too well.  What did
Mr. Bloor die of?"

"He was in the fashion," said Denry.

"How?"

"Appendicitis, of course.  Operation—domino!
All over in three days."

"Poor man!" Nellie murmured, trying to feel
sad for a change, and not succeeding.  "And
he was to have been mayor in November, was n't
he?  How disappointing for him!"

"I expect he 's got something else to think
about," said Denry.

After a pause Nellie asked suddenly:

"Who'll be mayor—now?"

"Well," said Denry, "his Worship, Councillor
Barlow, J. P., will be extremely cross if he
is n't."

"How horrid!" said Nellie frankly.  "And
he 's got nobody at all to be mayoress."

"Mrs. Prettyman would be mayoress," said
Denry.  "When there's no wife or daughter,
it's always a sister if there is one."

"But can you imagine Mrs. Prettyman as
mayoress?  Why, they say she scrubs her own
doorstep—after dark.  They ought to make you
mayor!"

"Do you fancy yourself as mayoress?" he inquired.

"I should be better than Mrs. Prettyman anyhow!"

"I believe you 'd make an A1 mayoress," said Denry.

"I should be frightfully nervous," she
confidentially admitted.

"I doubt it," said he.

The fact was that since her return to Bursley
from the honeymoon Nellie was an altered
woman.  She had acquired, as it were in a day,
to an astonishing extent, what in the Five Towns
is called "a nerve."

"I should like to try it," said she.

"One day you 'll have to try it, whether you
want to or not."

"When will that be?"

"Don't know.  Might be next year but one.
Old Barlow 's pretty certain to be chosen for
next November.  It's looked on as his turn next.
I know there's been a good bit of talk about
me for the year after Barlow.  Of course,
Bloor's death will advance everything by a year.
But even if I come next after Barlow it 'll be
too late."

"Too late?  Too late for what?"

"I'll tell you," said Denry.  "I wanted to
be the youngest mayor that Bursley 's ever had.
It was only a kind of notion I had, a long time
ago.  I 'd given it up, because I knew there was
no chance, unless I came before Bloor, which
of course I could n't do.  Now he 's dead.  If I
could upset old Barlow's apple-cart I should just
be the youngest mayor by the skin of my teeth.
Huskinson, the mayor in 1884, was aged thirty-four
and six months.  I 've looked it all up this
afternoon."

"How lovely if you *could* be the youngest mayor!"

"Yes.  I'll tell you how I feel.  I feel as
though I didn't want to be mayor at all if I
can't be the youngest mayor ... you know."

She knew.

"Oh!" she cried.  "Do upset Mr. Barlow's
apple-cart.  He's a horrid old thing.  Should
I be the youngest mayoress?"

"Not by chalks!" said he.  "Huskinson's
sister was only sixteen."

"But that's only playing at being mayoress!"
Nellie protested.  "Anyhow, I do think
you might be youngest mayor.  Who settles it?"

"The Council, of course."

"Nobody likes Councillor Barlow."

"He 'll be still less liked when he 's wound up
the Bursley Football Club."

"Well, urge him on to wind it up, then.  But
I don't see what football has got to do with
being mayor."

She endeavoured to look like a serious politician.

"You are nothing but a cuckoo," Denry
pleasantly informed her.  "Football has got to do
with everything.  And it's been a disastrous
mistake in my career that I 've never taken any
interest in football.  Old Barlow wants no
urging on to wind up the Football Club.  He's
absolutely set on it.  He 's lost too much over
it.  If I could stop him from winding it up,
I might..."

"What?"

"I dunno."

She perceived that his idea was yet vague.

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   II

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Not very many days afterwards the walls of
Bursley sharply called attention, by small blue
and red posters (blue and red being the historic
colours of the Bursley Football Club), to a
public meeting which was to be held in the Town
Hall, under the presidency of the Mayor, to
consider what steps could be taken to secure
the future of the Bursley Football Club.

There were two "great" football clubs in the
Five Towns—Knype, one of the oldest clubs in
England, and Bursley.  Both were in the League,
though Knype was in the first division while
Bursley was only in the second.  Both were, in
fact, limited companies, engaged as much in the
pursuit of dividends as in the practice of the
one ancient and glorious sport which appeals
to the reason and the heart of England.
(Neither ever paid a dividend.)  Both employed
professionals, who, by a strange chance, were
nearly all born in Scotland; and both also
employed trainers who before an important match
took the teams off to a hydropathic establishment
far, far distant from any public-house.  (This
was called "training.")  Now, whereas the
Knype Club was struggling along fairly well,
the Bursley Club had come to the end of its
resources.  The great football public had
practically deserted it.  The explanation, of course,
was that Bursley had been losing too many
matches.  The great football public had no use
for anything but victories.  It would treat its
players like gods—so long as they won.  But
when they happened to lose, the great football
public simply sulked.  It did not kick a man
that was down; it merely ignored him, well
knowing that the man could not get up without
help.  It cared nothing whatever for fidelity,
municipal patriotism, fair play, the chances of
war, or dividends on capital.  If it could see
victories it would pay sixpence, but it would
not pay sixpence to assist at defeats.

Still, when at a special general meeting of
the Bursley Football Club, Limited, held at the
registered offices, the Coffee House, Bursley,
Councillor Barlow, J. P., chairman of the
company since the creation of the League, announced
that the directors had reluctantly come to
the conclusion that they could not conscientiously
embark on the dangerous risks of the
approaching season, and that it was the intention
of the directors to wind up the Club, in default
of adequate public interest—when Bursley read
this in the *Signal*, the town was certainly
shocked.  Was the famous club, then, to
disappear for ever, and the football ground to be
sold in plots and the grandstand for
firewood?  The shock was so severe that the
death of Alderman Bloor (none the less a
mighty figure in Bursley) passed as a minor event.

Hence the advertisement of the meeting in the
Town Hall caused joy and hope, and people said
to themselves, "Something's bound to be done;
the old Club can't go out like that."  And
everybody grew quite sentimental.  And although
nothing is supposed to be capable of filling
Bursley Town Hall except a political meeting and
an old folks' treat, Bursley Town Hall was as
near full as made no matter for the football
question.  Many men had cheerfully sacrificed
a game of billiards and a glass of beer in order
to attend it.

The Mayor, in the chair, was a mild old
gentleman who knew nothing whatever about
football and had probably never seen a football
match; but it was essential that the meeting
should have august patronage, and so the Mayor
had been trapped and tamed.  On the mere fact
that he paid an annual subscription to the golf
club certain parties built up the legend that he
was a true sportsman with the true interests of
sport in his soul.

He uttered a few phrases such as "the manly
game," "old associations," "bound up with the
history of England," "splendid fellows,"
"indomitable pluck," "dogged by misfortune"
(indeed, he produced quite an impression on
the rude and grim audience), and then he
called upon Councillor Barlow to make a
statement.

Councillor Barlow, on the Mayor's right, was
a different kind of man from the Mayor.  He
was fifty and iron-grey, with whiskers, but no
moustache; short, stoutish, raspish.

He said nothing about manliness, pluck,
history, or auld lang syne.

He said he had given his services as chairman
to the Football Club for thirteen years; that he
had taken up £2000 worth of shares in the
company; and that, as at that moment the company's
liabilities would exactly absorb its assets,
his £2000 was worth exactly nothing.  "You
may say," he said, "I've lost that £2000 in
thirteen years.  That is, it's the same as if I 'd
been steadily paying three pun' a week out of
my own pocket to provide football matches that
you chaps would n't take the trouble to go and
see.  That's the straight of it!  What have I
got for my pains?  Nothing but worries, and
these!"  (He pointed to his grey hairs.)  "And
I 'm not alone; there's others; and now I have
to come and defend myself at a public meeting.
I 'm supposed not to have the best interests of
football at heart.  Me and my co-directors," he
proceeded, with even a rougher raspishness,
"have warned the town again and again what
would happen if the matches weren't better
patronised.  And now it's happened, and now
it's too late, you want to *do* something!  You
can't!  It's too late.  There 's only one thing
the matter with first-class football in Bursley,"
he concluded, "and it is n't the players.  It's
the public—it's yourselves.  You 're the most
craven lot of tomfools that ever a big
football club had to do with.  When we lose
a match, what do you do?  Do you come and
encourage us next time?  No, you stop away,
and leave us fifty or sixty pound out of pocket
on a match, just to teach us better!  Do you
expect us to win every match?  Why, Preston
North End itself—" here he spoke solemnly, of
heroes—"Preston North End itself in its great
days did n't win every match—it lost to Accrington.
But did the Preston public desert it?  No!
You—you have n't got the pluck of a louse, nor
the faithfulness of a cat.  You 've starved your
Football Club to death, and now you call a
meeting to weep and grumble.  And you have the
insolence to write letters to the *Signal* about
bad management, forsooth!  If anybody in the
hall thinks he can manage this Club better than
me and my co-directors have done, I may say
that we hold a majority of the shares, and we 'll
part with the whole show to any clever person
or persons who care to take it off our hands
at a bargain price.  That's talking."

He sat down.

Silence fell.  Even in the Five Towns a public
meeting is seldom bullied as Councillor Barlow
had bullied that meeting.  It was aghast.
Councillor Barlow had never been popular: he had
merely been respected; but thenceforward he
became even less popular than before.

"I 'm sure we shall all find Councillor
Barlow's heat quite excusable," the Mayor
diplomatically began.

"No heat at all," the councillor interrupted.
"Simply cold truth!"

A number of speakers followed, and nearly
all of them were against the directors.  Some,
with prodigious memories for every combination
of players in every match that had ever been
played, sought to prove by detailed instances
that Councillor Barlow and his co-directors had
persistently and regularly muddled their work
during thirteen industrious years.  And they
defended the insulted public by asserting that
no public that respected itself would pay
sixpence to watch the wretched football provided
by Councillor Barlow.  They shouted that the
team wanted reconstituting, wanted new blood.

"Yes!" shouted Councillor Barlow in reply.
"And how are you going to get new blood, with
transfer fees as high as they are now?  You
can't get even an average good player for less
than £200.  Where 's the money to come from?
Anybody want to lend a thousand or so on second
debentures?"

He laughed sneeringly.

No one showed a desire to invest in second
debentures of the Bursley F.C. Ltd.

Still, speakers kept harping on the necessity
of new blood in the team, and then others, bolder,
harped on the necessity of new blood on the board.

"Shares on sale!" cried the councillor.  "Any
buyers?  Or," he added, "do you want
something for nothing—as usual?"

At length a gentleman rose at the back of
the hall.

"I don't pretend to be an expert on football,"
said he, "though I think it's a great game, but
I should like to say a few words as to this
question of new blood."

The audience craned its neck.

"Will Mr. Councillor Machin kindly step up
to the platform?" the Mayor suggested.

And up Denry stepped.

The thought in every mind was: "What's
he going to do?  What's he got up his
sleeve—this time?"

"Three cheers for Machin!" people chanted gaily.

"Order!" said the Mayor.

Denry faced the audience.  He was now
accustomed to audiences.  He said:

"If I 'm not mistaken, one of the greatest
modern footballers is a native of this town."

And scores of voices yelled: "Ay!  Callear!
Callear!  Greatest centre forward in England!"

"Yes," said Denry.  "Callear is the man I
mean.  Callear left the district, unfortunately
for the district, at the age of nineteen, for
Liverpool.  And it was not till after he left that his
astounding abilities were perceived.  It is n't
too much to say that he made the fortune of
Liverpool City.  And I believe it is the fact that
he scored more goals in three seasons than any
other player has ever done in the League.  Then,
York County, which was in a tight place last
year, bought him from Liverpool for a high
price, and, as all the world knows, Callear had
his leg broken in the first match he played for
his new club.  That just happened to be the
ruin of the York Club, which is now quite
suddenly in bankruptcy (which happily we are not)
and which is disposing of its players.
Gentlemen, I say that Callear ought to come back to
his native town.  He is fitter than ever he was,
and his proper place is in his native town."

Loud cheers!

"As captain and centre forward of the club
of the Mother of the Five Towns he would be
an immense acquisition and attraction, and he
would lead us to victory."

Renewed cheers!

"And how," demanded Councillor Barlow
jumping up angrily, "are we to get him back
to his precious native town?  Councillor Machin
admits that he is not an expert on football.  It
will probably be news to him that Aston Villa
have offered £700 to York for the transfer of
Callear, and Blackburn Rovers have offered
£750, and they 're fighting it out between 'em.
Any gentleman willing to put down £800 to buy
Callear for Bursley?" he sneered.  "I don't
mind telling you that steam-engines and the
King himself couldn't get Callear into our Club."

"Quite finished?" Denry inquired, still standing.

Laughter, overtopped by Councillor Barlow's
snort as he sat down.

Denry lifted his voice.

"Mr. Callear, will you be good enough to step
forward and let us all have a look at you?"

The effect of these apparently simple words
surpassed any effect previously obtained by the
most complex flights of oratory in that hall.  A
young, blushing, clumsy, long-limbed,
small-bodied giant stumbled along the central aisle
and climbed the steps to the platform, where
Denry pointed him to a seat.  He was recognised
by all the true votaries of the game.  And
everybody said to everybody: "By Gosh!  It's
him right enough.  It's Callear!"  And a vast
astonishment and expectation of good fortune
filled the hall.  Applause burst forth, and
though no one knew what the appearance of
Callear signified, the applause continued and
waxed.

"Good old Callear!"  The hoarse shouts
succeeded each other.  "Good old Machin!"

"Anyhow," said Denry, when the storm was
stilled, "we 've got him here, without either
steam-engines or his Majesty.  Will the directors
of the club accept him?"

"And what about the transfer?" Councillor
Barlow demanded.

"Would you accept him and try another
season if you could get him free?" Denry
retorted.

Councillor Barlow always knew his mind, and
was never afraid to let other people share that
knowledge.

"Yes," he said.

"Then I will see that you have the transfer free."

"But what about York?"

"I have settled with York provisionally," said
Denry.  "That is my affair.  I have returned
from York to-day.  Leave all that to me.  This
town has had many benefactors far more
important than myself.  But I shall be able to
claim this originality: I 'm the first to make
a present of a live man to the town.
Gentlemen—Mr. Mayor—I venture to call for three
cheers for the greatest centre forward in
England, our fellow-townsman."

The scene, as the *Signal* said, was unique.

And at the Sports Club and the other clubs
afterwards men said to each other: "No one
but him would have thought of bringing Callear
over specially and showing him on the platform....
That's cost him above twopence, that has!"

Two days later a letter appeared in the *Signal*
(signed "Fiat Justitia") suggesting that Denry,
as some reward for his public spirit, ought to
be the next mayor of Bursley, in place of
Alderman Bloor deceased.  The letter urged that
he would make an admirable mayor, the sort of
mayor the old town wanted in order to wake it
up.  And also it pointed out that Denry would
be the youngest mayor that Bursley had ever
had, and probably the youngest mayor in
England that year.  The sentiment in the last idea
appealed to the town.  The town decided that
it would positively *like* to have the youngest
mayor it had ever had, and probably the
youngest mayor in England that year.  The *Signal*
printed dozens of letters on the subject.  When
the Council met, more informally than formally,
to choose a chief magistrate in place of the dead
alderman, several councillors urged that what
Bursley wanted was a young and *popular* mayor.
And in fine Councillor Barlow was shelved for
a year.  On the choice being published the
entire town said: "Now we *shall* have a
mayoralty—and don't you forget it!"

And Denry said to Nellie:

"You 'll be mayoress to the youngest mayor,
etc., my child.  And it's cost me, including
hotel and travelling expenses, eight hundred and
eleven pounds six and sevenpence."

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   III

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The rightness of the Council in selecting
Denry as mayor was confirmed in a singular
manner by the behaviour of the football and
of Callear at the opening match of the season.

It was a philanthropic match, between
Bursley and Axe, for the benefit of a county
orphanage, and, according to the custom of such
matches, the ball was formally kicked off by a
celebrity, a pillar of society.  The ceremony of
kicking off has no sporting significance; the
celebrity merely with gentleness propels the ball
out of the white circle and then flies for his
life from the *melée*; but it is supposed to add
to the moral splendour of the game.  In the
present instance the posters said: "Kick-off at
3.45 by Councillor E. H. Machin,
Mayor-designate."  And indeed no other celebrity
could have been decently selected.  On the fine
afternoon of the match Denry therefore discovered
himself with a new football at his toes, a
silk hat on his head, and twenty-two Herculean
players menacing him in attitudes expressive of
an intention to murder him.  Bursley had lost
the toss, and hence Denry had to kick towards
the Bursley goal.  As the *Signal* said, he
"despatched the sphere" straight into the keeping
of Callear, who as centre forward was facing
him, and Callear was dodging down the field
with it before the Axe players had finished
admiring Denry's effrontery.  Every reader will
remember with a thrill the historic match in
which the immortal Jimmy Brown, on the last
occasion when he captained Blackburn Rovers,
dribbled the ball himself down the length of
the field, scored a goal, and went home with
the English Cup under his arm.  Callear
evidently intended to imitate the feat.  He was
entirely wrong.  Dribbling tactics had been
killed for ever, years before, by Preston North
End, who invented the "passing" game.  Yet
Callear went on, and good luck seemed to float
over him like a cherub.  Finally he shot; a wild,
high shot; but there was an adverse wind which
dragged the ball down, swept it round, and blew
it into the net.  The first goal had been scored
in twenty seconds!  (It was also the last in
the match.)  Callear's reputation was
established.  Useless for solemn experts to point out
that he had simply been larking for the gallery,
and that the result was a shocking fluke—Callear's
reputation was established.  He became at
once the idol of the populace.  As Denry walked
gingerly off the field to the grandstand he too
was loudly cheered, and he could not help
feeling that, somehow, it was he who had scored
that goal.  And although nobody uttered the
precise thought, most people did secretly think,
as they gazed at the triumphant Denry, that a
man who triumphed like that, because he
triumphed like that, was the right sort of man to
be mayor, the kind of man they needed.

Denry became identified with the highest
class of local football.  This fact led to a curious
crisis in the history of municipal manners.  On
Corporation Sunday the mayor walks to church,
preceded by the mace, and followed by the
aldermen and councillors, the borough officials,
the volunteers, and the fire brigade; after all
these, in the procession, come individuals known
as prominent citizens.  Now the first and second
elevens of the Bursley Football Club, headed by
Callear, expressed their desire to occupy a place
in Denry's mayoral procession; they felt that
some public acknowledgment was due to the
mayor for his services to the national sport.
Denry instantly agreed, with thanks: the notion
seemed to him entirely admirable.  Then some
unfortunately-inspired parson wrote to the
*Signal* to protest against professional footballers
following the chief magistrate of the borough
to church.  His arguments were that such a
thing was unheard of, and that football was
the cause of a great deal of evil gambling.
Some people were inclined to agree with the
protest, until Denry wrote to the *Signal* and
put a few questions: Was Bursley proud of
its football team?  Or was Bursley ashamed of
its football team?  Was the practice of football
incompatible with good citizenship?  Was there
anything dishonourable in playing football?
Ought professional footballers to be considered
as social pariahs?  Was there any class of
beings to whom the churches ought to be closed?

The parson foundered in a storm of opprobrium,
scorn, and ironic laughter.  Though the
town laughed, it only laughed to hide its disgust
of the parson.

People began to wonder whether the teams
would attend in costume carrying the football
between them on a charger as a symbol.  No
such multitudes ever greeted a mayoral
procession in Bursley before.  The footballers,
however, appeared in ordinary costume (many of
them in frock-coats); but they wore neckties
of the club colours, a device which was agreed
to be in the nicest taste.  St. Luke's Church
was crowded; and, what is stranger, the churchyard
was also crowded.  The church barely held
the procession itself and the ladies who by
influence had been accommodated with seats in
advance.  Thousands of persons filled the
churchyard, and to prevent them from crushing into
the packed fane and bursting it at its weakest
point, the apse, the doors had to be locked and
guarded.  Four women swooned during the
service; neither Mrs. Machin, senior, nor Nellie
was among the four.  It was the first time that
any one had been known to swoon at a religious
service held in November.  This fact alone gave
a tremendous prestige to Denry's mayoralty.
When, with Nellie on his arm, he emerged from
the church to the thunders of the organ, the
greeting which he received in the churchyard,
though the solemnity of the occasion forbade
clapping, lacked naught in brilliance and efficacy.

The real point and delight of that Corporation
Sunday was not fully appreciated till later.  It
had been expected that the collection after the
sermon would be much larger than usual,
because the congregation was much larger than
usual.  But the churchwardens were startled to
find it four times as large as usual.  They were
further startled to find only three threepenny-bits
among all the coins.  This singularity led
to comment and to note-comparing.  Everybody
had noticed for weeks past a growing dearth
of threepenny-bits.  Indeed, threepenny-bits had
practically vanished from circulation in the Five
Towns.  On the Monday it became known that
the clerks of the various branches of the
Universal Thrift Club, Limited, had paid into the
banks enormous and unparalleled quantities of
threepenny-bits; and for at least a week
afterwards everybody paid for everything in
three-penny-bits.  And the piquant news passed from
mouth to mouth that Denry, to the simple end
of ensuring a thumping collection for charities
on Corporation Sunday, had used the vast
organisation of the Thrift Club to bring about a
famine of threepenny-bits.  In the annals of the
town that Sunday is referred to as
"Three-penny-bit Sunday," because it was so happily
devoid of threepenny-bits.

A little group of councillors were discussing Denry.

"What a card!" said one, laughing joyously.
"He 's a rare 'un, no mistake!"

"Of course, this 'll make him more popular
than ever," said another.  "We 've never had a
man to touch him for that."

"And yet," demanded Councillor Barlow,
"what's he done?  Has he ever done a day's
work in his life?  What great cause is he
identified with?"

"He's identified," said the first speaker,
"with the great cause of cheering us all up."

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