WORKS BY ARNOLD BENNETT
NOVELS
A MAN FROM THE NORTH
ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS
LEONORA
A GREAT MAN
SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE
WHOM GOD HATH JOINED
BURIED ALIVE
THE OLD WIVES' TALE
THE GLIMPSE
LILIAN
MR. PROHACK
LORD RAINGO
IMPERIAL PALACE
HELEN WITH THE HIGH HAND
THE PRICE OF LOVE
CLAYHANGER
HILDA LESSWAYS
THESE TWAIN
THE ROLL CALL
THE CARD
THE REGENT
THE LION'S SHARE
THE PRETTY LADY
RICEYMAN STEPS
THE STRANGE VANGUARD
ACCIDENT
FANTASIAS
THE GRAND BABYLON HOTEL
THE GATES OF WRATH
TERESA OF WATLING STREET
THE LOOT OF CITIES
HUGO
THE GHOST
THE CITY OF PLEASURE
SHORT STORIES
THE NIGHT VISITOR
TALES OF THE FIVE TOWNS
THE MATADOR OF THE FIVE TOWNS
THE GRIM SMILE OF THE FIVE TOWNS
ELSIE AND THE CHILD
THE WOMAN WHO STOLE EVERYTHING
BELLES-LETTRES
JOURNALISM FOR WOMEN
FAME AND FICTION
HOW TO BECOME AN AUTHOR
THE TRUTH ABOUT AN AUTHOR
MENTAL EFFICIENCY
HOW TO LIVE ON TWENTY-FOUR HOURS A DAY
THE HUMAN MACHINE
LITERARY TASTE
THE FEAST OF ST. FRIEND
HOW TO MAKE THE BEST OF LIFE
THE RELIGIOUS INTERREGNUM
MARRIED LIFE
THE AUTHOR'S CRAFT
LIBERTY
OVER THERE
BOOKS AND PERSONS
SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT
THINGS THAT HAVE INTERESTED ME
THINGS THAT HAVE INTERESTED ME (Second Series)
THINGS THAT HAVE INTERESTED ME (Third Series)
THE SAVIOUR OF LIFE
DRAMA
POLITE FARCES
CUPID AND COMMON SENSE
WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS
THE HONEYMOON
THE LOVE MATCH
DON JUAN
THE GREAT ADVENTURE
THE TITLE
JUDITH
SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE
BODY AND SOUL
THE BRIGHT ISLAND
MR. PROHACK
MISCELLANEOUS
THEIR UNITED STATE
PARIS NIGHTS
OUR WOMEN
THE LOG OF THE "VELSA"
MEDITERRANEAN SCENES
* * * * *
(In Collaboration with EDEN PHILLPOTTS)
THE SINEWS OF WAR: A ROMANCE
THE STATUE: A ROMANCE
(In Collaboration with EDWARD KNOBLOCK)
MILESTONES
LONDON LIFE
THE CARD
A STORY OF ADVENTURE
IN THE FIVE TOWNS
BY
ARNOLD BENNETT
_First Published (Crown 8vo), February 23rd, 1911_
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
CONTENTS
I. THE DANCE 7
II. THE WIDOW HULLINS'S HOUSE 27
III. THE PANTECHNICON 48
IV. WRECKING OF A LIFE 71
V. THE MERCANTILE MARINE 89
VI. HIS BURGLARY 112
VII. THE RESCUER OF DAMES 132
VIII. RAISING A WIGWAM 153
IX. THE GREAT NEWSPAPER WAR 177
X. HIS INFAMY 196
XI. IN THE ALPS 218
XII. THE SUPREME HONOUR 240
THE CARD
CHAPTER I
THE DANCE
I
Edward Henry Machin first saw the smoke on the 27th May 1867, in
Brougham Street, Bursley, the most ancient of the Five Towns. Brougham
Street runs down from St Luke's Square straight into the Shropshire
Union Canal, 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 speciality apart from her
vocation: she could wash flannel with less shrinking than any other
woman in the district, and she could wash fine lace without ruining it;
thus often she came to sew and remained to wash. A somewhat gloomy
woman; thin, with a tongue! But I liked her. She saved a certain amount
of time every day by addressing her son as Denry, instead of Edward
Henry.
Not intellectual, not industrious, Denry would have maintained the
average dignity of labour on a potbank had he not at the age of twelve
won a scholarship from the Board School to the Endowed School. He owed
his triumph to audacity rather than learning, and to chance rather than
design. On the second day of the examination he happened to arrive in
the examination-room ten minutes too soon for the afternoon sitting. He
wandered about the place exercising his curiosity, and reached the
master's desk. On the desk was a tabulated form with names of candidates
and the number of marks achieved by each in each subject of the previous
day. He had done badly in geography, and saw seven marks against his
name, in the geographical column, out of a possible thirty. The figures
had been written in pencil. The pencil lay on the desk. He picked it
up, glanced at the door and at the rows of empty desks, and 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 gentlemanly way, to call him "washer-woman."
Happily Denry did not mind.
He had a thick skin, and fair hair and bright eyes and broad shoulders,
and the jolly gaiety of his disposition developed daily. He did not
shine at the school; he failed to fulfil the rosy promise of the
scholarship; but he was not stupider than the majority; and his opinion
of himself, having once risen, remained at "set fair." It was
inconceivable that he should work in clay with his hands.
II
When he was sixteen his mother, by operations 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 Town Clerk of
Bursley, and a solicitor. It is well known that all bureaucracies are
honey-combed with intrigue. Denry Machin left school to be clerk to Mr
Duncalf, on the condition that within a year he should be able to write
shorthand at the rate of a hundred and fifty words a minute. In those
days mediocre and incorrect shorthand was not a drug on the market. He
complied (more or less, and decidedly less than more) with the
condition. And for several years he really thought that he had nothing
further to hope for. Then he met the Countess.
The Countess of Chell was born of poor but picturesque parents, and she
could put her finger on her great-grandfather's grandfather. Her mother
gained her livelihood and her daughter's by allowing herself to be seen
a great deal with humbler but richer people's daughters. The Countess
was brought up to matrimony. She was aimed and timed to hit a given mark
at a given moment. She succeeded. She married the Earl of Chell. She
also married about twenty thousand acres in England, about a fifth of
Scotland, a house in Piccadilly, seven country seats (including Sneyd),
a steam yacht, and five hundred thousand pounds' worth of shares in the
Midland Railway. She was young and pretty. She had travelled in China
and written a book about China. She sang at charity concerts and acted
in private theatricals. She sketched from nature. She was one of the
great hostesses of London. And she had not the slightest tendency to
stoutness. All this did not satisfy her. She was ambitious! She wanted
to be taken seriously. She wanted to enter into the life of the people.
She saw in the quarter of a million souls that constitute the Five Towns
a unique means to her end, an unrivalled toy. And she determined to be
identified with all that was most serious in the social progress of the
Five Towns. Hence some fifteen thousand pounds were spent in
refurbishing Sneyd Hall, which lies on the edge of the Five Towns, and
the Earl and Countess passed four months of the year there. Hence the
Earl, a mild, retiring man, when invited by the Town Council to be the
ornamental Mayor of Bursley, accepted the invitation. Hence the Mayor
and Mayoress gave an immense afternoon reception to practically the
entire roll of burgesses. And hence, a little later, the Mayoress let it
be known that she meant to give a municipal ball. The news of the ball
thrilled Bursley more than anything had thrilled Bursley since the
signing of Magna Charta. Nevertheless, balls had been offered by
previous mayoresses. One can only suppose that in Bursley there remains
a peculiar respect for land, railway stock, steam yachts, and
great-grandfathers' grandfathers.
Now, everybody of account had been asked to the reception. But everybody
could not be asked to the ball, because not more than two hundred people
could dance in the Town Hall. There were nearly thirty-five thousand
inhabitants in Bursley, of whom quite two thousand "counted," even
though they did not dance.
III
Three weeks and three days before the ball Denry Machin was seated one
Monday alone in Mr Duncalf's private offices in Duck Square (where he
carried on his practice as a solicitor), when in stepped a tall and
pretty young woman, dressed very smartly but soberly in dark green. On
the desk in front of Denry were several wide sheets of "abstract" paper,
concealed by a copy of that morning's _Athletic News_. Before Denry
could even think of reversing the positions of the abstract paper and
the _Athletic News_ the young woman said "Good-morning!" in a very
friendly style. She had a shrill voice and an efficient smile.
"Good-morning, madam," said Denry.
"Mr Duncalf in?" asked the young woman brightly.
(Why should Denry have slipped off his stool? It is utterly against
etiquette for solicitors' clerks to slip off their stools while
answering inquiries.)
"No, madam; he's across at the Town Hall," said Denry.
The young lady shook her head playfully, with a faint smile.
"I've just been there," she said. "They said he was here."
"I daresay I could find him, madam--if you would----"
She now smiled broadly. "Conservative Club, I suppose?" she said, with
an air deliciously confidential.
He, too, smiled.
"Oh, no," she said, after a little pause; "just tell him I've called."
"Certainly, madam. Nothing I can do?"
She was already turning away, but she turned back and scrutinised his
face, as Denry thought, roguishly.
"You might just give him this list," she said, taking a paper from her
satchel and spreading it. She had come to the desk; their elbows
touched. "He isn't to take any notice of the crossings-out in red ink--
you understand? Of course, I'm relying on him for the other lists, and I
expect all the invitations to be out on Wednesday. Good-morning."
She was gone. He sprang to the grimy window. Outside, in the snow, were
a brougham, twin horses, twin men in yellow, and a little crowd of
youngsters and oldsters. She flashed across the footpath, and vanished;
the door of the carriage banged, one of the twins in yellow leaped up to
his brother, and the whole affair dashed dangerously away. The face of
the leaping twin was familiar to Denry. The man had, indeed, once
inhabited Brougham Street, being known to the street as Jock, and his
mother had for long years been a friend of Mrs Machin's.
It was the first time Denry had seen the Countess, save at a distance.
Assuredly she was finer even than her photographs. Entirely different
from what one would have expected! So easy to talk to! (Yet what had he
said to her? Nothing--and everything.)
He nodded his head and murmured, "No mistake about that lot!" Meaning,
presumably, that all that one had read about the brilliance of the
aristocracy was true, and more than true.
"She's the finest woman that ever came into this town," he murmured.
The truth was that she surpassed his dreams of womanhood. At two o'clock
she had been a name to him. At five minutes past two he was in love with
her. He felt profoundly thankful that, for a church tea-meeting that
evening, he happened to be wearing his best clothes.
It was while looking at her list of invitations to the ball that he
first conceived the fantastic scheme of attending the ball himself. Mr
Duncalf was, fussily and deferentially, managing the machinery of the
ball for the Countess. He had prepared a little list of his own of
people who ought to be invited. Several aldermen had been requested to
do the same. There were thus about half-a-dozen lists to be combined
into one. Denry did the combining. Nothing was easier than to insert the
name of E.H. Machin inconspicuously towards the centre of the list!
Nothing was easier than to lose the original lists, inadvertently, so
that if a question arose as to any particular name, the responsibility
for it could not be ascertained without inquiries too delicate to be
made. On Wednesday Denry received a lovely Bristol board, stating in
copper-plate that the Countess desired the pleasure of his company at
the ball; and on Thursday his name was ticked off as one who had
accepted.
IV
He had never been to a dance. He had no dress-suit, and no notion of
dancing.
He was a strange, inconsequent mixture of courage and timidity. You and
I are consistent in character; we are either one thing or the other but
Denry Machin had no consistency.
For three days he hesitated, and then, secretly trembling, he slipped
into Shillitoe's, the young tailor who had recently set up, and who was
gathering together the _jeunesse dorée_ of the town.
"I want a dress-suit," he said.
Shillitoe, who knew that Denry only earned eighteen shillings a week,
replied with only superficial politeness that a dress-suit was out of
the question; he had already taken more orders than he could execute
without killing himself. The whole town had uprisen as one man and
demanded a dress-suit.
"So you're going to the ball, are you?" said Shillitoe, trying to
condescend, but, in fact, slightly impressed.
"Yes," said Denry; "are you?"
Shillitoe started and then shook his head. "No time for balls," said he.
"I can get you an invitation, if you like," said Denry, glancing at the
door precisely as he had glanced at the door before adding 2 to 7.
"Oh!" Shillitoe cocked his ears. He was not a native of the town, and
had no alderman to protect his legitimate interests.
To cut a shameful story short, in a week Denry was being tried on.
Shillitoe allowed him two years' credit.
The prospect of the ball gave an immense impetus to the study of the art
of dancing in Bursley, and so put quite a nice sum of money info the
pocket of Miss Earp, a young mistress in that art. She was the daughter
of a furniture dealer with a passion for the Bankruptcy Court. Miss
Earp's evening classes were attended by Denry, but none of his money
went into her pocket. She was compensated by an expression of the
Countess's desire for the pleasure of her company at the ball.
The Countess had aroused Denry's interest in women as a sex; Ruth Earp
quickened the interest. She was plain, but she was only twenty-four, and
very graceful on her feet. Denry had one or two strictly private lessons
from her in reversing. She said to him one evening, when he was
practising reversing and they were entwined in the attitude prescribed
by the latest fashion: "Never mind me! Think about yourself. It's the
same in dancing as it is in life--the woman's duty is to adapt herself
to the man." He did think about himself. He was thinking about himself
in the middle of the night, and about her too. There had been something
in her tone... her eye... At the final lesson he inquired if she would
give him the first waltz at the ball. She paused, then said yes.
V
On the evening of the ball, Denry spent at least two hours in the
operation which was necessary before he could give the Countess the
pleasure of his company. This operation took place in his minute bedroom
at the back of the cottage in Brougham Street, and it was of a complex
nature. Three weeks ago he had innocently thought that you had only to
order a dress-suit and there you were! He now knew that a dress-suit is
merely the beginning of anxiety. Shirt! Collar! Tie! Studs! Cuff-links!
Gloves! Handkerchief! (He was very glad to learn authoritatively from
Shillitoe that handkerchiefs were no longer worn in the waistcoat
opening, and that men who so wore them were barbarians and the truth was
not in them. Thus, an everyday handkerchief would do.) Boots!... Boots
were the rock on which he had struck. Shillitoe, in addition to being a
tailor was a hosier, but by some flaw in the scheme of the universe
hosiers do not sell boots. Except boots, Denry could get all he needed
on credit; boots he could not get on credit, and he could not pay cash
for them. Eventually he decided that his church boots must be dazzled up
to the level of this great secular occasion. The pity was that he
forgot--not that he was of a forgetful disposition in great matters; he
was simply over-excited--he forgot to dazzle them up until after he had
fairly put his collar on and his necktie in a bow. It is imprudent to
touch blacking in a dress-shirt, so Denry had to undo the past and begin
again. This hurried him. He was not afraid of being late for the first
waltz with Miss Ruth Earp, but he was afraid of not being out of the
house before his mother returned. Mrs Machin had been making up a lady's
own materials all day, naturally--the day being what it was! If she had
had twelve hands instead of two, she might have made up the own
materials of half-a-dozen ladies instead of one, and earned twenty-four
shillings instead of four. Denry did not want his mother to see him ere
he departed. He had lavished an enormous amount of brains and energy to
the end of displaying himself in this refined and novel attire to the
gaze of two hundred persons, and yet his secret wish was to deprive his
mother of the beautiful spectacle.
However, she slipped in, with her bag and her seamy fingers and her
rather sardonic expression, at the very moment when Denry was putting on
his overcoat in the kitchen (there being insufficient room in the
passage). He did what he could to hide his shirt-front (though she knew
all about it), and failed.
"Bless us!" she exclaimed briefly, going to the fire to warm her hands.
A harmless remark. But her tone seemed to strip bare the vanity of human
greatness.
"I'm in a hurry," said Denry, importantly, as if he was going forth to
sign a treaty involving the welfare of the nations.
"Well," said she, "happen ye are, Denry. But th' kitchen table's no
place for boot-brushes."
He had one piece of luck. It froze. Therefore no anxiety about the
condition of boots.
VI
The Countess was late; some trouble with a horse. Happily the Earl had
been in Bursley all day, and had dressed at the Conservative Club; and
his lordship had ordered that the programme of dances should be begun.
Denry learned this as soon as he emerged, effulgent, from the
gentlemen's cloak-room into the broad red-carpeted corridor which runs
from end to end of the ground-floor of the Town Hall. Many important
townspeople were chatting in the corridor--the innumerable Swetnam
family, the Stanways, the great Etches, the Fearnses, Mrs Clayton
Vernon, the Suttons, including Beatrice Sutton. Of course everybody knew
him for Duncalf's shorthand clerk and the son of the flannel-washer; but
universal white kid gloves constitute a democracy, and Shillitoe could
put more style into a suit than any other tailor in the Five Towns.
"How do?" the eldest of the Swetnam boys nodded carelessly.
"How do, Swetnam?" said Denry, with equal carelessness.
The thing was accomplished! That greeting was like a Masonic initiation,
and henceforward he was the peer of no matter whom. At first he had
thought that four hundred eyes would be fastened on him, their glance
saying, "This youth is wearing a dress-suit for the first time, and it
is not paid for, either!" But it was not so. And the reason was that the
entire population of the Town Hall was heartily engaged in pretending
that never in its life had it been seen after seven o'clock of a night
apart from a dress-suit. Denry observed with joy that, while numerous
middle-aged and awkward men wore red or white silk handkerchiefs in
their waistcoats, such people as Charles Fearns, the Swetnams, and
Harold Etches did not. He was, then, in the shyness of his handkerchief,
on the side of the angels.
He passed up the double staircase (decorated with white or pale frocks
of unparalleled richness), and so into the grand hall. A scarlet
orchestra was on the platform, and many people strolled about the floor
in attitudes of expectation. The walls were festooned with flowers. The
thrill of being magnificent seized him, and he was drenched in a vast
desire to be truly magnificent himself. He dreamt of magnificence and
boot-brushes kept sticking out of this dream like black mud out of snow.
In his reverie he looked about for Ruth Earp, but she was invisible.
Then he went downstairs again, idly; gorgeously feigning that he spent
six evenings a week in ascending and descending monumental staircases,
appropriately clad. He was determined to be as sublime as any one.
There was a stir in the corridor, and the sublimest consented to be
excited.
The Countess was announced to be imminent. Everybody was grouped round
the main portal, careless of temperatures. Six times was the Countess
announced to be imminent before she actually appeared, expanding from
the narrow gloom of her black carriage like a magic vision. Aldermen
received her--and they did not do it with any excess of gracefulness.
They seemed afraid of her, as though she was recovering from influenza
and they feared to catch it. She had precisely the same high voice, and
precisely the same efficient smile, as she had employed to Denry, and
these instruments worked marvels on aldermen; they were as melting as
salt on snow. The Countess disappeared upstairs in a cloud of shrill
apologies and trailing aldermen. She seemed to have greeted everybody
except Denry. Somehow he was relieved that she had not drawn attention
to him. He lingered, hesitating, and then he saw a being in a long
yellow overcoat, with a bit of peacock's feather at the summit of a
shiny high hat. This being held a lady's fur mantle. Their eyes met.
Denry had to decide instantly. He decided.
"Hello, Jock!" he said.
"Hello, Denry!" said the other, pleased.
"What's been happening?" Denry inquired, friendly.
Then Jock told him about the antics of one of the Countess's horses.
He went upstairs again, and met Ruth Earp coming down. She was glorious
in white. Except that nothing glittered in her hair, she looked the very
equal of the Countess, at a little distance, plain though her features
were.
"What about that waltz?" Denry began informally.
"That waltz is nearly over," said Ruth Earp, with chilliness. "I suppose
you've been staring at her ladyship with all the other men."
"I'm awfully sorry," he said. "I didn't know the waltz was----"
"Well, why didn't you look at your programme?"
"Haven't got one," he said 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 Shillitoe, cause of another
of Denry's wicked crimes. The group was taciturn, critical, and very
doggish.
The group observed that the Countess was not dancing. The Earl was
dancing (need it be said with Mrs Jos Curtenty, second wife of the
Deputy Mayor?), but the Countess stood resolutely smiling, surrounded by
aldermen. Possibly she was getting her breath; possibly nobody had had
the pluck to ask her. Anyhow, she seemed to be stranded there, on a
beach of aldermen. Very wisely she had brought with her no members of a
house-party from Sneyd Hall. Members of a house-party, at a municipal
ball, invariably operate as a bar between greatness and democracy; and
the Countess desired to participate in the life of the people.
"Why don't some of those johnnies ask her?" Denry burst out. He had
hitherto said nothing in the group, and he felt that he must be a man
with the rest of them.
"Well, _you_ go and do it. It's a free country," said Shillitoe.
"So I would, for two pins!" said Denry.
Harold Etches glanced at him, apparently resentful of his presence
there. Harold Etches was determined to put the extinguisher on
_him_.
"I'll bet you a fiver you don't," said Etches scornfully.
"I'll take you," said Denry, very quickly, and very quickly walked off.
VII
"She can't eat me. She can't eat me!"
This was what he said to himself as he crossed the floor. People seemed
to make a lane for him, divining his incredible intention. If he had not
started at once, if his legs had not started of themselves, he would
never have started; and, not being in command of a fiver, he would
afterwards have cut a preposterous figure in the group. But started he
was, like a piece of clockwork that could not be stopped! In the grand
crises of his life something not himself, something more powerful than
himself, jumped up in him and forced him to do things. Now for the first
time he seemed to understand what had occurred within him in previous
crises.
In a second--so it appeared--he had reached the Countess. Just behind
her was his employer, Mr Duncalf, whom Denry had not previously noticed
there. Denry regretted this, for he had never mentioned to Mr Duncalf
that he was coming to the ball, and he feared Mr Duncalf.
"Could I have this dance with you?" he demanded bluntly, but smiling and
showing his teeth.
No ceremonial title! No mention of "pleasure" or "honour." Not a trace
of the formula in which Ruth Earp had instructed him! He forgot all such
trivialities.
"I've won that fiver, Mr Harold Etches," he said to himself.
The mouths of aldermen inadvertently opened. Mr Duncalf blenched.
"It's nearly over, isn't it?" said the Countess, still efficiently
smiling. She did not recognise Denry. In that suit he might have been a
Foreign Office attaché.
"Oh! that doesn't matter, I'm sure," said Denry.
She yielded, and he took the paradisaical creature in his arms. It was
her business that evening to be universally and inclusively polite. She
could not have begun with a refusal. A refusal might have dried up all
other invitations whatsoever. Besides, she saw that the aldermen wanted
a lead. Besides, she was young, though a countess, and adored dancing.
Thus they waltzed together, while the flower of Bursley's chivalry gazed
in enchantment. The Countess's fan, depending from her arm, dangled
against Denry's suit in a rather confusing fashion, which withdrew his
attention from his feet. He laid hold of it gingerly between two
unemployed fingers. After that he managed fairly well. Once they came
perilously near the Earl and his partner; nothing else. And then the
dance ended, exactly when Denry had begun to savour the astounding
spectacle of himself enclasping the Countess.
The Countess had soon perceived that he was the merest boy.
"You waltz quite nicely!" she said, like an aunt, but with more than an
aunt's smile.
"Do I?" he beamed. Then something compelled him to say: "Do you know,
it's the first time I've ever waltzed in my life, except in a lesson,
you know?"
"Really!" she murmured. "You pick things up easily, I suppose?"
"Yes," he said. "Do you?"
Either the question or the tone sent the Countess off into carillons of
amusement. Everybody could see that Denry had made the Countess laugh
tremendously. It was on this note that the waltz finished. She was still
laughing when he bowed to her (as taught by Ruth Earp). He could not
comprehend why she had so laughed, save on the supposition that he was
more humorous than he had suspected. Anyhow, he laughed too, and they
parted laughing. He remembered that he had made a marked effect (though
not one of laughter) on the tailor by quickly returning the question,
"Are you?" And his unpremeditated stroke with the Countess was similar.
When he had got ten yards on his way towards Harold Etches and a fiver
he felt something in his hand. The Countess's fan was sticking between
his fingers. It had unhooked itself from her chain. He furtively
pocketed it.
VIII
"Just the same as dancing with any other woman!" He told this untruth in
reply to a question from Shillitoe. It was the least he could do. And
any other young man in his place would have said as much or as little.
"What was she laughing at?" somebody asked.
"Ah!" said Denry, judiciously, "wouldn't you like to know?"
"Here you are!" said Etches, with an inattentive, plutocratic gesture
handing over a five-pound note. He was one of those men who never
venture out of sight of a bank without a banknote in their pockets--
"Because you never know what may turn up."
Denry accepted the note with a silent nod. In some directions he was
gifted with astounding insight, and he could read in the faces of the
haughty males surrounding him that in the space of a few minutes he had
risen from nonentity into renown. He had become a great man. He did not
at once realise how great, how renowned. But he saw enough in those eyes
to cause his heart to glow, and to rouse in his brain those ambitious
dreams which stirred him upon occasion. He left the group; he had need
of motion, and also of that mental privacy which one may enjoy while
strolling about on a crowded floor in the midst of a considerable noise.
He noticed that the Countess was now dancing with an alderman, and that
the alderman, by an oversight inexcusable in an alderman, was not
wearing gloves. It was he, Denry, who had broken the ice, so that the
alderman might plunge into the water. He first had danced with the
Countess, and had rendered her up to the alderman with delicious gaiety
upon her countenance. By instinct he knew Bursley, and he knew that he
would be talked of. He knew that, for a time at any rate, he would
displace even Jos Curtenty, that almost professional "card" and amuser
of burgesses, in the popular imagination. It would not be: "Have ye
heard Jos's latest?" It would be: "Have ye heard about young Machin,
Duncalf's clerk?"
Then he met Ruth Earp, strolling in the opposite direction with a young
girl, one of her pupils, of whom all he knew was that her name was
Nellie, and that this was her first ball: a childish little thing with a
wistful face. He could not decide whether to look at Ruth or to avoid
her glance. She settled the point by smiling at him in a manner that
could not be ignored.
"Are you going to make it up to me for that waltz you missed?" said Ruth
Earp. She pretended to be vexed and stern, but he knew that she was not.
"Or is your programme full?" she added.
"I should like to," he said simply.
"But perhaps you don't care to dance with us poor, ordinary people, now
you've danced with the _Countess_!" she said, with a certain lofty
and bitter pride.
He perceived that his tone had lacked eagerness.
"Don't talk like that," he said, as if hurt.
"Well," she said, "you can have the supper dance."
He took her programme to write on it.
"Why," he said, "there's a name down here for the supper dance.
'Herbert,' it looks like."
"Oh!" she replied carelessly, "that's nothing. Cross it out."
So he crossed Herbert out.
"Why don't you ask Nellie here for a dance?" said Ruth Earp.
And Nellie blushed. He gathered that the possible honour of dancing with
the supremely great man had surpassed Nellie's modest expectations.
"Can I have the next one?" he said.
"Oh, yes!" Nellie timidly whispered.
"It's a polka, and you aren't very good at polking, you know," Ruth
warned him. "Still, Nellie will pull you through."
Nellie laughed, in silver. The 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 full.
"Do tell us what the Countess was laughing at?" This question was shot
at him at least thirty times. He always said he would not tell. And one
girl who had danced with Mr Stanway, who had danced with the Countess,
said that Mr Stanway had said that the Countess would not tell either.
Proof, here, that he was being extensively talked about!
Towards the end of the festivity the rumour floated abroad that the
Countess had lost her fan. The rumour reached Denry, who maintained a
culpable silence. But when all was over, and the Countess was departing,
he rushed down after her, and, in a dramatic fashion which demonstrated
his genius for the effective, he caught her exactly as she was getting
into her carriage.
"I've just picked it up," he said, pushing through the crowd of
worshippers.
"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.