THE WIDOW HULLINS'S HOUSE
I
The simple fact that he first, of all the citizens of Bursley, had asked
a countess for a dance (and not been refused) made a new man of Denry
Machin. He was not only regarded by the whole town as a fellow wonderful
and dazzling, but he so regarded himself. He could not get over it. He
had always been cheerful, even to optimism. He was now in a permanent
state of calm, assured jollity. He would get up in the morning with song
and dance. Bursley and the general world were no longer Bursley and the
general world; they had been mysteriously transformed into an oyster;
and Denry felt strangely that the oyster-knife was lying about somewhere
handy, but just out of sight, and that presently he should spy it and
seize it. He waited for something to happen. And not in vain.
A few days after the historic revelry, Mrs Codleyn called to see Denry's
employer. Mr Duncalf was her solicitor. A stout, breathless, and yet
muscular woman of near sixty, the widow of a chemist and druggist who
had made money before limited companies had taken the liberty of being
pharmaceutical. The money had been largely invested in mortgage on
cottage property; the interest on it had not been paid, and latterly Mrs
Codleyn had been obliged to foreclose, thus becoming the owner of some
seventy cottages. Mrs Codleyn, though they brought her in about twelve
pounds a week gross, esteemed these cottages an infliction, a bugbear,
an affront, and a positive source of loss. Invariably she talked as
though she would willingly present them to anybody who cared to accept--
"and glad to be rid of 'em!" Most owners of property talk thus. She
particularly hated paying the rates on them.
Now there had recently occurred, under the direction of the Borough
Surveyor, a revaluation of the whole town. This may not sound exciting;
yet a revaluation is the most exciting event (save a municipal ball
given by a titled mayor) that can happen in any town. If your house is
rated at forty pounds a year, and rates are seven shillings in the
pound, and the revaluation lifts you up to forty-five pounds, it means
thirty-five shillings a year right out of your pocket, which is the
interest on thirty-five pounds. And if the revaluation drops you to
thirty-five pounds, it means thirty-five shillings _in_ your
pocket, which is a box of Havanas or a fancy waistcoat. Is not this
exciting? And there are seven thousand houses in Bursley. Mrs Codleyn
hoped that her rateable value would be reduced. She based the hope
chiefly on the fact that she was a client of Mr Duncalf, the Town Clerk.
The Town Clerk was not the Borough Surveyor and had nothing to do with
the revaluation. Moreover, Mrs Codleyn 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 rateable value, far from being
reduced, had been slightly augmented.
The interview, as judged by the clerks through a lath-and-plaster wall
and by means of a speaking tube, atoned by its vivacity for its lack of
ceremony. When the stairs had finished creaking under the descent of Mrs
Codleyn's righteous fury, Mr Duncalf whistled sharply twice. Two
whistles meant Denry. Denry picked up his shorthand note-book and obeyed
the summons.
"Take this down!" said his master, rudely and angrily.
Just as though Denry had abetted Mrs Codleyn! Just as though Denry was
not a personage of high importance in the town, the friend of
countesses, and a shorthand clerk only on the surface.
"Do you hear?"
"Yes, sir."
"MADAM"--hitherto it had always been "Dear Madam," or "Dear Mrs
Codleyn"--"MADAM,--Of course I need hardly say that if, after our
interview this morning, and your extraordinary remarks, you wish to
place your interests in other hands, I shall be most happy to hand over
all the papers, on payment of my costs. Yours truly ... To Mrs Codleyn."
Denry reflected: "Ass! Why doesn't he let her cool down?" Also: "He's
got 'hands' and 'hand' in the same sentence. Very ugly. Shows what a
temper he's in!" Shorthand clerks are always like that--hypercritical.
Also: "Well, I jolly well hope she does chuck him! Then I shan't have
those rents to collect." Every Monday, and often on Tuesday, too, Denry
collected the rents of Mrs Codleyn's cottages--an odious task for Denry.
Mr Duncalf, though not affected by its odiousness, deducted 7-1/2 per
cent. for the job from the rents.
"That'll do," said Mr Duncalf.
But as Denry was leaving the room Mr Duncalf called with formidable
brusqueness--
"Machin!"
"Yes, sir?"
In a flash Denry knew what was coming. He felt sickly that a crisis had
supervened with the suddenness of a tidal wave. And for one little
second it seemed to him that to have danced with a countess while the
flower of Bursley's chivalry watched in envious wonder was not, after
all, the key to the door of success throughout life.
Undoubtedly he had practised fraud in sending to himself an invitation
to the ball. Undoubtedly he had practised fraud in sending invitations
to his tailor and his dancing-mistress. On the day after the ball,
beneath his great glory, he had trembled to meet Mr Duncalf's eye, lest
Mr Duncalf should ask him: "Machin, what were _you_ doing at the
Town Hall last night, behaving as if you were the Shah of Persia, the
Prince of Wales, and Henry Irving?" But Mr Duncalf had said nothing, and
Mr Duncalf's eye had said nothing, and Denry thought that the danger was
past.
Now it surged up. "Who invited you to the Mayor's ball?" demanded Mr
Duncalf like thunder.
Yes, there it was! And a very difficult question.
"I did, sir," he blundered out. Transparent veracity. He simply could
not think of a lie.
"Why?"
"I thought you'd perhaps forgotten to put my name down on the list of
invitations, sir."
"Oh!" This grimly. "And I suppose you thought I'd also forgotten to put
down that tailor chap, Shillitoe?"
So it was all out! Shillitoe must have been chattering. Denry remembered
that the classic established tailor of the town, Hatterton, whose trade
Shillitoe was getting, was a particular friend of Mr Duncalf's. He saw
the whole thing.
"Well?" persisted Mr Duncalf, after a judicious silence from Denry.
Denry, sheltered in the castle of his silence, was not to be tempted
out.
"I suppose you rather fancy yourself dancing with your betters?" growled
Mr Duncalf, menacingly.
"Yes," said Denry. "Do _you_?"
He had not meant to say it. The question slipped out of his mouth. He
had recently formed the habit of retorting swiftly upon people who put
queries to him: "Yes, are _you_?" or "No, do _you_?" The trick
of speech had been enormously effective with Shillitoe, for instance,
and with the Countess. He was in process of acquiring renown for it.
Certainly it was effective now. Mr Duncalf's dance with the Countess had
come to an ignominious conclusion in the middle, Mr Duncalf preferring
to dance on skirts rather than on the floor, and the fact was notorious.
"You can take a week's notice," said Mr Duncalf, pompously.
It was no argument. But employers are so unscrupulous in an altercation.
"Oh, very well," said Denry; and to himself he said: "Something
_must_ turn up, now."
He felt dizzy at being thus thrown upon the world--he who had been
meditating the propriety of getting himself elected to the stylish and
newly-established Sports Club at Hillport! He felt enraged, for Mr
Duncalf had only been venting on Denry the annoyance induced in him by
Mrs Codleyn. But it is remarkable that he was not depressed at all. No!
he went about with songs and whistling, though he had no prospects
except starvation or living on his mother. He traversed the streets in
his grand, new manner, and his thoughts ran: "What on earth can I do to
live up to my reputation?" However, he possessed intact the five-pound
note won from Harold Etches in the matter of the dance.
II
Every life is a series of coincidences. Nothing happens that is not
rooted in coincidence. All great changes find their cause in
coincidence. Therefore I shall not mince the fact that the next change
in Denry's career was due to an enormous and complicated coincidence. On
the following morning both Mrs Codleyn and Denry were late for service
at St Luke's Church--Mrs Codleyn by accident and obesity, Denry by
design. Denry was later than Mrs Codleyn, whom he discovered waiting in
the porch. That Mrs Codleyn was waiting is an essential part of the
coincidence. Now Mrs Codleyn would not have been waiting if her pew had
not been right at the front of the church, near the choir. Nor would she
have been waiting if she had been a thin woman and not given to
breathing loudly after a hurried walk. She waited partly to get her
breath, and partly so that she might take advantage of a hymn or a psalm
to gain her seat without attracting attention. If she had not been late,
if she had not been stout, if she had not had a seat under the pulpit,
if she had not had an objection to making herself conspicuous, she would
have been already in the church and Denry would not have had a private
colloquy with her.
"Well, you're nice people, I must say!" she observed, as he raised his
hat.
She meant Duncalf and all Duncalf's myrmidons. She was still full of her
grievance. The letter which she had received that morning had startled
her. And even the shadow of the sacred edifice did not prevent her from
referring to an affair that was more suited to Monday than to Sunday
morning. A little more, and she would have snorted.
"Nothing to do with me, you know!" Denry defended himself.
"Oh!" she said, "you're all alike, and I'll tell you this, Mr Machin,
I'd take him at his word if it wasn't that I don't know who else
I could trust to collect my rents. I've heard such tales about
rent-collectors.... I reckon I shall have to make my peace with him."
"Why," said Denry, "I'll keep on collecting your rents for you if you
like."
"You?"
"I've given him notice to leave," said Denry. "The fact is, Mr Duncalf
and I don't hit it off together."
Another procrastinator arrived in the porch, and, by a singular
simultaneous impulse, Mrs Codleyn and Denry fell into the silence of the
overheard and wandered forth together among the graves.
There, among the graves, she eyed him. He was a clerk at eighteen
shillings a week, and he looked it. His mother was a sempstress, and he
looked it. The idea of neat but shabby Denry and the mighty Duncalf not
hitting it off together seemed excessively comic. If only Denry could
have worn his dress-suit at church! It vexed him exceedingly that he had
only worn that expensive dress-suit once, and saw no faintest hope of
ever being able to wear it again.
"And what's more," Denry pursued, "I'll collect 'em for five per cent,
instead of seven-and-a-half. Give me a free hand, and see if I don't get
better results than _he_ did. And I'll settle accounts every month,
or week if you like, instead of once a quarter, like _he_ does."
The bright and beautiful idea had smitten Denry like some heavenly
arrow. It went through him and pierced Mrs Codleyn with equal success.
It was an idea that appealed to the reason, to the pocket, and to the
instinct of revenge. Having revengefully settled the hash of Mr Duncalf,
they went into church.
No need to continue this part of the narrative. Even the text of the
rector's sermon has no bearing on the issue.
In a week there was a painted board affixed to the door of Denry's
mother:
E.H. MACHIN, _Rent Collector and Estate Agent_.
There was also an advertisement in the _Signal_, announcing that
Denry managed estates large or small.
III
The next crucial event in Denry's career happened one Monday morning, in
a cottage that was very much smaller even than his mother's. This
cottage, part of Mrs Codleyn's multitudinous property, stood by itself
in Chapel Alley, behind the Wesleyan chapel; the majority of the
tenements were in Carpenter's Square, near to. The neighbourhood was not
distinguished for its social splendour, but existence in it was
picturesque, varied, exciting, full of accidents, as existence is apt to
be in residences that cost their occupiers an average of three shillings
a week. Some persons referred to the quarter as a slum, and ironically
insisted on its adjacency to the Wesleyan chapel, as though that was the
Wesleyan chapel's fault. Such people did not understand life and the joy
thereof.
The solitary cottage had a front yard, about as large as a blanket,
surrounded by an insecure brick wall and paved with mud. You went up two
steps, pushed at a door, and instantly found yourself in the principal
reception-room, which no earthly blanket could possibly have covered.
Behind this chamber could be seen obscurely an apartment so tiny that an
auctioneer would have been justified in terming it "bijou," Furnished
simply but practically with a slopstone; also the beginnings of a
stairway. The furniture of the reception-room comprised two chairs and a
table, one or two saucepans, and some antique crockery. What lay at the
upper end of the stairway no living person knew, save the old woman who
slept there. The old woman sat at the fireplace, "all bunched up," as
they say in the Five Towns. The only fire in the room, however, was in
the short clay pipe which she smoked; Mrs Hullins was one of the last
old women in Bursley to smoke a cutty; and even then the pipe was
considered coarse, and cigarettes were coming into fashion--though not
in Chapel Alley. Mrs Hullins smoked her pipe, and thought about nothing
in particular. Occasionally some vision of the past floated through her
drowsy brain. She had lived in that residence for over forty years. She
had brought up eleven children and two husbands there. She had coddled
thirty-five grand-children there, and given instruction to some
half-dozen daughters-in-law. She had known midnights when she could
scarcely move in that residence without disturbing somebody asleep. Now
she was alone in it. She never left it, except to fetch water from the
pump in the square. She had seen a lot of life, and she was tired.
Denry came unceremoniously in, smiling gaily and benevolently, with his
bright, optimistic face under his fair brown hair. He had large and good
teeth. He was getting--not stout, but plump.
"Well, mother!" he greeted Mrs Hullins, and sat down on the other chair.
A young fellow obviously at peace with the world, a young fellow content
with himself for the moment. No longer a clerk; one of the employed;
saying "sir" to persons with no more fingers and toes than he had
himself; bound by servile agreement to be in a fixed place at fixed
hours! An independent unit, master of his own time and his own
movements! In brief, a man! The truth was that he earned now in two days
a week slightly more than Mr Duncalf paid him for the labour of five and
a half days. His income, as collector of rents and manager of estates
large or small, totalled about a pound a week. But, he walked forth in
the town, smiled, joked, spoke vaguely, and said, "Do _you_?" to
such a tune that his income might have been guessed to be anything from
ten pounds a week to ten thousand a year. And he had four days a week in
which to excogitate new methods of creating a fortune.
"I've nowt for ye," said the old woman, not moving.
"Come, come, now! That won't do," said Denry. "Have a pinch of my
tobacco."
She accepted a pinch of his tobacco, and refilled her pipe, and he gave
her a match.
"I'm not going out of this house without half-a-crown at any rate!" said
Denry, blithely.
And he rolled himself a cigarette, possibly to keep warm. It was very
chilly in the stuffy residence, but the old woman never shivered. She
was one of those old women who seem to wear all the skirts of all their
lives, one over the other.
"Ye're here for th' better part o' some time, then," observed Mrs
Hullins, looking facts in the face. "I've told you about my son Jack.
He's been playing [out of work] six weeks. He starts to-day, and he'll
gi me summat Saturday."
"That won't do," said Denry, curtly and kindly.
He then, with his bluff benevolence, explained to Mother Hullins that
Mrs Codleyn would stand no further increase of arrears from anybody,
that she could not afford to stand any further increase of arrears, that
her tenants were ruining her, and that he himself, with all his cheery
good-will for the rent-paying classes, would be involved in her fall.
"Six-and-forty years have I been i' this 'ere house!" said Mrs Hullins.
"Yes, I know," said Denry. "And look at what you owe, mother!"
It was with immense good-humoured kindliness that he invited her
attention to what she owed. She tacitly declined to look at it.
"Your children ought to keep you," said Denry, upon her silence.
"Them as is dead, can't," said Mrs Hullins, "and them as is alive has
their own to keep, except Jack."
"Well, then, it's bailiffs," said Denry, but still cheerfully.
"Nay, nay! Ye'll none turn me out."
Denry threw up his hands, as if to exclaim: "I've done all I can, and
I've given you a pinch of tobacco. Besides, you oughtn't to be here
alone. You ought to be with one of your children."
There was more conversation, which ended in Denry's repeating, with
sympathetic resignation:
"No, you'll have to get out. It's bailiffs."
Immediately afterwards he left the residence with a bright filial smile.
And then, in two minutes, he popped his cheerful head in at the door
again.
"Look here, mother," he said, "I'll lend you half-a-crown if you like."
Charity beamed on his face, and genuinely warmed his heart.
"But you must pay me something for the accommodation," he added. "I
can't do it for nothing. You must pay me back next week and give me
threepence. That's fair. I couldn't bear to see you turned out of your
house. Now get your rent-book."
And he marked half-a-crown as paid in her greasy, dirty rent-book, and
the same in his large book.
"Eh, you're a queer 'un, Mester Machin!" murmured the old woman as he
left. He never knew precisely what she meant. Fifteen--twenty--years
later in his career her intonation of that phrase would recur to him and
puzzle him.
On the following Monday everybody in Chapel Alley and Carpenter's Square
seemed to know that the inconvenience of bailiffs and eviction could be
avoided by arrangement with Denry the philanthropist. He did quite a
business. And having regard to the fantastic nature of the security, he
could not well charge less than threepence a week for half-a-crown. That
was about 40 per cent. a month and 500 per cent. per annum. The security
was merely fantastic, but nevertheless he had his remedy against
evil-doers. He would take what they paid him for rent and refuse to mark
it as rent, appropriating it to his loans, so that the fear of bailiffs
was upon them again. Thus, as the good genius of Chapel Alley and
Carpenter's Square, saving the distressed from the rigours of the open
street, rescuing the needy from their tightest corners, keeping many a
home together when but for him it would have fallen to pieces--always
smiling, jolly, sympathetic, and picturesque--Denry at length employed
the five-pound note won from Harold Etches. A five-pound note--
especially a new and crisp one, as this was--is a miraculous fragment of
matter, wonderful in the pleasure which the sight of it gives, even to
millionaires; but perhaps no five-pound note was ever so miraculous as
Denry's. Ten per cent. per week, compound interest, mounts up; it
ascends, and it lifts. Denry never talked precisely. But the town soon
began to comprehend that he was a rising man, a man to watch. The town
admitted that, so far, he had lived up to his reputation as a dancer
with countesses. The town felt that there was something indefinable
about Denry.
Denry himself felt this. He did not consider himself clever or
brilliant. But he considered himself peculiarly gifted. He considered
himself different from other men. His thoughts would run:
"Anybody but me would have knuckled down to Duncalf and remained a
shorthand clerk for ever."
"Who but me would have had the idea of going to the ball and asking the
Countess to dance?... And then that business with the fan!"
"Who but me would have had the idea of taking his rent-collecting off
Duncalf?"
"Who but me would have had the idea of combining these loans with the
rent-collecting? It's simple enough! It's just what they want! And yet
nobody ever thought of it till I thought of it!"
And he knew of a surety that he was that most admired type in the
bustling, industrial provinces--a card.
IV
The desire to become a member of the Sports Club revived in his breast.
And yet, celebrity though he was, rising though he was, he secretly
regarded the Sports Club at Hillport as being really a bit above him.
The Sports Club was the latest and greatest phenomenon of social life in
Bursley, and it was emphatically the club to which it behoved the golden
youth of the town to belong. To Denry's generation the Conservative Club
and the Liberal Club did not seem like real clubs; they were machinery
for politics, and membership carried nearly no distinction with it. But
the Sports Club had been founded by the most dashing young men of
Hillport, which is the most aristocratic suburb of Bursley and set on a
lofty eminence. The sons of the wealthiest earthenware manufacturers
made a point of belonging to it, and, after a period of disdain, their
fathers also made a point of belonging to it. It was housed in an old
mansion, with extensive grounds and a pond and tennis courts; it had a
working agreement with the Golf Club and with the Hillport Cricket Club.
But chiefly it was a social affair. The correctest thing was to be seen
there at nights, rather late than early; and an exact knowledge of card
games and billiards was worth more in it than prowess on the field.
It was a club in the Pall Mall sense of the word.
And Denry still lived in insignificant Brougham Street, and his mother
was still a sempstress! These were apparently insurmountable truths. All
the men whom he knew to be members were somehow more dashing than Denry--and
it was a question of dash; few things are more mysterious than
dash. Denry was unique, knew himself to be unique; he had danced with a
countess, and yet... these other fellows!... Yes, there are puzzles,
baffling puzzles, in the social career.
In going over on Tuesdays to Hanbridge, where he had a few trifling
rents to collect, Denry often encountered Harold Etches in the tramcar.
At that time Etches lived at Hillport, and the principal Etches
manufactory was at Hanbridge. Etches partook of the riches of his
family, and, though a bachelor, was reputed to have the spending of at
least a thousand a year. He was famous, on summer Sundays, on the pier
at Llandudno, in white flannels. He had been one of the originators of
the Sports Club. He spent far more on clothes alone than Denry spent in
the entire enterprise of keeping his soul in his body. At their first
meeting little was said. They were not equals, and nothing but
dress-suits could make them equals. However, even a king could not
refuse speech with a scullion whom he had allowed to win money from him.
And Etches and Denry chatted feebly. Bit by bit they chatted less
feebly. And once, when they were almost alone on the car, they chatted
with vehemence during the complete journey of twenty minutes.
"He isn't so bad," said Denry to himself, of the dashing Harold Etches.
And he took a private oath that at his very next encounter with Etches
he would mention the Sports Club--"just to see." This oath disturbed his
sleep for several night. But with Denry an oath was sacred. Having sworn
that he would mention the club to Etches, he was bound to mention it.
When Tuesday came, he hoped that Etches would not be on the tram, and
the coward in him would have walked to Hanbridge instead of taking the
tram. But he was brave. And he boarded the tram, and Etches was already
in it. Now that he looked at it close, the enterprise of suggesting to
Harold Etches that he, Denry, would be a suitable member of the Sports
Club at Hillport, seemed in the highest degree preposterous. Why! He
could not play any games at all! He was a figure only in the streets!
Nevertheless--the oath!
He sat awkwardly silent for a few moments, wondering how to begin. And
then Harold Etches leaned across the tram to him and said:
"I say, Machin, I've several times meant to ask you. Why don't you put
up for the Sports Club? It's really very good, you know."
Denry blushed, quite probably for the last time in his life. And he saw
with fresh clearness how great he was, and how large he must loom in the
life of the town. He perceived that he had been too modest.
V
You could not be elected to the Sports Club all in a minute. There were
formalities; and that these formalities were complicated and took time
is simply a proof that the club was correctly exclusive and worth
belonging to. When at length Denry received notice from the "Secretary
and Steward" that he was elected to the most sparkling fellowship in the
Five Towns, he was positively afraid to go and visit the club. He wanted
some old and experienced member to lead him gently into the club and
explain its usages and introduce him to the chief _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 back-bone of Denry's livelihood, and he could
by no means be sure that a new owner would employ him as rent-collector.
A new owner might have the absurd notion of collecting rents in person.
Vainly did Denry exhibit to Mrs Codleyn rows of figures, showing that
her income from the property had increased under his control. Vainly did
he assert that from no other form of investment would she derive such a
handsome interest. She went so far as to consult an auctioneer. The
auctioneer's idea of what could constitute a fair reserve price shook,
but did not quite overthrow her. At this crisis it was that Denry
happened to say to her, in his new large manner: "Why! If I could
afford, I'd buy the property off you myself, just to show you...!" (He
did not explain, and he did not perhaps know himself, what had to be
shown.) She answered that she wished to goodness he would! Then he said
wildly that he _would_, in instalments! And he actually did buy the
Widow Hullins's half-a-crown-a-week cottage for forty-five pounds, of
which he paid thirty pounds in cash and arranged that the balance should
be deducted gradually from his weekly commission. He chose the Widow
Hullins's because it stood by itself--an odd piece, as it were, chipped
off from the block of Mrs Codleyn's realty. The transaction quietened
Mrs Codleyn. And Denry felt secure because she could not now dispense
with his services without losing her security for fifteen pounds. (He
still thought in these small sums instead of thinking in thousands.)
He was now a property owner.
Encouraged by this great and solemn fact, he went up one afternoon to
the club at Hillport. His entry was magnificent, superficially. No one
suspected that he was nervous under the ordeal. The truth is that no one
suspected because the place was empty. The emptiness of the hall gave
him pause. He saw a large framed copy of the "Rules" hanging under a
deer's head, and he read them as carefully as though he had not got a
copy in his pocket. Then he read the notices, as though they had been
latest telegrams from some dire seat of war. Then, perceiving a massive
open door of oak (the club-house had once been a pretty stately
mansion), he passed through it, and saw a bar (with bottles) and a
number of small tables and wicker chairs, and on one of the tables an
example of the _Staffordshire Signal_ displaying in vast letters
the fearful question:--"Is your skin troublesome?" Denry's skin was
troublesome; it crept. He crossed the hall and went into another room
which was placarded "Silence." And silence was. And on a table with
copies of _The Potter's World, The British Australasian, The Iron
Trades Review_, and the _Golfers' Annual_, was a second copy of
the _Signal_, again demanding of Denry in vast letters whether his
skin was troublesome. Evidently the reading-room.
He ascended the stairs and discovered a deserted billiard-room with two
tables. Though he had never played at billiards, he seized a cue, but
when he touched them the balls gave such a resounding click in the hush
of the chamber that he put the cue away instantly. He noticed another
door, curiously opened it, and started back at the sight of a small
room, and eight middle-aged men, mostly hatted, playing cards in two
groups. They had the air of conspirators, but they were merely some of
the finest solo-whist players in Bursley. (This was before bridge had
quitted Pall Mall.) Among them was Mr Duncalf. Denry shut the door
quickly. He felt like a wanderer in an enchanted castle who had suddenly
come across something that ought not to be come across. He returned to
earth, and in the hall met a man in shirt-sleeves--the Secretary and
Steward, a nice, homely man, who said, in the accents of ancient
friendship, though he had never spoken to Denry before: "Is it Mr
Machin? Glad to see you, Mr Machin! Come and have a drink with me, will
you? Give it a name." Saying which, the Secretary and Steward went
behind the bar, and Denry imbibed a little whisky and much information.
"Anyhow, I've _been!_" he said to himself, going home.
VI
The next night he made another visit to the club, about ten o'clock. The
reading-room, that haunt of learning, was as empty as ever; but the bar
was full of men, smoke, and glasses. It was so full that Denry's arrival
was scarcely observed. However, the Secretary and Steward observed him,
and soon he was chatting with a group at the bar, presided over by the
Secretary and Steward's shirt-sleeves. He glanced around, and was
satisfied. It was a scene of dashing gaiety and worldliness that did not
belie the club's reputation. Some of the most important men in Bursley
were there. Charles Fearns, the solicitor, who practised at Hanbridge,
was arguing vivaciously in a corner. Fearns lived at Bleakridge and
belonged to the Bleakridge Club, and his presence at Hillport (two miles
from Bleakridge) was a dramatic tribute to the prestige of Hillport's
Club.
Fearns was apparently in one of his anarchistic moods. Though a
successful business man who voted right, he was pleased occasionally to
uproot the fabric of society and rebuild it on a new plan of his own.
To-night he was inveighing against landlords--he who by "conveyancing"
kept a wife and family, and a French governess for the family, in rather
more than comfort. The Fearns's French governess was one of the seven
wonders of the Five Towns. Men enjoyed him in these moods; and as he
raised his voice, so he enlarged the circle of his audience.
"If the by-laws of this town were worth a bilberry," he was saying,
"about a thousand so-called houses would have to come down to-morrow.
Now there's that old woman I was talking about just now--Hullins. She's
a Catholic--and my governess is always slumming about among Catholics--
that's how I know. She's paid half-a-crown a week for pretty near half a
century for a hovel that isn't worth eighteen-pence, and now she's going
to be pitched into the street because she can't pay any more. And she's
seventy if she's a day! And that's the basis of society. Nice refined
society, eh?"
"Who's the grasping owner?" some one asked.
"Old Mrs Codleyn," said Fearns.
"Here, Mr Machin, they're talking about you," said the Secretary and
Steward, genially. He knew that Denry collected Mrs Codleyn's rents.
"Mrs Codleyn isn't the owner," Denry called out across the room, almost
before he was aware what he was doing. There was a smile on his face and
a glass in his hand.
"Oh!" said Fearns. "I thought she was. Who is?"
Everybody looked inquisitively at the renowned Machin, the new member.
"I am," said Denry.
He had concealed the change of ownership from the Widow Hullins. In his
quality of owner he could not have lent her money in order that she
might pay it instantly back to himself.
"I beg your pardon," said Fearns, with polite sincerity. "I'd no
idea...!" He saw that unwittingly he had come near to committing a gross
outrage on club etiquette.
"Not at all!" said Denry. "But supposing the cottage was _yours_,
what would _you_ do, Mr Fearns? Before I bought the property I used
to lend her money myself to pay her rent."
"I know," Fearns answered, with a certain dryness of tone.
It occurred to Denry that the lawyer knew too much.
"Well, what should you do?" he repeated obstinately.
"She's an old woman," said Fearns. "And honest enough, you must admit.
She came up to see my governess, and I happened to see her."
"But what should you do in my place?" Denry insisted.
"Since you ask, I should lower the rent and let her off the arrears,"
said Fearns.
"And supposing she didn't pay then? Let her have it rent-free because
she's seventy? Or pitch her into the street?"
"Oh--Well--"
"Fearns would make her a present of the blooming house and give her a
conveyance free!" a voice said humorously, and everybody laughed.
"Well, that's what I'll do," said Denry. "If Mr Fearns will do the
conveyance free, I'll make her a present of the blooming house. That's
the sort of grasping owner I am."
There was a startled pause. "I mean it," said Denry firmly, even
fiercely, and raised his glass. "Here's to the Widow Hullins!"
There was a sensation, because, incredible though the thing was, it had
to be believed. Denry himself was not the least astounded person in the
crowded, smoky room. To him, it had been like somebody else talking, not
himself. But, as always when he did something crucial, spectacular, and
effective, the deed had seemed to be done by a mysterious power within
him, over which he had no control.
This particular deed was quixotic, enormously unusual; a deed assuredly
without precedent in the annals of the Five Towns. And he, Denry, had
done it. The cost was prodigious, ridiculously and dangerously beyond
his means. He could find no rational excuse for the deed. But he had
done it. And men again wondered. Men had wondered when he led the
Countess out to waltz. That was nothing to this. What! A smooth-chinned
youth giving houses away--out of mere, mad, impulsive generosity.
And men said, on reflection, "Of course, that's just the sort of thing
Machin _would_ do!" They appeared to find a logical connection
between dancing with a Countess and tossing a house or so to a poor
widow. And the next morning every man who had been in the Sports Club
that night was remarking eagerly to his friends: "I say, have you heard
young Machin's latest?"
And Denry, inwardly aghast at his own rashness, was saying to himself:
"Well, no one but me would ever have done that!"
He was now not simply a card; he was _the_ card.