IIIt 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 mindyou," she said, "not at all. But I 'm not well. I 've got a frightful headache."He put on a concerned expression."Ithoughtyou 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. Itisa 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'tforgetAllman's!" she enjoined him as he left the room. He was to let himself out."Oh, no!" he said.IIIHe 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."Whatareyou 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.IVThe 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.CHAPTER IV. WRECKING OF A LIFEIIn 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?IIThey 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.IIIWhat 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, theHjalmar, 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 theStaffordshire 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 theSignal," said Denry, whose thoughts were excusably on the Press."Oh, do!" exclaimed Nellie."They have theSignalat 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.
II
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 mindyou," she said, "not at all. But I 'm not well. I 've got a frightful headache."
He put on a concerned expression.
"Ithoughtyou 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. Itisa 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'tforgetAllman's!" she enjoined him as he left the room. He was to let himself out.
"Oh, no!" he said.
III
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.
"Whatareyou 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.
IV
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.
CHAPTER IV. WRECKING OF A LIFE
I
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?
II
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.
III
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, theHjalmar, 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 theStaffordshire 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 theSignal," said Denry, whose thoughts were excusably on the Press.
"Oh, do!" exclaimed Nellie.
"They have theSignalat 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.