"How do?" the eldest of the Sweetnam boys nodded carelessly.
"How do, Sweetnam?" said Denry with equal carelessness.
The thing was accomplished! That greeting was like a masonicinitiation, and henceforward he was the peer of no matter whom. Atfirst he had thought that four hundred eyes would be fastened on him,their glance saying: "This youth is wearing a dress-suit for the firsttime, and it is not paid for, either." But it was not so. And thereason was that the entire population of the Town Hall was heartilyengaged in pretending that never in its life had it been seen afterseven o'clock of a night apart from a dress-suit. Denry observed withjoy that, while numerous middle-aged and awkward men wore red or whitesilk handkerchiefs in their waistcoats, such people as Charles Fearns,the Sweetnams, and Harold Etches did not. He was, then, in the shynessof his handkerchief, on the side of the angels.
He passed up the double staircase (decorated with white or pale frocksof unparalleled richness) and so into the grand hall. A scarletorchestra was on the platform, and many people strolled about the floorin attitudes of expectation. The walls were festooned with flowers. Thethrill of being magnificent seized him, and he was drenched in a vastdesire to be truly magnificent himself. He dreamt of magnificence,boot-brushes kept sticking out of this dream like black mud out of snow.In his reverie he looked about for Ruth Earp, but she was invisible.Then he went down-stairs again, idly; gorgeously feigning that he spentsix evenings a week in ascending and descending monumental staircases,appropriately clad. He was determined to be as sublime as any one.
There was a stir in the corridor, and the sublimest consented to beexcited.
The Countess was announced to be imminent. Everybody was grouped roundthe main portal, careless of temperatures. Six times was the Countessannounced to be imminent before she actually appeared, expanding fromthe narrow gloom of her black carriage like a magic vision. Aldermenreceived her, and they did not do it with any excess of gracefulness.They seemed afraid of her, as though she was recovering from influenzaand they feared to catch it. She had precisely the same high voice, andprecisely the same efficient smile as she had employed to Denry, andthese instruments worked marvels on Aldermen; they were as melting assalt on snow. The Countess disappeared up-stairs in a cloud of shrillapologies and trailing Aldermen. She seemed to have greeted everybodyexcept Denry. Somehow he was relieved that she had not drawn attentionto him. He lingered, hesitating, and then he saw a being in a longyellow overcoat, with a bit of peacock's feather at the summit of ashiny high hat. This being held a lady's fur mantle. Their eyes met.Denry had to decide instantly. He decided.
"Hello, Jock!" he said.
"Hello, Denry!" said the other, pleased.
"What's been happening?" Denry enquired, friendly.
Then Jock told him about the antics of one of the Countess's horses.
He went up-stairs again, and met Ruth Earp coming down. She wasglorious in white. Except that nothing glittered in her hair, she lookedthe very equal of the Countess, at a little distance, plain though herfeatures were.
"What about that waltz?" Denry began, informally.
"That waltz is nearly over," said Ruth Earp, with chilliness. "Isuppose you 've been staring at her ladyship with all the other men."
"I 'm awfully sorry," he said. "I did n't know the waltz was----"
"Well, why did n't you look at your programme?"
"Have n't got one," he said naively.
He had omitted to take a programme. Ninny! Barbarian!
"Better get one," she said, cuttingly, somewhat in her role of dancingmistress.
"Can't we finish the waltz?" he suggested, crestfallen.
"No!" she said, and continued her solitary way downwards.
She was hurt. He tried to think of something to say that was equal tothe situation, and equal to the style of his suit. But he could not.In a moment he heard her, below him, greeting some male acquaintance inthe most effusive way.
Yet, if Denry had not committed a wicked crime for her, she could neverhave come to the dance at all!
He got a programme, and with terror gripping his heart he asked sundryyoung and middle-aged women whom he knew by sight and by name for adance. (Ruth had taught him how to ask.) Not one of them had a danceleft. Several looked at him as much as to say: "You must be a goose tosuppose that my programme is not filled up in the twinkling of my eye!"
Then he joined a group of despisers of dancing near the main door.Harold Etches was there, the wealthiest manufacturer of his years(barely twenty-four) in the Five Towns. Also Sillitoe, cause of anotherof Denry's wicked crimes. The group was taciturn, critical, and verydoggish.
The group observed that the Countess was not dancing. The Earl wasdancing (need it be said with Mrs. Jos. Curtenly, second wife of theDeputy Mayor?), but the Countess stood resolutely smiling, surrounded byAldermen. Possibly she was getting her breath; possibly nobody had hadthe pluck to ask her. Anyhow she seemed to be stranded there, on abeach of Aldermen. Very wisely she had brought with her no members of ahouse-party from Sneyd Hall. Members of a house-party, at a municipalball, invariably operate as a bar between greatness and democracy; andthe Countess desired to participate in the life of the people.
"Why don't some of those johnnies ask her?" Denry burst out. He hadhitherto said nothing in the group, and he felt that he must be a manwith the rest of them.
"Well, _you_ go and do it. It's a free country," said Sillitoe.
"So I would, for two pins!" said Denry.
Harold Etches glanced at him, apparently resentful of his presencethere. Harold Etches was determined to put the extinguisher on _him_.
"I 'll bet you a fiver you don't," said Etches, scornfully.
"I 'll take you," said Denry very quickly, and very quickly walked off.
VII
"She can't eat me. She can't eat me!"
This was what he said to himself as he crossed the floor. People seemedto make a lane for him, divining his incredible intention. If he hadnot started at once, if his legs had not started of themselves, he wouldnever have started; and, not being in command of a fiver, he wouldafterwards have cut a preposterous figure in the group. But started hewas, like a piece of clockwork that could not be stopped! In the grandcrisis of his life something not himself, something more powerful thanhimself, jumped up in him and forced him to do things. Now for the firsttime he seemed to understand what had occurred within him in previouscrises.
In a second--so it appeared--he had reached the Countess. Just behindher was his employer, Mr. Duncalf, whom Denry had not previously noticedthere. Denry regretted this, for he had never mentioned to Mr. Duncalfthat he was coming to the ball, and he feared Mr. Duncalf.
"Could I have this dance with you?" he demanded bluntly, but smiling andshowing his teeth.
No ceremonial title! No mention of "pleasure" or "honour." Not a traceof the formula in which Ruth Earp had instructed him! He forgot allsuch trivialities.
("I've won that fiver, Mr. Harold Etches," he said to himself.)
The mouths of Aldermen inadvertently opened. Mr. Duncalf blenched.
"It's nearly over, is n't it?" said the Countess, still efficientlysmiling. She did not recognise Denry. In that suit he might have beena Foreign Office attache.
"Oh! that does n't matter, I 'm sure!" said Denry.
She yielded, and he took the paradisiacal creature in his arms. It washer business that evening to be universally and inclusively polite. Shecould not have begun with a refusal. A refusal might have dried up allother invitations whatsoever. Besides, she saw that the Aldermen wanteda lead. Besides, she was young, though a Countess, and adored dancing.
Thus they waltzed together, while the flower of Bursley's chivalry gazedin enchantment. The Countess's fan, depending from her arm, dangledagainst Denry's suit in a rather confusing fashion which withdrew hisattention from his feet. He laid hold of it gingerly between twounemployed fingers. Af
ter that he managed fairly well. Once they cameperilously near the Earl and his partner; nothing else. And then thedance ended, exactly when Denry had begun to savour the astoundingspectacle of himself enclasping the Countess.
The Countess had soon perceived that he was the merest boy.
"You waltz quite nicely!" she said, like an aunt, but with more than anaunt's smile.
"Do I?" he beamed. Then something compelled him to say: "Do you know,it's the first time I 've ever waltzed in my life, except in a lesson,you know?"
"Really!" she murmured. "You pick things up easily, I suppose?"
"Yes," he said. "Do you?"
Either the question or the tone sent the Countess off into carillons ofamusement. Everybody could see that Denry had made the Countess laughtremendously. It was on this note that the waltz finished. She wasstill laughing when he bowed to her (as taught by Ruth Earp). He couldnot comprehend why she had so laughed, save on the supposition that hewas more humorous than he had suspected. Anyhow he laughed too, andthey parted laughing. He remembered that he had made a marked effect(though not one of laughter) on the tailor by quickly returning thequestion, "Are you?" And his unpremeditated stroke with the Countesswas similar. When he had got ten yards on his way towards Harold Etchesand a fiver he felt something in his hand. The Countess's fan wassticking between his fingers. It had unhooked itself from her chain.He furtively pocketed it.
VIII
"Just the same as dancing with any other woman!"--he told this untruthin reply to a question from Sillitoe. It was the least he could do.And any other young man in his place would have said as much or aslittle.
"What was she laughing at?" somebody else asked.
"Ah!" said Denry judiciously, "wouldn't you like to know?"
"Here you are!" said Etches, with an unattentive, plutocratic gesturehanding over a five-pound note. He was one of those men who neverventure out of sight of a bank without a banknote in theirpockets--"because you never know what may turn up."
Denry accepted the note with a silent nod. In some directions he wasgifted with astounding insight. And he could read in the faces of thehaughty males surrounding him that in the space of a few minutes he hadrisen from nonentity into renown. He had become a great man. He did notat once realise how great, how renowned. But he saw enough in thoseeyes to cause his heart to glow, and to rouse in his brain thoseambitious dreams which stirred him upon occasion. He left the group; hehad need of motion, and also of that mental privacy which one may enjoywhile strolling about on a crowded floor, in the midst of a considerablenoise. He noticed that the Countess was now dancing with an Alderman,and that the Alderman, by an oversight inexcusable in an Alderman, wasnot wearing gloves. It was he, Denry, who had broken the ice so thatthe Aldermen might plunge into the water! He first had danced with theCountess, and had rendered her up to the Alderman with delicious gaietyupon her countenance. By instinct he knew Bursley, and he knew that hewould be talked of. He knew that, for a time at any rate, he woulddisplace even Jos. Curtenly, that almost professional "card" and amuserof burgesses, in the popular imagination. It would not be: "Have yeheard Jos.'s latest?" It would be: "Have ye heard about young Machin,Duncalf's clerk?"
Then he met Ruth Earp, strolling in the opposite direction with a younggirl, one of her pupils, of whom all he knew was that her name wasNellie, and that this was her first ball: a childish little thing with awistful face. He could not decide whether to look at Ruth or to avoidher glance. She settled the point by smiling at him in a manner thatcould not be ignored.
"Are you going to make it up to me for that waltz you missed?" said RuthEarp. She pretended to be vexed and stern, but he knew that she wasnot. "Or is your programme full?" she added.
"I should like to," he said simply.
"But perhaps you don't care to dance with us poor ordinary people, nowyou 've danced with the _Countess_!" she said, with a certain lofty andbitter pride.
He perceived that his tone had lacked eagerness.
"Don't talk like that," he said, as if hurt.
"Well," she said, "you can have the supper dance."
He took her programme to write on it.
"Why!" he said, "there's a name down here for the supper dance.'Herbert' it looks like."
"Oh!" she replied carelessly, "that's nothing. Cross it out."
So he crossed Herbert out.
"Why don't you ask Nellie here for a dance," said Ruth Earp.
And Nellie blushed. He gathered that the possible honour of dancingwith the supremely great man had surpassed Nellie's modest expectations.
"Can I have the next one?" he said.
"Oh, yes!" Nellie timidly whispered.
"It's a polka, and you are n't very good at polking, you know," Ruthwarned him. "Still, Nellie will pull you through."
Nellie laughed, in silver. The naive child thought that Ruth was tryingto joke at Denry's expense. Her very manifest joy and pride in beingseen with the unique Mr. Machin, in being the next after the Countess todance with him, made another mirror in which Denry could discern thereflection of his vast importance.
At the supper, which was worthy of the hospitable traditions of theChell family (though served standing-up in the police-court), he learntall the gossip of the dance from Ruth Earp; amongst other things thatmore than one young man had asked the Countess for a dance, and had beenrefused, though Ruth Earp for her part declined to believe that Aldermenand Councillors had utterly absorbed the Countess's programme. Ruthhinted that the Countess was keeping a second dance open for him, Denry.When she asked him squarely if he meant to request another from theCountess, he said, No, positively. He knew when to let well alone, aknowledge which is more precious than a knowledge of geography. Thesupper was the summit of Denry's triumph. The best people spoke to himwithout being introduced. And lovely creatures mysteriously andintoxicatingly discovered that programmes which had been crammed twohours before were not after all quite, quite full.
"Do tell us what the Countess was laughing at?" This question was shotat him at least thirty times. He always said he would not tell. And onegirl who had danced with Mr. Stanway, who had danced with the Countess,said that Mr. Stanway had said that the Countess would not tell, either.Proof, here, that he was being extensively talked about!
Toward the end of the festivity the rumour floated abroad that theCountess had lost her fan. The rumour reached Denry, who maintained aculpable silence. But when all was over, and the Countess wasdeparting, he rushed down after her, and in a dramatic fashion whichdemonstrated his genius for the effective, he caught her exactly as shewas getting into her carriage.
"I 've just picked it up," he said, pushing through the crowd ofworshippers.
"Oh! thank you so much!" she said. And the Earl also thanked Denry.And then the Countess, leaning from the carriage, said with archness inher efficient smile: "You do pick things up easily, don't you?"
And both Denry and the Countess laughed without restraint, and thepillars of Bursley society were mystified.
Denry winked at Jock as the horses pawed away. And Jock winked back.
The envied of all, Denry walked home, thinking violently. At a strokehe had become possessed of more than he could earn from Duncalf in amonth. The faces of the Countess, of Ruth Earp, and of the timid Nelliemingled in exquisite hallucinations before his tired eyes. He wasinexpressibly happy. Trouble, however, awaited him.
CHAPTER II. THE WIDOW HULLINS'S HOUSE
I
The simple fact that he first, of all the citizens of Bursley, had askeda Countess for a dance (and not been refused) made a new man of DenryMachin. He was not only regarded by the whole town as a fellowwonderful and dazzling; but he so regarded himself. He could not getover it. He had always been cheerful, even to optimism. He was now ina permanent state of calm, assured jollity. He would get up in themorning with song and dance. Bursley and the gen
eral world were nolonger Bursley and the general world; they had been mysteriouslytransformed into an oyster; and Denry felt strangely that theoyster-knife was lying about somewhere handy, but just out of sight, andthat presently he should spy it and seize it. He waited for somethingto happen.
And not in vain.
A few days after the historic revelry, Mrs. Codleyn called to seeDenry's employer. Mr. Duncalf was her solicitor. A stout, breathless,and yet muscular woman of near sixty, the widow of a chemist anddruggist who had made money before limited companies had taken theliberty of being pharmaceutical. The money had been largely invested inmortgage on cottage-property; the interest on it had not been paid, andlatterly Mrs. Codleyn had been obliged to foreclose, thus becoming theowner of some seventy cottages. Mrs. Codleyn, though they brought herin about twelve pounds a week gross, esteemed these cottages aninfliction, a bugbear, an affront, and a positive source of loss.Invariably she talked as though she would willingly present them toanybody who cared to accept; "and glad to be rid of 'em!" Most ownersof property talk thus. She particularly hated paying the rates on them.
Now there had recently occurred, under the direction of the BoroughSurveyor, a re-valuation of the whole town. This may not soundexciting; yet a re-valuation is the most exciting event (save amunicipal ball given by a titled mayor) that can happen in any town. Ifyour house is rated at L40 a year, and rates are 7/- in the L, and there-valuation lifts you up to L45, it means thirty-five shillings a yearright out of your pocket, which is the interest on L35. And if there-valuation drops you to L35, it means thirty-five shillings _in_ yourpocket, which is a box of Havanas or a fancy waistcoat. Is not thisexciting? And there are seven thousand houses in Bursley. Mrs. Codleynhoped that her ratable value would be reduced. She based the hopechiefly on the fact that she was a client of Mr. Duncalf, the TownClerk. The Town Clerk was not the Borough Surveyor and had nothing todo with the re-valuation. Moreover Mrs. Codleyn presumably entrustedhim with her affairs because she considered him an honest man, and anhonest man could not honestly have sought to tickle the Borough Surveyorout of the narrow path of rectitude in order to oblige a client.Nevertheless Mrs. Codleyn thought that because she patronised the TownClerk her rates ought to be reduced! Such is human nature in theprovinces--so different from human nature in London, where nobody everdreams of offering even a match to a municipal official, lest the actmight be construed into an insult.