It was on a Saturday morning that Mrs. Codleyn called to impart to Mr.Duncalf the dissatisfaction with which she had learned the news (printedon a bit of bluish paper) that her ratable value, far from beingreduced, had been slightly augmented.
The interview, as judged by the clerks through a lath-and-plaster walland by means of a speaking tube, atoned by its vivacity for its lack ofceremony. When the stairs had finished creaking under the descent ofMrs. Codleyn's righteous fury, Mr. Duncalf whistled sharply twice. Twowhistles meant Denry. Denry picked up his shorthand note-book andobeyed the summons.
"Take this down," said his master rudely and angrily.
Just as though Denry had abetted Mrs. Codleyn! Just as though Denry wasnot a personage of high importance in the town, the friend ofCountesses, and a shorthand clerk only on the surface!
"Do you hear?"
"Yes, sir."
"Madam"--hitherto it had always been "dear Madam," or "dear Mrs.Codleyn"--"Madam. Of course I need hardly say that if, after ourinterview this morning and your extraordinary remarks, you wish to placeyour interests in other hands, I shall be most happy to hand over allthe papers on payment of my costs. Yours truly ... To Mrs. Codleyn."
Denry reflected. "Ass! Why does n't he let her cool down?" Also:"He's got 'hands' and 'hand' in the same sentence. Very ugly. Showswhat a temper he's in!" Shorthand clerks are always likethat--hypercritical. Also: "Well, I jolly well hope she does chuck him!Then I sha n't have those rents to collect." Every Monday, and often onTuesday too, Denry collected the rents of Mrs. Codleyn's cottages: anodious task for Denry. Mr. Duncalf, though not affected by itsodiousness, deducted 7-1/2 Per cent. for the job from the rents.
"That 'll do," said Mr. Duncalf.
But as Denry was leaving the room, Mr. Duncalf called with formidablebrusqueness:
"Machin."
"Yes, sir?"
In a flash Denry knew what was coming. He felt, sickly, that a crisishad supervened with the suddenness of a tidal wave. And for one littlesecond it seemed to him that to have danced with a Countess while theflower of Bursley's chivalry watched in envious wonder, was not afterall the key to the door of success throughout life.
Undoubtedly he had practised fraud in sending to himself an invitationto the ball! Undoubtedly he had practised fraud in sending invitationsto his tailor and his dancing-mistress! On the day after the ball,beneath his great glory, he had trembled to meet Mr. Duncalf's eye lestMr. Duncalf should ask him: "Machin, what were _you_ doing at the TownHall last night, behaving as if you were the Shah of Persia, the Princeof Wales, and Mr. George Alexander?" But Mr. Duncalf had said nothing,and Mr. Duncalf's eye had said nothing, and Denry thought that thedanger was past.
Now it surged up.
"Who invited you to the Mayor's ball?" demanded Mr. Duncalf likethunder.
Yes, there it was! And a very difficult question!
"I did, sir," he blundered out. Transparent veracity! He simply couldnot think of a lie.
"Why?"
"I thought you 'd perhaps forgotten to put my name down on the list ofinvitations, sir."
"Oh!" This, grimly. "And I suppose you thought I 'd also forgotten toput down that tailor chap, Sillitoe?"
So it was all out! Sillitoe must have been chattering. Denryremembered that the classic established tailor of the town, Hatterton,whose trade Sillitoe was filching, was a particular friend of Mr.Duncalf's. He saw the whole thing.
"Well?" persisted Mr. Duncalf, after a judicious silence from Denry.
Denry, sheltered in the castle of his silence, was not to be temptedout.
"I suppose you rather fancy yourself, dancing with your betters?"growled Mr. Duncalf, menacingly.
"Yes," said Denry. "Do _you_?"
He had not meant to say it. The question slipped out of his mouth. Hehad recently formed the habit of retorting swiftly upon people who putqueries to him: "Yes, are _you_?" or "No, do _you_?" The trick ofspeech had been enormously effective with Sillitoe, for instance, andwith the Countess. He was in process of acquiring renown for it.Certainly it was effective now. Mr. Duncalf's dance with the Countesshad come to an ignominious conclusion in the middle, Mr. Duncalfpreferring to dance on skirts rather than on the floor--and the fact wasnotorious.
"You can take a week's notice," said Mr. Duncalf pompously.
It was no argument. But employers are so unscrupulous in analtercation.
"Oh, very well!" said Denry; and to himself he said: "Something _must_turn up, now."
He felt dizzy, at being thus thrown upon the world--he who had beenmeditating the propriety of getting himself elected to the stylish andnewly-established Sports Club at Hillport! He felt enraged, for Mr.Duncalf had only been venting on Denry the annoyance induced on him byMrs. Codleyn. But it is remarkable that he was not depressed at all.No! he went about with songs and whistling, though he had no prospectsexcept starvation or living on his mother. He traversed the streets inhis grand, new manner, and his thoughts ran: "What on earth can I do tolive up to my reputation?"
However he possessed intact the five-pound note won from Harold Etchesin the matter of the dance.
II
Every life is a series of coincidences. Nothing happens that is notrooted in coincidence. All great changes find their cause incoincidence. Therefore I shall not mince the fact that the next changein Denry's career was due to an enormous and complicated coincidence.On the following morning both Mrs. Codleyn and Denry were late forservice at St. Luke's Church--Mrs. Codleyn by accident and obesity,Denry by design. Denry was later than Mrs. Codleyn, whom he discoveredwaiting in the porch. That Mrs. Codleyn was waiting is an essentialpart of the coincidence. Now Mrs. Codleyn would not have been waitingif her pew had not been right at the front of the church, near thechancel. Nor would she have been waiting if she had been a thin womanand not given to breathing loudly after a hurried walk. She waitedpartly to get her breath, and partly so that she might take advantage ofa hymn or a psalm to gain her seat without attracting attention. If shehad not been late, if she had not been stout, if she had not had a seatunder the pulpit, if she had not had an objection to making herselfconspicuous, she would have been already in the church and Denry wouldnot have had a private colloquy with her.
"Well, you 're nice people, I must say!" she observed, as he raised hishat.
She meant Duncalf and all Duncalf's myrmidons. She was still full of hergrievance. The letter which she had received that morning had startledher. And even the shadow of the sacred edifice did not prevent her fromreferring to an affair that was more suited to Monday than to Sundaymorning. A little more, and she would have snorted.
"Nothing to do with me, you know!" Denry defended himself.
"Oh!" she said, "you 're all alike and I 'll tell you this, Mr. Machin,I 'd take him at his word if it was n't that I don't know who else Icould trust to collect my rents. I 've heard such tales aboutrent-collectors.... I reckon I shall have to make my peace with him."
"Why!" said Denry. "I 'll keep on collecting your rents for you if youlike."
"You?"
"I 've given him notice to leave!" said Denry. "The fact is, Mr. Duncalfand I don't hit it off together."
Another procrastinator arrived in the porch, and, by a singularsimultaneous impulse, Mrs. Codleyn and Denry fell into the silence ofthe overheard and wandered forth together among the graves.
There, among the graves, she eyed him. He was a clerk at eighteenshillings a week, and he looked it. His mother was a sempstress, and helooked it. The idea of neat but shabby Denry and the mighty Duncalf nothitting it off together seemed excessively comic. If only Denry couldhave worn his dress-suit at church! It vexed him exceedingly that hehad only worn that expensive dress-suit once, and saw no faintest hopeof ever being able to wear it again.
"And what's more," Denry pursued, "I 'll collect 'em for five per cent.instead of seven and a half. Give me a free hand and see if I don't getbet
ter results than _he_ did. And I 'll settle accounts every month, orweek if you like, instead of once a quarter, like _he_ does."
The bright and beautiful idea had smitten Denry like some heavenlyarrow. It went through him and pierced Mrs. Codleyn with equal success.It was an idea that appealed to the reason, to the pocket, and to theinstinct of revenge. Having revengefully settled the hash of Mr.Duncalf, they went into church.
No need to continue this part of the narrative! Even the text of therector's sermon has no bearing on the issue.
In a week there was a painted board affixed to the door of Denry'smother: "E. H. Machin, Rent Collector, and Estate Agent." There wasalso an inch advertisement in the _Signal_ announcing that Denry managedestates large or small.
III
The next crucial event in Denry's career happened one Monday morning, ina cottage that was very much smaller even than his mother's. Thiscottage, part of Mrs. Codleyn's multitudinous property, stood by itselfin Chapel Alley, behind the Wesleyan Chapel; the majority of thetenements were in Carpenter's Square, near to. The neighbourhood wasnot distinguished for its social splendour; but existence in it waspicturesque, varied, exciting, full of accidents, as existence is apt tobe in residences that cost their occupiers an average of three shillingsa week. Some persons referred to the quarter as a slum, and ironicallyinsisted on its adjacency to the Wesleyan Chapel, as though that was theWesleyan Chapel's fault. Such people did not understand life and thejoy thereof.
The solitary cottage had a front-yard, about as large as a blanket,surrounded by an insecure brick wall and paved with mud. You went uptwo steps, pushed at a door, and instantly found yourself in theprincipal reception-room, which no earthly blanket could possibly havecovered. Behind this chamber could be seen obscurely an apartment sotiny that an auctioneer would have been justified in terming it "bijou,"furnished simply but practically with a slopstone; also the beginningsof a stairway. The furniture of the reception-room comprised two chairsand a table, one or two saucepans, and some antique crockery. What layat the upper end of the stairway no living person knew, save the oldwoman, who slept there. The old woman sat at the fire-place, "allbunched up," as they say in the Five Towns. The only fire in the room,however, was in the short clay pipe which she smoked; Mrs. Hullins wasone of the last old women in Bursley to smoke a cutty; and even then thepipe was considered coarse, and cigarettes were coming intofashion--though not in Chapel Alley. Mrs. Hullins smoked her pipe, andthought about nothing in particular. Occasionally some vision of thepast floated through her drowsy brain. She had lived in that residencefor over forty years. She had brought up eleven children and twohusbands there. She had coddled thirty-five grandchildren there, andgiven instruction to some half-dozen daughters-in-law. She had knownmidnights when she could scarcely move in that residence withoutdisturbing somebody asleep. Now she was alone in it. She never leftit, except to fetch water from the pump in the Square. She had seen alot of life, and she was tired.
Denry came unceremoniously in, smiling gaily and benevolently, with hisbright, optimistic face under his fair brown hair. He had large andgood teeth. He was getting--not stout, but plump.
"Well, mother!" he greeted Mrs. Hullins, and sat down on the otherchair.
A young fellow obviously at peace with the world, a young fellow contentwith himself for the moment! No longer a clerk; one of the employed;saying "sir" to persons with no more fingers and toes than he hadhimself; bound by servile agreement to be in a fixed place at fixedhours! An independent unit, master of his own time and his ownmovements! In brief, a man! The truth was that he earned now in twodays a week slightly more than Mr. Duncalf paid him for the labour offive and a half days. His income, as collector of rents and manager ofestates large or small, totalled about a pound a week. But he walkedforth in the town, smiled, poked, spoke vaguely, and said "Do _you_?" tosuch a tune that his income might have been guessed to be anything fromten pounds a week to ten thousand a year. And he had four days a weekin which to excogitate new methods of creating a fortune.
"I 've nowt for ye!" said the old woman, not moving.
"Come, come, now! That won't do!" said Denry. "Have a pinch of mytobacco!"
She accepted a pinch of his tobacco, and refilled her pipe, and he gaveher a match.
"I 'm not going out of this house without half a crown at any rate!"said Denry blithely.
And he rolled himself a cigarette, possibly to keep warm. It was verychilly in the stuffy residence, but the old woman never shivered. Shewas one of those old women who seem to wear all the skirts of all theirlives, one over the other.
"Ye 're here for th' better part o' some time, then," observed Mrs.Hullins, looking facts in the face. "I 've told ye about my son Jack.He 's been playing [out of work] six weeks. He starts to-day, and he'll gi' me summat Saturday."
"That won't do," said Denry, curtly and kindly.
He then, with his bluff benevolence, explained to Mother Hullins thatMrs. Codleyn would stand no further increase of arrears, from anybody,that she could not afford to stand any further increase of arrears, thather tenants were ruining her, and that he himself, with all his cheerygood will for the rent-paying classes, would be involved in her fall.
"Six and forty years have I been i' this 'ere house!" said Mrs. Hullins.
"Yes, I know," said Denry. "And look at what you owe, mother!"
It was with immense good-humoured kindliness that he invited herattention to what she owed. She tacitly declined to look at it.
"Your children ought to keep you," said Denry, upon her silence.
"Them as is dead, can't," said Mrs. Hullins, "and them as is alive hastheir own to keep, except Jack."
"Well, then, it's bailiffs," said Denry, but still cheerfully.
"Nay, nay! Ye 'll none turn me out."
Denry threw up his hands, as if to exclaim: "I 've done all I can, and I've given you a pinch of tobacco. Besides, you ought not to be herealone. You ought to be with one of your children."
There was more conversation, which ended in Denry repeating, withsympathetic resignation:
"No, you 'll have to get out. It's bailiffs."
Immediately afterwards he left the residence, with a bright filialsmile. And then, in two minutes, he popped his cheerful head in at thedoor again.
"Look here, mother," he said, "I 'll lend you half a crown if you like."
Charity beamed on his face, and genuinely warmed his heart.
"But you must pay me something for the accommodation," he added. "Ican't do it for nothing. You must pay me back next week and give methreepence. That's fair. I could n't bear to see you turned out ofyour house. Now, get your rent-book."
And he marked half a crown as paid in her greasy, dirty rent-book, andthe same in his large book.
"Eh, you 're a queer 'un, Mester Machin!" murmured the old woman, as heleft. He never knew precisely what she meant. Fifteen--twenty yearslater in his career, her intonation of that phrase would recur to himand puzzle him.
On the following Monday everybody in Chapel Alley and Carpenter's Squareseemed to know that the inconvenience of bailiffs and eviction could beavoided by arrangement with Denry the philanthropist. He did quite abusiness. And having regard to the fantastic nature of the security, hecould not well charge less than threepence a week for half a crown.That was about forty per cent. a month and five hundred per cent. perannum. The security was merely fantastic, but nevertheless, he had hisremedy against evil-doers. He would take what they paid him for rentand refuse to mark it as rent, appropriating it to his loans; so thatthe fear of bailiffs was upon them again. Thus, as the good genius ofChapel Alley and Carpenter's Square, saving the distressed from therigours of the open street, rescuing the needy from their tightestcorners, keeping many a home together when but for him it would havefallen to pieces, always smiling, jolly, sympathetic, and picturesque,Denry at length employed the five-pound note won from Harold Etches. Afive-pound
note--especially a new and crisp one, as this was--is amiraculous fragment of matter, wonderful in the pleasure which the sightof it gives even to millionaires; but perhaps no five-pound note wasever so miraculous as Denry's. Ten per cent. per week, compoundinterest, mounts up; it ascends; and it lifts. Denry never talkedprecisely. But the town soon began to comprehend that he was a risingman, a man to watch. The town admitted that, so far, he had lived up tohis reputation as a dancer with countesses. The town felt that there wassomething indefinable about Denry.
Denry himself felt this. He did not consider himself clever, norbrilliant. But he considered himself peculiarly gifted. He consideredhimself different from other men. His thoughts would run: