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 awarehouse.
He jumped up. "Certainly," he said, very eager.
"I think you 'll see a small bottle of eau-de-cologne on the top of thepiano," she said, and shut her eyes.
He hastened away, full of his mission, and feeling himself to be aterrific cavalier and guardian of weak women. He felt keenly that hemust be equal to the situation. Yes, the small bottle of eau-de-colognewas on the top of the piano. He seized it and bore it to her on thewings of chivalry. He had not been aware that eau-de-cologne was aremedy for, or a palliative of headaches.
She opened her eyes, and with a great effort tried to be bright andbetter. But it was a failure. She took the stopper out of the bottleand sniffed first at the stopper and then at the bottle; then shespilled a few drops of the liquid on her handkerchief and applied thehandkerchief to her temples.
"It's easier," she said.
"Sure?" he asked. He did not know what to do with himself, whether tosit down and feign that she was well, or to remain standing in anattitude of respectful and grave anxiety. He thought he ought to depart;yet would it not be ungallant to desert her under the circumstances? Shewas 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 masterfulaccents. And added: "And I'll go? ... You ought to lie down. It's theonly 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 ofcommon-sense in Denry. He had been puzzling how he might neatly mentionthe rent while departing in a hurry so that she might lie down. And nowshe had solved the difficulty for him.
She stretched out her arm, and picked up a bunch of keys from a basketon a little table.
"You might just unlock that desk for me, will you?" she said. Andfurther, as she went through the keys one by one to select the rightkey: "Each quarter I 've put your precious Mr. Herbert Calvert's rent ina drawer in that desk.... Here 's the key." She held up the whole ringby the chosen key, and he accepted it. And she lay back once more inher chair, exhausted by her exertions.
"You must turn the key sharply in the lock," she said weakly, as hefumbled 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 ityielded 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. It_is_ a 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 bunchoff him.
"I 'm afraid you 've broken something in the lock," she announced, whichgentle 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 'snothing else for it. Or perhaps you 'd better say first thing to-morrowmorning. And then as soon as he 's done it, I 'll call and pay you themoney, myself. And you might tell your precious Mr. Herbert Calvertthat next quarter I shall give notice to leave."
"Don't you trouble to call, please!" said he. "I can easily pop inhere."
She sped him away in an enigmatic tone. He could not be sure whether hehad succeeded or failed, in her estimation, as a man of the world and apartaker of delicate teas.
"Don't _forget_ Allman's!" she enjoined him as he left the room. He wasto let himself out.
"Oh, no!" he said.
III
He was coming home late that night from the Sports Club, from adelectable 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, hegrew 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 ofthe dark summer night he perceived a vast and vague rectangular form inslow movement towards the slope of Brougham Street.
It was a pantechnicon van.
But the extraordinary thing was, not that it should be a pantechniconvan, but that it should be moving of its own accord and power. Forthere were no horses in front of it, and Denry saw that the doubleshafts had been pushed up perpendicularly, after the manner of carmenwhen they outspan. The pantechnicon was running away. It had perceivedthe wrath to come and was fleeing. Its guardians had evidently left itimperfectly scotched or braked and it had got loose.
It proceeded down the first bit of Brougham Street with a dignity worthyof its dimensions, and at the same time with apparently a certain senseof the humour of the situation. Then it seemed to be saying to itself:"Pantechnicons will be pantechnicons." Then it took on the absurdgravity of a man who is perfectly sure that he is not drunk.Nevertheless it kept fairly well to the middle of the road, but asthough the road were a tight rope.
The rumble of it increased as it approached Denry. He withdrew the keyfrom his mother's cottage and put it in his pocket. He was always athis finest in a crisis. And the onrush of the pantechnicon constituteda clear crisis. Lower down the gradient of Brougham Street was moredangerous, and it was within the possibilities that people inhabitingthe depths of the street might find themselves pitched out of bed by thesharp corner of a pantechnicon that was determined to be a pantechnicon.A pantechnicon whose ardour is fairly aroused may be capable ofsurpassing deeds. Whole thoroughfares might crumble before it.
As the pantechnicon passed Denry, at the rate of about three and a halfmiles an hour, he leaped, or rather he scrambled, on to it, losingnothing in the process except his straw hat, which remained a witness athis mother's door that her boy had been that way and departed underunusual circumstances.
Denry had the bright idea of dropping the shafts down, to act as abrake. But, unaccustomed to the manipulation of shafts, he was ratherslow in accomplishing the deed, and ere the first pair of shafts hadfallen the pantechnicon was doing quite eight miles an hour and thesteepest declivity was yet to come. Further the dropping of theleft-hand shafts jerked the van to the left, and Denry dropped the otherpair 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 ofthe road gave the pantechnicon something to think about for a fewseconds. But unfortunately the precipitousness of the street encouragedits headstrong caprices, and a few seconds later all four shafts werebroken; and the pantechnicon seemed to scent the open prairie. (What itreally did scent was the canal.) Then Denry discovered the brake, andfuriously struggled with the iron handle. He turned it and turned it,some forty revolutions. It seemed to have no effect. The miracle wasthat the pantechnicon maintained its course in the middle of the street.Presently Denry could vaguely distinguish the wall and double woodengates of the canal wharf. He could not jump off; the pantechnicon wasnow an express; and I doubt whether he would have jumped off even ifjumping off had not been madness. His was the kind of perseverancethat, for the fun of it, will perish in an attempt. The final fifty orsixty yards of Brougham Street were level, and the pantechnicon slightlyabated its haste. Denry could now plainly see, in the radiance of agas-lamp, the gates of the wharf, and on them the painted letters:"Shropshire Union Canal Coy. Lt
d. General Carriers. No admittanceexcept on business." He was heading straight for those gates, and thepantechnicon evidently had business within. It jolted over the ironguard of the weighing machine, and this jolt deflected it, so thatinstead of aiming at the gates it aimed for part of a gate and part of abrick 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 andviolent, owing partly to a number of bags of cement and partly to thepropinquity of the canal basin. The pantechnicon jumped into the canallike a mastodon, and drank.
Denry, clinging to the woodwork, was submerged for a moment, but bystanding on the narrow platform from which sprouted the splintered endsof the shafts, he could get his waist clear of the water. He was not aswimmer.
All was still; and dark, save for the faint stream of starlight on thebroad bosom of the canal basin. The pantechnicon had encountered nobodywhatever en route. Of its strange escapade Denry had been the solewitness.
"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 weare!"
"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 playingwith him! She had performed a comedy for him in two acts. She had meantto do what is called in the Five Towns "a moonlight flit." Thepantechnicon (doubtless from Birmingham, where her father was) had beenbrought to her door late in the evening, and was to have been filled andtaken away during the night. The horses had been stabled, probably inRuth's own yard, and while the carmen were reposing the pantechnicon hadgot 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 notthe 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 hertremendous and audacious enterprise; it appealed strongly to every cellin 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 doorsat the back, but a pantechnicon has a wheel-base which forbids leapingfrom wheel to wheel, especially when the wheels are under water. Hencehe was obliged to climb on to the roof, and so slide down on to the topof 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 theonly thing they had put into the van before they went off to have theirsupper or something. Furniture removers are always like that. Haven'tyou got a match?"
"I 've got scores of matches," said Denry. "But what good do you supposethey 'll be now? All soaked through!"
A short silence. He noticed that she had offered no explanation of herconduct towards himself. She seemed to take it for granted that hewould 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 andsacks 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 brokendown under the stress of events. He climbed out of the water on to thepart of the table which she was not occupying. And the van was as blackas Erebus.
Gradually, out of the welter of sobs, came faint articulations, andlittle by little he learnt the entire story of her difficulties, hermisfortunes, her struggles, and her defeats. He listened to a frankconfession of guilt. But what could she do? She had meant well. Butwhat could she do? She had been driven into a corner. And she had herfather to think of! Honestly, on the previous day, she had intended topay the rent, or part of it. But there had been a disappointment! Andshe had been so unwell. In short....
The van gave a lurch. She clutched at him and he at her. The van wassettling down for a comfortable night in the mud.
(Queer that it had not occurred to him before; but at the first visitshe had postponed paying him on the plea that the bank was closed; whileat the second visit she had stated that the actual cash had been slowlyaccumulating in her desk. And the discrepancy had not struck him! Suchis the influence of a tea-gown. However, he forgave her, inconsideration of her immense audacity.)
"What can we do?" she almost whispered. Her confidence in him affectedhim.
"Wait till it gets light," said he.
So they waited, amid the waste of waters. In a hot July it is notunpleasant 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 thatat the back of the pantechnicon the waste of waters extended for at mosta yard, and that it was easy, by climbing on to the roof, to jumptherefrom to the wharf. He did so; and then fixed a plank so that Ruthcould get ashore. Relieved of their weight the table floated out afterthem. Denry seized it, and set about smashing it to pieces with hisfeet.
"What _are_ you doing?" she asked faintly. She was too enfeebled toprotest more vigorously.
"Leave it to me," said Denry. "This table is the only thing that cangive 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 inthe van, and attached the heavy iron bar whose function was to keep thedoors closed. Then he sank the faggot of wood and iron in a distantcorner of the basin.
"There!" he said. "Now you understand, nothing's happened except that afurniture van 's run off and fallen into the canal, owing to the men'scarelessness.
"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, butthere 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, baptisingthe path as they walked. The Town Hall clock struck three as Denrycrept up his mother's stairs. He had seen not a soul.
IV
The exact truth in its details was never known to more than twoinhabitants of Bursley. The one clear certainty appeared to be thatDenry, in endeavouring to prevent a runaway pantechnicon from destroyingthe town, had travelled with it into the canal. The romantic trip wasaccepted as perfectly characteristic of Denry. Around this island offact washed a fabulous sea of uninformed gossip, in which assertionconflicted with assertion, and the names of Denry and Ruth werecontinually bumping against each other.
Mr. Herbert Calvert glanced queerly and perhaps sardonically at Denrywhen Denry called and handed over ten pounds (less commission) which hesaid 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. Theonly explanation I can think of is that that van must have come to thewrong house."
"Are you engaged to her?" Calvert asked, with amazing effront
ery.
Denry paused. "Yes," he said. "Are you?" Mr. Calvert wondered what hemeant.
He admitted to himself that the courtship had begun in a mannersurpassingly strange.
CHAPTER IV. WRECKING OF A LIFE
I
In the Five Towns, and perhaps elsewhere, there exists a custom invirtue of which a couple who have become engaged in the early summerfind themselves by a most curious coincidence at the same seasideresort, and often in the same street thereof, during August. Thus ithappened to Denry and to Ruth Earp. There had been difficulties--therealways are. A business man who lives by collecting weekly rentsobviously cannot go away for an indefinite period. And a young womanwho lives alone in the world is bound to respect public opinion.However, Ruth arranged that her girlish friend Nellie Cotterill, who hadgenerous parents, should accompany her. And the North StaffordshireRailway's philanthropic scheme of issuing four-shilling tourist returntickets to the seaside enabled Denry to persuade his mother and himselfthat he was not absolutely mad in contemplating a fortnight on theshores of England.
Ruth chose Llandudno, Llandudno being more stylish than either Rhyl orBlackpool, and not dearer. Ruth and Nellie had a double room in aboarding-house, No. 26, St. Asaph's Road (off the Marine Parade), andDenry had a small single room in another boarding-house, No. 28, St.Asaph's Road. The ideal could scarcely have been approached morenearly.
Denry had never seen the sea before. As, in his gayest clothes, hestrolled along the esplanade or on the pier between those two girls intheir gayest clothes, and mingled with the immense crowd ofpleasure-seekers and money-spenders, he was undoubtedly much impressedby the beauty and grandeur of the sea. But what impressed him far morethan the beauty and grandeur of the sea was the field for profitablecommercial enterprise which a place like Llandudno presented. He hadnot only his first vision of the sea, but his first genuine vision ofthe possibilities of amassing wealth by honest ingenuity. On themorning after his arrival he went out for a walk and lost himself nearthe Great Orme, and had to return hurriedly along the whole length ofthe Parade about nine o'clock. And through every ground-floor window ofevery house he saw a long table full of people eating and drinking thesame kinds of food. In Llandudno fifty thousand souls desired always toperform the same act at the same time; they wanted to be distracted andthey would do anything for the sake of distraction, and would pay forthe privilege. And they would all pay at once.