Denry the Audacious
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"Oh! I don't agree with you at all!" said Ruth. "Do you really think she ought to leave her parents just now? Her place is with her parents. And besides, between you and me, she 'll have a much better chance of marrying there than in this town – after all this – I can tell you. Of course I shall be very sorry to lose her – and Mrs. Cotterill, too. But…"
"I expect you 're right," Denry concurred.
And they sped on luxuriously through the lamplit night of the Five Towns. And Denry pointed out his house as they passed it. And they both thought much of the security of their positions in the world, and of their incomes, and of the honeyed deference of their bankers; and also of the mistake of being a failure. You could do nothing with a failure.
IV
On a frosty morning in early winter you might have seen them together in a different vehicle – a first-class compartment of the express from Knype to Liverpool. They had the compartment to themselves and they were installed therein with every circumstance of luxury. Both were enwrapped in furs, and a fur rug united their knees in its shelter. Magazines and newspapers were scatted about to the value of a labourer's hire for a whole day; and when Denry's eye met the guard's it said "shilling." In short, nobody could possibly be more superb than they were on that morning in that compartment.
The journey was the result of peculiar events.
Mr. Cotterill had made himself a bankrupt, and cast away the robe of a Town Councillor. He had submitted to the inquisitiveness of the Official Receiver and to the harsh prying of those rampant baying beasts, his creditors. He had laid bare his books, his correspondence, his lack of method, his domestic extravagance, and the distressing fact that he had continued to trade long after he knew himself to be insolvent. He had for several months, in the interests of the said beasts, carried on his own business as manager at a nominal salary. And gradually everything that was his had been sold. And during the final weeks the Cotterill family had been obliged to quit their dismantled house and exist in lodgings. It had been arranged that they should go to Canada by way of Liverpool, and on the day before the journey of Denry and Ruth to Liverpool they had departed from the borough of Bursley (which Mr. Cotterill had so extensively faced with terra-cotta) unhonoured and unsung. Even Denry, though he had visited them in their lodgings to say good-bye, had not seen them off at the station. But Ruth Capron-Smith had seen them off at the station. She had interrupted a sojourn at Southport in order to come to Bursley and despatch them therefrom with due friendliness. Certain matters had to be attended to after their departure, and Ruth had promised to attend to them.
Now immediately after seeing them off Ruth had met Denry in the street.
"Do you know," she said brusquely, "those people are actually going steerage? I 'd no idea of it. Mr. and Mrs. Cotterill kept it from me, and I should not have heard of it only from something Nellie said. That's why they 've gone to-day. The boat does n't sail till to-morrow afternoon."
"Steerage!" and Denry whistled.
"Yes," said Ruth. "Nothing but pride, of course. Old Cotterill wanted to have every penny he could scrape so as to be able to make the least tiny bit of a show when he gets to Toronto, and so – steerage! Just think of Mrs. Cotterill and Nellie in the steerage! If I'd known of it I should have altered that, I can tell you, and pretty quickly too; and now it's too late."
"No, it is n't," Denry contradicted her flatly.
"But they 've gone."
"I could telegraph to Liverpool for saloon berths – there 's bound to be plenty at this time of year – and I could run over to Liverpool to-morrow and catch 'em on the boat and make 'em change."
She asked him whether he really thought he could, and he assured her.
"Second-cabin berths would be better," said she.
"Why?"
"Well, because of dressing for dinner and so on. They have n't got the clothes, you know."
"Of course," said Denry.
"Listen," she said, with an enchanting smile. "Let's halve the cost, you and I. And let's go to Liverpool together and – er – make the little gift and arrange things. I 'm leaving for Southport to-morrow, and Liverpool's on my way."
Denry was delighted by the suggestion, and telegraphed to Liverpool, with success.
Thus they found themselves on that morning in the Liverpool express together. The work of benevolence in which they were engaged had a powerful influence on their mood, which grew both intimate and tender. Ruth made no concealment of her regard for Denry; and as he gazed across the compartment at her, exquisitely mature (she was slightly older than himself), dressed to a marvel, perfect in every detail of manner, knowing all that was to be known about life, and secure in a handsome fortune – as he gazed, Denry reflected, joyously, victoriously:
"I 've got the dibs, of course. But she's got 'em too – perhaps more. Therefore she must like me for myself alone. This brilliant creature has been everywhere and seen everything, and she comes back to the Five Towns and comes back to me."
It was his proudest moment. And in it he saw his future far more dazzlingly glorious than he had dreamt – even as late as six months before.
"When shall you be out of mourning?" he inquired.
"In two months," said she.
This was not a proposal and acceptance, but it was very nearly one. They were silent, and happy.
Then she said:
"Do you ever have business at Southport?"
And he said, in a unique manner:
"I shall have."
Another silence. This time, he felt, he would marry her.
V
The White Star liner Titubic stuck out of the water like a row of houses against the landing-stage. There was a large crowd on her promenade deck, and a still larger crowd on the landing-stage. Above the promenade deck officers paced on the navigating deck, and above that was the airy bridge, and above that the funnels, smoking, and somewhere still higher a flag or two fluttering in the icy breeze. And behind the crowd on the landing-stage stretched a row of four-wheeled cabs and rickety horses. The landing-stage swayed ever so slightly on the tide. Only the ship was apparently solid, apparently cemented in foundations of concrete.
On the starboard side of the promenade deck, among a hundred other small groups, was a group consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Cotterill and Ruth and Denry. Nellie stood a few feet apart. Mrs. Cotterill was crying. People naturally thought she was crying because of the adieux. But she was not. She wept because Denry and Ruth by sheer force of will had compelled them to come out of the steerage and occupy beautiful and commodious berths in the second cabin, where the manner of the stewards was quite different. She wept because they had been caught in the steerage. She wept because she was ashamed, and because people were too kind. She was at once delighted and desolated. She wanted to outpour psalms of gratitude, and also she wanted to curse.
Mr. Cotterill said stiffly that he should repay – and that soon.
An immense bell sounded impatiently.
"We 'd better be shunting," said Denry. "That's the second."
In exciting crises he sometimes employed such peculiar language as this. And he was very excited. He had done a great deal of rushing about. The upraising of the Cotterill family from the social Hades of the steerage to the respectability of the second cabin had demanded all his energy and a lot of Ruth's.
Ruth kissed Mrs. Cotterill and then Nellie. And Mrs. Cotterill and Nellie acquired rank and importance for the whole voyage by reason of being kissed in public by a woman so elegant and aristocratic as Ruth Capron-Smith.
And Denry shook hands. He looked brightly at the parents, but he could not look at Nellie; nor could she look at him; their handshaking was perfunctory. For months their playful intimacy had been in abeyance.
"Good-bye!"
"Good luck!"
"Thanks. Good-bye!"
"Good-bye!"
The horrible bell continued to insist.
"All non-passengers ashore! All ashore!"
The numerous gangways were thronged with people obeying the call, and handkerchiefs began to wave. And there was a regular vibrating tremor through the ship.
Mr. and Mrs. Cotterill turned away.
Ruth and Denry approached the nearest gangway, and Denry stood aside and made a place for her to pass. And, as always, a number of women pushed into the gangways immediately after her and Denry had to wait, being a perfect gentleman.
His eye caught Nellie's. She had not moved.
He felt then as he had never felt in his life. No, absolutely never! Her sad, her tragic glance rendered him so uncomfortable, and yet so deliciously uncomfortable, that the symptoms startled him. He wondered what would happen to his legs. He was not sure that he had legs.
However, he demonstrated the existence of his legs by running up to Nellie. Ruth was by this time swallowed in the crowd on the landing-stage. He looked at Nellie. Nellie looked at him. Her lips twitched.
"What am I doing here?" he asked of his soul.
She was not at all well dressed. She was indeed shabby – in a steerage style. Her hat was awry; her gloves miserable. No girlish pride in her distraught face! No determination to overcome fate! No consciousness of ability to meet a bad situation. Just those sad eyes and those twitching lips.
"Look here!" Denry whispered. "You must come ashore for a second. I 've something I want to give you, and I 've left it in the cab."
"But there's no time. The bell's…"
"Bosh!" he exclaimed, gruffly, extinguishing her timid childish voice. "You won't go for at least a quarter of an hour. All that's only a dodge to get people off in plenty of time. Come on, I tell you."
And in a sort of hysteria he seized her thin, long hand, and dragged her along the deck to another gangway, down whose steep slope they stumbled together. The crowd of sightseers and handkerchief-wavers jostled them. They could see nothing but heads and shoulders and the great side of the ship rising above. Denry turned her back on the ship.
"This way!" He still held her hand.
He struggled to the cab-rank.
"Which one is it?" she asked.
"Any one. Never mind which. Jump in!" And to the first driver whose eye met his, he said: "Lime-street Station."
The gangways were being drawn away. A hoarse boom filled the air, and then a cheer.
"But I shall miss the boat," the dazed girl protested.
"Jump in!"
He pushed her in.
"But I shall miss the…"
"I know you will," he replied, as if angrily. "Do you suppose I was going to let you go by that steamer? Not much!"
"But mother and father…"
"I 'll telegraph. They 'll get it on landing."
"And where's Ruth?"
"Be hanged to Ruth!" he shouted furiously.
As the cab rattled over the cobbles, the Titubic slipped away from the landing-stage. The irretrievable had happened.
Nellie burst into tears.
"Look here!" Denry said savagely. "If you don't dry up, I shall have to cry myself!"
"What are you going to do with me?" she whimpered.
"Well, what do you think? I 'm going to marry you, of course."
His aggrieved tone might have been supposed to imply that people had tried to thwart him, but that he had no intention of being thwarted, nor of asking permissions, nor of conducting himself as anything but a fierce tyrant.
As for Nellie, she seemed to surrender.
Then he kissed her – also angrily. He kissed her several times – yes, even in Lord-street itself – less and less angrily.
"Where are you taking me to?" she inquired humbly, as a captive.
"I shall take you to my mother's," he said.
"Will she like it?"
"She 'll either like it or lump it," said Denry. "It 'll take a fortnight."
"What?"
"The notice, and things."
In the train, in the midst of a great submissive silence, she murmured:
"It 'll be simply awful for father and mother."
"That can't be helped," said he. "And they 'll be far too seasick to bother their heads about you."
"You can't think how you 've staggered me," said she.
"You can't think how I 've staggered myself," said he.
"When did you decide to…"
"When I was standing at the gangway and you looked at me," he answered.
"But…"
"It's no use butting," he said. "I 'm like that… That's me, that is!"
It was the bare truth that he had staggered himself. But he had staggered himself into a miraculous, ecstatic happiness. She had no money, no clothes, no style, no experience, no particular gifts. But she was she. And when he looked at her, calmed, he knew that he had done well for himself. He knew that if he had not yielded to that terrific impulse he would have done badly for himself.
Mrs. Machin had what she called a ticklish night of it.
VI
The next day he received a note from Ruth, dated Southport, inquiring how he came to lose her on the landing-stage, and expressing concern. It took him three days to reply, and even then the reply was a bad one. He had behaved infamously to Ruth: so much could not be denied. Within three hours of practically proposing to her he had run off with a simple girl who was not fit to hold a candle to her. And he did not care. That was the worst of it: he did not care.
Of course the facts reached her. The facts reached everybody; for the singular reappearance of Nellie in the streets of Bursley immediately after her departure for Canada had to be explained. Moreover, the infamous Denry was rather proud of the facts. And the town inevitably said: "Machin all over, that! Snatching the girl off the blooming lugger! Machin all over!" And Denry agreed privately that it was Machin all over.
"What other chap," he demanded of the air, "would have thought of it? Or had the pluck…"
It was mere malice on the part of Destiny that caused Denry to run across Mrs. Capron-Smith at Euston some weeks later. Happily they both had immense nerve.
"Dear me!" said she. "What are you doing here?"
"Only honeymooning," he said.
CHAPTER XI. IN THE ALPS
I
Although Denry was extremely happy as a bridegroom, and capable of the most foolish symptoms of affection in private, he said to himself, and he said to Nellie (and she sturdily agreed with him): "We aren't going to be the ordinary silly honeymooners." By which, of course, he meant that they would behave so as to be taken for staid married persons. They failed thoroughly in this enterprise as far as London, where they spent a couple of nights, but on leaving Charing Cross they made a new and a better start, in the light of experience.
The destination – it need hardly be said – was Switzerland. After Mrs. Capron-Smith's remarks on the necessity of going to Switzerland in winter if one wished to respect one's self, there was really no alternative to Switzerland. Thus it was announced in the Signal (which had reported the wedding in ten lines, owing to the excessive quietude of the wedding) that Mr. and Mrs. Councillor Machin were spending a month at Mont Pridoux, sur Montreux, on the Lake of Geneva. And the announcement looked very well.
At Dieppe they got a through carriage. There were several through carriages for Switzerland on the train. In walking through the corridors from one to another Denry and Nellie had their first glimpse of the world which travels and which runs off for a holiday whenever it feels in the mood. The idea of going for a holiday in any month but August seemed odd to both of them. Denry was very bold and would insist on talking in a naturally loud voice. Nellie was timid and clinging. "What do you say?" Denry would roar at her when she half-whispered something, and she had to repeat it so that all could hear. It was part of their plan to address each other curtly, brusquely, and to frown, and to pretend to be slightly bored by each other.
They were outclassed by the world which travels. Try as they might, even Denry was morally intimidated. He had managed his clothes fairly correctly; he was not ashamed of them; and Nellie's were by no means the worst in the compartments; indeed, according to the standard of some of the most intimidating women, Nellie's costume erred in not being quite sufficiently negligent, sufficiently "anyhow." And they had plenty, and ten times plenty of money, and the consciousness of it. Expense was not being spared on that honeymoon. And yet… Well, all that can be said is that the company was imposing. The company, which was entirely English, seemed to be unaware that any one ever did anything else but travel luxuriously to places mentioned in second-year geographies. It astounded Nellie that there should be so many people in the world with nothing to do but spend. And they were constantly saying the strangest things with an air of perfect calm.
"How much did you pay for the excess luggage?" an untidy young woman asked of an old man.
"Oh! Thirteen pounds," answered the old man carelessly.
And not long before Nellie had scarcely escaped ten days in the steerage of an Atlantic liner.
After dinner in the restaurant car – no champagne because it was vulgar, but a good sound expensive wine – they felt more equal to the situation, more like part-owners of the train. Nellie prudently went to bed ere the triumphant feeling wore off. But Denry stayed up smoking in the corridor. He stayed up very late, being too proud and happy and too avid of new sensations to be able to think of sleep. It was a match which led to a conversation between himself and a thin, drawling, overbearing fellow with an eyeglass. Denry had hated this lordly creature all the way from Dieppe. In presenting him with a match he felt that he was somehow getting the better of him, for the match was precious in the nocturnal solitude of the vibrating corridor. The mere fact that two people are alone together and awake, divided from a sleeping or sleepy population only by a row of closed, mysterious doors, will do much to break down social barriers. The excellence of Denry's cigar also helped. It atoned for the breadth of his accent.
He said to himself:
"I 'll have a bit of a chat with this johnny."
And then he said aloud:
"Not a bad train this!"
"No!" the eyeglass agreed languidly. "Pity they give you such a beastly dinner!"
And Denry agreed hastily that it was.
Soon they were chatting of places, and somehow it came out of Denry that he was going to Montreux. The eyeglass professed its indifference to Montreux in winter, but said the resorts above Montreux were all right, such as Caux or Pridoux.
And Denry said:
"Well, of course, should n't think of stopping in Montreux. Going to try Pridoux."
The eyeglass said it wasn't going so far as Switzerland yet; it meant to stop in the Jura.
"Geneva's a pretty deadly place, ain't it?" said the eyeglass after a pause.
"Ye-es," said Denry.
"Been there since that new esplanade was finished?"
"No," said Denry. "I saw nothing of it."
"When were you there?"
"Oh! A couple of years ago."
"Ah! It was n't started then. Comic thing! Of course they 're awfully proud in Geneva of the view of Mont Blanc."
"Yes," said Denry.
"Ever noticed how queer women are about that view? They 're no end keen on it at first, but after a day or two it gets on their nerves."
"Yes," said Denry. "I 've noticed that myself. My wife…"
He stopped because he did n't know what he was going to say.
The eyeglass nodded understandingly. "All alike," it said. "Odd thing!"
When Denry introduced himself into the two-berth compartment which he had managed to secure at the end of the carriage for himself and Nellie, the poor tired child was as wakeful as an owl.
"Who have you been talking to?" she yawned.
"The eyeglass johnny."
"Oh! Really!" Nellie murmured, interested and impressed. "With him, have you? I could hear voices. What sort of a man is he?"
"He seems to be an ass," said Denry. "Fearfully haw-haw. Could n't stand him for long. I 've made him believe we 've been married for two years."
II
They stood on the balcony of the Hotel Beau-Site of Mont Pridoux. A little below, to the right, was the other hotel, the Métropole, with the red-and-white Swiss flag waving over its central tower. A little below that was the terminal station of the funicular railway from Montreux. The railway ran down the sheer of the mountain into the roofs of Montreux, like a wire. On it, two toy trains crawled towards each other, like flies climbing and descending a wall. Beyond the fringe of hotels that constituted Montreux was a strip of water, and beyond the water a range of hills white at the top.
"So these are the Alps!" Nellie exclaimed.
She was disappointed; he also. But when Denry learnt from the guide-book and by enquiry that the strip of lake was seven miles across, and the highest notched peaks ten thousand feet above the sea and twenty-five miles off, Nellie gasped and was content.
They liked the Hotel Beau-Site. It had been recommended to Denry, by a man who knew what was what, as the best hotel in Switzerland. "Don't you be misled by prices," the man had said. And Denry was not. He paid sixteen francs a day for the two of them at the Beau-Site, and was rather relieved than otherwise by the absence of finger-bowls. Everything was very good, except sometimes the hot water. The hot-water cans bore the legend "hot water," but these two words were occasionally the only evidence of heat in the water. On the other hand, the bedrooms could be made sultry by merely turning a handle; and the windows were double. Nellie was wondrously inventive. They breakfasted in bed, and she would save butter and honey from the breakfast to furnish forth afternoon tea, which was not included in the terms. She served the butter freshly with ice by the simple expedient of leaving it outside the window of a night! And Denry was struck by this housewifery.
The other guests appeared to be of a comfortable, companionable class, with, as Denry said, "no frills." They were amazed to learn that a chattering little woman of thirty-five, who gossiped with everybody, and soon invited Denry and Nellie to have tea in her room, was an authentic Russian Countess – inscribed in the visitors' lists as "Comtesse Ruhl (with maid), Moscow." Her room was the untidiest that Nellie had ever seen, and the tea a picnic. Still, it was thrilling to have had tea with a Russian Countess. (Plots! Nihilism! Secret police! Marble palaces!) Those visitors' lists were breath-taking. Pages and pages of them; scores of hotels, thousands of names, nearly all English – and all people who came to Switzerland in winter, having naught else to do! Denry and Nellie bathed in correctness as in a bath.
The only persons in the hotel with whom they did not "get on" nor "hit it off" were a military party, chiefly named Clutterbuck, and presided over by a Major Clutterbuck and his wife. They sat at a large table in a corner – father, mother, several children, a sister-in-law, a sister, a governess, eight heads in all; and while utterly polite they seemed to draw a ring round themselves. They grumbled at the hotel; they played bridge (then a newish game); and once, when Denry and the Countess played with them (Denry being an adept card-player) for shilling points, Denry overheard the sister-in-law say that she was sure Captain Deverax would n't play for shilling points. This was the first rumour of the existence of Captain Deverax; but afterwards Captain Deverax began to be mentioned several times a day. Captain Deverax was coming to join them, and it seemed that he was a very particular man. Soon all the rest of the hotel had got its back up against this arriving Captain Deverax. Then a Clutterbuck cousin came, a smiling, hard, fluffy woman, and pronounced definitely that the Hotel Beau-Site would never do for Captain Deverax. This cousin aroused Denry's hostility in a strange way. She imparted to the Countess (who united all sects) her opinion that Denry and Nellie were on their honeymoon. At night in a corner of the drawing-room the Countess delicately but bluntly asked Nellie if she had been married long. "No," said Nellie. "A month?" asked the Countess smiling. "N-no!" said Nellie.