Kitabı oku: «Denry the Audacious», sayfa 6

IV

Beyond getting his feet wet Denry accomplished but little in the dark basement of the pier. In spite of his success in hauling on the thrown rope, he seemed to be classed at once down there by the experts assembled as an eager and useless person who had no right to the space which he occupied. However, he witnessed the heaving arrival of the lifeboat and the disembarking of the rescued crew of the Norwegian barque, and he was more than ever decided to compose a descriptive article for the Staffordshire Signal. The rescued and the rescuing crews disappeared in single file to the upper floor of the pier, with the exception of the coxswain, a man with a spreading red beard, who stayed behind to inspect the lifeboat, of which indeed he was the absolute owner. As a journalist Denry did the correct thing and engaged him in conversation. Meanwhile, cheering could be heard above. The coxswain, who stated that his name was Cregeen and that he was a Manxman, seemed to regret the entire expedition. He seemed to be unaware that it was his duty now to play the part of the modest hero to Denry's interviewer. At every loose end of the chat he would say gloomily:

"And look at her now, I 'm telling ye!"

Meaning the battered craft, which rose and fell on the black waves.

Denry ran upstairs again, in search of more amenable material. Some twenty men in various sou'westers and other headgear were eating thick slices of bread and butter and drinking hot coffee, which with foresight had been prepared for them in the pier buffet. A few had preferred whiskey. The whole crowd was now under the lee of the pavilion, and it constituted a spectacle which Denry said to himself he should refer to in his article as "Rembrandtesque." For a few moments he could not descry Ruth and Nellie in the gloom. Then he saw the indubitable form of his betrothed at a penny-in-the-slot machine, and the indubitable form of Nellie at another penny-in-the-slot machine. And then he could hear the click-click-click of the machines, working rapidly. And his thoughts took a new direction.

Presently Ruth ran with blithe gracefulness from her machine and commenced a generous distribution of packets to the members of the crews. There was neither calculation nor exact justice in her generosity. She dropped packets on to heroic knees with a splendid gesture of largesse. Some packets even fell on the floor. But she did not mind.

Denry could hear her saying:

"You must eat it. Chocolate is so sustaining. There 's nothing like it."

She ran back to the machines, and snatched more packets from Nellie, who under her orders had been industrious; and then began a second distribution.

A calm and disinterested observer would probably have been touched by this spectacle of impulsive womanly charity. He might even have decided that it was one of the most beautifully human things that he had ever seen. And the fact that the hardy heroes and Norsemen appeared scarcely to know what to do with the silver-wrapped bonbons would not have impaired his admiration for these two girlish figures of benevolence. Denry, too, was touched by the spectacle, but in another way. It was the rents of his clients that were being thus dissipated in a very luxury of needless benevolence. He muttered:

"Well, that's a bit thick, that is!"

But of course he could do nothing.

As the process continued, the clicking of the machines exacerbated his ears.

"Idiotic!" he muttered.

The final annoyance to him was that everybody except himself seemed to consider that Ruth was displaying singular ingenuity, originality, enterprise, and goodness of heart.

In that moment he saw clearly for the first time that the marriage between himself and Ruth had not been arranged in heaven. He admitted privately then that the saving of a young woman from violent death in a pantechnicon need not inevitably involve espousing her. She was without doubt a marvellous creature, but it was as wise to dream of keeping a carriage and pair as to dream of keeping Ruth. He grew suddenly cynical. His age leaped to fifty or so, and the curve of his lips changed.

Ruth, spying around, saw him and ran to him with a glad cry.

"Here!" she said. "Take these. They 're no good." She held out her hands.

"What are they?" he asked.

"They 're the halfpennies."

"So sorry!" he said, with an accent whose significance escaped her, and took the useless coins.

"We 've exhausted all the chocolate," said she. "But there 's butterscotch left – it's nearly as good – and gold-tipped cigarettes. I dare say some of them would enjoy a smoke. Have you got any more pennies?"

"No!" he replied. "But I 've got ten or a dozen half-crowns. They 'll work the machine just as well, won't they?"

This time she did notice a certain unusualness in the flavour of his accent. And she hesitated.

"Don't be silly!" she said.

"I 'll try not to be," said Denry. So far as he could remember, he had never used such a tone before. Ruth swerved away to rejoin Nellie.

Denry surreptitiously counted the half-pennies. There were eighteen. She had fed those machines, then, with over a hundred and thirty pence.

He murmured, "Thick, thick!"

Considering that he had returned to Llandudno in the full intention of putting his foot down, of clearly conveying to Ruth that his conception of finance differed from hers, the second sojourn had commenced badly. Still, he had promised to marry her, and he must marry her. Better a lifetime of misery and insolvency than a failure to behave as a gentleman should. Of course, if she chose to break it off… But he must be minutely careful to do nothing which might lead to a breach. Such was Denry's code.

The walk home at midnight, amid the reverberations of the falling tempest, was marked by a slight pettishness on the part of Ruth, and by Denry's polite taciturnity.

V

Yet the next morning, as the three companions sat together under the striped awning of the buffet on the pier, nobody could have divined, by looking at them, that one of them at any rate was the most uncomfortable young man in all Llandudno. The sun was hotly shining on their bright attire and on the still turbulent waves. Ruth, thirsty after a breakfast of herrings and bacon, was sucking iced lemonade up a straw. Nellie was eating chocolate, undistributed remains of the night's benevolence. Denry was yawning, not in the least because the proceedings failed to excite his keen interest, but because he had been a journalist till three A.M. and had risen at six in order to despatch a communication to the editor of the Staffordshire Signal by train.

The girls were very playful. Nellie dropped a piece of chocolate into Ruth's glass, and Ruth fished it out, and bit at it.

"What a jolly taste!" she exclaimed.

And then Nellie bit at it.

"Oh! It's just lovely!" said Nellie softly.

"Here, dear!" said Ruth. "Try it."

And Denry had to try it, and to pronounce it a delicious novelty (which indeed it was) and generally to brighten himself up. And all the time he was murmuring in his heart, "This can't go on."

Nevertheless he was obliged to admit that it was he who had invited Ruth to pass the rest of her earthly life with him, and not vice versa.

"Well, shall we go on somewhere else?" Ruth suggested.

And he paid yet again. He paid and smiled, he who had meant to be the masterful male, he who deemed himself always equal to a crisis. But in this crisis he was helpless.

They set off down the pier, brilliant in the brilliant crowd. Everybody was talking of wrecks and lifeboats. The new lifeboat had done nothing, having been forestalled by the Prestatyn boat; but Llandudno was apparently very proud of its brave old worn-out lifeboat which had brought ashore the entire crew of the Hjalmar, without casualty, in a terrific hurricane.

"Run along, child," said Ruth to Nellie, "while uncle and auntie talk to each other for a minute."

Nellie stared, blushed, and walked forward in confusion. She was startled. And Denry was equally startled. Never before had Ruth so brazenly hinted that lovers must be left alone at intervals. In justice to her it must be said that she was a mirror for all the proprieties. Denry had even reproached her, in his heart, for not sufficiently showing her desire for his exclusive society. He wondered, now, what was to be the next revelation of her surprising character.

"I had our bill this morning," said Ruth.

She leaned gracefully on the handle of her sunshade, and they both stared at the sea. She was very elegant, with an aristocratic air. The bill, as she mentioned it, seemed a very negligible trifle. Nevertheless, Denry's heart quaked.

"Oh!" he said. "Did you pay it?"

"Yes," said she. "The landlady wanted the money, she told me. So Nellie gave me her share, and I paid it at once."

"Oh!" said Denry.

There was a silence. Denry felt as though he were defending a castle, or as though he were in a dark room and somebody was calling him, calling him, and he was pretending not to be there and holding his breath.

"But I 'd hardly enough money left," said Ruth. "The fact is, Nellie and I spent such a lot yesterday and the day before… You 've no idea how money goes!"

"Haven't I?" said Denry. But not to her – only to his own heart.

To her he said nothing.

"I suppose we shall have to go back home," she ventured lightly. "One can't run into debt here. They 'd claim your luggage."

"What a pity!" said Denry sadly.

Just those few words – and the interesting part of the interview was over! All that followed counted not in the least. She had meant to induce him to offer to defray the whole of her expenses in Llandudno – no doubt in the form of a loan; and she had failed. She had intended him to repair the disaster caused by her chronic extravagance. And he had only said, "What a pity!"

"Yes, it is!" she agreed bravely, and with a finer disdain than ever of petty financial troubles. "Still, it can't be helped."

"No, I suppose not," said Denry.

There was undoubtedly something fine about Ruth. In that moment she had it in her to kill Denry with a bodkin. But she merely smiled. The situation was terribly strained, past all Denry's previous conceptions of a strained situation; but she deviated with superlative sang-froidinto frothy small-talk. A proud and an unconquerable woman! After all, what were men for, if not to pay?

"I think I shall go home to-night," she said, after the excursion into prattle.

"I 'm sorry," said Denry.

He was not coming out of his castle.

At that moment a hand touched his shoulder. It was the hand of Cregeen, the owner of the old lifeboat.

"Mister!" said Cregeen, too absorbed in his own welfare to notice Ruth. "It's now or never! Five-and-twenty 'll buy the Fleetwing, if ten 's paid down this mornun."

And Denry replied boldly:

"You shall have it in an hour. Where shall you be?"

"I 'll be in John's cabin, under the pier," said Cregeen, "where ye found me this mornun."

"Right!" said Denry.

If Ruth had not been caracoling on her absurdly high horse, she would have had the truth out of Denry in a moment concerning these early morning interviews and mysterious transactions in shipping. But from that height she could not deign to be curious. And so she said naught. Denry had passed the whole morning since breakfast and had uttered no word of preprandial encounters with mariners, though he had talked a lot about his article for the Signaland of how he had risen betimes in order to despatch it by the first train.

And as Ruth showed no curiosity, Denry behaved on the assumption that she felt none. And the situation grew even more strained.

As they walked down the pier towards the beach, at the dinner-hour, Ruth bowed to a dandiacal man who obsequiously saluted her.

"Who 's that?" asked Denry instinctively.

"It's a gentleman that I was once engaged to," answered Ruth with cold, brief politeness.

Denry did not like this.

The situation almost creaked under the complicated stresses to which it was subject. And the wonder was that it did not fly to pieces long before evening.

VI

The pride of the principal actors being now engaged, each person was compelled to carry out the intentions which he had expressed either in words or tacitly. Denry's silence had announced more efficiently than any words that he would under no inducement emerge from his castle. Ruth had stated plainly that there was nothing for it but to go home at once, that very night. Hence she arranged to go home, and hence Denry refrained from interfering with her arrangements. Ruth was lugubrious under a mask of gaiety; Nellie was lugubrious under no mask whatever. Nellie was merely the puppet of these betrothed players, her elders. She admired Ruth and she admired Denry, and between them they were spoiling the little thing's holiday for their own adult purposes. Nellie knew that dreadful occurrences were in the air – occurrences compared to which the storm at sea was a storm in a teacup. She knew partly because Ruth had been so queerly polite, and partly because they had come separately to St. Asaph's Road and had not spent the entire afternoon together.

So quickly do great events loom up and happen that at six o'clock they had had tea and were on their way afoot to the station. The odd man of No. 26, St. Asaph's Road had preceded them with the luggage. All the rest of Llandudno was joyously strolling home to its half-past six high tea – grand people to whom weekly bills were as dust and who were in a position to stop in Llandudno for ever and ever, if they chose! And Ruth and Nellie were conscious of the shame which always afflicts those whom necessity forces to the railway station of a pleasure resort in the middle of the season. They saw omnibuses loaded with luggage and jolly souls who were actually coming, whose holiday had not yet properly commenced. And this spectacle added to their humiliation and their disgust. They genuinely felt that they belonged to the lower orders.

Ruth, for the sake of effect, joked on the most solemn subjects. She even referred with giggling laughter to the fact that she had borrowed from Nellie in order to discharge her liabilities for the final twenty-four hours at the boarding-house. Giggling laughter being contagious, as they were walking side by side close together, they all laughed. And each one secretly thought how ridiculous was such behaviour and how it failed to reach the standard of true worldliness.

Then, nearer the station, some sprightly caprice prompted Denry to raise his hat to two young women who were crossing the road in front of them. Neither of the two young women responded to the homage.

"Who are they?" asked Ruth, and the words were out of her mouth before she could remind herself that curiosity was beneath her.

"It's a young lady I was once engaged to," said Denry.

"Which one?" asked the ninny, Nellie, astounded.

"I forget," said Denry.

He considered this to be one of his greatest retorts – not to Nellie, but to Ruth. Nellie naturally did not appreciate its loveliness. But Ruth did. There was no facet of that retort that escaped Ruth's critical notice.

At length they arrived at the station, quite a quarter of an hour before the train was due, and half an hour before it came in.

Denry tipped the odd man for the transport of the luggage.

"Sure it's all there?" he asked the girls, embracing both of them in his gaze.

"Yes," said Ruth, "but where 's yours?"

"Oh!" he said. "I 'm not going to-night. I 've got some business to attend to here. I thought you understood. I expect you 'll be all right, you two together."

After a moment, Ruth said brightly, "Oh, yes! I was quite forgetting about your business." Which was completely untrue, since she knew nothing of his business, and he had assuredly not informed her that he would not return with them.

But Ruth was being very brave, haughty, and queen-like, and for this the precise truth must sometimes be abandoned. The most precious thing in the world to Ruth was her dignity – and who can blame her? She meant to keep it at no matter what costs.

In a few minutes the bookstall on the platform attracted them as inevitably as a prone horse attracts a crowd. Other people were near the bookstall, and as these people were obviously leaving Llandudno, Ruth and Nellie felt a certain solace. The social outlook seemed brighter for them. Denry bought one or two penny papers, and then the newsboy began to paste up the contents poster of the Staffordshire Signal, which had just arrived. And on this poster, very prominent, were the words: "The Great Storm in North Wales. Special Descriptive Report." Denry snatched up one of the green papers and opened it, and on the first column of the news page saw his wondrous description, including the word "Rembrandtesque." "Graphic account by a Bursley gentleman of the scene at Llandudno," said the sub-title. And the article was introduced by the phrase, "We are indebted to Mr. E. H. Machin, a prominent figure in Bursley," etc.

It was like a miracle. Do what he would, Denry could not stop his face from glowing.

With false calm he gave the paper to Ruth. Her calmness in receiving it upset him.

"We 'll read it in the train," she said primly, and started to talk about something else. And she became most agreeable and companionable.

Mixed up with papers and sixpenny novels on the bookstall were a number of souvenirs of Llandudno – paper-knives, pens, paper-weights, watch-cases, pen-cases, all in light wood or glass, and ornamented with coloured views of Llandudno, and also the word "Llandudno" in large German capitals, so that mistakes might not arise. Ruth remembered that she had even intended to buy a crystal paper-weight with a view of the Great Orme at the bottom. The bookstall clerk had several crystal paper-weights with views of the pier, the Hotel Majestic, the Esplanade, the Happy Valley, but none with a view of the Great Orme. He had also paper-knives and watch-cases with a view of the Great Orme. But Ruth wanted a combination of paper-weight and Great Orme, and nothing else would satisfy her. She was like that. The clerk admitted that such a combination existed, but he was sold "out of it."

"Could n't you get one and send it to me?" said Ruth.

And Denry saw anew that she was incurable.

"Oh, yes, miss," said the clerk. "Certainly, miss. To-morrow at latest!" And he pulled out a book. "What name?"

Ruth looked at Denry, as women do look on such occasions.

"Rothschild," said Denry.

It may seem perhaps strange that that single word ended their engagement. But it did. She could not tolerate a rebuke. She walked away, flushing. The bookstall clerk received no order. Several persons in the vicinity dimly perceived that a domestic scene had occurred, in a flash, under their noses, on a platform of a railway station. Nellie was speedily aware that something very serious had happened, for the train took them off without Ruth speaking a syllable to Denry, though Denry raised his hat and was almost effusive.

The next afternoon Denry received by post a ring in a box. "I will not submit to insult," ran the brief letter.

"I only said 'Rothschild'!" Denry murmured to himself. "Can't a fellow say 'Rothschild'?"

But secretly he was proud of himself.

CHAPTER V. THE MERCANTILE MARINE

I

The decisive scene, henceforward historic, occurred in the shanty known as "John's cabin" – John being the unacknowledged leader of the 'longshore population – under the tail of Llandudno pier. The cabin, festooned with cordage, was lighted by an oil-lamp of a primitive model, and round the orange case on which the lamp was balanced sat Denry, Cregeen, the owner of the lifeboat, and John himself (to give, as it were, a semi-official character to whatever was afoot).

"Well, here you are," said Denry, and handed to Cregeen a piece of paper.

"What's this, I 'm asking ye," said Cregeen, taking the paper in his large fingers and peering at it as though it had been a papyrus.

But he knew quite well what it was. It was a check for twenty-five pounds. What he did not know was that, with the ten pounds paid in cash earlier in the day, it represented a very large part indeed of such of Denry's savings as had survived his engagement to Ruth Earp. Cregeen took a pen as though it had been a match-end and wrote a receipt. Then, after finding a stamp in a pocket of his waistcoat under his jersey, he put it in his mouth and lost it there for a long time. Finally Denry got the receipt, certifying that he was the owner of the lifeboat formerly known as Llandudno, but momentarily without a name, together with all her gear and sails.

"Are ye going to live in her?" the rather curt John enquired.

"Not in her. On her," said Denry.

And he went out on to the sand and shingle, leaving John and Cregeen to complete the sale to Cregeen of the Fleetwing, a small cutter specially designed to take twelve persons forth for "a pleasant sail in the bay." If Cregeen had not had a fancy for the Fleetwing and a perfect lack of the money to buy her, Denry might never have been able to induce him to sell the lifeboat.

Under another portion of the pier Denry met a sailor with a long white beard, the aged Simeon, who had been one of the crew that rescued the Hjalmar, but whom his colleagues appeared to regard rather as an ornament than as a motive force.

"It's all right," said Denry.

And Simeon, in silence, nodded his head slowly several times.

"I shall give you thirty shillings for the week," said Denry.

And that venerable head oscillated again in the moon-lit gloom and rocked gradually to a standstill.

Presently the head said, in shrill, slow tones:

"I 've seen three o' them Norwegian chaps. Two of 'em can no more speak English than a babe unborn; no, nor understand what ye say to 'em, though I fair bawled in their ear-holes."

"So much the better," said Denry.

"I showed 'em that sovereign," said the bearded head, wagging again.

"Well," said Denry, "you won't forget. Six o'clock to-morrow morning."

"Ye 'd better say five," the head suggested. "Quieter like!"

"Five, then," Denry agreed.

And he departed to St. Asaph's Road burdened with a tremendous thought.

The thought was:

"I 've gone and done it this time!"

Now that the transaction was accomplished and could not be undone, he admitted to himself that he had never been more mad. He could scarcely comprehend what had led him to do that which he had done. But he obscurely imagined that his caprice for the possession of sea-going craft must somehow be the result of his singular adventure with the pantechnicon in the canal at Bursley.

He was so preoccupied with material interests as to be capable of forgetting, for a quarter of an hour at a stretch, that in all essential respects his life was wrecked, and that he had nothing to hope for save hollow worldly success. He knew that Ruth would return the ring. He could almost see the postman holding the little cardboard cube which would contain the rendered ring. He had loved, and loved tragically. (That was how he put it – in his unspoken thoughts; but the truth was merely that he had loved something too expensive.) Now the dream was done. And a man of disillusion walked along the Parade towards St. Asaph's Road among revellers, a man with a past, a man who had probed women, a man who had nothing to learn about sex. And amid all the tragedy of his heart, and all his apprehensions concerning hollow worldly success, little thoughts of absurd unimportance kept running about like clockwork mice in his head. Such as that it would be a bit of a bore to have to tell people at Bursley that his engagement, which truly had thrilled the town, was broken off. Humiliating, that! And, after all, Ruth was a glittering gem among women. Was there another girl in Bursley so smart, so effective, so truly ornate?

Then he comforted himself with the reflection, "I 'm certainly the only man that ever put an end to an engagement by just saying 'Rothschild'." This was probably true. But it did not help him to sleep.