Denry the Audacious Page 7

  This thought was more majestic to him than the sea or the Great Orme orthe Little Orme.

  It stuck in his head because he had suddenly grown into a very seriousperson. He had now something to live for, something on which to lavishhis energy. He was happy in being affianced, and more proud than happy,and more startled than proud. The manner and method of his courtshiphad sharply differed from his previous conception of what such an affairwould be. He had not passed through the sensations which he would haveexpected to pass through. And then this question was continuallypresenting itself: _What could she see in him_? She must have got anotion that he was far more wonderful than he really was. Could it betrue that she, his superior in experience and in splendour of person,had kissed him? _Him_! He felt that it would be his duty to live up tothis exaggerated notion which she had of him. But how?

  II

  They had not yet discussed finance at all, though Denry would have likedto discuss it. Evidently she regarded him as a man of means. This becameclear during the progress of the journey to Llandudno. Denry wasflattered. But the next day he had slight misgivings, and on the dayfollowing he was alarmed; and on the day after that his state resembledterror. It is truer to say that she regarded him less as a man of meansthan as a magic and inexhaustible siphon of money.

  He simply could not stir out of the house without spending money, andoften in ways quite unforeseen. Pier, minstrels, Punch and Judy,bathing, buns, ices, canes, fruit, chairs, rowboats, concerts, toffee,photographs, char-a-bancs; any of these expenditures was likely tohappen whenever they went forth for a simple stroll. One might thinkthat strolls were gratis, that the air was free! Error! If he had hadthe courage he would have left his purse in the house, as Ruthinvariably did. But men are moral cowards.

  He had calculated thus: Return fare, four shillings a week. Agreedterms at boarding-house, twenty-five shillings a week. Total expensesper week, twenty-nine shillings,--say thirty!

  On the first day he spent fourteen shillings on nothing whatever--whichwas at the rate of five pounds a week of supplementary estimates! On thesecond day he spent nineteen shillings on nothing whatever, and Ruthinsisted on his having tea with herself and Nellie at theirboarding-house; for which of course he had to pay, while his own tea waswasting next door. So the figures ran on, jumping up each day.Mercifully, when Sunday dawned the open wound in his pocket wastemporarily staunched. Ruth wished him to come in for tea again. Herefused. At any rate he did not come. And the exquisite placidity ofthe stream of their love was slightly disturbed.

  Nobody could have guessed that she was in monetary difficulties on herown account. Denry, as a chivalrous lover, had assisted her out of thefearful quagmire of her rent; but she owed much beyond rent. Yet, whensome of her quarterly fees had come in, her thoughts had instantly runto Llandudno, joy, and frocks. She did not know what money was, and shenever would. This was, perhaps, part of her superior splendour. Thegentle, timid, silent Nellie occasionally let Denry see that she, too,was scandalised by her bosom friend's recklessness. Often Nellie wouldmodestly beg for permission to pay her share of the cost of anamusement. And it seemed just to Denry that she should pay her share.And he violently wished to accept her money. But he could not. Hewould even get quite curt with her when she insisted. From this it willbe seen how absurdly and irrationally different he was from the rest ofus.

  Nellie was continually with them, except just before they separated forthe night. So that Denry paid consistently for three. But he likedNellie Cotterill. She blushed so easily, and she so obviouslyworshipped Ruth and admired himself. And there was a marked vein ofcommon sense in her ingenuous composition.

  On the Monday morning he was up early and off to Bursley to collectrents and manage estates. He had spent nearly five pounds beyond hisexpectation. Indeed, if by chance he had not gone to Llandudno with aportion of the previous week's rents in his pockets, he would have beenin what the Five Towns call a fix.

  While in Bursley he thought a good deal. Bursley in August encouragesnothing but thought. His mother was working as usual. His recitals toher of the existence led by betrothed lovers at Llandudno were vague.

  On the Tuesday evening he returned to Llandudno. And, despite thegeneral trend of his thoughts, it once more occurred that his pocketswere loaded with a portion of the week's rents. He did not knowprecisely what was going to happen, but he knew that something was goingto happen; for the sufficient reason that his career could not continueunless something did happen. Without either a quarrel, anunderstanding, or a miracle, three months of affianced bliss with RuthEarp would exhaust his resources and ruin his reputation as one who wasever equal to a crisis.

  III

  What immediately happened was a storm at sea. He heard it mentioned atRhyl, and he saw, in the deep night, the foam of breakers at Prestatyn.And when the train reached Llandudno, those two girls in ulsters andcaps greeted him with wondrous tales of the storm at sea, and of wrecks,and of lifeboats. And they were so jolly, and so welcoming, so plainlyglad to see their cavalier again, that Denry instantly discoveredhimself to be in the highest spirits. He put away the dark and broodingthoughts which had disfigured his journey, and became the gay Denry ofhis own dreams. The very wind intoxicated him! There was no rain.

  It was half-past nine, and half Llandudno was afoot on the Parade anddiscussing the storm--a storm unparalleled, it seemed, in the month ofAugust. At any rate, people who had visited Llandudno yearly fortwenty-five years declared that never had they witnessed such a storm.If the tide had not been out the Parade would have been uninhabitable.The new lifeboat had gone forth, amid cheers, about six o'clock to aschooner in distress near Rhos. And at eight o'clock a second lifeboat(an old one which the new one had replaced and which had been bought fora floating warehouse by an aged fisherman) had departed to the rescue ofa Norwegian barque, the _Hjalmar_, round the bend of the Little Orme.

  "Let's go on the pier," said Denry. "It will be splendid."

  He was not an hour in the town, and yet was already hanging expense!

  "They 've closed the pier," the girls told him.

  But when in the course of their meanderings among the excited crowdunder the gas-lamps they arrived at the pier-gates, Denry perceivedfigures on the pier.

  "They 're sailors and things, and the Mayor," the girls explained.

  "Pooh!" said Denry, fired.

  He approached the turnstile and handed a card to the official. It wasthe card of an advertisement agent of the _Staffordshire Signal_, whohad called at Brougham Street in Denry's absence about the renewal ofDenry's advertisement.

  "Press," said Denry to the guardian at the turnstile, and went throughwith the ease of a bird on the wing.

  "Come along," he cried to the girls.

  The guardian seemed to hesitate.

  "These ladies are with me," he said.

  The guardian yielded.

  It was a triumph for Denry. He could read his triumph in the eyes ofhis companions. When she looked at him like that, Ruth was assuredlymarvellous among women. And any ideas derogatory to her marvellousnesswhich he might have had at Bursley and in the train were false ideas.

  At the head of the pier beyond the pavilion there were gathered togethersome fifty people. And the tale ran that the second lifeboat hadsuccessfully accomplished its mission and was approaching the pier.

  "I shall write an account of this for the _Signal_," said Denry, whosethoughts were excusably on the Press.

  "Oh, do!" exclaimed Nellie.

  "They have the _Signal_ at all the newspaper shops here," said Ruth.

  Then they seemed to be merged in the storm. The pier shook and trembledunder the shock of the waves, and occasionally, though the tide was verylow, a sprinkle of water flew up and caught their faces. The eyes couldsee nothing save the passing glitter of the foam on the crest of abreaker. It was the most thrilling situation that any of them had ev
erbeen in.

  And at last came word from the mouths of men who could apparently see aswell in dark as in daylight that the second lifeboat was close to thepier. And then everybody momentarily saw it--a ghostly thing thatheaved up pale out of the murk for an instant and was lost again. Andthe little crowd cheered.

  The next moment a Bengal light illuminated the pier, and the lifeboatwas silhouetted with strange effectiveness against the storm. And someone flung a rope. And then another rope arrived out of the sea and fellon Denry's shoulder.

  "Haul on there!" yelled a hoarse voice. The Bengal light expired.

  Denry hauled with a will. The occasion was unique. And those fewseconds were worth to him the whole of Denry's precious life--yes, notexcluding the seconds in which he had kissed Ruth and the minutes inwhich he had danced with the Countess of Chell. Then two men withbeards took the rope from his hands. The air was now alive withshoutings. Finally there was a rush of men down the iron stairway tothe lower part of the pier, ten feet nearer the water.

  "You stay here, you two!" Denry ordered, extremely excited.

  "But Denry----"

  "Stay here, I tell you!" All the male in him was aroused. He was off,after the rush of men. "Half a jiffy!" he said, coming back. "Just takecharge of this, will you?" And he poured into their hands about twelveshillings' worth of copper, small change of rents, from his pocket. "Ifanything happened, that might sink me," he said, and vanished.

  It was very characteristic of him, that effusion of calm sagacity in asupreme emergency.

  IV

  Beyond getting his feet wet Denry accomplished but little in the darkbasement of the pier. In spite of his success in hauling on the thrownrope, he seemed to be classed at once down there by the expertsassembled as an eager and useless person who had no right to the spacewhich he occupied. However, he witnessed the heaving arrival of thelifeboat and the disembarking of the rescued crew of the Norwegianbarque, and he was more than ever decided to compose a descriptivearticle for the _Staffordshire Signal_. The rescued and the rescuingcrews disappeared in single file to the upper floor of the pier, withthe exception of the coxswain, a man with a spreading red beard, whostayed behind to inspect the lifeboat, of which indeed he was theabsolute owner. As a journalist Denry did the correct thing and engagedhim in conversation. Meanwhile, cheering could be heard above. Thecoxswain, who stated that his name was Cregeen and that he was aManxman, seemed to regret the entire expedition. He seemed to be unawarethat it was his duty now to play the part of the modest hero to Denry'sinterviewer. 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. Sometwenty men in various sou'westers and other headgear were eating thickslices of bread and butter and drinking hot coffee, which with foresighthad been prepared for them in the pier buffet. A few had preferredwhiskey. The whole crowd was now under the lee of the pavilion, and itconstituted a spectacle which Denry said to himself he should refer toin his article as "Rembrandtesque." For a few moments he could notdescry Ruth and Nellie in the gloom. Then he saw the indubitable formof his betrothed at a penny-in-the-slot machine, and the indubitableform of Nellie at another penny-in-the-slot machine. And then he couldhear the click-click-click of the machines, working rapidly. And histhoughts took a new direction.

  Presently Ruth ran with blithe gracefulness from her machine andcommenced a generous distribution of packets to the members of thecrews. There was neither calculation nor exact justice in hergenerosity. She dropped packets on to heroic knees with a splendidgesture of _largesse_. Some packets even fell on the floor. But shedid not mind.

  Denry could hear her saying:

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

  She ran back to the machines, and snatched more packets from Nellie, whounder her orders had been industrious; and then began a seconddistribution.

  A calm and disinterested observer would probably have been touched bythis spectacle of impulsive womanly charity. He might even have decidedthat it was one of the most beautifully human things that he had everseen. And the fact that the hardy heroes and Norsemen appeared scarcelyto know what to do with the silver-wrapped bonbons would not haveimpaired his admiration for these two girlish figures of benevolence.Denry, too, was touched by the spectacle, but in another way. It wasthe rents of his clients that were being thus dissipated in a veryluxury 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 hisears.

  "Idiotic!" he muttered.

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

  In that moment he saw clearly for the first time that the marriagebetween himself and Ruth had not been arranged in heaven. He admittedprivately then that the saving of a young woman from violent death in apantechnicon need not inevitably involve espousing her. She was withoutdoubt a marvellous creature, but it was as wise to dream of keeping acarriage and pair as to dream of keeping Ruth. He grew suddenlycynical. His age leaped to fifty or so, and the curve of his lipschanged.

  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 herhands.

  "What are they?" he asked.

  "They 're the halfpennies."

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

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

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

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

  "Don't be silly!" she said.

  "I 'll try not to be," said Denry. So far as he could remember, he hadnever 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 ofputting his foot down, of clearly conveying to Ruth that his conceptionof finance differed from hers, the second sojourn had commenced badly.Still, he had promised to marry her, and he must marry her. Better alifetime of misery and insolvency than a failure to behave as agentleman should. Of course, if she chose to break it off... But hemust 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 fallingtempest, was marked by a slight pettishness on the part of Ruth, and byDenry's polite taciturnity.

  V

  Yet the next morning, as the three companions sat together under thestriped awning of the buffet on the pier, nobody could have divined, bylooking at them, that one of them at any rate was the most uncomfortableyoung man in all Llandudno. The sun was hotly shining on their brightattire and on the still turbulent waves. Ruth, thirsty after abreakfast of herrings and bacon, was sucking iced lemonade up a straw.Nellie was eating chocolate, undistributed remains of the night'sbenevolence. Denry was yawning, not in the least because the proceedingsfailed to excite his keen interest, but because he had been a journalisttill three A.M. and had risen at six in order to despatch acommunication to the editor of the _Staffordshire Signal_ by train.

  The girls were very playf
ul. Nellie dropped a piece of chocolate intoRuth'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 (whichindeed it was) and generally to brighten himself up. And all the timehe was murmuring in his heart, "This can't go on."

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