The Card - Arnold Bennett (great books to read txt) 📗

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 machine 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 daresay 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 halfpennies. 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. Demo 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've 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-froid_ into 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 pre-prandial encounters with mariners, though he had talked a lot about his article for the _Signal_ and 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. 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