He tried to clamber round the side of the van so as to get to the doors at the back, but a pantechnicon has a wheel-base which forbids leaping from wheel to wheel, especially when the wheels are under water. Hence he was obliged to climb on to the roof, and so slide down on to the top of 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 the only thing they had put into the van before they went off to have their supper or something. Furniture removers are always like that. Haven"t you got a match?"
"I "ve got scores of matches," said Denry. "But what good do you suppose they "ll be now? All soaked through!"
A short silence. He noticed that she had offered no explanation of her conduct towards himself. She seemed to take it for granted that he would understand.
"I "m frightfully b.u.mped, and I believe my nose is bleeding," said Ruth, still more plaintively. "It"s a good thing there was a lot of straw and sacks 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 broken down under the stress of events. He climbed out of the water on to the part of the table which she was not occupying. And the van was as black as Erebus.
Gradually, out of the welter of sobs, came faint articulations, and little by little he learnt the entire story of her difficulties, her misfortunes, her struggles, and her defeats. He listened to a frank confession of guilt. But what could she do? She had meant well. But what could she do? She had been driven into a corner. And she had her father to think of! Honestly, on the previous day, she had intended to pay the rent, or part of it. But there had been a disappointment! And she had been so unwell. In short....
The van gave a lurch. She clutched at him and he at her. The van was settling down for a comfortable night in the mud.
(Queer that it had not occurred to him before; but at the first visit she had postponed paying him on the plea that the bank was closed; while at the second visit she had stated that the actual cash had been slowly acc.u.mulating in her desk. And the discrepancy had not struck him! Such is the influence of a tea-gown. However, he forgave her, in consideration of her immense audacity.)
"What can we do?" she almost whispered. Her confidence in him affected him.
"Wait till it gets light," said he.
So they waited, amid the waste of waters. In a hot July it is not unpleasant 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 that at the back of the pantechnicon the waste of waters extended for at most a yard, and that it was easy, by climbing on to the roof, to jump therefrom to the wharf. He did so; and then fixed a plank so that Ruth could get ash.o.r.e. Relieved of their weight the table floated out after them. Denry seized it, and set about smashing it to pieces with his feet.
"What _are_ you doing?" she asked faintly. She was too enfeebled to protest more vigorously.
"Leave it to me," said Denry. "This table is the only thing that can give 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 in the van, and attached the heavy iron bar whose function was to keep the doors closed. Then he sank the f.a.ggot of wood and iron in a distant corner of the basin.
"There!" he said. "Now you understand, nothing"s happened except that a furniture van "s run off and fallen into the ca.n.a.l, owing to the men"s carelessness.
"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, but there 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, baptising the path as they walked. The Town Hall clock struck three as Denry crept up his mother"s stairs. He had seen not a soul.
IV
The exact truth in its details was never known to more than two inhabitants of Bursley. The one clear certainty appeared to be that Denry, in endeavouring to prevent a runaway pantechnicon from destroying the town, had travelled with it into the ca.n.a.l. The romantic trip was accepted as perfectly characteristic of Denry. Around this island of fact washed a fabulous sea of uninformed gossip, in which a.s.sertion conflicted with a.s.sertion, and the names of Denry and Ruth were continually b.u.mping against each other.
Mr. Herbert Calvert glanced queerly and perhaps sardonically at Denry when Denry called and handed over ten pounds (less commission) which he said 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. The only explanation I can think of is that that van must have come to the wrong house."
"Are you engaged to her?" Calvert asked, with amazing effrontery.
Denry paused. "Yes," he said. "Are you?" Mr. Calvert wondered what he meant.
He admitted to himself that the courtship had begun in a manner surpa.s.singly strange.
CHAPTER IV. WRECKING OF A LIFE
I
In the Five Towns, and perhaps elsewhere, there exists a custom in virtue of which a couple who have become engaged in the early summer find themselves by a most curious coincidence at the same seaside resort, and often in the same street thereof, during August. Thus it happened to Denry and to Ruth Earp. There had been difficulties-there always are. A business man who lives by collecting weekly rents obviously cannot go away for an indefinite period. And a young woman who lives alone in the world is bound to respect public opinion.
However, Ruth arranged that her girlish friend Nellie Cotterill, who had generous parents, should accompany her. And the North Staffordshire Railway"s philanthropic scheme of issuing four-shilling tourist return tickets to the seaside enabled Denry to persuade his mother and himself that he was not absolutely mad in contemplating a fortnight on the sh.o.r.es of England.
Ruth chose Llandudno, Llandudno being more stylish than either Rhyl or Blackpool, and not dearer. Ruth and Nellie had a double room in a boarding-house, No. 26, St. Asaph"s Road (off the Marine Parade), and Denry had a small single room in another boarding-house, No. 28, St.
Asaph"s Road. The ideal could scarcely have been approached more nearly.
Denry had never seen the sea before. As, in his gayest clothes, he strolled along the esplanade or on the pier between those two girls in their gayest clothes, and mingled with the immense crowd of pleasure-seekers and money-spenders, he was undoubtedly much impressed by the beauty and grandeur of the sea. But what impressed him far more than the beauty and grandeur of the sea was the field for profitable commercial enterprise which a place like Llandudno presented. He had not only his first vision of the sea, but his first genuine vision of the possibilities of ama.s.sing wealth by honest ingenuity. On the morning after his arrival he went out for a walk and lost himself near the Great Orme, and had to return hurriedly along the whole length of the Parade about nine o"clock. And through every ground-floor window of every house he saw a long table full of people eating and drinking the same kinds of food. In Llandudno fifty thousand souls desired always to perform the same act at the same time; they wanted to be distracted and they would do anything for the sake of distraction, and would pay for the privilege. And they would all pay at once.
This thought was more majestic to him than the sea or the Great Orme or the Little Orme.
It stuck in his head because he had suddenly grown into a very serious person. He had now something to live for, something on which to lavish his energy. He was happy in being affianced, and more proud than happy, and more startled than proud. The manner and method of his courtship had sharply differed from his previous conception of what such an affair would be. He had not pa.s.sed through the sensations which he would have expected to pa.s.s through. And then this question was continually presenting itself: _What could she see in him_? She must have got a notion that he was far more wonderful than he really was. Could it be true 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 to this exaggerated notion which she had of him. But how?