And yet Denry was not satisfied. He had a secret woe, due to the factsthat he was gradually ceasing to be a card and that he was notmultiplying his capital by two every six months. He did not understandthe money market, nor the stock market, nor even the financial articlein the _Signal_; but he regarded himself as a financial genius anddeemed that as a financial genius he was vegetating. And as for settingthe town on fire, or painting it scarlet, he seemed to have lost thetrick of that.
II
And then one day the populace saw on his office-door, beneath hisname-board, another sign: "Five Towns Universal Thrift Club. Secretaryand Manager, E. H. Machin."
An idea had visited him.
Many tradesmen formed slate-clubs--goose-clubs, turkey-clubs,whisky-clubs--in the autumn, for Christmas. Their humble customers paidso much a week to the tradesmen, who charged them nothing for keepingit, and at the end of the agreed period they took out the total sum ingoods--dead or alive; eatable, drinkable, or wearable. Denry conceiveda universal slate-club. He meant it to embrace each of the Five Towns.He saw forty thousand industrial families paying weekly instalments intohis slate-club. He saw his slate-club entering into contracts with allthe principal tradesmen of the entire district, so that the members ofthe slate-club could shop with slate-club tickets practically where theychose. He saw his slate-club so powerful that no tradesman could affordnot to be in relations with it. He had induced all Llandudno to performthe same act daily for nearly a whole season, and he now wished toinduce all the vast Five Towns to perform the same act to his profit forall eternity.
And he would be a philanthropist into the bargain. He would encouragethrift in the working-man and the working-man's wife. He would guardthe working-man's money for him; and to save trouble to the working-manhe would call at the working-man's door for the working-man's money.Further, as a special inducement and to prove superior advantages toordinary slate-clubs, he would allow the working-man to spend his fullnominal subscription to the club as soon as he had actually paid onlyhalf of it. Thus, after paying ten shillings to Denry the working-mancould spend a pound in Denry's chosen shops, and Denry would settle withthe shops at once, while collecting the balance weekly at theworking-man's door. But this privilege of anticipation was to beforfeited or postponed if the working-man's earlier payments wereirregular.
And Denry would bestow all these wondrous benefits on the working-manwithout any charge whatever. Every penny that members paid in, memberswould draw out. The affair was enormously philanthropic.
Denry's modest remuneration was to come from the shopkeepers upon whomhis scheme would shower new custom. They were to allow him at leasttwopence in the shilling discount on all transactions, which would bemore than sixteen per cent. on his capital; and he would turn over hiscapital three times a year. He calculated that out of fifty per cent.per annum he would be able to cover working expenses and a little over.
Of course, he had to persuade the shopkeepers. He drove his mule toHanbridge and began with Bostocks, the largest but not the mostdistinguished drapery house in the Five Towns. He succeeded inconvincing them on every point except that of his own financialstability. Bostocks indicated their opinion that he looked far too muchlike a boy to be financially stable. His reply was to offer to depositfifty pounds with them before starting business and to renew the sum inadvance as quickly as the members of his club should exhaust it.Cheques talk. He departed with Bostocks' name at the head of his list,and he used them as a clinching argument with other shops. But theprejudice against his youth was strong and general. "Yes," tradesmenwould answer, "what you say is all right, but you are so young." As ifto insinuate that a man must be either a rascal or a fool until he isthirty, just as he must be either a fool or a physician after he isforty. Nevertheless, he had soon compiled a list of several score shops.
His mother said:
"Why don't you grow a beard? Here you spend money on razors, strops,soaps, and brushes, besides a quarter of an hour of your time every day,and cutting yourself--all to keep yourself from having something thatwould be the greatest help to you in business! With a beard you 'd lookat least thirty-one. Your father had a splendid beard, and so could youif you chose."
This was high wisdom. But he would not listen to it. The truth is, hewas getting somewhat dandiacal.
At length his scheme lacked naught but what Denry called a "right-downgood starting shove." In a word a fine advertisement to fire it off.Now, he could have had the whole of the first page of the _Signal_ (atthat period) for five-and-twenty pounds. But he had been so accustomedto free advertisements of one sort or another that the notion of payingfor one was loathsome to him. Then it was that he thought of theCountess of Chell, who happened to be staying at Knype. If he couldobtain that great aristocrat, that ex-Mayoress, that lovely witch, thatbenefactor of the district, to honour his Thrift Club as patroness,success was certain. Everybody in the Five Towns sneered at the Countessand called her a busybody; she was even dubbed "interfering Iris" (Irisbeing one of her eleven Christian names); the Five Towns was fiercelydemocratic--in theory. In practice the Countess was worshipped; hersmile was worth at least five pounds, and her invitation to tea waspriceless. She could not have been more sincerely adulated in theUnited States, the home of social equality.
Denry said to himself.
"And why _should n't_ I get her name as patroness? I will have her nameas patroness."
Hence the expedition to Sneyd Hall, one of the various ancestral homesof the Earls of Chell.
III
He had been to Sneyd Hall before many times--like the majority of theinhabitants of the Five Towns--for, by the generosity of its owner,Sneyd Park was always open to the public. To picnic in Sneyd Park wasone of the chief distractions of the Five Towns on Thursday and Saturdayafternoons. But he had never entered the private gardens. In the midstof the private gardens stood the Hall, shut off by immense ironpalisades, like a lion in a cage at the Zoo. On the autumn afternoon ofhis historic visit, Denry passed with qualms through the double gates ofthe palisade, and began to crunch the gravel of the broad drive that ledin a straight line to the overwhelming Palladian facade of the Hall.
Yes, he was decidedly glad that he had not brought his mule. As heapproached nearer and nearer to the Countess's front door his argumentsin favour of the visit grew more and more ridiculous. Useless to remindhimself that he had once danced with the Countess at the municipal ball,and amused her to the giggling point, and restored her lost fan to her.Useless to remind himself that he was a quite exceptional young man,with a quite exceptional renown, and the equal of any man or woman onearth. Useless to remind himself that the Countess was notorious for heraffability and also for her efforts to encourage the true welfare of theFive Towns. The visit was grotesque.
He ought to have written. He ought, at any rate, to have announced hisvisit by a note. Yet only an hour earlier he had been arguing that hecould most easily capture the Countess by storm, with no warning orpreparations of any kind.
Then, from a lateral path, a closed carriage and pair drove rapidly upto the Hall, and a footman bounced off the hammer-cloth. Denry couldnot see through the carriage, but under it he could distinguish theskirts of some one who got out of it. Evidently the Countess was justreturning from a drive.
He quickened his pace, for at heart he was an audacious boy.
"She can't eat me!" he said.
This assertion was absolutely irrefutable, and yet there remained in hisbold heart an irrational fear that after all she _could_ eat him. Suchis the extraordinary influence of a Palladian facade!
After what seemed several hours of torture entirely novel in hisexperience, he skirted the back of the carriage and mounted the steps tothe portal. And, although the coachman was innocuous, being apparentlycarved in stone, Denry would have given a ten-pound note to find himselfsuddenly in his club or even in church. The masonry of the Hall ros
e upabove him like a precipice. He was searching for the bell-knob in theface of the precipice when a lady suddenly appeared at the doors. Atfirst he thought it was the Countess, and that heart of his began toslip down the inside of his legs. But it was not the Countess.
"Well!" demanded the lady. She was dressed in black.
"Can I see the Countess?" he inquired.
The lady stared at him. He handed her his professional card which laywaiting all ready in his waistcoat pocket.
"I will ask my lady," said the lady in black.
Denry perceived from her accent that she was not English.
She disappeared through a swinging door; and then Denry most clearlyheard the Countess's own authentic voice, saying in a pettish, disgustedtone:
"Oh! Bother!"
And he was chilled. He seriously wished that he had never thought ofstarting his confounded Universal Thrift Club.
After some time the carriage suddenly drove off, presumably to thestables. As he was now within the hollow of the porch, a sort of caveat the foot of the precipice, he could not see along the length of thefacade. Nobody came to him. The lady who had promised to ask my ladywhether the latter could see him did not return. He reflected that shehad not promised to return; she had merely promised to ask a question.As the minutes passed he grew careless, or grew bolder, graduallydropping his correct attitude of a man-about-town paying an afternooncall, and peered through the glass of the doors that divided him fromthe Countess. He could distinguish nothing that had life. One of hispreliminary tremors had been caused by a fanciful vision ofmultitudinous footmen, through a double line of whom he would becompelled to walk in order to reach the Countess. But there was noteven one footman. This complete absence of indoor footmen seemed to himremiss, not in accordance with centuries of tradition concerning life atSneyd.
Then he caught sight, through the doors, of the back of Jock, theCountess's carriage footman and the son of his mother's old friend.Jock was standing motionless at a half-open door to the right of thespace between Denry's double doors and the next pair of double doors.Denry tried to attract his attention by singular movements and strangenoises of the mouth. But Jock, like his partner the coachman, appearedto be carven in stone. Denry decided that he would go in and havespeech with Jock. They were on Christian-name terms, or had been a fewyears ago. He unobtrusively pushed at the doors, and at the very samemoment Jock, with a start--as though released from some spell--vanishedaway from the door to the right.
Denry was now within.
"Jock!" He gave a whispering cry, rather conspiratorial in tone. Andas Jock offered no response, he hurried after Jock through the door tothe right. This door led to a large apartment which struck Denry asbeing an idealisation of a first-class waiting-room at a highlyimportant terminal station. In a wall to the left was a small door,half open. Jock must have gone through that door. Denry hesitated--hehad not properly been invited into the Hall. But in hesitating he waswrong; he ought to have followed his prey without qualms. When he hadconquered qualms and reached the further door, his eyes were met, totheir amazement, by an immense perspective of great chambers. Denry hadonce seen a Pullman car, which had halted at Knype Station with a Frenchactress on board. What he saw now presented itself to him as a train ofPullman cars, one opening into the other, constructed for giants. Eachcar was about as large as the large hall in Bursley Town Hall, and, likethat auditorium, had a ceiling painted to represent blue sky, milk-whiteclouds, and birds. But in the corners were groups of naked cupids,swimming joyously on the ceiling; in Bursley Town Hall there were nonaked cupids. He understood now that he had been quite wrong in hisestimate of the room by which he had come into this Versailles. Insteadof being large it was tiny, and instead of being luxurious it was merelyfurnished with miscellaneous odds and ends left over from far moreimportant furnishings. It was, indeed, naught but a nondescript box ofa hole insignificantly wedged between the state apartments and the outerlobby.
For an instant he forgot that he was in pursuit of Jock. Jock wasperfectly invisible and inaudible. He must, however, have gone down thevista of the great chambers, and therefore Denry went down the vista ofthe great chambers after him, curiously expecting to have a glimpse ofhis long salmon-tinted coat or his cockaded hat popping up out of somecorner. He reached the other end of the vista, having traversed threeenormous chambers, of which the middle one was the most enormous and themost gorgeous. There were high windows everywhere to his right, and tohis left, in every chamber, double doors with gilt handles of a peculiarshape. Windows and doors, with equal splendour, were draped in hangingsof brocade. Through the windows he had glimpses of the gardens in theirautumnal colours, but no glimpse of a gardener. Then a carriage flewpast the windows at the end of the suite, and he had a very clear thougha transient view of two menials on the box-seat; one of those menials heknew must be Jock. Hence Jock must have escaped from the state suite byone of the numerous doors.
Denry tried one door after another, and they were all fastened firmly onthe outside. The gilded handles would turn, but the lofty and ornateportals would not yield to pressure. Mystified and startled, he wentback to the place from which he had begun his explorations, and was evenmore seriously startled and more deeply mystified to find nothing but ablank wall where he had entered. Obviously he could not have penetratedthrough a solid wall. A careful perusal of the wall showed him thatthere was indeed a door in it, but that the door was artfully disguisedby painting and other devices so as to look like part of the wall. Hehad never seen such a phenomenon before. A very small glass knob wasthe door's sole fitting. Denry turned this crystal, but with no usefulresult. In the brief space of time since his entrance that door, andthe door by which Jock had gone, had been secured by unseen hands.Denry imagined sinister persons bolting all the multitudinous doors, andinimical eyes staring at him through many keyholes. He imagined himselfto be the victim of some fearful and incomprehensible conspiracy.
Why in the sacred name of common sense should he have been imprisoned inthe state suite? The only answer to the conundrum was that nobody wasaware of his quite unauthorised presence in the state suite. But thenwhy should the state suite be so suddenly locked up, since the Countesshad just come in from a drive? It then occurred to him that, instead ofjust coming in, the Countess had been just leaving. The carriage musthave driven round from some humble part of the Hall, with the lady inblack in it, and the lady in black--perhaps a lady's maid--alone hadstepped out from it. The Countess had been waiting for the carriage inthe porch, and had fled to avoid being forced to meet the unfortunateDenry! (Humiliating thought!) The carriage had then taken her up at aside door. And now she was gone. Possibly she had left Sneyd Hall notto return for months, and that was why the doors had been locked!Perhaps everybody had departed from the Hall save one aged and deafretainer--he knew, from historical novels which he had glanced at in hisyouth, that in every Hall that respected itself an aged and deafretainer was invariably left solitary during the absences of the nobleowner. He knocked on the small disguised door. His unique purpose inknocking was naturally to make a noise, but something prevented him frommaking a noise. He felt that he must knock decently, discreetly; hefelt that he must not outrage the conventions.
No result to this polite summoning.
He attacked other doors; he attacked every door he could put his handson; and gradually he lost his respect for decency and the conventionsproper to Halls, knocking loudly and more loudly. He banged. Nothingbut sheer solidity stopped his sturdy hands from going through thepanels. He so far forgot himself as to shake the doors with all hisstrength furiously.
And finally he shouted, "Hi, there! Hi! Can't you hear?"
Apparently the aged and deaf retainer could not hear. Apparently he wasthe deafest retainer that a peeress of the realm ever left in charge ofa princely pile.
"Well, that's a nice thing!" Denry exclaimed. And he noticed that hewas hot and angry. He took a certain pleasure
in being angry. Heconsidered that he had a right to be angry.
At this point he began to work himself up into the state of "notcaring," into the state of despising Sneyd Hall and everything for whichit stood. As for permitting himself to be impressed or intimidated bythe lonely magnificence of his environment, he laughed at the idea; or,more accurately, he snorted at it. Scornfully he tramped up and downthose immense interiors, doing the caged lion, and cogitating in questof the right, dramatic, effective act to perform in the singular crisis.Unhappily, the carpets were very thick, so that though he could tramp,he could not stamp, and he desired to stamp. But in the connectingdoorways there were expanses of bare, highly polished oak floor, andhere he did stamp.
The rooms were not furnished after the manner of ordinary rooms. Therewas no round or square table in the midst of each with a checked clothon it and a plant in the centre. Nor in front of each window was there asmall table with a large Bible thereupon. The middle parts of the roomswere empty, save for a group of statuary in the largest room. Greatarmchairs and double-ended sofas were ranged about in straight lines,and among these, here and there, were smaller chairs gilded from head tofoot. Round the walls were placed long, narrow tables with tops likeglass-cases, and in the cases were all sorts of strange matters--such ascoins, fans, daggers, snuff-boxes. In various corners white statuesstood awaiting the day of doom without a rag to protect them from thewinds of destiny. The walls were panelled in tremendous panels, and ineach panel was a formidable dark oil-painting. The mantlepieces were sopreposterously high that not even a giant could have sat at thefireplace and put his feet on them. And if they had held clocks, asmantlepieces do, a telescope would have been necessary to discern thehour. Above each mantelpiece, instead of a looking-glass, was a vastpicture. The chandeliers were overpowering in glitter and indimensions.
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