Denry the Audacious

And in the discreet corner which she had selected the Countess fired a sudden shot at Denry.

"How did you get all those details about the state rooms at Sneyd?" she asked.

Upon which opening the conversation became lively.

The same evening Denry called at the Signaloffice and gave an order for a half-page advertisement of the Five Towns Universal Thrift Club – "patroness, the Countess of Chell." The advertisement informed the public that the Club had now made arrangements to accept new members. Besides the order for a half-page advertisement, Denry also gave many interesting and authentic details about the historic drive from Sneyd Vale to Hanbridge. The next day the Signal was simply full of Denry and the Countess. It had a large photograph, taken by a photographer on Cauldon Bank, which showed Denry actually driving the Countess, and the Countess's face was full in the picture. It presented, too, an excellently appreciative account of Denry's speech, and it congratulated Denry on his first appearance in the public life of the Five Towns. (In parenthesis it sympathised with Sir Jee in his indisposition.) In short, Denry's triumph obliterated the memory of his previous triumphs. It obliterated, too, all rumours adverse to the Thrift Club. In a few days he had a thousand new members. Of course, this addition only increased his liabilities; but now he could obtain capital on fair terms, and he did obtain it. A company was formed. The Countess had a few shares in this company. So (strangely) had Jock and his companion the coachman. Not the least of the mysteries was that when Denry reached his mother's cottage on the night of the tea with the Countess his arm was not in a sling and showed no symptom of having been damaged.

CHAPTER VIII. RAISING A WIGWAM

I

A still young man – his age was thirty – with a short, strong beard peeping out over the fur collar of a vast overcoat, emerged from a cab at the snowy corner of St. Luke's Square and Brougham Street, and paid the cabman with a gesture that indicated both wealth and the habit of command. And the cabman, who had driven him over from Hanbridge through the winter night, responded accordingly. Few people take cabs in the Five Towns. There are few cabs to take. If you are going to a party you may order one in advance by telephone, reconciling yourself also in advance to the expense, but to hail a cab in the street without forethought and jump into it as carelessly as you would jump into a tram – this is by very few done. The young man with the beard did it frequently, which proved that he was fundamentally ducal.

He was encumbered with a large and rather heavy parcel as he walked down Brougham Street, and moreover the footpath of Brougham Street was exceedingly dirty. And yet no one acquainted with the circumstances of his life would have asked why he had dismissed the cab before arriving at his destination, because every one knew. The reason was that this ducal person with the gestures of command dared not drive up to his mother's door in a cab oftener than about once a month. He opened that door with a latchkey (a modern lock was almost the only innovation that he had succeeded in fixing on his mother), and stumbled with his unwieldy parcel into the exceedingly narrow lobby.

"Is that you, Denry?" called a feeble voice from the parlour.

"Yes," said he, and went into the parlour, hat, fur coat, parcel, and all.

Mrs. Machin, in a shawl and an antimacassar over the shawl, sat close to the fire and leaning towards it. She looked cold and ill. Although the parlour was very tiny and the fire comparatively large, the structure of the grate made it impossible that the room should be warm, as all the heat went up the chimney. If Mrs. Machin had sat on the roof and put her hands over the top of the chimney she would have been much warmer than at the grate.

"You aren't in bed?" Denry queried.

"Can't ye see?" said his mother. And indeed to ask a woman who was obviously sitting up in a chair whether she was in bed did seem somewhat absurd. She added, less sarcastically:

"I was expecting ye every minute. Where have ye had your tea?"

"Oh!" he said lightly, "in Hanbridge."

An untruth! He had not had his tea anywhere. But he had dined richly at the new Hôtel Métropole, Hanbridge.

"What have ye got there?" asked his mother.

"A present for you," said Denry. "It's your birthday to-morrow."

"I don't know as I want reminding of that," murmured Mrs. Machin.

But when he had undone the parcel and held up the contents before her she exclaimed:

"Bless us!"

The staggered tone was an admission that for once in a way he had impressed her.

It was a magnificent sealskin mantle, longer than sealskin mantles usually are. It was one of those articles the owner of which can say: "Nobody can have a better than this – I don't care who she is." It was worth in monetary value all the plain shabby clothes on Mrs. Machin's back, and all her very ordinary best clothes upstairs, and all the furniture in the entire house, and perhaps all Denry's dandiacal wardrobe too, except his fur coat. If the entire contents of the cottage, with the aforesaid exception, had been put up to auction, they would not have realised enough to pay for that sealskin mantle.

Had it been anything but a sealskin mantle, and equally costly, Mrs. Machin would have upbraided. But a sealskin mantle is not "showy." It "goes with" any and every dress and bonnet. And the most respectable, the most conservative, the most austere woman may find legitimate pleasure in wearing it. A sealskin mantle is the sole luxurious ostentation that a woman of Mrs. Machin's temperament – and there are many such in the Five Towns and elsewhere – will conscientiously permit herself.

"Try it on," said Denry.

She rose weakly and tried it on. It fitted as well as a sealskin mantle can fit.

"My word – it's warm!" she said. This was her sole comment.

"Keep it on," said Denry.

His mother's glance withered the suggestion.

"Where are you going?" he asked, as she left the room.

"To put it away," said she. "I must get some moth powder to-morrow."

He protested with inarticulate noises, removed his own furs, which he threw down on to the old worn-out sofa, and drew a Windsor chair up to the fire. After a while his mother returned, and sat down in her rocking-chair, and began to shiver again under the shawl and the antimacassar. The lamp on the table lighted up the left side of her face and the right side of his.

"Look here, mother," said he. "You must have a doctor."

"I shall have no doctor."

"You 've got influenza, and it's a very tricky business – influenza is; you never know where you are with it."

"Ye can call it influenza if ye like," said Mrs. Machin. "There was no influenza in my young days. We called a cold a cold."

"Well," said Denry. "You are n't well, are you?"

"I never said I was," she answered grimly.

"No," said Denry, with the triumphant ring of one who is about to devastate an enemy. "And you never will be in this rotten old cottage."

"This was reckoned a very good class of house when your father and I came into it. And it's always been kept in repair. It was good enough for your father, and it's good enough for me. I don't see myself flitting. But some folks have gotten so grand. As for health, old Reuben next door is ninety-one. How many people over ninety are there in those grimcrack houses up by the Park, I should like to know?"

Denry could argue with any one save his mother. Always, when he was about to reduce her to impotence, she fell on him thus and rolled him in the dust. Still, he began again.

"Do we pay four-and-sixpence a week for this cottage, or don't we?" he demanded.

"And always have done," said Mrs. Machin. "I should like to see the landlord put it up!" she added, formidably, as if to say: "I 'd landlord him, if he tried to put my rent up!"

"Well," said Denry, "here we are living in a four-and-six a week cottage, and do you know how much I 'm making? I 'm making two thousand pounds a year. That's what I 'm making."

A second wilful deception of his mother! As managing director of the Five Towns Universal Thrift Club, as proprietor of the majority of its shares, as its absolute autocrat, he was making very nearly four thousand a year. Why could he not easily have said four as two to his mother? The simple answer is that he was afraid to say four. It was as if he ought to blush before his mother for being so plutocratic, his mother who had passed most of her life in hard toil to gain a few shillings a week. Four thousand seemed so fantastic! And in fact the Thrift Club, which he had invented in a moment, had arrived at a prodigious success, with its central offices in Hanbridge and its branch offices in the other four towns, and its scores of clerks and collectors presided over by Mr. Penkethman. It had met with opposition. The mighty said that Denry was making an unholy fortune under the guise of philanthropy. And to be on the safe side the Countess of Chell had resigned her official patronage of the Club and given her shares to the Pirehill Infirmary, which had accepted the high dividends on them without the least protest. As for Denry, he said that he had never set out to be a philanthropist nor posed as one, and that his unique intention was to grow rich by supplying a want, like the rest of them, and that anyhow there was no compulsion to belong to his Thrift Club. Then letters in his defence from representatives of the thousands and thousands of members of the Club rained into the columns of the Signal, and Denry was the most discussed personage in the county. It was stated that such thrift clubs, under various names, existed in several large towns in Yorkshire and Lancashire. This disclosure rehabilitated Denry completely in general esteem, for whatever obtains in Yorkshire and Lancashire must be right for Staffordshire; but it rather dashed Denry, who was obliged to admit to himself that after all he had not invented the Thrift Club. Finally the hundreds of tradesmen who had bound themselves to allow a discount of twopence in the shilling to the Club (sole source of the Club's dividends) had endeavoured to revolt. Denry effectually cowed them by threatening to establish co-operative stores – there was not a single co-operative store in the Five Towns. They knew he would have the wild audacity to do it.

Thenceforward the progress of the Thrift Club had been unruffled. Denry waxed amazingly in importance. His mule died. He dared not buy a proper horse and dog-cart because he dared not bring such an equipage to the front door of his mother's four-and-sixpenny cottage. So he had taken to cabs. In all exterior magnificence and lavishness he equalled even the great Harold Etches, of whom he had once been afraid; and like Etches he became a famous habitué of Llandudno pier. But whereas Etches lived with his wife in a superb house at Bleakridge, Denry lived with his mother in a ridiculous cottage in ridiculous Brougham Street. He had a regiment of acquaintances, and he accepted a lot of hospitality, but he could not return it at Brougham Street. His greatness fizzled into nothing in Brougham Street. It stopped short and sharp at the corner of St. Luke's Square, where he left his cabs. He could do nothing with his mother. If she was not still going out as a sempstress the reason was, not that she was not ready to go out, but that her old clients had ceased to send for her. And could they be blamed for not employing at three shillings a day the mother of a young man who wallowed in thousands sterling? Denry had essayed over and over again to instil reason into his mother, and he had invariably failed. She was too independent, too profoundly rooted in her habits; and her character had more force than his. Of course, he might have left her and set up a suitably gorgeous house of his own.

But he would not.

In fact, they were a remarkable pair.

On this eve of her birthday he had meant to cajole her into some step, to win her by an appeal, basing his argument on her indisposition. But he was being beaten off once more. The truth was that a cajoling, caressing tone could not be long employed towards Mrs. Machin. She was not persuasive herself, nor favourable to persuasiveness in others.

"Well," said she, "if you 're making two thousand a year, ye can spend it or save it as ye like, though ye 'd better save it. Ye never know what may happen in these days. There was a man dropped half-a-crown down a grid opposite only the day before yesterday."

Denry laughed.

"Ay!" she said; "ye can laugh."

"There 's no doubt about one thing," he said, "you ought to be in bed. You ought to stay in bed for two or three days at least."

"Yes," she said. "And who 's going to look after the house while I 'm moping between blankets?"

"You can have Rose Chudd in," he said.

"No," said she. "I 'm not going to have any woman rummaging about my house, and me in bed!"

"You know perfectly well she's been practically starving since her husband died, and as she 's going out charing, why can't you have her and put a bit of bread into her mouth?"

"Because I won't have her! Neither her nor any one. There 's naught to prevent you giving her some o' your two thousand a year, if you 've a mind. But I see no reason for my house being turned upside down by her, even if I have got a bit of a cold."

"You 're an unreasonable old woman," said Denry.

"Happen I am!" said she. "There can't be two wise ones in a family. But I 'm not going to give up this cottage, and as long as I am standing on my feet I 'm not going to pay any one for doing what I can do better myself." A pause. "And so you need n't think it! You can't come round me with a fur mantle."

She retired to rest. On the following morning he was very glum.

"Ye need n't be so glum," she said.

But she was rather pleased at his glumness. For in his glumness was a sign that he recognised defeat.

II

The next episode between them was curiously brief. Denry had influenza. He said that naturally he had caught hers.

He went to bed and stayed there. She nursed him all day, and grew angry in a vain attempt to force him to eat. Towards night he tossed furiously on the little bed in the little bedroom, complaining of fearful headaches. She remained by his side most of the night. In the morning he was easier. Neither of them mentioned the word "doctor." She spent the day largely on the stairs. Once more towards night he grew worse, and she remained most of the second night by his side.

In the sinister winter dawn Denry murmured in a feeble tone:

"Mother, you 'd better send for him."

"Doctor?" she said. And secretly she thought that she had better send for the doctor, and that there must be after all some difference between influenza and a cold.

"No," said Denry; "send for young Lawton."

"Young Lawton!" she exclaimed. "What do you want young Lawton to come here for?"

"I have n't made my will," Denry answered.

"Pooh!" she retorted.

Nevertheless she was the least bit in the world frightened. And she sent for Dr. Stirling, the aged Harrop's Scotch partner.

Dr. Stirling, who was full-bodied and left little space for anybody else in the tiny, shabby bedroom of the man with four thousand a year, gazed at Mrs. Machin, and he gazed also at Denry.

"Ye must go to bed this minute," said he.

"But he 's in bed," cried Mrs. Machin.

"I mean yerself," said Dr. Stirling.

She was very nearly at the end of her resources. And the proof was that she had no strength left to fight Dr. Stirling. She did go to bed. And shortly afterwards Denry got up. And a little later, Rose Chudd, that prim and efficient young widow from lower down the street, came into the house and controlled it as if it had been her own. Mrs. Machin, whose constitution was hardy, arose in about a week, cured, and duly dismissed Rose with wages and without thanks. But Rose had been. Like the Signal's burglars, she had "effected an entrance." And the house had not been turned upside down. Mrs. Machin, though she tried, could not find fault with the result of Rose's uncontrolled activities.

III

One morning – and not very long afterwards; in such wise did fate seem to favour the young at the expense of the old – Mrs. Machin received two letters which alarmed and disgusted her. One was from her landlord announcing that he had sold the house in which she lived to a Mr. Wilbraham of London, and that in future she must pay the rent to the said Mr. Wilbraham or his legal representatives. The other was from a firm of London solicitors announcing that their client Mr. Wilbraham had bought the house and that the rent must be paid to their agent whom they would name later.

Mrs. Machin gave vent to her emotion in her customary manner:

"Bless us!"

And she showed the impudent letters to Denry.

"Oh!" said Denry. "So he has bought them, has he? I heard he was going to."

"Them?" exclaimed Mrs. Machin. "What else has he bought?"

"I expect he 's bought all the five – this and the four below, as far as Downes's. I expect you 'll find that the other four have had notices just like these. You know all this row used to belong to the Wilbrahams. You surely must remember that, mother?"

"Is he one of the Wilbrahams of Hillport, then?"

"Yes, of course he is."

"I thought the last of 'em was Cecil, and when he 'd beggared himself here he went to Australia and died of drink. That's what I always heard. We always used to say as there was n't a Wilbraham left."

"He did go to Australia, but he did n't die of drink. He disappeared, and when he 'd made a fortune he turned up again in Sydney, so it seems. I heard he 's thinking of coming back here to settle. Anyhow, he 's buying up a lot of the Wilbraham property. I should have thought you 'd have heard of it. Why, lots of people have been talking about it."

"Well," said Mrs. Machin, "I don't like it."

She objected to a law which permitted a landlord to sell a house over the head of a tenant who had occupied it for more than thirty years. In the course of the morning she discovered that Denry was right – the other tenants had received notices exactly similar to hers.

Two days later Denry arrived home for tea with a most surprising article of news. Mr. Cecil Wilbraham had been down to Bursley from London, and had visited him, Denry. Mr. Cecil Wilbraham's local information was evidently quite out of date, for he had imagined Denry to be a rent-collector and estate agent, whereas the fact was that Denry had abandoned this minor vocation years ago. His desire had been that Denry should collect his rents and watch over his growing interests in the district.

"So what did you tell him?" asked Mrs. Machin.

"I told him I 'd do it," said Denry.

"Why?"

"I thought it might be safer for you" said Denry with a certain emphasis. "And, besides, it looked as if it might be a bit of a lark. He's a very peculiar chap."

"Peculiar?"

"For one thing, he's got the largest moustaches of any man I ever saw. And there 's something up with his left eye. And then I think he's a bit mad."

"Mad?"

"Well, touched. He's got a notion about building a funny sort of a house for himself on a plot of land at Bleakridge. It appears he is fond of living alone, and he's collected all kind of dodges for doing without servants and still being comfortable."

"Ay! But he 's right there!" breathed Mrs. Machin in deep sympathy. As she said about once a week, "she never could abide the idea of servants." "He's not married, then?" she added.

"He told me he 'd been a widower three times, but he 'd never had any children," said Denry.

"Bless us!" murmured Mrs. Machin.

Denry was the one person in the town who enjoyed the acquaintance and the confidence of the thrice-widowed stranger with long moustaches. He had descended without notice on Bursley, seen Denry (at the branch office of the Thrift Club), and then departed. It was understood that later he would permanently settle in the district. Then the wonderful house began to rise on the plot of land at Bleakridge. Denry had general charge of it, but always subject to erratic and autocratic instructions from London. Thanks to Denry, who since the historic episode at Llandudno had remained very friendly with the Cotterill family, Mr. Cotterill had the job of building the house; the plans came from London. And though Mr. Cecil Wilbraham proved to be exceedingly watchful against any form of imposition, the job was a remunerative one for Mr. Cotterill, who talked a great deal about the originality of the residence. The town judged of the wealth and importance of Mr. Cecil Wilbraham by the fact that a person so wealthy and important as Denry should be content to act as his agent. But then the Wilbrahams had been magnates in the Bursley region for generations, up till the final Wilbraham smash in the late seventies. The town hungered to see those huge moustaches and that peculiar eye. In addition to Denry, only one person had seen the madman, and that person was Nellie Cotterill, who had been viewing the half-built house with Denry one Sunday morning when the madman had most astonishingly arrived upon the scene, and after a few minutes vanished. The building of the house strengthened greatly the friendship between Denry and the Cotterills. Yet Denry neither liked Mr. Cotterill nor trusted him.

The next incident in these happenings was that Mrs. Machin received notice from the London firm to quit her four-and-sixpence a week cottage. It seemed to her that not merely Brougham Street, but the world, was coming to an end. She was very angry with Denry for not protecting her more successfully. He was Mr. Wilbraham's agent, he collected the rent, and it was his duty to guard his mother from unpleasantness. She observed, however, that he was remarkably disturbed by the notice, and he assured her that Mr. Wilbraham had not consulted him in the matter at all. He wrote a letter to London, which she signed, demanding the reason of this absurd notice flung at an ancient and perfect tenant. The reply was that Mr. Wilbraham intended to pull the houses down, beginning with Mrs. Machin's, and rebuild.

"Pooh!" said Denry. "Don't you worry your head, mother; I shall arrange it. He'll be down here soon to see his new house – it's practically finished, and the furniture is coming in – and I 'll just talk to him."

But Mr. Wilbraham did not come, the explanation doubtless being that he was mad. On the other hand, fresh notices came with amazing frequency. Mrs. Machin just handed them over to Denry. And then Denry received a telegram to say that Mr. Wilbraham would be at his new house that night and wished to see Denry there. Unfortunately, on the same day, by the afternoon post, while Denry was at his offices, there arrived a sort of supreme and ultimate notice from London to Mrs. Machin, and it was on blue paper. It stated, baldly, that as Mrs. Machin had failed to comply with all the previous notices, had indeed ignored them, she and her goods would now be ejected into the street according to the law. It gave her twenty-four hours to flit. Never had a respectable dame been so insulted as Mrs. Machin was insulted by that notice. The prospect of camping out in Brougham Street confronted her. When Denry reached home that evening Mrs. Machin, as the phrase is, "gave it him."

Denry admitted frankly that he was nonplussed, staggered, and outraged. But the thing was simply another proof of Mr. Wilbraham's madness. After tea he decided that his mother must put on her best clothes and go up with him to see Mr. Wilbraham and firmly expostulate – in fact, they would arrange the situation between them; and if Mr. Wilbraham was obstinate they would defy Mr. Wilbraham. Denry explained to his mother that an Englishwoman's cottage was her castle, that a landlord's minions had no right to force an entrance, and that the one thing that Mr. Wilbraham could do was to begin unbuilding the cottage from the top, outside. And he would like to see Mr. Wilbraham try it on!

So the sealskin mantle (for it was spring again) went up with Denry to Bleakridge.

IV

The moon shone in the chill night. The house stood back from Trafalgar Road in the moonlight – a squarish block of a building.