The Card, Arnold Bennett [read with me .txt] 📗

I was going to let you go by that steamer? Not much."

"But mother and father..."

"I'll telegraph. They'll get it on landing."

"And where's Ruth?"

"_Be hanged to Ruth!_" he shouted furiously.

As the cab rattled over the cobbles the _Titubic_ slipped away from the landing-stage. The irretrievable had happened.

Nellie burst into tears.

"Look here," Denry said savagely. "If you don't dry up, I shall have to cry myself."

"What are you going to do with me?" she whimpered.

"Well, what do _you_ think? I'm going to marry you, of course."

His aggrieved tone might have been supposed to imply that people had tried to thwart him, but that he had no intention of being thwarted, nor of asking permissions, nor of conducting himself as anything but a fierce tyrant.

As for Nellie, she seemed to surrender.

Then he kissed her--also angrily. He kissed her several times--yes, even in Lord Street itself--less and less angrily.

"Where are you taking me to?" she inquired humbly, as a captive.

"I shall take you to my mother's," he said.

"Will she like it?"

"She'll either like it or lump it," said Denry. "It'll take a fortnight."

"What?"

"The notice, and things."

In the train, in the midst of a great submissive silence, she murmured:

"It'll be simply awful for father and mother."

"That can't be helped," said he. "And they'll be far too sea-sick to bother their heads about you."

"You can't think how you've staggered me," said she.

"You can't think how I've staggered myself," said he.

"When did you decide to..."

"When I was standing at the gangway, and you looked at me," he answered.

"But..."

"It's no use butting," he said. "I'm like that.... That's me, that is."

It was the bare truth that he had staggered himself. But he had staggered himself into a miraculous, ecstatic happiness. She had no money, no clothes, no style, no experience, no particular gifts. But she was she. And when he looked at her, calmed, he knew that he had done well for himself. He knew that if he had not yielded to that terrific impulse he would have done badly for himself. Mrs Machin had what she called a ticklish night of it.


VI

The next day he received a note from Ruth, dated Southport, inquiring how he came to lose her on the landing-stage, and expressing concern. It took him three days to reply, and even then the reply was a bad one. He had behaved infamously to Ruth; so much could not be denied. Within three hours of practically proposing to her, he had run off with a simple girl, who was not fit to hold a candle to her. And he did not care. That was the worst of it; he did not care.

Of course the facts reached her. The facts reached everybody; for the singular reappearance of Nellie in the streets of Bursley immediately after her departure for Canada had to be explained. Moreover, the infamous Denry was rather proud of the facts. And the town inevitably said: "Machin all over, that! Snatching the girl off the blooming lugger. Machin all over." And Denry agreed privately that it was Machin all over.

"What other chap," he demanded of the air, "would have thought of it? Or had the pluck?..."

It was mere malice on the part of destiny that caused Denry to run across Mrs Capron-Smith at Euston some weeks later. Happily they both had immense nerve.

"Dear me," said she. "What are _you_ doing here?"

"Only honeymooning," he said.


CHAPTER XI

IN THE ALPS

I

Although Denry was extremely happy as a bridegroom, and capable of the most foolish symptoms of affection in private, he said to himself, and he said to Nellie (and she sturdily agreed with him): "We aren't going to be the ordinary silly honeymooners." By which, of course, he meant that they would behave so as to be taken for staid married persons. They failed thoroughly in this enterprise as far as London, where they spent a couple of nights, but on leaving Charing Cross they made a new and a better start, in the light of experience.

Their destination, it need hardly be said, was Switzerland. After Mrs Capron-Smith's remarks on the necessity of going to Switzerland in winter if one wished to respect one's self, there was really no alternative to Switzerland. Thus it was announced in the _Signal_ (which had reported the wedding in ten lines, owing to the excessive quietude of the wedding) that Mr and Mrs Councillor Machin were spending a month at Mont Pridoux, sur Montreux, on the Lake of Geneva. And the announcement looked very well.

At Dieppe they got a through carriage. There were several through carriages for Switzerland on the train. In walking through the corridors from one to another Denry and Nellie had their first glimpse of the world which travels and which runs off for a holiday whenever it feels in the mood. The idea of going for a holiday in any month but August seemed odd to both of them. Denry was very bold and would insist on talking in a naturally loud voice. Nellie was timid and clinging. "What do you say?" Denry would roar at her when she half-whispered something, and she had to repeat it so that all could hear. It was part of their plan to address each other curtly, brusquely, and to frown, and to pretend to be slightly bored by each other.

They were outclassed by the world which travels. Try as they might, even Denry was morally intimidated. He had managed his clothes fairly correctly; he was not ashamed of them; and Nellie's were by no means the worst in the compartments; indeed, according to the standard of some of the most intimidating women, Nellie's costume erred in not being quite sufficiently negligent, sufficiently "anyhow." And they had plenty, and ten times plenty of money, and the consciousness of it. Expense was not being spared on that honeymoon. And yet.... Well, all that can be said is that the company was imposing. The company, which was entirely English, seemed to be unaware that any one ever did anything else but travel luxuriously to places mentioned in second-year geographies. It astounded Nellie that there should be so many people in the world with nothing to do but spend. And they were constantly saying the strangest things with an air of perfect calm.

"How much did you pay for the excess luggage?" an untidy young woman asked of an old man.

"Oh! Thirteen pounds," answered the old man, carelessly.

And not long before Nellie had scarcely escaped ten days in the steerage of an Atlantic liner.

After dinner in the restaurant car--no champagne, because it was vulgar, but a good sound, expensive wine--they felt more equal to the situation, more like part-owners of the train. Nellie prudently went to bed ere the triumphant feeling wore off. But Denry stayed up smoking in the corridor. He stayed up very late, being too proud and happy and too avid of new sensations to be able to think of sleep. It was a match which led to a conversation between himself and a thin, drawling, overbearing fellow with an eyeglass. Denry had hated this lordly creature all the way from Dieppe. In presenting him with a match he felt that he was somehow getting the better of him, for the match was precious in the nocturnal solitude of the vibrating corridor. The mere fact that two people are alone together and awake, divided from a sleeping or sleepy population only by a row of closed, mysterious doors, will do much to break down social barriers. The excellence of Denry's cigar also helped. It atoned for the breadth of his accent.

He said to himself:

"I'll have a bit of a chat with this johnny."

And then he said aloud:

"Not a bad train this!"

"No!" the eyeglass agreed languidly. "Pity they give you such a beastly dinner!"

And Denry agreed hastily that it was.

Soon they were chatting of places, and somehow it came out of Denry that he was going to Montreux. The eyeglass professed its indifference to Montreux in winter, but said the resorts above Montreux were all right, such as Caux or Pridoux.

And Denry said:

"Well, of course, shouldn't think of stopping _in_ Montreux. Going to try Pridoux."

The eyeglass said it wasn't going so far as Switzerland yet; it meant to stop in the Jura.

"Geneva's a pretty deadly place, ain't it?" said the eyeglass after a pause.

"Ye-es," said Denry.

"Been there since that new esplanade was finished?"

"No," said Denry. "I saw nothing of it."

"When were you there?"

"Oh! A couple of years ago."

"Ah! It wasn't started then. Comic thing! Of course they're awfully proud in Geneva of the view of Mont Blanc."

"Yes," said Denry.

"Ever noticed how queer women are about that view? They're no end keen on it at first, but after a day or two it gets on their nerves."

"Yes," said Denry. "I've noticed that myself. My wife...."

He stopped, because he didn't know what he was going to say. The eyeglass nodded understandingly.

"All alike," it said. "Odd thing!"

When Denry introduced himself into the two-berth compartment which he had managed to secure at the end of the carriage for himself and Nellie, the poor tired child was as wakeful as an owl.

"Who have you been talking to?" she yawned.

"The eyeglass johnny."

"Oh! Really," Nellie murmured, interested and impressed. "With him, have you? I could hear voices. What sort of a man is he?"

"He seems to be an ass," said Denry. "Fearfully haw-haw. Couldn't stand him for long. I've made him believe we've been married for two years."


II

They stood on the balcony of the Hotel Beau-Site of Mont Pridoux. A little below, to the right, was the other hotel, the Metropole, with the red-and-white Swiss flag waving over its central tower. A little below that was the terminal station of the funicular railway from Montreux. The railway ran down the sheer of the mountain into the roofs of Montreux, like a wire. On it, two toy trains crawled towards each other, like flies climbing and descending a wall. Beyond the fringe of hotels that constituted Montreux was a strip of water, and beyond the water a range of hills white at the top.

"So these are the Alps!" Nellie exclaimed.

She was disappointed; he also. But when Denry learnt from the guide-book and by inquiry that the strip of lake was seven miles across, and the highest notched peaks ten thousand feet above the sea and twenty-five miles off, Nellie gasped and was content.

They liked the Hotel Beau-Site. It had been recommended to Denry, by a man who knew what was what, as the best hotel in Switzerland. "Don't you be misled by prices," the man had said. And Denry was not. He paid sixteen francs a day for the two of them at the Beau-Site, and was rather relieved than otherwise by the absence of finger-bowls. Everything was very good, except sometimes the hot water. The hot-water cans bore the legend "hot water," but these two words were occasionally the only evidence of heat in the water. On the other hand, the bedrooms could be made sultry by merely turning a handle; and the windows were double. Nellie was wondrously inventive. They breakfasted