He nodded.

They were off, together. Ruth, it had appeared, was actually staying at the Five Towns Hotel, at Knype, which at that epoch was the only hotel in the Five Towns seriously pretending to be "first-cla.s.s" in the full-page advertis.e.m.e.nt sense. The fact that Ruth was staying at the Five Towns Hotel impressed Denry anew. a.s.suredly she did things in the grand manner. She had meant to walk down by the Park to Bursley Station and catch the last loop line train to Knype, and when Denry suddenly disclosed the existence of his motor-car, and proposed to see her to her hotel in it, she in her turn had been impressed. The astonishment in her tone as she exclaimed:

"Have you got a _motor_?" was the least in the world nave.

Thus they departed together from the stricken house, Ruth saying brightly to Nellie, who had reappeared in a painful state of demoralisation, that she should return on the morrow.

And Denry went down the obscure drive with a final vision of the poor child Nellie as she stood at the door to speed them. It was extraordinary how that child had remained a child. He knew that she must be more than half-way through her twenties, and yet she persisted in being the merest girl! A delightful little thing; but no _savoir vivre_, no equality to a situation, no spectacular pride. Just a nice, bright girl, strangely girlish! The Cotterills had managed that bad evening badly. They had shown no dignity, no reserve, no discretion; and old Cotterill had been simply fatuous in his suggestion! As for Mrs. Cotterill, she was completely overcome, and it was due solely to Ruth's calm managing influence that Nellie, nervous and whimpering, had wound herself up to come and shut the front door after the guests.

It was all very sad.

When he had successfully started the car, and they were sliding down the Moorthorne hill together, side by side, their shoulders touching, Denry threw off the nightmarish effect of the bankrupt household. After all, there was no reason why he should be depressed. He was not a bankrupt.

He was steadily adding riches to riches. He acquired wealth mechanically now. Owing to the habits of his mother he never came within miles of living up to his income. And Ruth-she too was wealthy.

He felt that she must be wealthy in the strict significance of the term.

And she completed wealth by experience of the world. She was his equal.

She understood things in general. She had lived, travelled, suffered, reflected-in short, she was a completed article of manufacture. She was no little, clinging, raw girl. Further, she was less hard than of yore.

Her voice and gestures had a different quality. The world had softened her. And it occurred to him suddenly that her sole fault-extravagance-had no importance now that she was wealthy.

He told her all that Mr. Cotterill had said about Canada. And she told him all that Mrs. Cotterill had said about Canada. And they agreed that Mr. Cotterill had got his deserts, and that, in its own interest, Canada was the only thing for the Cotterill family. And the sooner the better!

People must accept the consequences of bankruptcy. Nothing could be done.

"I think it's a pity Nellie should have to go," said Denry.

"Oh! _Do_ you?" replied Ruth.

"Yes. Going out to a strange country like that. She 's not what you may call the Canadian kind of girl. If she could only get something to do here.... If something could be found for her!"

"Oh! I don't agree with you at _all_!" said Ruth. "Do you really think she ought to leave her parents just _now_? Her place is with her parents. And besides, between you and me, she 'll have a much better chance of marrying there than in _this_ town-after all this-I can tell you. Of course I shall be very sorry to lose her-and Mrs. Cotterill, too. But..."

"I expect you 're right," Denry concurred.

And they sped on luxuriously through the lamplit night of the Five Towns. And Denry pointed out his house as they pa.s.sed it. And they both thought much of the security of their positions in the world, and of their incomes, and of the honeyed deference of their bankers; and also of the mistake of being a failure. You could do nothing with a failure.

IV

On a frosty morning in early winter you might have seen them together in a different vehicle-a first-cla.s.s compartment of the express from Knype to Liverpool. They had the compartment to themselves and they were installed therein with every circ.u.mstance of luxury. Both were enwrapped in furs, and a fur rug united their knees in its shelter.

Magazines and newspapers were scatted about to the value of a labourer's hire for a whole day; and when Denry's eye met the guard's it said "shilling." In short, n.o.body could possibly be more superb than they were on that morning in that compartment.

The journey was the result of peculiar events.

Mr. Cotterill had made himself a bankrupt, and cast away the robe of a Town Councillor. He had submitted to the inquisitiveness of the Official Receiver and to the harsh prying of those rampant baying beasts, his creditors. He had laid bare his books, his correspondence, his lack of method, his domestic extravagance, and the distressing fact that he had continued to trade long after he knew himself to be insolvent. He had for several months, in the interests of the said beasts, carried on his own business as manager at a nominal salary. And gradually everything that was his had been sold. And during the final weeks the Cotterill family had been obliged to quit their dismantled house and exist in lodgings. It had been arranged that they should go to Canada by way of Liverpool, and on the day before the journey of Denry and Ruth to Liverpool they had departed from the borough of Bursley (which Mr.

Cotterill had so extensively faced with terra-cotta) unhonoured and unsung. Even Denry, though he had visited them in their lodgings to say good-bye, had not seen them off at the station. But Ruth Cap.r.o.n-Smith had seen them off at the station. She had interrupted a sojourn at Southport in order to come to Bursley and despatch them therefrom with due friendliness. Certain matters had to be attended to after their departure, and Ruth had promised to attend to them.

Now immediately after seeing them off Ruth had met Denry in the street.

"Do you know," she said brusquely, "those people are actually going steerage? I 'd no idea of it. Mr. and Mrs. Cotterill kept it from me, and I should not have heard of it only from something Nellie said.

That's why they 've gone to-day. The boat does n't sail till to-morrow afternoon."

"Steerage!" and Denry whistled.

"Yes," said Ruth. "Nothing but pride, of course. Old Cotterill wanted to have every penny he could sc.r.a.pe so as to be able to make the least tiny bit of a show when he gets to Toronto, and so-steerage! Just think of Mrs. Cotterill and Nellie in the steerage! If I'd known of it I should have altered that, I can tell you, and pretty quickly too; and now it's too late."

"No, it is n't," Denry contradicted her flatly.

"But they 've gone."

"I could telegraph to Liverpool for saloon berths-there 's bound to be plenty at this time of year-and I could run over to Liverpool to-morrow and catch 'em on the boat and make 'em change."

She asked him whether he really thought he could, and he a.s.sured her.

"Second-cabin berths would be better," said she.

"Why?"

"Well, because of dressing for dinner and so on. They have n't got the clothes, you know."

"Of course," said Denry.

"Listen," she said, with an enchanting smile. "Let's halve the cost, you and I. And let's go to Liverpool together and-er-make the little gift and arrange things. I 'm leaving for Southport to-morrow, and Liverpool's on my way."

Denry was delighted by the suggestion, and telegraphed to Liverpool, with success.

Thus they found themselves on that morning in the Liverpool express together. The work of benevolence in which they were engaged had a powerful influence on their mood, which grew both intimate and tender.

Ruth made no concealment of her regard for Denry; and as he gazed across the compartment at her, exquisitely mature (she was slightly older than himself), dressed to a marvel, perfect in every detail of manner, knowing all that was to be known about life, and secure in a handsome fortune-as he gazed, Denry reflected, joyously, victoriously:

"I 've got the dibs, of course. But she's got 'em too-perhaps more.

Therefore she must like me for myself alone. This brilliant creature has been everywhere and seen everything, and she comes back to the Five Towns and comes back to _me_."

It was his proudest moment. And in it he saw his future far more dazzlingly glorious than he had dreamt-even as late as six months before.

"When shall you be out of mourning?" he inquired.

"In two months," said she.

This was not a proposal and acceptance, but it was very nearly one.

They were silent, and happy.

Then she said:

"Do you ever have business at Southport?"

And he said, in a unique manner:

"I shall have."

Another silence. This time, he felt, he would marry her.