The Card, a Story of Adventure in the Five Towns Part 12

V

Yet the next morning, as the three companions sat together under the striped awning of the buffet on the pier, n.o.body could have divined, by looking at them, that one of them at any rate was the most uncomfortable young man in all Llandudno. The sun was hotly shining on their bright attire and on the still turbulent waves. Ruth, thirsty after a breakfast of herrings and bacon, was sucking iced lemonade up a straw. Nellie was eating chocolate, undistributed remains of the night's benevolence. Denry was yawning, not in the least because the proceedings failed to excite his keen interest, but because he had been a journalist till three a.m.

and had risen at six in order to despatch a communication to the editor of the _Staffordshire Signal_ by train. The girls were very playful. Nellie dropped a piece of chocolate into Ruth's gla.s.s, and Ruth fished it out, and bit at it.

"What a jolly taste!" she exclaimed.

And then Nellie bit at it.

"Oh, it's just lovely!" said Nellie, softly.

"Here, dear!" said Ruth, "try it."

And Denry had to try it, and to p.r.o.nounce it a delicious novelty (which indeed it was) and generally to brighten himself up. And all the time he was murmuring in his heart, "This can't go on."

Nevertheless, he was obliged to admit that it was he who had invited Ruth to pa.s.s the rest of her earthly life with him, and not _vice versa_.

"Well, shall we go on somewhere else?" Ruth suggested.

And he paid yet again. He paid and smiled, he who had meant to be the masterful male, he who deemed himself always equal to a crisis. But in this crisis he was helpless.

They set off down the pier, brilliant in the brilliant crowd. Everybody was talking of wrecks and lifeboats. The new lifeboat had done nothing, having been forestalled by the Prestatyn boat; but Llandudno was apparently very proud of its brave old worn-out lifeboat which had brought ash.o.r.e the entire crew of the _Hjalmar,_ without casualty, in a terrific hurricane.

"Run along, child," said Ruth to Nellie, "while uncle and auntie talk to each other for a minute."

Nellie stared, blushed, and walked forward in confusion. She was startled. And Denry was equally startled. Never before had Ruth so brazenly hinted that lovers must be left alone at intervals. In justice to her, it must be said that she was a mirror for all the proprieties.

Denry had even reproached her, in his heart, for not sufficiently showing her desire for his exclusive society. He wondered, now, what was to be the next revelation of her surprising character.

"I had our bill this morning," said Ruth.

She leaned gracefully on the handle of her sunshade, and they both stared at the sea. She was very elegant, with an aristocratic air. The bill, as she mentioned it, seemed a very negligible trifle.

Nevertheless, Denry's heart quaked.

"Oh!" he said. "Did you pay it?"

"Yes," said she. "The landlady wanted the money, she told me. So Nellie gave me her share, and I paid it at once."

"Oh!" said Denry.

There was a silence. Denry felt as though he were defending a castle, or as though he were in a dark room and somebody was calling him, calling him, and he was pretending not to be there and holding his breath.

"But I've hardly enough money left," said Ruth. "The fact is, Nellie and I spent such a lot yesterday and the day before.... You've no idea how money goes!"

"Haven't I?" said Denry. But not to her--only to his own heart.

To her he said nothing.

"I suppose we shall have to go back home," she ventured lightly. "One can't run into debt here. They'd claim your luggage."

"What a pity!" said Denry, sadly.

Just those few words--and the interesting part of the interview was over! All that followed counted not in the least. She had meant to induce him to offer to defray the whole of her expenses in Llandudno--no doubt in the form of a loan; and she had failed. She had intended him to repair the disaster caused by her chronic extravagance. And he had only said: "What a pity!"

"Yes, it is!" she agreed bravely, and with a finer disdain than ever of petty financial troubles. "Still, it can't be helped."

"No, I suppose not," said Denry.

There was undoubtedly something fine about Ruth. In that moment she had it in her to kill Denry with a bodkin. But she merely smiled. The situation was terribly strained, past all Denry's previous conceptions of a strained situation; but she deviated with superlative _sang-froid_ into frothy small talk. A proud and an unconquerable woman! After all, what were men for, if not to pay?

"I think I shall go home to-night," she said, after the excursion into prattle.

"I'm sorry," said Denry.

He was not coming out of his castle.

At that moment a hand touched his shoulder. It was the hand of Cregeen, the owner of the old lifeboat.

"Mister," said Cregeen, too absorbed in his own welfare to notice Ruth.

"It's now or never! Five-and-twenty'll buy the _Fleetwing_, if ten's paid down this mornun."

And Denry replied boldly:

"You shall have it in an hour. Where shall you be?"

"I'll be in John's cabin, under the pier," said Cregeen, "where ye found me this mornun."

"Right," said Denry.

If Ruth had not been caracoling on her absurdly high horse, she would have had the truth out of Denry in a moment concerning these early morning interviews and mysterious transactions in shipping. But from that height she could not deign to be curious. And so she said naught.

Denry had pa.s.sed the whole morning since breakfast and had uttered no word of pre-prandial encounters with mariners, though he had talked a lot about his article for the _Signal_ and of how he had risen betimes in order to despatch it by the first train.

And as Ruth showed no curiosity Denry behaved on the a.s.sumption that she felt none. And the situation grew even more strained.

As they walked down the pier towards the beach, at the dinner-hour, Ruth bowed to a dandiacal man who obsequiously saluted her.

"Who's that?" asked Denry, instinctively.

"It's a gentleman that I was once engaged to," answered Ruth, with cold, brief politeness.

Denry did not like this.

The situation almost creaked under the complicated stresses to which it was subject. The wonder was that it did not fly to pieces long before evening.

VI

The pride of the princ.i.p.al actors being now engaged, each person was compelled to carry out the intentions which he had expressed either in words or tacitly. Denry's silence had announced more efficiently than any words that he would under no inducement emerge from his castle. Ruth had stated plainly that there was nothing for it but to go home at once, that very night. Hence she arranged to go home, and hence Denry refrained from interfering with her arrangements. Ruth was lugubrious under a mask of gaiety; Nellie was lugubrious under no mask whatever.

Nellie was merely the puppet of these betrothed players, her elders. She admired Ruth and she admired Denry, and between them they were spoiling the little thing's holiday for their own adult purposes. Nellie knew that dreadful occurrences were in the air--occurrences compared to which the storm at sea was a storm in a tea-cup. She knew partly because Ruth had been so queenly polite, and partly because they had come separately to St Asaph's Road and had not spent the entire afternoon together.