The Card | Page 7

She yielded, and he took the paradisaical creature in his arms. It was
her business that evening to be universally and inclusively polite. She
could not have begun with a refusal. A refusal might have dried up all
other invitations whatsoever. Besides, she saw that the aldermen
wanted a lead. Besides, she was young, though a countess, and adored
dancing.

Thus they waltzed together, while the flower of Bursley's chivalry
gazed in enchantment. The Countess's fan, depending from her arm,
dangled against Denry's suit in a rather confusing fashion, which
withdrew his attention from his feet. He laid hold of it gingerly
between two unemployed fingers. After that he managed fairly well.
Once they came perilously near the Earl and his partner; nothing else.
And then the dance ended, exactly when Denry had begun to savour the
astounding spectacle of himself enclasping the Countess.
The Countess had soon perceived that he was the merest boy.
"You waltz quite nicely!" she said, like an aunt, but with more than an
aunt's smile.
"Do I?" he beamed. Then something compelled him to say: "Do you
know, it's the first time I've ever waltzed in my life, except in a lesson,
you know?"
"Really!" she murmured. "You pick things up easily, I suppose?"
"Yes," he said. "Do you?"
Either the question or the tone sent the Countess off into carillons of
amusement. Everybody could see that Denry had made the Countess
laugh tremendously. It was on this note that the waltz finished. She was
still laughing when he bowed to her (as taught by Ruth Earp). He could
not comprehend why she had so laughed, save on the supposition that
he was more humorous than he had suspected. Anyhow, he laughed too,
and they parted laughing. He remembered that he had made a marked
effect (though not one of laughter) on the tailor by quickly returning the
question, "Are you?" And his unpremeditated stroke with the Countess
was similar. When he had got ten yards on his way towards Harold
Etches and a fiver he felt something in his hand. The Countess's fan
was sticking between his fingers. It had unhooked itself from her chain.
He furtively pocketed it.
VIII

"Just the same as dancing with any other woman!" He told this untruth
in reply to a question from Shillitoe. It was the least he could do. And
any other young man in his place would have said as much or as little.
"What was she laughing at?" somebody asked.
"Ah!" said Denry, judiciously, "wouldn't you like to know?"
"Here you are!" said Etches, with an inattentive, plutocratic gesture
handing over a five-pound note. He was one of those men who never
venture out of sight of a bank without a banknote in their pockets--
"Because you never know what may turn up."
Denry accepted the note with a silent nod. In some directions he was
gifted with astounding insight, and he could read in the faces of the
haughty males surrounding him that in the space of a few minutes he
had risen from nonentity into renown. He had become a great man. He
did not at once realise how great, how renowned. But he saw enough in
those eyes to cause his heart to glow, and to rouse in his brain those
ambitious dreams which stirred him upon occasion. He left the group;
he had need of motion, and also of that mental privacy which one may
enjoy while strolling about on a crowded floor in the midst of a
considerable noise. He noticed that the Countess was now dancing with
an alderman, and that the alderman, by an oversight inexcusable in an
alderman, was not wearing gloves. It was he, Denry, who had broken
the ice, so that the alderman might plunge into the water. He first had
danced with the Countess, and had rendered her up to the alderman
with delicious gaiety upon her countenance. By instinct he knew
Bursley, and he knew that he would be talked of. He knew that, for a
time at any rate, he would displace even Jos Curtenty, that almost
professional "card" and amuser of burgesses, in the popular
imagination. It would not be: "Have ye heard Jos's latest?" It would be:
"Have ye heard about young Machin, Duncalf's clerk?"
Then he met Ruth Earp, strolling in the opposite direction with a young
girl, one of her pupils, of whom all he knew was that her name was
Nellie, and that this was her first ball: a childish little thing with a
wistful face. He could not decide whether to look at Ruth or to avoid

her glance. She settled the point by smiling at him in a manner that
could not be ignored.
"Are you going to make it up to me for that waltz