The Card | Page 8

you missed?" said
Ruth Earp. She pretended to be vexed and stern, but he knew that she
was not. "Or is your programme full?" she added.
"I should like to," he said simply.
"But perhaps you don't care to dance with us poor, ordinary people,
now you've danced with the Countess!" she said, with a certain lofty
and bitter pride.
He perceived that his tone had lacked eagerness.
"Don't talk like that," he said, as if hurt.
"Well," she said, "you can have the supper dance."
He took her programme to write on it.
"Why," he said, "there's a name down here for the supper dance.
'Herbert,' it looks like."
"Oh!" she replied carelessly, "that's nothing. Cross it out."
So he crossed Herbert out.
"Why don't you ask Nellie here for a dance?" said Ruth Earp.
And Nellie blushed. He gathered that the possible honour of dancing
with the supremely great man had surpassed Nellie's modest
expectations.
"Can I have the next one?" he said.
"Oh, yes!" Nellie timidly whispered.
"It's a polka, and you aren't very good at polking, you know," Ruth

warned him. "Still, Nellie will pull you through."
Nellie laughed, in silver. The naïve child thought that Ruth was trying
to joke at Denry's expense. Her very manifest joy and pride in being
seen with the unique Mr Machin, in being the next after the Countess to
dance with him, made another mirror in which Denry could discern the
reflection of his vast importance.
At the supper, which was worthy of the hospitable traditions of the
Chell family (though served standing-up in the police-court), he learnt
all the gossip of the dance from Ruth Earp; amongst other things that
more than one young man had asked the Countess for a dance, and had
been refused, though Ruth Earp for her part declined to believe that
aldermen and councillors had utterly absorbed the Countess's
programme. Ruth hinted that the Countess was keeping a second dance
open for him, Denry. When she asked him squarely if he meant to
request another from the Countess, he said no, positively. He knew
when to let well alone, a knowledge which is more precious than a
knowledge of geography. The supper was the summit of Denry's
triumph. The best people spoke to him without being introduced. And
lovely creatures mysteriously and intoxicatingly discovered that
programmes which had been crammed two hours before were not, after
all, quite full.
"Do tell us what the Countess was laughing at?" This question was shot
at him at least thirty times. He always said he would not tell. And one
girl who had danced with Mr Stanway, who had danced with the
Countess, said that Mr Stanway had said that the Countess would not
tell either. Proof, here, that he was being extensively talked about!
Towards the end of the festivity the rumour floated abroad that the
Countess had lost her fan. The rumour reached Denry, who maintained
a culpable silence. But when all was over, and the Countess was
departing, he rushed down after her, and, in a dramatic fashion which
demonstrated his genius for the effective, he caught her exactly as she
was getting into her carriage.
"I've just picked it up," he said, pushing through the crowd of

worshippers.
"On! thank you so much!" she said. And the Earl also thanked Denry.
And then the Countess, leaning from the carriage, said, with archness in
her efficient smile: "You do pick things up easily, don't you?"
And both Demo and the Countess laughed without restraint, and the
pillars of Bursley society were mystified.
Denry winked at Jock as the horses pawed away. And Jock winked
back.
The envied of all, Denry walked home, thinking violently. At a stroke
he had become possessed of more than he could earn from Duncalf in a
month. The faces of the Countess, of Ruth Earp, and of the timid Nellie
mingled in exquisite hallucinations before his tired eyes. He was
inexpressibly happy. Trouble, however, awaited him.
CHAPTER II
THE WIDOW HULLINS'S HOUSE
I
The simple fact that he first, of all the citizens of Bursley, had asked a
countess for a dance (and not been refused) made a new man of Denry
Machin. He was not only regarded by the whole town as a fellow
wonderful and dazzling, but he so regarded himself. He could not get
over it. He had always been cheerful, even to optimism. He was now in
a permanent state of calm, assured jollity. He would get up in the
morning with song and dance. Bursley and the general world were no
longer Bursley and the general world; they had been mysteriously
transformed into an oyster; and Denry felt strangely that the
oyster-knife was lying about somewhere handy, but just out of sight,
and that presently