He had prepared a little list of his own of people who ought to be invited. Several aldermen had been requested to do the same. There were thus about half-a-dozen lists to be combined into one. Denry did the combining. Nothing was easier than to insert the name of E. H. Machin inconspicuously towards the centre of the list! Nothing was easier than to lose the original lists, inadvertently, so that if a question arose as to any particular name, the responsibility for it could not be ascertained without inquiries too delicate to be made. On Wednesday Denry received a lovely Bristol board, stating in copper-plate that the Countess desired the pleasure of his company at the ball; and on Thursday his name was ticked off as one who had accepted.

IV

He had never been to a dance. He had no dress-suit, and no notion of dancing.

He was a strange, inconsequent mixture of courage and timidity. You and I are consistent in character; we are either one thing or the other but Denry Machin had no consistency.

For three days he hesitated, and then, secretly trembling, he slipped into Shillitoe’s, the young tailor who had recently set up, and who was gathering together the jeunesse dorée of the town.

‘I want a dress-suit,’ he said.

Shillitoe, who knew that Denry only earned eighteen shillings a week, replied with only superficial politeness that a dress-suit was out of the question; he had already taken more orders than he could execute without killing himself. The whole town had uprisen as one man and demanded a dress-suit.

‘So you’re going to the ball, are you?’ said Shillitoe, trying to condescend, but, in fact, slightly impressed.

‘Yes,’ said Denry; ‘are you?’

Shillitoe started and then shook his head. ‘No time for balls,’ said he.

‘I can get you an invitation, if you like,’ said Denry, glancing at the door precisely as he had glanced at the door before adding 2 to 7.

‘Oh!’ Shillitoe cocked his ears. He was not a native of the town, and had no alderman to protect his legitimate interests.

To cut a shameful story short, in a week Denry was being tried on. Shillitoe allowed him two years’ credit.

The prospect of the ball gave an immense impetus to the study of the art of dancing in Bursley, and so put quite a nice sum of money into the pocket of Miss Earp, a young mistress in that art. She was the daughter of a furniture dealer with a passion for the Bankruptcy Court. Miss Earp’s evening classes were attended by Denry, but none of his money went into her pocket. She was compensated by an expression of the Countess’s desire for the pleasure of her company at the ball.

The Countess had aroused Denry’s interest in women as a sex; Ruth Earp quickened the interest. She was plain, but she was only twenty-four, and very graceful on her feet. Denry had one or two strictly private lessons from her in reversing. She said to him one evening, when he was practising reversing and they were entwined in the attitude prescribed by the latest fashion: ‘Never mind me! Think about yourself. It’s the same in dancing as it is in life – the woman’s duty is to adapt herself to the man.’ He did think about himself. He was thinking about himself in the middle of the night, and about her too. There had been something in her tone … her eye … At the final lesson he inquired if she would give him the first waltz at the ball. She paused, then said yes.

V

On the evening of the ball, Denry spent at least two hours in the operation which was necessary before he could give the Countess the pleasure of his company. This operation took place in his minute bedroom at the back of the cottage in Brougham Street, and it was of a complex nature. Three weeks ago he had innocently thought that you had only to order a dress-suit and there you were! He now knew that a dress-suit is merely the beginning of anxiety. Shirt! Collar! Tie! Studs! Cuff-links! Gloves! Handkerchief! (He was very glad to learn authoritatively from Shillitoe that handkerchiefs were no longer worn in the waistcoat opening, and that men who so wore them were barbarians and the truth was not in them. Thus, an everyday handkerchief would do.) Boots! … Boots were the rock on which he had struck. Shillitoe, in addition to being a tailor was a hosier, but by some flaw in the scheme of the universe hosiers do not sell boots. Except boots, Denry could get all he needed on credit; boots he could not get on credit, and he could not pay cash for them. Eventually he decided that his church boots must be dazzled up to the level for this great secular occasion.