V

You could not be elected to the Sports Club all in a minute.  There were formalities; and that these formalities were complicated and took time is simply a proof that the club was correctly exclusive and worth belonging to.  When at length Denry received notice from the “Secretary and Steward” that he was elected to the most sparkling fellowship in the Five Towns, he was positively afraid to go and visit the club.  He wanted some old and experienced member to lead him gently into the club and explain its usages and introduce him to the chief habitues.  Or else he wanted to slip in unobserved while the heads of clubmen were turned.  And then he had a distressing shock.  Mrs Codleyn took it into her head that she must sell her cottage property.  Now, Mrs Codleyn’s cottage property was the back-bone of Denry’s livelihood, and he could by no means be sure that a new owner would employ him as rent-collector.  A new owner might have the absurd notion of collecting rents in person.  Vainly did Denry exhibit to Mrs Codleyn rows of figures, showing that her income from the property had increased under his control.  Vainly did he assert that from no other form of investment would she derive such a handsome interest.  She went so far as to consult an auctioneer.  The auctioneer’s idea of what could constitute a fair reserve price shook, but did not quite overthrow her.  At this crisis it was that Denry happened to say to her, in his new large manner:  “Why!  If I could afford, I’d buy the property off you myself, just to show you...!” (He did not explain, and he did not perhaps know himself, what had to be shown.) She answered that she wished to goodness he would!  Then he said wildly that he would, in instalments!  And he actually did buy the Widow Hullins’s half-a-crown-a-week cottage for forty-five pounds, of which he paid thirty pounds in cash and arranged that the balance should be deducted gradually from his weekly commission.  He chose the Widow Hullins’s because it stood by itself—­an odd piece, as it were, chipped off from the block of Mrs Codleyn’s realty.  The transaction quietened Mrs Codleyn.  And Denry felt secure because she could not now dispense with his services without losing her security for fifteen pounds. (He still thought in these small sums instead of thinking in thousands.)

He was now a property owner.

Encouraged by this great and solemn fact, he went up one afternoon to the club at Hillport.  His entry was magnificent, superficially.  No one suspected that he was nervous under the ordeal.  The truth is that no one suspected because the place was empty.  The emptiness of the hall gave him pause.  He saw a large framed copy of the “Rules” hanging under a deer’s head, and he read them as carefully as though he had not got a copy in his pocket.  Then he read the notices, as though they had been latest telegrams from some dire seat of war.