Denry the Audacious

by Arnold Bennett

Forty minutes after the advertised time for the opening of the reception of respectable men in search of money four men had arrived. Mr. Myson, mystified, thought that there had been a mistake in the advertisement. But there was no mistake in the advertisement. A little later two more men came. Of the six, three were tipsy, and the other three absolutely declined to be seen selling papers in the streets. Two were abusive, one facetious. Mr. Myson did not know his Five Towns; nor did Denry. A man in the Five Towns, when he can get neither bread nor beer, will keep himself and his family on pride and water.

The policemen went off to more serious duties.

III

Then came the announcement of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Signal, and of the processional fête by which the Signal was at once to give itself a splendid spectacular advertisement and to reward and enhearten its boys. The Signal meant to liven up the streets of the Five Towns on that great day by means of a display of all the gilt chariots of Snape's Circus in the main thoroughfares. Many of the boys would be in the gilt chariots. Copies of the anniversary number of the Signal would be sold from the gilt chariots. The idea was excellent, and it showed that after all the Signal was getting just a little more afraid of its young rival than it had pretended to be.

For, strange to say, after a trying period of hesitation, the Five Towns Daily was slightly on the upward curve—thanks to Denry. Denry did not mean to be beaten by the puzzle which the Daily offered to his intelligence. There the Daily was, full of news, and with quite an encouraging show of advertisements, printed on real paper with real ink—and yet it would not "go." Notoriously the Signal earned a net profit of at the very least five thousand a year, whereas the Daily earned a net loss of at the very least sixty pounds a week—and of that sixty quite a third was Denry's money. He could not explain it. Mr. Myson tried to rouse the public by passionately stirring up extremely urgent matters—such as the smoke-nuisance, the increase of the rates, the park question, German competition, technical education for apprentices; but the public obstinately would not be roused concerning its highest welfare to the point of insisting on a regular supply of the Daily. If a mere five thousand souls had positively demanded daily a copy of the Daily and not slept till boys or agents had responded to their wish, the troubles of the Daily would soon have vanished. But this ridiculous public did not seem to care which paper was put into its hand in exchange for its halfpenny so long as the sporting news was put there. It simply was indifferent. It failed to see the importance to such an immense district of having two flourishing and mutually opposing daily organs. The fundamental boy difficulty remained ever-present.

And it was the boy difficulty that Denry perseveringly and ingeniously attacked, until at length the Daily did indeed possess some sort of a brigade of its own, and the bullying and slaughter in the streets (so amusing to the inhabitants) grew a little less one-sided.

A week or more before the Signal's anniversary day Denry heard that the Signal was secretly afraid lest the Daily's brigade might accomplish the marring of its gorgeous procession, and that the Signal was ready to do anything to smash the Daily's brigade. He laughed; he said he did not mind. About that time hostilities were rather acute; blood was warming, and both papers, in the excitation of rivalry, had partially lost the sense of what was due to the dignity of great organs. By chance a tremendous local football match—Knype v. Bursley—fell on the very Saturday of the procession. The rival arrangements for the reporting of the match were as tremendous as the match itself, and somehow the match seemed to add keenness to the journalistic struggle, especially as the Daily favoured Bursley and the Signal was therefore forced to favour Knype.

By all the laws of hazard there ought to have been a hitch on that historic Saturday. Telephone or telegraph ought to have broken down, or rain ought to have made play impossible. But no hitch occurred. And at five-thirty o'clock of a glorious afternoon in earliest November the Daily went to press with a truly brilliant account of the manner in which Bursley (for the first and last time in its history) had defeated Knype by one goal to none. Mr. Myson was proud. Mr. Myson defied the Signal to beat his descriptive report. As for the Signal's procession—well, Mr. Myson and the chief sub-editor of the Daily glanced at each other and smiled.

And a few minutes later the Daily boys were rushing out of the publishing-room with bundles of papers—assuredly in advance of the Signal.

It was at this juncture that the unexpected began to occur to the Daily boys. The publishing door of the Daily opened into Stanway Rents, a narrow alley in a maze of mean streets behind Crown Square. In Stanway Rents was a small warehouse in which, according to rumours of the afternoon, a free soup kitchen was to be opened. And just before the football edition of the Daily came off the Marinoni, it emphatically was opened, and there issued from its inviting gate an odour—not, to be sure, of soup, but of toasted cheese and hot jam—such an odour as had never before tempted the nostrils of a Daily boy; a unique and omnipotent odour. Several boys (who, I may state frankly, were traitors to the Daily cause, spies and mischief-makers from elsewhere) raced unhesitatingly in, crying that toasted cheese sandwiches and jam tarts were to be distributed like lightning to all authentic newspaper lads.