A dramatic moment was about to arrive in the joint career of Stephen
Cheswardine and Vera his wife. The motor-car stood by the side of the
pavement of the Strand, Torquay, that resort of southern wealth and
fashion. The chauffeur, Felix, had gone into the automobile shop to
procure petrol. Mr Cheswardine looking longer than ever in his long
coat, was pacing the busy footpath. Mrs Cheswardine, her beauty
obscured behind a flowing brown veil, was lolling in the tonneau, very
pleased to be in the tonneau, very pleased to be observed by all
Torquay in the tonneau, very satisfied with her husband, and with the
Napier car, and especially with Felix, now buying petrol. Suddenly Mrs
Cheswardine perceived that next door but one to the automobile shop was
a milliner's. She sat up and gazed. According to a card in the window
an 'after-season sale' was in progress that June day at the milliner's.
There were two rows of hats in the window, each hat plainly ticketed.
Mrs Cheswardine descended from the car, crossed the pavement, and gave
to the window the whole of her attention.
She sniffed at most of the hats. But one of them, of green straw, with
a large curving green wing on either side of the crown, and a few odd
bits of fluffiness here and there, pleased her. It was Parisian. She
had been to Paris--once. An 'after-season' sale at a little shop in
Torquay would not, perhaps, seem the most likely place in the world to
obtain a chic hat; it is, moreover, a notorious fact that really chic
hats cannot be got for less than three pounds, and this hat was marked
ten shillings. Nevertheless, hats are most mysterious things. Their
quality of being chic is more often the fruit of chance than of design,
particularly in England. You never know when nor where you may light on
a good hat. Vera considered that she had lighted on one.
'They're probably duck's feathers dyed,' she said to herself. 'But it's
a darling of a hat and it will suit me to a T.'
As for the price, when once you have taken the ticket off a hat the
secret of its price is gone forever. Many a hat less smart than this
hat has been marked in Bond Street at ten guineas instead of ten
shillings. Hats are like oil-paintings--they are worth what people will
give for them.
So Vera approached her husband, and said, with an enchanting, innocent
smile--
'Lend me half-a-sovereign, will you, doggie?'
She called him doggie in those days because he was a sort of dog-man, a
sort of St Bernard, shaggy and big, with faithful eyes; and he enjoyed
being called doggie.
But on this occasion he was not to be bewitched by the enchanting
innocence of the smile nor by the endearing epithet. He refused to
relax his features.
'You aren't going to buy another hat, are you?' he asked sternly,
challengingly.
The smile disappeared from her face, and she pulled her slim young self
together.
'Yes,' she replied harshly.
The battle was definitely engaged. You may inquire why a man
financially capable of hiring a 20-24 h.p. Napier car, with a French
chauffeur named Felix, for a week or more, should grudge his wife ten
shillings for a hat. Well, you are to comprehend that it was not a
question of ten shillings, it was a question of principle. Vera already
had eighteen hats, and it had been clearly understood between them that
no more money should be spent on attire for quite a long time. Vera was
entirely in the wrong. She knew it, and he knew it. But she wanted just
that hat.
And they were on their honeymoon, you know: which enormously
intensified the poignancy of the drama. They had been married only six
days; in three days more they were to return to the Five Towns, where
Stephen was solidly established as an earthenware manufacturer. You who
have been through them are aware what ticklish things honeymoons are,
and how much depends on the tactfulness of the more tactful of the two
parties. Stephen, thirteen years older than Vera, was the more tactful
of the two parties. He had married a beautiful and elegant woman, with
vast unexploited capacities for love in her heart. But he had married a
capricious woman, and he knew it. So far he had yielded to her
caprices, as well became him; but in the depths of his masculine mind
he had his own private notion as to the identity of the person who
should ultimately be master in their house, and he had decided only the
previous night that when the next moment for being firm arrived, firm
he would be.
And now the moment was upon him. It was their eyes that fought,
silently, bitterly. There is a great deal of bitterness in true love.
Stephen perceived the affair broadly, in all its aspects. He was older
and much more experienced than Vera, and therefore he was responsible
for the domestic peace, and for her happiness, and for his own, and for
appearances, and for various other things. He perceived the moral
degradation which would be involved in an open quarrel during the
honeymoon. He perceived the difficulties of a battle in the street, in
such a select and prim street as the Strand, Torquay, where the very
backbone of England's respectability goes shopping. He perceived Vera's
vast ignorance of life. He perceived her charm, and her naughtiness,
and all her defects. And he perceived, further, that, this being the
first conflict of their married existence, it was of the highest
importance that he should emerge from it the victor. To allow Vera to
triumph would gravely menace their future tranquillity and multiply the
difficulties which her adorable capriciousness would surely cause. He
could not afford to let her win. It was his duty, not merely to himself
but to her, to conquer. But, on the other hand, he had never fully
tested her powers of sheer obstinacy, her willingness to sacrifice
everything for the satisfaction of a whim; and he feared these powers.
He had a dim suspicion that Vera was one of that innumerable class of
charming persons who are perfectly delicious and perfectly sweet so
long as they have precisely their own way--and no longer.
Vera perceived only two things. She perceived the hat--although her
back was turned towards it--and she perceived the
half-sovereign--although it was hidden in Stephen's pocket.
'But, my dear,' Stephen protested, 'you know--'
'Will you lend me half-a-sovereign?' Vera repeated, in a glacial tone.
The madness of a desired hat had seized her. She was a changed Vera.
She was not a loving woman, not a duteous young wife, nor a reasoning
creature. She was an embodied instinct for hats.
'It was most distinctly agreed,' Stephen murmured, restraining his
anger.
Just then Felix came out of the shop, followed by a procession of three
men bearing cans of petrol. If Stephen was Napoleon and Vera
Wellington, Felix was the Blucher of this deplorable altercation.
Impossible to have a row--yes, a row--with your wife in the presence of
your chauffeur, with his French ideas of chivalry.
'Will you lend me half-a-sovereign?' Vera reiterated, in the same
glacial tone, not caring twopence for the presence of Felix.
And Stephen, by means of an interminable silver chain, drew his
sovereign-case from the profundity of his hip-pocket; it was like
drawing a bucket out of a well. And he gave Vera half-a-sovereign; and
THAT was like knotting the rope for his own execution.
And while Felix and his three men poured gallons and gallons of petrol
into a hole under the cushions of the tonneau, Stephen swallowed his
wrath on the pavement, and Vera remained hidden in the shop. And the
men were paid and went off, and Felix took his seat ready to start. And
then Vera came out of the hat place, and the new green hat was on her
head, and the old one in a bag in her pretty hands.
'What do you think of my new hat, Felix?' she smiled to the favoured
chauffeur; 'I hope it pleases you.'
Felix said that it did.
In these days, chauffeurs are a great race and a privileged. They have
usurped the position formerly held by military officers. Women fawn on
them, take fancies to them, and spoil them. They can do no wrong in the
eyes of the sex. Vera had taken a fancy to Felix. Perhaps it was
because he had been in a cavalry regiment; perhaps it was merely the
curve of his moustache. Who knows? And Felix treated her as only a
Frenchman can treat a pretty woman, with a sort of daring humility,
with worship--in short, with true Gallic appreciation. Vera much
enjoyed Gallic appreciation. It ravished her to think that she was the
light of poor Felix's existence, an unattainable star for him. Of
course, Stephen didn't mind. That is to say, he didn't really mind.
The car rushed off in the direction of Exeter, homewards.
That day, by means of Felix's expert illegal driving, they got as far
as Bath; and there were no breakdowns. The domestic atmosphere in the
tonneau was slightly disturbed at the beginning of the run, but it soon
improved. Indeed, after lunch Stephen grew positively bright and gay.
At tea, which they took just outside Bristol, he actually went so far
as to praise the hat. He said that it was a very becoming hat, and also
that it was well worth the money. In a word, he signified to Vera that
their first battle had been fought and that Vera had won, and that he
meant to make the best of it and accept the situation.
Vera was naturally charmed, and when she was charmed she was charming.
She said to herself that she had always known that she could manage a
man. The recipe for managing a man was firmness coupled with charm. But
there must be no half measures, no hesitations. She had conquered. She
saw her future life stretching out before her like a beautiful vista.
And Stephen was to be her slave, and she would have nothing to do but
to give rein to her caprices, and charm Stephen when he happened to
deserve it.
But the next morning the hat had vanished out of the bedroom of the
exclusive hotel at Bath. Vera could not believe that it had vanished;
but it had. It was not in the hat-box, nor on the couch, nor under the
couch, nor perched on a knob of the bedstead, nor in any of the spots
where it ought to have been. When she realized that as a fact it had
vanished she was cross, and on inquiring from Stephen what trick he had
played with her hat, she succeeded in conveying to Stephen that she was
cross. Stephen was still in bed, comatose. The tone of his reply
startled her.
'Look here, child,' he said, or rather snapped--he had never been
snappish before--'since you took the confounded thing off last evening
I haven't seen it and I haven't touched it, and I don't know where it
is.'
'But you must--'
'I gave in to you about the hat,' Stephen continued to snap, 'though I
knew I was a fool to do so, and I consider I behaved pretty pleasantly
over it too. But I don't want any more scenes. If you've lost it,
that's not my fault.'
Such speeches took Vera very much aback. And she, too, in her turn, now
saw the dangers of a quarrel, and in this second altercation it was
Stephen who won. He said he would not even mention the disappearance of
the hat to the hotel manager. He was sure it must be in one of Vera's
trunks. And in the end Vera performed that day's trip in another hat.
They reached the Five Towns much earlier than they had
anticipated--before lunch on the ninth day, whereas the new servants in
their new house at Bursley were only expecting them for dinner. So
Stephen had the agreeable idea of stopping the car in front of the new
Hotel Metropole at Hanbridge and lunching there. Precisely opposite
this new and luxurious caravanserai (as they love to call it in the
Five Towns) is the imposing garage and agency where Stephen had hired
the Napier car. Felix said he would lunch hurriedly in order to
transact certain business at the garage before taking them on to
Bursley. After lunch, however, Vera caught him transacting business
with a chambermaid in a corridor. Shocking though the revelation is, it
needs to be said that Felix was kissing the chambermaid. The blow to
Mrs Cheswardine was severe. She had imagined that Felix spent all his
time in gazing up to her as an unattainable star.
She spoke to Stephen about it, in the accents of disillusion. 'What?'
cried Stephen. 'Don't you know? They're engaged to be married. Her name
is Mary Callear. She used to be parlourmaid at Uncle John's at
Oldcastle. But hotels pay higher wages.'
Felix engaged to a parlourmaid! Felix, who had always seemed to Vera a
gentleman in disguise! Yes, it was indeed a blow!
But balm awaited Vera at her new home in Bursley. A parcel, obviously
containing a cardboard box, had arrived for Stephen. He opened it, and
the lost hat was inside it. Stephen read a note, and explained that the
hotel people at Bath had found it and forwarded it. He began to praise
the hat anew. He made Vera put it on instantly, and seemed delighted.
So much so that Vera went out to the porch to say good-bye to Felix in
a most forgiving frame of mind. She forgave Felix for being engaged to
the chambermaid.
And there was the chambermaid walking up the drive, quite calmly!
Felix, also quite calmly, asked Vera to excuse him, and told the
chambermaid to get into the car and sit beside him. He then informed
Vera that he had to go with the car immediately to Oldcastle, and was
taking Miss Callear with him for the run, this being Miss Callear's
weekly afternoon off. Miss Callear had come to Bursley in the electric
tram.
Vera shook with swift anger; not at Felix's information, but the patent
fact that Mary Callear was wearing a hat which was the exact replica of
the hat on Vera's own head. And Mary Callear was seated like a duchess
in the car, while Vera stood on the gravel. And two of Vera's new
servants were there to see that Vera was wearing a hat precisely
equivalent to the hat of a chambermaid!
She went abruptly into the house and sought for Stephen--as with a
sword. But Stephen was not discoverable. She ran to her elegant new
bedroom and shut herself in. She understood the plot. She had plenty of
wit. Stephen had concerted it with Felix. In spite of Stephen's
allegations of innocence, the hat had been sent somewhere--probably to
Brunt's at Hanbridge--to be copied at express speed, and Stephen had
presented the copy to Felix, in order that Felix might present it to
Mary Callear the chambermaid, and the meeting in the front garden had
been deliberately arranged by that odious male, Stephen. Truly, she had
not believed Stephen capable of such duplicity and cruelty.
She removed the hat, gazed at it, and then tore it to pieces and
scattered the pieces on the carpet.
An hour later Stephen crept into the bedroom and beheld the fragments,
and smiled.
'Stephen,' she exclaimed, 'you're a horrid, cruel brute.' 'I know I
am,' said Stephen. 'You ought to have found that out long since.'
'I won't love you any more. It's all over,' she sobbed. But he just
kissed her.