II

Woodruff, in stating that Vera was all nerves that evening, was quite

right. She was. And neither her husband nor Woodruff knew the reason.

The reason had to do most intimately with frocks.

Vera had been married ten years. But no one would have guessed it, to

watch her girlish figure and her birdlike ways. You see, she was the

only child in the house. She often bitterly regretted the absence of

offspring to the name and honour of Cheswardine. She envied other wives

their babies. She doted on babies. She said continually that in her

deliberate opinion the proper mission of women was babies. She was the

sort of woman that regards a cathedral as a place built especially to

sit in and dream soft domestic dreams; the sort of woman that adores

music simply because it makes her dream. And Vera's brown studies,

which were frequent, consisted chiefly of babies. But as babies amused

themselves by coming down the chimneys of all the other houses in

Bursley, and avoiding her house, she sought comfort in frocks. She made

the best of herself. And it was a good best. Her figure was as near

perfect as a woman's can be, and then there were those fine emotional

eyes, and that flutteringness of the pigeon, and an ever-changing charm

of gesture. Vera had become the best-dressed woman in Bursley. And that

is saying something. Her husband was wealthy, with an increasing

income, though, of course, as an earthenware manufacturer, and the son

and grandson of an earthenware manufacturer, he joined heartily in the

general Five Towns lamentation that there was no longer any money to be

made out of 'pots'. He liked to have a well-dressed woman about the

house, and he allowed her an incredible allowance, the amount of which

was breathed with awe among Vera's friends; a hundred a year, in fact.

He paid it to her quarterly, by cheque. Such was his method.

Now a ball was to be given by the members of the Ladies' Hockey Club

(or such of them as had not been maimed for life in the pursuit of this

noble pastime) on the very night after the conversation about murder.

Vera belonged to the Hockey Club (in a purely ornamental sense), and

she had procured a frock for the ball which was calculated to crown her

reputation as a mirror of elegance. The skirt had--but no (see the

columns of the Staffordshire Signal for the 9th November, 1901). The

mischief was that the gown lacked, for its final perfection, one

particular thing, and that particular thing was separated from Vera by

the glass front of Brunt's celebrated shop at Hanbridge. Vera could

have managed without it. The gown would still have been brilliant

without it. But Vera had seen it, and she WANTED it.

Its cost was a guinea. Well, you will say, what is a guinea to a dainty

creature with a hundred a year? Let her go and buy the article. The

point is that she couldn't, because she had only six and sevenpence

left in the wide world. (And six weeks to Christmas!) She had

squandered--oh, soul above money!--twenty-five pounds, and more than

twenty-five pounds, since the 29th of September. Well, you will say,

credit, in other words, tick? No, no, no! The giant Stephen absolutely

and utterly forbade her to procure anything whatever on credit. She was

afraid of him. She knew just how far she could go with Stephen. He was

great and terrible. Well, you will say, why couldn't she blandish and

cajole Stephen for a sovereign or so? Impossible! She had a hundred a

year on the clear understanding that it was never exceeded nor

anticipated. Well, you will discreetly hint, there are certain devices

known to housewives.... Hush! Vera had already employed them. Six and

sevenpence was not merely all that remained to her of her dress

allowance; it was all that remained to her of her household allowance

till the next Monday.

Hence her nerves.

There that poor unfortunate woman lay, with her unconscious tyrant of a

husband snoring beside her, desolately wakeful under the night-light in

the large, luxurious bedroom--three servants sleeping overhead,

champagne in the cellar, furs in the wardrobe, valuable lace round her

neck at that very instant, grand piano in the drawing-room, horses in

the stable, stuffed bear in the hall--and her life was made a blank for

want of fourteen and fivepence! And she had nobody to confide in. How

true it is that the human soul is solitary, that content is the only

true riches, and that to be happy we must be good!

It was at that juncture of despair that she thought of mandarins. Or

rather--I may as well be frank--she had been thinking of mandarins all

the time since retiring to rest. There MIGHT be something in Charlie's

mandarin theory.... According to Charlie, so many queer, inexplicable

things happened in the world. Occult--subliminal--astral--thoughtwaves.

These expressions and many more occurred to her as she recollected

Charlie's disconcerting conversations. There MIGHT.... One never knew.

Suddenly she thought of her husband's pockets, bulging with silver,

with gold, and with bank-notes. Tantalizing vision! No! She could not

steal. Besides, he might wake up.

And she returned to mandarins. She got herself into a very morbid and

two-o'clock-in-the-morning state of mind. Suppose it was a dodge that

DID work. (Of course, she was extremely superstitious; we all are.) She

began to reflect seriously upon China. She remembered having heard that

Chinese mandarins were very corrupt; that they ground the faces of the

poor, and put innocent victims to the torture; in short, that they were

sinful and horrid persons, scoundrels unfit for mercy. Then she

pondered upon the remotest parts of China, regions where Europeans

never could penetrate. No doubt there was some unimportant mandarin,

somewhere in these regions, to whose district his death would be a

decided blessing, to kill whom would indeed be an act of humanity.

Probably a mandarin without wife or family; a bachelor mandarin whom no

relative would regret; or, in the alternative, a mandarin with many

wives, whose disgusting polygamy merited severe punishment! An old

mandarin already pretty nearly dead; or, in the alternative, a young

one just commencing a career of infamy!

'I'm awfully silly,' she whispered to herself. 'But still, if there

SHOULD be anything in it. And I must, I must, I must have that thing

for my dress!'

She looked again at the dim forms of her husband's clothes, pitched

anyhow on an ottoman. No! She could not stoop to theft!

So she murdered a mandarin; lying in bed there; not any particular

mandarin, a vague mandarin, the mandarin most convenient and suitable

under all the circumstances. She deliberately wished him dead, on the

off-chance of acquiring riches, or, more accurately, because she was

short of fourteen and fivepence in order to look perfectly splendid at

a ball.

In the morning when she woke up--her husband had already departed to

the works--she thought how foolish she had been in the night. She did

not feel sorry for having desired the death of a fellow-creature. Not

at all. She felt sorry because she was convinced, in the cold light of

day, that the charm would not work. Charlie's notions were really too

ridiculous, too preposterous. No! She must reconcile herself to wearing

a ball dress which was less than perfection, and all for the want of

fourteen and fivepence. And she had more nerves than ever!

She had nerves to such an extent that when she went to unlock the

drawer of her own private toilet-table, in which her prudent and fussy

husband forced her to lock up her rings and brooches every night, she

attacked the wrong drawer--an empty unfastened drawer that she never

used. And lo! the empty drawer was not empty. There was a sovereign

lying in it!

This gave her a start, connecting the discovery, as naturally at the

first blush she did, with the mandarin.

Surely it couldn't be, after all.

Then she came to her senses. What absurdity! A coincidence, of course,

nothing else? Besides, a mere sovereign! It wasn't enough. Charlie had

said 'rich for life'. The sovereign must have lain there for months and

months, forgotten.

However, it was none the less a sovereign. She picked it up, thanked

Providence, ordered the dog-cart, and drove straight to Brunt's. The

particular thing that she acquired was an exceedingly thin, slim, and

fetching silver belt--a marvel for the money, and the ideal waist

decoration for her wonderful white muslin gown. She bought it, and left

the shop.

And as she came out of the shop, she saw a street urchin holding out

the poster of the early edition of the Signal. And she read on the

poster, in large letters: 'DEATH OF LI HUNG CHANG.' It is no

exaggeration to say that she nearly fainted. Only by the exercise of

that hard self-control, of which women alone are capable, did she

refrain from tumbling against the blue-clad breast of Adams, the

Cheswardine coachman.

She purchased the Signal with well-feigned calm, opened it and read:

'Stop-press news. Pekin. Li Hung Chang, the celebrated Chinese

statesman, died at two o'clock this morning.--Reuter.'