I
Curious and strange things had a way of happening to Vera--perhaps
because she was an extremely feminine woman. But of all the curious and
strange things that ever did happen to Vera, this was certainly the
strangest and the most curious. It makes a somewhat exasperating
narrative, because the affair ended--or, rather, Vera caused it to
end--on a note of interrogation. The reader may, however, draw
consolation from the fact that, if he is tormented by an unanswerable
query, Vera herself was much more tormented by precisely the same query.
Two days before Christmas, at about three o'clock in the afternoon,
just when it was getting dusk and the distant smokepall of the Five
Towns was merging in the general greyness of the northern sky, Vera was
sitting in the bow-window of the drawing-room of Stephen Cheswardine's
newly-acquired house at Sneyd; Sneyd being the fashionable suburb of
the Five Towns, graced by the near presence of a countess. And as the
slim, thirty-year-old Vera sat there, moody (for reasons which will
soon appear), in her charming teagown, her husband drove up to the door
in the dogcart, and he was not alone. He had with him a man of vigorous
and dashing appearance, fair, far from ugly, and with a masterful face,
keen eyes, and most magnificent furs round about him. At sight of the
visitor Vera's heart did not exactly jump, but it nearly jumped.
Presently, Stephen brought his acquaintance into the drawing-room.
"My wife," said Stephen, rubbing his hands. "Vera, this is Mr
Bittenger, of New York. He will give us the pleasure of spending the
night here."
And now Vera's little heart really did jump.
She behaved with the delicious wayward grace which she could always
command when she chose to command it. No one would have guessed that
she had not spoken to Stephen for a week.
'I'm most happy--most happy,' said Mr Bittenger, with a marked accent
and a fine complimentary air. And obviously he was most happy. Vera had
impressed him. There was nothing surprising in that. She was in the
fullness of her powers in that direction.
It is at this point--at the point of the first jumping of Vera's
heart--that the tale begins to be uncanny and disturbing. Thus runs the
explanation.
During the year Stephen had gradually grown more and more preoccupied
with the subject of his own health. The earthenware business was very
good, although, of course, manufacturers were complaining just as
usual. Trade, indeed, flourished to such an extent that Stephen had
pronounced himself to be suffering from nervous strain and overwork.
The symptoms of his malady were chiefly connected with the assimilation
of food; to be brief, it was dyspepsia. And as Stephen had previously
been one of those favoured people who can eat anything at any hour, and
arise in the best of health the next day, Stephen was troubled. At
last--about August, when he was obliged to give up wine--he had
suddenly decided that the grimy air of the Five Towns was bad for him,
and that the household should be removed to Sneyd. And removed to Sneyd
it accordingly was. The new house was larger and more splendid even
than the Cheswardine abode at Bursley. But Vera did not like the
change. Vera preferred the town. Nevertheless, she could not openly
demur, since Stephen's health was supposed to be at stake.
During the autumn she was tremendously bored at Sneyd. She had
practically no audience for her pretty dresses, and her friends would
not flock over from Bursley because of the difficulty of getting home
at night. Then it was that Vera had the beautiful idea of spending
Christmas in Switzerland. Someone had told her about a certain hotel
called The Bear, where, on Christmas Day, never less than a hundred
well-dressed and wealthy English people sat down to an orthodox
Christmas dinner. The notion enchanted her. She decided, definitely,
that she and Stephen should do their Christmassing at The Bear,
wherever the Bear was. And as she was fully aware of the power of her
capricious charm over Stephen, she regarded the excursion as arranged
before she had broached it to him.
Stephen refused. He remarked bitterly that the very thought of a
mince-tart made him ill; and that he hated 'abroad'.
Vera took her defeat badly.
She pouted. She sulked. She announced that, if she was not to be
allowed to do her Christmassing at The Bear, she would not do it
anywhere. She indicated that she meant to perish miserably of ennui in
the besotted dullness of Sneyd, and that no Christmas-party of any kind
should occur in HER house. She ceased to show interest in Stephen's
health. She would not speak. In fact, she went too far. One day, in
reply to her rude silence, Stephen said: 'Very well, child, if that's
your game, I'll play it with you. Except when other people are present,
not a word do I speak to you until you have first spoken to me.'
She knew he would abide by that. He was a monster. She hated him. She
loathed him (so she said to herself).
That night, in the agony of her distress, she had dreamed a dream. She
dreamed that a stranger came to the house. The details were vague, but
the stranger had travelled many miles over water. She could not see him
distinctly, but she knew that he was quite bald. In spite of his
baldness he inspired her with sympathy. He understood her, praised her
costumes, and treated a woman as a woman ought to be treated. Then,
somehow or other, he was making love to her, the monster Stephen being
absent. She was shocked by his making love to her, and she moved a
little farther off him on the sofa (he had sat down by her on a vague
sort of sofa in a vague sort of room); but still she was thrilled, and
she could not feel as wicked as she felt she ought to feel. Then the
dream became hazy; it became hazy at the interesting point of her
answer to the love-making. A later stage was very clear. Something was
afoot between the monster Stephen and the stranger in the dining-room,
and she was locked out of the dining-room. It was Christmas night. She
knocked frantically at the door, and at last forced it open, and
Stephen was lying in the middle of the floor; the table had been pushed
into a corner. 'I killed him quite by accident,' said the stranger
affably. And then he seized her by the hand and ruthlessly dragged her
away, away, away; and they travelled in trains and ships and trains,
and they came to a very noisy, clanging sort of city--and Vera woke up.
It had been a highly realistic dream, and it made a deep impression on
Vera.
Can one wonder that Vera's heart, being a superstitious little heart,
like all our hearts, should leap when the very next day Stephen turned
up with a completely unexpected stranger from New York? Of course,
dreams are nonsense! Of course! Still--
She did not know whether to rejoice or mourn over the fact that Mr
Bittenger was not bald. He was decidedly unbald; he had a glorious
shock of chestnut hair. That hair of his naturally destroyed any
possible connection with the dream. None the less the coincidence was
bizarre.