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.'
