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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.
Read next: PART V - VERA'S FIRST CHRISTMAS ADVENTURE: CHAPTER I
Read previous: PART III - THE SILENT BROTHERS: CHAPTER IV
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