The Grim Smile of the Five Towns

by Arnold Bennett

  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 dogcart, 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.’

  III

  Vera reclined on the sofa that afternoon, and the sofa was drawn round in front of the drawing-room fire. And she wore her fluffiest and languidest peignoir. And there was a perfume of eau de Cologne in the apartment. Vera was having a headache; she was having it in her grand, her official manner. Stephen had had to lunch alone. He had been told that in all probability his suffering wife would not be well enough to go to the ball. Whereupon he had grunted. As a fact, Vera’s headache was extremely real, and she was very upset indeed.

  The death of Li Hung Chang was heavy on her soul. Occultism was justified of itself. The affair lay beyond coincidence. She had always KNOWN that there was something in occultism, supernaturalism, so-called superstitions, what not. But she had never expected to prove the faith that was in her by such a homicidal act on her own part. It was detestable of Charlie to have mentioned the thing at all. He had no right to play with fire. And as for her husband, words could give but the merest rough outline of her resentment against Stephen. A pretty state of things that a woman with a position such as she had to keep up should be reduced to six and sevenpence! Stephen, no doubt, expected her to visit the pawnshop. It would serve him right if she did so—and he met her coming out under the three brass balls! Did she not dress solely and wholly to please him? Not in the least to please herself! Personally she had a mind set on higher things, impossible aspirations. But he liked fine clothes. And it was her duty to satisfy him. She strove to satisfy him in all matters. She lived for him. She sacrificed herself to him completely. And what did she get in return? Nothing! Nothing! Nothing! All men were selfish. And women were their victims…. Stephen, with his silly bullying rules against credit and so forth…. The worst of men was that they had no sense.

  She put a new dose of eau de Cologne on her forehead, and leaned on one elbow. On the mantelpiece lay the tissue parcel containing the slim silver belt, the price of Li’s death. She wanted to stick it in the fire. And only the fact that it would not burn prevented her savagely doing so. There was something wrong, too, with the occultism. To receive a paltry sovereign for murdering the greatest statesman of the Eastern hemisphere was simply grotesque. Moreover, she had most distinctly not wanted to deprive China of a distinguished man. She had expressly stipulated for an inferior and insignificant mandarin, one that could be spared and that was unknown to Reuter. She supposed she ought to have looked up China at the Wedgwood Institution and selected a definite mandarin with a definite place of residence. But could she be expected to go about a murder deliberately like that?

  With regard to the gross inadequacy of the fiscal return for her deed, perhaps that was her own fault. She had not wished for more. Her brain had been so occupied by the belt that she had wished only for the belt. But, perhaps, on the other hand, vast wealth was to come. Perhaps something might occur that very night. That would be better. Yet would it be better? However rich she might become, Stephen would coolly take charge of her riches, and dole them out to her, and make rules for her concerni
ng them. And besides, Charlie would suspect her guilt. Charlie understood her, and perused her thoughts far better than Stephen did. She would never be able to conceal the truth from Charlie. The conversation, the death of Li within two hours, and then a sudden fortune accruing to her—Charlie would inevitably put two and two together and divine her shameful secret.

  The outlook was thoroughly black anyway.

  She then fell asleep.

  When she awoke, some considerable time afterwards, Stephen was calling to her. It was his voice, indeed, that had aroused her. The room was dark.

  ‘I say, Vera,’ he demanded, in a low, slightly inimical tone, ‘have you taken a sovereign out of the empty drawer in your toilet-table?’

  ‘No,’ she said quickly, without thinking.

  ‘Ah!’ he observed reflectively, ‘I knew I was right.’ He paused, and added, coldly, ‘If you aren’t better you ought to go to bed.’

  Then he left her, shutting the door with a noise that showed a certain lack of sympathy with her headache.

  She sprang up. Her first feeling was one of thankfulness that that brief interview had occurred in darkness. So Stephen was aware of the existence of the sovereign! The sovereign was not occult. Possibly he had put it there. And what did he know he was ‘right’ about?

  She lighted the gas, and gazed at herself in the glass, realizing that she no longer had a headache, and endeavouring to arrange her ideas.

  ‘What’s this?’ said another voice at the door. She glanced round hastily, guiltily. It was Charlie.

  ‘Steve telephoned me you were too ill to go to the dance,’ explained Charlie, ‘so I thought I’d come and make inquiries. I quite expected to find you in bed with a nurse and a doctor or two at least. What is it?’ He smiled.

  ‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘Only a headache. It’s gone now.’

  She stood against the mantelpiece, so that he should not see the white parcel.

  ‘That’s good,’ said Charlie.

  There was a pause.

  ‘Strange, Li Hung Chang dying last night, just after we had been talking about killing mandarins,’ she said. She could not keep off the subject. It attracted her like a snake, and she approached it in spite of the fact that she fervently wished not to approach it.

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlie. ‘But Li wasn’t a mandarin, you know. And he didn’t die after we had been talking about mandarins. He died before.’

  ‘Oh! I thought it said in the paper he died at two o’clock this morning.’

  ‘Two a.m. in Pekin,’ Charlie answered. ‘You must remember that Pekin time is many hours earlier than our time. It lies so far eastward.’

  ‘Oh!’ she said again.

  Stephen hurried in, with a worried air.

  ‘Ah! It’s you, Charlie!’

  ‘She isn’t absolutely dying, I find,’ said Charlie, turning to Vera: ‘You are going to the dance after all—aren’t you?’

  ‘I say, Vera,’ Stephen interrupted, ‘either you or I must have a scene with Martha. I’ve always suspected that confounded housemaid. So I put a marked sovereign in a drawer this morning, and it was gone at lunch-time. She’d better hook it instantly. Of course I shan’t prosecute.’

  ‘Martha!’ cried Vera. ‘Stephen, what on earth are you thinking of? I wish you would leave the servants to me. If you think you can manage this house in your spare time from the works, you are welcome to try. But don’t blame me for the consequences.’ Glances of triumph flashed in her eyes.

  ‘But I tell you—’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Vera. ‘I took the sovereign. I saw it there and I took it, and just to punish you, I’ve spent it. It’s not at all nice to lay traps for servants like that.’

  ‘Then why did you tell me just now you hadn’t taken it?’ Stephen demanded crossly.

  ‘I didn’t feel well enough to argue with you then,’ Vera replied.

  ‘You’ve recovered precious quick,’ retorted Stephen with grimness.

  ‘Of course, if you want to make a scene before strangers,’ Vera whimpered (poor Charlie a stranger!), ‘I’ll go to bed.’

  Stephen knew when he was beaten.

  She went to the Hockey dance, though. She and Stephen and Charlie and his young sister, aged seventeen, all descended together to the Town Hall in a brougham. The young girl admired Vera’s belt excessively, and looked forward to the moment when she too should be a bewitching and captivating wife like Vera, in short, a woman of the world, worshipped by grave, bearded men. And both the men were under the spell of Vera’s incurable charm, capricious, surprising, exasperating, indefinable, indispensable to their lives.

  ‘Stupid superstitions!’ reflected Vera. ‘But of course I never believed it really.’

  And she cast down her eyes to gloat over the belt.

  VERA’S SECOND CHRISTMAS ADVENTURE

  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 t
he 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.’