The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories Part 28

"That's what's the matter with you," said Simeon; "you think too much.

The two o'clock law was altered years ago. Had anything to eat?" He was helping Arthur with b.u.t.tons.

"No."

"I expected not. Here! Swallow this whisky."

"Not I!" Arthur protested in a startled tone.

"Why not?"

"Because I shall have to kiss her after the ceremony."

"Bos.h.!.+" said Simeon. "Drink it. Besides, there's no kissing in a Registry Office. You're thinking of a church. I wish you wouldn't think so much. Here! Now the necktie, you cuckoo!"

In three minutes they were driving rapidly through the London mist towards the other s.e.x, and in a quarter of an hour there was one bachelor the less in this vale of tears.

THE WIDOW OF THE BALCONY

I

They stood at the window of her boudoir in the new house which Stephen Cheswardine had recently bought at Sneyd. The stars were pursuing their orbits overhead in a clear dark velvet sky, except to the north, where the industrial fires and smoke of the Five Towns had completely put them out. But even these distant signs of rude labour had a romantic aspect, and did not impair the general romance of the scene. Charlie had loved her; he loved her still; and she gave him odd minutes of herself when she could, just to keep him alive. Moreover, there was the log fire richly crackling in the well-grate of the boudoir; there was the feminineness of the boudoir (dimly lit), and the soft splendour of her gown, and behind all that, pervading the house, the gay rumour of the party. And in front of them the window-panes, and beyond the window-panes the stars in their orbits. Doubtless it was such influences which, despite several degrees of frost outside, gave to Charlie Woodruff's thoughts an Italian, or Spanish, turn. He said:

"Stephen ought to have this window turned into a French window, and build you a balcony. It could easily be done. Just the view for a balcony. You can see Sneyd Lake from here." (You could. People were skating on it.)

He did not add that you could see the Sneyd Golf Links from there, and _vice versa_. I doubt if the idea occurred to him, but as he was an active member of the Sneyd Golf Club it would certainly have presented itself to him in due season.

"What a lovely scheme!" Vera exclaimed enthusiastically.

It appealed to her. It appealed to all that was romantic in her bird-like soul. She did not see the links; she did not see the lake; she just saw herself in exquisite frocks, lightly lounging on the balcony in high summer, and dreaming of her own beauty.

"And have a striped awning," she said.

"Yes," he said. "Make Stephen do it."

"I will," she said.

At that moment Stephen came in, with his bald head and his forty years.

"I say!" he demanded. "What are you up to?"

"We were just watching the skaters," said Vera.

"And the wonders of the night," said Charlie, chuckling characteristically. He always laughed at himself. He was a philosopher.

He and Stephen had been fast friends from infancy.

"Well, you'd just better skate downstairs," said Stephen. (No romance in Stephen! He was netting a couple of thousand a year out of the manufacture of toilet-sets, in all that smoke to the north. How could you expect him to be romantic?)

"Charlie was saying how nice it would be for me to have a French window here, and a marble balcony," Vera remarked. It had not taken her long to think of marble. "You must do it for me, Steve."

"Bos.h.!.+" said Stephen. "That's just like you, Charlie. What an a.s.s you are!"

"Oh, but you _must_!" said Vera, in that tone which meant business, and which also meant trouble for Stephen.

"_She's_ come," Stephen announced curtly, determined to put trouble off.

"Oh, has she?" cried Vera. "I thought you said she wouldn't."

"She hesitated, because she was afraid. But she's come after all,"

Stephen answered.

"What fun!" Vera murmured.

And ran off downstairs back again into the midst of the black coats and the white toilettes and the holly-clad electricity of her Christmas gathering.

II

The news that _she_ had come was all over the noisy house in a minute, and it had the astonis.h.i.+ng effect of producing what might roughly be described as a silence. It stopped the reckless waltzing of the piano in the drawing-room; it stopped the cackle incident to cork-pool in the billiard-room; it even stopped a good deal of the whispering under the Chinese lanterns beneath the stairs and in the alcove at the top of the stairs. What it did not stop was the consumption of mince-pies and claret-cup in the small breakfast-room; people mumbled about _her_ between munches.

_She_, having been sustained with turkey and beer in the kitchen, was led by the backstairs up to Vera's very boudoir, that being the only suitable room. And there she waited. She was a woman of about forty-five; fat, unfair (in the physical sense), and untidy. Of her hands the less said the better. She had probably never visited a professional coiffeur in her life. Her form was straitly confined in an atrocious dress of linsey-woolsey, and she wore an ap.r.o.n that was neither white nor black. Her boots were commodious. After her meal she was putting a hat-pin to a purpose which hat-pins do not usually serve.

She gained an honest living by painting green leaves on yellow wash-basins in Stephen's renowned earthenware manufactory. She spoke the dialect of the people. She had probably never heard of Christian Science, bridge, Paquin, Panhard, Father Vaughan, the fall of consols, osprey plumes, nor the new theology. n.o.body in the house knew her name; even Stephen had forgotten it. And yet the whole house was agog concerning her.

The fact was that in the painting-shops of the various manufactories where she had painted green leaves on yellow wash-basins (for in all her life she had done little else) she possessed a reputation as a prophet, seer, oracle, fortune-teller--what you will. Polite persons would perhaps never have heard of her reputation, the toiling millions of the Five Towns being of a rather secretive nature in such matters, had not the subject of fortune-telling been made prominent in the district by the celebrated incident of the fas.h.i.+onable palmist. The fas.h.i.+onable palmist, having thriven enormously in Bond Street, had undertaken a tour through the provinces and had stopped several days at Hanbridge (our metropolis), where he had an immense vogue until the Hanbridge police hit on the singular idea of prosecuting him for an unlawful vagabond.

Stripped of twenty pounds odd in the guise of a fine and costs, and having narrowly missed the rigours of our county jail, that fas.h.i.+onable palmist and soothsayer had returned to Bond Street full of hate and respect for Midland justice, which fears not and has a fist like a navvy's. The attention of the Five Towns had thus been naturally drawn to fortune-telling in general. And it was deemed that in securing a local celebrity (quite an amateur, and therefore, it was uncertainly hoped, on the windy side of the law) for the diversion of his Christmas party Stephen Cheswardine had done a stylish and original thing.

Of course no one in the house believed in fortune-telling. Oh no! But as an amus.e.m.e.nt it was amusing. As fun, it was fun. She did her business with tea-leaves: so the tale ran. This was not considered to be very distinguished. A crystal, or even cards, or the anatomy of a sacrificed fowl, would have been better than tea-leaves; tea-leaves were decidedly lower cla.s.s. And yet, despite these drawbacks, when the question arose who should first visit the witch of Endor, there was a certain hesitation.

"You go!"

"No, _you_ go."

"Oh! _I'm_ not going," (a superior laugh), etc.

At last it was decided that Jack Hall and Cissy Woodruff (Charlie's much younger sister), the pair having been engaged to be married for exactly three days, should make the first call. They ascended, blus.h.i.+ng and brave. In a moment Jack Hall descended alone, nervously playing with the silk handkerchief that was lodged in his beautiful white waistcoat. The witch of Endor had informed him that she never received the two s.e.xes together, and had expelled him. This incident greatly enhanced the witch's reputation. Then Stephen happened to mention that he had heard that the woman's mother, and her grandmother before her, had been fortune-tellers. Somehow that statement seemed to strike everybody full in the face; it set a seal on the authority of the witch, made her genuine. And an uncanny feeling seemed to spread through the house as the house waited for Cissy to reappear.

"She's very _good_," said Cissy, on emerging. "She told me all sorts of things."

A group formed at the foot of the stairs.

"What did she tell you?"

"Well, she said I must expect a very important letter in a few days, and much would depend on it, and next year there will be a big removal, and a large lumbering piece of furniture, and I shall go a journey over water. It's quite right, you know. I suppose the letter's from grandma; I hope it is, anyway. And if we go to France--"

Thenceforward the witch without a name held continuous receptions in the boudoir, and the boudoir gradually grew into an abode of mystery and strangeness, hypnotizing the entire house. People went thither; people came back; and those who had not been pictured to themselves something very incantatory, and little by little they made up their minds to go.