The Widow of the Balcony
IThey stood at the window of her boudoir in the new house which StephenCheswardine had recently bought at Sneyd. The stars were pursuing theirorbits overhead in a clear dark velvet sky, except to the north, wherethe industrial fires and smoke of the Five Towns had completely put themout. But even these distant signs of rude labour had a romantic aspect,and did not impair the general romance of the scene. Charlie had lovedher; he loved her still; and she gave him odd minutes of herself whenshe could, just to keep him alive. Moreover, there was the log firerichly crackling in the well-grate of the boudoir; there was thefeminineness of the boudoir (dimly lit), and the soft splendour of hergown, and behind all that, pervading the house, the gay rumour of theparty. And in front of them the window-panes, and beyond thewindow-panes the stars in their orbits. Doubtless it was such influenceswhich, despite several degrees of frost outside, gave to CharlieWoodruff's thoughts an Italian, or Spanish, turn. He said:"Stephen ought to have this window turned into a French window, andbuild you a balcony. It could easily be done. Just the view for abalcony. You can see Sneyd Lake from here." (You could. People wereskating on it.)He did not add that you could see the Sneyd Golf Links from there, andvice versa. I doubt if the idea occurred to him, but as he was anactive member of the Sneyd Golf Club it would certainly have presenteditself to him in due season."What a lovely scheme!" Vera exclaimed enthusiastically.It appealed to her. It appealed to all that was romantic in herbird-like soul. She did not see the links; she did not see the lake; shejust saw herself in exquisite frocks, lightly lounging on the balcony inhigh 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, chucklingcharacteristically. 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 inStephen! He was netting a couple of thousand a year out of themanufacture of toilet-sets, in all that smoke to the north. How couldyou expect him to be romantic?)"Charlie was saying how nice it would be for me to have a French windowhere, and a marble balcony," Vera remarked. It had not taken her long tothink of marble. "You must do it for me, Steve.""Bosh!" said Stephen. "That's just like you, Charlie. What an ass youare!""Oh, but you must!" said Vera, in that tone which meant business, andwhich 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 andthe white toilettes and the holly-clad electricity of her Christmasgathering.
IIThe news that she had come was all over the noisy house in a minute,and it had the astonishing effect of producing what might roughly bedescribed as a silence. It stopped the reckless waltzing of the piano inthe drawing-room; it stopped the cackle incident to cork-pool in thebilliard-room; it even stopped a good deal of the whispering under theChinese lanterns beneath the stairs and in the alcove at the top of thestairs. What it did not stop was the consumption of mince-pies andclaret-cup in the small breakfast-room; people mumbled about herbetween munches.She, having been sustained with turkey and beer in the kitchen, wasled by the backstairs up to Vera's very boudoir, that being the onlysuitable room. And there she waited. She was a woman of aboutforty-five; fat, unfair (in the physical sense), and untidy. Of herhands the less said the better. She had probably never visited aprofessional coiffeur in her life. Her form was straitly confined in anatrocious dress of linsey-woolsey, and she wore an apron that wasneither white nor black. Her boots were commodious. After her meal shewas putting a hat-pin to a purpose which hat-pins do not usually serve.She gained an honest living by painting green leaves on yellowwash-basins in Stephen's renowned earthenware manufactory. She spoke thedialect of the people. She had probably never heard of ChristianScience, bridge, Paquin, Panhard, Father Vaughan, the fall of consols,osprey plumes, nor the new theology. Nobody in the house knew her name;even Stephen had forgotten it. And yet the whole house was agogconcerning her.The fact was that in the painting-shops of the various manufactorieswhere she had painted green leaves on yellow wash-basins (for in all herlife she had done little else) she possessed a reputation as a prophet,seer, oracle, fortune-teller--what you will. Polite persons wouldperhaps never have heard of her reputation, the toiling millions of theFive Towns being of a rather secretive nature in such matters, had notthe subject of fortune-telling been made prominent in the district bythe celebrated incident of the fashionable palmist. The fashionablepalmist, having thriven enormously in Bond Street, had undertaken a tourthrough the provinces and had stopped several days at Hanbridge (ourmetropolis), where he had an immense vogue until the Hanbridge policehit on the singular idea of prosecuting him for an unlawful vagabond.Stripped of twenty pounds odd in the guise of a fine and costs, andhaving narrowly missed the rigours of our county jail, that fashionablepalmist and soothsayer had returned to Bond Street full of hate andrespect for Midland justice, which fears not and has a fist like anavvy's. The attention of the Five Towns had thus been naturally drawnto fortune-telling in general. And it was deemed that in securing alocal celebrity (quite an amateur, and therefore, it was uncertainlyhoped, on the windy side of the law) for the diversion of his Christmasparty Stephen Cheswardine had done a stylish and original thing.Of course no one in the house believed in fortune-telling. Oh no! But asan amusement it was amusing. As fun, it was fun. She did her businesswith tea-leaves: so the tale ran. This was not considered to be verydistinguished. A crystal, or even cards, or the anatomy of a sacrificedfowl, would have been better than tea-leaves; tea-leaves were decidedlylower class. And yet, despite these drawbacks, when the question arosewho should first visit the witch of Endor, there was a certainhesitation."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 muchyounger sister), the pair having been engaged to be married for exactlythree days, should make the first call. They ascended, blushing andbrave. In a moment Jack Hall descended alone, nervously playing with thesilk handkerchief that was lodged in his beautiful white waistcoat. Thewitch of Endor had informed him that she never received the two sexestogether, and had expelled him. This incident greatly enhanced thewitch's reputation. Then Stephen happened to mention that he had heardthat the woman's mother, and her grandmother before her, had beenfortune-tellers. Somehow that statement seemed to strike everybody fullin the face; it set a seal on the authority of the witch, made hergenuine. And an uncanny feeling seemed to spread through the house asthe house waited for Cissy to reappear."She's very good," said Cissy, on emerging. "She told me all sorts ofthings."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, andmuch would depend on it, and next year there will be a big removal, anda large lumbering piece of furniture, and I shall go a journey overwater. 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 inthe boudoir, and the boudoir gradually grew into an abode of mystery andstrangeness, hypnotizing the entire house. People went thither; peoplecame back; and those who had not been pictured to themselves somethingvery incantatory, and little by little they made up their minds to go.Some thought the woman excellent, others said it was all rot. But nonedenied that it was interesting. None could possibly deny that thefortune-telling had killed every other diversion provided by thehospitable Stephen and Vera (except the refreshments). The most scornfulscoffers made a concession and kindly consented to go to the boudoir.Stephen went. Charlie went. Even the Mayor of Hanbridge went (not beingon the borough Bench that night).But Vera would not go. A genuine fear was upon her. Christmases hadalways been unlucky for her peace of mind. And she was highlysuperstitious. Yet she wanted to go; she was burning to go, all thewhile assuring her guests that nothing would induce her to go. The partydrew to a close, and pair by pair the revellers drove off, or walked,into the romantic night. Then Stephen told Vera to give the womanhalf-a-sovereign and let her depart, for it was late. And in paying thehalf-sovereign to the woman Vera was suddenly overcome by temptation andasked for her fortune. The woman's grimy simplicity, her smiling face,the commonness of her teapot, her utter unlikeness to anything in thefirst act of Macbeth, encouraged Vera to believe in her magic powers.Vera's hand trembled as, under instructions, she tipped the tea-leavesinto the saucer."Ay!" said the witch, in broadest Staffordshire, running herobjectionable hand up and down the buttons of her linsey-woolsey bodice,and gently agitating the saucer. "Theer's a widder theer." [There's awidow there.] "Yo'll be havin' a letter, or it mit be a talligram--"Vera wouldn't hear any more. Her one fear in life was the fear ofStephen's death (though she did console Charlie with nice smiles andlots of tete-a-tete), and here was this fiendish witch directlyforeseeing the dreadful event.
IIIEvery day for many days Stephen expected to have to take part in apitched battle about the proposed balcony. The sweet enemy, however, didnot seem to be in fighting form. It is true that she mentioned thebalcony, but she mentioned it in quite a reasonable spirit. Astoundingas the statement may appear to any personal acquaintance of Vera's, Verashowed a capacity to perceive that there were two sides to the question.When Stephen pointed out that balconies were unsuited to the Englishclimate, she almost agreed. When he said that balconies were dangerousand that to have a safe one would necessitate the strengthening of thewall, she merely replied, with wonderful meekness, that she only weighedseven stone twelve. When he informed her that the breakfast-room,already not too light, was underneath the proposed balcony, which wouldfurther darken it, she kept an angelic silence. And when he showed herthat the view from the proposed balcony would in any case be marred bythe immense pall of Five Towns smoke to the south, she still kept anangelic silence.Stephen could not understand it.Nor was this all. She became extraordinarily solicitous for his welfare,especially in the matter of health. She wrapped him up when he went out,and unpacked him when he came in. She cautioned him against draughts,overwork, microbes, and dietary indiscretions. Thanks to regular boxingexercise, his old dyspepsia had almost entirely disappeared, but thisdid not prevent her from watching every mouthful that vanished under theportals of his moustache. And she superintended his boxing too. She madea point of being present whenever he and Charlie boxed, and she wouldforce Charlie to cease fighting at the oddest moments. She was flatagainst having a motor-car; she compelled Stephen to drive to thestation in the four-wheeler instead of in the high dogcart. Indeed, fromthe way she guarded him, he might have been the one frail life thatstood between England and anarchy.And she was always so kind, in a rather melancholy, resigned, wistfulfashion.No. Stephen could not understand it.There came a time when Stephen could neither understand it nor stand it.And he tried to worm out of her her secret. But he could not. Thefascinating little liar stoutly stuck to it that nothing was the matterwith her, and that she had nothing on her mind. Stephen knewdifferently. He consulted Charlie Woodruff. She had not made a confidantof Charlie. Charlie was exactly as much in the dark as Stephen. ThenStephen (I regret to have to say it) took to swearing. For instance, heswore when she hid all his thin socks and so obliged him to continuewith his thick ones. And one day he swore when, in answer to his querywhy she was pale, she said she didn't know.He thus, without expecting to do so, achieved a definite climax.For she broke out. She ceased in half a second to be pale. She gave himwith cutting candour all that had been bottled up in her entrancingbosom. She told him that the witch had foreseen her a widow (which wasthe same thing as prophesying his death), and that she had done, and wasdoing, all that the ingenuity of a loving heart could suggest to keephim alive in spite of the prediction, but that, in face of his infamousbrutality, she should do no more; that if he chose to die and leave hera widow he might die and leave her a widow for all she cared; in brief,that she had done with him.When she had become relatively calm Stephen addressed her calmly, andeven ingratiatingly."I'm sorry," he said, and added, "but you know you did say that you werehiding nothing from me.""Of course," she retorted, "because I was." Her arguments were usuallyon this high plane of logic."And you ought not to be so superstitious," Stephen proceeded."Well," said she, with truth, "one never knows." And she wiped away atear and showed the least hint of an inclination to kiss him. "Andanyhow my only anxiety was for you.""Do you really believe what that woman said?" Stephen asked."Well," she repeated, "one never knows.""Because if you do, I'll tell you something.""What?" Vera demanded.At this juncture Stephen committed an error of tactics. He might havelet her continue in the fear of his death, and thus remained on velvet(subject to occasional outbreaks) for the rest of his life. But he gavehimself utterly away."She told me I should live till I was ninety," said he. "So you can'tbe a widow for quite half a century, and you'll be eighty yourselfthen."
IVWithin twenty-four hours she was at him about the balcony."The summer will be lovely," she said, in reply to his argument aboutclimate."Rubbish," she said, in reply to his argument about safety."Who cares for your old breakfast-room?" she said, in reply to hisargument about darkness at breakfast."We will have trees planted on that side--big elms," she said, in replyto his argument about the smoke of the Five Towns spoiling the view.Whereupon Stephen definitely and clearly enunciated that he should notbuild a balcony."Oh, but you must!" she protested."A balcony is quite impossible," said Stephen, with his firmestmasculinity."You'll see if it's impossible," said she, "when I'm that widow."The curious may be interested to know that she has already begun toplant trees.
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