In the early afternoon she went to Bostock's emporium, at Hanbridge, to
buy the cigar-cabinet and a few domestic trifles. Bostock's is a good
shop. I do not say that it has the classic and serene dignity of
Brunt's, over the way, where one orders one's dining-room suites and
one's frocks for the January dances. But it is a good shop, and one of
the chief glories of the Paris of the Five Towns. It has frontages in
three streets, and it might be called the shop of the hundred windows.
You can buy pretty nearly anything at Bostock's, from an art nouveau
music-stool up to the highest cheese--for there is a provision
department. (You can't get cheese at Brunt's.)
Vera made her uninteresting purchases first, in the basement, and then
she went up-stairs to the special Christmas department, which certainly
was wonderful: a blaze and splendour of electric light; a glitter of
gilded iridescent toys and knick-knacks; a smiling, excited, pushing
multitude of faces, young and old; and the cashiers in their cages
gathering in money as fast as they could lay their tired hands on it! A
joyous, brilliant scene, calculated to bring soft tears of satisfaction
to the board of directors that presided over Bostock's. It was a record
Christmas for Bostock's. The electric cars were thundering over the
frozen streets of all the Five Towns to bring customers to Bostock's.
Children dreamt of Bostock's. Fathers went to scoff and remained to
pay. Brunt's was not exactly alarmed, for nothing could alarm Brunt's;
but there was just a sort of suspicion of something in the air at
Brunt's that did not make for odious self-conceit. People seemed to
become intoxicated when they went into Bostock's, to close their heads
in a frenzy of buying.
And there the art nouveau music-stool stood in the corner, where Vera
had originally seen it! She approached it, not thinking of the terrible
danger. The compartments for music lay invitingly open.
'Four pounds, nine and six, Mrs Cheswardine,' said a shop-walker, who
knew her.
She stopped to finger it.
Well, of course everybody is acquainted with that peculiar ecstasy that
undoubtedly does overtake you in good shops, sometimes, especially at
Christmas. I prefer to call it ecstasy rather than intoxication, but I
have heard it called even drunkenness. It is a magnificent and
overwhelming experience, like a good wine. A blind instinct seizes your
reason and throws her out of the window of your soul, and then assumes
entire control of the volitional machinery. You listen to no arguments,
you care for no consequences. You want a thing; you must have it; you
do have it.
Vera was caught unawares by this magnificent and overwhelming
experience, just as she stooped to finger the music-stool. A fig for
the cigar-cabinet! A fig for her husband's objections! After all she
was a grown-up woman (twenty-nine or thirty), and entitled to a certain
freedom. She was not and would not be a slave. It would look perfect in
the drawing-room.
'I'll take it,' she said.
'Yes, Mrs Cheswardine. A unique thing, quite unique. Penkethman!'
And Vera followed Penkethman to a cash desk and received half-a-guinea
out of a five-pound note.
'I want it carefully packed,' said Vera.
'Yes, ma'am. It will be delivered in the morning.'
She was just beginning to realize that she had been under the sinister
influence of the ecstasy, and that she had not bought the
cigar-cabinet, and that she had practically no more money, and that
Stephen's rule against credit was the strictest of all his rules, when
she caught sight of Mr Charles Woodruff buying toys, doubtless for his
nephews and nieces.
Mr Woodruff was the bachelor friend of the family. He had loved Vera
before Stephen loved her, and he was still attached to her. Stephen and
he were chums of the most advanced kind. Why! Stephen and Vera thought
nothing of bickering in front of Mr Woodruff, who rated them both and
sided with neither.
'Hello!' said Woodruff, flushing, and moving his long, clumsy limbs
when she touched him on the shoulder. 'I'm just buying a few toys.'
She helped him to buy toys, and then he asked her to go and have tea
with him at the newly-opened Sub Rosa Tea Rooms, in Machin Street. She
agreed, and, in passing the music-stool, gave a small parcel which she
was carrying to Penkethman, and told him he might as well put it in the
music-stool. She was glad to have tea with Charlie Woodruff. It would
distract her, prevent her from thinking. The ecstasy had almost died
out, and she had a violent desire not to think.