A terrible blow fell upon her the next morning. Stephen had one of his
bad colds, one of his worst. The mere cold she could have supported
with fortitude, but he was forced to remain indoors, and his presence
in the house she could not support with fortitude. The music-stool
would be sure to arrive before lunch, and he would be there to see it
arrive. The ecstasy had fully expired now, and she had more leisure to
think than she wanted. She could not imagine what mad instinct had
compelled her to buy the music-stool. (Once out of the shop these
instincts always are difficult to imagine.) She knew that Stephen would
be angry. He might perhaps go to the length of returning the
music-stool whence it came. For, though she was a pretty and pampered
woman, Stephen had a way, in the last resort, of being master of his
own house. And she could not even placate him with the gift of a
cigar-cabinet. She could not buy a five-guinea cigar-cabinet with ten
and six. She had no other money in the world. She never had money, yet
money was always running through her fingers. Stephen treated her
generously, gave her an ample allowance, but he would under no
circumstances permit credit, nor would he pay her allowance in advance.
She had nothing to expect till the New Year.
She attended to his cold, and telephoned to the works for a clerk to
come up, and she refrained from telling Stephen that he must have been
very careless while in London, to catch a cold like that. Her
self-denial in this respect surprised Stephen, but he put it down to
the beneficent influence of Christmas and the Venetian vases.
Bostock's pair-horse van arrived before the garden gate earlier than
her worse fears had anticipated, and Bostock's men were evidently in a
tremendous hurry that morning. In quite an abnormally small number of
seconds the wooden case containing the fragile music-stool was lying in
the inner hall, waiting to be unpacked. Having signed the delivery-book
Vera stood staring at the accusatory package. Stephen was lounging over
the dining-room fire, perhaps dozing. She would have the thing swiftly
transported up-stairs and hidden in an attic for a time.
But just then Stephen popped out of the dining-room. Stephen's
masculine curiosity had been aroused by the advent of Bostock's van. He
had observed the incoming of the package from the window, and he had
ventured to the hall to inspect it. The event had roused him
wonderfully from the heavy torpor which a cold induces. He wore a
dressing-gown, the pockets of which bulged with handkerchiefs.
'You oughtn't to be out here, Stephen,' said his wife.
'Nonsense!' he said. 'Why, upon my soul, this steam heat is warmer than
the dining-room fire.' Vera, silenced by the voice of truth, could not
reply.
Stephen bent his great height to inspect the package. It was an
appetizing Christmas package; straw escaped from between its ribs, and
it had an air of being filled with something at once large and delicate.
'Oh!' observed Stephen, humorously. 'Ah! So this is it, is it? Ah! Oh!
Very good!'
And he walked round it.
How on earth had he learnt that she had bought it? She had not
mentioned the purchase to Mr Woodruff.
'Yes, Stephen,' she said timidly. 'That's it, and I hope--'
'It ought to hold a tidy few cigars, that ought,' remarked Stephen
complacently.
He took it for the cigar-cabinet!
She paused, struck. She had to make up her mind in an instant.
'Oh yes,' she murmured.
'A thousand?'
'Yes, a thousand,' she said.
'I thought so,' murmured Stephen. 'I mustn't kiss you, because I've got
a cold,' said he. 'But, all the same I'm awfully obliged, Vera. Suppose
we have it opened now, eh? Then we could decide where it is to go, and
I could put my cigars in it.'
'Oh no,' she protested. 'Oh no, Stephen! That's not fair! It mustn't be
opened before Christmas morning.'
'But I gave you my vases yesterday.'
'That's different,' she said. 'Christmas is Christmas.' 'Oh, very
well,' he yielded. 'That's all right, my dear.'
Then he began to sniff.
'There's a deuced odd smell from it,' he said.
'Perhaps it's the wood!' she faltered.
'I hope it isn't,' he said. 'I expect it's the straw. A deuced odd
smell. We'll have the thing put in the side hall, next to the clock. It
will be out of the way there. And I can come and gaze at it when I feel
depressed. Eh, Maria?' He was undoubtedly charmed at the prospect of
owning so large and precious a cigar-cabinet.
Considering that the parcel which she had given to Penkethman to put in
the music-stool comprised a half-a-pound of Bostock's very ripest
Gorgonzola cheese, bought at the cook's special request, the smell
which proceeded from the mysterious inwards of the packing-case did not
surprise Vera at all. But it disconcerted her none the less. And she
wondered how she could get the cheese out.
For thirty hours the smell from the unopened packing-case waxed in
vigour and strength. Stephen's cold grew worse and prevented him from
appreciating its full beauty, but he savoured enough of it to induce
him to compare it facetiously to the effluvium of a dead rat, and he
said several times that Bostock's really ought to use better straw. He
was frequently to be seen in the hall, gloating over his cigar-cabinet.
Once he urged Vera to have it opened and so get rid of the straw, but
she refused, and found the nerve to tell him that he was exaggerating
the odour.
She was at a loss what to do. She could not get up in the middle of the
night and unpack the package and hide its guilty secret. Indeed, to
unpack the package would bring about her ruin instantly; for, the
package unpacked, Stephen would naturally expect to see the
cigar-cabinet. And so the hours crept on to Christmas and Vera's
undoing. She gave herself a headache.
It was just thirty hours after the arrival of the package when Mr
Woodruff dropped in for tea. Stephen was asleep in the dining-room,
which apartment he particularly affected during his colds. Woodruff was
shown into the drawing-room, where Vera was having her headache. Vera
brightened. In fact, she suddenly grew very bright. And she gave
Woodruff tea, and took some herself, and Woodruff passed an enjoyable
twenty minutes.
The two Venetian vases were on the mantelpiece. Vera rose into
ecstasies about them, and called upon Charlie Woodruff to rise too. He
got up from his chair to examine the vases, which Vera had placed close
together side by side at the corner of the mantelpiece nearest to him.
Vera and Woodruff also stood close together side by side. And just as
Woodruff was about to handle the vases, Vera knocked his arm; his arm
collided with one vase; that vase collided with the next, and both fell
to earth--to the hard, unfeeling, unyielding tiles of the hearth.