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The chauffeur, Felix, had gone into the automobile shop to procure petrol. Mr Cheswardine looking longer than ever in his long coat, was pacing the busy footpath.
And as he doffed the furs, he gaily told her what had happened. Owing to difficulties with the Cheswardine mare on the frosty, undulating road between Sneyd and Bursley, and owing to delays with his baggage at the Five Towns Hotel, he had just missed the Liverpool express, and, therefore, the steamer also. He had returned to Stephen's manufactory.
In short, it was the last word of music-stools; nothing could possibly be newer. But Cheswardine did not like it, and did not conceal his opinion. He argued that it would not 'go' with the Chippendale furniture, and Vera said that all beautiful things 'went' together, and Cheswardine admitted that they did, rather dryly.
Shocking though the revelation is, it needs to be said that Felix was kissing the chambermaid. The blow to Mrs Cheswardine was severe. She had imagined that Felix spent all his time in gazing up to her as an unattainable star. She spoke to Stephen about it, in the accents of disillusion. 'What? cried Stephen. 'Don't you know? They're engaged to be married. Her name is Mary Callear.
And Desmond Burke passed on alone, out of the silent town, into the now darkening road that led to his home towards Cheswardine. Desmond's pace became slower when, having crossed the valley, he began the long ascent that led past the site of Tyrley Castle.
In such matters Mrs Cheswardine knew exactly what she was about. She delighted, when her husband brought Woodruff in late of a night, as he frequently did after a turn at the club, to prepare with her own hands the servants being in bed a little snack of supper for them. Tomato sandwiches, for instance, miraculously thin, together with champagne or Bass.
Woodruff, and Cheswardine also, had called her Vera during the whole of her life; and she was thirty. They had all three lived in different houses at the top end of Trafalgar Road, Bursley. Woodruff fell in love with her first, when she was eighteen, but with no practical result.
A kiss on these occasions is only just, and Cheswardine had one. 'Duveens told me they were quite unique, he said, modestly; 'and I believe 'em. You might imagine that a pair of Venetian vases of the seventeenth century, stated by Duveens to be unique, would have satisfied a woman who had a generous dress allowance and lacked absolutely nothing that was essential. But Vera was not satisfied.
'Oh! said Cheswardine, touched. He had no cigar-cabinet, and he wanted one, and Vera knew that he wanted one. And Vera slept in the sweet consciousness of her thoughtful wifeliness. The next morning, at breakfast, Cheswardine demanded 'Getting pretty hard up, aren't you, Maria? He called her Maria when he wished to be arch. Well, she said, 'as a matter of fact, I am. What with the
'I won't love you any more. It's all over, she sobbed. But he just kissed her. Five days before Christmas, Cheswardine came home to his wife from a week's sojourn in London on business. Still, the teagown had pleased him, and by certain secret symptoms Vera knew that it had pleased him. She hoped much from that teagown.
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