If Only etc. Part 3

"Oh, I think we will be toddling, thanks. Are you coming with us, Saidie?"

"No, I'm not," returned that young woman, st.u.r.dily. "Since this house is the joint property of Dr. John Chetwynd and his wife, I reckon I shall stop awhile. Bella, you are not going to turn me out, are you?"

"Not I. I can't imagine what Jack means by behaving so inhospitably.

I hope you will all stop."

But Mr. Doss, exceedingly affronted at the slight offered him, had tucked his wife's arm under his own and was already at the door.

"Good night, gents. My best respects to you, Mrs. Chetwynd, but we knows who wants us and who doesn't."

Bella turned indignantly to her husband. "And you call yourself a gentleman!" she cried.

"For heaven's sake remember we are not alone!" whispered Chetwynd in distress, "you have distinguished yourself quite enough."

"I don't care--you have insulted my friends."

"Friends!"

"Yes, and as good as you or I. What did you marry me for if you are ashamed of my connections?"

"I did not marry the whole variety stage."

At this juncture Meynell rose.

"Awfully sorry, but I must be going old chap, promised to look in again at the club." And Chetwynd did not press him to stay.

Humiliated to the last degree, he followed him downstairs.

"I have given you a very enjoyable evening, Meynell," he said bitterly.

"My dear fellow, what ought I to say?"

"I'm d.a.m.ned if I know; I've never visited a friend who made such a marriage as mine. I should have pitied the poor devil profoundly if I had. Good night, old chap."

The hall door shut, and Chetwynd went slowly, sorrowfully back to the drawing-room.

"I hope you have disgraced me enough to-night," he said stormily.

"Where's the disgrace, I should like to know, in inviting a couple of old friends into one's own house?" demanded Saidie aggressively.

Chetwynd promptly turned his back upon her. "I am addressing my wife," he said frigidly.

"Yes; I would like to see you talking to _me_ in that tone of voice,"

returned his sister-in-law.

"Bella, what have you to say for yourself? Have you no self-respect whatever, and no consideration for your husband's position?"

"Oh, I'm sick of hearing about your position," said his wife pettishly. "In the days when you had not any, we were a lot happier.

You didn't turn up your nose at my a.s.sociates when I was on the boards at the Band Box! Everything was charming. You laughed then at what you now call "vulgar," and you thought it good fun, and you would have taken the property man to your heart if I had told you he was my brother. But now I am your wife it is quite a different tale.

My friends are too common for you to mix with. By the Lord! I'm not at all certain whether you think _me_ good enough for you, myself."

"Bella, Bella!"

"Oh! Yes, it is easy enough to look broken-hearted. How dare you turn my friends out of the place? It is you, not I, who have brought disgrace upon us by introducing a stranger here and mortifying and humbling me in front of him. If the Dosses are good enough for me, they are good enough for my husband."

"My dear wife, they are not good enough for you. There is the whole truth. Why are you so altered? Why will you not listen to me and take my advice as you used to do? Have you forgotten how happy we once were with each other?"

There was a little break in his voice, but Bella was too incensed to heed it.

"You mean that you did not abuse me when you had it entirely your own way! Wonderful! Perhaps you did not know that you bored me to death the whole time. And now you have got it at last. I'm tired of your cheap gentility and Brummagem pretensions; sick to death of hearing that nothing I have been used to is "proper." If my world is a second rate one, show me a better. Why don't you introduce me to your own, if it is so vastly superior? Have you done it? Not you! You bury me in this poky little hole and deliberately insult the only friends I have who take the trouble to come and look me up."

Chetwynd pa.s.sed his hand over his brow dreamily. The whole thing was such a shock to him, he could hardly realise it.

"I hope you are saying much more than you mean," he said at last.

"G.o.d knows if you have been dull I never suspected it."

"Because I have not grumbled--because I smiled instead of yawning, and laughed when I felt like crying, you never suspected it! Did you ever ask yourself what amus.e.m.e.nts you were providing for me while you were out all day? Not for a moment. Men like you never do, when they marry girls like us. You fancy you have been very n.o.ble and chivalrous and plucky; but what you have really done is to get what you want and leave me to pay the cost. Once your wife, there was an end of the matter so far as you were concerned, and to marry you was to complete my destiny! I was to sit all day long staring at the four walls, and if I happened to feel lonely, take a look at my marriage certificate to cheer myself up! well--" she drew a long breath and suddenly left her seat and came quite close to him. "Well," she said again, "I am not satisfied--do you hear? It may be the height of ingrat.i.tude, but it is a fact all the same. I am not content and I have made up my mind (you may as well know it now as at any other time) to go back to the stage. The life suits me and I am going to do it." And then she paused.

If she expected her husband to storm and rave, insist and expostulate, she was disappointed. He sat dumb and voiceless, his face buried in his hands, and he did not even look up when, with the air of a victor, Bella marched across the floor, beckoned to her sister, and went up to her own room.

"I never gave you credit for such real grit," began Saidie, admiringly; but to her surprise Bella flung herself on the bed and burst into uncontrollable sobs.

"I wish I was dead," she cried. "I am a beast--an ungrateful beast; and I have said what is not true. I have loved him always--always."

"Well, you can't go back from your word now," said Saidie; "You said you would do it."

"Yes, and I will." Bella sat up and dried her eyes. "I will go back to the stage; but I did not say I would stop there, and I shan't if I'm not happy, and if it makes a break between me and Jack."

"Don't talk like that," cried Saidie disdainfully, "You make me tired!"

CHAPTER III.

After this there was a lull; John Chetwynd observed that he had need of more forbearance towards his wilful wife, and tried to exercise it. He told himself that there was love enough and to spare; that with the deep affection he was convinced Bella bore him there was nothing really to fear. She was young and ill-advised, and it behoved him to keep a careful watch over her, and above all things not to draw too tight a rein. As for her threat of returning to her old life and its meretricious attractions, after the first shock he dismissed it from his mind. She had not really intended doing anything of the sort; such a step was impossible. It was a wild idea, born of the excitement of the moment, and unworthy of a further thought, and so he put it aside. Had not the question been argued and threshed out once and for all soon after marriage? He recalled with a curious lump in his throat how she had put her hands into his and said; "Your wishes are my wishes, now and always, Jack." And there had been an end of the matter.

"I will wait until the atmosphere has cleared a little," said John Chetwynd, reflectively, "and then I'll tell her that at the end of the year we will leave Camberwell and take a larger house in a better neighbourhood."

Thus, out of his love for his young wife, he made excuses for her and took her back to his heart again.

And Bella? Jack's conduct puzzled her. She had fully expected that he would be exceedingly angry and displeased, and in her own mind had prepared certain little set phrases which were to impress him with the fact that she intended to do as she pleased and would not allow herself to be dictated to or coerced. And thus it was that on the following morning she came down to breakfast with it must be confessed a forbidding look upon her pretty face and a defiant air about her bearing. But all her newly formed resolves were put to flight when Jack came towards her and deliberately kissed the lips which she vainly tried to withhold.

"Bella, you and I love each other too well to quarrel," he said kindly; "let us forget all that happened last night."

What could she say? In spite of herself she felt that she was yielding; and though she did not meet him half way as he had fondly antic.i.p.ated she would do, still she allowed him to draw her into his arms and did not repulse his caresses.

She might have shown a more generous spirit, it is true. Since he had tacitly acknowledged that they had been mutually to blame, she might have offered something in the shape of an expression of regret; but peace in any shape and at any cost Chetwynd felt he must have.