Studies in Wives Part 10

What had he, Oliver Germaine, been about, to allow his wife to become so intimate with two men, of whom he knew nothing? Yesterday he would have said Uvedale and Joliffe were his closest pals. But what did he really know of either of them--of their secret thoughts--their deep desires and ambitions--their shames and secret sins? Nothing--nothing. Bella's husband knew as little of Uvedale and Joliffe--in fact, till to-day, far less than they knew of him, for one or the other of these men was his enemy, and had betrayed, very basely, his hospitality.

Germaine had now lashed himself into the certainty that he was that most miserable and pitiable of civilised beings, the trusting, kindly, nay more, adoring husband, whose wife betrays him with his friend.

When others had laughed, as men have laughed, and will ever laugh, at similar ironic juxtapositions of fate, Germaine had remained grave, for he had a sensitive heart--a heart which made him realise something of what lay beneath such tales. Now he told himself that so no doubt he himself was being laughed at by the many, pitied--the thought stung deeper--by the few.

As he at last turned into Curzon Street, and so was within a few yards of his house, it struck two o'clock. By now they must all be waiting for him, and Bella would be angry, as angry as she ever allowed her sweet-tempered nature to be. But Germaine told himself savagely that he didn't care,--he was sorry to be so near home, to know that in a few moments he would have to command himself, to pretend light-hearted indifference before a crowd of people most of whom he now feared--ay, feared and hated, for they must all have long suspected what he only now knew to be the truth.

Some one touched him. He started violently. It was his sister, f.a.n.n.y, pouring out a confused stream of apologies and explanations. He stared at her in silence, and she thought he was so seriously annoyed, so "put out" that he could not trust himself to speak.

But though, as they stood there face to face, he dimly realised what his sister was trying to say, how she was trying to explain her failure to keep her appointment with him in the Park, Germaine could not have told, had his life depended on it, the nature of her excuse.

Together they walked side by side to the door of his house, and, as he rang the bell, as he knocked, he remembered with a pang of jealous anguish that Bella had asked him, when they moved into this house, not to use a latch-key in the daytime; she had explained to him that to do so prevented the servants keeping up to the mark, and he had obeyed her, as he always did obey her. This trifle made his anger, for the moment his impotent anger, become colder, clarified.

It was only an hour later, but at last they were all gone, these people whom Oliver Germaine had now begun to hate and suspect, each in their different measure, women and men. Everyone had left, that is, excepting Henry Buck and f.a.n.n.y; and f.a.n.n.y was just going away, Oliver seeing her off at the front door.

Germaine believed that he had carried himself well. True, Uvedale had said to him, "Feeling a bit chippy, old chap?" and twice he had noticed Joliffe's rather cold grey eyes fixed attentively on his face, but under the chatter of the women--Jenny Arabin was a great talker and in a harmless sort of way a great gossip, always knowing everybody's business better than they did themselves--under cover of the women's chatter, he had been able to remain silent, and, whatever the two men present had suspected,--one of the two forced thereto by his own conscience,--Bella had certainly noticed nothing. She had not even seen, as his sister had seen, that Oliver looked tired and unlike himself.

Why, just now f.a.n.n.y had spoken to him solicitously about his health--blundering, tactless, f.a.n.n.y had actually asked him if anything special were worrying him!

He shut the door on his sister, and crossed the little hall. The time had now come when he must have it out with Bella.

Then, suddenly, there came over Germaine a feeling as if he had been living through a hideous nightmare. If that were indeed so, then his whole life would not be too long to secretly atone to Bella for his horrible suspicion.

It seemed suddenly monstrous that he should suspect Bella on the word of a Mrs. Bliss. His wife had a right, after all, to pay her dressmaker in bank-notes if the fancy seized her. Sometimes when Bella did something that he, Oliver, did not like or approve, she explained that her mother had done the same thing, and the excuse always irritated him, left him without an answer.

Supposing that Bella were now to tell him that the late Mrs. Arabin, whose reputation for a certain daring liveliness and exceeding beauty still lingered in the ever-shifting naval and military society where he had first met his wife, always paid her bills in notes and cash rather than by cheque--what then?

He walked up the staircase; Henry Buck pa.s.sed him coming down.

Germaine's eyes rested on the awkward figure, the plain, good-natured face. Rabbit was certainly lacking in tact; he always outstayed all their other guests, and he never knew when Bella was tired, but still he was the one human being present at the little lunch party at whom Oliver had been able to look without a feeling of unease.

Slowly he turned the painted china k.n.o.b of the drawing-room door.

Bella was standing before the Sheraton bureau which had been the gift of Peter Joliffe. She had apparently been putting something away; Germaine heard the click of the lock. She turned round quickly, and her husband thought there was a look of constraint on her face.

"Why, Oliver," she said, "I thought you were going out with f.a.n.n.y this afternoon!"

"With f.a.n.n.y?" he stammered, "I never thought of doing such a thing."

"But you're not going to stay in, are you?"

He looked at her attentively, and again there surged up in his heart wild jealousy and suspicion. Why did she ask whether he was going to stay in? Which of the two men who had just left the house was she expecting to come back as soon as he, poor deluded fool, was safely out of the way?

But Bella went on speaking rather quickly: "I shan't go out. I'm tired.

Besides, I'm expecting some people to tea. So perhaps I'd better go and take my hat off. I shall only be a few minutes; do wait till I come back." Bella spoke rather breathlessly, moving across the room towards the door.

Then she didn't want him to go out? He had wronged her in this, at any rate. Germaine stared at the door through which his wife had just gone with a feeling of miserable uncertainty.

Then his eye travelled round to the place where she had been standing just now, in front of Joliffe's bureau. A glance at Bella's bank-book would set his mind at rest one way or the other. It would go far to prove or disprove the story Mrs. Bliss had told, for it would show if Bella were indeed in the habit of drawing considerable cheques to "self." Why hadn't he thought of this simple test before,--before shaming himself and shaming his wife by base suspicions?

And yet Oliver, for some few moments, stood in the middle of the room irresolute. Yesterday it would never have occurred to him that Bella would mind his looking at her bank-book, although, as a matter of fact he never had looked at it. She was a tidy little woman; he knew that everything under the flap which he had seen her close down so quickly just now would be exquisitely neat; he knew the exact spot where her bank-book was to be found.

With a curious feeling that he was doing something dishonourable,--and it was a feeling which sat very uneasily on Oliver Germaine,--he took hold of the little bra.s.s k.n.o.b and slid up the flap of the sloping desk.

The bank-book closed the ranks of the red household books over which in old days, when they were first married, before he had come into his fortune, he had actually seen Bella shed tears.

With fingers that felt numb he took up the little vellum-bound book and opened it at the page containing the latest items.

There, on the credit side, was the sum of money which had been paid in, to his bankers' order, on the last quarter day. On the debit side were a few cheques made out to trades-people. There was not a single cheque made out to "self" on the page at which he was looking; but--but of course it was possible that Bella, like so many women, added a few pounds for change every time she settled a tradesman's account.

He turned several leaves of the little book backwards----Here was a page which bore the date of three years ago; and here, as he had feared to find, there were constant, small entries to "self"....

By the empty place on the shelf where the bank-book had stood was a gilt file for bills, a pretty little toy which had been given her, so the husband now remembered, by Uvedale. The letters composing the word "paid" were twisted round the handle--horrible symbolic word!

He took up the file and ran his fingers through the receipted bills.

Ah! here at last, was one which bore the name of Mrs. Bliss.

The amount of the bill amazed him,--eight hundred and seventy-one pounds, sixteen shillings,--and Bella had paid four hundred pounds on account about a fortnight before. It was the only bill on the file on which there still remained a balance owing. Germaine did not need to look again at his wife's bank-book to see that the majority of the receipted bills had not been paid by cheque.

These bills, so he now became aware with a frightful contraction of the heart, were for all sorts of things--expensive trifles, costly hot-house flowers, extravagantly expensive fruit--which he had enjoyed, and of which he had partaken, believing, if he thought of the matter at all--fool that he had been--that they were being paid for out of his modest income, the income which had once seemed so limitless.

"What are you doing, Oliver? You've no business to look at my things. I never look at yours." He had not heard the door open, and Bella had crept up swiftly behind him; there was some anger, but there was far more fear, in her soft voice.

Germaine turned round and looked at his wife.

Bella had changed her dress, and she was now wearing a painted muslin gown, her slender waist girdled with a blue ribbon. She looked exquisitely lovely, and so young,--a girl, a young and innocent girl.

There fell a heavy hand on her rounded shoulder.

"Oliver!" she cried, "you're hurting me!"

He withdrew his hand--quickly.

"Bella," he said, "I only want to ask you one question--I know everything,"--and in answer to a strange look that came over her face he added hurriedly, "Never mind how I found out. I _have_ found out, and now I only want to ask you one thing--I--I have a right to know who it is."

"Who it is?" she repeated. "I don't understand what you mean, Oliver?

Who--what?" but as Bella Germaine asked the useless question she shrank back; for the first time in their joint lives she felt afraid of Oliver,--afraid, and intensely sorry for him.

A sob rose to her throat. What a shame it was! How on earth could he have found out? She had thought he would go on not knowing--for ever.

That this should happen now, when she was so happy too,--when everything was so--so comfortable.

"Tell me--tell me at once, Bella," he said again, shaken almost out of his self-control by her pretended lack of understanding.

But Bella made no answer; she was retreating warily towards the open window; Oliver, poor angry Oliver, could not say much, he could not _do_ anything, out on the balcony.

But he grasped her arm. "Come back," he said, "right into the room," and forced her, trembling, down into a low chair. "Now tell me," he repeated. "Don't keep me waiting--I can't stand it. I won't hurt you."

He leant over her, grasping her soft arm.