If Only etc.

by F. C. Philips; Sir Augustus Harris

CHAPTER II

It was not long before Dr. Chetwynd's eyes were fully open to the mistake he had made and that he realised the fact that you cannot fashion a Dresden vase out of earthenware, and though pinchbeck may pass muster for gold, it does not make it the real article.

At first Bella did try her "level best" as Saidie put it, to be all that Jack required of her. She took his lecturings humbly, held her peace when he scolded her (and I am afraid he constantly did), and acknowledged in the depths of her shallow little mind that she fell far short of what his wife should be. But as time went on she grew less solicitous about pleasing him. His standard was an almost impossible one to the very second-rate little American girl, to whom the atmosphere of the "Halls" was far more congenial than the humdrum, quiet life she led in the Camberwell New Road, and she slipped back little by little into the mire out of which he had raised her.

"I can never learn to be what he wants me to," she said a little pathetically to Saidie—"It is like standing on tiptoe all the time trying to reach up to his standard. I'm sick of it. If he loved me well enough to marry me, the same love ought to be strong enough to make him contented with me. After all, I'm the same Bella now that I was then."

A word of advice at this juncture might have quieted the poor little wife, and brought her back into safe paths, for she really loved Jack in her heart; but Saidie was not the person to give it. Privately she considered her sister a fool to have put up with this ridiculous nonsense of her husband's as long as she had done; and the line of argument she took was about the worst she could have adopted for the happiness and peace of the Camberwell household.

She was a good deal older than Bella, and the girl had been wont to rely upon her in a great measure, and to look up to her as a practical, sensible person, which Bella was quite ready to admit she herself was very far from being; so now, when Saidie spoke in a resolute, determined way, she listened meekly, if she did not in so many words acquiesce in the wisdom and justice of what she said.

"As far as I can see, you don't get a bit of fun and happiness out of your life," remarked Saidie, critically examining her features in the glass. "What did you marry him for, I should like to know? You might as well be Bella Blackall, on the boards again, and free, as the wife of a stingy fellow like that."

"Oh! Saidie, he doesn't grudge me anything." The young wife felt a little compunction in her heart.

"Yes he does." Saidie turned round and faced her sister. "He don't like you to enjoy yourself, not a little bit. He would keep you wrapped up in cotton wool if he could, and if you don't make a stand now, once and for all, and let him see you have a mind of your own and intend to do as you like, you'll regret it to the last day of your life. Who is he, anyway? I guess our family's as good, if we knew anything about them, which we don't, worse luck. Just you give him back his own sauce, Bella, and next time he finds fault with you, laugh in his face and tell him he has got to put up with what he finds, for it ain't likely you can alter your nature to suit his high mightiness. Pitch on a thing or two he does which you don't like, and give him a sermon as long as your arm. You see; he will come off his pedestal. Sakes alive! he ought to have me to deal with; I bet I'd teach him a thing or two."

And then Saidie whipped herself off to the "Rivolette," where she sang a doubtful song and displayed her finely turned limbs in a style that would have disgusted her brother-in-law, if he had been there to see.

But music halls were not to his liking under any circumstances. He had never really cared for them, even in his bachelor days, and now he would have cut his right hand off rather than be seen with his young wife beside him, at such resorts.

Then, too, Dr. Chetwynd felt that it behoved him to be circumspect in all his actions, for his practice was steadily increasing and he was becoming popular, and had serious thoughts of migrating westward. It was a constant source of vexation to him that Bella was not liked as much as her handsome, clever husband, and he began to be painfully alive to the fact that she could not have been received in certain houses whose doors would have been gradually opened to him. In a social sense his wife was a failure, and with a sigh he realised that it was almost an impossibility to show her where the fault lay; he could not always be at her elbow to guard against little solecisms of manner and speech which he knew must jar and grate on others even more than on himself.

It went terribly against the grain, for he loved her none the less that his eyes were not blinded to her shortcomings. She was still the same winsome girl he had made his own; large-hearted, gentle and affectionate, but—and he sighed impatiently, for that something lacking was for ever pulling him back and standing in the way of his own social advancement.

He became less demonstrative, less congenial, and his practice made huge demands upon his time, and left but scant opportunity for pleasure-seeking. Lines traced themselves upon his brow and lurked at the corners of his mouth; he aged rapidly, and began to look like an elderly man while Bella was still little more than a girl.

On the night of Mrs. Chetwynd's return from the maternal roof (for Mrs. Blackall still lived near the Waterloo Road, and her elder daughter continued to make her home with her), she found her husband, a good deal to her surprise, seated in the drawing-room, gay with flowers and crowded with knick-nacks of every description. He had in his hand a book which he flung down with an annoyed gesture as his wife opened the door.

It was perhaps no worse than others of its type, but it had not an honest moral tone and was not therefore, John Chetwynd considered, a desirable work for his young wife's perusal.

"Have you read this?" he asked.

"No; it is one of Saidie's. Is it interesting?"

John Chetwynd's answer was to hurl the volume under the grate with an angry word.

Bella flushed.

"Why did you do that? I want to read it."

"I will not allow you to sully your mind with such filth. It only goes to prove what I have so often told you, that your sister is not a proper associate for any young woman. A book of that description—faugh!"

Bella picked up the offending volume and looked ruefully at its battered condition. "I should have supposed that as a married woman I might read anything," she said with an assumption of dignity.

"Why should you be less pure because you have a husband, my child? Don't run away with any such notion."

"Well, I will read it and give you my opinion of it."

"You will do no such thing. I forbid it, Bella."

"In a matter like this I shall judge for myself." Her cheeks were scarlet, and she kept her eyes downbent.

"I will not—"

"Bella!"

It was the first time in their married life that she had defied him, and he looked at her in utter astonishment.

"Yes," she cried, turning on him like a small fury, with the book tightly held in both hands; "I'm not a child to be dictated to and ordered to do this and that. I'm perfectly well able to act for myself and I intend to do so now and always. I'm sick of your eternal fault-finding, and the sooner you know it the better. If it's not one thing it's another. Nothing I do is right and I'm about tired of it."

John Chetwynd sat perfectly silent under this tirade. He was a shrewd man, and he knew that Bella had been spending the evening with her own people, and jumped at once to the conclusion that in defying him she was acting by their advice, and his brow grew black and lowering.

Then he looked up at Bella, who, a little ashamed of her vehemence, was slowly unbuttoning her gloves, having laid aside the unlucky cause of the battle royal.

"My wife," he said kindly, "if you will not act on my advice, let me beg of you to think twice before accepting that of others, since I at least may be credited with having your real good at heart."

"And you think that—you mean to imply that—"

"That your sister has her own ends to serve? Undoubtedly I do."

"You are all wrong—all wrong." But the tell-tale blushes on Bella's face showed him plainly enough that he had been right in his conjecture, and had to thank his wife's relatives for her rebellion and newly developed obstinacy and resentment.

"Now, Bella, from to-night I cannot allow you to go to Holly Street: stay," as Bella would have spoken, "you may see your mother here when you please, but you must let your sister fully understand that she will not be welcome. Something surely is due to me as your husband, and that there is no great amount of sympathy between you and Saidie you have said repeatedly; therefore I am asking no great sacrifice of you. Do you hear me, Bella?"

"Yes, I hear."

"And you will respect my wishes in the matter?"

"I don't know," she spoke uncertainly.

She was not fond of her sister, as he had said; certainly not sufficiently fond of her to allow her to come between herself and Jack; and yet she felt that it would be unwise and undignified if she were to give in and refuse Saidie admission to their house. She had just declared that she would stand no coercion; and after all, what had poor Saidie done?

"I don't think you have any right to keep my people away," she said at last, sullenly. "This is my house as well as yours, remember."

"I am not going to argue over it, my dear girl." Dr. Chetwynd rose determinedly from his chair with an expression on his face which his wife had learned to know and dread. "I forbid you to ask your sister here again. I am sorry to have to speak so decidedly; but your conduct leaves me no alternative."

And he walked quickly across the floor and the next moment the door closed upon him.

"I don't care what he says. I won't be ordered about," flashed out Bella, all that was worst in her nature roused by Jack's resolution. "Saidie is quite right; if I don't put my foot down I shall soon be nothing better than a white slave."

"Putting her foot down," certainly had one effect, namely, that of making life anything but a bed of roses for the unfortunate doctor.

Never had Bella shown herself so unamiable and unloveable as during the next two days. She hardly addressed her husband and she flounced about the room and tossed her head and hummed music-hall ditties (which she had caught from Saidie) under her breath, and altogether comported herself in the most exasperating fashion.

John Chetwynd hardly knew how to act towards her. If he pretended to be unconscious of anything unusual, it would probably provoke her to stronger measures, and yet he was very loth to stir up strife between them, and leant towards the hope that this spirit of fractiousness would die out in time and that Bella would become her loving, tractable self again. But he reckoned without his host.

Saidie, who was duly apprised of the condition of things, urged upon her sister to stick to her guns and on no account to yield an inch, and although desperately miserable, Bella took her advice.

Returning from seeing a patient a day or two later, Dr. Chetwynd ran into the arms of an old friend, a man he had not seen since his marriage.

"Why, Meynell, old chap, where have you dropped from?" he exclaimed, grasping the outstretched hand.

"Where have you hidden yourself? is more to the purpose. No one ever sees you nowadays."

Dr. Chetwynd smiled.

"Perhaps you do not know I am a married man," he said. "Which accounts for a good deal of my time, and as a matter of fact I have but little leisure, for my practice keeps me always at the grindstone."

"Doing pretty well?"

"Yes, I think I may say I am. Uphill work, of course, but still—"

"And where are you living?"

Chetwynd hesitated.

"Close by here," he replied the next moment. "Come home with me now, if you have nothing better to do, and allow me to present my wife to you."

And they walked on side by side.

"You have dined? I am afraid—"

"My dear fellow, I have this moment left the club."

Dr. Chetwynd put his latch-key into the lock and ushered his friend upstairs to his wife's pretty drawing-room.

But Bella was not there; and finding that she was not in her bedroom, or in fact in the house at all, he rang the bell and questioned the maid as to when her mistress had gone out and if she knew when she would be likely to return.

"No, sir, that I'm sure I don't. My mistress never said anything to me."

"Well, she is not likely to be away long," remarked the doctor philosophically. "Have a cigar, Meynell."

"Thanks, no. Your wife spoils you, Jack, if she allows you to smoke in her pretty little room."

"Oh, she will not mind; but we will go down to my den shortly. You see, Meynell, I'm a bit of a Bohemian, although I like to preserve the customs of the civilised world all the same, to a certain extent. But my little wife—well—she—she—I daresay you may have heard she was on the stage before I married her."

"No, indeed I hadn't." Gus Meynell looked a good deal surprised.

"Well, I mention it because perhaps she is not quite like the ordinary run of women."

Meynell could no longer be blind to the want of ease in his host's manner, and in his turn became proportionately uncomfortable.

"Hang it all! A man marries to please himself," he said awkwardly.

"She is just the dearest girl in the world," continued Jack Chetwynd, with warmth. "I'm not only fond of her, but proud of her too, but you know—"

"I perfectly understand what you mean. To my idea unconventionality is the most charming thing a woman can have. I hate the bride manufactured out of the schoolgirl. The oppressive resemblance between most of our friends' wives is one of the safe-guards of society."

"What is that?" Chetwynd broke in upon his friend's speech with a nervous start and exclamation. The hall door opened with a loud bang and a woman's noisy laugh could be heard as a pelter of high-heeled shoes came along the tesselated hall and then the vision of a pretty girl at the doorway, accompanied by a man and two women.

"Hallo, Jack! You are home before me, then."

"Bella, my dear, I must introduce you to an old friend of mine: Meynell, my wife."

Bella bowed a little coldly.

"My sister, Mr. Meynell," she said, seeing that the doctor was looking straight over Saidie's head. "My sister, Miss Saidie Blackall; daresay you have seen her from the front before." Then, looking towards the open door, "Come in, come in. Jack, I think you have already met Mr. and Mrs. Doss."

Chetwynd looked terribly annoyed; but there was no choice left for him but to extend his hand and mutter something to the effect that he had not had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of his wife's friends before.

"Glad to know you, sir—not one of us—not in the profession, I think?"

"No—er—no," responded Chetwynd feebly.

"And the 'appier you, take my tip for it. The wear and tear of the 'alls, sir, no one but a pro can estimate."

Here his wife, an over-dressed, showy individual a shade more of a cockney than himself, interposed with a coarse laugh.

"Get along, you jolly old humbug, you! You couldn't live away from them—could he, dear?" addressing Saidie, who was maliciously enjoying the effect that their sudden entrance had produced upon her brother-in-law and his friend.

"Ah; you think so, d'ye? that's all you know about it. Give me a nice quiet 'public' with a hold-established trade and me and the missis cosy-like in the private bar; that's the life for yours truly when he can take the farewell ben."

"How soon are your friends going to take their leave, Bella?" asked Chetwynd in an undertone to his wife.

But Bella turned her back upon him without deigning to give him so much as a word.

"I think I had the pleasure of seeing you perform the other night, Mrs. Doss," remarked Mr. Meynell.

"Don't she look a figger in tights? now tell the truth and shame the old gentleman: a female as fat as my wife ought not never to leave off her petticoats, that's what I says."

"Samuel, fie! You make me blush." His wife coughed discreetly behind her hand. "It's a new departure, I grant; but I've had a good many compliments paid me since I took to the nautical style, I can tell you."

"Gammon!" grunted Mr. Doss, with a dissatisfied air. "Did you see her as the 'Rabbit Queen,' sir? My! the patience that woman displayed in the training of them little furry animals would have astonished you. Struck the line, sir, out of her own 'ed! 'I'm going, Samuel,' she said, 'to supply a want.' 'You!' I says. 'Me!' says she; 'they have got their serpents,' she says, 'and their ducks, and their pigeons and their kangaroos,' 'What's their void?' said I. 'Rabbits,' she says, and there you are!"

"Saidie, why don't you sit down? We will have some supper directly," said Bella.

"Oh, my dear, I'm dying for a drink!" cried Miss Blackall, flinging herself in an attitude more easy than graceful into an armchair.

Bella opened the chiffonier and produced glasses and a spirit stand.

"Saves the trouble of ringing for the servant," she said archly to Meynell.

Chetwynd could fairly have groaned; and when his wife put the climax upon everything by drinking out of her sister's glass he could contain himself no longer. "I never saw you touch spirits before," he said, determined that his friend should know that his wife was an abstemious woman.

"Ah," she said lightly, "there are lots of things you never saw me do, Jack, which I am capable of, all the same." Whereupon Saidie burst out laughing as at some prodigious joke.

"Good for you, Bella! All right, dear! I'm not one to tell tales out of school."

"Are you a married man, sir, may I ask?"

Doss put his thumbs under his arm-pits and looked scrutinisingly into Meynell's face. "I should say not."

"No, I'm a bachelor, and likely to continue one."

"Well," remarked Mrs. Doss sentimentally, "I don't know nothing jollier than courting time. Such little ordinary things seem sweet like, then."

"Hark at the old girl," chuckled Doss.

"You can't kidd me, Doss. You know it, too. I think of our own billing and cooing, sir—his and mine. I was not a draw in those days; the last turn in the bill at the "Middlesex" was about my mark, and Doss, he hadn't risen, neither. We used to walk 'ome that lovin' up Drury Lane, and Doss, he would say, 'fish, Tilda,' and I would say, 'if you could fancy a bit, Sam.' And in he would pop for two penny slices and chips. And eat—lor', how we did eat. When I look back on that fish, sometimes I could cry. Money and fame ain't everythink in the world, believe me, they ain't. You may be 'appy in your 'umbleness."

All this was gall and wormwood to John Chetwynd, and he approached his wife again and whispered.

"It is getting late—are these people never going?"

"Not until they have had supper, most certainly."

"And do you expect my friend to join you?"

"You can please yourselves. I don't think either of you would be much acquisition in your present frame of mind. Mrs. Doss, somebody interrupted you; you were talking about a kindred soul and an attic. Money and position are not everything you were saying. I agree with you. Give me an easy life and no stilts."

John Chetwynd could stand it no longer.

"Madam," he said, addressing Mrs. Doss; "I must really apologise, but Mr. Meynell and I have important business to discuss, and—"

Mrs. Doss might be vulgar, but she was not obtuse. Seeing she and her husband were not wanted, she sprang to her feet.

"Sam—right about face; we must be off 'ome."

"Nonsense, you must have some supper before you go," said Bella.

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

"No, I'm not," returned that young woman, sturdily. "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 damned 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 associates 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 passed 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. "God 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 amusements 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 noble 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 ingratitude, 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!"