‘Hoity, toity!’ cried Mr. Piper, but Bella had bounced out of the room, leaving him face to face with Mr. Namby, who, alarmed at the storminess of the domestic sky, made haste to depart.
Mr. Piper ordered the pony carriage—his wife’s pony carriage—and drove himself to Great Yafford. This appropriation of Bella’s carriage and ponies was an act of self-assertion on his part, and was meant as a kind of manifesto. He felt that the time had come when he must be master. But it was the most joyless drive he had ever taken. The very road looked dreary, barren, and uncomfortable in the autumnal light. How fast the leaves were falling, how dull and cold everything looked. Yes, assuredly Summer had gone. He had hardly noticed it till now. He loitered at his club while the ponies were being rested and fed, and contrived to be home rather late for dinner. He expected black looks from Bella when he went into the drawing-room, where she was waiting, daintily dressed, with the unfailing novel open in her lap; but to his surprise she received him as pleasantly as if nothing had happened.
This mollified him, and he made no further attempt at self-assertion that evening.
‘I hope you didn’t want your ponies, little woman,’ he said. ‘I took ’em.’
‘My ponies,’ laughed Bella. ‘As if anything I have were really mine! I am like the butterflies in the garden. I enjoy all the sweets, but I don’t pay for them, and they don’t belong to me.’
‘That’s not true, Bella, and you know it,’ exclaimed Mr. Piper. ‘You haven’t forgotten the marriage service. “With all my worldly goods I thee endow.” I endowed you with my worldly goods, Bella, and, without wishing to hurt your feelings, I must say that so far you’ve made pretty free with ’em. But I see how it is, you’re offended because I refused you a saddle-horse this morning. Well, perhaps it was rather mean of me, especially after I’d made a little bit of money by a side wind. But you see, we’ve been spending a lot this year, and I began to feel it was time to pull in a bit. However, I’ve been talking to White, and he says the carriage horses are too tall for a lady, and they might throw themselves forward from the habit of hanging on the collar; so never mind, my pet, you shall have a saddle-horse, and as far as a hundred pounds will go you shall have a good one.’
‘No,’ said Bella, drawing herself up, ‘after what you said to-day—before Mr. Namby, too, no doubt it’s all over the village by this time—I wouldn’t let you spend another sixpence upon me. You made me feel my dependence too keenly. You expected me to be quite a different kind of wife, yielding, subservient, without an idea of my own, like a Circassian slave, bought in the market-place. No, Mr. Piper, I am not such a degraded creature.’
Mr. Piper had to supplicate before Bella would accept his offer of a hundred guinea horse. He did not actually go down on his knees, but he humiliated himself to the uttermost, and the dinner, which had been perilled by his late return, was spoiled by this extra delay.
This was the end of Mr. Piper’s first attempt at self-assertion.