If Only etc. | Page 8

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