If Only etc. | Page 4

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