If Only etc. | Page 9

"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!"
CHAPTER III.
After this there was a lull; John Chetwynd observed that he had need of more forbearance towards his wilful wife, and tried to exercise it. He told himself that there was love enough and to spare; that with the deep affection he was convinced Bella bore him there was nothing really to fear. She was young and ill-advised, and it behoved him to keep a careful watch over her, and above all things not to draw too tight a rein. As for her threat of returning to her old life and its meretricious attractions, after the first shock he dismissed it from his mind. She had not really intended doing anything of the sort; such a step was impossible. It was a wild idea, born of the excitement of the moment, and unworthy of a further thought, and so he put it aside. Had not the question been argued and threshed out once and for all soon after marriage? He recalled with a curious lump in his throat how she had put her hands into his and said; "Your wishes are my wishes, now and always, Jack." And there had been an end of the matter.
"I will wait until the atmosphere has cleared a little," said John Chetwynd, reflectively, "and then I'll tell her that at the end of the year we will leave Camberwell and take a larger house in a better neighbourhood."
Thus, out of his love for his young wife, he made excuses for her and took her back to his heart again.
And Bella? Jack's conduct puzzled her. She had fully expected that he would be exceedingly angry and displeased, and in her own mind had prepared certain little set phrases which were to impress him with the fact that she intended to do as she pleased and would not allow herself to be dictated to or coerced. And thus it was that on the following morning she came down to breakfast with it must be confessed a forbidding look upon her pretty face and a defiant air about her bearing. But all her newly formed resolves were put to flight when Jack came towards her and deliberately kissed the lips which she vainly tried to withhold.
"Bella, you and I love each other too well to quarrel," he said kindly; "let us forget all that happened last night."
What could she say? In spite of herself she felt that she was yielding; and though she did not meet him half way as he had fondly anticipated she would do, still she allowed him to draw her into his arms and did not repulse his caresses.
She might have shown a more generous spirit, it is true. Since he had tacitly acknowledged that they had been mutually to blame, she might have offered something in the shape of an expression of regret; but peace in any shape and at any cost Chetwynd felt he must have.
But Bella had by no means surrendered her determination of going on the stage again, and was already with Saidie's assistance on the look-out for an engagement. It would be difficult to define her feelings towards her husband at this juncture. That there was still a veiled hostility John Chetwynd could not fail to see; but in his newly formed resolution to be patient and forbearing, he simply ignored it and diligently cultivated a kindly, gentle bearing, interesting himself in her little domesticities and the general routine of her everyday life. This amused Bella intensely, and although she would not have acknowledged it, perhaps touched her a little.
Why had he not done this before? And having been careless and indifferent once, why was he not so still? For this is how it was with Bella; she was learning to compare her husband with her lover, and be very sure the former suffered by comparison.
"Les absents ont toujours tort" and Saidie found so much to say and said it in such a contemptuous, scornful way to Howard Astley, about her sister's husband, that perhaps there was some little excuse for the young man's impression that Bella Chetwynd would be vastly better off under his protection than amid her present surroundings.
"The man was a brute," Miss Blackall declared.
Poor John Chetwynd! Not only was he far removed from being a brute,