Chapter VII
A week went by slowly: the hours crept like snails, and yet the days were surely slipping away, bringing nearer and nearer the one which was to give Sir John Chetwynd his second wife.
He had hardly seen Lady Ethel since the evening when she had yielded a coy assent to his not (it must be confessed) very amorous request that she would fix an early day for their nuptials, and his state of mind was anything but an enviable one. If ever a man was torn two ways, halting between prudence and worldly consideration on one side and the force and power of a love which he had honestly believed was laid for ever in its grave, that man was Sir John. The idea of seeing Bella again did not occur to him for some days, but when it fastened on him he could not shake it off. It was stronger than himself. He excused his temptation by the condition of her health, though in his heart of hearts he knew well enough that this was not sufficiently critical to serve for a reason.
Twice he seized his hat with the intention of going to her, then laid it aside, angry and disgusted with his own weakness.
His profession no longer occupied his thoughts to the exclusion of every other topic. He sat for hours buried in the newly awakened memories that that one brief glimpse of her had conjured up, unable, unwilling to rouse himself.
And then he made a compromise with his own weakness and irresolution. He would not go to Cecil Street, since by so doing he would be offering a tacit insult to the woman he had pledged himself to marry, but he would, he must see Bella, himself unseen and his presence unsuspected, and this he could effect easily by going to the Empire.
The notion pleased him, and that self-same evening he carried it out.
Bella was worse. She could no longer deceive herself. It was only by a superhuman effort that she could pull herself together sufficiently to sing the one song which was all her part consisted of now.
After she had got into her pretty sea-green skirts of lace and tulle and shimmering silk, like so much sea foam, she had to lie still and, let the poor over-strained lungs and heart recover themselves, and then, when the summons came she called up a smile to her wan face and pluckily did her best.
But that night she looked up at Saidie after the last ribbon was in its place.
“I’ll have to throw up the sponge, after all,” she said wearily; “it is beyond me. They are right and I was wrong,—I must have a rest.”
Saidie muttered something in reply, but when the door closed upon her sister, she sighed.
“She is bad; there is no denying it,” remarked the dresser, who was busily stroking out the roses which were to garland Saidie’s dress. “It gives me a turn every time I see her go on the stage.”
“She looks worse than she really is,” returned Saidie; “sometimes she is as brisk and lively as you like—she so soon gets tired.”
“She is a tidy sight worse than ‘tired,’ and it strikes me her voice was weak like to-night. Did you notice it, Miss?”
“Oh, she varies so. I guess she would be as right as any of us the moment she was on the boards.”
Nevertheless, although she was not going to confess it, Saidie was troubled and uneasy. There was something in Bella’s face she had not seen before, and it frightened her—a little. She stood at the wings with a quick-beating heart, but the next moment laughed at her own fears.
Bella was singing her very best. Not a falter in the clear, bell-like tones, and her face was smiling and radiant.
And then—her eyes fastened themselves on a box in the grand tier; with a scared expression she shrank back a little, and her lip quivered, but with a mighty effort she controlled herself and caught up the refrain again—carolled a word or two, faltered, swayed helplessly, uncertainly forward, and fell headlong on the stage.
They were round her in a second, lifting her gently and tenderly. Her head had fallen back and a thin stream of blood was welling over the laces at her bosom.
“She is dead!” cried Saidie. “Oh, will someone fetch a doctor, quick!”
But almost before the words were spoken he was there, and when Bella opened her eyes they fell on the grave, anxious, kindly face of the man whose wife she had been.
“Jack! Jack! is this—the end?”
“Hush—no—no! Keep still—perfectly still—you must not move.”
“I am not—in pain—a little dizzy—nothing more, and my head feels light.”
“Drink this and don’t talk. As soon as you are a little recovered we will go home.”
“Home! Jack!”
Oh, the wistful look in the deep blue eyes—the prophetic droop about the perfect mouth! It was almost more than he could bear.
“I will go with you myself if you will do what I tell you, keep absolutely quiet—your life depends upon it.”
She looked up tremulously.
“I don’t care—a—cent now,” she whispered.
She bore the journey to Cecil Street better than they could hope, and the bleeding from the lungs had ceased.
Downstairs Saidie expressed a wish to remain all night with her sister.
“She ought not to be left,” she said.
“Most decidedly she must not be left,” replied Sir John—“I intend remaining with your sister.”
“You! Well, this beats all, upon my word!”
So great was Miss Blackall’s surprise that when she found herself ousted from the position of head nurse and the door metaphorically closed upon her, she had not a word to say, but called a hansom and had herself driven to Bayswater, where she had been living since her mother’s death, now nearly a year ago.
“And I used to think he didn’t amount to a row of pins,” she murmured with an odd sort of penitence. “Well, I guess I was wrong, that’s all.”
Through the long hours of that never-ending night John Chetwynd watched by Bella’s bedside. For the most part, she lay mute and inert, but towards morning she grew restless.
“I must talk,” she cried excitedly—“to see you sit there and to think—to remember—oh! if only I had run straight, Jack—I don’t think I was meant for this, do you?”
He had no words with which to answer her. He folded his arms across his chest and looked out vaguely into the slant of room beyond. The folding doors were open and on the sideboard he could see a basket full of peaches, at this season an extravagance denied his own table. On the mantelshelf to his right hand were some exquisite hot-house flowers, carelessly crushed into a cracked, cheap little vase, and a penny packet of stationery and a powder puff in a sprinkling of chalk.
She stretched out her arms so that her fingers touched him, and he held them tightly in his own—rings and all.
She was never meant for the life she had chosen!
His heart felt breaking.
The delicate features, the sweet, wistful, childish face, the pathos in her regretful cry—the past with its load of gall and shame and misery—which could never be obliterated. Never!
“Why do you look at me like that? I am better. I know I am better. I thought—I feared—I was going to die; if I had there was no one to care but—Saidie.”
“Do you not think what it would mean to—me?”
The words broke from him against his will.
“To—you, Jack! then you care—still!”
“Care!”
He drew his hand away and walked over to the window. The morning was breaking: morning in the Strand; and already there was a busy hum without.
Her eyes followed him wistfully, with a little wonderment in them—and then the lids fell over them.
“I feel strangely weak—but—so—happy, Jack,” she said. Her breath came more easily and she slept.
Sir John Chetwynd was in his accustomed place at the accustomed hour, grave, attentive and professional as was his wont; but after his consulting hours were over, he went back to Cecil Street, leaving word with Soames where he was to be found, if wanted, prepared for another night’s vigil.
“She seems neither better nor worse,” said Saidie, meeting him in the little sitting-room and carefully pulling to the door behind her. “She is very, very weak. Is there a chance for her?”
“I am afraid to say—it depends so much on what recuperative power she has. If the bleeding can be stopped, I shall be more hopeful.”
“What is she to do, poor Bella? She will never be able to sing again, I suppose?”
“Never.” He spoke curtly, almost cruelly. Saidie burst into tears.
At that moment came a smart tap at the door.
“Mr. Bolingbroke, Miss,” said a voice from without.
“He can’t come up.” Saidie sprang from her chair. But she was too late. The handle turned, and a tall, distinctly good-looking man walked in.
“Miss Blackhall—how unkind to deny me admittance. You must know how fearfully anxious I am. How is she?”
“There’s the doctor—ask him.”
The stranger turned eagerly.
“This is not serious, I trust. She was always delicate, but—it is wonderful how she pulls together when the worst is over.”
For almost the first time in his life John Chetwynd was tongue-tied.
Who and what was this man, and what was he to Bella? He forced himself to give a professional opinion, and answered mechanically a string of questions Mr. Bolingbroke poured forth, but he hardly knew what he was saying.
“If only she gets over this she shall never be bothered any more, poor darling,” he said brokenly. “I suppose I can go in, eh?”
His hand was on the door—John Chetwynd sprang to his feet.
“No one must see her,” he cried excitedly. “I absolutely forbid it. It would be most dangerous—most improper.”
The two men looked into each other’s faces for the space of several seconds; then Mr. Bolingbroke turned away with a sigh and an impatient word. “Absurd! As if I could do her any harm,” he said. “Well, I will be round again later in the day,” he added with a nod to Saidie, and a minute later the hall door shut upon him.
“Who is that man?” asked Sir John sternly.
Saidie shrugged her shoulders.
“You shall tell me—what is he to Bella?”
“He is a good and noble man, and let me tell you there ain’t too many knocking around. If she lives to get over this he will make her his wife.”
And there was silence—a silence in which John Chetwynd read clearly his own heart at last, and stood face to face with facts—facts stripped of false adornments—naked, convincing.
Then he strode across the room and entered that in which Bella lay.
She was asleep, and he drew his chair close to the bedside and fixed his eyes on the wan, thin face, fever flushed, and fought the fiercest battle of his life with his inner self; and when the struggle was over, Pride lay in tatters and Love was conqueror.
She slept at intervals almost the whole of that day. Waking late in the afternoon, her eyes fell on the silent watcher by her side, and she smiled happily, contentedly.
Saidie bent over her and whispered a word or two.
“No—no,” cried Bella vehemently; “send him away. I don’t want to see him.”
“But he is so anxious, dear.”
“Is he?—poor Charlie! Tell him I am in no pain, and I should like to think he will never quite forget me.”
“He will never do that,” said Saidie, going away with her message but half satisfied, and Bella turned a flushed cheek to her pillow.
And then, for the second time, John Chetwynd asked, “Who is that man?”
And Bella tried feebly to tell him. He had been attached to her for a long time, and had come over with her from the States.
“And you—did you mean to marry him, Bella?”
“I had thought of it—it seemed suicidal to say no to such an offer, and then I—oh, Jack, when I saw you I knew I could never love any other man!”
He poured out a draught and held it to her trembling lips.
“I feel so strangely weak,” she said; “you are going to marry Ethel, and I am nothing to you now?”
John Chetwynd drew her close to him, so that the tired head rested on his shoulder with the sweet familiarity of long ago.
“Listen,” he said. “I have been a coward, frightened of the truth. The world was dearer to me than happiness, or I thought so, and I hesitated, afraid of its contempt. But amid my weakness was one thought, one impulse, which no amount of worldly prudence or consideration could stifle, and Bella—my wife—that was my love for you.”
“Jack, Jack, is it true?”
“I have loved you always, through all my life, you and no other. I see now how hard I must have seemed to you and how wild and unreasonable I was in my expectation from you and how at last it drove you from my side. The shame of it is not more yours than mine. We both erred, we both sinned; but I was older and should have been wiser; the burden of it should fall on me. The world is nothing to me now—less than nothing. Let us take up life where we broke it off. Give me back the past, which held for me all of happiness I have ever known.”
She lay with a smile of peace upon her face, both hands clinging to his.
“I have communed with myself and thought it well out, and I believe that to bind my life, with its memories of you, to the girl to whom I am engaged, would be a cruel wrong and an injustice to her. She deserves a better fate, and I honestly feel that the rupture will not grieve her much. We will remarry, you and I. I will take you away from England, I will guard and cherish you, and in my love for you, you will grow stronger. Oh! my darling, my darling, if you knew what life has been to me since you went; how I have blamed myself,—I who ought to have shielded you against yourself, and have been a moral backbone to your weakness. Then as time went on I persuaded myself that I had succeeded in putting you out of my heart,—that I had forgotten you,—and then—you came back to me, and the past leapt living from the years that had no power to bury it, and I knew that you were more to me than honour or fame or anything the world held. Hence-forth I will be so gentle with you, so tender—so loving.”
“Will you—kiss me—Jack?”
She had gradually pulled herself upright on the pillows.
“Will you kiss me—and say—once more, as you used to—‘God bless you—wifie’?”
Their lips met and clung together.
“God bless you—wifie.”
And there was silence, a long silence, broken by a gasp, a sigh, and a gentle unloosening of the clasping arms.
“Bella—Bella—speak to me, my beloved.”
But the passionate cry fell on ears that heard not.
The tempest-tossed soul was at rest; above were the pitying Angels’ wings, and over all the solemn hush of Death.