DOUBTING.
Prior to that affair in the conservatory, Bella had been to him all
that a man had a right to expect--that is, a man who had not
definitely declared himself; now that he had done so, she had thrown
him completely over.
'What strong running I might make with her beyond a doubt, but for
those accursed mortgages!' said Jerry to Bevil Goring, as they
lounged in the smoking-room. 'She thinks I do not want her for
herself, but to rid me of these, and values my love
accordingly--despises me, in short,' added Jerry, bitterly, 'and I am
without the means of undeceiving her.'
'He despises me for my humble origin, and even as much as admitted
that his friends would view a _mésalliance_ with contempt--yes, that
was the word,' was the thought of Bella; 'yet his debts and the
mortgages together made his royal highness stoop to act the lover to
me. Surely, after the past, I deserved something better than this!'
He knew and she knew that for some time before their affair had been
looked upon as 'a case;' that men began to make way for him whenever
she was concerned, and that, in short, they would soon get talked
about if they did not come to terms or separate; and now the
separation had come to pass in a way neither could have foreseen.
A man like Jerry, who rode to hounds and at hurdle races, who shot,
fished, rowed, and did everything else with such hearty good-will,
was little likely 'to play the fool with his little girl,' thought
Mr. Chevenix, from whom Bella had no concealments. He could not be
base enough, but Mr. Chevenix knew not what to think, and in the
first transport of his anger, but for her piteous appeals, would have
foreclosed the mortgages, and perhaps thus have forced Jerry out of
the Queen's service.
Any way, she must try not to love him now; love was over, she
thought, and she would never, never love again.
Jerry would no doubt marry some one else--especially if money was his
object, as she doubted not it was; and they--who were so near being
very dear to each other--might meet in years to come as mere
acquaintances, if even that! Her eyes filled with tears, and she
drummed her little foot passionately on the floor at the visions she
conjured up, and felt how difficult it is to obliterate or transfer
affection at a moment's notice.
One moment she would say to herself that she never wished to see her
lover's face again, especially if all, or even a half, were true that
his mother and cousin hinted of his character, and all she suspected
of his selfishness and pride; and the next moment she did so long to
see him once more, and made herself utterly miserable with the fear
that he might return to Aldershot without visiting the village again.
And so these two, who certainly loved each other well, and might have
done so fondly and dearly for life, were both making themselves
miserable through a very natural mistake--Bella deeming Jerry selfish
and vain, Jerry deeming her views of him unjust, or that his love was
what she suspected it to be, the outcome of cold-blooded policy,
crushing inborn and absurd pride of family and position!
So Bella's mind was in a whirl of contending emotions; one time
striving to believe in her lover's good faith, and the next endorsing
the opinion of her good, easy, and affectionate father: that he had
but one object in view--those horrible mortgages.
It was while the latter views were upper-most in her angry thoughts
that Jerry Wilmot--his leave having expired, and he and Bevil Goring
on the eve of their return to Aldershot camp--rode over to the
village to pay a farewell call.
Bella saw him from the window riding down the village street and
across the green, and her heart beat wildly as she gave breathlessly
a hurried message to one of the servants, and then rushed upstairs to
her room. She heard Jerry inquire for Mr. Chevenix. He was from
home. Then he asked for Miss Chevenix, and was told that she was at
home, but had a headache, and was unable to receive visitors.
Jerry hesitated; he knew well enough that in society 'a headache,'
when ladies were concerned, meant 'not at home;' and, leaving a card
with P.P.C. pencilled in a corner thereof, turned his horse's head,
and, quitting the village at a canter, never once looked back.
Thus Bella, by yielding to a momentary gust of pride and temper,
prompted by her then mood of mind, lost the only opportunity that
might ever occur of having the cloud that hovered between them
dispelled, and some explanation perhaps made.
But 'lovers from time immemorial have always shown much dexterity in
the mismanagement of their own affairs,' says a novelist, and thus
this pair were no exception to the general rule.
'Well,' he muttered, as his canter increased to a gallop, 'absence is
a curative process; and absence in Africa will be an exciting
addition thereto.'
Bella, as she wept on seeing him disappear, was not aware of one
circumstance that made Jerry spur his horse viciously. As he entered
the village at one end he had seen Lord Twesildown riding out of it
at the other, and, not unnaturally, he connected Bella's 'headache'
with that circumstance; but the young lord's appearance there was, in
reality, the merest chance contingency in the world.
'He was not one bit in love with me,' thought Bella, when days
succeeded each other in slow and monotonous succession, and Jerry
came no more. 'Well, he has inflicted a sore blow upon my woman's
vanity.'
She became moped and full of ennui; day followed day in monotonous
succession, and she sat by a window with a novel in her hand unread,
or some piece of feminine work forgotten, listlessly watching the
leafless and dripping trees, for the season was dreary, wet, and
stormy; the mist crept up from the adjacent stream and whitened all
the gardens and the village green; and a cold, a sheeny, a wan
crescent moon came out over Wilmot Woods.
'What a life I live just now!' sighed Bella; 'one might as well be in
one's grave as here at Wilmothurst.'