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IF ONLY
ETC.
BY
F.C. PHILIPS
AUTHOR OF "AS IN A LOOKING GLASS," ETC. ETC.
LEIPZIG
BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ
1904.
TO
MY OLD FRIEND AND COLLABORATOR,
SYDNEY GRUNDY,
I DEDICATE THESE PAGES.
F.C. PHILIPS.
CONTENTS.
IF ONLY
ONE CAN'T ALWAYS TELL
SONGS. AFTER VICTOR HUGO, ARMAND SILVESTRE,
CHARLES ROUSSEAU AND THE VICOMTE DE BORELLI
LOVE WENT OUT WHEN MONEY WAS INVENTED
A PUZZLED PAINTER. (WRITTEN IN COLLABORATION
WITH THE LATE SIR AUGUSTUS HARRIS)
* * * * *
IF ONLY.
CHAPTER I.
There is a vast deal talked in the present day about Freewill. We
like to feel that we are independent agents and are ready to overlook
the fact that our surroundings and circumstances and the hundred and
one subtle and mysterious workings of the fate we can none of us
escape, control our actions and are responsible for our movements,
and make us to a great extent what we are.
A man is not even a free agent when he takes the most important step
of his whole life, and marries a wife. He is impelled to it by
considerations outside of himself; it affects not only his own
present and future, but that of others, very often, and he must be
guided accordingly.
Emerson says; "The soul has inalienable rights, and the first of
these is love," but he does not say marriage. Love is the business of
the idle and the idleness of the busy, but marriage is quite another
affair--a grave matter, and not to be undertaken lightly, since it is
the one step that can never be retraced, save through the unsavoury
channels of shame and notoriety, or death itself.
But perhaps Jack Chetwynd was hampered with fewer restraining
influences than most men, for he was alone in the world, without kith
or kin, and might be fairly allowed to please himself, and pleasing
himself in this case meant leading to the altar, or rather to the
Registry Office, Miss Bella Blackall, music-hall singer and step
dancer.
It was unquestionably a case of love at first sight. The girl was
barely seventeen, and her girlishness attracted him quite as much as
her beauty, which was exceptional. There was nothing meretricious
about it, for as yet she owed nothing to art--brown hair, warm lips,
soft blue eyes, and a complexion like the leaf of a white rose--a
woman blossom. Then, too, she was a happy creature, full of life and
happiness and bubbling over with childish merriment--no one could
help liking her, he told himself, but it was something warmer than
that. What makes the difference between liking and love? It is so
little and yet so much. There was an air of refinement about her,
too, which to his fancy seemed to protest against the vulgarities of
her surroundings. He thought he could discern the stuff that meant an
actress in her, and prophesied that she would before long be playing
Juliet at the Haymarket. He was still at the age when the habit is to
discover geniuses in unlikely places, especially when the women are
pretty. He raved about her when he adjourned with his companions to
the bar, and they chaffed him a good deal to his face and sneered at
him behind his back. He was there the next night, and the night,
after and by-and-by he managed to get introduced to her.
She was prettier off the stage than on, and her manner was charming,
and her voice delicious with its racy accent.
She was an American, and had been in London only a few months; and he
was duly taken to a second-rate lodging in a side street near the
Waterloo Road, and presented to "Ma,"--a black satined and beaded
type of the race. There was also a sister, whom, truth to tell, he
objected to more than her maternal relative, for she was distinctly
professional, not to say loud, and the little mannerisms which were
so taking in his inamorata were very much the reverse in Miss Saidie
Blackall.
Still, he told himself, he was not going to marry the whole family;
which might be true in a sense and yet might not mean the entire
independence it implied. Bella's relations must, if he made her his
wife, mean more or less to him.
However, youth is sanguine, and Jack Chetwynd did not look too
closely at the thorns which hedged his dainty rose-bud round. She at
least was all he could wish her to be--unsophisticated as a child,
and pure and good at heart.
After a month's acquaintance it began to be understood that he was
engaged to her. "Ma" wept copious tears, and reckoned her Bella was a
lucky girl to get such an "elegant" husband; and Saidie wished him
happiness in a voice like a corn-crake, and declared that her sister
was "just the sweetest and best girl out of N'York," which she was;
"and born to lead a private life," which she wasn't.
Bella herself had very little to say. She blushed rosily when Jack
made fervent love to her; acquiesced confusedly when he told her she
must give up the music-hall stage, and seemed to take happily to the
idea of a quiet, uneventful life as Mrs. Jack Chetwynd.
They took a small house in Camberwell New Road. Jack put up a brass
plate with his name on it, and M.D. in imposing letters, and invested
in a telephone for the accommodation of night callers; and Bella
began to busy herself about the furnishing.
That was a delightful time. The little bride elect was so excited and
eager, and showed herself wonderfully capable, and with quite a
pretty taste in draping and ornamenting; but there was a terrible
hole in Jack's purse: chairs and tables seemed to cost a mint of
money; and the young man sighed and hoped fervently that it would not
be long before patients appeared, or he would be obliged to say No to
his darling when she turned her appealing eyes upon him and begged
him to give her money for that "duck of a screen," or something else
that was from her point of view the most extraordinary bargain, but
which, Jack reflected, privately, they could very well have done
without.
He was giving up a certainty in settling in Camberwell, for as House
Surgeon at St. Mark's his income was assured; but then as a married
man he could no longer have lived at the hospital, and "one must risk
something" said Jack, hopefully.
They were married in May, just three months from that eventful night
when our hero first saw pretty Bella Blackall, on the boards at the
"Band Box," and Mrs. John Chetwynd was altogether so sweet and
winsome in her simple white gown, that Saidie was right when she
hilariously remarked that Jack might well be forgiven for falling in
love with her "all over again."
The wedding was just as quiet as it could be, for Jack did not care
to invite any of his friends. "Ma" and Saidie were altogether too
impossible; and unfortunately no one seemed to mind whether he did or
not. There was one unpleasantness connected with the day which
Chetwynd felt Bella might have had tact enough to avoid. Two or three
of Saidie's friends, in light and eminently professional attire, were
of the party, the women a good deal worse than the men; and they all
returned together to Holly Street, where a meal had been prepared in
the front parlours, the landlady having generously placed them at the
disposal of her lodgers for the occasion. There was a good deal of
banter and side jokes were bandied about from one to another; which
was galling to young Chetwynd, and made him devoutly thankful that
none of his own companions and friends were present. When at last
Bella rose from the table to change her gown for the pale grey he
himself had chosen, with the big hat and nodding plumes in which she
had looked such a dainty little mortal, he pushed his chair back with
a look of disgust on his face and left them to talk amongst
themselves.
Saidie was distributing small pieces of wedding cake, laughing and
screaming at the top of her voice.
"Saikes, man! you are not to eat it. Put it under your pillow and as
sure as I'm a Yank you'll see your intended," she cried. And then
followed an amount of vulgar chaff and coarse pleasantry which caused
the "happy man" to set his teeth hard and register a vow at the
bottom of his heart that this should be the last occasion on which
his wife should associate with her sister's friends.
And then Bella came tripping down the narrow staircase, her cheeks
warm with a pale pink colour that made her inexpressibly lovely; and
the carriage which Mrs. Blackall had insisted upon ordering to take
the young couple to the station was at the door, and in the bustle
that ensued Jack lost sight of all annoyances and remembered only
that he had married the girl he loved and that he was the happiest
fellow in the universe; and amid a shower of rice and a white satin
slipper (one of Saidie's), which fell right into Bella's lap; the
last farewell was spoken, and they drove away.
"Only to Brighton!" cried Nina Nankin, the celebrity famed for the
height to which she could raise one leg while standing upon the
other. "What a mean chap! He might have forked out enough for a trip
to Paris, I should have thought."
"It wouldn't satisfy me," returned Saidie, turning up her nose
disdainfully; "but he isn't my style, anyway."
"Bit of a prig, eh?"
Saidie nodded.
"I do detest a man who fancies himself a head and shoulders above the
rest of his kind," said that young lady vehemently; "you'll generally
find out he don't amount to a row of pins. My! ain't I glad I'm not
going to live with him. I would as lief go to Bible-class every day
of the week. I'll bet my bottom dollar Bella'll see the mistake she's
made before she's many weeks older. There's a chip of the old block
about that young woman, for all her baby ways and her innocent
know-nothing. He'll be a spry man, will Dr. Chetwynd, to come up to
her. It'll take him all he knows to get ahead, you bet".
Saidie lay back in the chair and laughed till the tears ran down her
cheeks.