Part 5 (2/2)

”Indeed, sir, and I'm glad to hear it. Things do look most beautiful, and no mistake.”

The good soul shambled across the floor and held out a letter wrapped in the corner of her ap.r.o.n.

”A boy brought it, sir, half an hour ago, but I clean forgot it, and that's a fact.”

”Never mind. It is probably of no importance.”

But it was. By-and-by his eyes fell on it as it lay where Mrs.

Brewer's hard-working fingers had placed it, on the edge of a little gaily-lined work table destined to hold Bella Chetwynd's cotton and needles, and to his astonishment he observed it was in his wife's handwriting.

Ah! written just before she started for the----.He caught it up and tore it open. The next instant it fluttered from his hold.

For fully ten seconds John Chetwynd sat spell-bound, and then he broke into a laugh--mirthless, hollow.

”And I prayed to my G.o.d to send his blessing on--our--future,” he said in a dull, mechanical manner. ”Well, the last act is played out and they may ring the curtain down. From to-night I believe neither in woman, Heaven, nor h.e.l.l, save that which each man makes for himself.”

Bella had turned her shapely back on the apotheosis of respectability for a life of excitement and the protection of another man. n.o.body was surprised but John himself.

Everybody had predicted it months ago. The only astonis.h.i.+ng feature of the scandal was, that it had not occurred before.

The one other thing people found surprising was the callousness with which the injured husband took it.

It had always been believed that what love there was, was on his side, but now--

Well, it is indeed an ill wind that blows us no good. If notoriety was what John Chetwynd desired, he got it in full measure, well pressed down and br.i.m.m.i.n.g over; his waiting room was besieged, for many patients flocked there, wide eyed in scrutiny, martyrs to symptoms discovered or invented for the occasion.

Of course he would divorce her. And he did.

In due course he obtained his decree _nisi_, which later on was made absolute.

Bella's picture no longer stared him in the face from every h.o.a.rding, and the newspaper advertis.e.m.e.nts knew her no more. She had gone back to the States, and by-and-by was forgotten on this side the Atlantic.

Now and then he was disagreeably reminded of her existence.

Once in the Club a young fellow to whom Chetwynd was personally unknown stretched himself behind a newspaper and muttered, ”Bella Blackall Wasn't that the name of Dr. Somebody's wife who ran away with another fellow?”

”Yes, Bella Blackall was my wife,” John Chetwynd answered with unruffled equanimity, picking up the paper which the other had thrown down. ”She used to be rather a clever dancer, too.”

And he calmly perused the line which included her name among some well known American stars touring in the provinces.

”And he never turned a grizzled hair! I give you my word I felt more over the thing than he did,” remarked Captain Hetherington afterwards; ”without exception the most cold-blooded individual ever met.”

But John Chetwynd was far from being this. He had felt his wife's desertion far too deeply to show his scars, nor was he a man to wear his heart upon his sleeve; but as time went by and the utter callousness of Bella's conduct came home to him, he realised to the full that she was unworthy of a single pang, and he became reconciled to the inevitable. His profession claimed every spare moment, and for a man ill at ease there is no specific like hard work. By-and-by as the years rolled on, another distraction presented itself. He became interested in one of his patients, the only daughter of the Duke of Huddersfield, Lady Ethel Claremont, and this interest blossomed into something stronger and warmer--something that at last he dignified by the name of love, though he was by no means without misgivings as to whether it could ever really lay claim to the t.i.tle.

Certain it was that there was no more of the old exultation about his heart that had formed so large a part of his former courts.h.i.+p; there were no extravagances, no quickened pulses--rapture's warmth had yielded to the mildest of after-glows; but there was no reason that it should not prove as satisfactory in the long run. It is an open question whether the doctor, popular though he undoubtedly was, would have been considered an eligible suitor from the maternal point of view, had it not been that just about this time fortune elected to bestow another favour upon him; his career had reached its apex, and (again through sheer good luck, as John Chetwynd modestly declared) he was offered a baronetcy.

<script>