A Bachelor Husband Read online

  Produced by Elaine Laizure from images generously madeavailable by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.

  A BACHELOR HUSBAND

  BY

  RUBY M. AYRES

  AUTHOR OF "RICHARD CHATTERTON," ETC.

  Frontispiece by

  PAUL STAHR

  New York

  W. J. Watt & Company

  PUBLISHERS

  COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY

  W. J. WATT & COMPANY

  Printed in the United States of America

  TO

  FEATHERS

  CHAPTER I

  "Ah, then, was it all spring weather? Nay! but we were young--and together."

  SHE had always adored him. From the first moment he came to thehouse--an overgrown, good-looking schoolboy, and had started tobully and domineer over her, Marie Chester had thought him the mostwonderful person in all the world. She waited on him hand and foot,she was his willing bondslave; she did not mind at all when once,in an unusual fit of eloquence, she had confided in him that shethought it was the loveliest thing on earth to have a brother,young Christopher answered almost brutally that she "talked rot,anyway, and that sisters were a bally nuisance!"

  He looked at her with a sort of contempt for a moment, then added:"Besides, we're not brother and sister, really!"

  They were not; but their fathers had been lifelong friends, andwhen George Chester's wife inconsiderately--or so her husbandthought--died without presenting him with a son, and almost at thesame time young Christopher Lawless was left an orphan, GeorgeChester promptly adopted him.

  "It will do Marie good to have a brother," he maintained, when hissister. Miss Chester, who kept house for him, raised an objection."She's spoilt--shockingly spoilt--and a boy about the place willknock off some of her airs and graces."

  Young Christopher certainly did that much, if no more, for in afortnight he had turned Marie, who was naturally rather shy andreserved, into a tomboy who climbed trees with him regardless ofinjury to life and limb, who rode a cob barebacked round thepaddock, who did, in fact, everything he dared or ordered her todo.

  Miss Chester protested to Marie's father in vain.

  "Christopher is ruining her; I can do nothing with her now! She isquite a different child since he came to the house."

  Marie's father chuckled. He was not a particularly refined man, andthe daintiness and shyness of his little daughter had ratherembarrassed him. He was pleased to think that under Christopher'sguiding hand she was what he chose to call "improving."

  "Do her good!" he said bluntly. "Where's the harm? They're onlychildren."

  But the climax came rather violently when one afternoon Marie fellout of the loft into the yard below, and broke her arm.

  One of the grooms went running to the rescue and picked her up, aforlorn little heap with a face as white as her frock.

  "I fell out myself!" she said with quivering lips. "I fell out allmy own self."

  Young Christopher, who had clambered down the ladder from the loft,broke in violently:

  "She didn't! It was my fault! She made me wild, and I pushed her. Ididn't think she'd be so silly as to fall, though," he added, withan angry look at her. "And don't you trouble to tell lies aboutme."

  The groom said afterwards that she had not shed a tear till then,but at the angry words she broke down suddenly into bitter sobbing.

  She did not mind her broken arm, but she minded having offendedChristopher. It was the greatest trouble she had ever known when--as a consequence of the accident--Christopher was sent away to aboarding school.

  Hereafter she only saw him by fits and starts during the holidays,and then he seemed somehow quite different.

  He took but little notice of her, and he generally brought a friendhome with him from school. He was getting beyond the "boy" stage,and developing a wholesome contempt for girls as a whole!

  When--later--he went to a public school, he forgot to ignore her,and took to patronizing her instead. She wasn't such a bad littlething, he told her, and next term if she liked she might knit him atie.

  Marie knitted him two--which he never wore! She would have blackedhis boots for him if he had expressed the slightest wish for her todo so.

  Then, later still, he went to Cambridge and forgot all about her.He hardly ever came home during vacation save for week-ends; he hadso many friends, it seemed, and was in great demand amongst themall.

  Marie could quite believe it. She was bitterly jealous of theseunknown friends, and incidentally of the sisters which she was suresome of them must have!

  She was still at school herself, and her soft brown hair was tiedin a pigtail with a large bow at the end.

  "You'll soon have to put your hair up if you grow so fast, Marie,"Miss Chester said to her rather sadly, when at the end of one termshe came home.

  Marie glanced at herself in the glass. She was tall and slim forher age, which was not quite seventeen, and as she was entirelyfree from conceit she could see no beauty in her pale face and darkeyes, which, together with her name of Marie Celeste, she hadinherited from her French mother.

  "Am I like mother, Auntie Madge?" she asked, and Miss Chestersmiled as she answered:

  "You have your mother's eyes."

  Marie looked at her reflection again.

  "Mother was very pretty, wasn't she?" she asked, and Miss Chestersaid: "Yes--she was, very pretty."

  Marie sighed. "Of course, I can't be like her, then," she said,resignedly, and turned away.

  Presently: "Is Chris coming these holidays?" she asked.

  Miss Chester shook her head.

  "He did not think so. He wrote that he should go to Scotland withthe Knights."

  Marie flushed. "I hate the Knights," she said pettishly. She hadnever seen them, but on principle she hated everyone and everythingwho took Christopher from her.

  The following year she was sent to a finishing school in Paris, andwhile she was there her father died suddenly.

  A wire came from England late one night and Marie was packed offhome the following morning.

  Her father's death was no great grief to her, though in a placidsort of way she had been fond of him. She had written to himregularly every Sunday, and was grateful for all that she knew hehad done for her, but any deep love she might have borne for himhad long ago gone to Chris. He was the beginning and end of hergirlish dreams--the center of her whole life.

  As she sat in the stuffy cabin on the cross-Channel boat andlistened to the waves outside her chief thought was, should she seeChris? Had they wired for him to come home from wherever he was?

  He had left Cambridge now, she knew, but what he was doing or howhe spent his time she did not know. All the way up in the trainfrom Dover she was thinking of him, wondering how soon she wouldsee him, but she never dreamed that he would meet the train, andthe wild color flew to her face as she saw him coming down thecrowded platform.

  He looked very tall and very much of a man, she thought, as shegave him a trembling hand to shake. She felt herself very childishand insignificant beside his magnificence as she walked with him tothe waiting car, for the house in the country had long since beengiven up, and George Chester had lived in London for some yearsbefore his death.

  "Have you got your ticket?" Christopher asked, very much as hemight have asked a child, and Marie fumbled in her pocket withfingers that shook.

  "I nearly lost it once," she volunteered, and Chris smiled as heanswered: "Yes, that's the sort of thing you would do." He lookeddown at her. "You haven't altered much," he said condescendingly."You're still just a kid."

  Marie did not answer, but her heart swelled with disappointment.She was eighteen, and she knew that he was but six years older.

  Years ago that six years had
not seemed much of a gap, but now,looking up at him, she felt it to be an insuperable gulf.

  He was a man and she was only a school girl with short skirts andher hair down her back.

  They sat opposite one another in the car, and Chris looked at herconsideringly. "It's a long time since I saw you," he said.

  "Yes, eight months," she answered readily. She could have told himthe date and the month and almost the hour of their last meetinghad she chosen, but somehow she did not think he would be greatlyinterested.

  "It's rough luck--about Uncle George," he said awkwardly, and Marienodded.

  "Yes."

  She wondered if he thought she ought to be crying. She would havebeen amazed if she could have known that he was hoping with all hisheart and soul that she would not.

  He changed the subject abruptly.

  "Aunt Madge would have come to meet you, but there is so much tosee to. She sent her love and told me to say she was sorry not tobe able to come."

  "I don't mind," said Marie. She would infinitely rather have beenmet by Chris. Her dark eyes searched his face with shy adoration.

  She was quite sure there had never been anybody so good-looking ashe in all the world; that there had never been eyes so blue, orwith such a twinkle; that nobody had ever had such a wonderfulsmile or such a cheery laugh; that there was not a man in the wholeof London who dressed so well or looked so splendid.

  As a matter of fact, Christopher was rather a fine looking man, andperfectly well aware of the fact. He had more friends than he knewwhat to do with, and they all, more or less, spoilt him.

  He was generally good-tempered, and always good company. He was runafter by all the women with marriageable daughters though, to dohim justice, so far he evinced very little interest in the oppositesex.

  He looked now at Marie, and thought what a child she was! He wouldhave been amazed could he have known that beneath her black coather heart was beating with love for him, deep and sincere.

  Faithfulness was a failing with Marie, if it can ever be called afailing! There was something doglike in her devotion that madechange impossible. Her best friend at school had been unkind to hermany times, but Marie's affection had never swerved, and all thetyranny and bullying she had received from Christopher in the pasthad only deepened her adoration. In her eyes he was perfect.

  There were many things she wanted to say to him, but she wastongue-tied and shy. It seemed all too soon that they reached homeand Christopher handed her over to Miss Chester.

  Miss Chester took Marie upstairs and kissed her and made much ofher. She took it for granted that the girl was broken-hearted atthe death of her father. She was a sweet, old-fashioned woman whoalways took it for granted that people would do the right thing,and she thought it was the right thing for any daughter to grieveat the loss of a parent.

  "You grow so fast," she said, as she said every time the girl camehome. "You will have to put your hair up."

  Marie turned eagerly. "Oh, auntie! To-night, may I?"

  Miss Chester did not think it would matter, and so presently a veryself-conscious little figure in black crept downstairs through thesilent house and into the dining-room, where Christopher waswaiting impatiently for his dinner.

  He turned quickly as Marie and her aunt entered. He was a man whohated being kept waiting a moment, though if it pleased him hebroke appointments without the slightest hesitation.

  Conversation was intermittent during dinner. Naturally there was agloom over the house. It was only as they were leaving the tablethat Miss Chester said, smiling faintly: "Do you notice that Mariehas grown up, Chris?"

  "Grown up!" he echoed. He looked at Marie's flushing face.

  "She has put her hair up," said Miss Chester.

  Christopher looked away indifferently. "Oh, had she? I didn'tnotice."

  The tears started to Marie's eyes. She felt like a disappointedchild.

  CHAPTER II

  "All men kill the thing they love By all let this be heard. The coward does it with a kiss. . . ."