The Gentlemen in Possession by Katharine Tynan

When Belinda Grove-Smith, the daughter of a prosperous stockbroker of Evangelical leanings, married Jack Gascoigne, a poor artist, it was a severe blow to the Grove-Smith family.

Jack was then unknown to Fame. Today his posters make him famous all over England and farther, and he is held in the highest regard by the Grove-Smith family, who make a deal of capital out of him at suburban tennis and tea parties. At the time of his marriage his brother artists predicted a brilliant future for him; but if their predictions reached the Grove-Smith family they simply did not believe them.

Belinda was a little person who knew her own mind. A staunch little woman, brown-eyed and gentle, with a bubbling sense of humour which had overflowed all her days, discreetly, on her highly respectable surroundings. She was a perpetual wonder to Jack Gascoigne. How she had ever sprung in such a soil as the Grove-Smiths! Belinda was a freak, a jest of Nature, else it would have been as risky an experiment for her and Jack Gascoigne to marry as his artist friends feared at first, before they met Jack's wife.

Papa pursy, prosperous and prim--mamma exuding a stately respectability at every pore--the Grove-Smith sons and other than Belinda, qualifying for as honourable positions as their parents filled so happily--no wonder they didn't understand Jack Gascoigne. Mrs. Grove-Smith found it necessary to explain to her rich suburban friends that dear John's parentage had been quite unimpeachable; his father a distinguished officer in the army; his mother the daughter of Sir Beverley Bindon. The suburb believed her or not, according to its nature; but there was an inflexibility in its manner of receiving Mrs. Grove-Smith's assurances which boded ill for its acceptance of Bella's marriage.

Bella simply didn't care a pin. The parents were very good to her. Even Mrs. Grove-Smith, whom Jack's friends--the one or two he dared present at Fairgrove--pronounced a holy terror, had really a tender, maternal heart under her somewhat overwhelming exterior. It was not in her, nor was it in Peregrine Grove-Smith, to bear the unhappiness of one of the children. And there was really nothing very bad about Jack except that he had no money, was that feckless thing, an artist, and had such very odd ways. When he turned up in a grey flannel shirt the very day Lady Druce came to tea--the Grove-Smiths had asked Lady Druce so many times, and this was the very first time she had come--it was a blow to the Grove-Smiths. Mrs. Grove-Smith, presiding over the tea table, was nearly turned to stone when she heard Jack explaining to Lady Druce, with demonstrations, that he always had a clean shirt by making a new turn on his cuffs. It was nothing that Lady Druce laughed heartily, seemed delighted with Jack, and asked him to lunch next day. As Lucy, newly home from Paris, said, Jack was 'impayable'; and Lady Druce, who had not included the Grove-Smiths, beyond Belinda, in her invitations, was plainly interested in Jack for malicious reasons and none other.

It was rather a relief to all the Grove-Smiths that the engagement was a short one. Jack was not very keen about Fairgrove, and had steadily rejected all social advances from the Pendlehurst people. There had been a good many--and were actuated by curiosity, the Grove-Smiths felt sure. It was as well Jack did not respond to them, for one never knew what audacity he might commit. To be sure some people might find his audacities amusing. Not so the Grove-Smiths. In a spirit of pious resignation they saw the wedding through. Jack's speech at the wedding breakfast was something sever to be forgotten. It was with a sign of very real relief that Mrs. Grove-Smith saw the newly-married couple depart in a motor for Folkestone on their way abroad. She was quite determined that Jack should only be asked to Fairgrove for family occasions. He was really too awful. That squashing of his top hat now--bought at the last moment in deference to the wishes of the Grove-Smith family; Jack had somehow or other contrived to get it on to his chair while he returned thanks for himself and Belinda, and had then sat down on it. Pendlehurst had roared over his expression when he took it up and set it sideways on his handsome dark head. The Grove-Smiths had seen nothing to laugh at. To them it was, as Mrs. Grove-Smith described it, a painfully vulgar exhibition.

However, Belinda seemed to enjoy it more than anybody; and she went off with Jack, looking as radiantly happy a bride as ever left a parental roof. So long as the child was happy--Mrs. Grove-Smith said to Mr. Grove-Smith, and he answered gloomily that when Bella ceased to be happy with that queer fellow there was always room for her at Fairgrove; suggested further that there need be no change in Belinda's room yet awhile, till they saw how the marriage worked.

-"Oh, it will work well enough, Peregrine," Mrs. Grove-Smith replied, with an air as though the prophesy were the other way about. "Strange as it may seem, Bella is devoted to him. And I must say that beyond his queerness and his occasional vulgarities there seems no harm in John."