Comedies of Courtship. Anthony Hope

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      “Now,” said John, with a ghastly smile, “we can have a glorious long day together!”

      Mary was determined to leave herself no loophole.

      “We must tell Aunt what—what we have decided upon this morning,” she reminded him. “It means that the wedding must be very quiet.”

      “I shan’t mind that. Shall you?”

      “I shall like it of all things.” she answered. “Come and find Aunt Sarah.”

      Miss Bussey had always—or at least for a great many years back—maintained the general proposition that young people do not know their own minds. This morning’s news confirmed her opinion.

      “Why the other day you both agreed that the middle of June would do perfectly. Now you want it all done in a scramble.”

      The pair stood before her, looking very guilty.

      “What is the meaning of this—this (she very nearly said ‘indecent’) extraordinary haste?”

      Miss Bussey asked only one indulgence from her friends. Before she did a kind thing she liked to be allowed to say one or two sharp ones. Her niece was aware of this fancy of hers and took refuge in silence. John, less experienced in his hostess’s ways, launched into the protests appropriate to an impatient lover.

      “Well,” said Miss Bussey, “I must say you look properly ashamed of yourself [John certainly did], so I’ll see what can be done. What a fluster we shall live in! Upon my word you might as well have made it tomorrow. The fuss would have been no worse and a good deal shorter.”

      The next few days passed, as Miss Bussey had predicted, in a fluster. Mary was running after dress makers, John after licenses, Cook’s tickets, a best man, and all the impedimenta of a marriage. The intercourse of the lovers was much interrupted, and to this Miss Bussey attributed the low spirits that Mary sometimes displayed.

      “There, there, my dear,” she would say impatiently—for the cheerful old lady hated long faces—“you’ll have enough of him and to spare by and by.”

      Curiously this point of view did not comfort Mary. She liked John very much, she esteemed him even more than she liked him, he would, she thought, have made an ideal brother. Ah, why had she not made a brother of him while there was time? Then she would have enjoyed his constant friendship all her life; for it was not with him as with that foolish boy Charlie, all or nothing. John was reasonable; he would not have threatened—well, reading—his letter one way, Charlie almost seemed to be tampering with propriety. John would never have done that. And these reflections, all of which should have pleaded for John, ended in weeping over the lost charms of Charlie.

      One evening, just a week before the wedding, she roused herself from some such sad meditations, and, duty-driven, sought John in the smoking-room. The door was half open and she entered noiselessly. John was sitting at the table; his arms were outspread on it, and his face buried in his hands. Thinking he was asleep she approached on tiptoe and leant over his shoulder. As she did so her eyes fell on a sheet of note-paper; it was clutched in John’s right hand, and the encircling grasp covered it, save at the top. The top was visible, and Mary, before she knew what she was doing, had read the embossed heading—nothing else, just the embossed heading—Hotel de Luxe, Cannes, Alpes Maritimes.

      The drama teaches us how often a guilty mind rushes, on some trifling cause, to self-revelation. Like a flash came the conviction that Charlie had written to John, that her secret was known, and John’s heartbroken. In a moment she fell on her knees crying, “Oh, how wicked I’ve been! Forgive me, do forgive me! Oh, John, can you forgive me?”

      John was not asleep, he also was merely meditating; but if he had been a very Rip Van Winkle this cry of agony would have roused him. He started violently—as well he might—from his seat, looked at Mary, and crumpled the letter into a shapeless ball.

      “You didn’t see?” he asked hoarsely.

      “No, but I know. I mean I saw the heading, and knew it must be from him. Oh, John!”

      “From him!”

      “Yes. He’s—he’s staying there. Oh, John! Really I’ll never see or speak to him again. Really I won’t. Oh, you can trust me, John. See! I’ll hide nothing. Here’s his letter! You see I’ve sent him away?”

      And she took from her pocket Charlie’s letter, and in her noble fidelity (to John—the less we say about poor Charlie the better) handed it to him.

      “What’s this?” asked John, in bewilderment. “Who’s it from?”

      “Charlie Ellerton,” she stammered.

      “Who’s Charlie Ellerton? I never heard—but am I to read it?”

      “Yes, please, I—I think you’d better.”

      John read it; Mary followed his eyes, and the moment they reached the end, without giving him time to speak, she exclaimed, “There, you see I spoke the truth. I had sent him away. What does he say to you, John?”

      “I never heard of him in my life before.”

      “John! Then who is your letter from?”

      He hesitated. He felt an impulse to imitate her candor, but prudence suggested that he should be sure of his ground first.

      “Tell me all,” he said, sitting down. “Who is this man, and what has he to do with you?”

      “Why don’t you show me his letter? I don’t know what he’s said about me.”

      “What could he say about you?”

      “Well he—he might say that—that I cared for him, John.”

      “And do you?” demanded John, and his voice was anxious.

      Duty demanded a falsehood; Mary did her very best to satisfy its imperious commands. It was no use.

      “Oh, John,” she murmured, and then began to cry.

      For a moment wounded pride struggled with John’s relief; but then a glorious vision of what this admission of Mary’s might mean to him swept away his pique.

      “Read this,” he said, giving her Dora Bellairs’s letter, “and then we’ll have an explanation.”

      Half an hour later Miss Bussey was roused from a pleasant snooze. John and Mary stood beside her, hand in hand. They wore brother and sister now—that was an integral part of the arrangement—and so they stood hand in hand. Their faces were radiant.

      “We came to tell you, Auntie dear, that we have decided that we’re not suited to one another,” began Mary.

      “Not at all,” said John decisively.

      Miss Bussey stared helplessly from one to the other.

      “It’s all right, Miss Bussey,” remarked John cheerfully. “We’ve had an explanation; we part by mutual consent.”

      “John,” СКАЧАТЬ