The Wheel of Love. Anthony Hope

sounded like an afterthought.

      “I have been rather unhappy,” answered Mary, and her answer was true. As she said it she tucked in a projecting edge of her letter. John had hurriedly slipped his (it was rather the worse for its mauling) into his trousers-pocket.

      “You—you didn’t think me neglectful?”

      “Oh, no.”

      “I was thinking of you all the time,”

      “And I was thinking of you, dear.”

      “Are you very happy?”

      “Yes, John; aren’t you?”

      “Of course I am. Happy! I should think so,” and he kissed her with unimpeachable fervor.

      When a conscientious person makes up his mind that he ought, for good reasons, to deceive somebody, there is no one like him for thorough-paced hypocrisy. When two conscientious people resolve to deceive one another, on grounds of duty, the acme of duplicity is in a fair way to be reached. John Ashforth and Mary Travers illustrated this proposition. The former had been all his life a good son, and was now a trustworthy partner, to his father, who justly relied no less on his character than on his brains. The latter, since her parents’ early death had left her to her aunt’s care, had been the comfort and prop of Miss Bussey’s life. It is difficult to describe good people without making them seem dull; but luckily nature is defter than novelists, and it is quite possible to be good without being dull. Neither Mary nor John was dull; a trifle limited, perhaps, they were, a thought severe in their judgments of others as well as of themselves; a little exacting with their friends and more than a little with themselves. One description paints them both; doubtless their harmony of mind had contributed more than Mary’s sweet expression and finely cut features, or John’s upstanding six feet, and honest capable face, to produce that attachment between them which had, six months before this story begins, culminated in their engagement. Once arrived at, this ending seemed to have been inevitable. Everybody discovered that they had foretold it from the first, and modestly disclaimed any credit for anticipating a union between a couple so obviously made for one another.

      The distress into which lovers such as these fell when they discovered by personal experience that sincerely to vow eternal love is one thing, and sincerely to give it quite another, may be well imagined, and may well be left to be imagined. They both went through a terrible period of temptation, wherein they listened longingly to the seductive pleading of their hearts; but both emerged triumphant, resolved to stifle their mad fancy, to prefer good faith to mere inclination, and to avoid, at all costs, wounding one to whom they had sworn to be true. Thus far their steadfastness carried them, but not beyond. They could part from their loved ones, and they did; but they could not leave them without a word. Each wrote, after leaving Scotland and Switzerland respectively, a few lines of adieu, confessing the love they felt, but with resolute sadness saying farewell forever. They belonged to another.

      It was the answers that Mary and John were reading when Miss Bussey discovered them.

      Mary’s ran:

      “My Dear Miss Travers: I have received your letter. I can’t tell you what it means to me. You say all must be over between us. Don’t be offended—but I won’t say that yet. It can’t be your duty to marry a man you don’t love. You forbid me to write or come to you; and you ask only for a word of good-by. I won’t say good-by. I’ll say Au revoir—au revoir, my darling.”

      “Charlie.”

      “Burn this.”

      This was John’s:

      “My Dear Mr. Ashforth: What am I to say to you? Oh, why, why didn’t you tell me before? I oughtn’t to say that, but it is too late to conceal anything from you. Yes, you are right. It must be good-by. Yes, I will try to forget you. But oh, John, it’s very, very, very difficult. I don’t know how to sign this—so I won’t. You’ll know who it comes from, won’t you? Good-by. Burn this.”

      These letters, no doubt, make it plain that there had been at least a momentary weakness both in Mary and in John; but in a true and charitable view their conduct in rising superior to temptation finally was all the more remarkable and praiseworthy. They had indeed, for the time, been carried away. Even now Mary found it hard not to make allowances for herself, little as she was prone to weakness when she thought of the impetuous abandon and conquering whirl with which Charlie Ellerton had wooed her; and John confessed that flight alone, a hasty flight from Interlaken after a certain evening spent in gazing at the Jungfrau, had saved him from casting everything to the winds and yielding to the slavery of Dora Bellairs’s sunny smiles and charming coquetries. He had always thought that that sort of girl had no attractions for him, just as Mary had despised ‘butterfly-men’ like Charlie Ellerton. Well, they were wrong. The only comfort was that shallow natures felt these sorrows less; it would have broken Mary’s heart (thought John), or John’s (thought Mary), but Dora and Charlie would soon find consolation in another. But here, oddly enough, John generally swore heartily and Mary always began to search for her handkerchief.

      “They’re as affectionate as one could wish when they’re together,” mused Miss Bussey, as she stroked the cat, “but at other times they’re gloomy company. I suppose they can’t be happy apart. Dear! dear!” and the good old lady fell to wondering whether she had ever been so foolish herself.

      II. Sympathy in Sorrow

      CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

      SYMPATHY IN SORROW

      “Give me,” observed Sir Roger Deane, “Cannes, a fine day, a good set to look at, a beehive chair, a good cigar, a cocktail on one side and a nice girl on the other, and there I am! I don’t want anything else.”

      General Bellairs pulled his white mustache and examined Sir Roger’s figure and surroundings with a smile.

      “Then only Lady Deane is wanting to your complete happiness,” said he.

      “Maud is certainly a nice girl, but when she deserts me——”

      “Where is she?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “I do,” interposed a young man, who wore an eye—glass and was in charge of a large jug. “She’s gone to Monte.”

      “I might have known,” said Sir Roger. “Being missed here always means you’ve gone to Monte—like not being at church means you’ve gone to Brighton.”

      “Surely she doesn’t play?” asked the General.

      “Not she! She’s going to put it in a book. She writes books you know. She put me in the last—made me a dashed fool, too, by Jove!”

      “That was unkind,” said the General, “from your wife.”

      “Oh, Lord love you, she didn’t mean it. I was the hero. That’s how I came to be such an ass. The dear girl meant everything that was kind. Who’s taken her to Monte?”

      “Charlie Ellerton,” said the young man with the eye-glass.

      “There! I told you she was a kind girl. She’s trying to pull old Charlie up a peg or two. He’s had the deuce of a facer, you know.”

      “I thought he seemed less cheerful than usual.”

      “Oh, rather. He met a girl somewhere or other—I always forget places—Miss—Miss—hang it, I can’t remember names—and got awfully smitten, and everything went pleasantly and she took to him like anything—, and at last old Charlie spoke up like a man, and——” Sir Roger paused dramatically.

      “Well?”