CHAPTER III

A PROVIDENTIAL DISCLOSURE

On Wednesday the eleventh of April, John Ashforth rose from his bed full of a great and momentous resolution. There is nothing very strange in that, perhaps it is just the time of day when such things come to a man, and, in ordinary cases, they are very p.r.o.ne to disappear with the relics of breakfast. But John was of sterner stuff. He had pa.s.sed a restless night, tossed to and fro by very disturbing gusts of emotion, and he arose with the firm conviction that if he would escape shipwreck he must secure his bark by immovable anchors while he was, though not in honor, yet in law and fact, free; he could not trust himself.

Sorrowfully admitting his weakness, he turned to the true, the right, the heroic remedy.

"I'll marry Mary to--day fortnight," said he. "When we are man and wife I shall forget this madness and love her as I used to."

He went down to breakfast, ate a bit of toast and drank a cup of very strong tea. Presently Mary appeared and greeted him with remarkable tenderness. His heart smote him, and his remorse strengthened his determination.

"I want to speak to you after breakfast," he told her.

His manner was so significant that a sudden gleam of hope flashed into her mind. Could it be that he had seen, that he would be generous? She banished the shameful hope. She would not accept generosity at the expense of pain to him.

Miss Bussey, professing to find bed the best place in the world, was in the habit of taking her breakfast there. The lovers were alone, and, the meal ended, they pa.s.sed together into the conservatory. Mary sat down and John leant against the gla.s.s door opposite her.

"Well?" said she, smiling at him.

It suddenly struck John that, in a scene of this nature, it ill-befitted him to stand three yards from the lady. He took a chair and drew it close beside her. The thing had to be done and it should be done properly.

"We've made a mistake, Mary," he announced, taking her hand and speaking in a rallying tone.

"A mistake!" she cried; "oh, how?"

"In fixing our marriage----."

"So soon?"

"My darling!" said John (and it was impossible to deny admiration to the tone he said it in), "no. So late! What are we waiting for? Why are we wasting all this precious time?"

Mary could not speak, but consternation pa.s.sed for an appropriate confusion, and John pursued his pa.s.sionate pleadings. As Mary felt his grasp and looked into his honest eyes, her duty lay plain before her.

She would not stoop to paltry excuses on the score of clothes, invitations, or such trifles. She had made up her mind to the thing; surely she ought to do it in the way most gracious and most pleasing to her lover.

"If Aunt consents," she murmured at last, "do as you like, John dear,"

and the embrace which each felt to be inevitable at such a crisis pa.s.sed between them.

A discreet cough separated them. The butler stood in the doorway, with two letters on a salver. One he handed to Mary, the other to John, and walked away with a twinkle in his eye. However even our butlers do not know everything that happens in our houses (to say nothing of our hearts), although much they may think they do.

John looked at his letter, started violently and crushed it into his pocket. He glanced at Mary; her letter lay neglected on her lap. She was looking steadily out of the window.

"Well, that's settled," said John. "I--I think I'll have a cigar, dear."

"Yes, do, darling," said Mary, and John went out.

These second letters were unfortunately so long as to make it impossible to reproduce them. They were also very affecting, Dora's from its pathos, Charlie's from its pa.s.sion. But the waves of emotion beat fruitlessly on the rock-built walls of conscience. At almost the same moment, Mary, brushing away a tear, and John, blowing his nose, sat down to write a brief, a final answer. "We are to be married today fortnight," they said. They closed the envelopes without a moment's delay and went to drop their letters in the box. The servant was already waiting to go to the post with them and a second later the fateful doc.u.ments were on their way to Cannes.

"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 fl.u.s.ter 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 pa.s.sed, as Miss Bussey had predicted, in a fl.u.s.ter.

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 hoa.r.s.ely.

"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 n.o.ble 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.