FullReads

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,” said Mary, “is to be just my brother and I his sister. Oh, and Auntie, I want to go with him to Cannes.”