The Wheel of Love/Chapter 5

by Anthony Hope

 

CHAPTER V

A SECOND EDITION

“Don’t you think it’s an interesting sort of title?” inquired Lady Deane of Mr. Laing.

Laing was always a little uneasy in her presence. He felt not only that she was analyzing him, but that the results of the analysis seemed to her to be a very small residuum, of solid matter. Besides, he had been told that she had described him as a “commonplace young man,” a thing nobody could be expected to like.

“Capital!” he answered, nervously fingering his eye glass. “The Transformation of Giles Brockleton! Capital!”

“I think it will do,” said Lady Deane complacently.

“Er—what was he transformed into, Lady Deane?”

“A man,” replied the lady emphatically.

“Of course. I see,” murmured Laing apologetically, stifling a desire to ask what Giles had been before.

A moment later the author enlightened him.

“Yes,” said she, “into a man, from a useless, mischievous, contemptible idler, a parasite, Mr. Laing, a creature to whom——”

“What did it, Lady Deane?” interrupted Laing hastily. He felt somehow as if he were being catalogued.

“Just a woman’s influence.”

Laing’s face displayed relief; he felt that he was in his depth again.

“Oh, got married, you mean? Well, of course, he’d have to pull up a bit, wouldn’t he? Hang it, I think it’s a fellow’s duty——”

“You don’t quite understand me,” observed Lady Deane coldly. “He did not marry the woman.”

“What, did she give him the—I mean, wouldn’t she have him, Lady Deane?”

“She would have married him; but beside her he saw himself in his true colors. Knowing what he was, how could he dare? That was his punishment, and punishment brought transformation.”

As Lady Deane sketched her idea, her eyes kindled and her tone became animated. Laing admired both her and her idea, and he expressed his feeling’s by saying:

“Remarkable sort of chap, Lady Deane. I shall read it all right, you know.”

“I think you ought,” said she, rising, and leaving him to wonder whether she had “meant anything.”

He gave himself a little shake, as though to escape from the atmosphere of seriousness which she had diffused about him, and looked round. A little way off he saw Dora Bellairs and Charlie Ellerton sitting side by side. His brow clouded. Before Charlie came it had been his privilege to be Miss Bellairs’s cavalier, and although he never hoped, nor, to tell the truth, desired more than a temporary favor in her eyes, he did not quite like being ousted.

“Pretty good for a fellow who’s just had the bag!” he remarked scornfully, referring to Roger Deane’s unauthorized revelation.

It was the day before the exodus to Paris. Dora’s period of weary waiting had worn itself away, and she was acknowledging to Charlie that the last two or three days had passed quicker than she had ever thought they could.

“The first two days I was wretched, the next two gloomy, but these last almost peaceful. In spite of—you know what—I think you’ve done me good on the whole.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Charlie, flinging his arm over the back of the seat and looking at his companion.

“And now—in the end,” pursued Dora, “I’m actually a little sorry to leave all this; it’s so beautiful,” and she waved her parasol vaguely at the hills and the islands, while with the other hand she took off her hat and allowed the breeze to blow through her hair.

“It is jolly, isn’t it?” she asked.

“I should rather think it was,” said Charlie. “The jolliest I’ve ever seen.” It was evident that he did not refer to the scenery.

“Oh, you promised you wouldn’t,” cried Dora reproachfully.

“Well, then, I’ll promise again,” he replied, smiling amiably.

“What must I think of you, when only a week or so ago——? Oh, and what must you think of me to suppose I could? Oh, Mr. Ellerton!”

“Like to know what I think of you?” inquired Charlie, quite unperturbed by this passionate rebuke.

“Certainly not,” said she, with dignity, and turned away. A moment later, however, she attacked him again.

“And you’ve done nothing,” she said indignantly, “but suggest to papa interesting places to stop at on the way, and things he ought to see in Paris. Yes, and you actually suggested going home by sea from Marseilles. And all the time you knew it was vital to me to get home as soon as possible. To me? Yes, and to you last week. Shall I tell you something, Mr. Ellerton?”

“Please,” said Charlie. “Whisper it in my ear,” and he offered his head in fitting proximity.

“I shouldn’t mind who heard,” she declared. “I despise you, Mr. Ellerton.”

Charlie was roused to a protest.

“For downright unfairness give me a girl!” said he. “Here have I taken the manly course! After a short period of weakness—I admit that—I have conquered my feelings; I have determined not to distress Miss Travers by intruding upon her; I have overcome the promptings of a cowardly despair; I have turned my back resolutely on a past devoid of hope. I am, after a sore struggle, myself again. And my reward, Miss Bellairs, is to be told that you despise me. Upon my honor, you’ll be despising Simon Stylites next.”

“And you wrote and told Miss Travers you were coming!”

“All right. I shall write and tell her I’m not coming. I shall say, Miss Bellairs, that it seems to me to be an undignified thing——”

“To do what I’m going to do? Thank you, Mr. Ellerton.”

“Oh, I forgot.”

“The irony of it is that you persuaded me to do it yourself.”

“I was a fool; but I didn’t know you so well then.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Everything.”

“You didn’t know yourself, I’m afraid,” she remarked. “You thought you were a man of some—some depth of feeling, some constancy, a man whose—whose regard a girl would value, instead of being——”

“Just a poor devil who worships the ground you tread on.”

Dora laughed scornfully.

“Second edition!” said she. “The first dedicated to Miss Travers.”

And then Charlie (and it is thing’s like these which shake that faith in human nature that we try to cling to) said in a low but quite distinct voice:

“Oh, d——n Miss Travers!”

Dora shot—it almost looked as if something had shot her, as it used, in old days, Miss Zazel—up from her seat.

“I thought I was talking to a gentleman,” said she, “I suppose you’ll use that—expression—about me in a week.”

“In a good deal less, if you treat me like this,” said Charlie, and his air was one of hopeless misery.

We all recollect that Anne ended by being tolerably kind to wicked King Richard. After all, Charlie had the same excuse.

“I don’t want to be unkind,” said Dora more gently.

“I’ll do anything in the world to please you.”

“Then make papa go straight to Paris, and straight on from Paris,” said Dora, using her power mercilessly.

“Oh, I say, I didn’t mean that, Miss Bellairs.”

“You said you’d do anything I liked.”

Charlie looked at her thoughtfully.

“I suppose you’ve no pity?” he inquired.

“For you? Not a bit,”

“You probably don’t know how beautiful you are?”

“Don’t be foolish, and—and impertinent.”

She was standing opposite to him. With a sudden motion, he sprang forward, fell on one knee, seized her ungloved hand, covered it with kisses, sprang up, and hastened away, crying as he went:

“All right. I’ll do it.”

Dora stood where he left her. First she looked at her hand, then at Charlie’s retreating back, then again at her hand. Her cheek was flushed and she trembled a little.

“John never did that,” she said, “at least, not without asking. And even then, not quite like that.”

She walked on slowly, then stopped and exclaimed:

“I wonder if he ever did that to Mary Travers.”

And her last reflection was:

“Poor boy. He must be—oh, dear me!”

When Charlie reached the tennis-courts, he was, considering the moving scene through which he had passed, wonderfully calm. In fact he was smiling and whistling. Espying Sir Roger Deane, he went and sat down by him.

“Roger,” said he, “I’m going with you and the Bellairs’ to-morrow.”

“I know that.”

“Miss Bellairs wants to go straight through to England without stopping anywhere.”

“She’ll have to want, I expect.”

“And I’ve promised to try and get the General to do what she wants.”

“Have you though?”

“I suppose, Roger, old fellow—you know you’ve great influence with him—I suppose it’s no use asking you to say a word to him?”

“Not a bit.”

“Why?”

“Because Maud particularly wants him to stay with us in Paris.”

“Oh, of course, if Lady Deane wishes it, I mustn’t say a word. She’s quite made up her mind about it, has she?”

“Well, I suppose so.”

“She’s strong on it, I mean? Not likely to change?”

“I think not, Charlie.”

“She’d ask him to stay, as a favor to her?”

“I shouldn’t at all wonder.”

“Oh, well then, my asking him won’t make much difference.”

“Frankly, I don’t see why it should.”

“Thanks. I only wanted to know. You’re not in a hurry, Roger? I mean, you won’t ask your wife to go straight on?”

“No, I shan’t, Charlie. I want to stop myself.”

“Thanks, old chap! See you at dinner,” and Charlie strolled off with a reassured air.

Sir Roger sat and thought.

“I see his game,” he said to himself at last, “but I’m hanged if I see hers. Why does she want to get back to England? Perhaps if I delay her as much as I can, she’ll tell me. Hanged if I don’t! Anyhow I’m glad to see old Charlie getting convalescent.”

The next morning the whole party left Cannes by the early train. The Bellairs, the Deanes, and Charlie Ellerton travelled together. Laing announced his intention of following by the afternoon train.

“Oh,” said Lady Deane, “you’ll get to Paris sooner than we do.” Dora looked gloomy; so did Charlie, after a momentary, hastily smothered smile.

The porter approached and asked for an address. They told him the Grand Hotel, Paris.

“If anything comes to-day, I’ll bring it on,” said Laing.

“Yes, do; we shall have no address before Paris,” answered General Bellairs.

They drove off, and Laing, feeling rather solitary, returned to his cigar. An hour later the waiter brought him two telegrams, one for Dora and one for Charlie, he looked at the addresses.

“Just too late, by Jove! All right, garçon, I’ll take ’em,” and he thrust them into the pocket of his flannel jacket. And when, after lunch, he could not stand the dulness any longer and went to Monte Carlo, he left the telegrams in the discarded flannels, where they lay till—the time when they were discovered. For Mr. Laing clean forgot all about them!