Comedies of Courtship. Anthony Hope
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II. — 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?” asked the General.
“She was engaged to another fellow. Rough, wasn’t it? She told old Charlie she liked him infernally, but promises were promises, don’t you know, and she’d thank him to take his hook. And he had to take it, by Gad! Rough, don’t you know? So Maud’s been cheering him up. The devil!”
“What’s the matter now?” inquired the General.
“Why, I’ve just remembered that I promised to say nothing about it. I say, don’t you repeat it, General, nor you either, Laing.”
The General laughed.
“Well,” said Sir Roger, “he oughtn’t to have been such a fool as to tell me. He knows I never remember to keep things dark. It’s not my fault.”
A girl came out of the hotel and strolled up to where the group was. She was dark, slight, and rather below middle height; her complexion at this moment was a trifle sallow and her eyes listless, but it seemed rather as though she had dressed her face into a tragic cast, the set of the features being naturally mirthful. She acknowledged the men’s salutations and sat down with a sigh.
“Not on to-day?” asked Sir Roger, waving his cigar toward the lawn-tennis courts.
“No,” said Miss Bellairs.
“Are you seedy, Dolly?” inquired the General.
“No,” said Miss Bellairs.
Mr. Laing fixed his eye-glass and surveyed the young lady.
“Are you taking any?” said he, indicating the jug.
“I don’t see any fun in vulgarity,” observed Miss Bellairs.
The General smiled. Sir Roger’s lips assumed the shape for a whistle.
“That’s a nasty one for me,” said Laing.
“Ah, here you are, Roger,” exclaimed a fresh clear voice from behind the chairs. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. We’ve seen everything—Mr. Ellerton was most kind—and I do so want to tell you my impressions.”
The new-comer was Lady Deane, a tall young woman, plainly dressed in a serviceable cloth walking-gown. By her side stood Charlie Ellerton in a flannel suit of pronounced striping; he wore a little yellow mustache, had blue eyes and curly hair, and his face was tanned a wholesome ruddy-brown. He looked very melancholy.
“Letters from Hell,” murmured Sir Roger.
“But I was so distressed,” continued his wife. “Mr. Ellerton would gamble, and he lost ever so much money.”
“A fellow must amuse himself,” remarked Charlie gloomily, and with apparent unconsciousness he took a glass from Laing and drained it.
“Gambling and drink—what does that mean?” asked Sir Roger.
“Shut up, Deane,” said Charlie.
Miss Bellairs rose suddenly and walked away. Her movement expressed impatience with her surroundings. After a moment Charlie Ellerton slowly sauntered after her. She sat down on a garden-seat some way off. Charlie placed himself at the opposite end. A long pause ensued.
“I’m afraid I’m precious poor company,” said Charlie.
“I didn’t want you to be company at all,” answered Miss Bellairs, and she sloped her parasol until it obstructed his view of her face.
“I’m awfully sorry, but I can’t stand the sort of rot Deane and Laing are talking.”
“Can’t you? Neither can I.”
“They never seem to be serious about anything, you know,” and Charlie sighed deeply, and for three minutes there was silence.
“Do you know Scotland at all?” asked Charlie at last.
“Only a little.”
“There last year?”
“No, I was in Switzerland.”
“Oh.”
“Do you know Interlaken?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“May I have a cigarette?”
“Of course, if you like.”
Charlie lit his cigarette and smoked silently for a minute or two.
“I call this a beastly place,” said he.
“Yes, horrid,” she answered, and the force of sympathy made her move the parasol and turn her face towards her companion. “But I thought,” she continued, “you came here every spring?”
“Oh, I don’t mind the place so much. It’s the people.”
“Yes, isn’t it? I know what you mean.”
“You can’t make a joke of everything, can you?”
“Indeed no,” sighed Dora.
Charlie looked at his cigarette, and, his eyes carefully fixed on it, said in a timid tone:
“What’s the point, for instance, of talking as if love was all bosh?”
Dora’s parasol swept down again swiftly, but Charlie was still looking at the cigarette and he did not notice its descent, nor could he see that Miss Bellairs’s cheek was no longer sallow.
“It’s