BEAUMAROY HOME FROM THE WARS

BY ANTHONY HOPE

METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON

First Published in 1919

CONTENTS

BEAUMAROY HOME FROM THE WARS

CHAPTER I

DOCTOR MARY'S PAYING GUEST

"Just in time, wasn't it?" asked Mary Arkroyd.

"Two days before the—the ceremony! Mercifully it had all been kept very quiet, because it was only three months since poor Gilly was killed. I forget whether you ever met Gilly? My half-brother, you know?"

"Only once—in Collingham Gardens. He had an exeat, and dashed in one Saturday morning when we were just finishing our work. Don't you remember?"

"Yes, I think I do. But since my engagement I'd gone into colours—oh, of course, I've gone back into mourning now!—and everything was ready—settlements and so on, you know. And rooms taken at Bournemouth. And then it all came out!"

"How?"

"Well, Eustace—Captain Cranster, I mean——Oh, I think he really must have had shell-shock, as he said, even though the doctor seemed to doubt it! He gave the Colonel as a reference in some shop, and—and the bank wouldn't pay the cheque. Other cheques turned up too; and in the end the police went through his papers, and found letters from—well, from her, you know. From Bogota. South America, isn't it? He'd lived there ten years, you know, growing something—beans, or coffee, or coffee-beans, or something—I don't know what. He tried to say the marriage wasn't binding, but the Colonel—wasn't it providential that the Colonel was home on leave? Mamma could never have grappled with it! The Colonel was sure it was, and so were the lawyers."

"What happened then?"

"The great thing was to keep it quiet. Now wasn't it? And there was the shell-shock—or so Eustace—Captain Cranster, I mean—said, anyhow. So, on the Colonel's advice, Mamma squared the cheque business and—and they gave him twenty-four hours to clear out. Papa—I call the Colonel papa, you know, though he's really my stepfather—used a little influence, I think. Anyhow it was managed. I never saw him again, Mary."

"Poor dear! Was it very bad?"

"Yes! But—suppose we had been married! Mary, where should I have been?"

Mary Arkroyd left that problem alone. "Were you very fond of him?" she asked.

"Awfully!" Cynthia turned up to her friend pretty blue eyes suffused in tears. "It was the end of the world to me. That there could be such men! I went to bed. Mamma could do nothing with me. Oh, well, she wrote to you about all that."

"She told me you were in a pretty bad way."

"I was just desperate! Then one day—in bed—the thought of you came. It seemed an absolute inspiration. I remembered the card you sent on my last birthday—you've never forgotten my birthdays, though