“What has come over Gertrude?” said Agatha one day to Lady Brandon.
“Why? Is anything the matter with her?”
“I don’t know; she has not been the same since she poisoned herself.
And why did she not tell about it? But for Trefusis we should never have
known.”
“Gertrude always made secrets of things.”
“She was in a vile temper for two days after; and now she is quite
changed. She falls into long reveries, and does not hear a word of
what is going on around. Then she starts into life again, and begs your
pardon with the greatest sweetness for not catching what you have said.”
“I hate her when she is polite; it is not natural to her. As to her
going to sleep, that is the effect of the hemlock. We know a man who
took a spoonful of strychnine in a bath, and he never was the same
afterwards.”
“I think she is making up her mind to encourage Erskine,” said Agatha.
“When I came here he hardly dared speak to her--at least, she always
snubbed him. Now she lets him talk as much as he likes, and actually
sends him on messages and allows him to carry things for her.”
“Yes. I never saw anybody like Gertrude in my life. In London, if men
were attentive to her, she sat on them for being officious; and if they
let her alone she was angry at being neglected. Erskine is quite good
enough for her, I think.”
Here Erskine appeared at the door and looked round the room.
“She’s not here,” said Jane.
“I am seeking Sir Charles,” he said, withdrawing somewhat stiffly.
“What a lie!” said Jane, discomfited by his reception of her jest. “He
was talking to Sir Charles ten minutes ago in the billiard room. Men are
such conceited fools!”
Agatha had strolled to the window, and was looking discontentedly at the
prospect, as she had often done at school when alone, and sometimes did
now in society. The door opened again, and Sir Charles appeared. He,
too, looked round, but when his roving glance reached Agatha, it cast
anchor; and he came in.
“Are you busy just now, Miss Wylie?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Jane hastily. “She is going to write a letter for me.”
“Really, Jane,” he said, “I think you are old enough to write your
letters without troubling Miss Wylie.”
“When I do write my own letters you always find fault with them,” she
retorted.
“I thought perhaps you might have leisure to try over a duet with me,”
he said, turning to Agatha.
“Certainly,” she replied, hoping to smooth matters by humoring him. “The
letter will do any time before post hour.”
Jane reddened, and said shortly, “I will write it myself, if you will
not.”
Sir Charles quite lost his temper. “How can you be so damnably rude?”
he said, turning upon his wife. “What objection have you to my singing
duets with Miss Wylie?”
“Nice language that!” said Jane. “I never said I objected; and you have
no right to drag her away to the piano just when she is going to write a
letter for me.”
“I do not wish Miss Wylie to do anything except what pleases her best.
It seems to me that writing letters to your tradespeople cannot be a
very pleasant occupation.”
“Pray don’t mind me,” said Agatha. “It is not the least trouble to me. I
used to write all Jane’s letters for her at school. Suppose I write the
letter first, and then we can have the duet. You will not mind waiting
five minutes?”
“I can wait as long as you please, of course. But it seems such an
absurd abuse of your good nature that I cannot help protest!”
“Oh, let it wait!” exclaimed Jane. “Such a ridiculous fuss to make about
asking Agatha to write a letter, just because you happen to want her
to play you your duets! I am certain she is heartily sick and tired of
them.”
Agatha, to escape the altercation, went to the library and wrote the
letter. When she returned to the drawing-room, she found no one there;
but Sir Charles came in presently.
“I am so sorry, Miss Wylie,” he said, as he opened the piano for her,
“that you should be incommoded because my wife is silly enough to be
jealous.”
“Jealous!”
“Of course. Idiocy!”
“Oh, you are mistaken,” said Agatha, incredulously. “How could she
possibly be jealous of me?”
“She is jealous of everybody and everything,” he replied bitterly, “and
she cares for nobody and for nothing. You do not know what I have to
endure sometimes from her.”
Agatha thought her most discreet course was to sit down immediately and
begin “I would that my love.” Whilst she played and sang, she thought
over what Sir Charles had just let slip. She had found him a pleasant
companion, light-hearted, fond of music and fun, polite and considerate,
appreciative of her talents, quick-witted without being oppressively
clever, and, as a married man, disinterested in his attentions. But it
now occurred to her that perhaps they had been a good deal together of
late.
Sir Charles had by this time wandered from his part into hers; and he
now recalled her to the music by stopping to ask whether he was right.
Knowing by experience what his difficulty was likely to be, she gave him
his note and went on. They had not been singing long when Jane came
back and sat down, expressing a hope that her presence would not disturb
them. It did disturb them. Agatha suspected that she had come there to
watch them, and Sir Charles knew it. Besides, Lady Brandon, even when
her mind was tranquil, was habitually restless. She could not speak
because of the music, and, though she held an open book in her hand, she
could not read and watch simultaneously. She gaped, and leaned to one
end of the sofa until, on the point of overbalancing’ she recovered
herself with a prodigious bounce. The floor vibrated at her every
movement. At last she could keep silence no longer.
“Oh, dear!” she said, yawning audibly. “It must be five o’clock at the
very earliest.”
Agatha turned round upon the piano-stool, feeling that music and Lady
Brandon were incompatible. Sir Charles, for his guest’s sake, tried hard
to restrain his exasperation.
“Probably your watch will tell you,” he said.
“Thank you for nothing,” said Jane. “Agatha, where is Gertrude?”
“How can Miss Wylie possibly tell you where she is, Jane? I think you
have gone mad to-day.”
“She is most likely playing billiards with Mr. Erskine,” said Agatha,
interposing quickly to forestall a retort from Jane, with its usual
sequel of a domestic squabble.
“I think it is very strange of Gertrude to pass the whole day with
Chester in the billiard room,” said Jane discontentedly.
“There is not the slightest impropriety in her doing so,” said
Sir Charles. “If our hospitality does not place Miss Lindsay above
suspicion, the more shame for us. How would you feel if anyone else made
such a remark?”
“Oh, stuff!” said Jane peevishly. “You are always preaching long
rigmaroles about nothing at all. I did not say there was any impropriety
about Gertrude. She is too proper to be pleasant, in my opinion.”
Sir Charles, unable to trust himself further, frowned and left the room,
Jane speeding him with a contemptuous laugh.
“Don’t ever be such a fool as to get married,” she said, when he was
gone. She looked up as she spoke, and was alarmed to see Agatha seated
on the pianoforte, with her ankles swinging in the old school fashion.
“Jane,” she said, surveying her hostess coolly, “do you know what I
would do if I were Sir Charles?”
Jane did not know.
“I would get a big stick, beat you black and blue, and then lock you up
on bread and water for a week.”
Jane half rose, red and angry. “Wh--why?” she said, relapsing upon the
sofa.
“If I were a man, I would not, for mere chivalry’s sake, let a woman
treat me like a troublesome dog. You want a sound thrashing.”
“I’d like to see anybody thrash me,” said Jane, rising again and
displaying her formidable person erect. Then she burst into tears, and
said, “I won’t have such things said to me in my own house. How dare
you?”
“You deserve it for being jealous of me,” said Agatha.
Jane’s eyes dilated angrily. “I!--I!--jealous of you!” She looked round,
as if for a missile. Not finding one, she sat down again, and said in a
voice stifled with tears, “J--Jealous of YOU, indeed!”
“You have good reason to be, for he is fonder of me than of you.”
Jane opened her mouth and eyes convulsively, but only uttered a gasp,
and Agatha proceeded calmly, “I am polite to him, which you never
are. When he speaks to me I allow him to finish his sentence without
expressing, as you do, a foregone conclusion that it is not worth
attending to. I do not yawn and talk whilst he is singing. When he
converses with me on art or literature, about which he knows twice as
much as I do, and at least ten times as much as you.” (Jane gasped again)
“I do not make a silly answer and turn to my neighbor at the other side
with a remark about the tables or the weather. When he is willing to be
pleased, as he always is, I am willing to be pleasant. And that is why
he likes me.”
“He does NOT like you. He is the same to everyone.”
“Except his wife. He likes me so much that you, like a great goose as
you are, came up here to watch us at our duets, and made yourself as
disagreeable as you possibly could whilst I was making myself charming.
The poor man was ashamed of you.”
“He wasn’t,” said Jane, sobbing. “I didn’t do anything. I didn’t say
anything. I won’t bear it. I will get a divorce. I will--”
“You will mend your ways if you have any sense left,” said Agatha
remorselessly. “Do not make such a noise, or someone will come to see
what is the matter, and I shall have to get down from the piano, where I
am very comfortable.”
“It is you who are jealous.”
“Oh, is it, Jane? I have not allowed Sir Charles to fall in love with me
yet, but I can do so very easily. What will you wager that he will not
kiss me before to-morrow evening?”
“It will be very mean and nasty of you if he does. You seem to think
that I can be treated like a child.”
“So you are a child,” said Agatha, descending from her perch and
preparing to go. “An occasional slapping does you good.”
“It is nothing to you whether I agree with my husband or not,” said Jane
with sudden fierceness.
“Not if you quarrel with him in private, as wellbred couples do. But
when it occurs in my presence it makes me uncomfortable, and I object to
being made uncomfortable.”
“You would not be here at all if I had not asked you.”
“Just think how dull the house would be without me, Jane!”
“Indeed! It was not dull before you came. Gertrude always behaved like a
lady, at least.”
“I am sorry that her example was so utterly lost on you.”
“I won’t bear it,” said Jane with a sob and a plunge upon the sofa that
made the lustres of the chandeliers rattle. “I wouldn’t have asked you
if I had thought you could be so hateful. I will never ask you again.”
“I will make Sir Charles divorce you for incompatibility of temper and
marry me. Then I shall have the place to myself.”
“He can’t divorce me for that, thank goodness. You don’t know what
you’re talking about.”
Agatha laughed. “Come,” she said good-humoredly, “don’t be an old ass,
Jane. Wash your face before anyone sees it, and remember what I have
told you about Sir Charles.”
“It is very hard to be called an ass in one’s own house.”
“It is harder to be treated as one, like your husband. I am going to
look for him in the billiard room.”
Jane ran after her, and caught her by the sleeve.
“Agatha,” she pleaded, “promise me that you won’t be mean. Say that you
won’t make love to him.”
“I will consider about it,” replied Agatha gravely.
Jane uttered a groan and sank into a chair, which creaked at the
shock. Agatha turned on the threshold, and seeing her shaking her head,
pressing her eyes, and tapping with her heel in a restrained frenzy,
said quickly,
“Here are the Waltons, and the Fitzgeorges, and Mr. Trefusis coming
upstairs. How do you do, Mrs. Walton? Lady Brandon will be SO glad to
see you. Good-evening, Mr. Fitzgeorge.”
Jane sprang up, wiped her eyes, and, with her hands on her hair,
smoothing it, rushed to a mirror. No visitors appearing, she perceived
that she was, for perhaps the hundredth time in her life, the victim
of an imposture devised by Agatha. She, gratified by the success of her
attempt to regain her old ascendancy over Jane--she had made it with
misgiving, notwithstanding her apparent confidence--went downstairs to
the library, where she found Sir Charles gloomily trying to drown his
domestic troubles in art criticism.
“I thought you were in the billiard room,” said Agatha.
“I only peeped in,” he replied; “but as I saw something particular going
on, I thought it best to slip away, and I have been alone ever since.”
The something particular which Sir Charles had not wished to interrupt
was only a game of billiards.
It was the first opportunity Erskine had ever enjoyed of speaking to
Gertrude at leisure and alone. Yet their conversation had never been
so commonplace. She, liking the game, played very well and chatted
indifferently; he played badly, and broached trivial topics in spite of
himself. After an hour-and-a-half’s play, Gertrude had announced that
this game must be their last. He thought desperately that if he were to
miss many more strokes the game must presently end, and an opportunity
which might never recur pass beyond recall. He determined to tell
her without preface that he adored her, but when he opened his lips a
question came forth of its own accord relating to the Persian way of
playing billiards. Gertrude had never been in Persia, but had seen
some Eastern billiard cues in the India museum. Were not the Hindoos
wonderful people for filigree work, and carpets, and such things? Did
he not think the crookedness of their carpet patterns a blemish? Some
people pretended to admire them, but was not that all nonsense? Was not
the modern polished floor, with a rug in the middle, much superior to
the old carpet fitted into the corners of the room? Yes. Enormously
superior. Immensely--
“Why, what are you thinking of to-day, Mr. Erskine? You have played with
my ball.”
“I am thinking of you.”
“What did you say?” said Gertrude, not catching the serious turn he had
given to the conversation, and poising her cue for a stroke. “Oh! I am
as bad as you; that was the worst stroke I ever made, I think. I beg
your pardon; you said something just now.”
“I forget. Nothing of any consequence.” And he groaned at his own
cowardice.
“Suppose we stop,” she said. “There is no use in finishing the game if
our hands are out. I am rather tired of it.”
“Certainly--if you wish it.”
“I will finish if you like.”
“Not at all. What pleases you, pleases me.”
Gertrude made him a little bow, and idly knocked the balls about with
her cue. Erskine’s eyes wandered, and his lip moved irresolutely. He had
settled with himself that his declaration should be a frank one--heart
to heart. He had pictured himself in the act of taking her hand
delicately, and saying, “Gertrude, I love you. May I tell you so again?”
But this scheme did not now seem practicable.
“Miss Lindsay.”
Gertrude, bending over the table, looked up in alarm.
“The present is as good an opportunity as I will--as I shall--as I
will.”
“Shall,” said Gertrude.
“I beg your pardon?”
“SHALL,” repeated Gertrude. “Did you ever study the doctrine of
necessity?”
“The doctrine of necessity?” he said, bewildered.
Gertrude went to the other side of the table in pursuit of a ball. She
now guessed what was coming, and was willing that it should come; not
because she intended to accept, but because, like other young ladies
experienced in such scenes, she counted the proposals of marriage she
received as a Red Indian counts the scalps he takes.
“We have had a very pleasant time of it here,” he said, giving up as
inexplicable the relevance of the doctrine of necessity. “At least, I
have.”
“Well,” said Gertrude, quick to resent a fancied allusion to her private
discontent, “so have I.”
“I am glad of that--more so than I can convey by words.”
“Is it any business of yours?” she said, following the disagreeable vein
he had unconsciously struck upon, and suspecting pity in his efforts to
be sympathetic.
“I wish I dared hope so. The happiness of my visit has been due to you
entirely.”
“Indeed,” said Gertrude, wincing as all the hard things Trefusis
had told her of herself came into her mind at the heels of Erskine’s
unfortunate allusion to her power of enjoying herself.
“I hope I am not paining you,” he said earnestly.
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” she said, standing erect with
sudden impatience. “You seem to think that it is very easy to pain me.”
“No,” he said timidly, puzzled by the effect he had produced. “I fear
you misunderstand me. I am very awkward. Perhaps I had better say no
more.” Gertrude, by turning away to put up her cue, signified that that
was a point for him to consider; she not intending to trouble herself
about it. When she faced him again, he was motionless and dejected, with
a wistful expression like that of a dog that has proffered a caress and
received a kick. Remorse, and a vague sense that there was something
base in her attitude towards him, overcame her. She looked at him for an
instant and left the room.
The look excited him. He did not understand it, nor attempt to
understand it; but it was a look that he had never before seen in
her face or in that of any other woman. It struck him as a momentary
revelation of what he had written of in “The Patriot Martyrs” as
“The glorious mystery of a woman’s heart,”
and it made him feel unfit for ordinary social intercourse. He hastened
from the house, walked swiftly down the avenue to the lodge, where he
kept his bicycle, left word there that he was going for an excursion and
should probably not return in time for dinner, mounted, and sped away
recklessly along the Riverside Road. In less than two minutes he passed
the gate of Sallust’s House, where he nearly ran over an old woman laden
with a basket of coals, who put down her burthen to scream curses after
him. Warned by this that his headlong pace was dangerous, he slackened
it a little, and presently saw Trefusis lying prone on the river bank,
with his cheeks propped on his elbows, reading intently. Erskine,
who had presented him, a few days before, with a copy of “The Patriot
Martyrs and other Poems,” tried to catch a glimpse of the book over
which Trefusis was so serious. It was a Blue Book, full of figures.
Erskine rode on in disgust, consoling himself with the recollection of
Gertrude’s face.
The highway now swerved inland from the river, and rose to a steep
acclivity, at the brow of which he turned and looked back. The light
was growing ruddy, and the shadows were lengthening. Trefusis was still
prostrate in the meadow, and the old woman was in a field, gathering
hemlock.
Erskine raced down the hill at full speed, and did not look behind him
again until he found himself at nightfall on the skirts of a town,
where he purchased some beer and a sandwich, which he ate with little
appetite. Gertrude had set up a disturbance within him which made him
impatient of eating.
It was now dark. He was many miles from Brandon Beeches, and not sure
of the way back. Suddenly he resolved to complete his unfinished
declaration that evening. He now could not ride back fast enough to
satisfy his impatience. He tried a short cut, lost himself, spent nearly
an hour seeking the highroad, and at last came upon a railway station
just in time to catch a train that brought him within a mile of his
destination.
When he rose from the cushions of the railway carriage he found
himself somewhat fatigued, and he mounted the bicycle stiffly. But his
resolution was as ardent as ever, and his heart beat strongly as, after
leaving his bicycle at the lodge, he walked up the avenue through the
deep gloom beneath the beeches. Near the house, the first notes of
“Grudel perche finora” reached him, and he stepped softly on to the turf
lest his footsteps on the gravel should rouse the dogs and make them
mar the harmony by barking. A rustle made him stop and listen. Then
Gertrude’s voice whispered through the darkness:
“What did you mean by what you said to me within?”
An extraordinary sensation shook Erskine; confused ideas of fairyland
ran through his imagination. A bitter disappointment, like that of
waking from a happy dream, followed as Trefusis’s voice, more finely
tuned than he had ever heard it before, answered,
“Merely that the expanse of stars above us is not more illimitable than
my contempt for Miss Lindsay, nor brighter than my hopes of Gertrude.”
“Miss Lindsay always to you, if you please, Mr. Trefusis.”
“Miss Lindsay never to me, but only to those who cannot see through
her to the soul within, which is Gertrude. There are a thousand Miss
Lindsays in the world, formal and false. There is but one Gertrude.”
“I am an unprotected girl, Mr. Trefusis, and you can call me what you
please.”
It occurred to Erskine that this was a fit occasion to rush forward and
give Trefusis, whose figure he could now dimly discern, a black eye. But
he hesitated, and the opportunity passed.
“Unprotected!” said Trefusis. “Why, you are fenced round and barred in
with conventions, laws, and lies that would frighten the truth from the
lips of any man whose faith in Gertrude was less strong than mine. Go
to Sir Charles and tell him what I have said to Miss Lindsay, and within
ten minutes I shall have passed these gates with a warning never to
approach them again. I am in your power, and were I in Miss Lindsay’s
power alone, my shrift would be short. Happily, Gertrude, though she
sees as yet but darkly, feels that Miss Lindsay is her bitterest foe.”
“It is ridiculous. I am not two persons; I am only one. What does it
matter to me if your contempt for me is as illimitable as the stars?”
“Ah, you remember that, do you? Whenever you hear a man talking about
the stars you may conclude that he is either an astronomer or a fool.
But you and a fine starry night would make a fool of any man.”
“I don’t understand you. I try to, but I cannot; or, if I guess, I
cannot tell whether you are in earnest or not.”
“I am very much in earnest. Abandon at once and for ever all misgivings
that I am trifling with you, or passing an idle hour as men do when they
find themselves in the company of beautiful women. I mean what I say
literally, and in the deepest sense. You doubt me; we have brought
society to such a state that we all suspect one another. But whatever is
true will command belief sooner or later from those who have wit enough
to comprehend truth. Now let me recall Miss Lindsay to consciousness by
remarking that we have been out for ten minutes, and that our hostess is
not the woman to allow our absence to pass without comment.”
“Let us go in. Thank you for reminding me.”
“Thank you for forgetting.”
Erskine heard their footsteps retreating, and presently saw the two
enter the glow of light that shone from the open window of the billiard
room, through which they went indoors. Trefusis, a man whom he had seen
that day in a beautiful landscape, blind to everything except a row of
figures in a Blue Book, was his successful rival, although it was
plain from the very sound of his voice that he did not--could not--love
Gertrude. Only a poet could do that. Trefusis was no poet, but a sordid
brute unlikely to inspire interest in anything more human than a public
meeting, much less in a woman, much less again in a woman so ethereal
as Gertrude. She was proud too, yet she had allowed the fellow to insult
her--had forgiven him for the sake of a few broad compliments. Erskine
grew angry and cynical. The situation did not suit his poetry. Instead
of being stricken to the heart with a solemn sorrow, as a Patriot
Martyr would have been under similar circumstances, he felt slighted and
ridiculous. He was hardly convinced of what had seemed at first the most
obvious feature of the case, Trefusis’s inferiority to himself.
He stood under the trees until Trefusis reappeared on his way home,
making, Erskine thought, as much noise with his heels on the gravel as a
regiment of delicately bred men would have done. He stopped for a moment
to make inquiry at the lodge as he went out; then his footsteps died
away in the distance.
Erskine, chilled, stiff, and with a sensation of a bad cold coming on,
went into the house, and was relieved to find that Gertrude had retired,
and that Lady Brandon, though she had been sure that he had ridden into
the river in the dark, had nevertheless provided a warm supper for him.