“Just a word to say that I am going to be married,” said Trefusis.
“To — ?” Erskine could not add Gertrude’s name.
“To one of our friends at the Beeches. Guess to which.”
“To Miss Lindsay, I presume.”
“What in the fiend’s name has put it into all your heads that Miss Lindsay and I are particularly attached to one another?” exclaimed Trefusis. “YOU have always appeared to me to be the man for Miss Lindsay. I am going to marry Miss Wylie.”
“Really!” exclaimed Erskine, with a sensation of suddenly thawing after a bitter frost.
“Of course. And now, Erskine, you have the advantage of being a poor man. Do not let that splendid girl marry for money. If you go further you are likely to fare worse; and so is she.” Then he nodded and walked away, leaving the other staring after him.
“If he has jilted her, he is a scoundrel,” said Erskine. “I am sorry I didn’t tell him so.”
He mounted and rode slowly along the Riverside Road, partly suspecting Trefusis of some mystification, but inclining to believe in him, and, in any case, to take his advice as to Gertrude. The conversation he had overheard in the avenue still perplexed him. He could not reconcile it with Trefusis’s profession of disinterestedness towards her.
His bicycle carried him noiselessly on its indiarubber tires to the place by which the hemlock grew and there he saw Gertrude sitting on the low earthen wall that separated the field from the road. Her straw bag, with her scissors in it, lay beside her. Her fingers were interlaced, and her hands rested, palms downwards, on her knee. Her expression was rather vacant, and so little suggestive of any serious emotion that Erskine laughed as he alighted close to her.
“Are you tired?” he said.
“No,” she replied, not startled, and smiling mechanically — an unusual condescension on her part.
“Indulging in a daydream?”
“No.” She moved a little to one side and concealed the basket with her dress.
He began to fear that something was wrong. “Is it possible that you have ventured among those poisonous plants again?” he said. “Are you ill?”
“Not at all,” she replied, rousing herself a little. “Your solicitude is quite thrown away. I am perfectly well.”
“I beg your pardon,” he said, snubbed. “I thought — Don’t you think it dangerous to sit on that damp wall?”
“It is not damp. It is crumbling into dust with dryness.” An unnatural laugh, with which she concluded, intensified his uneasiness.
He began a sentence, stopped, and to gain time to recover himself, placed his bicycle in the opposite ditch; a proceeding which she witnessed with impatience, as it indicated his intention to stay and talk. She, however, was the first to speak; and she did so with a callousness that shocked him.
“Have you heard the news?”
“What news?”
“About Mr. Trefusis and Agatha. They are engaged.”
“So Trefusis told me. I met him just now in the village. I was very glad to hear it.”
“Of course.”
“But I had a special reason for being glad.”
“Indeed?”
“I was desperately afraid, before he told me the truth, that he had other views — views that might have proved fatal to my dearest hopes.”
Gertrude frowned at him, and the frown roused him to brave her. He lost his self-command, already shaken by her strange behavior. “You know that I love you, Miss Lindsay,” he said. “It may not be a perfect love, but, humanly speaking, it is a true one. I almost told you so that day when we were in the billiard room together; and I did a very dishonorable thing the same evening. When you were speaking to Trefusis in the avenue I was close to you, and I listened.”
“Then you heard him,” cried Gertrude vehemently. “You heard him swear that he was in earnest.”
“Yes,” said Erskine, trembling, “and I thought he meant in earnest in loving you. You can hardly blame me for that: I was in love myself; and love is blind and jealous. I never hoped again until he told me that he was to be married to Miss Wylie. May I speak to you, now that I know I was mistaken, or that you have changed your mind?”
“Or that he has changed his mind,” said Gertrude scornfully.
Erskine, with a new anxiety for her sake, checked himself. Her dignity was dear to him, and he saw that her disappointment had made her reckless of it. “Do not say anything to me now, Miss Lindsay, lest—”
“What have I said? What have I to say?”
“Nothing, except on my own affairs. I love you dearly.”
She made an impatient movement, as if that were a very insignificant matter.
“You believe me, I hope,” he said, timidly.
Gertrude made an effort to recover her habitual ladylike reserve, but her energy failed before she had done more than raise her head. She relapsed into her listless attitude, and made a faint gesture of intolerance.
“You cannot be quite indifferent to being loved,” he said, becoming more nervous and more urgent. “Your existence constitutes all my happiness. I offer you my services and devotion. I do not ask any reward.” (He was now speaking very quickly and almost inaudibly.) “You may accept my love without returning it. I do not want — seek to make a bargain. If you need a friend you may be able to rely on me more confidently because you know I love you.”
“Oh, you think so,” said Gertrude, interrupting him; “but you will get over it. I am not the sort of person that men fall in love with. You will soon change your mind.”
“Not the sort! Oh, how little you know!” he said, becoming eloquent. “I have had plenty of time to change, but I am as fixed as ever. If you doubt, wait and try me. But do not be rough with me. You pain me more than you can imagine when you are hasty or indifferent. I am in earnest.”
“Ha, ha! That is easily said.”
“Not by me. I change in my judgment of other people according to my humor, but I believe steadfastly in your goodness and beauty — as if you were an angel. I am in earnest in my love for you as I am in earnest for my own life, which can only be perfected by your aid and influence.”
“You are greatly mistaken if you suppose that I am an angel.”
“You are wrong to mistrust yourself; but it is what I owe to you and not what I expect from you that I try to express by speaking of you as an angel. I know that you are not an angel to yourself. But you are to me.”
She sat stubbornly silent.
“I will not press you for an answer now. I am content that you know my mind at last. Shall we return together?”
She looked round slowly at the hemlock, and from that to the river. Then she took up her basket, rose, and prepared to go, as if under compulsion.
“Do you want any more hemlock?” he said. “If so, I will pluck some for you.”
“I wish you would let me alone,” she said, with sudden anger. She added, a little ashamed of herself, “I have a headache.”
“I am very sorry,” he said, crestfallen.
“It is only that I do not wish to be spoken to. It hurts my head to listen.”
He meekly took his bicycle from the ditch and wheeled it along beside her to the Beeches without another word. They went in through the conservatory, and parted in the dining-room. Before leaving him she said with