“You look exactly as you used at school, Agatha. I could almost fancy us back again in Number Six.”
Agatha shook her head.
“Do I ever look like that — like myself, as I used to be?”
“Never,” said Agatha emphatically, turning and surveying the figure of which Miss Carpenter had been the unripe antecedent.
“But why?” said Jane querulously. “I don’t see why I shouldn’t. I am not so changed.”
“You have become an exceedingly fine woman, Jane,” said Agatha gravely, and then, without knowing why, turned her attentive gaze upon Sir Charles, who bore it uneasily, and left the room. A minute later he returned with two buff envelopes in his hand.
“A telegram for you, Miss Wylie, and one for Chester.” Erskine started up, white with vague fears. Agatha’s color went, and came again with increased richness as she read:
“I have arrived safe and ridiculously happy. Read a thousand things between the lines. I will write tomorrow. Good night.”
“You may read it,” said Agatha, handing it to Jane.
“Very pretty,” said Jane. “A shilling’s worth of attention — exactly twenty words! He may well call himself an economist.”
Suddenly a crowing laugh from Erskine caused them to turn and stare at him. “What nonsense!” he said, blushing. “What a fellow he is! I don’t attach the slightest importance to this.”
Agatha took a corner of his telegram and pulled it gently.
“No, no,” he said, holding it tightly. “It is too absurd. I don’t think I ought—”
Agatha gave a decisive pull, and read the message aloud. It was from Trefusis, thus:
“I forgive your thoughts since Brandon’s return. Write her tonight, and follow your letter to receive an affirmative answer in person. I promised that you might rely on me. She loves you.”
“I never heard of such a thing in my life,” said Jane. “Never!”
“He is certainly a most unaccountable man,” said Sir Charles.
“I am glad, for my own sake, that he is not so black as he is painted,” said Agatha. “You may believe every word of it, Mr. Erskine. Be sure to do as he tells you. He is quite certain to be right.”
“Pooh!” said Erskine, crumpling the telegram and thrusting it into his pocket as if it were not worth a second thought. Presently he slipped away, and did not reappear. When they were about to retire, Sir Charles asked a servant where he was.
“In the library, Sir Charles; writing.”
They looked significantly at one another and went to bed without disturbing him.
CHAPTER XVIII
When Gertrude found herself beside Trefusis in the Pullman, she wondered how she came to be travelling with him against her resolution, if not against her will. In the presence of two women scrutinizing her as if they suspected her of being there with no good purpose, a male passenger admiring her a little further off, her maid reading Trefusis’s newspapers just out of earshot, an uninterested country gentleman looking glumly out of window, a city man preoccupied with the “Economist,” and a polite lady who refrained from staring but not from observing, she felt that she must not make a scene; yet she knew he had not come there to hold an ordinary conversation. Her doubt did not last long. He began promptly, and went to the point at once.
“What do you think of this engagement of mine?”
This was more than she could bear calmly. “What is it to me?” she said indignantly. “I have nothing to do with it.”
“Nothing! You are a cold friend to me then. I thought you one of the surest I possessed.”
She moved as if about to look at him, but checked herself, closed her lips, and fixed her eyes on the vacant seat before her. The reproach he deserved was beyond her power of expression.
“I cling to that conviction still, in spite of Miss Lindsay’s indifference to my affairs. But I confess I hardly know how to bring you into sympathy with me in this matter. In the first place, you have never been married, I have. In the next, you are much younger than I, in more respects than that of years. Very likely half your ideas on the subject are derived from fictions in which happy results are tacked on to conditions very ill-calculated to produce them — which in real life hardly ever do produce them. If our friendship were a chapter in a novel, what would be the upshot of it? Why, I should marry you, or you break your heart at my treachery.”
Gertrude moved her eyes as if she had some intention of taking to flight.
“But our relations being those of real life — far sweeter, after all — I never dreamed of marrying you, having gained and enjoyed your friendship without that eye to business which our nineteenth century keeps open even whilst it sleeps. You, being equally disinterested in your regard for me, do not think of breaking your heart, but you are, I suppose, a little hurt at my apparently meditating and resolving on such a serious step as marriage with Agatha without confiding my intention to you. And you punish me by telling me that you have nothing to do with it — that it is nothing to you. But I never meditated the step, and so had nothing to conceal from you. It was conceived and executed in less than a minute. Although my first marriage was a silly love match and a failure, I have always admitted to myself that I should marry again. A bachelor is a man who shirks responsibilities and duties; I seek them, and consider it my duty, with my monstrous superfluity of means, not to let the individualists outbreed me. Still, I was in no hurry, having other things to occupy me, and being fond of my bachelor freedom, and doubtful sometimes whether I had any right to bring more idlers into the world for the workers to feed. Then came the usual difficulty about the lady. I did not want a helpmeet; I can help myself. Nor did I expect to be loved devotedly, for the race has not yet evolved a man lovable on thorough acquaintance; even my self-love is neither thorough nor constant. I wanted a genial partner for domestic business, and Agatha struck me quite suddenly as being the nearest approach to what I desired that I was likely to find in the marriage market, where it is extremely hard to suit oneself, and where the likeliest bargains are apt to be snapped up by others if one hesitates too long in the hope of finding something better. I admire Agatha’s courage and capability, and believe I shall be able to make her like me, and that the attachment so begun may turn into as close a union as is either healthy or necessary between two separate individuals. I may mistake her character, for I do not know her as I know you, and have scarcely enough faith in her as yet to tell her such things as I have told you. Still, there is a consoling dash of romance in the transaction. Agatha has charm. Do you not think so?”
Gertrude’s emotion was gone. She replied with cool scorn, “Very romantic indeed. She is very fortunate.”
Trefusis