“You are exciting yourself about nothing, Chester. They are in a Pullman, with her maid and plenty of people; and she expressly gave him leave to go with her. He asked her the question flatly before my face, and I must say I thought it a strange thing for her to consent to. However, she did consent, and of course I was not in a position to prevent him from going to London if he pleased. Don’t let us have a scene, old man. It can’t be helped.”
“I am very sorry,” said Erskine, hanging his head. “I did not mean to make a scene. I beg your pardon.”
He went away to his room without another word. Sir Charles followed and attempted to console him, but Erskine caught his hand, and asked to be left to himself. So Sir Charles returned to the drawingroom, where his wife, at a loss for once, hardly ventured to remark that she had never heard of such a thing in her life.
Agatha kept silence. She had long ago come unconsciously to the conclusion that Trefusis and she were the only members of the party at the Beeches who had much commonsense, and this made her slow to believe that he could be in the wrong and Erskine in the right in any misunderstanding between them. She had a slovenly way of summing up as “asses” people whose habits of thought differed from hers. Of all varieties of man, the minor poet realized her conception of the human ass most completely, and Erskine, though a very nice fellow indeed, thoroughly good and gentlemanly, in her opinion, was yet a minor poet, and therefore a pronounced ass. Trefusis, on the contrary, was the last man of her acquaintance whom she would have thought of as a very nice fellow or a virtuous gentleman; but he was not an ass, although he was obstinate in his Socialistic fads. She had indeed suspected him of weakness almost asinine with respect to Gertrude, but then all men were asses in their dealings with women, and since he had transferred his weakness to her own account it no longer seemed to need justification. And now, as her concern for Erskine, whom she pitied, wore off, she began to resent Trefusis’s journey with Gertrude as an attack on her recently acquired monopoly of him. There was an air of aristocratic pride about Gertrude which Agatha had formerly envied, and which she still feared Trefusis might mistake for an index of dignity and refinement. Agatha did not believe that her resentment was the common feeling called jealousy, for she still deemed herself unique, but it gave her a sense of meanness that did not improve her spirits.
The dinner was dull. Lady Brandon spoke in an undertone, as if someone lay dead in the next room. Erskine was depressed by the consciousness of having lost his head and acted foolishly in the afternoon. Sir Charles did not pretend to ignore the suspense they were all in pending intelligence of the journey to London; he ate and drank and said nothing. Agatha, disgusted with herself and with Gertrude, and undecided whether to be disgusted with Trefusis or to trust him affectionately, followed the example of her host. After dinner she accompanied him in a series of songs by Schubert. This proved an aggravation instead of a relief. Sir Charles, excelling in the expression of melancholy, preferred songs of that character; and as his musical ideas, like those of most Englishmen, were founded on what he had heard in church in his childhood, his style was oppressively monotonous. Agatha took the first excuse that presented itself to leave the piano. Sir Charles felt that his performance had been a failure, and remarked, after a cough or two, that he had caught a touch of cold returning from the station. Erskine sat on a sofa with his head drooping, and his palms joined and hanging downward between his knees. Agatha stood at the window, looking at the late summer afterglow. Jane yawned, and presently broke the silence.
“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