On the way to the train Sir Charles worried the horse in order to be excused from conversation on the sore subject of his guest’s sudden departure. He had made a few remarks on the skittishness of young ponies, and on the weather, and that was all until they reached the station, a pretty building standing in the open country, with a view of the river from the platform. There were two flies waiting, two porters, a bookstall, and a refreshment room with a neglected beauty pining behind the bar. Sir Charles waited in the booking office to purchase a ticket for Gertrude, who went through to the platform. The first person she saw there was Trefusis, close beside her.
“I am going to town by this train, Gertrude,” he said quickly. “Let me take charge of you. I have something to say, for I hear that some mischief has been made between us which must be stopped at once. You—”
Just then Sir Charles came out, and stood amazed to see them in conversation.
“It happens that I am going by this train,” said Trefusis. “I will see after Miss Lindsay.”
“Miss Lindsay has her maid with her,” said Sir Charles, almost stammering, and looking at Gertrude, whose expression was inscrutable.
“We can get into the Pullman car,” said Trefusis. “There we shall be as private as in a corner of a crowded drawing-room. I may travel with you, may I not?” he said, seeing Sir Charles’s disturbed look, and turning to her for express permission.
She felt that to deny him would be to throw away her last chance of happiness. Nevertheless she resolved to do it, though she should die of grief on the way to London. As she raised her head to forbid him the more emphatically, she met his gaze, which was grave and expectant. For an instant she lost her presence of mind, and in that instant said, “Yes. I shall be very glad.”
“Well, if that is the case,” said Sir Charles, in the tone of one whose sympathy had been alienated by an unpardonable outrage, “there can be no use in my waiting. I leave you in the hands of Mr. Trefusis. Good-bye, Miss Lindsay.”
Gertrude winced. Unkindness from a man usually kind proved hard to bear at parting. She was offering him her hand in silence when Trefusis said:
“Wait and see us off. If we chance to be killed on the journey—which is always probable on an English railway—you will reproach yourself afterwards if you do not see the last of us. Here is the train; it will not delay you a minute. Tell Erskine that you saw me here; that I have not forgotten my promise, and that he may rely on me. Get in at this end, Miss Lindsay.”
“My maid,” said Gertrude hesitating; for she had not intended to travel so expensively. “She—”
“She comes with us to take care of me; I have tickets for everybody,” said Trefusis, handing the woman in.
“But—”
“Take your seats, please,” said the guard. “Going by the train, sir?”
“Good-bye, Sir Charles. Give my love to Lady Brandon, and Agatha, and the dear children; and thanks so much for a very pleasant—” Here the train moved off, and Sir Charles, melting, smiled and waved his hat until he caught sight of Trefusis looking back at him with a grin which seemed, under the circumstances, so Satanic, that he stopped as if petrified in the midst of his gesticulations, and stood with his arm out like a semaphore.
The drive home restored him somewhat, but he was still full of his surprise when he rejoined Agatha, his wife, and Erskine in the drawing-room at the Beeches. The moment he entered, he said without preface, “She has gone off with Trefusis.”
Erskine, who had been reading, started up, clutching his book as if about to hurl it at someone, and cried, “Was he at the train?”
“Yes, and has gone to town by it.”
“Then,” said Erskine, flinging the book violently on the floor, “he is a scoundrel and a liar.”
“What is the matter?” said Agatha rising, whilst Jane stared open-mouthed at him.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Wylie, I forgot you. He pledged me his honor that he would not go by that train. I will.” He hurried from the room. Sir Charles rushed after him, and overtook him at the foot of the stairs.
“Where are you going? What do you want to do?”
“I will follow the train and catch it at the next station. I can do it on my bicycle.”
“Nonsense! you’re mad. They have thirty-five minutes start; and the train travels forty-five miles an hour.”
Erskine sat down on the stairs and gazed blankly at the opposite wall.
“You must have mistaken him,” said Sir Charles. “He told me to tell you that he had not forgotten his promise, and that you may rely on him.”
“What is the matter?” said Agatha, coming down, followed by Lady Brandon.
“Miss Wylie,” said Erskine, springing up, “he gave me his word that he would not go by that train when I told him Miss Lindsay was going by it. He has broken his word and seized the opportunity I was mad and credulous enough to tell him of. If I had been in your place, Brandon, I would have strangled him or thrown him under the wheels sooner than let him go. He has shown himself in this as in everything else, a cheat, a conspirator, a man of crooked ways, shifts, tricks, lying sophistries, heartless selfishness, cruel cynicism—” He stopped to catch his breath, and Sir Charles interposed a remonstrance.
“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 drawing-room, 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 common-sense, 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