“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.
CHAPTER XV
Erskine soon found plenty of themes for his newly begotten cynicism. Gertrude’s manner towards him softened so much that he, believing her heart given to his rival, concluded that she was tempting him to make a proposal which she had no intention of accepting. Sir Charles, to whom he told what he had overheard in the avenue, professed sympathy, but was evidently pleased to learn that there was nothing serious in the attentions Trefusis paid to Agatha. Erskine wrote three bitter sonnets on hollow friendship and showed them to Sir Charles, who, failing to apply them to himself, praised them highly and showed them to Trefusis without asking the author’s permission. Trefusis remarked that in a corrupt society expressions of dissatisfaction were always creditable to a writer’s sensibility; but he did not say much in praise of the verse.
“Why has he taken to writing in this vein?” he said. “Has he been disappointed in any way of late? Has he proposed to Miss Lindsay and been rejected?”
“No,” said Sir Charles surprised by this blunt reference to a subject they had never before discussed. “He does not intend to propose to Miss Lindsay.”
“But he did intend to.”
“He certainly did, but he has given up the idea.”
“Why?” said Trefusis, apparently disapproving strongly of the renunciation.
Sir Charles shrugged his shoulders and did not reply.
“I am sorry to hear it. I wish you could induce him to change his mind. He is a nice fellow, with enough to live on comfortably, whilst he is yet what is called a poor man, so that she could feel perfectly disinterested in marrying him. It will do her good to marry without making a pecuniary profit by it; she will respect herself the more afterwards, and will neither want bread and butter nor be ashamed of her husband’s origin, in spite of having married for love alone. Make a match of it if you can. I take an interest in the girl; she has good instincts.”
Sir Charles’s suspicion that Trefusis was really paying court to Agatha returned after this conversation, which he repeated to Erskine, who, much annoyed because his poems had been shown to a reader of Blue Books, thought it only a blind for Trefusis’s design upon Gertrude. Sir Charles poohpoohed this view, and the two friends were sharp with one another in discussing it. After dinner, when the ladies had left them, Sir Charles, repentant and cordial, urged Erskine to speak to Gertrude without troubling himself as to the sincerity of Trefusis. But Erskine, knowing himself ill able to brook a refusal, was loth to expose himself.
“If you had heard the tone of her voice when she asked him whether he was in earnest, you would not talk to me like this,” he said despondently. “I wish he had never come here.”
“Well, that, at least, was no fault of mine, my dear fellow,” said Sir Charles. “He came among us against my will. And now that he appears to have been in the right — legally — about the field, it would look like spite if I cut him. Besides, he really isn’t a bad man if he would only let the women alone.”
“If he trifles with Miss Lindsay, I shall ask him to cross the Channel, and have a shot at him.”
“I don’t think he’d go,” said Sir Charles dubiously. “If I were you, I would try my luck with Gertrude at once. In spite of what you heard, I don’t believe she would marry a man of his origin. His money gives him an advantage, certainly, but Gertrude has sent richer men to the rightabout.”
“Let the fellow have fair play,” said Erskine. “I may be wrong, of course; all men are liable to err in judging themselves, but I think I could make her happier than he can.”
Sir Charles was not so sure of that, but he cheerfully responded, “Certainly. He is not the man for her at all, and you are. He