GEORGE SHAW - The Complete Works

“Selfish little beasts!” exclaimed Jane, making a miniature whirlwind with her skirts as she came in. “Charlie is a perfect little fiend. He spends all his time thinking how he can annoy me. Ugh! He’s just like his father.”

“Thank you, my dear,” said Sir Charles from the doorway.

Jane laughed. “I knew you were there,” she said. “Where’s Gertrude?”

“She has gone out,” said Sir Charles.

“Nonsense! She has only just come in from driving with me.”

“I do not know what you mean by nonsense,” said Sir Charles, chafing. “I saw her walking along the Riverside Road. I was in the village road, and she did not see me. She seemed in a hurry.”

“I met her on the stairs and spoke to her,” said Agatha, “but she didn’t hear me.”

“I hope she is not going to throw herself into the river,” said Jane. Then, turning to her husband, she added: “Have you heard the news?”

“The only news I have heard is from this paper,” said Sir Charles, taking out a journal and flinging it on the table. “There is a paragraph in it stating that I have joined some infernal Socialistic league, and I am told that there is an article in the ‘Times’ on the spread of Socialism, in which my name is mentioned. This is all due to Trefusis; and I think he has played me a most dishonorable trick. I will tell him so, too, when next I see him.”

“You had better be careful what you say of him before Agatha,” said Jane. “Oh, you need not be alarmed, Agatha; I know all about it. He told us in the library. We went out this morning — Gertrude and I — and when we came back we found Mr. Trefusis and Agatha talking very lovingly to one another on the conservatory steps, newly engaged.”

“Indeed!” said Sir Charles, disconcerted and displeased, but trying to smile. “I may then congratulate you, Miss Wylie?”

“You need not,” said Agatha, keeping her countenance as well as she could. “It was only a joke. At least it came about in a jest. He has no right to say that we are engaged.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” said Jane. “That won’t do, Agatha. He has gone off to telegraph to his solicitor. He is quite in earnest.”

“I am a great fool,” said Agatha, sitting down and twisting her hands perplexedly. “I believe I said something; but I really did not intend to. He surprised me into speaking before I knew what I was saying. A pretty mess I have got myself into!”

“I am glad you have been outwitted at last,” said Jane, laughing spitefully. “You never had any pity for me when I could not think of the proper thing to say at a moment’s notice.”

Agatha let the taunt pass unheeded. Her gaze wandered anxiously, and at last settled appealingly upon Sir Charles. “What shall I do?” she said to him.

“Well, Miss Wylie,” he said gravely, “if you did not mean to marry him you should not have promised. I don’t wish to be unsympathetic, and I know that it is very hard to get rid of Trefusis when he makes up his mind to act something out of you, but still—”

“Never mind her,” said Jane, interrupting him. “She wants to marry him just as badly as he wants to marry her. You would be preciously disappointed if he cried off, Agatha; for all your interesting reluctance.”

“That is not so, really,” said Agatha earnestly. “I wish I had taken time to think about it. I suppose he has told everybody by this time.”

“May we then regard it as settled?” said Sir Charles.

“Of course you may,” said Jane contemptuously.

“Pray allow Miss Wylie to speak for herself, Jane. I confess I do not understand why you are still in doubt — if you have really engaged yourself to him.”

“I suppose I am in for it,” said Agatha. “I feel as if there were some fatal objection, if I could only remember what it is. I wish I had never seen him.”

Sir Charles was puzzled. “I do not understand ladies’ ways in these matters,” he said. “However, as there seems to be no doubt that you and Trefusis are engaged, I shall of course say nothing that would make it unpleasant for him to visit here; but I must say that he has — to say the least — been inconsiderate to me personally. I signed a paper at his house on the implicit understanding that it was strictly private, and now he has trumpeted it forth to the whole world, and publicly associated my name not only with his own, but with those of persons of whom I know nothing except that I would rather not be connected with them in any way.”

“What does it matter?” said Jane. “Nobody cares twopence.”

“I care,” said Sir Charles angrily. “No sensible person can accuse me of exaggerating my own importance because I value my reputation sufficiently to object to my approval being publicly cited in support of a cause with which I have no sympathy.”

“Perhaps Mr. Trefusis has had nothing to do with it,” said Agatha. “The papers publish whatever they please, don’t they?”

“That’s right, Agatha,” said Jane maliciously. “Don’t let anyone speak ill of him.”

“I am not speaking ill of him,” said Sir Charles, before Agatha could retort. “It is a mere matter of feeling, and I should not have mentioned it had I known the altered relations between him and Miss Wylie.”

“Pray don’t speak of them,” said Agatha. “I have a mind to run away by the next train.”

Sir Charles, to change the subject, suggested a duet.

Meanwhile Erskine, returning through the village from his morning ride, had met Trefusis, and attempted to pass him with a nod. But Trefusis called to him to stop, and he dismounted reluctantly.

“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?”