GEORGE SHAW - The Complete Works

“Well,” he said, without troubling himself as to whether their conversation attracted attention or not, “what do you think of me now?”

“Why did you not tell me before, Mr. Trefusis?”

“That is the cream of the joke,” he replied, poising his heels on the ice so that his skates stood vertically at legs’ length from him, and looking at them with a cynical air. “I thought you were in love with me, and that the truth would be too severe a blow to you. Ha! ha! And, for the same reason, you generously forbore to tell me that you were no more in love with me than with the man in the moon. Each played a farce, and palmed it off on the other as a tragedy.”

“There are some things so unmanly, so unkind, and so cruel,” said Agatha, “that I cannot understand any gentleman saying them to a girl. Please do not speak to me again. Miss Ward! Come to me for a moment. I — I am not well.”

Ward hurried to her side. Smilash, after staring at her for a moment in astonishment, and in some concern, skimmed away into the crowd. When he reached the opposite bank he took off his skates and asked Jane, who strayed intentionally in his direction, to tell Miss Wylie that he was gone, and would skate no more there. Without adding a word of explanation he left her and made for his dwelling. As he went down into the hollow where the road passed through the plantation on the college side of the chalet he descried a boy, in the uniform of the post office, sliding along the frozen ditch. A presentiment of evil tidings came upon him like a darkening of the sky. He quickened his pace.

“Anything for me?” he said.

The boy, who knew him, fumbled in a letter case and produced a buff envelope. It contained a telegram.

From Jansenius, London.

TO J. Smilash, Chamoounix Villa, Lyvern.

Henrietta dangerously ill after journey wants to see you doctors say must come at once.

There was a pause. Then he folded the paper methodically and put it in his pocket, as if quite done with it.

“And so,” he said, “perhaps the tragedy is to follow the farce after all.”

He looked at the boy, who retreated, not liking his expression.

“Did you slide all the way from Lyvern?”

“Only to come quicker,” said the messenger, faltering. “I came as quick as I could.”

“You carried news heavy enough to break the thickest ice ever frozen. I have a mind to throw you over the top of that tree instead of giving you this half-crown.”

“You let me alone,” whimpered the boy, retreating another pace.

“Get back to Lyvern as fast as you can run or slide, and tell Mr. Marsh to send me the fastest trap he has, to drive me to the railway station. Here is your half-crown. Off with you; and if I do not find the trap ready when I want it, woe betide you.”

The boy came for the money mistrustfully, and ran off with it as fast as he could. Smilash went into the chalet and never reappeared. Instead, Trefusis, a gentleman in an ulster, carrying a rug, came out, locked the door, and hurried along the road to Lyvern, where he was picked up by the trap, and carried swiftly to the railway station, just in time to catch the London train.

“Evening paper, sir?” said a voice at the window, as he settled himself in the corner of a first-class carriage.

“No, thank you.”

“Footwarmer, sir?” said a porter, appearing in the news-vender’s place.

“Ah, that’s a good idea. Yes, let me have a footwarmer.”

The footwarmer was brought, and Trefusis composed himself comfortably for his journey. It seemed very short to him; he could hardly believe, when the train arrived in London, that he had been nearly three hours on the way.

There was a sense of Christmas about the travellers and the people who were at the terminus to meet them. The porter who came to the carriage door reminded Trefusis by his manner and voice that the season was one at which it becomes a gentleman to be festive and liberal.

“Wot luggage, sir? Hansom or fourweoll, sir?”

For a moment Trefusis felt a vagabond impulse to resume the language of Smilash and fable to the man of hampers of turkey and plum-pudding in the van. But he repressed it, got into a hansom, and was driven to his father-in-law’s house in Belsize Avenue, studying in a gloomily critical mood the anxiety that surged upon him and made his heart beat like a boy’s as he drew near his destination. There were two carriages at the door when he alighted. The reticent expression of the coachmen sent a tremor through him.

The door opened before he rang. “If you please, sir,” said the maid in a low voice, “will you step into the library; and the doctor will see you immediately.”

On the first landing of the staircase two gentlemen were speaking to Mr. Jansenius, who hastily moved out of sight, not before a glimpse of his air of grief and discomfiture had given Trefusis a strange twinge, succeeded by a sensation of having been twenty years a widower. He smiled unconcernedly as he followed the girl into the library, and asked her how she did. She murmured some reply and hurried away, thinking that the poor young man would alter his tone presently.

He was joined at once by a gray whiskered gentleman, scrupulously dressed and mannered. Trefusis introduced himself, and the physician looked at him with some interest. Then he said:

“You have arrived too late, Mr. Trefusis. All is over, I am sorry to say.”

“Was the long railway journey she took in this cold weather the cause of her death?”

Some bitter words that the physician had heard upstairs made him aware that this was a delicate question. But he said quietly: “The proximate cause, doubtless. The proximate cause.”

“She received some unwelcome and quite unlooked-for intelligence before she started. Had that anything to do with her death, do you think?”

“It may have produced an unfavorable effect,” said the physician, growing restive and taking up his gloves. “The habit of referring such events to such causes is carried too far, as a rule.”

“No doubt. I am curious because the event is novel in my experience. I suppose it is a commonplace in yours. Pardon me. The loss of a lady so young and so favorably circumstanced is not a commonplace either in my experience or in my opinion.” The physician held up his head as he spoke, in protest against any assumption that his sympathies had been blunted by his profession.

“Did she suffer?”

“For some hours, yes. We were able to do a little to alleviate her pain — poor thing!” He almost forgot Trefusis as he added the apostrophe.

“Hours of pain! Can you conceive any good purpose that those hours may have served?”

The physician shook his head, leaving it doubtful whether he meant to reply in the negative or to deplore considerations of that nature. He also made a movement to depart, being uneasy in conversation with Trefusis, who would, he felt sure, presently ask questions or make remarks with which he could hardly deal without committing himself in some direction. His conscience was not quite at rest. Henrietta’s pain had not, he thought, served any good purpose; but he did not want to say so, lest he should acquire a reputation for impiety and lose his practice. He believed that the general practitioner who attended the family, and had called him in when the case grew serious, had treated Henrietta unskilfully, but professional etiquette bound him so strongly that, sooner than betray his colleague’s inefficiency, he would have allowed him to decimate London.

“One word more,” said Trefusis. “Did she know that she was dying?”

“No. I considered it best that she should not be informed of her danger. She passed away without any apprehension.”

“Then one can think of it with equanimity. She dreaded death, poor child. The wonder is that there was not enough folly in the household to prevail against your good sense.”