GEORGE SHAW - Collected Works

“Not at all,” she replied, rousing herself a little. “Your solicitude is quite thrown away. I am perfectly well.”

“I beg your pardon,” he said, snubbed. “I thought—Don’t you think it dangerous to sit on that damp wall?”

“It is not damp. It is crumbling into dust with dryness.” An unnatural laugh, with which she concluded, intensified his uneasiness.

He began a sentence, stopped, and to gain time to recover himself, placed his bicycle in the opposite ditch; a proceeding which she witnessed with impatience, as it indicated his intention to stay and talk. She, however, was the first to speak; and she did so with a callousness that shocked him.

“Have you heard the news?”

“What news?”

“About Mr. Trefusis and Agatha. They are engaged.”

“So Trefusis told me. I met him just now in the village. I was very glad to hear it.”

“Of course.”

“But I had a special reason for being glad.”

“Indeed?”

“I was desperately afraid, before he told me the truth, that he had other views—views that might have proved fatal to my dearest hopes.”

Gertrude frowned at him, and the frown roused him to brave her. He lost his self-command, already shaken by her strange behavior. “You know that I love you, Miss Lindsay,” he said. “It may not be a perfect love, but, humanly speaking, it is a true one. I almost told you so that day when we were in the billiard room together; and I did a very dishonorable thing the same evening. When you were speaking to Trefusis in the avenue I was close to you, and I listened.”

“Then you heard him,” cried Gertrude vehemently. “You heard him swear that he was in earnest.”

“Yes,” said Erskine, trembling, “and I thought he meant in earnest in loving you. You can hardly blame me for that: I was in love myself; and love is blind and jealous. I never hoped again until he told me that he was to be married to Miss Wylie. May I speak to you, now that I know I was mistaken, or that you have changed your mind?”

“Or that he has changed his mind,” said Gertrude scornfully.

Erskine, with a new anxiety for her sake, checked himself. Her dignity was dear to him, and he saw that her disappointment had made her reckless of it. “Do not say anything to me now, Miss Lindsay, lest—”

“What have I said? What have I to say?”

“Nothing, except on my own affairs. I love you dearly.”

She made an impatient movement, as if that were a very insignificant matter.

“You believe me, I hope,” he said, timidly.

Gertrude made an effort to recover her habitual ladylike reserve, but her energy failed before she had done more than raise her head. She relapsed into her listless attitude, and made a faint gesture of intolerance.

“You cannot be quite indifferent to being loved,” he said, becoming more nervous and more urgent. “Your existence constitutes all my happiness. I offer you my services and devotion. I do not ask any reward.” (He was now speaking very quickly and almost inaudibly.) “You may accept my love without returning it. I do not want—seek to make a bargain. If you need a friend you may be able to rely on me more confidently because you know I love you.”

“Oh, you think so,” said Gertrude, interrupting him; “but you will get over it. I am not the sort of person that men fall in love with. You will soon change your mind.”

“Not the sort! Oh, how little you know!” he said, becoming eloquent. “I have had plenty of time to change, but I am as fixed as ever. If you doubt, wait and try me. But do not be rough with me. You pain me more than you can imagine when you are hasty or indifferent. I am in earnest.”

“Ha, ha! That is easily said.”

“Not by me. I change in my judgment of other people according to my humor, but I believe steadfastly in your goodness and beauty—as if you were an angel. I am in earnest in my love for you as I am in earnest for my own life, which can only be perfected by your aid and influence.”

“You are greatly mistaken if you suppose that I am an angel.”

“You are wrong to mistrust yourself; but it is what I owe to you and not what I expect from you that I try to express by speaking of you as an angel. I know that you are not an angel to yourself. But you are to me.”

She sat stubbornly silent.

“I will not press you for an answer now. I am content that you know my mind at last. Shall we return together?”

She looked round slowly at the hemlock, and from that to the river. Then she took up her basket, rose, and prepared to go, as if under compulsion.

“Do you want any more hemlock?” he said. “If so, I will pluck some for you.”

“I wish you would let me alone,” she said, with sudden anger. She added, a little ashamed of herself, “I have a headache.”

“I am very sorry,” he said, crestfallen.

“It is only that I do not wish to be spoken to. It hurts my head to listen.”

He meekly took his bicycle from the ditch and wheeled it along beside her to the Beeches without another word. They went in through the conservatory, and parted in the dining-room. Before leaving him she said with some remorse, “I did not mean to be rude, Mr. Erskine.”

He flushed, murmured something, and attempted to kiss her hand. But she snatched it away and went out quickly. He was stung by this repulse, and stood mortifying himself by thinking of it until he was disturbed by the entrance of a maid-servant. Learning from her that Sir Charles was in the billiard room, he joined him there, and asked him carelessly if he had heard the news.

“About Miss Wylie?” said Sir Charles. “Yes, I should think so. I believe the whole country knows it, though they have not been engaged three hours. Have you seen these?” And he pushed a couple of newspapers across the table.

Erskine had to make several efforts before he could read. “You were a fool to sign that document,” he said. “I told you so at the time.”

“I relied on the fellow being a gentleman,” said Sir Charles warmly. “I do not see that I was a fool. I see that he is a cad, and but for this business of Miss Wylie’s I would let him know my opinion. Let me tell you, Chester, that he has played fast and loose with Miss Lindsay. There is a deuce of a row upstairs. She has just told Jane that she must go home at once; Miss Wylie declares that she will have nothing to do with Trefusis if Miss Lindsay has a prior claim to him, and Jane is annoyed at his admiring anybody except herself. It serves me right; my instinct warned me against the fellow from the first.” Just then luncheon was announced. Gertrude did not come down. Agatha was silent and moody. Jane tried to make Erskine describe his walk with Gertrude, but he baffled her curiosity by omitting from his account everything except its commonplaces.

“I think her conduct very strange,” said Jane. “She insists on going to town by the four o’clock train. I consider that it’s not polite to me, although she always made a point of her perfect manners. I never heard of such a thing!”

When they had risen from the table, they went together to the drawing-room. They had hardly arrived there when Trefusis was announced, and he was in their presence before they had time to conceal the expression of consternation his name brought into their faces.

“I have come to say good-bye,” he said. “I find that I must go to town by the four o’clock train to push my arrangements in person; the telegrams I have received breathe nothing but delay. Have you seen the ‘Times’?”

“I have indeed,” said Sir Charles, emphatically.

“You are in some other paper too, and will be in half-a-dozen more in the course of the next fortnight. Men who have committed themselves to an opinion are always in trouble with the newspapers; some because they cannot get into them, others because they cannot keep out. If you had put forward a thundering revolutionary manifesto, not a daily paper would have dared allude to it: there is no cowardice like Fleet Street cowardice! I must run off; I have much to do before I start, and it is getting on for three. Good-bye, Lady Brandon, and everybody.”