The Complete Works of George Bernard Shaw. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

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СКАЧАТЬ not wish to speak of it,” she said firmly.

      Her firmness was lost on him. “I do not even know what it means yet,” he said, “and I want to know, for I believe there is some misunderstanding between us, and it is the trick of your sex to perpetuate misunderstandings by forbidding all allusions to them. Perhaps, leaving Lyvern so hastily, I forgot to fulfil some promise, or to say farewell, or something of that sort. But do you know how suddenly I was called away? I got a telegram to say that Henrietta was dying, and I had only time to change my clothes — you remember my disguise — and catch the express. And, after all, she was dead when I arrived.”

      “I know that,” said Agatha uneasily. “Please say no more about it.”

      “Not if it distresses you. Just let me hope that you did not suppose I blamed you for your share in the matter or that I told the Janseniuses of it. I did not. Yes, I like orchids. A plant that can subsist on a scrap of board is an instance of natural econ—”

      “YOU blame ME!” cried Agatha. “I never told the Janseniuses. What would they have thought of you if I had?”

      “Far worse of you than of me, however unjustly. You were the immediate cause of the tragedy; I only the remote one. Jansenius is not farseeing when his feelings are touched. Few men are.”

      “I don’t understand you in the least. What tragedy do you mean?”

      “Henrietta’s death. I call it a tragedy conventionally. Seriously, of course, it was commonplace enough.”

      Agatha stopped and faced him. “What do you mean by what you said just now? You said that I was the immediate cause of the tragedy, and you say that you were talking of Henrietta’s — of Henrietta. I had nothing to do with her illness.”

      Trefusis looked at her as if considering whether he would go any further. Then, watching her with the curiosity of a vivisector, he said: “Strange to say, Agatha,” (she shrank proudly at the word), “Henrietta might have been alive now but for you. I am very glad she is not; so you need not reproach yourself on my account. She died of a journey she made to Lyvern in great excitement and distress, and in intensely cold weather. You caused her to make that journey by writing her a letter which made her jealous.”

      “Do you mean to accuse me—”

      “No; stop!” he said hastily, the vivisecting spirit in him exorcised by her shaking voice; “I accuse you of nothing. Why do you not speak honestly to me when you are at your ease? If you confess your real thoughts only under torture, who can resist the temptation to torture you? One must charge you with homicide to make you speak of anything but orchids.”

      But Agatha had drawn the new inference from the old facts, and would not be talked out of repudiating it. “It was not my fault,” she said. “It was yours — altogether yours.”

      “Altogether,” he assented, relieved to find her indignant instead of remorseful.

      She was not to be soothed by a verbal acquiescence. “Your behavior was most unmanly, and I told you so, and you could not deny it. You pretended that you — You pretended to have feelings — You tried to make me believe that Oh, I am a fool to talk to you; you know perfectly well what I mean.”

      “Perfectly. I tried to make you believe that I was in love with you. How do you know I was not?”

      She disdained to answer; but as he waited calmly she said, “You had no right to be.”

      “That does not prove that I was not. Come, Agatha, you pretended to like me when you did not care two straws about me. You confessed as much in that fatal letter, which I have somewhere at home. It has a great rent right across it, and the mark of her heel; she must have stamped on it in her rage, poor girl! So that I can show your own hand for the very deception you accused me — without proof — of having practiced on you.”

      “You are clever, and can twist things. What pleasure does it give you to make me miserable?”

      “Ha!” he exclaimed, in an abrupt, sardonic laugh. “I don’t know; you bewitch me, I think.”

      Agatha made no reply, but walked on quickly to the end of the conservatory, where the others were waiting for them.

      “Where have you been, and what have you been doing all this time?” said Jane, as Trefusis came up, hurrying after Agatha. “I don’t know what you call it, but I call it perfectly disgraceful!”

      Sir Charles reddened at his wife’s bad taste, and Trefusis replied gravely: “We have been admiring the orchids, and talking about them. Miss Wylie takes an interest in them.”

      CHAPTER XIII

       Table of Contents

      One morning Gertrude got a letter from her father:

      “My Dear Gerty: I have just received a bill for L110 from Madame Smith for your dresses. May I ask you how long this sort of thing is to go on? I need not tell you that I have not the means to support you in such extravagance. I am, as you know, always anxious that you should go about in a style worthy of your position, but unless you can manage without calling on me to pay away hundreds of pounds every season to Madame Smith, you had better give up society and stay at home. I positively cannot afford it. As far as I can see, going into society has not done you much good. I had to raise L500 last month on Franklands; and it is too bad if I must raise more to pay your dressmaker. You might at least employ some civil person, or one whose charges are moderate. Madame Smith tells me that she will not wait any longer, and charges L50 for a single dress. I hope you fully understand that there must be an end to this.

      “I hear from your mother that young Erskine is with you at Brandon’s. I do not think much of him. He is not well off, nor likely to get on, as he has taken to poetry and so forth. I am told also that a man named Trefusis visits at the Beeches a good deal now. He must be a fool, for he contested the last Birmingham election, and came out at the foot of the poll with thirty-two votes through calling himself a Social Democrat or some such foreign rubbish, instead of saying out like a man that he was a Radical. I suppose the name stuck in his throat, for his mother was one of the Howards of Breconcastle; so he has good blood in him, though his father was nobody. I wish he had your bills to pay; he could buy and sell me ten times over, after all my twenty-five years’ service.

      “As I am thinking of getting something done to the house, I had rather you did not come back this month, if you can possibly hold on at Brandon’s. Remember me to him, and give our kind regards to his wife. I should be obliged if you would gather some hemlock leaves and send them to me. I want them for my ointment; the stuff the chemists sell is no good. Your mother’s eyes are bad again; and your brother Berkeley has been gambling, and seems to think I ought to pay his debts for him. I am greatly worried over it all, and I hope that, until you have settled yourself, you will be more reasonable, and not run these everlasting bills upon me. You are enjoying yourself out of reach of all the unpleasantness; but it bears hardly upon

      “Your affectionate father,

      “C.B. LINDSAY.”

      A faint sketch of the lines Time intended to engrave on Gertrude’s brow appeared there as she read the letter; but she hastened to give the admiral’s kind regards to her host and hostess, and discussed her mother’s health feelingly with them. After breakfast she СКАЧАТЬ