The Longest Journey | Page 5

Rickie, you are too bad! I say again: wicked, abominable, intolerable boy! I'll have you horsewhipped. If you please"--she turned to the symposium, which had now risen to its feet "If you please, he asks me and my brother for the week-end. We accept. At the station, no Rickie. We drive to where his old lodgings were--Trumpery Road or some such name--and he's left them. I'm furious, and before I can stop my brother, he's paid off the cab and there we are stranded. I've walked--walked for miles. Pray can you tell me what is to be done with Rickie?"
"He must indeed be horsewhipped," said Tilliard pleasantly. Then he made a bolt for the door.
"Tilliard--do stop--let me introduce Miss Pembroke--don't all go!" For his friends were flying from his visitor like mists before the sun. "Oh, Agnes, I am so sorry; I've nothing to say. I simply forgot you were coming, and everything about you."
"Thank you, thank you! And how soon will you remember to ask where Herbert is?"
"Where is he, then?"
"I shall not tell you."
"But didn't he walk with you?"
"I shall not tell, Rickie. It's part of your punishment. You are not really sorry yet. I shall punish you again later."
She was quite right. Rickie was not as much upset as he ought to have been. He was sorry that he had forgotten, and that he had caused his visitors inconvenience. But he did not feel profoundly degraded, as a young man should who has acted discourteously to a young lady. Had he acted discourteously to his bedmaker or his gyp, he would have minded just as much, which was not polite of him.
"First, I'll go and get food. Do sit down and rest. Oh, let me introduce--"
Ansell was now the sole remnant of the discussion party. He still stood on the hearthrug with a burnt match in his hand. Miss Pembroke's arrival had never disturbed him.
"Let me introduce Mr. Ansell--Miss Pembroke."
There came an awful moment--a moment when he almost regretted that he had a clever friend. Ansell remained absolutely motionless, moving neither hand nor head. Such behaviour is so unknown that Miss Pembroke did not realize what had happened, and kept her own hand stretched out longer than is maidenly.
"Coming to supper?" asked Ansell in low, grave tones.
"I don't think so," said Rickie helplessly.
Ansell departed without another word.
"Don't mind us," said Miss Pembroke pleasantly. "Why shouldn't you keep your engagement with your friend? Herbert's finding lodgings,--that's why he's not here,--and they're sure to be able to give us some dinner. What jolly rooms you've got!"
"Oh no--not a bit. I say, I am sorry. I am sorry. I am most awfully sorry."
"What about?"
"Ansell" Then he burst forth. "Ansell isn't a gentleman. His father's a draper. His uncles are farmers. He's here because he's so clever--just on account of his brains. Now, sit down. He isn't a gentleman at all." And he hurried off to order some dinner.
"What a snob the boy is getting!" thought Agnes, a good deal mollified. It never struck her that those could be the words of affection--that Rickie would never have spoken them about a person whom he disliked. Nor did it strike her that Ansell's humble birth scarcely explained the quality of his rudeness. She was willing to find life full of trivialities. Six months ago and she might have minded; but now--she cared not what men might do unto her, for she had her own splendid lover, who could have knocked all these unhealthy undergraduates into a cocked-hat. She dared not tell Gerald a word of what had happened: he might have come up from wherever he was and half killed Ansell. And she determined not to tell her brother either, for her nature was kindly, and it pleased her to pass things over.
She took off her gloves, and then she took off her ear-rings and began to admire them. These ear-rings were a freak of hers--her only freak. She had always wanted some, and the day Gerald asked her to marry him she went to a shop and had her ears pierced. In some wonderful way she knew that it was right. And he had given her the rings--little gold knobs, copied, the jeweller told them, from something prehistoric and he had kissed the spots of blood on her handkerchief. Herbert, as usual, had been shocked.
"I can't help it," she cried, springing up. "I'm not like other girls." She began to pace about Rickie's room, for she hated to keep quiet. There was nothing much to see in it. The pictures were not attractive, nor did they attract her--school groups, Watts' "Sir Percival," a dog running after a rabbit, a man running after a maid, a cheap brown Madonna in a cheap green frame--in short, a collection where one mediocrity was generally