I said meekly, “Yes, Audrey. I expect he is very right; and it is a good thought of his for the poor Professors.”
She stood staring at me a moment, said, “What is the matter with you?” then turned away, moving much more slowly than before.
All the wind seemed knocked out of me by this blow, and I remained in a very depressed mood. It was my greatest mortification to realize on what vain and empty illusions I had been building a case for my friend. I will do myself so much justice. But whatever I planned seemed to go wrong. I had better retire, I thought, and leave it to better heads than mine to grapple with the problem. Nor did my amour-propre achieve any particular reinstatement for itself from my interview with Sir Calvin on the subject of my journey, made entirely on his behalf. I found him, when at length he called me to it, very distrait, and I thought not particularly interested in what I had to tell him. He seemed to listen attentively, but in fact his answers proved that he had done nothing of the sort. Everything since my return appeared somehow wrong and peculiar. It might have struck one almost as if a cloud had passed away, and a threatened tempest been forgotten. And yet Hugo was in his prison, and nothing new that I could see had happened. I told his father, as he had asked me to do, about the circumstances of his wrong-doing, and even in that failed greatly to interest the General. He did not appear to be particularly shocked. No doubt his principles in such respects were old-fashioned, and took for their text that licentious proverb which, in the name of love and war, exempts a gentleman from those bonds of truth and honour which alone make him one. He was in a strange state altogether, distraught, nervous, excited by turns, and yet always with a look about him which I should have described as exultant pride at high tension. What was the meaning of everything?
During the following day or two I kept myself studiously in the background, proffering no opinions on anything, and only pleading mutely to be put to any use I could reasonably serve. My attitude commended itself to Audrey at last. “Frank and the Baron,” she once said to me, “have been meeting and having a long talk together. I wonder if you will disapprove, Mr. Bickerdike?”
“Two heads are better than one,” I answered, “and as good as three when the Baron’s is counted in. I’m not sure you weren’t right, Audrey, and that I’m not a worse judge of character than I supposed.”
She looked at me in that queer way of hers.
“That’s jolly decent of you,” she said; “and so I’ll say the same to you. It’s something to be a gentleman, after all.”
Cryptic, but meant to be propitiatory. I forgave her. She had recovered her spirits wonderfully. She knew, or felt, I think, that something was in the air, though she could not tell what, and it made her confident and happy. I fancy it was her dear friend the Baron who kept her on that prick of expectancy, without quite letting her into the secret. Sometimes now she would even condescend to speak with me.
“Do you know,” she said one day, “that Sergeant Ridgway is coming down again from Scotland Yard to see us?”
“No!” I exclaimed. “He can’t have the atrocious bad taste.”