Trist was not to be impressed by the social position of this dilettante dabbler in the fine arts. Soul, pure unvarnished soul, had no effect upon his mental epidermis. Poetry in curious dress-clothes, behind a singular cambric tie, failed to touch his inmost being. Then a brilliant inspiration came to this ambitious youth who attempted to be all things to all men. For once he would be natural. On this one occasion sincerity should grace his actions and his wondrous thoughts.
“I say, Trist,” he remarked almost earnestly, “I met Martin of the Royal Engineers the other day, and he told me that it is common mess-room gossip in Ceylon that Alice Huston is having a miserable life of it out there.”
Trist had almost finished his dinner. He looked up gravely, and there was in his eyes a worried expression, which, however, the artist (who, like most self-satisfied people, was not observant) failed to see.
“I am sorry to hear that,” quietly, almost indifferently.
“Yes,” continued the other in the perfunctorily sympathetic tone which we all assume while revelling in the recital of evil tidings. “They say that Huston drinks, that he is madly jealous and coldly indifferent by turns. He always was a brute. I remember when he was young he was a gourmand, and professed to be a great judge of claret. Now a boy who thinks of his interior when he ought to be hardening his muscles will, in all human probability, turn out a drinker.”
While Hicks was giving the benefit of his opinion, Trist had risen from the table, and now stood with his two hands upon the back of his chair looking down thoughtfully at his companion. The artist was peeling an early pear with great delicacy of fingering. Before the war-correspondent had time to say anything, he continued:
“I suppose,” he said somewhat pathetically, “that you and I are more interested in the Gilholmes than most people. To a certain extent they rely upon us as old friends. That is why I tell you this. I never repeat gossip, you know.”
The last addition was made in a deprecating way, as if to apologize for a celebrity which placed certain personal peculiarities within public reach. Trist had not heard that reticence was one of his companion’s characteristics, and he treated the remark with silent contempt. He did not even smile in response to the sympathetic glance of the soulless blue eyes.
“If,” he observed, “they rely upon us, they will expect us to hold our tongues. The truest friendship is shown in talking of anything but one’s friends. I must go now. Good night!”
The artist rose and held out his delicate hand. Within Trist’s brown and sunburnt fingers the shapely limb looked small and frail and very useless. The very manner in which Hicks stood was in strong contrast to the sturdy deportment of his companion. If Brenda Gilholme should at any future day be forced to rely upon one of these strikingly dissimilar men, the choice would surely be no hard task; for one was all latent energy, quiet, reserved, and manly force, while the other was a mere creature of drawing-room and boudoir, a lady’s knight, a dandy, an effeminate egoist.
And the stronger man, Theo Trist, went out from the brilliant chamber down the broad and silent stairs, out of the huge door, wrapt in his own thoughts as in a cloak which shielded him from men’s eyes, for he saw no one, heard no sound, and was sensible of no definite feeling.
This great stone building was as a home to him—the only home he had ever known. The faces of the servants were pleasantly familiar; the stillness of the vast rooms, the very softness of the rich carpet beneath his feet, were distinct pleasures, and imparted a pleasant feeling of homeliness. And from this he passed out in the bright August evening alone and absorbed. To the war he gave no thought, neither meditated over the ripening fruits of his pen. There was before his meek and pensive eyes a vision which would not be cast aside. He saw a yacht rolling gently on the still waters of a northern fjord. The sails were hastily clewed up or lowered, hanging idle in the soft breeze. Away behind, clear and hard in the morning light, were brown hills rising sheer from the water—bleak rocks of unlovely contour. But the soul of the whole picture looked from the eyes of a slight young girl, clad in sober black, standing bareheaded, so that the sun gleamed on her soft brown hair, beside the stern rail, smiling bravely.
He had left Brenda alone in the midst of sorrow, and now he knew that she was on her way home to England to meet more of it. There is nothing so sad in human life as the bitter realization of human helplessness. Alice Huston was miserable, and Trist knew that he could do nothing. He was fully aware that misery with her meant misery to others. She was too impulsive—too selfish, perhaps—to keep her sorrows to herself, and Brenda would sooner or later be dragged into the trouble. He smiled to himself at the remembrance of William Hicks’ words. The idea of Brenda Gilholme—the gifted, the capable, the learned—seeking the aid of this exalté artist was ludicrous, and yet Trist did not smile over it for long. He wished that there had been another man—such a man as himself, he unconsciously decided—near Brenda at this time.
Accustomed as he was to act alone, he perhaps assigned to the spirit of independence a greater importance in the average nature of men and women than such spirit really occupies. Independence or self-dependence is a quality which, being possessed, brings with it a certain blindness. A man such as Theodore Trist, whose every action and thought receives its motive from a calm, straightforward independence,
