“Where is your luggage?” inquired the editor suddenly, as they walked along.
From his manner it would appear that he feared that Trist had forgotten this necessary item. Under similar circumstances he would no doubt have done so himself.
“It is waiting for me at the station,” was the reply; “I went to my rooms after dinner and packed up.”
“It cannot have taken you long,” abstractedly.
“No; I am not taking much.”
The journalist seemed suddenly to return to practical things.
“But,” he inquired, “I suppose you are prepared to stay some time if necessary?”
“Oh yes!”
“How long?”
“As long as I am needed,” replied the war-correspondent very deliberately. There was no ring of doubt or hesitation in his voice.
“You are an ideal special,” said the other.
“It is best to be consistent even in trifles,” observed Trist, and the editor made no reply. Presently he continued, as if speaking his own thoughts aloud:
“I don’t like the look of things in the East. Russia is seething; Turkey is ready, and … and hell is brewing.”
“Let it brew!” said the philosophic Trist.
“While you stand on the edge of the vat and watch things through the smoke.”
“Exactly.”
“Then, Trist, mind you do not fall in. No fighting, my boy. You must keep in the background this time.”
“If,” replied the other, “I kept in the background, you would be the very first man to recall me.”
“Yes,” meditatively; “I suppose I should. But you can duck your head when you hear things whistling … when the music begins.”
Trist shrugged his shoulders, and smiled.
“My ducking days are done. One is just as likely to duck into bullets as out of their way. If, as you poetically put it, hell is brewing, I shall stay out there and watch the process as long as I am wanted; but if it is all the same to you, I should like to be with the Turks.”
“I thought you would. In case of war between Russia and Turkey, I have secured Steinoff to go with the Russians. With Steinoff on one side and you on the other, there will not be a newspaper in the world to come near us. The thought of it almost makes one pray for war.”
“I don’t think you need do that,” murmured Trist, selecting a fresh cigar.
The journalist glanced at him with some keenness.
“You think it will come?”
“I do.”
The great journalist smiled slowly, and as Trist did not continue, he fell into a long reverie which lasted until they reached Charing Cross Station.
It was Monday night, and the mails were light, but there were a great many passengers. Mostly pleasure-seekers, these travellers, hurrying away from London into clearer atmospheres, and across to lands where the art of enjoying life is better understood. The great train was ready, standing next to that right-hand middle platform we all know so well—a very ordinary erection of brick covered with large slabs of sandstone, encumbered with a few heavy wooden seats, backless, comfortless; lighted (in 1876, when Trist went off to the first Turkish war) with round-globed lamps. No spot this for sentiment—no place for thought. And yet what scenes have been illuminated by those round-globed lamps! what tears have fallen unheeded on the sandstone pavement! what feet have pressed the dust and covered up the tears! Countless men have stepped from that platform, literally, into a new life. Here have nameless waifs looked their last upon London haste, before turning to other lands where they have found naught else but a nameless grave. From these dumb stones men have gone forth unknown, unheeded, unwept, to return even as Theodore Trist had returned, with their name on all men’s lips. And—saddest thought—brown-faced wanderers have walked mechanically out of this same station into a world where they have no friends left. Returning from a life misspent in selfish absorption, they have passed out beneath those three-armed lamps with a faint sickening thought that this is home—old England at last, with naught but graves and memories to seek.
Trist soon saw his luggage into the hands of the guard. The ticket was taken, and more than one fussy tourist at the booking-office window turned to look again at the quiet, unobtrusive man whose destination was so far afield as Bucharest.
The little tragedies of real life differ in one important point from those represented on the stage for our amusement and instruction. This point is the lamentable lack of stage management. On the boards we have appropriate scenery—a bosky glade, and far away up the stage a shimmering calm sea with moonlight cleverly thrown upon it. There is also slow music—piano, pianissimo—and lowered footlights and pretty dresses. But in real life there are none of these accessories. In my time I also have dabbled a little in tragedy, as most of us are, sooner or later, likely to do; and there was no soft music, no distant shimmering sea, no whispering pine-trees and sighing glades. When I look back (with a peculiar sensation in the region of the collar), there are only memories of
