Enveloped as he was, however, in conceit, he had the good taste to perceive that his bewildering presence was on this particular occasion liable to be considered bliss of an alloyed description, and in a short time he took his leave.
As he was moving round and saying goodbye, Mrs. Huston returned to the artistic question, from which they had never strayed very far. Indeed, art was somewhat apt to become a nauseating subject of conversation wherever William Hicks was allowed to influence matters to any extent.
“You have never sent pictures to the Academy, then?” she asked innocently.
“Oh no!” he answered with mild horror. “Goodbye, so glad to see you home again.”
And then he vanished.
Mrs. Wylie watched his retreating figure with a pleasant and sociable expression on her intelligent face.
“That,” she was reflecting, “is a lie!” She happened to know that Hicks had been refused a place on the walls of Burlington House.
If I were a ghost, or if I ever come to be one, I shall not take up the old, timeworn craft of frightening people during the stilly hours. Instead of such uninteresting work, I shall make a collection in a phantom pocketbook of asides and murmured reflections. From such, an interesting study of earthly existence, and more particularly of social life, might well be made.
On those phantom pages might, for instance, be inscribed the reflections of William Hicks as he made his way down the broad staircase of Suffolk Mansions.
“Whew!” was their tenor; “ran right into it. She’s left him; I could see that. Seems to me she’s on the verge of a catastrophe—divorce or separation, or something like that.”
In the drawing-room Mrs. Wylie was saying reflectively to either or both of her companions:
“This is the beginning of it. That man will tell everyone he meets before going to bed tonight that you are home. He did not ask where your husband was, which shows that he wanted to know; consequently he will wonder over it, and will take care to tell everyone what he is wondering about.”
IV
To the Front
A week later Brenda was sitting in the same apartment again. But this time she was alone. From pure kindness of heart Mrs. Wylie had managed to allow the girl an afternoon’s leisure, and Brenda was spending this very happily amidst her books and magazines. She was, in her way, a literary person, this brilliant young scholar; but, belonging to a universal age, universality was also hers. With the literary she could show herself well-read; with the purely pleasure-seeking she could also find sympathy. In these times of mixed circles, men and women must needs be able to talk upon many subjects, whether they know aught about them or nothing.
Brenda Gilholme was not, however, a brilliant talker. She could have written well had she been moved thereto by that restless spirit which makes some people look upon existence as a blank without pens and paper. But as yet she was content to read, and her young mind thirsted for the grasp of other folks’ thoughts as a fisherman’s fingers itch for the rod.
During the last week Alice Huston’s presence in Mrs. Wylie’s household had not been an unmixed success. There was a slight and almost imperceptible impatience in the widow’s manner, in the inflection of her pleasant voice, in her very glance when her eyes rested upon her guest’s gracious form. Gradually the story had come out, and some details were related with unguarded carelessness, resulting in the conclusion, as far as Mrs. Wylie and Brenda were concerned, that Captain Huston might also have a story to tell, differing in tone and purport from that related by his wronged spouse. Her case against her husband was not very clear, and in her relation of it there was in some vague way a sense of suppression and easy adaptation both pointing to the same end. If Brenda felt this and drew her own conclusions from it, she allowed no sign of such conclusions to appear, but accepted the situation without comment. The natural result of this unfeminine behaviour was a wane of confidence between the sisters. It is easy enough, even for the most reticent person, to make known to some chosen familiar certain details hitherto suppressed when once the subject is broached; but to continue confiding in a bosom friend who accepts all statements without surprise, horror or sympathy is a different matter.
Brenda’s manner of listening was neither forbidding nor indifferent. It was merely unenthusiastic, and its chief characteristic was a certain measured attention, as if the details were imprinting themselves indelibly upon a prepared mental surface, where they might well remain intact and legible for many years. Mrs. Wylie, glancing at the two sisters over her book, or her palm-leaf screen, conceived a strange thought. She imagined that she detected in Brenda’s manner and demeanour a certain subtle resemblance to the manner and demeanour of one who was far away, and whose influence upon the girl’s life could not well have been very great, namely, Theodore Trist.
When the war-correspondent was not on active service, he lived in London, and, as was only natural to one of his calling, moved in such intervals in a circle of men and women influential in the political world. He was a reticent speaker, but an excellent listener, and Mrs. Wylie, as the wife of an active naval politician, had many opportunities of watching in her placid way this strange young man among his fellows. Theodore Trist’s
