“My poor darling,” whispered Mrs. Wylie. “I ought never to have left you here alone. We might have guessed that that man Huston would be home soon. Did he hurt you, Brenda?”
“No; he frightened me a little, that was all.”
“I am very glad you had Theo!” Mrs. Wylie purposely turned away as she said these words.
Brenda sipped her tea, and made no reply.
It had been twilight when Mrs. Wylie returned home, and now it was almost dark. The two ladies sat in the warm firelight, with their feet upon the fender. Tea laid aside, they continued sitting there while the flames leapt and fell again, glowing on their thoughtful faces, gleaming on the simple jewellery at their throats. From the restless streets came a dull, continuous roar as of the sea. I hear it now as I write, and would fain lay aside the pen and wonder over it; for it rises and falls, swells and dies again, with a long, slow, mournful rhythm full of life, and yet joyless; soporific, and yet alive with movement. There is no sound on earth like it except the hopeless song of breaking waves. Both alike steal upon the senses with an indefinable suggestion of duration, almost amounting to a glimmer of what is called eternity. Both alike reach the heart with a subtle, undeniable lovableness. Londoners and sailors cannot resist its music, for both return to it in their age, whithersoever they may have wandered.
Mrs. Wylie it was who moved at last, rising with characteristic determination, as if the pastime of thought were a vice not wisely encouraged. She stood before Brenda in her widow’s weeds, looking down through the dim light with a faint smile.
“Come,” she said; “we must get ready for dinner. Remember that Mrs. Hicks is going to call for you at eight o’clock to take you to that Ancient Artists’ Guild soirée. I should put on a white dress if I were you, and violets. The gifted William Hicks, whom we met in the Park this afternoon, asked what flowers he should bring, and I suggested violets.”
Brenda laughed suddenly, but her hilarity finished in a peculiar, abrupt way.
“Telle est la vie!” she murmured, as she rose obediently. “What a labour this enjoyment sometimes is!”
VII
Quicksands
“Wot’s this—runaway couple?” asked a pallid and slipshod waiter of his equally-unwholesome colleague in the dining-room attached to a large City railway-station.
“D’no,” answered the second, with weary indifference; “we don’t offen see that sort down ’ere.”
“There’s a sort,” continued the first attendant, pulling down his soup-stained waistcoat, “o’ haristocratic simplicity about them and their wants as pleases my poetic and ’igh-born soul.”
“Indeed,” yawned the other with withering sarcasm.
“Yes, indeed!”
The sarcasm was treated with noble scorn by its victim, who was called away at that moment by a bumping sound within the lift-cupboard.
In the meantime Trist and Alice Huston were turning their attention to dinner.
The novelty of the situation pleased the lady vastly. There was a spice of danger coupled with a sense of real security imparted by the presence of her calm and resourceful companion which she appreciated thoroughly. For Trist there was, however, less enjoyment in the sense of novelty. A war-correspondent is a man to whom few situations are, strictly speaking, novel, and it is, or should be, his chief study to acquire the virtue of adaptability, and never to allow himself to be carried away by the forces of environment.
His sense of chivalry was too strong to allow the merest suggestion of weariness, but in his inmost heart there was a vague uneasiness at the thought that there was still an hour before the train for the east coast left, not the station where they were at present, but one near at hand. He knew that to the fugitive every moment is of immeasurable value, but for the time being he feared no pursuit. His measures had been too carefully taken for that, and all the private detectives in London could not approach this impenetrable strategist in cunning or foresight.
Only an hour had passed since he and Alice Huston had met on the stairs of Suffolk Mansions, and since then the excellent construction of a London cab and the justly-praised smoothness of London roadways had effectually put a stop to any conversation of a connected or confidential nature.
At first Alice had been too frightened to resent this, and subsequently the manner of her companion, which was at once reassuring and repelling, had checked her efforts. Now the pallid waiters were almost within earshot, and Theodore Trist, who concealed a keen power of observation beneath a demeanour at times aggravatingly stolid, was fully aware that they were interested, and consequently inquisitive. The result of this knowledge was a singular lack of the ordinary outward signs of mystery. He spoke in rather louder tones than was his wont, told one or two amusing anecdotes, and laughed at them himself, while Mrs. Huston unconsciously aided him by smiling in a slightly weary way. This last conjugal touch of human nature went far to convince the waiter that the two were after all nothing more interesting than husband and wife.
“Theo, I have so much to tell you,” whispered Mrs. Huston once when the waiter was exchanging civilities with the cook’s assistant down a speaking-tube.
“Yes,” replied Trist, interested in his bread; “wait until we are in the train.”
“Where are we going?”
“I will tell you afterwards; these fellows might hear. Will you have wine? What shall it be, something light—say Niersteiner?”
He softened his apparent brusqueness with a smile, and she blushed promptly, which was an unnecessary proceeding. Trist’s sangfroid was phenomenal.
By a simple subterfuge, of which he was almost ashamed, he had obtained tickets to a small east-coast watering-place without leaving any trace whatever, and at seven o’clock they left Liverpool Street Station, in the same compartment, without having allowed the railway officials to perceive
