Ah! these little mistakes! We spend a small portion of our lives in making them, and the rest in trying to repair.
“Give me,” said Brenda, “her address, and I will go to her tomorrow.”
“She is at the Castle Hotel, Burgh Ferry, Suffolk. There is a train from Liverpool Street Station leaving at ten o’clock tomorrow for Burgh Station, which is four miles from Burgh Ferry.”
“I have heard of the place,” said Brenda composedly. “Have you been there and back this evening?”
“Yes. I just had time to install Alice comfortably in the hotel, which is really nothing more than an inn, and is the largest house in the village. I have a list for you—here it is—of things that Alice would like you to take to her tomorrow.”
Brenda took the paper and glanced at it rapidly.
“It is a long one,” she said with a short, hard laugh. “Is she quite resigned to burying herself alive for a short time?”
“Ye—es. … I put things rather strongly. She has consented to communicate with her husband through Mrs. Wylie, with the view of coming to some sort of agreement.”
The girl drew a sharp breath of relief.
“There … were … a good many tears,” added Trist rather unevenly. “I would suggest a good supply of books,” he said a moment later in a practical way. “It is a dreadfully dull little place (which makes it safer), and too much thinking is hardly desirable at the present time.”
“It is questionable whether much thinking is profitable at any time.”
Trist looked at her in a curious, doubtful way, and then he rose from his seat.
“I will take you home now,” he said, “if you are ready. It is nearly one o’clock.”
She rose a little wearily, and, lifting her gloved hand, skirmished deftly over her hair in order to make sure that it had not become deranged. He noted the curve of her white arm, and the quick play of her fingers, while he stood erect and motionless, waiting. No passing light of emotion was visible in his eyes, which possessed a strange, unreflective power of observation. That round white arm was looked upon as a beautiful thing, and nothing more. And she was a trifle weary. Her face betrayed no sign of mental or natural anxiety.
Then she took his arm, and they passed down the splendid stairs together. Co-heirs to a truly human inheritance of sorrow, they bore their burden without complaint or murmur, with a self-reliance behoving children of an acute civilization. For civilization will in time kill all human sympathy.
“I will go home with you,” said Trist, “because some precautions are necessary in order to escape observation on your journey tomorrow, and I have several suggestions to make.”
IX
In Case of War
As the winter settled over Europe—here with gloom and fog, there with bright keen frosts and dazzling snow—the feeling of anxiety respecting affairs in the East slowly subsided. The general conviction was that Russia would not move against her hereditary Muslim enemy until the winter was over; for even hatred, sturdy weed though it may be, is killed by cold.
Theodore Trist, fresh from those mysterious Oriental lands which are so much more romantic from a distance, gave no opinion upon the matter, because he was a practical businessman, and fully aware of the market value of his observations.
By ten o’clock on the morning following the soirée of the Ancient Artists, he alighted from a hansom cab opposite the huge office of the journal to which his pen was pledged. A few moments later he was shaking hands uneffusively with the editor. This gentleman has been introduced before, and men at his age change little in appearance or habit. His vast head was roughly picturesque as usual, his speech manly and to the point.
“Glad to see you back,” he said, in a businesslike way. “Sit down. None the worse, I hope?” he added, in a softer tone, and accompanied his observation with a keen glance. “None the worse for the smell of powder again?”
“No,” was the answer. “That smell never did any man much harm.”
The editor smiled, and drew some straggling papers together upon his desk.
“I want,” said Trist, after a pause, “to make a lot of money.”
“Ah!”
“Enough,” continued Trist gravely, “to put into something secure, and ensure a steady income in the piping times of peace.”
The editor clasped his large hands gravely with fingers interlocked, and placed them on the desk in front of him.
“That,” he said, with raised eyebrows, “is bad.”
“But natural,” suggested the younger man.
“When a man of your age suddenly expresses a desire for something which …”
“He has never had,” remarked Trist meekly.
“Which he has never had or wished for, it is suggestive of a change—a radical change—in that man’s plan of life.”
Trist raised his square shoulders slightly and respectfully.
“Now,” continued the editor, in his most solid and convincing way, “you—Theodore Trist—are the most brilliant war-correspondent of a brilliant and warlike generation. You are, besides that, a clever fellow—perhaps an exceptionally clever fellow. But, my friend, there are many clever fellows in the world. It is an age of keen competition, and the first man in the race must never look back to see whose step it is that he hears behind him. We live in a time of specialities, and we must be content with specialities. You are a born war-correspondent, and I suppose your ambition is to prove that you can do something else—write a novel, or edit a religious periodical—eh?”
Trist laughed, and returned the gaze of a pair of remarkably bright eyes without hesitation.
“No,” he answered. “I am content with the mark I have made, but there is not sufficient money to be gained at it, considering how much it takes out of a man. I am as strong as a horse yet, but I have noticed that there are some of us
