Her first and, indeed, only communication reached Mrs. Wylie the morning after her interviews with Theo Trist and Captain Huston. It was only a few words scribbled on the back of a visiting card, and slipped into an envelope previously addressed and stamped:
Whatever you do, keep Theo and Alice apart.
Mrs. Wylie turned the card over and read the neatly-engraved name on the other side. Then she read the words aloud, slowly and thoughtfully, once more:
Whatever you do, keep Theo and Alice apart.
“Brenda knows,” reflected the practical woman of the world, “that Huston is jealous of Theo. She also knows that I am quite aware of this jealousy. It would be unnecessary to warn me of it; therefore this means that Brenda has discovered a fresh reason.”
She broke off her meditations at this point by rising almost hurriedly, and walking to the window. For a considerable time she watched the passing traffic; then she returned to the fireplace.
“Poor Brenda!” she murmured—“my poor Brenda! And … Alice is so silly!”
The connection between these two observations may be a trifle obscure to the ordinary halting male intellect; but I think I know what Mrs. Wylie meant.
Later on in the day she sent a note to Captain Huston, requesting him to come and see her, and by the same messenger despatched a few words to Theo Trist—her reserve force—forbidding him to come near.
“My reserves,” she said to herself as she closed the envelope energetically, “are thus rendered useless; but Brenda is reliable. I must do as she tells me.”
Captain Huston received the widow’s note at his club. It was only eleven o’clock, and, consequently, there was plenty of time before he need put in an appearance at Suffolk Mansions. He was an idle man, and, like all idle men, fond of lounging about the streets gazing abstractedly into shops, and getting generally into the way of such foot-passengers as might have an object in their walk.
There is no haven for loungers in London except Piccadilly in the morning, and to this spot the soldier turned his steps. After inspecting the wares of a sporting tailor, he was preparing to cross the road with a view of directing his course down St. James’s Street, when someone touched him on the shoulder.
Huston turned with rather more alacrity than is usually displayed by a British gentleman with a clear conscience, and for some seconds gazed in a watery manner at a fair, insipid face, ornamented by a wondrous moustache. There was a peculiarity about this moustache worth mentioning. Although an essentially masculine adornment, it, in some subtle way, suggested effeminacy.
“Mr. … eh … Hicks,” murmured Huston vaguely, and without much interest.
Hicks forgave magnanimously this Philistine want of appreciation.
“Yes, Captain Huston. How are you?”
“I? … Oh! I’m all right, thanks.”
There was a faint suggestion of movement about the soldier’s left leg as if intimating a desire to continue on its way towards St. James’s Street; but this was ignored by Hicks in his own inimitable way.
“I caught sight of you the other day,” he said graciously; “and I also had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Huston at Mrs. Wylie’s.”
“Oh yes,” vaguely.
The soldier made a violent effort, pulled himself together, and stepped into the road. The artist stepped with him, and, furthermore, slipped his gloved hand within his companion’s arm with a familiar ease which seemed to say that they would live or die together until the passage was safely accomplished.
“How is Mrs. Huston?” inquired he when they had reached the opposite pavement.
That lady’s husband looked very stolid as he answered:
“Quite well, thanks.”
He mentally wriggled, poor fellow, and in sympathy his arm became lifeless and repelling. Hicks removed his hand from the unappreciative sleeve.
“Do you know,” he asked pleasantly, “whether Trist happens to be in town?”
Huston began to feel uncomfortable. He was afraid of this society prig, and honestly wished to save his wife’s name from the ready tongue of slander.
“I don’t,” he answered abruptly—“why?”
This sudden question in no way disconcerted Hicks, who met the soldier’s unsteady, and would-be severe, gaze with bland innocence.
“Because I happen to know a Russian artist who is very anxious to meet him, that is all.”
“Ah! I have seen him since I came home, but I could not say where he is now.”
If Hicks had been a really observant man (such as he devoutly considered himself to be), he would have noticed that his companion raised a gloved finger to his cheek, and tenderly pressed a slight abrasion visible still just on the bone in front of the ear.
“He is generally to be heard of,” said the artist in that innocently-significant tone which may mean much or nothing, according to the acuteness or foreknowledge of the listener, “… he is generally to be heard of at Suffolk Mansions. That is to say, when Brenda is staying there.”
Captain Huston’s dull eyes were for a moment actually endowed with life. He stroked his drooping moustache, which was apparently placed there by a merciful Providence for purposes of justifiable concealment, and his moral attitude became visibly milder. He had just begun to realize that his own private affairs might not, after all, be of paramount importance to the whole of society.
“Is there,” he asked with military nonchalance, “supposed to be something between Trist and Brenda?”
Hicks laughed, and, before replying, waved his hand gracefully to a friend in the stock-jobbing line, who had previously crossed the road in order to be recognised by him in passing.
“Oh no,” he answered cheerfully; “I did not mean that at all. Now that I think of it, however, you were quite justified in taking it thus. They have always been great friends—that was all I meant. Their mothers were related, I believe.”
Captain Huston looked slightly disappointed. He did not, however, display such eagerness to walk either faster or slower, or in some other
