“Trist,” he observed as he opened his cigar-case sociably, “is a queer fellow. Have a cigar?”
“Oh, I never smoke, you know—never. No, thanks.”
The captain grunted, and put his case back with a suppressed sigh. He had not known, but hoped. Then he waited for a reply to his leading and ambiguous remark.
“Yes,” mused Hicks at length; “he is. I dined with him the night he left for the Serbian frontier.”
This detail, interesting as it was, had but slight reference to the general characteristics of Theodore Trist. Huston tried again after he had lighted his cigar.
“One never knows where one has him.”
Hicks looked mildly sympathetic. He even gave the impression of being about to look in his pockets on the chance of finding the war-correspondent there.
“No; he is always on the move. I was once told that the Diplomatic Corps call him the Stormy Petrel, because he arrives before the hurricane.”
“And sits smiling on the top of the waves afterwards, while we poor devils sink,” added the soldier with a disagreeable laugh.
“He has not the reputation of being a coward,” said Hicks, who despised personal courage as a mere brute-like attribute.
The man of arms did not like the turn of the conversation.
“No; I believe not,” he said rather hurriedly, as if no man could be a coward. “What I don’t like about him is a certain air of mystery which he cultivates. It pleases the women, I suppose.”
“That,” suggested the other calmly, “is probably part of his trade. If he talked much there would be nothing original left in him to write! All these diplomatic fellows get that peculiar reticence of manner—a sort of want of frankness, as it were. That is the great difference between art practised by the tongue, and art stimulated by the eye and created for the pleasure of the eye.”
Huston looked at the burning end of his cigar with bibulous concentration. He knew absolutely nothing about art, and cared less. It is just possible that, in his hideous ignorance, he doubted the purity of the pleasure vouchsafed by the pictorial productions of the artist at his side.
“We,” continued Hicks, with a deprecating wave of the hand, “can always be frank. The bolder we are, the higher we aim, the … eh … the better.”
“Yes … yes,” murmured Huston. “But tell me—what made you think that Trist was out of town?”
“Oh, nothing!” airily. “Nobody stays in town at this time of the year unless they can’t help it; that is all! But I suppose these newspaper men hardly think of the seasons. They do not seem to realize the difference between summer and winter—between joyous spring and dismal autumn. I saw a man sketching the other day in a cold east wind on the Thames Embankment. He was only a ‘black and white’ man, you know; but he seemed to know something about drawing. His fingers were blue.”
Like many weak-minded people, Alfred Huston was subject to sudden fits of obstinacy. He felt now that Hicks wished to lead him away from the subject originally under discussion, and in consequence was instigated by a sudden desire to talk and hear more of Theodore Trist.
“That is another thing,” he said, “about Trist that I do not like. He pretends to despise personal discomfort. It is mere affectation, of course, and on that account, perhaps, all the more aggravating.”
“Carried away by enthusiasm, I suppose?”
The soldier laughed.
“Trist never was carried away by anything. He sits on a box of cartridges, and writes in that beastly notebook of his as if he were at a review. If all his countrymen were being slaughtered round him he would count them with his pencil and take a note of it.”
Hicks gave a few moments’ careful attention to the curl of his moustache. Then he glanced curiously at his companion’s vacant physiognomy. There was evidently some motive in this sudden attack on Trist. Both these men distrusted the war-correspondent, but were in no way prepared to test the value of that force which is said to arise from union. They distrusted each other more.
Presently they parted, each absorbed in his own selfish fears as before. Here, again, was Vanity and her hideous sister Jealousy. If one of these be not found at the bottom of all human misery, I think you will find the other. With these two men both motives were at work. Each was jealous of Trist, and neither would confess his jealousy to the other; while Vanity was wounded by the war-correspondent’s simple silence. He ignored them, and for that they hated him. His own path was apparently mapped out in front of him, and he followed it without ostentation, without seeking comment or approbation.
William Hicks was, as Mrs. Wylie had said, finding his own level. He was beginning to come under the influence of a vague misgiving that his individuality was not such as commands the respect of the better sort of women. In his own circle he was a demigod; but the gratification to be gathered from the worship of a number of weak-kneed uncomely ladies was beginning to pall. In fact, he had hitherto been intensely satisfied with the interesting creature called William Hicks; but now there was a tiny rift within the lute upon which he always played his own praises. He had not hitherto realized that man is scarcely created for the purpose of being worshipped by the weaker sex, and lately there had been in his mind a vague desire to be of greater account among his fellow-men. Of athletics, sport, or the more manly accomplishments he knew nothing; indeed, he had up to this period despised them as the pastime of creatures possessed of little or no intellect; now he was at times troubled by a haunting thought that it would have been as well had he been able to play lawn-tennis, to ride, or shoot, or row, or drive—or even walk ten miles at a stretch. This was not the outcome of any natural taste for
