“I must,” he said, “go back now to … to Huston’s rooms. Will you communicate with Alice?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Wylie simply.
Without further explanation he went towards the door, glancing at Brenda as he passed. Mrs. Wylie followed him.
“We are better without you just now,” she whispered in the passage. “Write me full particulars, and wait to hear from me before you come back.”
III
Mrs. Wylie Takes the Offensive
When Mrs. Wylie returned to the breakfast-room, she found that Brenda was preparing to write. A blank telegram-form lay on the blotting-pad in readiness.
“We must telegraph to Alice,” she said briskly, as she dipped a quill pen into the ink. “What shall I say?”
Mrs. Wylie noticed the quill pen, and remembered that the girl never used anything but steel.
“Do not be in a hurry,” she urged rather coolly. “Let us think what is best to be done. Let us have some breakfast.”
“I don’t think I want any breakfast.”
“I am sure I do not, but I am going to eat some. Breakfast means nerve, Brenda, and we shall want all our nerve for the next few days.”
Reluctantly the girl took her place at the table. Her companion was relentless; moreover, she was aggravatingly placid, even to speculation.
“There are some lives,” she said, “which seem to be allowed as a warning and lesson to the rest of us. No doubt it is very instructive to the onlookers; but I am sometimes a little sorry for the examples themselves.”
Brenda looked up, and presently resumed her pretence of eating.
“I am afraid,” she said, “that his was not a very happy life. If he had the opportunity of living it over again … I doubt … whether he would accept it, I mean.”
“Oh,” returned the elder lady with remarkable conviction, “none of us would do that!”
Brenda showed no disposition to stray off into generalities.
“Did you,” she asked quietly, “really mean what you said just now about Alice? Is it your honest opinion that she loved Alfred Huston through it all?”
Mrs. Wylie sipped her tea meditatively.
“There are,” she answered after a pause, “… there are, I am afraid, some women who go through their lives without ever achieving the power of loving truly and wholly. It sometimes seems to me that Alice is one of them. They enjoy as others do, and they endure; but love is neither enjoyment nor endurance. It is a speciality, and the women who possess it (though they be called coquettes, flirts, wantons) are the salt of the earth. Alice came as near loving Alfred Huston as she will ever be to loving anyone beyond herself.”
“You think so?” in a curious monotone.
“Yes; I do.”
“I … don’t,” said Brenda.
“Ah! then you follow the majority, which, by the way, is composed of mere casual observers?”
“I do not know that I follow the majority; but I am of opinion that Alice has never loved Alfred Huston, because there was someone else.”
“That is following the majority,” observed Mrs. Wylie complacently.
“And,” continued the girl in a hard voice, “that other person is Theo Trist.”
“Majority,” murmured the widow sweetly.
“Even,” continued Brenda after a little pause, “if things are as you say, it is horribly sad, and there is no alleviation. It is very hard that Alice should only realize now that she loved him. The rest of her life will be … what will it be?”
“I believe,” answered the older woman, with that practical philosophy which seems to be a growth of years only, “that Alice loved him as much as lay in her nature. I am afraid, my dear, that your sister is incapable of a great and lasting passion, such as is usually considered desirable, although it invariably wrecks a life or two.”
“Very few people understand Alice.”
“And fewer still are ready to make her the slightest allowance. She began life with an initial mistake—namely, that a beautiful girl can marry any man she may choose. This error is very widespread; but, my dear, I have never watched the career of a beautiful girl without discovering, sooner or later, that in reality her choice is remarkably small. After weeding out impossibilities, setting aside improbabilities, and getting rid of ballroom hacks, there are seldom more than two men left. If a girl, in the confidence of her own loveliness as vouched for by elderly bachelors and doting relatives, is pleased to consider that she can have any man she likes, let her try. The best men, the ideal husbands, are not to be fished for. They come of their own accord, or they stay away altogether.”
“I suppose,” said Brenda reflectively, “that she was spoilt by the circumstances attending her early life? Her popularity, I mean. But then people will say that a good nature is, or should be, beyond the reach of circumstances.”
“We cannot help,” replied the woman of the world, “what people say. In the meantime we must just make the best of things as they stand. Alice is in an awkward position, and it is clearly our duty to get her out of it as creditably as we can.”
“Of course. I am ready to do all I can.”
Mrs. Wylie rose from the table with her characteristic cheeriness. For some moments she appeared to be thinking, then she spoke:
“The best way out of it is for me to go down to Cheltenham and bring her back. There is a train about eleven o’clock; Alice herself went by it. We can be back by tonight—about dinnertime, I should think, or a little later.”
To this suggestion Brenda acceded willingly enough. She was rather dazed by this sudden change in her sister’s affairs, and her usually clear intellect seemed almost benumbed. Her manner was similar to that of a woman labouring under intense anxiety, or a suspense more terrible
