Before leaving Mrs. Wylie telegraphed to Trist, the message being kept from Brenda’s knowledge. She addressed it to his rooms in Jermyn Street, and without hesitation wrote the following words:
I am going to Cheltenham. Keep away from Brenda. Expect me in Jermyn Street eight o’clock tonight.
“I think,” she reflected, as her plump white hand pressed the blotting-paper, “that the time has really come when I must do something. These young people are verging on a terrible muddle … unless … unless Theo has some set plan of his own all along. I sometimes think he has. There must be a motive somewhere.”
As the good lady was descending the stairs at half-past ten on her way to Paddington Station, a commissionaire came toiling up. He carried a letter in his hand, and Mrs. Wylie, perceiving it, stopped him. It was a full account of the accident, written at a club near at hand by Theodore Trist.
By three o’clock that afternoon Alice Huston learnt her husband’s end. She received the news with a strange apathy. There were times in this woman’s life when the permanence of sorrow was shut out from her mind. She was like a child in the way in which she took the punishment God thought fit to administer. It seemed part of her mental laziness. She had not even the energy to resist, however useless such a course may be.
There was no time to be lost, and Mrs. Wylie insisted upon an immediate departure for town. The excuses put forward by Alice were trivial, or would have been considered trivial in another woman. They caught the train, however, and reached London at half-past seven. A long, weary drive in a rattling cab (such a vehicle as could not be found in any other city) brought them to Suffolk Mansions.
Brenda was at the door to meet them. She kissed her sister silently, and then followed the two ladies into the drawing-room. There was a cheery fire burning briskly in the grate; a single lamp with a pink shade had a wonderful effect in adding comfort to the appearance of the room.
Alice lifted her veil and looked round as if expecting to find someone there. Mrs. Wylie, near the fire, and Brenda, who was closing the door, were both watching her.
“I think,” she said wearily, “that Theo might have been here.”
Mrs. Wylie was hungry; perhaps she was also slightly irritated.
“Why?” she asked mercilessly.
Mrs. Huston unbuttoned her gloves speculatively, and, after a short pause, replied:
“Oh … I don’t know! I thought he would come, that was all.”
Mrs. Wylie made no pretence of concealing a somewhat impatient shrug of the shoulders.
“You are in your old room,” she said in a voice devoid of sympathy. “If you take off your bonnet we will have dinner at once. It will warm us up.”
Brenda conducted her sister to the bedroom assigned to her. They had not spoken yet, but the girl’s attitude was distinctly sympathetic in its bearing. Women have a silent way of telling us that their hearts are coming, as it were, towards us. I wonder, my brothers, what some of us would do without that voiceless sympathy—without the gentle glance that penetrates and consoles at one time—without the touch of certain fingers which, though light, is full of sweet heartfelt pleading to be allowed a share of the burden.
Brenda unpinned her sister’s veil, and, hovering round, volunteered here and there a quick and deft assistance.
“I wonder,” said the beautiful woman at length, with that touch of helplessness in her tone which would have been better reserved for male ears, “why I feel like a whipped child. I do not see that I am to blame because Alfred chose to be careless. Of course it was an accident.”
Brenda did not answer at once. Indeed, they were leaving the room when she said in a reassuring tone:
“Undoubtedly it was an accident.”
There was no mistaking the tone. Whatever Mrs. Huston’s faults may have been, she never sought undue credit; she never pretended to feel that which had no place in her heart. Her sins were those of omission rather than of commission. Despite Mrs. Wylie’s assurance to the contrary, Brenda knew then, and never afterwards doubted, that her sister’s love for her husband, if it had ever existed, was dead at the time of his sudden and untimely end.
As things go in these days, we can hardly blame this beautiful woman for having loved, and ceasing to love. It is only in novels of today and in records of ancient times that we meet with an enduring love. The fact is, we see too many of our fellow-creatures to be constant to a few. We drift together, and we drift apart again. We vow a little, perhaps, and protest that nothing shall divide; but presently the streams diverge. There is some little obstruction in the bed or pathway; the waters part, and never flow together again. We merrymakers dance here and we dance there; we run down into the country by an evening train; dine, dance, make love, and come to town at an early hour. The next night it is just as likely as not that we go off in some other direction with our dress-clothes in a bag and our hearts conspicuously on our sleeves “for one night only.”
It was all very well for those inconsistent old knights (strange combinations of poetry and brutality) to be faithful to the young person remaining at home for industrial purposes; it was very easy for the young person in question to think of none other than the youth who wore her colours ’twixt armour and heart. These people never saw other youths and other maidens. If I went to the Holy Land, I am confident that I should think only of a certain small person left behind; and, moreover, it is within the bounds of probability that if she had no tennis parties, bachelors’ balls, bazaars, and race-meetings, she would pine away her
