These reflections must, however, remain strictly between us. It would not do for the general public to get ear of them. Let us rather pound away at the good old doctrine of true love, following in the footsteps of romancers since the days of Solomon. Your hand, my brother! It is best to blind one’s self at times.
Brenda was a daughter of the nineteenth century, and as such conceived it possible that love can bloom and flourish in the human heart only to die utterly after all. Some of us there are, perhaps, who, having once loved, carry a small wound with us until the end of the chapter; but the majority have no time to look back too steadily. Most assuredly Alice Huston was not one of the former. I believe honestly that she loved her husband; but I am also convinced that before his death she had ceased to do so—that the growth had died down utterly within her heart, leaving no trace, diffusing no odour, as it were, of better things.
The younger sister realized all this, but her blind affection for the woman whose existence had been so closely allied to her own made excuses and propounded explanatory theories as only a woman’s love can. There was in her mind an indefinite feeling of antagonism against the events of the last few months, but in her own heart she blamed Alfred Huston. She would not give way to the ever-growing conviction that her sister was not quite free from the taint of faultiness in thought or action.
IV
An Interview
In his inner life—his domestic environments—Theodore Trist was not a comfortable man. There are some who, possessing luxurious ways, seem to pass through the trials and petty woes of life with more comfort than others. This is, moreover, accomplished without the expenditure of greater means. Many are wanting in this power of alleviating crude environments, which, however, goes usually with a very small capability of adapting one’s self to circumstances.
Trist was essentially an adaptable fellow. He never seemed to notice that the sheet was shorter than the blanket, for instance. Nor did the fact affect his equanimity that he had to drink his tea without milk or sugar. It was not that he failed to perceive these things. His calling and his training alike made it necessary that he should. Nor was it that his mind was above such trifles; nothing was so small, so trivial, as to be beneath his attention. The fact was, that his mental and physical discipline was such that in recording hardship he had come to look upon it as an excuse for so much printed matter, a thing to write about, but of which it was useless to complain. He was an observer, not an autobiographer; he recorded the hardships of others, and spoke little of his own. On the Danube, and later in Plevna, they called him the “philosopher.”
It has been said that women possess the faculty of stamping upon the rooms in which they dwell the impress of their own individuality. Surely this power is not confined to the weaker sex alone. A man surrounds himself with little individualities as well. He is more individual in his characteristics and in his way of living. Why! no two men fill their pipes alike. Some there are who stuff the tobacco in hastily; others (the luxurious type) linger over the operation lovingly. The one has no sense of anticipatory enjoyment; the other is already enjoying his smoke before the pipe is lighted.
Theodore Trist’s room, in Jermyn Street, was very like himself. There was an indefinite feeling of readiness about it, as if at a moment’s notice it could be vacated, or turned into a bedroom or a meetinghouse. There were no curiosities lying about, no mementoes, no souvenirs of battlefield, no mysterious Eastern jewellery from poetic harems, such as lady-novelists tell us we who wander love to have about us when we loll in divans, and smoke narghilis at home in England. Looking round bedroom or sitting-room, one’s first feeling was a conviction that in ten minutes the dweller therein could remove all trace of himself and his belongings. In a word, the rooms were lamentably bare. It is a pity to have to record this, because no man in the fiction of the day, having travelled in foreign lands, is allowed to live afterwards like an English gentleman. It has been the good fortune of the present writer to meet some whose lives have been spent, as it were, in portmanteaus, under tents, and under the open sky; but never, except in ladies’ novels, has he met a globetrotter, a big game-hunter, or a wandering journalist, who, when in England, wears Turkish slippers, an Eastern bernouse-like gown, and no waistcoat. Such individuals are a race apart; and in some respects they resemble a pug-dog, who barks much and bites little. In the matter of travel, their imaginations wander farther afield than their slippered feet.
Trist’s readiness to depart at any moment was a literal fact, although he tried to disguise it. He rather prided himself upon the homelike appearance of his tobacco-scented sitting-room; but the habit of being always ready, of knowing exactly where everything was to be found, and putting all things in their right places, was so strong in him that a sailor-like neatness was his only conception of human comfort.
Instead, therefore, of adorning his apartment with flowers and ornaments in anticipation of Mrs. Wylie’s visit, he committed the Philistine error of looking round to see that nothing was lying about without visible and obvious excuse. The task of making tidy was not a long one. Before going out to dine at a small and self-abnegating club he had dressed so that he might be ready for the widow’s visit. There had also been a long and serious consultation with the
